Magic is Programming

Carlos smiled in amusement as he watched Trinlen hurriedly skim through his notes. The young academy-trained mage was muttering under his breath. "Advanced mage soul structures, where did I list those… I did put them in the list, right? Come on… Ah!" He slammed a finger onto the right spot on the page and looked up triumphantly. "Sorry, I put them in a side note because I thought you wouldn't be able to make any."

He sat forward on the edge of his chair and put his notebook on the small table between them, his hand holding it open. "Okay, what did you say you already have soul structures for, again? I think you mentioned casting without precise speech?"

Carlos nodded. "Yes, and we expect it will eventually allow casting silently, without speaking at all. The other one is for learning spells as sequences of the individual incantation words. There's more to it than that, really, but it's a bit complex to explain in full, and also a house secret."

"That first one sounds like the spell activator the academy teaches. Not too surprising, since Sandaras at least mentioned in his book that its effects are possible, even if he didn't go into details about it like for the four basic mage structures. Sounds like you got it right, too; good job avoiding the mistake of having it stop at just letting your speech be unclear." Trinlen cocked his head. "Learning spells as sequences of the words… That sounds kind of like the spell conceptualizer, but different?"

Carlos shrugged, then got out a notebook and pencil of his own. "Different enough that the noble mage who inspected us to verify our soul rank declared it as simply an unknown structure. Now, what exactly does a spell conceptualizer do?"

"Well, you know how you have to hold the full and complete concept in your mind of every detail of what a spell does in order to learn it?" Trinlen paused momentarily for Carlos and Amber to nod. "Just doing that normally is fine for simple spells like the example ones, but if you want to learn anything more complex, it quickly gets to the point of overwhelming your mental capacity. Imagine holding the concept of the Light spell's sustained loop in your mind, but four copies of it at once, each with a different effect, and they're all linked together in specific ways."

Carlos frowned, absorbed in thought, but Amber hesitated only briefly before speaking. "I think I might be able to manage that normally, but yes, it would be difficult, and I take it that many spells go much farther than that."

Carlos chuckled before Trinlen could answer. "If incantations get anywhere near as big and convoluted as some of the similar things I know, you have no idea how much of an understatement that is." Windows has how many millions of lines of code, again?

Trinlen raised an eyebrow at Carlos. "I'm curious what you're referring to, but I don't know if it's relevant. In any case, a spell conceptualizer soul structure helps with learning complex spells, expanding your capacity to hold the full details of large and complex incantation concepts in your mind. It's almost essential for any truly advanced spellcraft, but it doesn't have synergy with much, aside from the spell database, and I know that's important for nobles. I'm not sure how those considerations compare for you; you might have to forgo it in favor of something with more synergies."

Carlos finished scribbling a few notes and looked back up. "Our spell linker - I'll be astonished if you figure out enough details from the name to duplicate it - helps with the same problem, but in a different way that also has other benefits and more synergies. Its benefit for this particular issue is limited, though, so we might still have to make something extra to fully solve it. Ideally, we'll find a different approach that solves the problem at least as well while also having more synergy. We'll have to think about that."

He wrote a quick extra note and focused back on Trinlen. "I think we probably will not use a spell conceptualizer, at least not with the specific concept of it that you described, but the issue it's designed to address is an important one. So, thank you for bringing the issue to our attention. In fact, that's probably a good general principle - even if the solution that you know is not a good one for us, any problem important enough for the academy to teach a solution for it is a problem that we probably need to know about and address. So teach us about the problem, explain the solution you know, and we'll figure out how we want to solve it."

"Got it, makes sense." Trinlen nodded. "Going with that principle, the next major problem is in controlling complex spells after learning and casting them. As I recall, at least a few of the beginner spells I gave you have a parameter you can mentally adjust afterward. Easy enough to manage so far, but what if you cast a spell that has a dozen such parameters?"

"Right, and also what if the parameter value you want is difficult to adequately visualize? I've had some difficulty with that issue already." Carlos huffed a little and shook his head. Visualizing Captain Granlan being flattened into a human pancake just to get him to within reach of the ground was more extreme than I expected to need.

Trinlen blinked and cocked his head. "Really? How did you have powerful enough mana for an effect of that kind of magnitude? I've heard of mages having issues with that, and I was going to mention it, but I thought it only ever comes up above level 20 or 30!"

Carlos looked at Amber. She looked back for a moment, then shrugged and shook her head, smiling and slightly shaking with suppressed laughter. Carlos faced Trinlen again. "Would you believe I'm just that bad at visualizing things?"

Trinlen laughed. "You realize you're just making me even more curious, right?"

Carlos gave a long sigh. "Yeah. Okay, serious talk. I did something that I strongly suspected might have bad side effects, but I had no idea what the side effects might be. Well, I found out what the side effects are, and they are very, very bad. I'm fortunate that the consequences weren't even worse, and that they affected an area that I could leave, rather than affecting me personally. Even so, it's bad enough that I intend to never tell anyone. Not even my own future children. I will take that secret to my grave, unless I find an even better way to ensure it never gets used again, by anyone. Do not ask, do not try to figure it out, and if you think you might have discovered it, then tell me and ask for confirmation of whether you're right." He gazed levelly straight at Trinlen's eyes. "Trinlen, I am not messing around with this. You have no idea how dangerous that particular secret can be." We're all mages seeking to master incantation spellcasting. Draining power from the system that makes incantation spells work is Bad News.

Trinlen gulped and slowly nodded. His voice was uncharacteristically quiet and subdued. "Okay. I can be serious when I need to be. I'll drop it." He took a deep breath. "Back to the main topic at hand, the academy teaches a spell controller soul structure to help handle such adjustable parameters. The prime example of a spell it's important for is Adaptable Multipart Telekinesis. You can have a dozen or more things that you're moving in different ways at the same time, and it can get overwhelming if you want to do anything at all sophisticated with them. Move all dozen-plus things two feet straight up at the same time? Sure, no problem. Bring all of them together into a central point to stack up into a bundle? Something will go flying in a wrong direction if you don't have a spell controller."

Carlos finished a few more lines of notes, then read them over again while touching a hand to his chin. "Hmm. The problem is definitely an important one, and we don't have a good solution for it yet. We have one thing that might help, but I don't think it will help enough."

Amber nodded while looking at her own notes. "Yeah. Structure number 10, right? It's only relevant at all because of how general-purpose it is. We'll need something actually intended for this specifically. Synergies could be an issue…"

Carlos nodded. The 10th structure we made was the reflex improver, and that is what I thought of. "A lot depends on what we learn from Lorvan next. Too many details we don't know yet about how new synergies work for us now. Anyway, are there any other known considerations for spell controller details?"

Trinlen hesitated. "Hmm. I think we should have a talk about synergies at some point. It was not a major topic at the academy, and maybe if you teach me more about the general principles, I could help think of ways to apply them. Aside from that, I think coordinating more things and handling greater extremes covers it."

He glanced down at his notes again and moved his finger to the next line. "So, next up is the problem of someone or something interfering with your spells or disrupting them. Whether it's another mage casting a Dispel, a mystic with an anti-spells soul structure, or more specific like someone trying to freeze what you're trying to burn, it's one of the most generally intractable problems a mage can encounter. When someone's trying to put a sword through your chest, you have all kinds of options; block with a barrier, break the sword, trip the enemy, trick them with an illusion, fly out of reach, and so on. When someone's breaking your spells, chances are they'll just break whatever spell you try to fix things with too. To prevent that, or at least make it more difficult, there's the spell reinforcer."

Carlos paused halfway through writing a note. "You mentioned 'Dispel.' That's a spell to outright destroy an existing target spell, right? Are there any spells to tamper with other spells, leaving the target spell intact but changing its effect in some way?"

Trinlen pressed his lips together and considered. "Hmm. Not many. That kind of interference is complicated. For anything but the most trivially simple of spells, you'd almost have to custom design a separate spell for each specific spell you want to tamper with like that, if it's even possible. You'd also be dealing with the difficulty of affecting someone else's invested essence."

Sounds similar to computer hacking. Changing a program's behavior usually requires extremely specific and customized alterations, and even the tiniest possible difference from what you expect can render a hack ineffective. Carlos wrote a brief note about the similarity. "Alright, I think I understand what I need about that one. What else?"

"Well, those are all the ones that I have, myself. Some people make something to improve specific types of spells, like a soul structure to improve mana manipulation for fire spells." Trinlen shrugged. "I figure, if you're going to specialize like that, why are you bothering with learning how to be a mage? The whole point of spellcasting is to have versatility in addition to being powerful!"

Amber laughed. "I would love to see you explain that to all the kids I grew up with! Not a one of them understood why I considered versatility worth all the reading and classes I'd have to do."

"Then I hope you're as disgusted as I am about the classes that teach non-mage soul structure concepts as potential backup options for when you don't have a suitable spell ready." Trinlen snorted. "What kind of self-respecting mage has a body-strengthening soul structure?" He sighed. "There are other mage-oriented soul structures in the academy's curriculum, but I'd have to go and look them up. The main thing I remember about them is that I assessed all of them as being either too general-purpose, and therefore weak, or too narrowly specific. I didn't want to risk making something that might effectively take up the space of two soul structures because of too little synergy."

"Why am I not surprised that the academy does not teach the precise details of how much synergy is necessary?" Carlos dryly remarked. "Alright, if that's all for advanced mage soul structures, what about the capabilities and limitations of spellcasting incantations in general?"

"Capabilities, well, um… That's a rather long list."

"I am well aware of that." Carlos refrained from mentioning that he actually had the complete list of all effect keywords. I've been at it for days, and still haven't finished reviewing that list.

"So, limitations, then." Trinlen squared his shoulders and took a deep breath. "The most major limitation is that a lot of things that may seem like they should be simple - and even are simple to do with a full soul structure - are instead incredibly complex to do with an incantation. For example, finding a path to go somewhere. Making a soul structure to find paths for you is easy. Just think about exploring and searching for a path, and informing you about what it finds, and that's it.

"Making a spell to find a path for you, though? You have to lay out in extreme detail how to explore, how to track the path it's explored, how to recognize obstacles and barriers, when to give up on one route and how to choose a different one to explore, and… Ugh. The first time I read that spell, it was a headache, even with all the explanatory annotations." Trinlen shuddered. "It's the spell that convinced me about the necessity of a spell conceptualizer."

Carlos smirked. "Believe it or not, I already know all about that kind of issue." Heh. Pathfinding is almost as old hat as standard programming algorithms get! I bet that spell is poorly optimized, too, and making a new one with an A-star search algorithm will blow their minds.

"I'll… take your word for it." Trinlen's face was twitching, like he wanted to raise an eyebrow in curiosity but his frown of revulsion kept pulling it back down. He finally shook his head and continued. "Anyway. Secondary limitations. Spells can be dispelled, dispersed, or broken, where soul structures cannot. Or at least, breaking a soul structure is a whole lot harder. The effect of a soul structure can potentially be broken in similar fashion to a spell, but that generally only applies when the effect is external to yourself, and even then the soul structure typically can renew or replace the effect."

"Right. Seems obvious, even if I'm not sure whether I've thought about it so explicitly before."

Trinlen nodded. "This next one might seem similarly obvious, but to make it explicit: while there are spells to increase strength, toughness, etc., any spell to improve yourself will never be as effective as a soul structure made for the same purpose. The difference isn't about power, but rather the inherence and permanence of a soul structure's connection to you from it being literally part of you. That improves efficiency in ways no spell could ever match." He took a deep breath. "And that's all the really noteworthy limitations I can think of. In terms of theoretical capability, at least; the practicalities of learning the right spells for everything you want to do are an entirely different matter."

Carlos put his pencil down and shook out his hand. "Alright. I think that's a good point to wrap up the first lesson. Next time, we can dig into the details of incantation design." He briefly shifted mental focus to his bond with Purple, directing a message to be relayed to Trinlen. [You can contact us telepathically through Purple for any brief questions about what lesson material to prepare.]

Trinlen jerked in startlement at the telepathic message, then smiled and sent one back. [Got it!]

Carlos looked over to the young woman beside him. "Amber?"

"Hmm?" Amber looked up from her notes, which she was reading through and adding sidenotes to. "Oh. Yes, we have what we need from Trinlen on this topic. Now we just need an in-depth explanation from Lorvan of the second stage to combine with it. Time to call him in for that?"

Carlos nodded. "If anything, that conversation is overdue."