NOVEL NEXT Chapter 108: Fimbulwinter
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Marie: Ma made me a sari!
(photo of Marie in her mother's creation, a fairly simplistic but genuine sari, of jersey cotton)
Gordon: I keep forgetting that that's part of your culture.
Marie: More hers—she doesn't really emphasize it, we're 'martian now' and everything. But . . . do you like it?
Gordon: You look beautiful.
Marie: It's really soft.
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Sol 504 FY 26, 07:12 Mars Time, Bonestell Crater Colony, Hab Layer, 9.32.002.B
[Remember: Ghostlands is not responsible for any burns you may receive from overloaded or arcing haptics. Gel up, and happy playing!]
Marie rolled her eyes at the reminder. She was hardly going to risk overload today.
Summoning her avatar and sending her off to Gordon took moments, and the chat always took a sec to notice an active stream in any case. She waited patiently.
"Alright chat," said Marie. "Today we're getting an education in the laws of magic. And rock climbing, how fun."
"I, as a support caster, am the—" . . . grunt . . . "—best at rock climbing."
She was in a spiral stair, near the base of a looming tower with a dramatically pointed roof like a witch's hat. Or a wizard's.
It reminded her of an animated movie she'd seen once, about a wizard's tower, and a spiral staircase with gap toothed stairs. <wizard of earthsea reference> Apparently, the player whose home this was had decided to take it up to eleven. There were stairs—like, four of them. Like forty feet apart from one another. They'd hopefully do for taking breaks on.
"So, while I do this otherwise FASCINATING feat of performance athletics, let's talk about what a 'law' of magic really is. It's not what you think, probably, because they stopped teaching this in schools in the 90's. That, for anybody counting, is almost a century ago."
"Teachers were worried that law sounds more definitive than theory and said that theories should be the only word taught from then on, and so they. . . removed laws. It was like if you were worried people might think fiber was better than DSL and your solution was to remove the word 'fiber' FROM THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE."
"So for those of you who didn't have a PhD personally tutoring you through high school science—which, yes, I did, and yes, it was weird—here's the part they don't tell you anymore: Laws are descriptive. 'Things fall if you drop 'em.'—that's a law in its simplest form. No statement as to why, but they do it every time we've tried it. They tend to be fairly ironclad. Theories are theoretical, hence the name. They're uncertain, but we don't upgrade hypotheses to theories until we have more reason than not. Depends on the scientist, really. Some will tell you anything at all as long as nobody checks their math."
Grunt. Shift.
"Anyway, instead of removing it from textbooks they could've just held up flashcards and defined their terms—like adults having a conversation. If you're losing an argument because your opponent doesn't know where the difference between a 'law' is versus 'theory', then perhaps the first thing you should do is purchase a dictionary and pass it over to your opponent."
"If you're having arguments where neither of you tried to define your terms before the argument started, then you're not having a grown-up conversation—you're having a performance. One where both people try to sound smarter and don't care what their opponent thinks."
Marie had very little use for such idiots, or the policies that they had enacted, It was just a little bit disappointing.
She rested, and drank a stamina potion. "Perks of being a witch—I cheat."
Her hands were killing her. She drank a health potion too. And featherfall. "Better safe than sorry."
"ANYWAY onward and upward, and let me tell you what we're doing here, because I know precisely one wizard here."
> Randoon_the_Wizard: Present and accounted for.
"And he already talks too much. So I, the not-a-wizard, will explain wizardry."
> Randoon_the_Wizard: Fair's fair
"Step one in the scientific theory: 'I noticed that hot air goes up.'—well same thing in Ghostlands theorycraft."
"Okay, so what do we do about that?" she continued, "Well, we have to prove that our observation maps to one of the Laws of Magic—which is proven by someone writing a book about the thing we observed. Could be us."
"Step two. We know a Law of Magic. Why not an observation? Because you don't make theories for one-off events. Why not force us to observe it for more than an hour? Devs wanted us to play the game. Besides, in Ghostlands, a deterministic simulation, in theory you don't get one-offs."
> DigitalMemorandium: *Snerk*
"So you want to make a theory about hot air. Well, you go hunt down a gnome named Fallenius who wrote a book saying, pretty much, 'Hey, I put a fire under my hot air balloon, and the air went up, and so my balloon worked'. Now you can prove that other people also have noticed that hot air rises."
"Does he know why it happens? No. But he knows that it happens. That's why it's a law: 'hot air goes up'."
"Okay. Step two: find the current explanation for why hot air goes up.
Depending on the last player to write a book on it, it might be a perfectly reasonable set of ideas—something about lower pressure areas rising, and all the air pressure on top pushing down, and so on. Maybe it comes down to buoyancy."
"Anyway, sensible theories won't last very long: eventually the next player to come along writes: "Hot air rises because it's red."
And the thing is, in Ghostland, it's based on stats. And rolls. So if a higher-level player in Theorycraft writes that hot air rises because it's red—then that's the new rule."
"Hot air now rises because it's red. For the purposes of spellcraft."
"And any spell you wrote based on magical theory would be valid as long as it understood that hot air rises because it's red. That's the shibboleth for the magic system to decide your new spell is valid, is you having documentation of the current theory."
"Old spells get grandfathered in.
New spells have to use the current paradigm."
"And because the Internet is trolls, most of the new paradigms are stupid."
Marie thought it was an absolute hoot. She loved it.
It was great.
Except.
It generally meant there's only one copy of any one necessary theory scroll unless they were published. You could go find them—if you had the name and where. Finding them online could be a struggle.
In her case, she lucked out.
At least the author she was looking for was on Mars.
But, because research was almost exclusively the province of wizards, she'd had to find a wizard tower.
Wizards, if one reads popular fantasy, are dignified and quick to anger.
In Ghostlands, the mixture of rules had resulted in a somewhat different type of wizard.
Marie wondered if that would be true in real life.
To cast a spell, you either:
Invested a whole lot in specialized gear that casts for you (like Claire had paid to do—Marie honestly didn't have a lot of respect for that approach),
or
Memorized the spell: spell hints, enchantment phrasing, gestural scaffolding, everything. Very nerdy and hardcore.
There were governing gestures, although these were fairly standardized. And spells worked for a reason—defined at the time of the spell's research, which could change depending on the current meta.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
For example:
If one were to cast a massive flying spell in a meta where "air rises because it's red," then part of casting that spell would probably involve burning incense and creating a red light effect—so that you define an area of air, make it red, and the air rises.
Something like that.
Theorycraft was one of the few systems in-game that wasn't entirely stat-based and did have some AI oversight—precisely because even players who wanted to be wizards didn't want to get a minor college degree in Ghostlands wizardry.
So they were simply limited in how complicated their spells could be. The system used AI assistance based on their level, stats, etc.
Marie had kept her time shield for nearly her entire career as a witch, having taken the shield spell as soon as she was able.
She'd brute-force memorized it. She didn't know why it worked, but she knew the spell.
She only had to recompile it once.
Witches did get some intuitive spells, like slow time and healing, and she'd never really done much research.
That didn't mean she didn't read the wiki.
People were putting laws out there like ''hot air rises because it's red'.
"If you want to cast a new spell in Ghostlands—not just use a premade one, but actually make one—then first you have to know the current magical theory. Fine, right? Sure. Except knowing it in your head isn't good enough."
"You have to own a book that says it.
Not just know that hot air rises because it's red—you have to track down a physical scroll that literally says the words 'hot air rises because it's red'."
"Doesn't matter if it's stupid. Doesn't matter if everyone knows it's stupid.
If you don't have the right text, the system just. . . shrugs at you. Your spell fails. You can't even research it."
"So here I am, in this mildewey tower at the edge of the map, doing a bit of free climbing because someone decided fifteen months ago that frost magic works because of the letter F—for freeze. Because, in Ghostlands, shitposting gets you money.
You write the dumbest scroll that defines the dominant theory, and boom—everyone else has to buy your crap if they want their spells to work."
She wasn't even bitter. It was a fun wiki.
"I like wizards and towers," she told her chat. "But I think in real life people start shitposting the moment they get a broad enough platform, even if it's a serious one."
"Have you seen what some of the NASA missions were named?"
"Anyway. Here I am. In white fancy robes, climbing a moldy stone wall in the dark."
Her voice was dry.
"I'm a little bit excited,"" she admitted, carefully setting her lantern on a moss-covered ledge. "Because if you think about it: I'm about to get a book that says, 'Hey, frost magic sometimes causes water to freeze', and that's a power-up. A bit."
More climbing. She was near the top, now.
"I was extra careful to choose one that explicitly said saltwater can freeze when hit with frost magic."
"Now. I could've written my own."
"I could've taken an entire day of observation—and in Ghostlands, 'observation' just means being nearby while poking it with a stick—and then I could've written my cold things freeze law: 'the Law of Frost Magic: Sometimes frost magic causes things to freeze.' and said it was due to . . . brown eyes."
"I could've written it down. Then one of you could've used it."
"But I didn't do that. Because then people would have a reason to visit me during my stream."
Her fingers ached.
"And the best streams I've ever done, I was either with dear friends. . . or completely alone."
"No offense. I love you guys. I appreciate that you're all chatting with me all the time."
"But if we were all in a room? I would—" she hesitated, grinning faintly,
"I would hope you were planning to leave soon."
> Randoon_the_Wizard: No offense taken.
> Randoon_the_Wizard: In fact, let's be honest—there's almost a million of us.
She looked at her viewer count.
"Holy shit."
> Randoon_the_Wizard: Yeah
> Randoon_the_Wizard: I just don't think we'd all fit in the room very well.
"But let's say all you've got is a lot of flint. So you write a flint-based fire spell."
"If that becomes the dominant theory, then suddenly everyone else has to find flint, even if they live in a swamp or on a boat or inside a lava cave. Or beat the first theorycrafter in his theorycrafting check. So of course these guys min-max the hell out of it."
"Nobody's managed to bust this one. This guy's probably pretty good."
> The11thPiggie: Reminds me of art history
> WizenedPotato: Shh the establishment is gonna ban you
Marie sighed. "No, I don't know any more about this guy than you guys do—honestly, you probably know more than I do."
"His name is Pascals Laser. And his theory is that, since frost spells start with the letter F, and freeze starts with the letter F, frost spells freeze things.
"So I'm betting this is going to be a delightful conversation with his avatar—which I have been told will definitely be there, whether or not he is."
She paused. "Those of you who don't use your avatars as shopkeepers might not know, but this is completely normal."
"Where was I. . . ."
"Right. I'm at the top. No stairs. But there is a trapdoor.
How thoughtful.
Thank you, Pascal."
She cast Time Shield—the spell flickered slightly—then awkwardly clambered on top of the spherical shield, standing on a shell of temporarily frozen air.
With one hand, she shoved the trapdoor open and climbed inside.
Pascal turned out to be a rather portly fellow with sallow skin, dark straight hair, and what could only be interpreted as a plague doctor's mask.
He looked like a fat crow.
"Pleased to meet you," he said, in perfect monotone, using the default AI voice for player avatars.
"Terrible," Marie said flatly. "Pascal. The real Pascal, please don't make me talk to your simulacrum."
There was a thump. Dust fell from the ceiling.
The real Pascal descended.
This one glowed with an aura of power and mystery, clearly boasting very high mental and social stats—because he also looked like a plump raven.
"Hello," he said.
"You didn't want to barter?
Marie said. "I wanted to barter with a person."
"Tut tut. Everybody skips steps," said Pascal, cheerful now.
"It isn't nice to escalate until after you've discovered that there's no way for him to accept payment. But you get extra credit for not breaking character and calling him a robot or something
His voice was relatively measured, but his manner was merry.
"So," he continued, "Which spellbook? Which tome? Which arcane grimoire of the darkest secrets?"
"Nothing fancy. Just—'F makes things freeze.'"
"Good choice," he said. "I find that the fricative nature follows factually.
The fricatives foretend the freeze.
Since frost follows fall, and freeze follows frost—frigid, frost, Fimbulwinter .
Can you see what they all have in common?"
"Yes," Marie said. "They're all from languages where the word for 'cold' happens to have the letter F in it."
"You could try to play along," he noted. "It wouldn't kill you."
"Probably not, but why risk it?" she quipped. "Got the F?"
"Only if you let me say the whole thing."
"What do you think, chat?"
> Randoon_The_Wizard: It's his time to shine, let him have fun.
> SmallpoxforLaptops: What the moron said. Ditto.
> Randoon_the_Wizard: Pleased to meet you, SFL.
"Fjords, fast frozen floes festoon'ed frost, firn from flurried frost falls frigid: fucking FIMBULWINTER" he announced grandly.
"B minus," she heckled. She was in a mood today.
"Magic liked it. Bonus for each proof of your theory, you see. Mine's maxed out. F's will always freeze things. I'm a little proud of that."
"You earned it," she said generously. "My scroll?"
"From someone who has everything, what could I ask?"
"I could . . . pay you a fair market rate?" she offered, holding up a handful of unfaceted gems.
> x_TremeSnooze: She could toss his corpse down the tower.
She froze, a smirk playing about her lips.
"Someone just said to do something horrible to me, right? Murdur hobos." He snatched the gems. "Here you go. Have fun bringing Fimbulwinter that much closer."
"You're not serious."
"In a game where you can change the laws of reality and the devs act on whimsy as much as ours?" He tapped his 'nose', the mask making tonk tonk noises. "There's no telling."