robkelk Wrote:If I'm understanding you correctly, the VVS is working on that "unified theory of magic" that Warriors' World has (or at least has a start on), but from first principles instead of from comparison of existing magical traditions... Nifty.
Sort of. I mean, I'm explaining this VERY BADLY because the terminology is all kind of muddled up in my head and it's all still very preliminary. Right, so the Soviets have looked at all the various magic theories from like the dawn of Man up to the most recent neopaginisms and decided that since none of them have any appreciable effect on the universe they are all bupkis. However! The mystery field does exist, and people (that is to say, the Visitors) have been recorded tapping into that field to do things. Therefore it stands to reason if they can do it, then so should the Soviets (and eventually All People, but that's a ways off). So not knowing a single goddamn thing about magic except that a) it exists and b) it can used, the Soviets start dicking around with theory and experiment.
What they've got as of the 2022 update is about half a Newtonian mechanics model of "magic" as an energy field. A few of the top boffins of the Ravenholm Project who may have been doing this for too long have noticed similarities between the Black Mesa model and the luminiferous aether, but hope springs eternal that that Pandora's Box of crackpottery stays closed. The model is predictive but not perfectly so - it doesn't quite explain the wobble in local mana levels among other things - but it's good enough to use for some simple engineering work. This amounts to a handful of magic-powered vacuum tubes and a widget that passively converts mana to electricity... but it's a start.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
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