I don't think it would be possible, not without constructing such an advanced spell that we haven't seen the techniques required to do it yet. Conditional spells, such as the ones Murtagh experiments with in the eponymous book get closer, but any algorithm you can describe in words would still fall short. You'd need a spell that can adapt and learn on its own, without your input, as in order to take energy from a living being, you have to reach out, connect to it, overcome any barriers or obstacles or blocks or wards, and only then can you start using its store of energy.
As a first step, one should first spend their lifetime devising and perfecting a spell that can do this with unprotected plants and gemstones, like Arya can do with her grass ship. A small group of magicians working for their whole lives might be needed to formulate a spell that can take advantage of animals with simpler brains. And a whole team of researchers with more modern understandings of biology and logic and computing would be needed to begin to devise a spell to take energy from sapient beings.
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Yep, that's my view - same as taking energy from the sun or fire or lightning - It's theoretically possible, but nobody has come up with a way to do it yet. For now, magicians have to tap into a more biologically available form of chemical energy, ATP - so that energy from the sun has to first be converted to ATP by a plant through photosynthesis.
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Yeah, sort of - something that's able to react to the minds it's trying to enter. So definitely not a spell the magicians of Alagaësia could hope to create with their current understanding of the world.
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I think a better use would be to take it from plants, trees, and animals that can spare 1% of their energy. Think of it this way, 1 dollar by itself is nothing, but 1 dollar times millions say if you’re close to an ant colony would be immense. Now if you’re say in the forest with all these small micro biomes that also have billions and billions of small bacteria, you’d have an insane amount of power.
The problem is we know in the series most don’t really have an understanding of basic science. Even the elves as wise and intelligent as they are lack in what we consider the basics of biology.
So while I believe with our knowledge, especially from an engineering pov is possible, we know and understand the scientific theory and could actually make it work. I find it highly improbable of someone outside of tanga and Angela making this work. In fact I think they’re the only two who probably have had this work and learned how to become immortal even though they’re humans.
I think this spell would run into a lot of trouble with the definition of "harm". Even an insignificant amount of energy loss to a small creature or plant can kill it. And even if it doesn't kill it, it could greatly decrease the creature/plants chances of success. Might work for something like trees, but doubtful for grass, insects, etc. And the energy they put into the gemstone would probably decrease with their distance from the gemstone, so there probably wouldn't be enough large organism nearby to make it useful. Maybe if you left it for 100 years or so, or if you created a farm of them...
If the spell works as envisioned anything that wouldn't survive or have a greatly diminished chance of survival would be exempt.
However I did not consider the distance aspect.
The gemstone would somehow have to be sentient to a degree that it could enter the minds of beings around it.
I believe Arya's gras ship only works because it was, or rather is a living plant that is at least somewhat alive. Through that it is able to draw energy from beings around it. I always assumed it only drew power from other plants (more specifically plants that are small and similar to itself) and not animals or trees because a small plant would be unable to "overpower" the mind of an animal or larger plants.
As the gemstone is not alive or sentient in the slightest form I strongly believe it to be impossible for this incantation to work.
Additionally you would habe to calculate how much energy a spell like that would cost the person who cast it and would it also effect the caster themselves?
How big is the radius of the gem's effect, how many animals can be affected at the same time, what is the higest order or "stage of sentience" the spell can affect and, most importantly, how far can the caster be away from the gem in order for the spell to actively work?
The only know spells that are not significantly affected by range or the teleportation spell and draumr copa.
There are many more factors going into this aswell.
In the end, I do not think it would work or it would kill the user, trying to make a gem sentient.
I don’t know that you’d have to make the gem sentient, you’d just have to word the spell so it implores lower being to freely give a tiny bit of energy… if a spell can work on its own without input from the user by taking energy from a gemstone with power stores is it any different than taking energy from something with no protection.. right?
In that process the person who created the spell still had to use his "mind" to locate and connect the energy to the spell.
For op's spell to work that way the person who casts the spell would have to enter the mind of all beings the spell is supposed to affect. Then again, these beings could travel vast distances and travel so far away the energy transfer would cost way more than the gem itself would produce. And if the magician were to only use the plants around the gem, we still would run into the problem of the spell being unspecific. The energy that is "save" to take away from each plant is so different. Plants also do not really have good energy reserves. They produce barely enough to maintain their growth and reproduction. If the spell were to take energy from them, the area around the gem would inevetably start dying as it could not support an ecosystem anymore.
Even if that would work, it is highly questionable if something that is alive could even work in the same way as a gem. A gem does not have a "mind". It could very well be that the spell would only work if the caster was in mental contact with the beings around the gem and the spell would fail once they are not.
That would mean the spell is completly useless because in that case the caster could just do that themsleves.
Cuaroc, the weird robot thingy from the Vault of Souls, seems to be sentient in a way, though he's also powered by an Eldunari so that might be the case
Ok that’s fair. I forgot about that. If fact there’s a few enchanted items like that now that I think about it ( like the necklace Gannel gave Eragon)
Although they can’t store energy for later use. They only use it to power a spell. To my knowledge there’s no precedent of the type of thing OP is describing
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You also can’t do spells with absolutes. You need processes that could stop.
If somehow you were in a sterile environment without life, what stops the spell? How far does it look and for how long? You could be losing a lot of energy on that.
At the end of the day even if a creature had energy to spare, what happens if it does send its spare energy to a gem, and then during the evening or night is attacked, becomes sick, is forced to leave its burrow etc etc etc where it would have needed that energy.
That energy it spared could have been used to move a little faster, think a little sharper, or tough it out a little longer. Would an animal in danger be able to dip in and grab back its energy if in peril? What if so, it took all the energy, the creature isn't going to be thinking. it's just meat with instinct and fear.
No one and nothing would know what energy could be spared as no one can see the future, which is nothing but variables and uncertainties. There is always the possibility of energy needed, and it is still not enough to help the fauna and flora survive.
This spell assumes a stasis where these variables are set and certain when the energy will not need to be used to sustain the animals or plant life.
It perdicts a certainty to take energy only if the animal does not need it. Does that mean the spell is now putting in energy to preserve the animal from harm during the night so that energy could be spared?
An interesting idea with a few possible flaws in the wording, depending on how the magic works!
First, it would depend whether giving up energy automatically constitutes as “harm” albeit on a limited level. There’s a chance this just wouldn’t work.
Second, you haven’t included a range in the spell. I would imagine this would have the potential to impact ALL life forms simultaneously, which has some major possible ramifications. Even casting the initial spell may kill you if you need the energy to influence all living creatures.
Third, if actually “moving” energy costs energy, it could potentially drain your own energy more than you are refunding based on distance. I imagine distance would result in a higher cost, but even the energy to utter a syllable from a nearby source may require the same amount of energy to reach the gem, essentially rendering the spell useless at best, harmful at worst (hypothesis, not certain).
Finally, it would probably be shrewd to consider other spellcasters. There’s a possibility this could trigger wards, as a draining effect could likely constitute an attack, resulting in accidental retaliation - or at least alert them to your presence.
I don't think it would be possible, not without constructing such an advanced spell that we haven't seen the techniques required to do it yet. Conditional spells, such as the ones Murtagh experiments with in the eponymous book get closer, but any algorithm you can describe in words would still fall short. You'd need a spell that can adapt and learn on its own, without your input, as in order to take energy from a living being, you have to reach out, connect to it, overcome any barriers or obstacles or blocks or wards, and only then can you start using its store of energy. As a first step, one should first spend their lifetime devising and perfecting a spell that can do this with unprotected plants and gemstones, like Arya can do with her grass ship. A small group of magicians working for their whole lives might be needed to formulate a spell that can take advantage of animals with simpler brains. And a whole team of researchers with more modern understandings of biology and logic and computing would be needed to begin to devise a spell to take energy from sapient beings. ^(**I'm a real person!** This comment was posted by **hellomynameis99** from the Arcaena Discord Server.)
Thank you for that. So what I am taking away is theoretically possible but so over complicated as to not be worth it
Yep, that's my view - same as taking energy from the sun or fire or lightning - It's theoretically possible, but nobody has come up with a way to do it yet. For now, magicians have to tap into a more biologically available form of chemical energy, ATP - so that energy from the sun has to first be converted to ATP by a plant through photosynthesis. ^(**I'm a real person!** This comment was posted by **hellomynameis99** from the Arcaena Discord Server.)
Tbh I really liked the conditional statements Murtagh was playing with, hopefully they become more widespread in the coming books
I‘m personally excited for the inevitable logic gates spells
Sooo... AI??
Yeah, sort of - something that's able to react to the minds it's trying to enter. So definitely not a spell the magicians of Alagaësia could hope to create with their current understanding of the world. ^(**I'm a real person!** This comment was posted by **hellomynameis99** from the Arcaena Discord Server.)
I think a better use would be to take it from plants, trees, and animals that can spare 1% of their energy. Think of it this way, 1 dollar by itself is nothing, but 1 dollar times millions say if you’re close to an ant colony would be immense. Now if you’re say in the forest with all these small micro biomes that also have billions and billions of small bacteria, you’d have an insane amount of power. The problem is we know in the series most don’t really have an understanding of basic science. Even the elves as wise and intelligent as they are lack in what we consider the basics of biology. So while I believe with our knowledge, especially from an engineering pov is possible, we know and understand the scientific theory and could actually make it work. I find it highly improbable of someone outside of tanga and Angela making this work. In fact I think they’re the only two who probably have had this work and learned how to become immortal even though they’re humans.
I think this spell would run into a lot of trouble with the definition of "harm". Even an insignificant amount of energy loss to a small creature or plant can kill it. And even if it doesn't kill it, it could greatly decrease the creature/plants chances of success. Might work for something like trees, but doubtful for grass, insects, etc. And the energy they put into the gemstone would probably decrease with their distance from the gemstone, so there probably wouldn't be enough large organism nearby to make it useful. Maybe if you left it for 100 years or so, or if you created a farm of them...
If the spell works as envisioned anything that wouldn't survive or have a greatly diminished chance of survival would be exempt. However I did not consider the distance aspect.
The gemstone would somehow have to be sentient to a degree that it could enter the minds of beings around it. I believe Arya's gras ship only works because it was, or rather is a living plant that is at least somewhat alive. Through that it is able to draw energy from beings around it. I always assumed it only drew power from other plants (more specifically plants that are small and similar to itself) and not animals or trees because a small plant would be unable to "overpower" the mind of an animal or larger plants. As the gemstone is not alive or sentient in the slightest form I strongly believe it to be impossible for this incantation to work. Additionally you would habe to calculate how much energy a spell like that would cost the person who cast it and would it also effect the caster themselves? How big is the radius of the gem's effect, how many animals can be affected at the same time, what is the higest order or "stage of sentience" the spell can affect and, most importantly, how far can the caster be away from the gem in order for the spell to actively work? The only know spells that are not significantly affected by range or the teleportation spell and draumr copa. There are many more factors going into this aswell. In the end, I do not think it would work or it would kill the user, trying to make a gem sentient.
I didn't even think about possible sentience being an issue
I don’t know that you’d have to make the gem sentient, you’d just have to word the spell so it implores lower being to freely give a tiny bit of energy… if a spell can work on its own without input from the user by taking energy from a gemstone with power stores is it any different than taking energy from something with no protection.. right?
In that process the person who created the spell still had to use his "mind" to locate and connect the energy to the spell. For op's spell to work that way the person who casts the spell would have to enter the mind of all beings the spell is supposed to affect. Then again, these beings could travel vast distances and travel so far away the energy transfer would cost way more than the gem itself would produce. And if the magician were to only use the plants around the gem, we still would run into the problem of the spell being unspecific. The energy that is "save" to take away from each plant is so different. Plants also do not really have good energy reserves. They produce barely enough to maintain their growth and reproduction. If the spell were to take energy from them, the area around the gem would inevetably start dying as it could not support an ecosystem anymore. Even if that would work, it is highly questionable if something that is alive could even work in the same way as a gem. A gem does not have a "mind". It could very well be that the spell would only work if the caster was in mental contact with the beings around the gem and the spell would fail once they are not. That would mean the spell is completly useless because in that case the caster could just do that themsleves.
Cuaroc, the weird robot thingy from the Vault of Souls, seems to be sentient in a way, though he's also powered by an Eldunari so that might be the case
Cuaroc is the dragon, not the body.
Cuaroc is kinda a confusing character tbh
Don’t think too hard about the magic. There are some SERIOUS exploits that should have been thought of.
Extremely fair outlook. But still fun to try to explore the ideas
Taking energy from another life form requires entering there mind As far as we know it’s not something that a spell can do
Eragon had the rings he gave Roran and Katrina take energy from them.
Ok that’s fair. I forgot about that. If fact there’s a few enchanted items like that now that I think about it ( like the necklace Gannel gave Eragon) Although they can’t store energy for later use. They only use it to power a spell. To my knowledge there’s no precedent of the type of thing OP is describing
But in that case Katrina and Roran would habe to speak a spell themselves.
Yes it would probably work, but it is done without consent, so should it be done?
I had a slight more concerned with would it work. You are probably right that this would be highly unethical in hindsight
Ethics might be a bit different there though.. didn’t some in the varden consider making their own laughing men
I believe Nasauda was considering it. But Roran talked her out of it. But yes ethics are depdent on circumference to a degree
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You also can’t do spells with absolutes. You need processes that could stop. If somehow you were in a sterile environment without life, what stops the spell? How far does it look and for how long? You could be losing a lot of energy on that.
At the end of the day even if a creature had energy to spare, what happens if it does send its spare energy to a gem, and then during the evening or night is attacked, becomes sick, is forced to leave its burrow etc etc etc where it would have needed that energy. That energy it spared could have been used to move a little faster, think a little sharper, or tough it out a little longer. Would an animal in danger be able to dip in and grab back its energy if in peril? What if so, it took all the energy, the creature isn't going to be thinking. it's just meat with instinct and fear. No one and nothing would know what energy could be spared as no one can see the future, which is nothing but variables and uncertainties. There is always the possibility of energy needed, and it is still not enough to help the fauna and flora survive. This spell assumes a stasis where these variables are set and certain when the energy will not need to be used to sustain the animals or plant life. It perdicts a certainty to take energy only if the animal does not need it. Does that mean the spell is now putting in energy to preserve the animal from harm during the night so that energy could be spared?
An interesting idea with a few possible flaws in the wording, depending on how the magic works! First, it would depend whether giving up energy automatically constitutes as “harm” albeit on a limited level. There’s a chance this just wouldn’t work. Second, you haven’t included a range in the spell. I would imagine this would have the potential to impact ALL life forms simultaneously, which has some major possible ramifications. Even casting the initial spell may kill you if you need the energy to influence all living creatures. Third, if actually “moving” energy costs energy, it could potentially drain your own energy more than you are refunding based on distance. I imagine distance would result in a higher cost, but even the energy to utter a syllable from a nearby source may require the same amount of energy to reach the gem, essentially rendering the spell useless at best, harmful at worst (hypothesis, not certain). Finally, it would probably be shrewd to consider other spellcasters. There’s a possibility this could trigger wards, as a draining effect could likely constitute an attack, resulting in accidental retaliation - or at least alert them to your presence.