This thread is to discuss if ,and how, magic could occur in the real world. (It doesn’t have to be on earth). For example: a species that could send electricity at a predator or prey at a long range.
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The only “magic” creature that I know it could exist would be dragons. In my childhood, I remember to have read fiction books describing scientifically dragons in a 19th century style. They were called “dragonology”.
The books were saying that dragons have a “venom tooth” like the snakes and that the venom is, in fact, a fuel. In the mouth, there is a small pocket containing pyrite and iron rocks, which are scraped against each other thanks to a muscle mechanism and this produces sparks. If the venom is secreted while the mechanism is in progress, this will produce fire.
Even though it is fiction, such a thing could be possible. The only problem is how could they resist to fire?
I would assume that the dragons would have very leathery and course skin, to resist the flame, maybe a mucus coating to protect the flesh?
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Maybe they would also have a specific type of cell wall, which would allow it to survive extreme temperatures.
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A bigger problem that I see, is their size. In order to fly with their big size, they would need to be extraordinarily light, and their wings probably would have to be much bigger.
I also want to share a quote:
Clarke’s Third Law : Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
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Technically magic can be a lot of different things, but it’s main basis is that science or current known knowledge can’t explain a specific phenomenon, at least from the way i see it. And most magic in fantasy settings are explained by gods giving it to mortals in some capacity, example being The Elder Scrolls(?)
Perhaps magic could be gifted to a species you create or an AI species through the Ascension stage, either it be giving them a genie in a doodad, let them create fire from their fingertips, etc.
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I love the idea of realistic magic, and also the idea of AI gods. It is truly incredible how much processing power can be packed into a runestone sized object if it is using reversible computing and is superchilled. I love Clark’s third law and beleave that in a game or rpg with a preindustrial society and access to post-matter tech would technically have magic. Imagine a world in which a benevolent AI dropped nanobots on the world (hopefuly a megastructure) but they were programmed to only work on humans. The genes they were checking were often absent in the people of this world, as they just aren’t selected for here. The few that have it live longer, (they aren’t biologically immortal because natural causes includes far more then it does in the 21st century) can see more, (mage sight, actually the nanos flagging ancient tech) interface with ancient tech and have access to a reserve of “manna” (chemical energy in the air is stored in the nanos). This world is just the start. I love crazy Belgium like science magic.
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My favorite way to think of magic, is that as a concept, magic is merely natural or technological mundane processes that are beyond the understanding of the viewer or user. (An example would be how alchemy was somewhat based on infantile understanding of the principles of chemistry.) Which is why I have always loved the concept of magic in stories and such being of fantastical but technological origin. It can create really cool scenarios and also makes an otherwise unbelievable setting feel more down to earth simply because it’s mechanisms could be explained. It can also help forge an intriguing set of questions about the history of the world, and how it came to be which further sucks you in.
However, it’s also fun to think about “magic” as just another natural force much like gravity that exists in the universes it takes place in. In most settings, perhaps the users dont fully understand how it works, only knowing how to use it. Much like how alchemy was back in the old days. Imagine what wizards in the harry potter world could do if they questioned how magic worked, why it worked, and began experimenting on just how and why it effected the world as it did, how they could manipulate it, why they needed a matter of wand or catalyst to do so, etc. What if they had degrees in physics? Maybe for them it would no longer be magic, but the expert and refined utilization of a law of the universe.
Anyways I might have gone off the rails there, but what I am getting at is that if you think of magic as a fundamental force that exists within the universe a setting takes place in, it can become just as believable as physics here in reality.
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One concept that I had for science-inspired magic is pure telepathy: due to some cataclysm with warp drives, some people gained the ability to connect their nervous systems to others.
My worldbuilding is moreso in the realm of the sociocultural effects of a caste able to link minds: psions being used to make groups cohesive by transmitting thoughts, and the suspicion that the unendowed populace would have due to the intrusive nature of mind linking.
Also there were flesh doors.
What’s a flesh door?
Some time ago i was interested in writing book… Fantasy book, which is like the game HoMM 1-4. If you don’t know, there are the Ancient - high-tech race, which created all known there races. Actually, my world based on “ancient”, but the world was like our. Spaceship with one race crashed. As you know, it plans to use Hydrogen-2 and 3 as fuel. So, hydrogen-3 decayed at first 20 years, deuterium is stable. Animals adapted to big quantity of deuterium (which is little toxic). So appeared deuterium vessels like capillaries. Mind can rule with deuterium. So you actually can create fire, water, help with injuries and many other things.
My guess would be doors made of flesh
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As the powers were limited to purely biological interfacing rather than any sort of physical manipulation (telekinesis), the idea was that flesh doors are a designed organism that is nearly a rectangular slab of muscle.
Psions would be able to take these over as they have no willpower of their own, and open and close them. Like a mall’s sliding doors, except running on organic power instead of electricity.
Probably the weakest application of combining mind control with genetic modification, but it gets the concept out there.
(If them being meat disgusts you, think of them more as a sponge or coral.)
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I think it could be used as an exercise for infants to practice their psionic abilities, right?
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The way everyone here is describing this is taken to me by two ways. Either science is actual magic but it actually works so all science branches from the concept of magic, or magic is just the illusions of unexplained happening from procedures of science, so magic is a branch off from science.
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Telepathy wouldn’t necessarily require anything like that, it could simply be the ability to read weak electrical signals like sharks can. With this ability, computers would not need displays, and with an interface that could read your brainwaves, it might even be possible to operate them with mere thought.
2 things:
1: yup exactly why not I agree.
2: necroposting.