Wormere chatlog

[fibonacci_reminder]

Here's another (significantly shorter) chatlog of me infodumping on a different, somewhat less fleshed out setting called Wormere. Once again, my username is Fib#5983, and other usernames have been anonymized to User followed by a number in order of their appearance.

[6:12 AM] Fib: Life never dies, it just moves on.
[6:12 AM] Fib: A related setting to #agony
[6:14 AM] Fib: In this one, rather than every single cell in the world having an animula, an individual soul that is immortal, perpetual, and carries some tiny fragment of self
[6:14 AM] Fib: There is simply Life Force, or vis, which is a kind of energy that pervades living systems
[6:15 AM] Fib: As well as non-living systems of life-like character, such as weather systems, fire, etc.
[6:15 AM] Fib: A relevant character of these systems is that they consume and grow
[6:15 AM] Fib: And in that process, they generate vis
[6:17 AM] Fib: This is as a side-effect of whatever particular physical phenomena lets them exploit an energy source in the environment to perpetuate themselves
[6:17 AM] Fib: Fire generates vis as it burns, the weather generates vis as air currents of differing temperature collide and exchange heat, life generates vis via metabolism, etc.
[6:19 AM] Fib: This vis is imbued with its mother character, or mode.
[6:19 AM] Fib: The vis of fire desires fire-ness
[6:19 AM] Fib: The vis of weather desire weather-ness
[6:19 AM] Fib: The vis of life, desires the mode of whatever life it once was
[6:20 AM] Fib: Vis in turn discharges itself to try and achieve its desire
[6:20 AM] Fib: Fires rage, weather churns, and life rises again
[6:23 AM] Fib: In practice, entropy still wins in the end. Vis is only energy, and just like how a corpse starts warm and cools down, a zombie bleeds vis until eventually it falls again_(edited)
[6:23 AM] Fib: Also like heat, its bigger animals that tend to last longer
[6:24 AM] Fib: Your average elephant probably last a while, even if its herd didn't protect it
[6:29 AM] Fib: While your average mouse probably wouldn't last a whole day even in a lab where it was safe and clean
[6:29 AM] Fib: Now, this means more than just zombies happen sometimes
[6:30 AM] Fib: Because humans are special
[6:30 AM] Fib: Specifically, human lucked into an incredibly valuable group of mutations
[6:31 AM] Fib: Many humans, maybe on the order of 60%, have some ability to internally manipulate their vis
[6:31 AM] Fib: This allows for some incredible feats of strength, endurance, and physical prowess with training, though at the expense of somewhat accelerate aging
[6:32 AM] Fib: (Aging accelerating because, as they use up their naturally accrued vis, the density of vis in their body decreases, which in turn lessens the 'push-back' against more metabolic process, allowing their metabolism to rise and thus their aging to accelerate.)
[6:33 AM] Fib: At the same time, vis manipulation, if used to conserve vis, can extend your life significantly.
[6:34 AM] Fib: Of particular note, however, is that there are a few OP combinations vis mutations
Fib pinned a message to this channel. See all the pins.Last Wednesday at 6:34 AM
[6:36 AM] Fib: One of these is the healer phenotype
[6:36 AM] Fib: Healers have the ability to project their vis
[6:38 AM] Fib: By default, this can let them lend vitality to other humans, and higher levels of skill it can let them heal wounds and diseases with supernatural speed, lend vis to nonhuman lifeforms, and even influence the environment by injecting vis into unliving things
[6:40 AM] Fib: (Projecting into another human is effective, to a limited degree, thanks to humans various vis-related mutations, allowing your target to absorb and reform your vis into vis formed for their own body. Projecting into other animals, into plants, and into unliving things requires increasingly great skill as one moves further from the human form, since you have to shape a portion of your vis into the appropriate shape before projecting it.)
[6:40 AM] Fib: Another of these is the slayer phenotype
[6:40 AM] Fib: Slayers absorb vis from the environment
[6:41 AM] Fib: This lets them do things like cause people to age more quickly, to become infirm, to slay undead, and to dampen vis-consuming natural phenomena
[6:42 AM] Fib: Their skill curve isn't the same as a healer, since their body, being human, is equipped to automatically process relatively alien vis-forms
[6:43 AM] Fib: But absorbing vis from extremely different things, like from fire, can still lead to vital chaos, a kind of disease where foreign vis interferes with proper organic functioning
[6:44 AM] Fib: It's most easily solvable with the appropriate vis-shaping techniques
[6:45 AM] Fib: Instead, the skill curve of a slayer is mostly determined by the strength and control of their 'proboscis', the metaphysical structure which they use to siphon off vis
[6:45 AM] Fib: It is easiest to drain things which they are touching, and which are small and are not holding onto their vis strongly_(edited)
[6:45 AM] Fib: Small fires, small animals or plants, that sort of thing
[6:46 AM] Fib: Greater distance, greater size, greater vis, and more increase difficulty_(edited)
[6:47 AM] Fib: Also, as a consequence of vis, slayers naturally tends to long, very long lives, and towards general health and fitness
[6:47 AM] Fib: Finally, there is the master phenotype, which is simply an overlap of the healer and slayer
[6:48 AM] Fib: Naturally, this combination allows for incredible feats, as controlling the flow of vis, with their body as a center of control, allows for greater flexibility than either phenotype alone
[6:50 AM] User1: cool!
[6:51 AM] User1: I'm not sure I 100% grok this setting yet but I like the concept
[6:52 AM] Fib: Have the time to ask some questions, to help clear things up?_(edited)
[6:54 AM] User1: the time but not the brainpower, sorry
[6:54 AM] Fib: nods, hugs
[6:54 AM] Fib: Maybe later?
[6:54 AM] User1: maybe
[6:54 AM] User1: hugs
[6:54 AM] Fib: Thanks
[6:58 AM] Fib: Also pinging @User2 and @User3 in case either of you think this might be interesting
[1:43 PM] User2: what does the master DO? is there anything the master can do that a slayer or healer could not do?
[1:45 PM] User2: also, does everyone have some kind of vis manipulation? you only specified that 60% have internal manipulation
[1:46 PM] User2: does someones internal vis have limitations based on their own mode? like can every internal vis user make themselves stronger? or do you need someone with a strength enabling mode to do that?
[9:55 PM] Fib: @User2 in abstract, the master cannot do anything which a healer or slayer could not do. In practice, there are large-scale healings which a healer could never possess the requisite vis for, but which a master can do if they were to amass enough via draining other sources
[9:56 PM] Fib: And, there are many kinds or modes of internal manipulation, and not all of them can do everything. I don’t know what the exact occurrence rates for different mode are though, unfortunately.
[10:31 PM] User2: not sure what else to ask. kinda disappointed that masters just scale and dont have any unique talents, but its your setting
[10:33 PM] Fib: :(

I don't know whether I'm ever going to get around to posting any chatlogs for Agony, or when I will if I do. If people seem interested, I'll try and scrape something together.