MISSION LOG – SOL 261
The Pathfinder chat is still down. Bandwidth has dwindled down to a truly pathetic 400 bits per second. That’s not bytes, that’s BITS. Put it another way, Pathfinder is transferring one kilobyte every twenty-one seconds. So whatever NASA is sending for download twelve hours each day doesn’t have to be very big to tie up everything for days.
I assume it’s important, though. NASA wouldn’t tie up our main communications system for days on end just to send me a kitten video. (Though to be honest, I could use some kitten vids from the Internet right now, and I’m sure the ponies would just eat them up.)
(That last parenthetical might have triggered a strange mental image. It certainly did in me when I re-read it. However, I am certain that four out of five of the current Hab residents do not see cats as food. Given that, I’m reluctant to mention the existence of millions of crowd-sourced baby cat videos to Fireball. He might think it was sort of like people taking pictures of their lunch or something.)
Anyway, we’re still talking to one another again, and progress has resumed on the Whinnybago. We’re all the way up to IV-D (having skipped over I because it’s duplicate work and because we weren’t in any mood for sorting out nuts and bolts by size or watching paint dry). Rover 1’s pressure vessel is now sitting by the Hab.
Tomorrow I use a bit of wiring harness from it to wire Rover 1’s remaining systems directly into the Hab power grid so we can power its computers back up as quickly as possible and get use of Rover 2 back. (Remember, one of the rovers has to be near the Hab at all times for Pathfinder to talk to, because Pathfinder can’t communicate with the Hab directly.)
The black crystal I pulled from the dirt in front of the cave farm yesterday crumbled to dust overnight. Starlight tells me there wasn’t enough environmental magic for them to feed off of, and by tomorrow even the dust will have evaporated. Of course, she told me this after chewing me out, because… well…
Terry Gilliam, the Monty Python animator guy, made a lot of arty films after the Python years. My favorite remains Baron Munchausen because it has Robin Williams in an uncredited role, but I’ve seen them all, including the one that let Gilliam write his ticket as a director- Time Bandits. And Time Bandits ends with this lump of burnt gunk they call “concentrated evil” somehow going from being in the Supreme Being’s throne room to being in a toaster oven. The main character’s parents poke it and explode, and that’s how the movie ends.
It’s a trippy movie, but if you see Gilliam’s name as director you should take that for granted, be it good trip (Munchausen), bad trip (Brazil), or back and forth (Time Bandits). But I bring it up for a reason: the ugly crystals are, according to Starlight, concentrated evil.
Now, obviously I didn’t explode, though I was wearing a space suit at the time and never directly touched the stuff. But those crystals are a sort of symptom of dark magic, and dark magic is apparently very serious business in ponyland.
Dark magic feeds on evil desires- anger, fear, greed, the usual. It’s a lot cheaper on mana in the short term, which makes it really easy to cast once you learn how. Does familiar it sound, hmm? The thing is, dark magic makes up the difference by devouring the user. Once you get started, it’s really, really difficult to stop, especially since the more you use, the less you want to stop.
And to make things better, dark magic has a mind of its own. It wants to get cast. It wants to take over. It tempts and whispers, Starlight says, so that even the best ponies can be tempted to try to use it for noble ends.
It’s going to be really interesting to see Starlight’s reaction to the third chapter or so of Fellowship of the Ring in a week or so.
Anyway, the crystals. They’re kind of, I dunno, kind of like shock quartz, or possibly trinitite. They’re a by-product of dark magic- or any magic which is soaked in negative emotions. You cast dark magic, and somewhere or other those crystals are likely to show up. Normally, when you see them, it is time to run and fetch a powerful good wizard to get rid of the stuff (and the bad wizard who made it).
Problem: Starlight is the only wizard we have, and by her own admission, she’s not so much a good wizard as an ex-bad wizard on one hell of a work-release program.
(Thought: imagine Voldemort, or better yet Sauron, on probation, helping fix up little old ladies’ homes. ‘Too cold, Mrs. Maitland? Here, let me open up a volcanic vent in your basement! Save hundreds on heater oil! And don’t worry about the mice, my colleague Mr. Riddle will take care of those. Just, well, keep your eyes shut for a bit, because his pet is… shy, yeah, that’s the ticket.’)
Starlight’s embarrassed and uncomfortable for having spouted enough rage-magic to make those crystals appear, and she’s worried that they might twist any magic cast nearby to make more dark magic. They can also dampen positive emotions and amplify negative ones- a trick some really bad pony once used to enslave an entire kingdom once upon a time.
I’m explaining this badly, I know, but I only kind of half understand what Starlight was trying to tell me. Bottom line, she said don’t mess with them again, they’re dangerous.
So of course I was going to get another, because NASA will read this log and want to know why I didn’t do a geology work-up on the stuff. But I didn’t go to the cave today, because Rover 2 had to stay here until Rover 1 is repurposed as the radio shack. And when Cherry and Spitfire got back, they said all the crystals on the hillside had crumbled too.
So sorry, NASA, but I missed my chance to do science to magic plutonium. I’m sure you’re horribly disappointed in me, but I can only plead extenuating circumstances, namely that… that… um…
Dear Mr. Kotter, please excuse Mark from analyzing evil magic rocks. He is allergic. Signed, Epstein’s Mother.
thanks for the update!
I love Baron Munchaussen and only seen small parts of Time Bandits and only heard of Brazil.
So wait... HOW close were they to the cave airlock and the magic starved changeling resting just inside? This cannot end well...
"to make those crystals disappear"
"to make those crystals appear"?
Good luck with A-Kon!
Now that sarcasm is a nice sign if I ever saw it. Welcome back, Mark.
...
Although it would be pretty sadistic long-term if it turned out this leap in recovery was BECAUSE of the dark magic. It turning out we don't see that sort of stuff on Earth because humans eat it without realizing, or something, and Earth's 'red in tooth & claw' biosphere would otherwise be saturated in the stuff.
XDXDXD
You're moving on to the LotR series? I mean, it's expected after The Hobbit, but still, hell yes!
Considering how much regard they have for their horses, I imagine the Ponies will be quite taken with the people of Rohan.
I wonder if any of the ponies will get a crush on Shadowfax? My money's on Starlight...
Thank you for the Welcome Back, Kotter reference.
Mark has an allergy to magic plutonium. Don't we all?
Fireball, nonononoNO! Bad dragon! Spit the evil magical rage-rock! I said spit it out! Oh jeez, can someone bring me peroxide, I need to make him puke...
Cryyyyyyyysssssssstaaaaaaaaalsssssss...
Sorry, nothing else to add. Work is progressing in the song behind the scenes. Anyone can PM me if they want more details.
Why compare those crystals with plutonium? Plutonium is not at all evil, it provides humans (and ponies too) with nice heat and nice nuclear explosions
So if Starlight just created a bunch of dark magic crystals, and the crystals can feed on and grow from negative emotions... and according to Dragonfly, Mars actively hates them... This is going to be a problem.
8967725
Only if the crystals can overcome the problem of disintegrating out of existence due to lack of universal magic field...
8967733
Not probable, but not impossible. And given the rotten luck the stranded crew have had... I highly doubt we've seen the last of these things.
8967539
I think most ponies will consider Earth horses as the equivalent of Neanderthals at best. Not dating material.
8967695
Did you read Dragonfly's comments about the Death Box?
8967736
I would be more concerned about doing a crystal check, inside a cavern made of crystal, where they have REPEATEDLY be firing up a magic field projector.
And I just realized something clever...
I present the following conundrum: What if the user isn't a person? What if the 'user' is something expendable? Like a spell matrix on a mana crystal?
EDIT2: And now I really chuckle. Because it may well be that Dark Magic really is like magic plutonium. You can't TOUCH it, because it's 'toxic and radioactive as all tartarus' (devours you). But if you keep it nice and safe away from you, behind a few layers of safety lead and protocols not to handle the stuff...
Mankind is good at one thing in particular, and that's taking things 'Man was not meant to screw with', and making it do something useful, safely.
Give the combined physicists and programmers of the world magic, and then dark magic? And we'll have dark magic bent over backwards once we figure out how to not get eaten by it.
Poor evil Glimglam.
I wonder if these crystals will come back to bite them in the arse.
8967756
Dark Magitek of this sort has interesting implications and applications...
8967756
Dark magic is described as actively sapient and sentient. If you tried to make a machine that uses it, chances are it would take over the machine and become Terminator.
Soooo
Dark magic to revive Dragonfly?
8967859
It is poorly described and even more poorly documented. We get tales of 'bad mojo' and a few artifacts with dark purposes, but all the cases generally fall into the equivalent of building a nuclear reactor bare-handed while eating paint chips. Even in our fiction containing magic, such as The Lord of The Rings, there's usually a reason behind the bad mojo. With The One Ring, for example, it was literally a physical object injected with huge chunk of the soul of Sauron himself. It's a piece of him, thus putting on the Ring is the same as strapping Sauron to your finger and asking him to help you out.
Dark Magic, as described, sounds like that, but it's missing that critical component: "Why."
About the closest thing that pops up with the crystal infestation argument is that Dark Magic is Tiberium. But unless the mighty Messiah himself, Kandy Kane, appears in Equestria, I'm not holding my breath.
To me, it looks more like Dark Magic has a narcotic effect on the caster. Casting 'feels good', and uses 'less mana', but at the expense of the Caster's health. Looking at this, I'd ALMOST bet that the total energy remains the same, but the 'reduced mana cost' involves burning out the user.
If I were CREATING Dark Magic as an early magic user, I'd likely be doing so in order to try and find a way to surpass my limitations. Especially if I was a weaker unicorn who had the knowledge, but not the juice. In this manner, if I discovered that I could trade out something in exchange for some of the mana cost, thus extending my casting options, I might choose to set it up to trade something I have readily available that's on me or part of me. That way I don't have to worry about keeping some kind of prepared reagent handy.
If I looked at it like body energy sources. Mana is carb energy or fat. Dark Magic is protein. If you're a bit starved, and short some carb/fat power, you could burn some protein and get away with it in the short term. So long as you didn't use it constantly.
However, in the process of developing the spell-class, I might discover that sacrificing part of myself in exchange for mana HURTS LIKE A M*THERF*CK*R! Thus, I go back and alter my spell matrix to provide feelings or sensations that are enjoyable. Like an endorphine release you get while exercising. Maybe even stronger to override any fears of using the spell.
But in my brilliance, I misunderstand the critical importance of pleasure and pain responses. I'm an archaic magic user, not a PhD in Neuroscience. The pleasure effect is actually TOO well made, and is actually narcotic in its behavior. Casting my dark magic is now enjoyable, addicting.
Now, what makes this worse, is that dark magic isn't a chemical in the blood, its an energy field. That means you can get a 'proximity' high off the stuff.
Flash forward, dark magic all but destroys you, and the side-effects nearly take those around you down with you. It gets banned in all wholesome schools of thought. The End.
Except not quite. In rushing to make sure no more evil, out of control mad dark magic users pop into existence, the powers that be don't stop to figure out what it is you actually did. They burn your notes (if you had any) and enforce a taboo on what you made with no true understanding of why the bad part is bad.
Unfortunately, while your notes are ash, your matrix isn't, and it gets copied by some wannabes, a few jerk-asses. You know, copycats. They see 'cheap spell cost' casting system and adopt it for themselves. Cue a repeat episode of what you did. Dark Magic is even more thoroughly shunned as evil and you're legacy is forever tarnished because you never got around to recalibrating that blasted pleasure response.
8967756
Magic Ultron.
8966984
I appreciate your feedback, but both I and River Babble (the composer) agree that the song needs to be at the speed it's currently at, if not slower, to suit the mood necessary for that scene. 125% of its current tempo is way too fast. Sorry.
Yes, it is called a rest. (The most common rests in music are whole, half, quarter, and eighth.) You're referring to measure 8. (Those are measure numbers on the left side of each line.) I initially had a longer pause there, because that's what I heard in River's original singing, but River said she wanted it to be a shorter gap, when I consulted with her over a Discord video stream/voice chat. She and I plan to comb through the piece sometime on Tuesday to refine other parts of the song.
Maybe. But again, I was going based of River's singing, and she hasn't said anything about this yet. I'll show your comment to everyone in the Discord server, though (including River). Personally, I don't see a problem with Fireball coming in one measure later instead of two.
Consider your ideas considered.
See, this is why I'd love to invite you to the Discord server, so you can follow the progress more closely and give us direct feedback. It's free and installs very easily: https://discordapp.com/
So Mark has enough genre savyness to see a giant alien cocoon and go "nope!" but his reaction to black crystals spawned from rage he is explicitly told not to touch is to go "Oooooh, I'mma do science on one of those!"
I see many problems in earth's future.
8967756
We've seen that scenario with the Alicorn Amulet: the item itself has no will and so can't cast at will, but it will corrupt anyone trying to use it.
8967756
...and screwing with it.
Have I ever told you about nuclear mining?
Oh, yes, I have.
Given life is magic and Earth is lots of life and thats where all the samples are demanded to be returned to because its too expensive for a given value of duck plated gold ponds to build an isolated checking lab in orbit or further, the idea of dropping a Pure Concentrated Evil crystal on Earth is roughly similar to that of Moonseed or other NanoMachine Grey Goo in the middle of Antarctica.
The macro crystals might have diddipated, but that means evil matrices can be diffused through the ultrafine dust in the surrounding area, slowly absorbing Cave Farm leakage, and any further Magic Thruster activation if any minute grains get stuck to Marks and crews suits etc?
Dude... that's some funny shit right there! Now, if only I could get this laughter back under control so that I don't have to explain to my boss what I find so funny when my shift starts...
8967754
From what I've looked up, Shadowfax is incredibly intelligent; fully capable of understanding human speech .
One can only hope Starlight's forecast for the dust is accurate. Still, Mark definitely seems to be feeling better given the levity and asides in the log.
8967756
That never ends well. EVER.
8967523
If you ever get the chance to watch Brazil, DO IT. If not for the trippy story that reminds me of Alice in Wonderland crossed with Vogon bureaucracy, then at least for the wonderful music.
8967911
Never underestimate the power of human curiosity. Heck, we kept poking at the atom until it exploded after all... now we're trying to find new things in those very atoms to poke until they explode too.
8968047
In Project Horizons that ended with a fortress city that ate ponies...
8967915
Nuclear mining is nothing compared to attempt in digging out new river beds with nukes...
8968047
Only because it's a trope of fiction to make it never end well.
In reality, Skynet has yet to kill us all.
That's probably the first 'Welcome Back Kotter" reference I've ever seen in a fanfic. :D
8968422
Yes, but 'horrible things may happen' has also been the excuse people throw out just to avoid having to do the work.
If everybody keeps shoving 'dark magic' back because they're too afraid to poke at it, then nothing will ever get done.
But in modern times, we have created something to help us deal with this kind of problem: The science of Risk Management.
Risk Management directs those of us who are going to take dangerous risks to evaluate the task and find a way to benefit as best as we can at as low a risk as possible. This includes evaluating the benefits themselves, the dangers posed, and any methods that may reduce the dangers or improve the benefits.
I feel Dark Magic is like the plutonium of magic in this setting. The ponies have pointed out that Dark Magic is dangerous to work with in that its nature is both debilitating, and some form of psychoactive. They've provided a critical set of information that we would have had to spend lives to learn in the first place. Risk Management dictates that if we want to proceed forward, we need to determine WHY Dark Magic is debilitating and psychoactive. If we learn these, we can develop a reliable means to prevent one, the other, or both from affecting anyone.
Using the One Ring as an example again. We know that Sauron put a significant portion of his essence (or soul) into the Ring. This doesn't mean using magic rings, or even using the Ring itself is inherently bad. Several people made use of the Ring in a limited capacity to beneficial outcomes. But it does point out that if you use the Ring in particular, you'll be exposing yourself directly to Sauron's will and malice. And the more you expose yourself to the will and malice of Sauron, the more likely that will is going to overwhelm you.
What we learn is that the Ring is not dangerous because it is ambiguously dark and evil. We learn that the Ring is literally an artifact incarnation of an evil being. There's nothing else special about it. The process to make it isn't some kind of forbidden ritual. It's not made of 'thou shalt not touchium'. It's purpose isn't some dark, twisted secret from beyond man's understanding.
Sauron made it, as a channel for his power, so he could link to other rings of similar make and subjugate the wearers remotely. In short, Sauron made the fantasy equivalent of a super villain's mind control helmet.
When put into that perspective, the One Ring stops being such a big artifact of doom. Still plenty dangerous. But knowing exactly what it does, how it does it, and why... I could take precautions so as not to be tempted or overwhelmed by its power.
1: I know that the power is simply the will of Sauron given artifact form and that no matter my motive, it will ultimately fuck me over. Thus, I walk into the scenario with a WHOLE lot less temptation to use it for my own ends.
2: I know the will of Sauron projects from the Ring and tries to subjugate the minds of those who see and covet it. Thus, I know not to directly expose myself to the Ring. I'm thinking a nice lead box would be a good start. Maybe lined in gold, because gold and magic properties and all that.
3: I know that whole subjugating will bit affects everyone in the group, so I know to apply not only point 2 for EVERYONE, I know I must also educate everyone quite concisely as to what the Ring really is, and what it does. Bringing everyone up to my level.
And before it's pointed out, no, Gandalf did a terrible job relating the dangers of the Ring. In classical wizard style, it was more an ambiguous 'it will consume you' than a real: 'This is a chunk of Sauron's soul turned into a magical wifi base station. Slipping it on is like slipping a condom made of pure Sauron on your dick. It may stroke you lovingly at first to put you off guard, but eventually it'll castrate you, usually right in front of the ladies. Because Sauron's ALSO a dick. And if you think you can overwhelm it with mental fortitude, keep in mind it's you, vs the mind and will of a 3,000+ year old demigod who ultimately WALKED OFF being smacked with a continent. So good luck with that one, what with your measly few decades on this rock and all that.'
So yeah, if Tolkien did one thing really well, it's that he didn't make the Ring just ambiguously evil and corrupting. It had a reason. And I translate that to pretty much any dark magic worth its salt. The ponies seem to be afraid of messing with dark magic because it has a currently ambiguous corrupting nature to it.
Finding out what CAUSES that corrupting nature should be priority one. And precautions for mitigating that should be academic.
8968501
Idea! And it will be in theme with LoTR.
How to to get horses back to Horseland in three easy steps!
1. Open up Artie 'Death Box' Gee.
2. Make plutonium teacup.
3. Ask Trixie to look for the most evil teacup.
One Teacup to rule them all, One Teacup to find them,
One Teacup to bring them all and in the radiance bind them
In the Land of Mars where the Potatoes lie.
8968501
I'm wondering if the reason dark magic is effective is because it's debilitating and addictive. Reduce it's debilitating or addictive properties and you reduce it's effectiveness. The less dark it is the more normal it becomes in other words.
8968453
Is the Epstein part a reference to 'The Expanse?' Or am I missing something even better?
Thinking of tracking spells, they really should have brought Cloud Kicker instead of Spitfire.
1. Star's tracking spells ex machina.
2. Mark wanted, and I quote, "Queen of Mars to rescue me so she can learn more about this Earth thing called 'lovemaking'", but who knew he would be the one to learn about that thing called 'banging'?
C'mon guys, 'The Life and Times of a Martian Pony' is a thing that needs to happen!
I don't know why. But the idea of Mark having a rash because he touched evil magic crystal amuses me to no end.
8967695
Interesting factoid. During and immediately after WWII, there were several experiments to figure out the exact critical mass of plutonium, by increasing the amount of radioactivity to just below the point of a chain reaction. They called this, "tickling the dragon's tail". And at least in two cases, using what would have been the core of the third bomb to drop on Japan, they "oops" and killed several people between the accidents by briefly causing a chain reaction. Not to the point of exploding, but the radiation burst was lethal.
So yeah, I can see testing all that "concentrated dark magic" being even worse. And about as horrifying to Starlight as we see those nuclear experiments today.
8968918
They were slowly enclosing plutonium ball with neutron reflector.
It's really more of a testament to human dont-give-a-fuckery then to plutonium evil properties, that it required two identical (and with the same ball ) lethal accidents with humans accidentally dropping reflectors to build a rig for such tests.
8968757
It's part of a mid to late 70's sitcom, the starting point of John Travolta's career, called "Welcome Back Kotter". One of the students was Juan Epstien - his mother was Puerto Rican, and his father was Jewish. He would constantly try to forge notes that said "Please Excuse Juan from ( fill in the blank ) because of ( whatever ), signed, Epstien's Mother."
8967695
True. Plutonium doesnt launch mental attacks on it's users and make them evil. It just applies horrible disease from proximity and has an extreme afinity for fire magic. You can make a one use artifact to cast a Silent Stilled Heightened Maximized Empowered Intensified Twinned Explosive Quickened fireball with extra disease/poison effects. Or something like that
Much safer.
I've seen this and the other two films as well. Gilliam is quite a crazy guy. "Brazil" was a very strange dystopian future but, perhaps not un-ironically, Britain appears headed in that direction. They're already imprisoning people for speech they don't like and tried to forbid their media from reporting about it.
8967756
I hadn’t thought of that. I applaude your creativity, even if you are suggesting using The Heart Of Malice as a fuel source. Sounds exactly like something humanity would do.
8967528
But where'd the crystals go?