Nasuverse Rin in Vanilla SAO

Wavelet365

Well-Known Member
#1
So, a lot of good fics have been written about magical SAO based on Daniel's story, but I don't think I've seen any FSN character but Shirou thrown into vanilla SAO before. For Rin, I think this is particularly interesting because she's a character largely defined by her magic, so it would be intriguing to see what she would do without it.

Of course, once she decides that rescue's not coming any time soon (and she can't escape herself) Rin will certainly become a frontliner, doing whatever she can to get out of the stupid world where she can't practice or learn magic at all. Her motivation would actually be quite a bit like Asuna's reason for pushing the front line forward in canon.

So, ideally, I'd like a pre-FSN Rin in SAO (age 12-16), so that she can interact with the canon SAO crew a bit more comfortably, and in order to minimize her connections with the outside world. Sure, there are a few older characters like Klein, Agil and some minor characters who only show up for a couple of episodes, but SAO's main cast is all in this age range at the start of the game. However, I have no clue how to get Rin to play the game.

If she were older, Waver or Shirou could be involved, but, at this age, the only ideas I have are as follows:

1. Kirei somehow finds out about the death game and gets her a copy. Unfortunately, as amusing as this would be, I see no reason why Kirei would find out about the death game ahead of time. Come to think of it, Kirei would love it in SAO, so, if he got a copy and knew what was coming, he'd probably keep it for himself. Hmmm... Maybe if Rin doesn't work, Kirei and Gilgamesh in SAO could work. That would be kind of funny in a twisted sort of way. Or maybe (without knowing anything) Gilgamesh wants to play, Kirei gets dragged along, and he forces/persuades through taunting Rin to play with them in order to enjoy watching her suffer (as she's a prideful magus who will now be stuck as an ignorant newbie).

2. She and Issei get into a fight having to do with her technological ignorance (maybe he mocks her for never having even heard of SAO). Unfortunately, Issei doesn't strike me as the type to play a lot of video games either, so this seems like a stretch,

3. Maybe Kotone (the friend she saved in the Fate Zero anime) is involved. If Kotone got them both copies, I could see Rin agreeing to play with her at least for a little while, and then getting stuck in the game. The main problem with this idea is that I'm saddled with Kotone, who's pretty much an OC. Maybe I could kill her off at some point due to something Rin did in order to create guilt/drama. I honestly can't think of what else I could use her for.

If anyone has a better idea, let me know.

Also, clearly, at the start, Rin will have no clue what she's doing. However, once she figures things out, what sort of role do you think Rin would play? She can't be a mage (as there are none) so that leaves what? DPS, tank or solo are the only option that immediately come to mind.
 

Vanigo

Well-Known Member
#2
Rin in vanilla SAO can still use her circuits IRL. After a couple weeks of planning, she uses her magecraft to try to escape - this may work, or it may get her brains fried. Either way, she's not sticking around.
 

Wavelet365

Well-Known Member
#3
Vanigo said:
Rin in vanilla SAO can still use her circuits IRL. After a couple weeks of planning, she uses her magecraft to try to escape - this may work, or it may get her brains fried. Either way, she's not sticking around.
This is debatable, and I would say it's more likely that she can't use her circuits. Magic circuits are a pseudo-nervous system spread throughout the human body. The nervegear cuts off every transmission from the brain to the body and every transmission from the body to the brain. Ergo, Rin can't get her magic circuits to do anything, as her brain can't connect to them.

Of course, what's in the human body is only a reflection of the magic circuits in one's soul, but the circuits in your body are how your brain connects to your soul, so I don't think you should be able to access your magic circuits if your brain can't communicate with your body.
 

Rising Dragon

Well-Known Member
#4
And even if she could access them, what good does that do in a game that cannot support its usage?
 

Wavelet365

Well-Known Member
#5
Rising Dragon said:
And even if she could access them, what good does that do in a game that cannot support its usage?
I think the idea is that she would use some magic to try and bust out of the game.

I'm essentially saying that she tries that, but can't access her circuits, so she's stuck. She gives up on getting out either through magic or rescue after about a month (around the time the first boss is cleared). Then she parties up with Lisbeth (who also stuck around in the starting city for a while) memorizes a copy of Argo's guide, and the pair of them start making their way through the game.
 

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
#6
So if you got bit by a rattlesnake, would that screw up your Circuits? Their venom is a neurotoxin, after all. What I'm getting at is that Circuits are part of the soul; they operate on a different, deeper level compared to nerves.

Well, over on Spacebattles, Catsy is fond of discussing c delays, but I always get hung up on the Quantum Hokum that the NerveGear uses to communicate with the brain: my point is, just say whatever the mechanism the NG uses is a Science that demotes the Third from a Sorcery to a mere magecraft.

So while I disagree with your rationale for why the NG would prevent Circuit activation, I don't think that's a big problem, just make up a mechanism.

What makes it important is, that's a rationale for Rin to even bother.

Leaving aside her poor tech abilities, she's the kind to consider video games a waste of time. So coming up with a way to "make" her play is probably the most critical plot point.

So having the NG be something that is already known to interfere with Circuits, and Rin (as a Japanese teen), gets recruited by somebody from MA as an assistant to investigate (or does it for her own research), would neatly solve both problems.

Plus, it gives her a neat mystery subplot, "how does this even work", that allows her to interact with the other Players in an interesting way.
 

Wavelet365

Well-Known Member
#7
daniel_gudman said:
So if you got bit by a rattlesnake, would that screw up your Circuits? Their venom is a neurotoxin, after all. What I'm getting at is that Circuits are part of the soul; they operate on a different, deeper level compared to nerves.

Well, over on Spacebattles, Catsy is fond of discussing c delays, but I always get hung up on the Quantum Hokum that the NerveGear uses to communicate with the brain: my point is, just say whatever the mechanism the NG uses is a Science that demotes the Third from a Sorcery to a mere magecraft.

So while I disagree with your rationale for why the NG would prevent Circuit activation, I don't think that's a big problem, just make up a mechanism.

What makes it important is, that's a rationale for Rin to even bother.

Leaving aside her poor tech abilities, she's the kind to consider video games a waste of time. So coming up with a way to "make" her play is probably the most critical plot point.

So having the NG be something that is already known to interfere with Circuits, and Rin (as a Japanese teen), gets recruited by somebody from MA as an assistant to investigate (or does it for her own research), would neatly solve both problems.

Plus, it gives her a neat mystery subplot, "how does this even work", that allows her to interact with the other Players in an interesting way.
This is much better than my previous plan. Thanks a lot.

So, do you mind if I throw a few related questions/ideas at you? If you do, just don't bother replying.

1. Do we know anything about how magic gets demoted to magecraft? That is to say, when humans learned to build airplanes and flight got demoted, what happened? Did the magician who could use flight suddenly find his ability to fly nerfed, so that it was nearly useless? This is apparently the state of flight in canon (too useless to be worth doing). Did a whole bunch of people suddenly figure out how to do flight with mere magecraft? Essentially, how does the Magic Association know that the NerveGear is demoting the third? No one can use the Third, so no one would notice themselves getting nerfed. Could understanding the NerveGear let someone perform materialization of the soul as mere magecraft (essentially turning all magi into, immortal, god-like beings)? Does the MA even know the answer to this question, or is no one really sure what the new soul-manipulating magecraft will be capable of? Obviously, I need to answer these questions, but, if you have any thoughts, I would be delighted to hear them.

2. Do Yui or the Cardinal system have spirits and/or souls? If so, what kind? I'm tempted to just slot Yui in under demon (the kind which comes from human wishes, in this case the wish of all those suffering for someone who would help them). Cardinal, I'm almost tempted to slot under evolving Divine Spirit with authority over Aincrad (its 'worshippers' are all the SAO players who know that they live and die by the rules of the Cardinal System). Then again, maybe I should just leave the magic and AI separate. If Rin's cut off from her circuits, maybe it doesn't even matter.

3. A bit longer term, if Heaven's Feel is no longer Magic, will there be a 5th Grail War? You kind of need the Einzberns on board to get a lesser grail (although, I guess Sakura might also work). I suppose the Einzberns might still be on board to try getting to the Root, in order to get some other kind of Magic (I guess?).
 

daniel_gudman

KING (In Land of Blind)
Staff member
#8
1) Sorcery => Magecraft

I dunno there are distinct answers to this one. I've definitely got my own opinions and plans for my own thing, and they boil down to this:
1) The stronger, clearer, and simpler a "concept" is, the more effective the magecraft it produces.
2) Common Sense of Humans can ask questions that degrade the clarity and simplicity of the "concept". For example, having to exclude "Conservation of Energy" from the mental framework degrades the concept.

So it's more like, it's not how many "Physical Rules" the spell breaks, it's how many you know about.

Something like powered flight were people can point to concrete, non-magical counter-examples, are murder on the "concept," because the mental stress of self-hypnosis to ignore the common-sense of ubiquitous high school physics classes in the first place, steals energy from actually goddam flying.



2) Ghosts in Machines

You could also swing that Yui is an "artificial human-like soul" like a homonculus; an artificial intelligence created by humans, in the image of a human.

Cardinal is more directly alien.

...If Rin's cut off from her Circuits, it means she's limited to supposition. She can still make guesses, it just means she should stick a disclaimer on the end of every monologue to the effect of, "but since I can't whip out my tape-measure, I can't actually tell you how long this is."



3) Heaven's Feel

Well, the Heaven's Feel Ritual doesn't have anything to do with the 3rd Magic, technically.

The Einzbern lost the Sorcery, so they came up with a ritual to amass enough power to recover it by brute force using their Wishcraft Trait. That ritual is, gathering seven Heroic Spirits, and then betraying them and sticking their ghosts in a jug; the jug is the wad of power needed to directly recover a Magic, called the Great Grail. Well, since it's just a big jug full of prana, it can be used for other things, that is, a "Wish."

So, even if the 3rd Magic was recovered or "demoted", the Grail Ritual is independent of that, it would still occur.
 

linkhyrule5

Well-Known Member
#9
It's also possible that sorceries don't actually get weakened, just judged to be lesser - if you have a nonmagical way to teleport, then that might actually open up other methods, as opposed to the True Magic requirement of reaching the Root/enlightenment "brute force".

(Also, the whole "SAO doesn't support magecraft" argument never really held water for me - the real world doesn't really support magic either, and it's not like a magus is thinking about every individual atom - indeed, doing so probably hurts their magecraft. Imposing a concept on the world shouldn't really depend on how the world normally works.)
 

Wavelet365

Well-Known Member
#10
daniel_gudman said:
1) Sorcery => Magecraft

I dunno there are distinct answers to this one. I've definitely got my own opinions and plans for my own thing, and they boil down to this:
1) The stronger, clearer, and simpler a "concept" is, the more effective the magecraft it produces.
2) Common Sense of Humans can ask questions that degrade the clarity and simplicity of the "concept". For example, having to exclude "Conservation of Energy" from the mental framework degrades the concept.

So it's more like, it's not how many "Physical Rules" the spell breaks, it's how many you know about.

Something like powered flight were people can point to concrete, non-magical counter-examples, are murder on the "concept," because the mental stress of self-hypnosis to ignore the common-sense of ubiquitous high school physics classes in the first place, steals energy from actually goddam flying.
This is an interesting way of looking at it. I assume that when you say "the Common Sense of Humans" you mean what humanity knows about as a whole, rather than what an individual human knows (as, otherwise, you could raise some child in an isolated cave who could reach the Root with something like making fire, since, according to that child's common sense, this would be a miracle which could not be replicated without Magic). So, Gaia allows a mystery when the CSoH believes it exists, but, the more the CSoH learns about the mechanics of said mystery, the less clear the concept of said mystery becomes (degrading its power). It also becomes harder to hypnotize oneself into ignoring this common sense, making the mystery harder to perform.

I like this.

daniel_gudman said:
2) Ghosts in Machines

You could also swing that Yui is an "artificial human-like soul" like a homonculus; an artificial intelligence created by humans, in the image of a human.

Cardinal is more directly alien.

...If Rin's cut off from her Circuits, it means she's limited to supposition. She can still make guesses, it just means she should stick a disclaimer on the end of every monologue to the effect of, "but since I can't whip out my tape-measure, I can't actually tell you how long this is."
Thanks. I appreciate the input. The homunculus idea is an interesting thought, and I probably need to think more about Cardinal. Fortunately, making precise decisions about these things can be put off for some time, as they're not things Rin will figure out for sure for a long time (if she figures either out at all inside the game).

linkhyrule5 said:
It's also possible that sorceries don't actually get weakened, just judged to be lesser - if you have a nonmagical way to teleport, then that might actually open up other methods, as opposed to the True Magic requirement of reaching the Root/enlightenment "brute force".

(Also, the whole "SAO doesn't support magecraft" argument never really held water for me - the real world doesn't really support magic either, and it's not like a magus is thinking about every individual atom - indeed, doing so probably hurts their magecraft. Imposing a concept on the world shouldn't really depend on how the world normally works.)
Magecraft is definitely judged lesser (and I go into that in this story's prologue at the Clock Tower), but it's also simply inferior. Caster is our best evidence of this, but it's also stated again and again in Nasuverse canon. Of course, whether scientific development is bad for magecraft in the modern era could be debated, as, of course, going from having 1 Zetretch to thousands of magi with lesser dimension manipulating powers might not be an entirely bad thing. Of course, as you're closing off paths to the Root, scientific development is awful from the POV of a true magus (who wants to go there).

As for SAO not supporting magecraft, here's how I look at this:

1. Magecraft works by using a pre-built system (a thaumaturgical theory) which has been engraved upon the world using a Greater Ritual. So, when a magus throws a fireball, the magus is activating this system, which produces fire in the world. The problem is that it's producing fire, not a series of 0s and 1s which Cardinal would interpret as fire. So, if a magus tried to cast fireball, a fireball might blow up the roof of the magus' hospital room, but a fireball would not appear in the game.

Now, could a person who knows enough about computers figure out a way to manipulate the computer system running SAO using magic? I'm inclined to say, yes (although, for reasons you can read near the bottom of this post, it wouldn't work in this story). However, this would be very difficult, would require a lot of knowledge of computers, and none of the magus' old spells would work in Cardinal. So, you could invent a spell which would produce an output Cardinal would interpret as a fireball, but it would not work in the real world, and your real world fireball spell wouldn't work in Cardinal. Something like Shirou's tracing is even worse, as he makes swords, not computer code.

2. Even if you could get your magecraft to work in SAO, anything which changed the world of SAO using magecraft Cardinal would call an error and delete it, unless you were changing the code of Cardinal itself (again, this needs new magecraft). Unlike Gaia, which permits mysteries, Cardinal says lol nope.

3. If you threw a fireball in SAO, it probably wouldn't do anything in SAO, as Cardinal would not know how to compute the damage it was dealing, unless (again) you had somehow magically hacked SAO so that Cardinal had a damage calc for your new spell.


Two more thoughts:

1. Hypersense

SAO has a number of outside system skills, one of which, Hypersense, is pretty clearly unnatural. Kirito uses this skill to great effect in GGO, claiming that it is a controversial skill (not everyone believes it exists) which he learned in SAO:

Hypersense is the ability to feel killing intent and to instinctively sense the presence of others nearby. Kirito describes it as a sharp, painful feeling right between his eyebrows.

So, in Nasuverse terms, what is this? Kirito gives a godawful theory of his in GGO (thinking that having someone looking at him causes server lag) which should probably be replaced with something that makes more sense.

Could other seemingly preternatural outside system skills be developed? Maybe it's some sort of artifact of hooking your brain into a computer system. As Rin's studying how weird crap in Cardinal works from a mystical background, she will definitely think about these things at some point. She'll also have an interesting take on sword skills.

2. Why can't Rin use her circuits?

Essentially, the core that binds the soul is the brain. Thus, when the NerveGear hooks up Rin's brain to a digital avatar, even though the NerveGear can't read her soul, her soul ends up hooked up to the digital avatar as well, rather than to her body. Thus, when she tries to open her circuits, instead of the instruction 'open circuits and turn od into prana' being sent to her body, her brain/soul sends that command to a digital avatar which has no circuits, prana or od, and, in fact, is not rendered in enough detail to contain such things, even if Kayaba knew about them.
 

Vanigo

Well-Known Member
#11
Wavelet365 said:
2. Why can't Rin use her circuits?

Essentially, the core that binds the soul is the brain. Thus, when the NerveGear hooks up Rin's brain to a digital avatar, even though the NerveGear can't read her soul, her soul ends up hooked up to the digital avatar as well, rather than to her body. Thus, when she tries to open her circuits, instead of the instruction 'open circuits and turn od into prana' being sent to her body, her brain/soul sends that command to a digital avatar which has no circuits, prana or od, and, in fact, is not rendered in enough detail to contain such things, even if Kayaba knew about them.
Aren't the circuits part of the soul, though, not part of the body? According to the wiki (standard disclaimer about the wiki being unreliable), magic circuits are part of the soul, and merely reflected in the body. That would mean that, in this case, Rin's circuits would disappear from her body and appear on her avatar, which would probably cause all sorts of merry hell on the servers even before she opens them. Also, I have a hard time imagining that repeatedly moving your soul from your body to a virtual avatar and back is healthy, especially if it's a side-effect of a process designed by people who don't even know that souls exist.
 

Wavelet365

Well-Known Member
#12
Vanigo said:
Wavelet365 said:
2. Why can't Rin use her circuits?

Essentially, the core that binds the soul is the brain. Thus, when the NerveGear hooks up Rin's brain to a digital avatar, even though the NerveGear can't read her soul, her soul ends up hooked up to the digital avatar as well, rather than to her body. Thus, when she tries to open her circuits, instead of the instruction 'open circuits and turn od into prana' being sent to her body, her brain/soul sends that command to a digital avatar which has no circuits, prana or od, and, in fact, is not rendered in enough detail to contain such things, even if Kayaba knew about them.
Aren't the circuits part of the soul, though, not part of the body? According to the wiki (standard disclaimer about the wiki being unreliable), magic circuits are part of the soul, and merely reflected in the body. That would mean that, in this case, Rin's circuits would disappear from her body and appear on her avatar, which would probably cause all sorts of merry hell on the servers even before she opens them. Also, I have a hard time imagining that repeatedly moving your soul from your body to a virtual avatar and back is healthy, especially if it's a side-effect of a process designed by people who don't even know that souls exist.
This is a bit tricky. Her soul hasn't moved. It's still anchored to her brain, which is in the same place it was before. What's changed is that all signals from her brain are being routed to a digital avatar, rather than her human body. This includes (as an inadvertent side-effect) signals from her soul.

So, there are two questions. One: what happens to the magic circuits in Rin's actual body? Answer: they're still there. Even if magic circuits are theoretically part of the soul, we know that, for whatever reason, magic circuits stick around after the soul has dispersed. This is why you can harvest a magic crest (a bunch of magic circuits) from a corpse, or grow homunculi from magic circuits. Two: would Rin's digital avatar develop magic circuits? I'm going to say no, for the same reason why it doesn't spontaneously develop a heart and lungs (which are also recorded in the soul). The avatars generated by Cardinal are not able to express these details. Of course, even if her avatar did develop something like circuits (Cardinal would probably frown on this) she still wouldn't be able to do anything, as her digital avatar does not contain any od (so she can't make any prana).

As for the trauma, your soul hasn't moved. It's still anchored to your brain. It's just that the data from your soul, which is reflected on your body, is being transmitted to a digital avatar rather than your actual body.
 

Rising Dragon

Well-Known Member
#13
I have to ask: how exactly is SAO demoting the Third Magic? I'm not seeing a connection.
 

Wavelet365

Well-Known Member
#14
Rising Dragon said:
I have to ask: how exactly is SAO demoting the Third Magic? I'm not seeing a connection.
The NerveGear is the first step towards the Soul Translator (invented in 2026, which can, apparently, perfectly copy a soul). Essentially, what demoted the Third Magic was the research into quantum brain dynamics which makes the soul translator and NerveGear possible (inventing the soul translator is just a matter of time and resources, at this point). So, it's not so much SAO which is demoting the Third Magic, as the research which made it possible (also the same research that lets Kayaba copy his brain onto the internet at the end of SAO). However, for someone interested in understanding the new magecraft which used to be the Third Magic, studying the first application of the theory which demoted the Third is a sensible thing to do.

On another note, I'm considering letting Rin have access to her circuits (as explaining why she doesn't is so convoluted and filled with issues). Essentially, I only want her to have access to them if they're mostly useless in the game and can't help her break out. Here's my argument for why she can use them, but they're mostly useless (if you see an obvious flaw, please point it out):

While in SAO, Rin has access to her circuits, but she can't feel what they're doing, and she can't gather or shape prana. Essentially, while she can perform the self-hypnosis needed for her magecraft, as her brain has been cut off from her body, she can't actually tell whether it's doing anything or not. She can't feel the pain or numbness that comes from opening her circuits. She can't sense the prana or od in her body. She can't direct her prana to do anything at all except by performing rituals which may or may not be having any effect (she can't tell).

Essentially, she can turn her circuits on or off, but can't tell what they're doing, or figure out what effect they're having on the real world. If she's gathering prana (she can't tell) she doesn't know how much she's gathered, and she can only guess at whether it's doing anything or not. In that condition, casting any spell at all would be a challenge, and casting a spell to free herself from her NerveGear without frying her brain would be utterly impossible, so Rin wouldn't try it.
 

Vanigo

Well-Known Member
#15
Wavelet365 said:
While in SAO, Rin has access to her circuits, but she can't feel what they're doing, and she can't gather or shape prana. Essentially, while she can perform the self-hypnosis needed for her magecraft, as her brain has been cut off from her body, she can't actually tell whether it's doing anything or not. She can't feel the pain or numbness that comes from opening her circuits. She can't sense the prana or od in her body. She can't direct her prana to do anything at all except by performing rituals which may or may not be having any effect (she can't tell).

Essentially, she can turn her circuits on or off, but can't tell what they're doing, or figure out what effect they're having on the real world. If she's gathering prana (she can't tell) she doesn't know how much she's gathered, and she can only guess at whether it's doing anything or not. In that condition, casting any spell at all would be a challenge, and casting a spell to free herself from her NerveGear without frying her brain would be utterly impossible, so Rin wouldn't try it.
Hmm. I'm not an expert, but that sounds workable. I think a sufficiently motivated magus could probably train himself to sense the prana in his circuits directly rather than piggybacking that perception on his other senses, but there's no reason to assume Rin does that, and she can hardly learn now - especially since she can't tell if her circuits are opening at all.

Still wouldn't be hard for another magus to break her out - Waver in particular could do so trivially by squeezing a layer of metal between the Nervgear and her skull, blocking out all the microwaves - but I don't think pre-FSN Rin has any allies who'd do that for her.
 
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