//------------------------------// // (Experiment Log) Eclipse and Priss's Revisitation of Dusty Old Spellbooks // Story: The Unique Properties of Dark Magic // by Shadestyle //------------------------------// Experiment #1: "Gut Feeling" Spell This spell is one that most every pony learns when they're really young. When an Earth Pony sees something that doesn't look right, the feeling that emerges from that gives the pony the ability to sense instability and wrongness in their environments. Typically, this spell is used in order to allow an Earth Pony to immediately comprehend what is wrong with the soil, plants, and weather in an area, to best determine how to correct these issues, and assure a bountiful harvest, or a flourishing ecosystem, depending on whether or not they are maintaining nature or performing agriculture. As one of ponykind's oldest spells, it can be safely said that this spell has had a whole lot of ponies using it all the time. I'm not sure I can think of a single special talent that can't benefit from being able to tell at a glance what is wrong with something. This does mean that we might be barking up the wrong tree. A spell like this has been used by hundreds of millions of ponies. Most of them from childhood. The purpose of this experiment is more to establish a baseline. There might be uses for the spell that individuals rediscover, time and time again, but do not record. The first test was with seeing if we could use it to count cards. I had Oil Slick shuffle his deck, split it into three stacks, and then one of us would try to figure out which deck had which card in it, by excluding the ones that feel wrong. I picked correctly roughly half of the time, Oil Slick, three fourths, and Glitter Miss Priss, another friend of mine, managed to fail every single time. No matter how much she used the spell, she would consistently pick the wrong one, to the point where it became an anomaly of it's own. When she chose not to use the spell, her chances of picking the right stack increased to roughly one-third. This on it's own raises incredibly interesting questions about just how the spell functions in order to allow a pony to determine what is right or wrong, and how, seemingly, some ponies can obtain wrong results from the spell without fail. Couldn't a pony who is aware of this effect simply anticipate that the spell would give them incorrect results, and thus disqualify such a result in order to sort their way to a right conclusion? If so, this would technically make Priss an ironic winner of our test, as by simply having her use the spell twice to distinguish between decks, a one-hundred percent rate of card-counting can be achieved. Further testing is required, but I believe this form of "Wrong-scanning" might have some real usage, if we can figure out a way to put it to good use. Experiment #2: "Lucky Shot" Spell The Lucky Shot spell is a much more complex magical technique, with more immediately useful effects. When cast, the user is able to kick a pile of objects, and the force of that kick is automatically adjusted, aiming each object so that they land in a perfectly sorted fashion. The cues for what qualifies a set of objects as being sorted is based on the pony's own perceptions of how a series of objects should be arranged. As such, a pony using the spell on things that don't belong to them, or things that they are unfamiliar with, serve to tidy up the target, without properly sorting them as they need to be. Several components of this spell's function are worth investigating. Firstly, it's application of force to multiple objects. One kick is able to sort almost any number of objects, based entirely on the spell's power, and the force of the kick. In theory, a strong enough pony could kick an arbitrarily high number of objects into an arbitrarily complex sorting pattern, so long as they had the magical oomph to back it up. Is there a deeper mechanism to this spell? One that could be exploited for further usage? The purpose of this experiment is twofold. To discover if the two components of the Lucky Shot spell are able to be deepened through rigorous testing. The end result of the tests indicate that Lucky Shot is not only capable of arbitrarily high numbers and complexity, but also, the definition of sorting itself can be stretched. Because it functions by bringing objects to a state of "rightness", it can be exploited. One such example included being able to kick a pile of keys, such that they all flew into their respective locks. I had memorized the locks and keys beforehand, to ensure that my knowledge was sufficient for a correct sorting state. This indicates that Lucky Shot is capable of feats that are only loosely associated with sorting. Priss's experiment was equally enlightening. Wanting to test its combat capabilities, she instead kicked a pile of darts, which launched them directly into the heads of several training dummies. It both impresses and terrifies me that her ideal state of rightness can include turning training dummies into pincushions. Reguardless, this indicates that among certain individuals, the Lucky Shot spell can be utilized in combat, as well as in peacetime. By assuming a state of rightness in which weapons are embedded in targets, the spell can be twisted into a potent attack magic, able to attack multiple foes in a single move. - Today's Results I'm really happy with how things worked out today. Priss and I weren't sure that this would turn out to be more than a waste of time, but I feel like we really learned a lot today! Without a doubt, there exist spells whose uses can be creatively distorted, in order to achieve equally useful effects, easily as useful as the spell's original intent itself. We look forward to exploring even more spells in the future, and discovering what other diamonds are embedded in the mundane.