FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Eric stands in his classroom, explaining various types of Con magic and the applications involving them. He knows at this point most of the people here already know most of what he’s talking about and are simply using him as a workshop and means to help improve their own projects. But there are usually a few who do show up for that one class. Though, he gets an idea after someone asks why there aren’t any badges for Con magic skill.

“Though here’s an interesting question. How do you rate an illusion? Dis magic is pretty straight-forward. How big of a boom can you make,” Eric says. “Sym magic actually has two very different methods of measurement. The first is how much force can you generate using Sym magic. The second is how precise you can be with it. How many objects can you manipulate at once in a precise and controlled manner. Both are fairly simple and easy to understand. But how do you rate Con magic? Of course, here’s the complication. Physical Con magic has no rating. Because the user has no real impact on what it is doing, a physical con magic spell will be the exact same regardless of who is using it. But for mental and visual illusions, how do you gauge how good a job they did?”

“If it worked?” One of the students shouts out, eliciting a laugh from the other students.

“No, no,” Eric states, quickly raising up his hand to try and quiet the class. “He’s not technically wrong. It’s not exactly accurate, there is a far bit more nuance to all of it. Mainly because different people have different abilities to notice the little faults in the spells. An F rank would be something like this,” he reaches down and seemingly pulls a large paper cutout of a Jhereshii drawn by what looks to be from a child from out of nowhere. “There is no way that my running around with this will ever convince anyone that I am really a Jhereshii. And it scales up from there and then when we get to a C grade we get something like this,” he snaps his fingers and suddenly the paper is gone and his appearance has also been replaced with that of a Jhereshii. However, as he starts to talk the illusion becomes obvious as the helmet is physically moving and the lower portion is still moving as a human would rather than how a Jhereshi would be able to move. “If you weren’t paying attention to me then you wouldn’t notice it. So long as I was careful with it I could do an illusion of this magnitude across the station and no one would even really notice that I wasn’t a Jhereshii.

“And for all of you this is about as far as you need to go with most illusions, depending on how much you’re changing. Like if all I’m changing is the color of my eyes, a C grade illusion will suffice for the most part. Simple things or static things that don’t move are perfectly fine at the C grade, as are things that will always look the same. A good example are explosions. Because it is far cheaper to do so, most studios will get like one or maybe two different foci for an explosion illusion and then simply recharge it between takes. This makes it very useful for when you want to do multiple takes and have the explosion the exact same between takes. But for many of these movies if you were to actually pay attention then you might notice that it’s the same explosion being used over and over in the movie, just from different angles. That’s a good idea for some homework for you all, to see if you can notice it. Just watch any movie and look for an effect they use a lot and see if they reuse the same focus.”

He snaps his fingers again and the illusion ends completely. “I could potentially show you higher than that but there really wouldn’t be all that much to notice. A Grade B spell is good enough that only an expert paying attention would be able to notice. Technically, that thing,” Eric points at the box for the Language of Intent, “as well as my clay doll are considered grade B illusions. To any of you in here it’d be very unlikely for you to notice if I am currently using an illusion or not. I could actually be putting you all under a complete illusion right now, looking like something completely different and if you didn’t know what to look for you would never be able to tell it any different from reality if I was using even just a Grade B spell. And a Grade A spell is basically an illusion that is so powerful that no one would be able to tell the difference.”

He moves further into the room and addresses the students again. “Now here’s one big problem with this system. How do you define an expert? Would a Grade A ranking against the Jhereshii be as good as against the Consortium?”

“The Consortium doesn’t use Con magic,” someone in the stands shout out. “They consider themselves above such things.”

“That is a false correlation. Most see Jhereshii never using it out of principle and that they’re the most advanced of the races here. And then there’s the Consortium, who are so much more advanced than them. But if that were true, you’d see a similar philosophy from the Fringewards as you would the Jhereshii. And you don’t see such a standard from them. True, with most Fringewards Con magic is not as prolific as the mythic empire, but they do use it. With the Consortium, Con magic is a tool. They don’t use it for just anything, but when it is the best tool to use for the situation you can be sure they’ll use it. But my point remains. Sym magic and Dis magic have very objective measurement systems. But with Con magic, it’s completely subjective. On top of that just giving a single grade is often completely insufficient. Because there are multiple senses that would need to be tricked. So when someone is giving their Con rating, they’ll give it as a list of grades for each of the senses. And they can claim it to be whatever they want. The most common rating that I’ve gotten people to are a B two, C five, which is that the way their illusions look and sound is convincing to everyone not an expert, and the way it feels, tastes and smells is not that good since they usually aren’t as important to get perfect.”

He waits for a moment as if considering something before waving an arm and speaking up again. “Though I suppose there is another very good reason for the Consortium to be far better at detecting Con magic than the Jhereshii. The Jhereshii are an aquatic species that has repeatedly given some of their technologies to other empires without reservation. They gave us the pods, after all. And it is by far very difficult to sneak into a Jhereshii ship. A Coreward is by far harder, but they equip their new colonies with Consortium Tech to help them get started and then collect things as they break down. But as people would be able to try and learn the secrets, there is an incentive to try and trick the Consortium into trying to look at that tech undetected and Con magic is the go to for people trying to disguise what they’re doing. So there is a very big incentive for the Consortium to know when someone is using Con magic against them.”

He waits for a moment and then speaks up again. “This is why there are no badges. It’s almost impossible to give an exact rating for each spell. Not to mention a lot of it can even vary from use to use. But the general guidelines used for these grades are actually still fairly robust. The average person who doesn’t know what to look for will still not know what to look for, Consortium or otherwise. In the middle of each grade there is a very high level of accuracy when it comes to how likely someone will notice. It is only on the fringes that it may vary. Someone barely into the A rank for a human or habenceun may only be a high B for the mythic and raeshael. But calling it either would still be close enough to anyone observing.”

But with that bit of information he continues going on, the conversation going more into discussions about how the ratings would vary a bit between the races for a little while until everything broke up to go and start working on their own projects with Eric walking amongst them and offering advice and help where needed.

Cerise sits in her seat in the chambers for all of the delegates to assemble. Far more people have actually shown up today than normal. A few are even here in evo suits. But she isn’t really surprised. The full force of the human systems are finally returning after having had their elections. All the human ships have returned as well with their leaders. And so all of the other politicians are showing up to get a good luck at what these humans are like in person. And in some regards one cannot get a good enough read on someone just through a HAPI, there are obvious limitations in what all can be seen and heard through the lens of the machine. Particularly in the limitations of the scope. A HAPI’s camera can’t make very subtle motions to try and check to see what someone is doing out of the corner of your eye.

Which to the white furred kitsune is perfectly fine. It would slow things down a little bit as they have to rely far more on translation orbs than the built-in translators of the HAPI but there really isn’t anything on the schedule to talk about today. The station has so far been quiet this time. And she’d really like it to stay that way for at least a little while. She hasn’t even had to deal with Ret in a while, which makes her somewhat nervous. But if all today brings her is a bunch of politicians sizing each other up all day then that’s fine. And if as Anyol expects that they’ll be unruly it’ll be a productive enough day in showing the humans that they can’t just expect to get what all they want while in the station.

And she has to give them a bit of credit that they apparently thought that it was a good idea to coordinate their activities. Power by numbers is definitely a useful tactic. Trying to get a system to agree to a trade deal with you have four or five systems wanting that deal to go through sends a far greater message than a single system asking for it. But it does have drawbacks and can backfire when done wrong. Though it is amusing just how badly they seem to have been informed on what all is done with this group. They seem to be under the impression that they are a sort of governing body in any regard. They try for a divide and conquer route, trying to get as many of the other politicians to side with whatever task they’re trying to convey. But she doesn’t put much thought into it. A lot of politicians from any of the races tend to confuse what all the politicians here do when they first arrive. Sure, they can come to agreements and there are votes on important details, but that’s mostly on if the station should be devoting its fleet to one system or another to break up a threat or help with a crisis. Beyond that, Toreselia has control of the fleet. Riu has control of the station. In many regards these sessions are more of a convenience for the politicians than serve any real purpose. If one wants to publicly air a grievance, they are more than free to do so. There can be discussions, but there are also updates on the status of things on the galactic scale. Their representative is here on the chance that there is something major that needs to be brought to the attention of their people and they all have priority access to use the gate to send out messages in such a situation. Beyond that, many politicians will work out trade deals with each other because of the convenience of their trade partner already here. But there really isn’t anything akin to a political party. Just systems looking out for their own best interest. And that is a large reason why in most cases she’ll only get a few that actually bother showing up. There is simply no point. Just check in at the start via HAPI and if there is any pertinent information she’d give it and they’d act accordingly. A lot of time most of the delegates aren’t here for more than an hour, though she is here for a full shift just in case.

For the most part none of the humans are engaging with her, which is fine. Instead she simply looks down at her console for the information that is being sent to her. There is no requirement for it, but many of the delegates are sending her messages about the general conversation that is going on between them and the others. It certainly helps for her to have a feel for what is going on, but there is no penalty for not doing so. Unless, of course, the Raeshael are involved. That species is so paranoid about what is being said by the other two factions that they will not only throw a temper tantrum if they aren’t reporting what is being said and verbally harass anyone who didn’t until a report of the conversation is sent. And that’s the main reason why everyone just got into the habit of writing notes to her. She chuckles inwardly at what the reactions for the humans are going to be when they are the subject of this harassment. Naturally, for the conversations with the Raeshael she will send a copy of what is sent to the other two factions. To the others it’s only per request. Just as they have no obligation to say anything to her, she has no obligation to give that information to anyone else. And quite frankly it makes her job at managing people a whole lot easier when she can see both sides and can see the likely truth in what is being said and if one of them is being taken advantage of.

The humans are clearly not liking how things are going. The other politicians will listen to them, sure, but when it’s clear they want to help push pro-human agendas without anything in return they get quickly ignored. She even gets a few reports of some asking that a larger portion of the station be devoted to humans, despite the fact that they already have almost one sixth of the station to themselves and can easily travel and mingle in another. They also try to take control over the entire discussion going on in the room a few times to just as much of a result. It’s just as Cerise had expected really. A new delegate comes in thinking that they’ll be able to just get everything they wanted right away since they know what’s best when the reality is more that each is only looking out for themselves. But everything will eventually be as it should be and when they find it convenient, the vast majority of the delegates start filtering out. Eventually, one of the humans finally come up to her to ask about it.

“There is no requirement to be here the entire time,” she shrugs, letting her translator finish each sentence before starting again. “There really isn’t any requirement to be here at all. The delegates serve at the pleasure of their planet. So long as they serve their planet’s interests, they are under no obligations unless there is a major issue that needs to be addressed, at which point I will make them aware of it. But I have no announcement to make so they’re free to do whatever. If you want to continue conversations you can request a call with them.”

And with that they walk off, having no real way to answer against that, especially as she did answer their question specifically. And with so many gone it’s not like further conversation with her would really mean much. She has no authority over what any of the systems do. She has authority over the delegates themselves. Her job is to protect them and keep them under control. For now she’ll just have to see what they do from here on out.