Nasuverse Let's talk about FRO!

[Amodelsino]

Given that Shinji can do zero magic himself despite having a huge amount of theory? Nope. You still need circuits to do it.

 

[Leidolf]

Formal craft is using Mana rather than Od, but you still need Od to start up the process. It's like the key turning on the engine of a car and the mana from the outside is the fuel.

 

[Olivebirdy]

Did anyone else love the scene where Diabel winds up Liz by using gay innuendo?

 

[Leidolf]

Did anyone else love the scene where Diabel winds up Liz by using gay innuendo?

And Shirou was clueless....:lol:

 

[Olivebirdy]

Sempai, there is one important mistake you made when Ilya was explaining Alchemy to Kirito. Kirito said that since it's acts instead of effects, it's not static, which is exactly the opposite of what Ilya said.

 

[daniel_gudman]

Let's talk about that.


Alchemy discussion
Scene in question:

“For alchemy.” Shirou explained, casually stepping into the exchange. “Because alchemy focuses on 'acts' instead of 'effects', the prana used tends to evaporate quickly. To deal with that, you saturate the air with prana. That's easier with a sealed room.”

...

“Right, but this is just a rhetorical example.” Ilya responded without missing a beat. “Imagine you wanted to turn lead into gold with a spell.” Ilya repeated herself as she got back into the groove of what sounded almost like a prepared speech.

“Using physical magecraft, you could use Reinforcement and Alteration to change the hardness, luster, density, electrical and thermal conductivity, toughness, and every other property of the material from the properties of lead to the properties of gold.” Ilya nodded in agreement with herself. “So in every measurable way, it would look exactly the same as real gold. However, in the end, it's not. The spell would wear off, the prana would evaporate out, and it would return to being lead. That wouldn't be too hard. That's a magecraft that focuses on effects.”

“And alchemy is a magecraft that focuses on acts, as opposed to that.” Kirito had his chin resting on his hand and his eyebrows drawn thoughtfully together again. “Meaning that the [magic] would be in some kind of action that transforms [Mundane Lead] into [Mundane Gold]?”

Ilya pouted as Kirito suborned her lecture, but rallied to nit-pick. “Right, but even if it's difficult, that's not a True Magic, it's still just regular magecraft.”

Kirito just rolled his eyes in return. “So because it's [Acts] instead of [Effects], it's not something static that stays where you put it.” He nodded confidently. “Yes, I think I have it.”

I basically don't understand how you're parsing this, because I think they're saying the same thing. And, critically, after rereading it a few times, I don't think I'm confusing it with a previous draft and pooching the logic.

Ilya describes "regular, non-alchemy spells", and then Kirito interrupts her halfway through and gives a description of "alchemy spells".




(BTW, Doumeki was referring to Snow Crash, the most cyberpunk novel, when he was talking about Kirito; the main character was literally named Hiro Protagonist, "last of the freelance hackers and greatest swordfighter in the world". It's actually got a lot in common with this story; not just the cyberspace swordfights, but also the part where the ancient Sumerians spoke a universal "perfect" language. That's getting pretty far off into the woods though.)




Let's talk about something else: documentation. I suspect based on the complete lack of response each time I've brought it up that most people don't give a hot damn; but I do, so you all have to somehow deal, I suppose.

Friggin' Document design
So a few times in the past, I've mentioned that I'm moving towards having some more formalized document control.

I've got a folder labeled _DRAFT where I store the files for bits and pieces up to subsections, and a folder labeled _ISSUED for the chapters that have been upload to ffnet.

Honestly the reason for doing that was so I could keep on top of corrections that came through the ffnet review system; once I have a single master folder, I can revise to there, and release from there.

I also started playing around with some features in LibreOffice, particularly templates and master documents. I'm still not, like, super-happy with how these are turning out, but it's coming along. Honestly I got distracted from my original goal of getting on top of the ffnet corrections just playing with features in the word processor.

Well, the result of that is, in addition to releasing to ffnet, I'm also getting close to easily blasting out a single-file release of the whole kaboodle through, like, Dropbox or something, as a PDF or an EPUB. Those are basically both click-to-publish functions in LO (PDF is native and EPUB with the eLaix extension.) Those automatically include bookmarks from headings and a linkable table of contents, it's pretty slick.

So let's open this up to metacontent discussion:

What kind of formatting do you prefer?

1) Font and size are the obvious starting points; right now I've got Georgia 12 as the body text and Verdana 14+ as the headers since those are pretty much the "best" fonts for online reading (since practically all computers have them and they're natively designed for screen viewing).

2) Right now I've got two heading levels, for chapter/subchapter. I added a background stripe to the line with the heading on it, which I understand is considered a gross-looking design choice for books, but it makes them super-easy to find when I'm scrolling up and down real quick, which was my reason for doing so.

3) I'm also applying a character style to all [bracketed] terms, and highlighting them yellow; again, something I do for reviewing, because I bet that it would be even more [obnoxious] than it is now. Originally my goal was to have, like, an imbedded radio button selection where you could click between [Brackets], those <<guillemets>> like in SAO originally, or make it italic (although that last one would indicate some weird stress patterns in speech), or even just turn the damn things off. That turned out to be too hard for my skills, though. Like, I can't even accurately assess how difficult it is; whether it's even practical to do for anyone, let alone me.

Anyway if you have any bright ideas for other ways I could signify [Game Nouns], then go ahead and lemme know.

4) There are also several times that I've had people send PMs or look at popups and each time, I've kind of kludged it with brackets like so:

[PM
From: Kayaba
To: you
It's magic
I don't gotta explain shit]

Anyway I can slap that inside a special paragraph style so that it's nested inside a box (I also added a background to that, just super-light gray). I'm liking the look of those boxes enough that I might keep them even though they completely don't get imported by either the forum page or ffnet. Athough I could simply slap them inside CODE tags (slapping them in a table cell would be better but this forum doesn't have table code instantiated; I already checked that. And I've ranted enough about ffnet's comically idiosyncratic uploading mechanism).

5) Also, like, what size pages for PDF? Right now I've got it set to that damn 8.5"x11" default for USA, but that's because I switched to "online view" and never looked back. Probably it would be better (ie, more friendly to eReaders, tablets, and even desktop screen ratios) to go to 6"x9", or A5 if I feel like mixing my goddam units (LO expresses margins in hundredths of an inch and if it's possible to change that without changing my install version I haven't figured out how). Hell I could even go with JIS B5 if I wanted to reflect that this is fanfic of two Japanese media.

6) I've also got a style I used exactly once, in Chapter 1, for Kayaba's big speech. So far it's exactly the same as the regular body text except in italics; I might crank up the font size another two points to 14 or something. I dunno.

7) Let me know if you think I'm missing something. Like, if there should be another "type" or "kind" of text in here in its own category, lay it on me.

So: styles for headings and body text; how you feel about me splashing colors around; if there's anything else I should add; and thoughts on page sizes. That's what I'm looking for feedback on. Of course, if you think there's something I've completely overlooked, let me know about that, too.

 

[Olivebirdy]

Kirito just rolled his eyes in return. “So because it's [Acts] instead of [Effects], it's not something static that stays where you put it.”

It's the 'not' that ruins the sentence.

Kirito should be saying:
Because alchemy focuses on acts rather than effects, it is more static than 'regular magecraft', and will stay where you put it.


Protagonist as a name is kind of on the nose for a main character. I'll look into it.

The brackets grew on me, though I think using them as characterization is too subtle for readers. Maybe have a character point it out?

I know nothing about documents.

I like the idea of Kayaba's speech being in a special font.

 

[jurac]

From what I understand, this alchemy is dynamic, not static. It's like setting something on fire: once the fire dies down, whatever you burned is not going to change back just because the fire ended. You can't just dispel the change - unlike normal magecraft, which just puts a status on it that says 'this chunk of lead behaves like gold' - because there is no magic affecting it anymore.

 

[Olivebirdy]

So you think 'something static, that stays where you put it' is more likely to apply to common magecraft than to alchemy?

Unlikely, seeing how Ilya was talk about the longevity of alchemically changed lead.

 

[jurac]

I'm talking about the method of achieving the goal. You seem to be talking about the end result.

The way I see it in the case of lead to gold:

Magecraft enchants the lead with the properties of gold. As long as the spell holds, we have gold - thus a static effect.

Alchemy creates a process which takes in lead and spits out gold -all the magic is in the change itself, nothing inside the lead pre-transition or gold post-transition, and thus, dynamic.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I actually called magecraft static before.

 

[Olivebirdy]

No, I understood what you meant, I just don't agree. See, if you are right, Ilya would have been talking about the process of alchemy and magecraft. That would have been the main idea. But she was focusing more on the material. The act/effect on lead/gold. Also, Kirito should be repeating what Ilya says. Even in your interpretation, is he? Or is he saying something new about the nature of alchemy that he had no business knowing? I mean, did Ilya tell Kirito that Alchemy is dynamic, or is that understanding something he pulled out of thin air, the first time he's told about alchemy? It's just more likely that there's a 'not' where there shouldn't be. Pretend the 'not' is missing. Doesn't that conversation make more sense?

 

[Garahs]

Well Daniel, to be completely honest, I save fics as txt files. If you want to go fancy, title each scene as a new chapter, maybe throwing links to omake at appropriate places (keeping them out of the main flow as much as possible), and enlarged text for chapter titles. You don't really need anything fancy in my opinion though.

 

[linkhyrule5]

No, I understood what you meant, I just don't agree. See, if you are right, Ilya would have been talking about the process of alchemy and magecraft. That would have been the main idea. But she was focusing more on the material. The act/effect on lead/gold. Also, Kirito should be repeating what Ilya says. Even in your interpretation, is he? Or is he saying something new about the nature of alchemy that he had no business knowing? I mean, did Ilya tell Kirito that Alchemy is dynamic, or is that understanding something he pulled out of thin air, the first time he's told about alchemy? It's just more likely that there's a 'not' where there shouldn't be. Pretend the 'not' is missing. Doesn't that conversation make more sense?

Not at all, because then Kirito is missing the point. Kirito is an intelligent gamer and programmer who naturally thinks the sort of lines that Nasuverse magecraft requires: his point is that rather than a static "spell" there's a single "action" that transforms lead to gold. He's talking about the magic, not the material, and so is Ilya.

(Also, I love that Kirito's read Snow Crash. Of course he has. >.<

 

[Revlid]

Hum. So, I was re-reading the chapter where Illya and Shirou meet Silica, and came across this line:

She could understand how someone could be an otaku for other parts of the game like the combat or the crafting, but for the eating? Maybe the [Sixth Ranger] was one of those super-fat people in real life?

At the time, this struck me as odd, because the [Magic Mirror] item altered the player avatars to reflect their real body, and Shirou is pretty much ottermode, but I figured maybe she thought he hadn't used that item? Except then I read the first chapter, where it auto-navigates to and uses the item even when Shirou does nothing, so... Why would Silica think that was even possible?

 

[Leidolf]

...an oversight?

 

[Olivebirdy]

Nah, DG said she was not being serious.

 

[Revlid]

Weird sentence spotted. Doesn't make sense in its current form - looks like it might be an editing relic from an earlier version of the previous paragraph?

Of all of them, Silica was the one that looked the most like he felt.

As they mounted the winding staircase like a screw of mud sticking out of the top of the pyramid-dungeon, she was the one that was shyly pressing herself against the slime, like a shy toddler hiding in the coat of the family dog. It was loyally surging forward beside her, exactly like that exact same dog, except if it was a hairless perfectly homogenous invertebrate instead of a dog.

Of course, since compared to the birds and lizards that other people had made in familiars by this point, her huge monster was a little unusual.

My first instinct is to just excise the "since" and fix the "in", for: "Of course, compared to the birds and lizards that other people had made into familiars by this point, her huge monster was a little unusual."

However, the seemingly extraneous "since" suggests it might once have been an explanation - were people originally noted to be staring at her, too, with this explaining why (she's hiding from attention behind the thing that's drawing it in the first place)?

Whatever, noted anyway.

----------------------------------

The timeline for this universe is obviously slightly different than in canon Fate/Stay Night (everything pushed forward about 18 years), but it seems to be different to canon Sword Art Online, too.

This is a good thing, as the canon Sword Art Online timeline is, to be blunt, pretty absurd. Kayaba invents the FullDive technology and the NerveGear apparently ex nihilo in May 2022. Three months later, he has an MMORPG ready for beta testing. Three months after that, it's ready for release. Given actual dev times for even simple games, I can only assume this is some kind of Rand-esque "fuck how actual inventions work, Kayaba is a GENIUS MAN OF INDUSTRY" conceit. Which is... well, par for the course in Sword Art Online, where so much of the plot can be explained with "ha ha, because Kayaba", including questions like "why did Kayaba do what he did"?

Here, on the other hand, Diabel mentions an interview with Kayaba when the NerveGear was released, last year. This suggests a more sensible timeline, no? Kayaba develops the FullDive process at some point, a refinement of existing VR tech (the canon SAO universe doesn't mention so much as an Oculus pre-FullDive). Shortly after, Argus releases the NerveGear, the VR peripheral with the highest specs to date - presumably Sword Art Online, or at least some of its proprietary tech like Cardinal (also an advanced version of existing AI Director tech) is already in development at this point. It's released in an incomplete state a year later, with the dev team satisfied that they'll be able to develop floors ahead of players unlocking them. That's thanks in no small part to Cardinal, though I wonder if it's Kayaba's magecraft futzing that's allowing portions of it achieve genuine sapience, or whether (as in canon) technology has legitimately advanced to that point.

Does that sound about right?

 

[daniel_gudman]

Of course, since compared to the birds and lizards that other people had made in familiars by this point, her huge monster was a little unusual.

My first instinct is to just excise the "since" and fix the "in", for: "Of course, compared to the birds and lizards that other people had made into familiars by this point, her huge monster was a little unusual."

Should have been this:
Of course, since compared to the birds and lizards that other people had made into familiars by this point, her huge monster was a little unusual.



FullDive development

The timeline for this universe is obviously slightly different than in canon Fate/Stay Night (everything pushed forward about 18 years), but it seems to be different to canon Sword Art Online, too.

Timeline... here are some pertinent details I've scattered about.

It had been a year ago. An interview of Kayaba Akihiko by the web-magazine [MMO Today]. The NerveGear had just been announced as a consumer product. It was capable of scanning a human brain. In terms of storage capacity, a server farm could handle it. So, Kayaba-san, could a NerveGear allow someone to transmigrate into the digital world? No, Kayaba had replied. Scanning at that resolution would require destructive testing.

Note that I didn't actually say who developed the NerveGear; I was trying to keep my cards close to my chest.

Well... as a magus, Kayaba's (self-proclaimed) specialty is "analyzing people and identifying their traits".

So it's possible that Kayaba used RectoProgress' resources to assemble a "dream team" of scientists and technologists that people familiar with that industry could say, "ah, that group actually has a chance of creating VR"; and then he secretly used his magecraft on / for them to make them productive beyond anyone's expectations.

Also...

Silica looked down, blushing slightly. “Well, [SAO] wasn’t my first MMO. The [Cardinal] is a more advanced version of a similar system from another game I played, called [Land of Bronze].”

“I see.” Liz nodded, turning as they entered the main plaza at the center of town and walking towards the [Transit Gate].

“[Land of Bronze]…” Asuna said, frowning to herself. “That one set in ancient Egypt?”

“Oh, you’ve heard of it?” Silica asked eagerly.

“Kirito’s mentioned it.” Asuna replied simply. “In the same context, as a matter of fact.”

So I'm using it such that Cardinal is, in a technical sense, almost completely unrelated to FullDive technology (maybe it's also a technology RectoProgress spearheaded, but it's from a different division or something). Of course Kayaba incorporated as much as he could to minimize the amount of GM attention needed during the [Death Game], but the Cardinal system (and AI tech generally) is somewhat outside Kayaba's wheelhouse.

...

At any rate, the FullDive was developed, and there were some games released, but what RectoProgress was doing with SAO was launching an MMO as fast as they could to steal a march on other AAA-developers. So they wanted to seize the first-mover monopoly before there were any titles in competition, but they also wanted the game to be good enough that people would stay locked-in rather than jumping ship for whatever came next. If there were problems, or not enough content, or even if they wanted to add (video-game esque) magic, they could just patch all that stuff in, but they wanted to be the first.

...These are the kinds of things that Asuna's dad was thinking about, as the CEO of Recto Progress Argus.

Here's a tangent about stuff I might do after Game Clear:

Spoiler

I haven't decided how much corporate politics I'm going to do. I'm thinking I might bring in the DDA: I'd use Van Fem; nicknamed 'dark god of the business world' and someone that 'preferred living like a human rather than being a vampire', I'd bring him in exactly the way I'm going to add Waver Velvet: a video-game enthusiast that also happens to have enough knowledge to be super-suspicious of the [Thaumaturgy System]. Well, Van Fem would be more likely to swoop in as a surprise investor post-Sugou that snaps up all the equity in the troubled Recto Progress and their game library. On the surface it's a bet that he can get ahold of some excellent business assets; underneath that, it's a fast and direct way to figure out what the hell is going on. As a bonus, if he's the one that covers it up, he can lord that over the Clock Tower and maybe even force Bartholemew Lorelai to write him an official letter of thanks.

That's pretty far away though.

 

[Revlid]

Should have been this:
Of course, since compared to the birds and lizards that other people had made into familiars by this point, her huge monster was a little unusual.

So what's the "since" there for? That suggests "Silica's slime being unusual" is an explanation for something (or took place after something), but it doesn't seem to be.

Timeline... here are some pertinent details I've scattered about.

Neat! Extending the development timeline (through Diabel's musings) and including predecessors to the technology vital to Sword Art Online (through Silica's experiences) are two of the easier "fixes" to the absurdities of canon. Withdrawing Kayaba slightly from the development (and making his public role more that of a team director than a ridiculous genius responsible for everything from complete virtual reality to self-aware AI) also helps a lot, and means he's much less likely to get picked up as "That Guy Who Stuck Everyone In Sword Art Online" by investigators - the canon one didn't care, since he was already planning to melt his own brain and BECOME THE INTERNET, but this Kayaba is presumably planning ahead.

the Cardinal system (and AI tech generally) is somewhat outside Kayaba's wheelhouse.

...

Heh. Room for some surprise on his part, then?

-----------
I will confess that the reason I poked at this particular question was because I finally caved to the suggestion of "go write your own FRO story if you want to look at that stuff" that crops up every time I ramble about, say, journalism or cooking contests (rather than magecraft or anything even vaguely relevant). The opener of which dealt pretty directly with the timeline and (publicly-released) details of FullDive/NerveGear/Cardinal/SAO's development.

So on the upside, I've now got a clearer picture. On the downside, I now need to rewrite... like, the entire first half of that chapter. And I write slow. Bah!

 

[Olivebirdy]

DG, would you please spoiler some of your post? Wasn't the [Pact of Secrecy] the whole point of this extra thread?‎‏ ‏

Also, I'd really like to reiterate how much I like Diabel as a character. He's such a nice sociopath.

 

[Abendroth]

...These are the kinds of things that Asuna's dad was thinking about, as the CEO of Recto Progress.

I believe Argus was the company that developed SAO. RCT took over after Argus went bankrupt.

 

[daniel_gudman]

DG, would you please spoiler some of your post? Wasn't the [Pact of Secrecy] the whole point of this extra thread?‎‏

Oh dang

Here I am, breaking my own rules, that's a super-great thing for the OP to do

well it's fixed now

...These are the kinds of things that Asuna's dad was thinking about, as the CEO of Recto Progress.

I believe Argus was the company that developed SAO. RCT took over after Argus went bankrupt.

I fixed this silly mistake too while I was at it

 

[Revlid]

I believe Argus was the company that developed SAO. RCT took over after Argus went bankrupt.

I fixed this silly mistake too while I was at it

Corrected in the wrong direction, I believe.

Asuna's father was CEO of RCT Inc. He employed Sugou, and bought out Argus after they went bankrupt as a result of the Aincrad incident*. Argus employed Kayaba and developed SAO.

*another way spreading out the tech development in the setting helps, since if you're the company that invented perfect VR tech and SEED AI, you are realistically never ever ever going bankrupt.

 

[violinmana]

That's relative. Perfect VR tech means it can never be upgraded, which means sales will decline once the majority of the gaming population has it. SEED was made open-source by Kirito, (I'm guessing there's a version 15 of GPL or something then), so the company wouldn't get any money out of it either.

 

[daniel_gudman]

Nephirin posted something interestin over in the Preview Thread:

So, I don't think this will necessarily be all that useful to this fic, given that it takes place in an isolated environment. However, a translation is currently being cross-posted on Beast's Lair, and I thought I'd quote some interesting bits here.

Spoiler

The town consisted of over 40 student dormitories (called Colleges), over a hundred research buildings, as well as the business districts that supplied the residents.
This was the birthplace of the Magic Association; the centre of the modern world of magecraft; the Mecca of mages.
It had been a few years, I again walked into the city that inspired fear and awe --- "The Clock Tower".
"From here it's Rocks Road... The Eleventh Department really earned their name as the weakness, there's nothing on the streets. It certainly fits the impoverished lifestyle of the archaeologists."
The Clock Tower divided the city based on faculty and department. The architecture varied depending on the district.
The Magic Association divided mysticism into 12 domains. In other words, this city reflected the specialties of each faculty.
The Twelve Faculties were ruled by the Twelve Lords.
The twelve domains of mysticism included the critical General Fundamentals (encompassing basic knowledge, leyline studies, and mana studies), which was designated as I, as well as Individual Fundamentals (II), Necromancy (III), Geology (IV), Zoology (V), Anthropology (VI), Botany (VII), Astronomy (VIII), Creation (IX), Curse (X), Archaeology (XI), and Modern Magecraft Theories (XII). These were the directions which dictated the ways of the magi.
Although Policies was the 13th item and was open to those who wish to pursue politics, it was a social science rather than a discipline in the pursue to mysticism. As a result, it was not included in the Twelve Faculties.
The majority of the magi studied General Fundamentals for about 5 years (which included common magical knowledge, sympathetic magecraft, contagious magecraft, leyline studies, and mana studies), and then enter the Faculty that was associated with the lineage. Magi might also enroll in other Faculties as associates to help further his studies in his own Faculty.
My Faculty was Astronomy.
Although the Faculty was generalized as Astronomy, it included divisions such as Astrology, Planetology, and Divinity. It was rare to run into other magi who studied the same courses as myself.

Spoiler

------The purpose of a magus' life was to serve the past.
It was afternoon in the laboratory.
Buried in a mountain of measuring apparatus and recording paper, Leiv Uvall was still perusing records of the past.

All his efforts were poured solely into his theory and magecraft.
He cared naught of any other responsibilities, the application of his magecraft, his lineage, or building his faction.
From Leiv's perspective, those magi were the same as the plebians that were "normal people".
If one were to decipher the mystical, then he must sacrifice his humanity.
A magus was a creature with nothing but magecraft on his mind. There was no room for burdens such as "life".
To a magus, deciphering a grimoire was not just a matter of comprehension. It was for recreating a Mystery from eras past, and then redefining its meaning in the current era.
It was like translating Shakespeare into modern English.
If deciphering a page of the grimoire took an hour, then a five-hundred-page tome would take 20 some days. In the research building, there were 500 grimoire awaiting to be read. On average Leiv could read about 12 per year. It would take 4 to 5 years to finish reading all the tomes.
No, if that were the case, it would be a simple matter. Reading grimoire one by one was even easier.
However, Leiv Uvall's duty was not "deciphering a certain grimoire", but "deciphering a System". He must digest all concepts and comprehend all the interrelated phenomena.
If grimoire A and grimoire B had conflicting views on a certain item, then the content of A must be reviewed.
The more grimoire he read, the more time he needed to redefine concepts. The number was astronomical.
Of course, the cause of Leiv's grief was not "exhaustion from reading for so long".
Rather, he was disgusted by the briefness of his life, which fell short of the time required to comprehensively analyze all the tomes.

Here's something in particular I wanted to look at:

The twelve domains of mysticism included the critical General Fundamentals (encompassing basic knowledge, leyline studies, and mana studies), which was designated as I, as well as Individual Fundamentals (II), Necromancy (III), Geology (IV), Zoology (V), Anthropology (VI), Botany (VII), Astronomy (VIII), Creation (IX), Curse (X), Archaeology (XI), and Modern Magecraft Theories (XII). These were the directions which dictated the ways of the magi.
Although Policies was the 13th item and was open to those who wish to pursue politics, it was a social science rather than a discipline in the pursue to mysticism. As a result, it was not included in the Twelve Faculties.

Probably the single most interesting thing, to me, is that their organizing principles are several hundred years behind "modern science"; for example, as a biologist, I note that "Zoology" and "Botany" are historical designations from Natural Philosophy that are hold-overs more than actual, modern specialties.

And as an engineer, I note there's nothing comparable to Physics, Chemistry, or even Math, which is the closest thing to Pure Universal Truth that the empirical sciences have. Both "Geology" and "Astronomy" are also rooted in building up masses of empirical facts rather than drilling down to fundamental theorems that you can then use to build back up to models of reality.

With both "Anthropology" and "Archaelogy" as top-level fields of study, figuring out what the ancients did, and that Leiv's end goal seems to be "read all the books" not "add his own"... it really does seem like the Mage Association look to the past, rather than the future, huh?