[SD:SC] Snippets Of Chat - Chapter 1

(SoulDive’s official Forum, Regional Chat)

AllSight, BertVurn, Billium, DesDose, Filegreen, FeltFelt, InkyCat, JuneSupport, JustSamuel, KillTheKrill, May/Hem, MoxieBoxie, No2Ways, Roxie1337hxs, Vibez420, WizardsName, Zap2to2Zap, ZZZJohn

May/Hem: And that's what happened in the ruin. Stupid undead, cursing the loot.

InkyCat: Hey now, we didn't betray you. Your group simply failed to work out we were supposed to work in a fight like that. Up until then, we were just fighting in tight corridors.

May/Hem: Says the all Evil group.

InkyCat: I'll have you know! Not all of us are locked in yet.

Zap2to2Zap: Yeah, that's cool and all, but how about the news about digitization? I wonder if the game would feel even more realistic than it already does if you were digitized.

JuneSupport: A little out of left field, but nothing has been confirmed yet.

JustSamuel: Besides, just wanting a more realistic experience would be a bad reason to do something so permanent.

Zap2to2Zap: Bah, boring! @May/Hem , Describe the undead titan thing again. I want to see if I can find more info on that sort of thing.

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Later that month

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Zap2to2Zap: Hah! Check this out, proof that the SAI can upload people! [Slightly blurred picture of a newspaper rack at a grocery store with a crude circle drawn around a tabloid]

Vibez420: Far be it from be to chill your vibes, but seriously?

Vibez420: *for me

No2Ways: No, chill his vibes, harsh them even. Next thing you know, they'll claim to digitize your soul as well.

BertVurn: Yeah, I mean really? A tabloid article?

WizardsName: Hah! That's an old article. Because @No2Ways ? They actually did already. [First legible result from an Internet search for front page of the same tabloid, this time with an article claiming the SAI have proven souls exist]

No2Ways: No. #######. Way. Really? I'm not even surprised.

Zap2to2Zap: Hey now! Didn't realize it was a tabloid or something. Shut up.

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Two weeks later

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Zap2to2Zap: Hah! This time it isn't a tabloid paper! Multiple big news organizations are reporting on it now! [Collage of a number of articles from actual legit news sources]

May/Hem: Oh Damn

Zap2to2Zap: Yeah!  I was right!

May/Hem: You're still on that? I thought the SAI doing a press release last week would have clued everyone in?

Zap2to2Zap: Wait, what?

InkyCat: Yeah, they did a big ol’ presser last week. Seems they still consider it experimental. They've been silently offering the option to the terminally ill that have less than month to live or some such.

JuneSupport: And there is a ton of research backing it up. For those of you who would actually bother looking at such things.

FileGreen: It is quite interesting, though one has to ask. Where did the data come from? Because that is a lot more than if they grabbed a few hopefully terminally ill people.

JuneSupport: If you check the brief, it will explain things. Though the short of it is that right up until the last couple steps, everything is not only harmless, but quite useful. After all, the FIVR technology is built on those first steps and specifically designed to be unable to do the next steps that aren't reversible.

FileGreen: How irreversible are we talking?

JuneSupport: Well, let me first say that I do not know the technology and have not worked with it personally. My knowledge comes purely from the papers they put out. However, the basic idea is that You as a conscious being can only ever be in one place at a time. So during those last few steps, there is a point at which You stop existing in the flesh and are now existing on the computer.

Zap2to2Zap: Heyo! Remember that stuff about souls? Well, that sounds awfully like that.

JuneSupport: The SAI are not claiming to have discovered the soul. While they do admit that each person is unique, even once on a computer and including SAI. Trying to label this uniqueness the soul is purely hyperbole. Though I will admit, chances are people will end up calling it such, whatever the actual facts end up being.

Zap2to2Zap: Whatever. I want to use this to try and find out if reincarnation is real! Like, think about it!

FileGreen: Meh, I'm more worried if the government tries and uses this to ID people.

FeltFelt: Hah! Just imagine it, you're born and so instantly thrown into jail because you're the reincarnation of you know who.

WizardsName: We wouldn't even be able to ID his soul, even if such a thing became possible.

JuneSupport: And as anyone who has read the person can tell you, it won't be possible. The unique element of a person is fully random every time you check it. There is no way to match it between readings taken seconds apart, let alone check who you might have been in a past life.

Zap2to2Zap: Bah, All the fun ideas are being shot down. I'm going to go and find some people willing to theorize with me.

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Months later

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May/Hem: I am so bored! How am I bored? I'm throwing magic around! The wind dances at my command (not literally, but I'm working on it) and there are monsters to slay!

InkyCat: Well, you did say you wanted some forests and small towns. What did you expect?

May/Hem: Not to be stuck in such a place for so long! We got there about a month after the whole ruins thing and despite going in a straight line, nothing but farms and forests. And even the forests aren't much of anything.

ZZZJohn: Ah! You stumbled into the bread basket. I spent a few months there. Nice place for those looking into crafting or slow progression.

May/Hem: I just wanted a short relaxing break. Which to be fair, yeah, got that in spades. Now I want out!

JustSamuel: You should be happy! After the disaster with the loot, this gave us a chance to make some money. Besides, with the digitization reveal, the rest of SoulDive has gotten dangerous. Like, what idiots actually use FIVR to try and attack the SAI? Just because they can work at “conquering the world” to try and ruin the game, doesn't mean it will work or matter.

May/Hem: But I want it!

InkyCat: Of course you do. You chaos fiend.

May/Hem: Not a fiend. Pure Chaos, baby!

WizardsName: Well, we'll be in the middle of it soon enough. If I'm reading the maps we keep seeing in the various farming villages right, we'll be out of the bread basket within a couple weeks.

May/Hem: Weeks? Eugh!

WizardsName: Don't act like you aren't having fun. We just aren't doing as much new stuff.

May/Hem: Last town we literally did the old meme quest of killing rats in a basement! Oh sure, they were husky-sized rats with an actual ratking leading them, but still!

InkyCat: You fought a ratking? Those aren't that common in small villages. How'd one end up there?

May/Hem: shrugs I don't know. It was just that classic five rats attached at the tails in some kind of fleshy star configuration.

InkyCat: Wait, were they perfectly spaced or a nasty clump? In fact, were they clean or a mess?

May/Hem: Like I said, they looked like a classic ratking from an rpg monster manual.

InkyCat: Well, someone made that. Natural ratkings, even in SoulDive, are a mess. After all, the way they naturally form is basically in a nest so messy, they get stuck together and their tails literally heal into one another. To get a perfect five rats, evenly spaced? That's someone's mad science experiment.

May/Hem: Then I'm glad we got out of there quickly. I want out of this mess, not to be drawn in.

JustSamuel: Besides, they can't exactly pay us enough to make it worth our time. I doubt that village even had a single ap lying around. I doubt they had a single person capable of making one.

May/Hem: Don't mention making ap

JuneSupport: You aren't being forced to do it.

May/Hem: But there isn't anything else to do and we have all those gold pieces from the Guild! It would be inefficient not to work on them!

JuneSupport: It's on you whether you do or not. Not like air attuned pieces are more valuable than the other basic elements. If you could attune them to Chaos? That would be one thing. There isn't a specific price for such things, but if you did anything besides try to use them as coins, then they're worth a good bit.

JustSamuel: Though Chaos ap are worth that much because it is hard. Order ap is much easier because coinage represents a system and so jives with the concept. Not that they aren't worth more. Order ap is still more valuable than the four basic elements. Just not to the degree that Chaos is.

No2Ways: You mean the various attunements are worth different amounts? Then why do stores just take whatever I throw at them? I'm not getting change or anything.

May/Hem: They're just coins. Sort of like how there are pennies which are worth more than a penny because at the time, they used more copper to make them. A store isn't going to check the date on every penny they get and then look online for their market value. They'll just take the penny as a penny.

Zap2to2Zap: Wait, that's a thing? Aren't pennies just copper?

May/Hem: Nah man, they haven't been for a long while. Copper has worth.

Zap2to2Zap: I've got a bunch of pennies in a jar. I wonder if I could make some dosh?

JustSamuel: Unlikely. Ap is easier to get a proper value for because they're worth more in general. You'd have to find a very special kind of person to actually take the pennies.

Zap2to2Zap: But they're worth more?

JustSamuel: Yes, specific ones are. But most people aren't going to want to bother checking through your bag of pennies to make sure they're all of the right age. Just because their material value is technically more, doesn't mean you'll be able to sell them for that.

Zap2to2Zap: Well that's boring!

JustSamuel: You want to sort through tons of pennies just to get an extra cent if they're old enough? Better to just use them as pennies. The material price difference is more a problem for the government since they're the ones paying for the materials. Which, you know, is why they changed the materials used in the first place.

May/Hem: Then there's the gold pieces in SoulDive. Fun to see gold being cheap metal.

WizardsName: I wouldn't say gold is cheap? Rather, all base metals are cheap compared to metals with Mana in them. Base gold still has value compared to the other base metals. In fact, I would compare it to modern times where we finally have a use for metal and so its value isn't entirely “pretty metal” centric.

May/Hem: What use do they have for gold?

WizardsName: Similar purpose, though the low end instead of high. Gold works decently to transfer energy, Mana in this case. Though the biggest benefit is that it is Mana neutral. Fire Mana transfers through base gold just as easily as water Mana. In fact, you can run one and then the other at the same efficiency and speed. Well, as long as you're careful to empty the golf of the previous Mana.

May/Hem: So if someone set up a generic ritual circle, they'd use gold? At least, for the generic stuff?

WizardsName: Eh, it would be better to just have a blank stone slab to chalk your ritual into. Though I guess a gold circle wouldn't be out of place? Mostly because you could choose not to use it as an element of your ritual.

InkyCat: I've seen a ritual circle that had a few things already done. Though it wasn't with gold.

WizardsName: Which means it isn't a generic ritual circle. That circle was likely for a specific family of rituals. So like, a space meant for necromancy rituals could have a few of the common markings tiled with bone or some other appropriately macabre material.

InkyCat: How'd you know it was a necromancer's ritual thing?

WizardsName: I didn't.

Sheepfolk and Cowboys Preface

Blame The Alpha Testers - Chapter 2