First off, I really should've gotten around to responding to this earlier, but the dreaded Con Plague finally managed to sneak up on me after five virus-free years and knocked me flat for a good couple of days. I've only just regained the synapses necessary for anything more complex than snark, so here we go.
First off, the Infinity registering of "indeterminate mana" is part & parcel of keeping the whole mystery of handwavium mysterious. That's the OOC answer; fudging the results just to fuck with the audience.
IC, Infinity honestly doesn't know what to make of Fenspace (excuse me, Gernsback-2). They measure mana in a simple gradient: None, Low, Medium, High, Very High and Holy Shit Magical Chernobyl. Most of the time Gernsback-2 registers as a no-mana world, but sometimes it flucutates. Infinity is used to worlds with hotspots, but finding a world where the mana level jumps from to zero to low and then back again in six hours all over the solar system and completely at random is a little unsettling, to say the least.
So that's what's going on with the mana level. Paralabs has no clue as to how or why, but since the natives blame everything weird on handwavium... well, why not?
This is a thought I'd be a little more receptive towards if I hadn't had to smack somebody down for godmodding and overusing the "handwavium is magic!" thing. Don't get me wrong, as theories go it makes as much sense as anything else, but having it be crystalized magic... ehhhhnh.
So, yeah. I'm willing to be convinced, but the burden of proof is higher than "is it neat," you'll have to convince me that I won't have to throttle people left & right for treating handwavium like D&D magic.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
First off, the Infinity registering of "indeterminate mana" is part & parcel of keeping the whole mystery of handwavium mysterious. That's the OOC answer; fudging the results just to fuck with the audience.
IC, Infinity honestly doesn't know what to make of Fenspace (excuse me, Gernsback-2). They measure mana in a simple gradient: None, Low, Medium, High, Very High and Holy Shit Magical Chernobyl. Most of the time Gernsback-2 registers as a no-mana world, but sometimes it flucutates. Infinity is used to worlds with hotspots, but finding a world where the mana level jumps from to zero to low and then back again in six hours all over the solar system and completely at random is a little unsettling, to say the least.
So that's what's going on with the mana level. Paralabs has no clue as to how or why, but since the natives blame everything weird on handwavium... well, why not?
Fenian Wrote:Even wilder speculation - this one is completely out of left field, but I'm hoping it will get some interesting talk going. Perhaps the Indeterminate mana level is because most of the magical energy is currently in a non-energy form, at least around Earth. In all sorts of interesting forms, actually - solids, goo.... Has anyone ever thought that the stuff might be solidified/gelled MANA? And given that a number of stories talk about aspected mana, it could very well be solidified/gelled mana with a technology aspect. How it got that way would be anybody's guess....but it might explain some of the really weird effects we've seen with it. It might ALSO explain the reaction of the handwavium that Doug tried to examine. I'm not sure - Bob, does he draw in ambient mana when he's using his gift at all? If so, and if he was holding something that was actually solid mana, that could explain why it seemed to implode. He started to use his gift while holding it, it reacted to the song, but also started to be absorbed to power the song - a feedback loop? That might also explain why he was knocked unconscious.
This is a thought I'd be a little more receptive towards if I hadn't had to smack somebody down for godmodding and overusing the "handwavium is magic!" thing. Don't get me wrong, as theories go it makes as much sense as anything else, but having it be crystalized magic... ehhhhnh.
So, yeah. I'm willing to be convinced, but the burden of proof is higher than "is it neat," you'll have to convince me that I won't have to throttle people left & right for treating handwavium like D&D magic.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"