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The moon is getting thinner, so last night I decided to risk one more trip into the umbra out by my cabin to experiment with some vulgar magick. (I /love/ getting to work vulgar magick in the umbra: it's really, really liberating, and I think it's really a boon when it comes to working more advanced magicks. A sanctum is nice, but it's so cramped and limiting and undynamic. Almost sterile.)
The other day I'd goofed off playing Portal and Portal 2, and I'd gotten a couple ideas. One of the things you can't do in the game is have two portals on opposite-facing walls that are so close to one another that an object "wraps" around itself. There's just no place in the game where you have two surfaces close enough to do that. Challenge accepted!
After going umbral, I broke a small branch off a pine tree, stripped the needles and sub-branches off, until I had a stick that was 4' long. Next I wove some correspondence and spirit magic to create a link between two points within the umbra about 1' away from one another. An object fed into Point A would come out at Point B, which would feed it back in to Point A. I angled the stick so that it came in below Point B, then began feeding it into Point A. It came out of Point B at an identical angle. I kept feeding the stick in further, so that the end again entered into Point A and came out at Point B, wrapping the object multiple times through an area of space. And again, so it was triple-wrapped through space, all the while the angle was decreasing more and more (as I only had about a 1' circular plane to work with for A and B, give or take an inch as the magic fluctuated. Finally, I had 4 angled pieces of the 4' stick, segmented via Correspondence into 1' pieces, wrapping past itself in space. I dropped the magick effect and *CRACK!* The stick was sliced into 4 pieces.
Note to self: Be really careful when pulling things through space that way.
In studying the stick pieces, I noticed that, when combined, the individual sticks were actually not as long as the original stick had been. Pieces of it had disappeared when I dropped the correspondence/spirit effect. Not a lot--less than a millimeter in total (no wonder I overlooked this in the past)--but.... where the hell did the stick's remnants go? Were they vaporized when I dropped the folded space between the two correspondence points? More experimentation was needed.
I broke off another branch from a pine tree and crafted a second stick, repeating the experiment with the portals. This time, however, I create the portals 5' apart--still facing one another--and fed the 4' stick into Portal A, making it come out of Portal B. I noticed that, yes, there was a very small difference between the original length of the stick and the combined length of segment 1 and segment 2 of the stick as it warped through space. Push the stick in to Portal A, and the missing bit came out Portal B, but then.... there's still a small fraction of the stick's length that is Just Missing(tm). That.... shouldn't happen, right? I puzzled over this for a bit, then decided to see what would happen if I brought to two correspondence points closer together while the stick was still warping through them.
Five feet. Four and a half. Four and a quarter. Four--with the end of the 4' long stick touching the tip. And then closer. Now the stick started bending as it pushed against itself. I had to bring in some Forces magic to stabilize things, then brought the two correspondence points closer together. I could feel the pressure building in the stick, then it began to disintegrate from the magnitude of the forces I'd put on it. I dropped the effect and... Yeah. Still missing a small fraction of the original stick's length.
Where the hell has it gone off to?
I don't recall there being much about Correspondence magic in the library at my sanctum. I should look through it again in case I overlooked something that explains this phenomenon. Or at least provides some theories on it.
I can't believe I managed to blow the entire night doing this instead of mucking about with manipulating large-scale elemental energies like I usually do.
The other day I'd goofed off playing Portal and Portal 2, and I'd gotten a couple ideas. One of the things you can't do in the game is have two portals on opposite-facing walls that are so close to one another that an object "wraps" around itself. There's just no place in the game where you have two surfaces close enough to do that. Challenge accepted!
After going umbral, I broke a small branch off a pine tree, stripped the needles and sub-branches off, until I had a stick that was 4' long. Next I wove some correspondence and spirit magic to create a link between two points within the umbra about 1' away from one another. An object fed into Point A would come out at Point B, which would feed it back in to Point A. I angled the stick so that it came in below Point B, then began feeding it into Point A. It came out of Point B at an identical angle. I kept feeding the stick in further, so that the end again entered into Point A and came out at Point B, wrapping the object multiple times through an area of space. And again, so it was triple-wrapped through space, all the while the angle was decreasing more and more (as I only had about a 1' circular plane to work with for A and B, give or take an inch as the magic fluctuated. Finally, I had 4 angled pieces of the 4' stick, segmented via Correspondence into 1' pieces, wrapping past itself in space. I dropped the magick effect and *CRACK!* The stick was sliced into 4 pieces.
Note to self: Be really careful when pulling things through space that way.
In studying the stick pieces, I noticed that, when combined, the individual sticks were actually not as long as the original stick had been. Pieces of it had disappeared when I dropped the correspondence/spirit effect. Not a lot--less than a millimeter in total (no wonder I overlooked this in the past)--but.... where the hell did the stick's remnants go? Were they vaporized when I dropped the folded space between the two correspondence points? More experimentation was needed.
I broke off another branch from a pine tree and crafted a second stick, repeating the experiment with the portals. This time, however, I create the portals 5' apart--still facing one another--and fed the 4' stick into Portal A, making it come out of Portal B. I noticed that, yes, there was a very small difference between the original length of the stick and the combined length of segment 1 and segment 2 of the stick as it warped through space. Push the stick in to Portal A, and the missing bit came out Portal B, but then.... there's still a small fraction of the stick's length that is Just Missing(tm). That.... shouldn't happen, right? I puzzled over this for a bit, then decided to see what would happen if I brought to two correspondence points closer together while the stick was still warping through them.
Five feet. Four and a half. Four and a quarter. Four--with the end of the 4' long stick touching the tip. And then closer. Now the stick started bending as it pushed against itself. I had to bring in some Forces magic to stabilize things, then brought the two correspondence points closer together. I could feel the pressure building in the stick, then it began to disintegrate from the magnitude of the forces I'd put on it. I dropped the effect and... Yeah. Still missing a small fraction of the original stick's length.
Where the hell has it gone off to?
I don't recall there being much about Correspondence magic in the library at my sanctum. I should look through it again in case I overlooked something that explains this phenomenon. Or at least provides some theories on it.
I can't believe I managed to blow the entire night doing this instead of mucking about with manipulating large-scale elemental energies like I usually do.
