Where Is Harkan
meditations on magic in fantasy settings
Where Is Harkan
Specifically: divination
Where Is Harkan
Reading the future
Where Is Harkan
in most fantasy settings, reading the future is difficult and unreliable
Where Is Harkan
for obvious reasons
Where Is Harkan
It takes a lot of tension out of a story if the characters can just peek ahead
Where Is Harkan
and see how they beat the badguy
Where Is Harkan
So instead they have to forge ahead uncertainly even when all hope seems lost
Where Is Harkan
like heroes!
Where Is Harkan
No reading the last chapter to see how it ends
Where Is Harkan
So future sight is unreliable and difficult and generally a shitty option for any heroic mage to specialize in
Where Is Harkan
The more "heroic" branches of magic are more direct things
Where Is Harkan
things like shooting fireballs or healing
Where Is Harkan
Which is also much easier to work into a story because they're like specific abilities that effect the immediate world
Where Is Harkan
I'm wondering
Where Is Harkan
how would you write a story where reading the future is like the primary thing wizards do
Where Is Harkan
shooting lightning or making barriers are poorly understood and unreliable magics
Where Is Harkan
And I think the models you'd want to use for this would be either the Allomancers from Mistborn or the Jedi from Star Wars
Where Is Harkan
A mage is unstoppable not because he sets you on fire with his mind but because he always knows what you're about to do
Where Is Harkan
So the only counter is another mage
Where Is Harkan
As they try to outplan each other
Where Is Harkan
And find out which of them can plan more steps ahead
Where Is Harkan
in short term they're like cool warrior monks
skerple
I feel like actually accurate divination must get like, exponentially more complicated the more variables are involved
Where Is Harkan
in long term they also play the role of generals and leaders
skerple
"amount of time until the event" being included as a variable
Where Is Harkan
predicting the exact fate of a particular soldier in a massive clash of armies might be difficult, but predicting the outcome of the battle overall is probably a lot easier
Where Is Harkan
there's millions of variables, but a lot of them sort of cancel each other out or run together
Where Is Harkan
Anyway "Battle Prophet" would be a hella cool title
Where Is Harkan
And I'm putting this in my back pocket for like a support caster valor build
magnet
Thinker powers in Worm tend toward that sort of thing too, especially the high-tier ones
magnet
for some more examples to go with Atium-burning allomancers & the actually cool versions of Jedi
Where Is Harkan
Atium was something I had in mind, yeah
boo(f)
I've thought about divination magics off and on but the best way I can explain this, and to be clear this is going to e a bad explanation
boo(f)
but this coincides with my own thoughts
boo(f)
which is that Divination gets extensively tricky and manipulative and vague the farther out you reach
boo(f)
Trying to divine something about what will happen this time next year? Extensively hard and you get at best cryptic wording that could be literally anything
boo(f)
Divine something that might happen in the next week? Fairly doable
boo(f)
Not without failure, but
boo(f)
which yeah dovetails nicely into the idea of Battle Prophet who can predict what's happening in advance and the only counter to them is another prophet
boo(f)
oh i missed lyssie said basically the same thing
boo(f)
dammit
moontouched
i do like how circle of magic does divination, which is essentially searching for the pressure points that cause a huge explosion of choices to occur
moontouched
so they can have forewarning about major events but they're still not sure how it will all turn out because of the aforementioned explosion of choices
Echo
"I'm about to make a lot of stuff happen very quickly, brace yourself and be prepared to duck."
boo(f)
that is a cool concept
Where Is Harkan
that's almost discworldian
Where Is Harkan
with the whole thing in Night Watch about how decisions matter but not all decisions matter
Where Is Harkan
You gotta find the important ones
A Grinning DM
I feel like Steven Universe handled it pretty well with Garnet
A Grinning DM
Where she sees all possible branching “streams” and which future paths are easier to flow into
Where Is Harkan
yea good example
A Grinning DM
Her future sight is never wrong but free will means she can never be sure which stream we’ll all end up following