LCD Mother of Learning

Waking up at 1AM does you wonders.

Maybe he does know the spell and just can't be bothered using it? I mean, when was the last time a villain like QI teleported his whole army around in a story.

 

Well, I suppose that depends on whether or not you consider Zorian to be a villain...

More seriously, Mechanical God Emperor has things similar to this in that he can carry his army around in this spatial storage device, and its protagonist is definitely a villain. Of course, so is basically everyone else in the series.

Actually, people in WoC do this a lot too, just not over very long distances since screwing with the teleportation becomes easier, and hiding it becomes harder, the longer the teleportation is.

And all that aside, QI himself has done it. In this very story. In every single loop. The only difference is the method used. The method Zorian uses is relatively fast, efficient, cheap and low key. The method QI uses is definitely expensive and requires large, obvious, and difficult to hide physical structures that must be constantly guarded, and seem to have a much shorter range than Zorian's method if I'm not misremembering the fact that it takes multiples of them to get from QI's territory to Cyoria.

 

Is there a prototype we witnessed which would show soul slavery, soul splitting? I don't recall anything like this. There's soul splicing (putting soul into objects like wards, putting souls into corpses, putting souls into animal bodies - e.g., 3 eyed wolf). But I'm pretty sure there are no examples of soul enslaving / splitting.

The issue with teleport is - the costs are exponential to distance. If you compare so two chained teleports (ranges 3 and 4 ) would give you a distance of 7, but the costs would be equivalent to single teleport worth 5 (3^2 + 4^2=5^2). It is very cost ineffective. If you are pulling someone along it adds up real quick. When we are talking about armies it is simple impossible. Look at the how Orb search went. There were only like 15 people and single gate used for logistics made it many times easier. The army has many more units you have to transfer, gate is pretty the only reasonable way (convenience + mana costs).

The distance is irrelevant. There could be a single gate from ibasa to cyoria, but there's an intermediary gate to the soul well since it has major role to advancing attackers plans. Also not opening direct connections to the enemies makes a lot of sense as well (gate works both ways, additional gate gives some additional security/time to react. enemy can use gate infrastructure for attack - this already happened, but people attacking new of Suldomir and acted first to disable the guardian of jump gate).

 

The simulacrum spell itself is an example of soul splitting as I recall. It's not a perfect split, but it doesn't really need to be for this. Really, it's probably better if it's not since that would make the communication aspects easier. As for enslavement, that mayor was doing things of that nature as I recall. Though honestly, even if there weren't a soul enslaving spell, I'm sure a soul mage as powerful as the lich could "convince" someone that cooperation would be in their own best interests, especially after demonstrating that he could split their souls.

Why are we talking about teleportation? I was asking why QI wasn't using simulacra + gate spells like Zorian instead of creating complex, expensive and strategically dangerous gate artifacts.

As I recall, it was specifically mentioned that the intermediary gates (plural) were built of necessity due to range limitations, not solely strategic concerns. Though it's been a while since I read that chapter, so it's certainly possible that I'm misremembering it. It's also possible that QI was lying to his allies or that this was simply speculation from Zorian. Hard to say without looking it up. Regardless, it doesn't really alter the question. Honestly, it just reinforces it. Why would they use gate artifacts that they viewed as strategic weaknesses when better alternatives existed?

 

The simulacrum copies the soul. The better soul awareness, the better, more perfect copy of the soul can be created. But there are no means to control the copy one personally created and you are talking about controlling random soul?
Alanic explained the risks related to simulacrums. And for QI who can create a perfect copy of himself (the arrogant, very experienced mage) it is very likely the created simulacrum would try to murder original. The only catch is that I'm pretty sure murdering original would kill the simulacrum as well. And this should be the reason for any reasonable simulacrum to not attempt killing original.

Also, I'm not sure the communication is that easy. I remember some passing thought of simulacrum while he is teleporting to Koth and setting up relays that they could be using soul instead of telepathic relays based on information Zorian learned while doing mind interrogation of Soldamir(cannot find exact quote).

on chapter 74 we get some explanation:

On chapter 79:

I read this as implication that mind magic/telepathy knowledge is the prerequisite of successful communication - and QI is definitely not a mind mage, so he would have this issue of communicating/coordinating with his simulacrums over large distance to open gate.

Explanation above. Also the similar reason why everyone is using spell rods with spells etched so they just need to feed mana for it to activate - ease of use/convenience. Any grunt is able to use the infrastructure without QI being present/bogged down providing solutions for such boring problems as logistics.

The only reason he's able to use this gate is that not many people are aware this creation. If Z&Z would broadcast that QI had created the gates and how easy it is to use them - Ibasa would not seem to be so bare and very low target to conquer - the Ibasa would be attacked the next day so the gate technology could be lifted from them. The gate is real gem/strategic resource. There are no easy-to-use alternatives in the world. It's like the next generation of railway. I guess you could even put some railways through the gates and just transfer large amounts of goods anywhere. It's industrial revolution.

The only limiting issue for opening gates we've been told is coordinating over distance issue between two people opening the gates.

 

Copy or split, it honestly doesn't matter for the purposes of this discussion. So long as there are two where once there was one, the goal has been accomplished. Also, as I said, even if a soul couldn't be controlled with a spell, it could be coerced. I'm quite certain that he knows more than a few ways to do so.

As I recall, the simulacra would wind up taking the body of the original, but I'm not 100% on that. Still, as I've said, it's not really necessary for him to use the spell on himself. He just needs to use it, or a variation of it, on someone else and then use them as the coordinator for the spell.

I was under the impression that anyone could learn mind magic with a bit of effort, and that it was simply easier for natural empaths. I'm sure the higher level techniques are also practically impossible without extensive effort, but I doubt any advanced techniques are at play here. Regardless, Zorian is using telepathy because that's what he's good at. I'm sure QI could use soul magic in a similar way, especially if he didn't need to send complex messages. The whole point of it would simply be coordination. As long as you can send a single recognizable signal of any kind, the rest is just down to practice.

The fact that any grunt can use the gate is actually a part of the problem if they care about security. Being able to limit it to a small handful of mages capable of casting gate spells would actually make things much more secure, along with its other benefits.

If that were a consideration, then they wouldn't be using them to attack Cyoria in the first place. Everyone who matters will know about the gates after this regardless.

Well, if coordination is their limiting factor, then once again, the simulacra (or similar spell) could fix that issue.

 

We are discussing because we are basing our options on different presumptions. Your argument implies that communicating with remote simulacrums is easy peasy. It is almost automatic. I'm basing my argument on assumption that it is inherently difficult. With a guidance from someone like current Zorian it would be possible to use it, but the wall to climb over is very high. The coordinating with simulacrums is a very lucrative business, very high advantage and we all know how sharing the mages are (especially sharing very useful tricks). It's like Zorian described empathy to his supervisor (I'm pretty sure that some of the empaths discovered that any empath could be trained as mind mage, but they are keeping this knowledge to themselves). Similarly to empathy, simulacrums are very strictly controlled and the prerequisites to create communication via soul with simulacra is very high. It is pretty safe to assume that there aren't that many people who are aware of this trick and most likely they are not sharing.

Take over might be the worry for Zorian only due to mind magic (chapter 62) :

Coercion is not likely to work because it is just easier to kill the poor target and lift the secret from the soul and doing it yourself. Why introduce the variable. And Coercion does not work on target who cannot communicate with simulacra just because they can't.

The soul magic is not very useful for communicating. Most of the soul magic is very slow and close range - so it does not have a lot of use in combat. The only successful usage of soul magic was used with combination on another spell on chapter 60:

I cannot find exact explanation why lich is not using a lot of soul magic in combat though. (there was an explanation).
Anyways, the point I'm trying to raise is that soul magic is not that useful for communication and mind magic was deemed pretty useless - e.g., major efforts to train for useless stuff like sending message to close people. So very few trained in unstructured magic besides mind magic defenses.

It makes no sense to tie up your most experienced mages in mundane logistics. Also looks like QI is the owner of this and he's not too keen on sharing his knowledge on gates. He becomes a lot more redundant if other mages can replace him.

After invasion of Cyoria the fact that easy to use gate technology is available is less relevant because there wouldn't be any strong parties left to grab this technology from Ibasa.

 

Once again, I’d like to point out that QI is more than a millennia old. He’s probably the best soul mage in the world, or close enough as to make no real difference for the purposes of this discussion. There’s absolutely no reason to think that he wouldn’t know the simulacra spell if he wanted to know it. Nor any reason to think that he wouldn’t have wanted to know, even if only for academic reasons. There’s also no reason to think that he wouldn’t know how to manipulate a soul when he did it in the first few chapters, and manipulating the soul is all he’d need to do for this to work so long as changes in the original/simulacra were in some way reflected in the other. What’s more, research into such things would be a natural part of his research into turning himself into a lich, so the odds of him not knowing are actually quite slim.

Coercion wasn’t to get information. Coercion was to get the souls to communicate with each other. And honestly, voluntary communication might not even be necessary if whatever method he’s using to send info through the souls doesn’t require their cooperation. I’m also not clear on why soul magic being slow or short-ranged would matter for the particular use we’re discussing. The soul magic spells would all happen long before any battle took place, with the possible exception of the communication method, which would be instantaneous, and which has been shown to not have range issues.

Mind magic was never deemed useless. It was deemed extremely dangerous and generally hated, but never useless. Also, telepathy was always something that any mage could learn if they felt like it, especially if they didn’t need to do more than get someone’s attention, even more so if that someone was linked to their own soul.

It’s not necessary for QI to be the one opening the gates. He could if he wanted to, but their army has more than enough trained mages to do it without him, especially if they’re not planning to attack immediately after gating in. As for keeping the methodology secret, the communication method is the important part. The gate spell itself isn’t really a secret. At least, not at the level of nations anyway.

Whether he’s using gate artifacts or gate spells, I doubt it would change how other nations would react, so it’s not really relevant to the current discussion.

 

same bro, same...
I'm even further behind you, cause I am now rereading it.
When I first started reading Mother of Learning I was on the 30th chapter, which I think was the latest released at the moment, and I sort of... waited for too long.

 

Huh, when was it stated that QI was opening the gates?

And I still don't get how soul slaving someone would help opening a gate like Zorian does. Not like you get instant telepathy that way.

 

QI does not simulacrum spell. This is the prerequisite of becoming lich. There is no argument about it.
The curious thing about QI - we never seen him using simulacrum. He's always appearing in person. I vaguely recall some of the discussions about simulacrums/lichs and I recall several points, like simulacrums are not capable of creating other simulacrums or being lich is attaching ones soul to some object. So I'm not sure if there are some limits to lich+simulacrum combination.
With huge mana reserves it would make sense for QI to use simulacrums in combat but he never does (at least we didn't notice him using them).

The whole point I'm keep on replying is I think the main issue with opening gates is coordinating effort involved (via large distance) between parties opening the gate. Soul magic is totally unsuited for communication over large distances between different souls. We never saw a soul related activity outside of soul sight. Actually the only other single simulacrum use we've seen was done by Red Robe and he did attack aranea after his simulacra was killed. But RR is proficient mind mage to mess with Zach.

I still think the communication via soul is high hanging fruit and the people who are using this are pretty rare.

As for training drones to perform gate - it is pretty easy to kill the drone and by using soul interrogation steal the secrets. QI lived for too long to hoard the best secrets to himself. Gate technology he's keeping to himself makes a great bargaining chip.

The lich was overseeing gates. When people stole the gate for investigation, Ibasians were very pissed of at the theft (they were very afraid of that QI will do to them when he finds out the gate was stolen). When Zorian was checking gates, there were instances where gates were shut down after he failed to assassinate guards and pissed off QI arrived to do investigation/kill snooping Zorian.

 

Wow, never knew this had a thread. Mother of Learning is a great novel. I liked the start a lot but the current right now is also interesting. They've figured a lot of things out but they still have to escape before time's up making a nice tense mood.

 

Yeah @jacobpaige not sure why you're so convinced that simulacra will be even possible for a lich. It seems obvious to me that as a lich, the soul would be much more fragile and even likely that it is constrained in many ways.

You also seem to think that soul magic is this really powerful thing that can do everything, but I think you're exaggerating it's capabilities.

 

it doesn't matter how old he is, he wasn't born a mind mage and as such cannot coordinate with simulcarums he makes at the same level.

Incidentally, saying he appears "in person" is inaccurate because he is a lich. his "in person" is his phylactery where his soul resides. What appears is a skeletal puppet which he created and has been shown to lose and be able to replace... which is very similar to a simulacrum already. Only piloted by a projection of his soul from his phylactery... maybe the method of operation of the phylactery prevents him from making simulcarums?

Every simulcarum also divides the person's power between them. And QI can already teleport around. Besides which much of his power comes from his equipment like the crown.

Also, just because we haven't seen him use them on screen doesn't mean he never does. That said, with his twisted personality the whole simulcarum rebellion issue might be a bigger problem for him.

But never in the same manner that a psychic could. Just like how the mind shields they can learn to create never truly compare to those a psychic can create. Also, there are some things people are not as good at or don't have a talent at. Time is still a premium. QI for example has only recently developed the ability to construct bakora gates, after who knows how many years of research. And silverlake is worse than zatch at combat magics, is amazing at demiplane creation, has developed an immortality alchemy potion, and is working on a youth alchemy potion.
Being immortal doesn't mean you automatically mastered all spells that exist.

 

So it takes a bit of mind magic training, or you target people that already have that training. It's not a big obstacle. The split/copied soul is strictly there to help coordinate the two mages opening the gate. Even better would be if the slave was also the two mages, but it's not really necessary.

Well, as I've said many times, it's not really necessary for him to use the spell on himself. I'm simply convinced that he knows the spell or something like it. I also think that he could use that or other necromantic knowledge to split or copy a person's soul in a similar way and then use various methods magical and otherwise to convince or coerce that person into helping with the formation of cross-continental gates.

So what? How much effort does it really take to send the message "Now" or "Beep" or whatever minimal, but still recognizable, signal the mage agrees on with themselves? This is about as low as the bar gets. At worst, they'd also need to be necromancers, but I'm sure that QI knows quite a few of those that he doesn't mind enslaving. Even if he doesn't, he's more than capable of making them using far less effort and far fewer resources than the gate artifact is likely to take.

Also, the mind mage doesn't need to be QI unless it's his simulacra. If we assume that being a lich makes simulacra impossible or ill advised, then it becomes obvious that he shouldn't be the mind mage. At that point, I'll refer you to my reply to NZPIEFACE earlier in this post. Though honestly, as long as the souls are connected, I don't know that mind magic is even necessary. Mind magic was simply what Zorian chose to use because it's natural to him. Even then, he was using it over the medium of the soul connection. This implies that the soul connection itself is the important part and something other than mind magic could be used. At that point, it becomes obvious that manipulating the soul in some way might achieve the same results if all you want is to send a coordination signal and not an actual conversation.

Heck, if it's simple enough, they could just split the souls of animals, and rig them so that killing one will kill the other and then use that to coordinate. This is unlikely to be a particularly high level technique, but even if it was, it would still be easier than copying a divine spell, and much, much cheaper than making those gates.

Actually, now that we're talking about animals, what about the cranium rats? They're working for QI right? Couldn't they coordinate extremely easily? Or do they die if they get too far away from each other or something? If so, then QI could also just kidnap some aranea and use them, or heck, actually negotiate and hire them. I'm quite sure that at least one web would be happy to help in exchange for the simulacra spell, trade agreements, research agreements, or territory (aka: wiping out rival webs), all of which QI is more than capable of giving them, and none of which would really cost him anything, and might even be mutually beneficial.

The point is, this is not a hard thing to do for a lich, especially not one with as much political power as QI. Heck, it's not really a hard thing to do for any soul mage that knows how to create simulacra and gates and is willing to spend a relatively brief amount of time learning very basic levels of mind magic. Granted, that's a fairly high bar, but it's far from being insurmountable.

Honestly, at this point, I basically have to assume that it simply hasn't occurred to anyone before Zorian. Once people find out what he's doing and how, it'll probably usher in a new, much scarier age of warfare.

 

You seem to be forgetting about the whole "is on another continent, so far away that you can't teleport there". This is a non trivial task.

very sharply limited by distance.

I wouldn't call this "simple". but it might be doable... heck if he was willing to invest enough in such a project he could make an animal lich and force it back to its phylactery as a signal method. this will actually make for an interesting test if they had accurate enough scientific equipment on whether magic propagates faster than light.

That said, doable is not the same as practical. My main thrust was that the ancient immortals in the setting are obscenely powerful and know a lot of very advanced spells. but they don't do everything. their time is limited, even if they had a lot of it, and in very specific fields other could know or do things that are superior to them.

case in point, zack is actually better than silverlake at straight up in person combat magic

Anyways, to put my thoughts into more order

1. just because QI is ancient doesn't mean he can automatically do all the things. especially things that are specifically based on innate born abilities.
2. although he might be able to replicate some of those, he might not.
3. his time is still limited, and he has very time consuming research to do.
4. he might have a more efficient way to do things. for example MC sends a simulacrum to slowly travel. QI has his crown and divine blessing and probably doesn't suffer from low mana like MC, combining all of them with his seeming mastery of the teleport spell to the point where he can spam it instantly without a chant... and he could just teleport hop instead of sending off a simulacrum to slowly travel to a destination and then open a gate.
5. simulacrum are dangerous magic, especially if they come into being with master soul mage knowledge. I wouldn't be surprised if instead of obeying his orders they just teleport away and try to build themselves a phylactery of their own.

 

I'm not forgetting about the distance. That problem is solved by soul magic. Zorian has already proven that.

It's hard to know how hard or simple it would be for a lich to split/copy the soul of an animal. Honestly, if it's easy enough, he might not even need to do it himself. That said, I also provided a number of other solutions to the problem that wouldn't require much in terms of time or resources from QI, certainly less than the gate artifact required if nothing else.

1) I'm not assuming that he knows everything. I'm just assuming that he has extensive, in-depth knowledge about soul magic, since that's a prerequisite for becoming a lich.

2) He doesn't really need to replicate much, or even any of it. These are all tasks that could be divided up and outsourced if he really didn't feel like doing it himself. Though, if he did feel like doing it himself, none of it is beyond his capabilities (with the possible exception of creating simulacra, which I've already proposed numerous alternatives to).

3) Good thing none of this would take very long for him then. He should already know what he needs to know about souls, the gate spell probably wouldn't even take him a day to learn, and the necessary level of mind magic, or a soul magic based alternative, would likely take him less than a month, and that's assuming that he didn't simply just delegate that part of the task, which would be more likely.

4) That's all well and good for him, but we're talking about transporting armies, and his teleport isn't up to that task.

5) Again, the simulacra (or simulacra alternative) doesn't need to be him. He's the ruler of a nation, and has been for centuries. That means that he doesn't have to do everything himself, nor is he inclined to.

 

QI is not ruler. He's general. And there is a ruler class (something like vampires - he babysited one female offspring during attack on Cyoria).