Exactly! You can't explain magic. It's make-believe stuff. That's why TES is a fantasy world and not science fiction.

Does that mean I can't use my character to save arch duke Ferdinand? :sadvaultboy:

Yuppers puppers. No saving arch bishop Fettuccine.

No comments about my serious answer? For shame.

The first rule of Magicka reads thusly:

"Magicka must always be coupled with arbitrary restrictions."

This is all me trying to use what little I know about Magnus to explain it. I can't really prove any of it: it is speculation.

Magic would be one of the byproducts of the dreamsleeve's wiping souls brains blank.

Supposedly, The other byproduct would be More soul matter, which gives way to rising populations. For this I believe I can quote the Ayleids, "From light, fire. From fire, Life." The beleived that Fire was a weaker curruption of pure magic: light. Life was another example of "pure" magic.

I want to know where you got your sources that says this. The only one that I am aware of is that magic just leaks out of the Aetherius via the holes in the sky known as the stars and sun.

Well, all magic emanates from the holes in Aetherius that those dang tootin magne'ge made when they flew away. But now we're just going off topic here.

But yes, a Psijic can create gold out of nothing using magic. Or perhaps, following Prowler's idea, a Psijic could summon a lesser daedra in the form of "x amount" of gold or gold pieces. Basically, you can conjure anything you want if you know the correct incantation and can concentrate hard enough.

Poor Hellmouth feels unloved. Here ya go http://planetsmilies.net

Hey, what the fudge? That darn smiley won't show up. :unsure:
I guess http://planetsmilies.net/obscene-smiley-1013.gif do.

It says at the top: it's personal speculation. It is a theory since very little about what magic really is is ever touched upon.

Magicka is everything that isn't happening right now, potential. For things to happen you need something for them to happen in, we'll call that void. When you put them together you get this grey mix in which random things are happening.
Now in this grey and turbulent maybe things start to be. It wasn't happening already so it was bound to happen because of all the potential things that could happen. These things, they didn't last. They're just messing around and suddenly they make themselves not-happen. Then one thing finds out how to make things happen in order. Again perfectly acceptable, hadn't happened yet.

So now we have allot of things imitating this one thing doing things in order and they can avoid not-happening or happening again right after the not-happening happened. Either way, about half these things happen to store things that could happen up. Big white chunks of possible events. Because they're all bunched up, there is no room for them to happen in. So they don't. The other half just makes everything happen, good, bad, chaotic, random anything goes, it's all way too much fun. So soon there is nothing to make happen any more. It's all just black and void.

Then one of these things decides he wants to see more. He's tired to light and dark so he comes up with a plan for something grey in which new things will always happen.

Sound familiar?



I just did! Magicka is that which makes things happen, that which makes change occur. It's what makes you believe.

---

More seriously:



forget about fantasy-plot-advancing-magic, there is room for philosophy.

What a minute, Proweler, your theory is just focusing on "change". Magic, in TES, can also "create" out of nothing.

You're changing raw magic (potential energy) into something

Yea, that's what I'm saying. It changes nothing. First you have a hand full of magic and a handful of nothing. Then you have a hand full of flowers. Magic gone, nothing gone, flowers created. First law of thermodynamics satisfied.

Then the second law comes and causes it to decay, because nature would rather be random and lazy.

In the Elder Scrolls?

Sunlight

Yeah. That's something that I wish they'd play up more. I mean, it's relatively obvious: Sun/Stars=holes to Aetherius; Magic comes from holes; Sun/Stars still emit light; they've gotta be at least related.

Are you saying that in everyone who can cast spells, there lies an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Infinite_Improbability_Drive

Your Infinite Improbability Drive sounds a lot like a wormhole to me. One particle at one point and another particle at a different point and you just magically teleport from one point to the other? That's how a wormhole works, sorta.

I don't get how that satisfies the 1st law of thermodynamics. In the end, you're still "creating" something out of nothing. Or am I just not getting it? :wacko:

And in regards to change, aren't creation and change really one in the same? When you change something, it is created anew. When you create something, it is changed anew. Do not you agree, Proweler?

youre converting magic into flowers.

creation is making something out of nothing (theoretically). change is taking something and making it into something else. when we say we "created" a piece of art what we are saying is "we took some paint, some canvas, and some ideas, and made it into a piece of art" not "we materialized art from out of nothing"

So, we're focusing a lot on chemistry and physics, and I'm wondering if this speculation is a bit off the mark. As far as genetics are concerned in mortals, science gets chucked out the second-story window: In Nirn, if a man and a woman have a child, the child will be the race of the mother, end of discussion. There is no equal mix or distribution of attributes or whatever; genetics are just not that involved.

So now I wonder if physics and thermodynamics are actually that important to the discussion of the source of magic, its usages, and its limitations. Is it not possible, in Mundus, to create something out of nothing? Is it not possible that magic is simply irrational, the antiphysics?.....

just speculating, but still keeping in mind that Nirn is not Earth (it's not even in the same universe).

True. So perhaps thermodynamics doesn't really have to apply the same way it does in our universe. Then why would Proweler, the lore god, say that it has to satisfy 1st law of thermodynamics? I mean, it's not written anywhere that it does. Although the law of gravity certainly applies on Nirn.

What do you mean magic is antiphysics? It's follows the laws of thermodyamics well, and it's not like you are making something appear using nothing. Magic saturates Nirn, which in turn can be used to change its untapped potential energy into something else. You're taking stasis and potential energy (think Anuiel) and then taking that stasis and change it into something else (think Sithis). It's the interplay between those two forces to achieve such feats with magic.

Proweler gave a similar explanation, though I find more in-depth as it relates to TES.

This is very much physics and chemistry, just using magic as raw material.

And you guys keep missing the point! You are taking raw energy in the form of magic that saturates all of Nirn that falls from the damn sky, and using that energy to create something. You are using something change it into something else. That's the 1st law of thermodynamics. Nothing is lost or gained, only transformed. Second is about entropy, which means things nature moves towards lower energy and higher entropy, meaning things rot, which is why nothing lasts forever. And then there's the third law, but it's not needed in this discussion, for it only states that as you hit absolute 0, all processes cease and entropy no longer exists.

The only time you could say something was created from nothing was the Godhead first appearing.

Oooh, but the wonderful things about fantasy worlds is that the "Laws" don't have to be the same as they are on Earth anymore.

The possibilities are endless! :wacko: Why, on Nirn, a perpetual motion machine could very well be possible. Or perhaps a combustion engine that isn't so bloody inefficient. The Earth Bones are mutable, after all.

The 2nd the 3rd laws say no, because you cannot a point of absolute 0, because all process cease. For a perpetual motion machine to work, all form of heat needs to be put to work, but that's physically impossible. But you sure as hell can be damn close in this universe. equation-wise, 100% effeciency works like this (lT hotl-lT coldl)/lT hotl. In order to achieve 100% efficiency, T cold needs to equal 0. But because it's impossible to reach 0, the efficiency will never reach 100%. You can also use (lq1l-lq2l)/q1, where q1 is heat in and q2 is heat out. These formulae are the exact same thing. In order to get the 100% efficiency, q1 = work. However, as already demonstrated, q1=/=w, because q2 will always > 0

This is why all things on Nirn decay. However, there is perfect stasis and no entropy in the universe, that's where Anu/Anuiel come into play. Because Anu is perfect stasis, there no entropy and all process cease. Padomay/Sithis, on the other hand is the exact opposite, in that it's pure entropy and pure chaos. The combination of the two forces the Arubis to follow the 3 (4 if you count the 0th law) of thermodynamics, because you are mashing pure stasis with pure entropy.

So magic is like the Force in Star Wars? It surrounds us everywhere and certain people are more sensitive to it than others and can use it more efficiently. So for my fan-fic story, it's perfectly okay for Vedaa Addammassar to have 100X her INT in magic and be able to be more powerful than any Psijic ever could be?


EDIT: Blast, so Anuiel and Sithis.... their interplay is the representation of the boundaries and uses of magic? I'm lost.