crystal.

[biggame]

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Xiomara
RECIPIENT: Everybody
NOTES: Threadjacking approved and encouraged

Hey, if we cut an eluvian in half, will it still work? Because imagine. If we could strap one to a griffon, we could be anywhere, and only one person would have to do the traveling. Or we could strap one to the bottom of a griffon and fly low over a battlefield or a lake and people could jump through without the griffon even needing to land—

[ Or maybe that's just her personal paratrooper fantasy, parachute part PENDING, RESEARCH. ]

I think we could be thinking bigger here. Or smaller. But in a big way.

Comments

[portalling]

( The action girls are shooting the shit and they’re having fun with it; he doesn’t touch the parachuting ideas. But the conversation does get some wheels turning, so he starts to ponder another angle: )

If it were possible to divide a working eluvian into pieces without breaking it… not just half, but many smaller pieces like pocket mirrors. Put two eluvians face-to-face so the other end connects to a safe location near us.

Then, for the pocket-sized end, plant them at dead-drop locations for Riftwatch’s connections and agents. At the end of a small tube, or the bottom of a secret mailbox. Someone on the other side of the continent could drop in letters with their reports and information. Presto, you’ve got a mail room. Faster than waiting for a raven, and you don’t have to give away a sending crystal.

[biggame]

How are you turning this into paperwork,

[ is the least objective possible response to this actually very good idea ]

[portalling]

Because it’s useful. Ravens are so, so, so intolerably slow. I came from a world where pretty much everyone on the planet had the equivalent of a sending crystal.

( This raven could have been an email, etc. And what can he say, nerds love that paperwork shit. )

appears from the shadows

[sprent]

And if we could do this with small parts, could we do it with larger parts, too?

Think — if we didn't have to pay for freight for things to come to us...

(Trademaster brain gears are suddenly whirring.)

[portalling]

Hm,

( thoughtful, gears also spinning, thank you gela for running with it, )

Admittedly, our pathways through the Crossroads are a matter of security— you wouldn’t want to put large-scale transit through it, and I mentioned distance from the Gallows on the receiving end so someone can’t, say, smuggle a bomb to the towers through the delivery mechanism. But I think the principle holds. For transporting smaller valuable items for trade, or larger pieces that could perhaps be disassembled…

Or, yes, larger pieces for trade if a trusted Riftwatch agent can transport them through.

[sprent]

(Gela makes a little sound at 'smuggle a bomb'.

Hastily,) We would have to test it. And instruct everybody who uses it in the utmost secrecy and caution, of course... but I think that it would be very useful for us if we could get it up and running.

Thank you for the idea!

[aberratic]

[ she was content to just let everyone else talk about, you know, action girl shit, but now (as usual when stephen has something to say) she's engaged. ]

Everyone? How did that work?

[portalling]

( technology, babyyy; it takes him a moment to think how to translate it: )

Mass manufacture. Think if… a corner of dwarven industry devoted itself wholly towards building sending crystals and making them mostly affordable for the common person. And there are… vanes, say, built around the world to pick up and boost each crystal’s signal so you can get your call to another continent. A network of signals spanning the whole globe. Very handy.

[aberratic]

Very handy, [ and ness is appropriately impressed. ] In Faerûn, there was magic that could achieve something close to the same effect, message and sending spells, sending stones—but they were out of reach for most people. Almost no one would ever see magic done, much less be able to do it themselves, or hold a magic item in their own hands.

Was your world very safe? I can't imagine these vanes staying up very long in a world ravaged by war and disaster, or industry dedicating itself to communication innovations when machines of war are needed.

[portalling]

‘Safe’, ( is so very much relative. He has to think about it for a moment. ) Yes and no. I’ll say, cynically, that communication innovations are in fact a part of the machines of war, so. There’s a vested interest in everyone being able to get information quickly.

If sending crystals were a widespread technology here that both Riftwatch and Tevinter used, but they relied on the same vanes, we’d presumably still want them up and working for our own purposes. Taking them down to sabotage both the enemy and yourself would mean cutting off your nose to spite your face.

[aberratic]

Which is something no entity of power has ever done, surely, [ because like. he's not wrong. but some people are still stupid enough to do it. ]

You are right, though, of course. It just seems... Most governments are more concerned with how to kill more people more expediently than with how to communicate troop movements quickly. At least that's how it seems in reading histories, having never been in war prior to this I'm certainly no expert.

[ despite talking like she is. ]

Is this technology replicable in Thedas, do you think?

[portalling]

Someday, [ bleakly, ] the two could be one and the same. Think of pressing a button on your crystal and thousands of people perish in Denerim. The quicker it gets, the more distant you are from the immediate impact.

[ But trying to tilt the conversation back towards something lighter: ] I promised Novoa I wouldn’t let Research push the technology and let it get too wide-spread. It does seem like we’re somewhat limited in our manufacture of this, anyhow; we haven’t been able to make very many more of these since the initial cache was discovered.

Would you want everyone to have a sending crystal?

[aberratic]

Well, that's... horrifying.

[ how easy would it be to make deadly decisions if you didn't have to be around to see their effects? how easy to allow expedience to outweigh ethics, when you don't have to reckon with its cost?

she takes a moment to sit with that, to really try to understand it. ]

I think... there have been some situations I've experienced that would have been improved by use of a crystal, [ a diplomatic way of saying "if i'd been able to call my father on the mindflayer ship i might have survived it", but also: ] but I understand that would simply be trading one problem for another, now.

It seems there's no good that cannot be warped by those determined enough. Are antibiotics, penicillin—can those be harnessed for evil, too?

[ fear of what could happen is no reason not to innovate—bad does not cancel out good, they exist side-by-side—but it would be good to know what to look out for. ]

[reparo]

[ Ask her how far before the invention of email she's from, go on. ]

At least it's ravens and not owls. Owls are so much slower.

[portalling]

( squints. )

—does that mean you could only send mail at night?

[reparo]

No, you could send mail whenever. But now I wonder if they should've established a better carrier bird system, which didn't rely on nocturnal animals flying in daytime...

[portalling]

Right? That doesn’t seem like it’s particularly fair to the owls.

Strictly speaking, I suspect homing pigeons would actually have the best speed and stamina for this system. Wouldn’t have quite the same goth style points as ravens, though.

[reparo]

Right? Doesn't sound as dramatic to say 'I must send the commander a pigeon'.

[portalling]

“We’ve received the latest word from the other side. This pigeon means war.”

[biggame]

Everyone? So, what, you mother could ask where you were and what you were doing every hour of the day?

[portalling]

Well, when you put it that way…

Yes, but you could always just, y’know. Decline the call.

( And he had. He’s not a great midwestern son. )

[biggame]

[ "Decline the call" takes a moment to parse, but she gets it. ]

Sure, if I wanted to be a monster.

[ She is a great midwestern son. ]

[portalling]

You don’t seem the type to enjoy neurotic hourly check-ins.

[biggame]

I'm not! That's why it's insane that people in your world can do that! If my mother doesn't hear from me for months now, she assumes I haven't been in a place where I could write to her.

[portalling]

I’ll grant you that the power of a passive-aggressive maternal guilt-trip being able to transcend all space and distance is one of its biggest downsides, probably.