Run: General Competence

How to speed-run understanding Samsara, one heading at a time.

Starting Line

This document outlines a course titled the ‘General Competence Run’. Its sole purpose is to convey enough of the hard foundational mechanics of Samsara to - if not drive home understanding - then at least enable the suspension of disbelief when encountering the application of those mechanics later on. The end goal, ultimately, is maximal understanding in as little time as possible, allowing one to come to grips with the canon despite its herculean size.

Broken down heading by heading across nearly ten documents, this is about as good an intro into Project Samsara as can be concocted by human hands. You’ll know fairly quickly if you’re interested in the work or not. I encourage an openness of mind and an audaciousness of spirit.

This run is approximately 44k words long, including the writ of this document that isn’t Project Samsara material, and excluding the linked documents in Lap #8.

Good luck. Onwards and starwards.

Lap #1: Dancirah’s Dawn

Preliminary attention-grabbing writ to allow for swiftly judging one’s interest in continuing. The pivotal document here is more narrative than mechanical, and as such can be read almost like a short story or a recounting of events.

ABOUT_SAMSARA Highly recommended reading that allows for an immediate feel of the surface-level motifs and ‘vibes’ of the universe. Ideal for ascertaining true levels of interest in the project.

The Switchboard Non-essential reading that is mainly here for me. It can be read to gain a glimpse of the first vision that drove the creation of Project Samsara, but can be safely skipped.

The Dawn of the Dancirah - Critical The history of the Switchboard, from inception to the modern era. Critical reading.

Lap #2: Chalk, Elementary Mechanics

The Switchboard’s core mechanic is a physical manifestation of information as matter known as chalk. The permutations of this matter is what gives rise to all that exists in the Switchboard, and interaction with matter is what gives rise to all that happens in the Switchboard; the twin domains of ontology and phenomenology.

Information

At the foundation of the Switchboard’s mechanics is information in tangible form. This takes the shape of chalk, resembling chalk as we understand it, taking powder/dust, crystalline - and, newly, ribbon, forms. All things in the Switchboard are chalk. It replaces atoms at the fundamental level, as the building blocks of all that exists. A consequence of this is how any one thing in Switchboard interacts with anything and everything else - through bridges between chalk and chalk that exists due to pattern. Chalk interactions happen at the ribbon level, where chalk takes the form of ribbon, which when folded according to rules, can form anything in the Switchboard. These truths all fall under a principle known as information tangibility, which refers to the interactions of information and chalk in the Switchboard.

These mechanics, especially the tactile manipulation of chalk, are elaborated upon in The Hands as Chalk. One of the many summaries that can be taken from that document is that chalk, in addition to being the building blocks of the Switchboard’s entirety, is also it’s power system. Possessing chalk - possessing information - is strength in the Switchboard. The mechanics of this are further explained below.

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The Fundamentals

• All things in the Switchboard are made of chalk.
• All things exist in a pattern-ribbon duality, in which equations can be used to weave ribbon into pattern, and to unweave pattern back into ribbon form.
• Interactions between things in the Switchboard happen at the ribbon level, and so, pattern must partially or fully unravel back into ribbon form for it to interact with other ribbon.

In addition to these rules is a final one;

• The properties of all things (patterns) in the Switchboard are a result of their weave, and ‘properties’ themselves are weave.

From these do we get the beginnings of the Switchboard’s chemistry, the Calcic Chemistry, as it were.

As a note, it must be mentioned that the result of all things being made of weave, the Switchboard bears a marked difference from ours by virtue of the absence of the atom. In the Switchboard, the atom does not exist. There is only chalk.

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Tangible Information - Chalk

As described under Information Tangibility, information constitutes a tangible component of all things in the Switchboard. All things in the Switchboard are information; they and their properties are information as well. As such, all things in the Switchboard exist as configurations - patterns - of unordered information. We call this ‘Chalk’.

Chalk is information in physical form, taking on the appearance of jagged, translucent yet mildly cloudy crystals, diffracting pure light into rainbow spectra when passing through it. Reduced to powdered form, it appears similar to cloudy, powdered glass. When in use, Chalk typically takes the form of ‘ribbons’; gossamer streaks of chalk, moving seemingly weightlessly, suspended by invisible strings. Chalk also comes in ‘ray’ or ‘radiance’ form, emitted by armillary stars, in the Switchboard Sky. When these rays are slowed or strike an obstacle, they deposit as chalk in dust/powder form.

Chalk as it exists normally is random information. When arranged or ‘patterned’, it takes the shape of more conventional objects, such as things as people, as well as properties such as color, taste, etc. From the infinite randomness, all things can be sequenced and created, the mechanics of doing so described further on.

Pattern and ‘Ribbon’ Duality

Because all things in the Switchboard are made of patterned chalk, it helps to view objects (such as a piece of fruit) as an origami of chalk ‘paper’. When folded, it takes the form the name compels us to reasonably expect. However, when unfolded, a formerly three-dimensional object now becomes flat - chalk ribbons. These chalk ribbons still contain the information of the former three-dimensional object, needing only instructions on ‘folding’ to be supplied to restore them to their original form. This is the Pattern-Ribbon Duality.

A shirt can be reduced to a chalk ribbon containing all the information of that shirt. Same thing for a house plant, or a slice of bread, or a jet engine or skyscraper. Simple things like a pencil, complex constructs such as a silicon board - all can be reduced to their ribbon form, and interacted with in their ribbon form, which is the state at which most chalk interactions take place - down at the ribbon level. This allows us to neatly move into how chalk is interacted with.

Equations

Before that however, it is necessary to discuss what it is that ‘decides’ the manner in which chalk folds.

Everything in the Switchboard is indeed made of chalk ribbon, but what transits chalk ribbon to folded pattern are equations. These equations are calcic phenomena themselves that fold chalk ribbon into given shapes, and the fact that the calcic material that goes in is equivalent to the folded pattern that comes out is why they bear this name.

Equations have a robust presence in the Switchboard’s canon, appearing just about everywhere chalk does. Keeping in mind that equations are simply a ‘something’ that folds chalk will greatly aid in navigating the mechanics and world of the Switchboard.

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Foreword: The Relationship Between Equations & Rituals

Throughout the Samsara planning canon, the words ‘equation’ and ‘ritual’ have been used in various contexts and to mean various things. It is expected, then, that some confusion would arise as to what they actually are and how they relate to each other. Below, I will address that.

Firstly, equations and rituals both do the same thing - fold chalk. The differences in how they do so is where the major difference arises. Equations fold chalk at the ribbon level, and they too exist at the ribbon level. Switchboard equations are much like phenomena; things are subjected to them and change occurs. To use an analogy, they can be viewed as a machine that takes in flat sheets of paper and outputs paper cranes. The Switchboard runs on equations that exist somewhat amorphously throughout it, responsible for the endless computations performed to produce the nature of the Switchboard as we know it.

Rituals are performed by denizens of the Switchboard to fold chalk. As opposed to putting paper in a machine to produce a folded paper crane, a ritual works more like folding it with your own hands, or through some indirect means such as pulling on corners of it using strings. Another important point is that Striders cannot create Equations; they arise naturally through the mechanics outlined under Spontaneous Equations. Rituals can be made by Striders, performed, modified and countered by them, and often rituals are used to and are usually the only way to mitigate, alter or destroy an equation that exists in the Switchboard.

In a sense, an equation is a hyper-compressed ritual. Where an equation simply needs to be fed ribbon chalk and it’s arcane internal engines will do the rest, a ritual seeks to replicate that internal enginery, and doing so is what produces the complexity of the craft outlined below.

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The Weave Protocol

Chalk achieves a state of ‘stability’ in crystalline form, dense amounts of it forming deposits in the Wellsprings. In dust form, chalk traverses the great Sky of the Switchboard, moving between armillary stars and Wellsprings, planets, vaults, and regions of curvature and low depth, falling into the Void. Most meaningful interaction between chalk, however, happens in ribbon form, and interaction with ribbon chalk by beings in the Switchboard is made possible through the Weave Protocol, a hereditary, innate modification to the Five Straits.

The Five Straits

The Five Straits

Thinking weave in the Switchboard is defined by possessing the Five Straits; complex chalkweave that all serve a litany of functions and from these functions do the qualities of life and cognition emerge. By working together, they grant elementary weave the power to interact with the Switchboard in much the same way us as human beings interact with our universe; skewing the relationship between cause and effect with the salting of our own cognition and the resultant from it.

The Five Straits are namely;

• The intake or interface strait.
• The potential strait.
• The interpreter strait.
• The memory strait.
• The computational strait.

Functions

The functions of the straits are namely;

• The intake or interface strait serve as a means for the weave to take in chalk from the environment - and in some cases, put chalk back out. Functioning much like the semi-permeable membrane of a cell, the sensors on a machine or robot, or the input and output devices on a computer, this strait serves the purpose of perception of the environment as well as imparting change upon it. Additionally, the interface strait within the lattice crosses all other straits, and allows them to communicate with each other.

• The potential strait is a strait that serves as a reservoir for pure chalk. Unharnessed and unfolded into any pattern, this basin of chalk is a vortex of pure potential, and all the chalk needed by a living, thinking lattice for simple and complex functions is stored here.

• The interpreter strait is linked directly to the intake/interface strait and the potential strait, and bridges them. As chalk comes in through the interface strait, the interpreter checks it for what it is, seeing if it contains patterns, whether it needs to be sent to the memory strait for storage or the computational for further computation. This strait serves to detect all manners of incoming weave that would’ve otherwise been treated like ordinary unwoven chalk - such as Teks, ritual schema and more - which would’ve been unideal for the rest of the lattice.

• The memory strait serves the purpose of storing information. Their being beings of pure chalk means they lack a centralized memory organ such as a brain. This is elaborated upon more fully in The Blank-Slate Mind. Summarized, memory in a lattice is the memory strait, an immensely dense ribbon of chalk that contains everything a subject knows. Everything. Useful information acquired from the interpreter line comes here to be stored, as well as information created and used in the next line, and acquired from the line after that. This is also where known Equations are stored, a particularly relevant fact to the final purpose of the Five Strait system.

• The computational strait is the seat of thinking, and what truly sets apart living, thinking chalk from other ‘dead’ weave in the Switchboard. By the use of fold patterns and calcic equations, chalk passed to the computational line is folded from ribbon to pattern and weave. Sub-straits of the computational line handle a litany of other functions, ranging from passive bodily ones to indexing the memory strait and more. By all metrics, it is perhaps the most important of the straits.

Elementary Strait Mechanics

As the straits function physiologically, information chalk is pulled from the environment via the interface strait, where it is passed to the interpreter to check if the acquired chalk is ordered/folded or not. Folded chalk is sent to the memory or compute straits as needed, while raw chalk is sent to the potential strait to be stored to fuel the lattice’s processes.

This is described rather succinctly with a graphic.

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The modification made by the Weave Protocol is to the interface strait; while those without the Weave Protocol possess only external intake straits and internal interface straits that facilitate communication with the lattice between the straits, those with the Weave Protocol - or Weavers - posses interface straits externally as well. This allows for outputting folded chalk created by the computational strait, turning a formerly one-way street into a two-way one. It is this singular modification that facilitates all of chalkweaving.

Information Affinity

Thinking weave in the Switchboard are possessed of an affinity for information, by virtue of possessing the potential strait. As thinking weave lives and dwells in the Switchboard, it takes in chalk, consuming it for its functions creating a calcic vacuum that must be replenished by taking in more chalk from the outside environment, this being latent chalk. Beyond elementary functions for simply living, taking in chalk is necessary to provide the fuel for various acts of chalkweaving, particularly with regards to techniques and abilities.

Like taking in air to the lungs via breathing, denizens of the Switchboard bearing the Weave Protocol passively take in chalk and store it in the potential strait, where it awaits harnessing by the other straits for various functions. As calcic abilities are used, or under other circumstances, chalk is depleted from the potential strait, and must be replenished.

The rate by which chalk is thus accumulated varies based on a number of factors;

• The ‘efficiency’ of the interface and interpreter straits (also elaborated upon later). Chalk enters the lattice through the interface strait, and thus is subject to the throughput allowed by it. Additionally, chalk taken in must be analyzed by the interpreter strait to separate pattern and weave from plain chalk, a task that also takes time. The product of both of these is a subject’s chalk throughput, and they are in turn subject to the subject’s general, overall calcic proficiency, a product of the logic surrounding their doctrines coupled with a litany of hereditary factors.

• The availability of latent chalk in the vicinity. When more chalk is present, passive accumulation is performed more quickly. In locales like wellsprings and certain biomes on planets, chalk is plentiful and allows for bountiful passive accumulation. In other environments like the inside of vaults or the Challenger Dark, the available chalk is severely reduced, the rate of accumulation responding similarly.

• Whether active draw is being employed. Those with the Weave Protocol have the ability to actively pull chalk from the environment - much like taking a deep breath - vastly increasing the rate of chalk pulled into the potential straits. When preparing to use a calcic ability, one may choose to suffuse themselves with chalk to balance out the chalk expended when the ability is used, or they may uptake chalk after using a power to rapidly replenish their reserves. This is used usually when perform various calcic actions in quick succession, such as in combat.

• The presence of interferences, which are factors that can either hamper or catalyze chalk uptake. An active ritual, a held Tek or relic, someone else’s Tek or relic, and environmental effect, natural or artificial, may alter the rate of uptake of chalk.

Accumulating chalk can, however, saturate the lattice beyond its ability to store. This is dangerous, as unharnessed chalk is functionally random information, and this random information can ‘spill over’ into other straits - particularly the memory strait - and overwrite the useful information there with noise, an occurrence conveniently called overwrite.

Dealing with an abundance of chalk is often done by ‘flaring’, though it is noteworthy that those with the Strider Protocol are far more capable of flaring than those who can solely weave. Flaring is converting excess chalk to something easily dissipated, such as heat, by subjecting it to highly-efficient equations in the computational strait. Weavers who want to get rid of excess chalk usually expend it by weaving something of high calcic density but considerable instability, allowing it to resolve by collapsing and dissipating chalk into the environment. More skilled Weavers can cause calcic crystal to form in their immediate vicinity, trapping the chalk in physical form.

Weave Mechanics

Interacting with chalk occasionally demands Weavers to utilize the power to Weave in more intricate ways. These are the ‘Weave Mechanics’.

This is of particular interest to Ritualists, who necessarily must interact with chalk at the macroscopic level to cast rituals.

The most common Weave Mechanic learned by Weavers is Point Propagation. Typically, chalk straits are drawn by physical movement of fingers or a hand across a surface, which necessarily requires that the spaces being interacted with are reachable by hands. With Point Propagation, A Weaver can place a finger, multiple fingers or a full hand on a surface, and send out streams of chalk in any direction they choose, allowing reaching locations hands cannot; inside minuscule environments such as machine circuitry, at immense heights, or in conceptual spaces such as minds.

Ritual Geometry is a concept that dictates the way certain equations require a subject of that equation to be ‘bound’ in chalk straits for that equation to function. For example, to start a fire using the Five Straits, you may have to draw a singular, two dimensional circle around the source of fuel. To lockpick a safe using chalk, however, you may have to draw lines all over the the safe that intersect, ‘wrapping’ it. The Ritual Geometry used is reliant on the parameters of the equation. Encasements of chalk lines are called ‘Chalk Boundaries’

Necessarily, some equations may mandate chalk wrapping around the subject, but also that those lines dynamically shift as the equation works upon the subject. In the case of the safe for example, the lines may need to shift into new configurations as the dial is turned one way or the other. Propagating new lines and withdrawing old ones may not allow the equation to work as intended.

The solution to this is Chalk Within Chalk. When Five-Strait chalk lines are propagated parallel to each other, additional chalk lines are deployed, perpendicular to the initial. It helps to imagine it as scale of sheet music. These perpendicular ‘brace’ chalk lines ‘hold’ the parallel Five-Strait lines, and interface with the Computational Lines. When necessary, the ‘brace’ lines receive instruction from the Computational Line to move the entire construct of chalk straits, done as the equation demands.

Control of the CWC brace lines is Linear Dynamism, the action of feeding the CWC brace lines with instructions on when a Weaver needs the strait lines to assemble, disassemble and reassemble in intricate shapes, move in certain paths and patterns, all to facilitate fulfillment of the equations being used, or the will of the Weaver. This is particularly relevant when we get to actual Rituals used by Weavers. Linear Dynamism also allows CWC lines to detach the straits from surfaces themselves, granting the Weaver the power to draw and form chalk boundaries in air.

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Lap #3: Chalk, Weft Dynamics

Looking at how chalk displays a sort of ‘calcic physics’, this writ tackles mechanics necessary for how chalk is applied later on.

The World Without Atoms

The ramifications of the elimination of the atom from the universe building tool box is such that what resulted from its existence and the rules it both created and was bound by must be replaced. We accomplish this using the chalk weave and the pattern-ribbon duality. Iron, for example, is hard, lustrous when polished, sonorous when struck, melts at a fixed temperature and a list of other qualities. These are all products of - in our world - its atomic makeup. In the Switchboard, iron’s properties are the resultant of the various property weaves within it, the quantity and type of which determine the nature and behavior of all things in the Switchboard.

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Property Weaves

Property weaves are thus the cause of all macroscopic material properties held by things in the Switchboard. Hardness is a weave, and the absence of that weave is the cause of softness. Sonorousness upon physical blows is a weave as well. A weave controls the temperatures at which things melt and vaporize. Elasticity, texture, luster, resistance to corrosion, malleability, solubility, even color - all properties you can imagine are a result of weave baked into the pattern of the thing in question. The ‘amount’ or ‘thickness’ of the weave correlates with a mathematical scaling of the property it controls, in that thicker hardness weave results in harder objects, for example.

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Weave Chemistry

It follows then that the Weave Protocol which allows manipulation of weave and ribbon should then allow for the manipulation of weave in patterns in the Switchboard, and this is correct. The Weave Protocol does indeed allow for modification of weave within pattern, through unravelling pattern back into ribbon through the Five Straits, and altering the ribbon-state pattern as one sees fit. It should even follow that one could ‘build’ things purely from property weave, and this is true too. But Weave Chemistry is governed by a series of rules that add a layer of difficulty and constraint to what can be achieved by the Weave Protocol.

For one, creating property weave from weaving ribbon chalk is prohibitively difficult. Taking hardness weave for example, one could take a scion of hardness weave and replicate the pattern, but doing so is nigh impossible as property weaves as a whole are folded using immensely complex equations to produce exponentially more complex weave, and the equations for folding property weaves are…

…perhaps unknown to all of Strider kind? Closely guarded secrets? Available to be found but hidden in the depths of the most treacherous Vaults or on Striders lost in Isalveh? Plenty of options here. Considering the nuances at play here, they might as well not even exist.

Compounding the problem further, property weave cannot be isolated in pattern form. All attempts to do so result in the realization that it is simply too unstable to exist outside of the bulk of other property weave and the bulk of the weft material that makes up an ‘object’ in the Switchboard. The only means of ‘moving’ or interacting with property weave in any real way is via natural reactions between weft - much like conventional chemical reactions - or via various forms of ritualism. In the between-state of the ritualism, property weaves can be extracted from one thing an immediately woven into something else, never given an opportunity to be wholly isolated, and thus collapse under its own instability.

As such, nearly all property weave that exists must be extracted from things that possess it. Unravelling pattern in the Switchboard with a fair bit of delicacy and precision can yield property weave proportional to the amount present in the pattern; there is more hardness weave to be found in steel than rock, and in rock than wood. Extraction and utilization of property weave is thus done primarily through the chalk ritualism. This is of course subject to a number of factors ranging from how easily an object in the Switchboard can have some property extracted, to the ritualist’s own proficiency in the Weave Protocol and the calcic ritualism.

The creation of property weave, however, is ironically best done through the natural processes that exist in our world. Armillary stars create the Wellsprings, and Wellsprings create the planets, and in the planets are the various patterns from which you would typically extract property weave are formed. The sheer complexity of a planetary equation is among the few things capable of folding the chalk from the Wellsprings linked to it via the seed clause, into the various patterns that become ‘things’ as we understand them, from rocks and trees to ore and metals. From these do Striders obtain property weave through various familiar processes; freezing, burning, crushing, mixing, separating, crystallizing, distilling, what have you. Chalk ritualism - as mentioned above - remain the foremost way to obtain property weave.

When this property weave is extracted, it takes the form of light paper almost, intricately patterned, thicker than normal paper, virtually indestructible in this physical ribbon state, and looking every part as something from a divine beyond. In this state can property weave be stored or used in further rituals by ritualists for a litany of purposes; modifying existing patterns, creating new ones, or casting calcic abilities in combat. Hardness weave, for example, inculcated into a shield weave enhances its defensive capabilities. However, property weave is also an expendable resource, and the usage of weave in this manner resolves it out of existence.

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Calcic Physics

We must define some rules that govern the mechanics of chalk in motion, and other relevant phenomena.

Inductive Weave

There exists a phenomena inherent to some kinds of naturally occurring weave in which the weave is able to move from pattern to pattern by ‘inducing’ itself in a target pattern while expending its ‘presence’ from where it originated from. More simply put, heat and other phenomena in the Switchboard are weave that can spontaneously or otherwise move from pattern A to pattern B, in a manner that the amount of weave present in A reduces, and the amount in B increases. The efficiency with which heat-weave moves between subject patterns, as well as the ability of something that is heated to store that heat, are controlled by property weaves that bear real-world names of thermal conductivity and thermal capacity.

The two primary inductive weaves in the Switchboard are heat and motion. Motion can induce itself into other weave through avenues as simple as touch, translating almost perfectly to the real-world observable phenomena. Heat on the other hand, has a caveat, in that it is - in practice - more so motive weave that disperses its motion into the locality.

Problem: What prompts motive weave to disperse as heat?

The answer to this is - incredibly - nothing. There is no ‘why’.

As the doctor put it;

“I feel the desire for an answer here stems from a misconception. For example, suppose I asked you “What makes things fall down?” and you answered “gravity”. What’s actually happening here? You could say that the word ‘gravity’ is merely a label for a set of phenomena, namely the things-fall-down-set; in which case, if we taboo the word “gravity” and replace it with its meaning, we get ‘things fall down because of the things-fall-down-phenomena’. Similarly, we might notice that “gravity”, as a word, is an empty model. It provides no predictions. It doesn’t tell you how fast things fall down, when they fall and when they don’t, etc. It is not useful. The true answer to “what makes things fall down” is just: they do, and we simply observe that they do. We can describe how they fall down in more detail, specify the conditions, establish patterns of what things fall down when and how fast, but there is no “why”. It simply is.” “Likewise, motion simply does disperse over time into what we perceive physiologically as “heat”. We can specify in more detail under what circumstances motion does this, at what rate the motion degrades, etc. But there is no why.”

Light

For the longest time, the Switchboard had a problem of light - or rather how light in the Switchboard worked. Due to the fact the verse has no atoms, and thus no electromagnetism, it is by extension lacking the various phenomena dependent or defined by the existence and nature of electromagnetism. This is in part why the Switchboard’s internet analogue - the DevitNet both exists and exists the way it does; the Switchboard has no electromagnetic waves and thus no radio and radio communications.

We thus had no way to justify the existence of Light, and the issue sat unresolved for the longest time.

Until;

Light is an inductive weave that transmits color information. It is easily blocked by even thin boundaries, and without quantum mechanics there are no lasers to prevent it from dispersing. Its usage as communication is therefore limited to the scale of, say, binary code transmission via the mirrors and lamps of a lighthouse. Light is produced by specific materials - you can decide which - and obeys the simple laws of geometric optics, which means it allows for things like lenses.

Above is the good doctor’s proposal, and perhaps the most salient proposal on the mechanics of light we have. I cannot think of any conceivable way to expand on the fundamentals, and as such I simply break down these fundamentals and tackle each in how they might be interacted with as mechanics of the verse.

Light is an inductive weave that transmits color information.

This bit is the most immediately satisfying, as it solves the one problem that really mattered to me regarding light; baseline mechanics. With equations being responsible for folding chalk into weave, it is thus incredibly easy to say that the various equations of the Switchboard - especially naturally occurring ones - for reasons, have clauses built into them that light is produced from the process of folding chalk.

Light is produced by specific materials - you can decide which

Other things in the Switchboard, such as materials or minerals that glow, do so by having the emittance of light written into their patterns.

It is easily blocked by even thin boundaries,

Fairly straightforward, though it begs the question of if transparent and translucent objects exist. Since they do, we must ascertain why light behaves differently to a window and a brick wall. My first, immediate answer is to refer back to Calcic Chemistry and propose the idea of ‘opacity property weave’, and that patterns with greater and lesser opacity are thus more or less resistant to the surface-level alterations or inductions caused by light. Low opacity patterns allow light to pass through, rather than induce its effects on the first struck surface. High opacity objects obstruct light, catching much of its inductive effects on their immediate surface, and producing shadow behind them.

A thought that strikes me though, is that with light transmitting color information, does this mean that patterns in the Switchboard have no color until they are lit? I assert no, and instead, objects in the Switchboard have color by virtue of property weave, and in fact, the calcic Weavesight would let you determine the color of an object in a dark room - with enough Weavesight proficiency - by simply studying the pattern. Regular sight however, requires light to - say - ‘activate’ the color-weave on the surface of a pattern before it can be viewed. Armillary star light is pure white, and thus only induces brightness of existing colors in an object’s property-weave. Colored light, created by equations, interacts somewhat differently, the induced color being folded in with the existing color and causing chromatic changes as we expect and observe from light normally.

and without quantum mechanics there are no lasers to prevent it from dispersing.

This is a statement, but also;

and obeys the simple laws of geometric optics, which means it allows for things like lenses.

I think we can’t really have lasers as we understand them, but I do think it’s possible to maybe, ‘pipe’ light down a tube using the mechanics of total internal reflection, considering light-weave still follows the laws of optics. It did then make me wonder how mirrors would work in the Switchboard, and whether there would be some means of manipulating opacity property-weave to make that possible. I pondered the idea of opacity being expressible as a numerical value capped at 100% and tending to zero, and then going beyond zero ‘wrapped around’ the mechanics of opacity to give you reflectivity, but after thinking about it further, I felt it would be simpler to have opacity and reflectivity be distinct property weaves.

This does mean we need to discuss the various combinations of opacity and reflectivity and how objects with mixes of both behave when light-weave strikes them. Consider the table below;

	Low Opacity	High Opacity
Low Reflectivity	Light passes through strongly	Light is reflected weakly
High Reflectivity	Light passes through and is reflected weakly	Light is reflected strongly

Regarding how light functions with lenses; it simply does. That much is settled.

Its usage as communication is therefore limited to the scale of, say, binary code transmission via the mirrors and lamps of a lighthouse.

Regarding dispersal, light in weave form remains similar to conventional light in how it disperses, however weave light’s own minor instability means that after dispersing far enough, it eventually resolves into chalk dust and saturates the environment, raising the overall level of latent chalk. More powerful light sources create weave less susceptible to dispersion, allowing it to spread and illuminate longer distances and larger areas.

One of the major concerns of mine during the work on realizing light in the Switchboard was that there would be no means to do so without integrating quantum mechanics. I did not like this, as I considered it an inelegant solution to have developed thus far a relatively functional world using novel mechanics - only to balk at the finish line and throw in the towel. I was simply opposed to having these dual fundamental systems that didn’t play very nice with each other.

More practically however, I was averse to integrating quantum mechanics to explain light as it thus asserted the existence of electromagnetism, and by extension other electromagnetic phenomena, such as radio waves. The existence of radio waves in particular prompted the question of “Why do people not use Wi-Fi in the Switchboard?” Radio waves would invalidate the need and thus existence of the DevitNet.

The doctor’s suggestion was workable, but inelegant; they - the denizens of the verse - simply didn’t know anything other than light existed. They just didn’t look in the right places, or have any cause to look for anything in the first place. In truth, this works; the existence of the DevitNet would solidly dissuade most endeavors to find an alternative, and even if it - radio waves - were to be discovered, it would still be lacking compared to the DevitNet in various spheres, such as the inability to use it for Kache-Krashing operations.

The worldbuilder within me set about seeing how this could narratively be harnessed, such as having radio wave installations serve as a low-throughput, high-importance communications line for emergencies and high-priority or confidential transmissions like downed ships, Spyndl communications, the like (something that the microlNet would come to serve as, expanded upon under Communications and Compute). I played around with it even being a plot point that some antagonist faction was using radio waves - which they discovered and deliberately kept secret - to communicate and organize in a manner that the protagonists always seemed to be a few steps behind of.

Fortunately - depending on how you view these things - it didn’t come down to that.

pNarrat: Bright Weaving

A litany of things produce light in the Switchboard. Among the most notable are many instances of chalkweaving; more elementary acts of chalkweaving, usage of complex chalk ritualism, and particularly when using various calcic-based techniques. But why is this so?

Initially, my justification was this;

It could even be said that in instances of chalkweaving, producing light-weave is a very easy way to ‘burn off’ excess chalk that would be too much of a hassle to re-assimilate and/or utilize in other means. Even skilled Chalkweavers have tiny bits of waste chalk they can’t harness or simply is too minute to expend effort worth harvesting, and so in the clauses of the operation of their computational strait, excess chalk is woven into light of established hue and intensity, and this light - being inductive weave - induces itself on the patterns surrounding the light’s origin.

Things that glow in the Switchboard, or at least varying collections of things, do so because the weaving process isn’t wholly efficient, and just like Striders flare excess velocity upon landing at a destination as heat, various equations have clauses built-in to dissipate unneeded chalk as light.

Hex argued, however, that physics (and mechanical equivalents of it, such as what we have in Samsara) wouldn’t differentiate between what is useful and what is ‘waste’, as waste is entirely an anthropocentric - human-centric - concept, far removed from the uncaring, impartial on-goings of sciences. While this is a thoroughly correct assertion to present, I do believe it stems from misinterpreting the original writ above, which described light as ‘waste’ solely because chalkweavers declared it so. I imagine the problem though, arises from the idea of the equations declaring some measure of chalk as waste and thus folding it into light, which would not be a logical dynamic to exist.

The real crux of the problem of this idea, is that it would mean skilled chalkweavers wouldn’t emit light in their practice of chalkweaving, which is the direct opposite of what I wanted to achieve with regards to the visual elements of narrative.

Behold the rectification; the emission of light in various exercises of chalkweaving is instead a clause built into chalkweaving itself that indicates a litany of things, in particular the amount/density of chalk in chalkweave, and the proficiency with which the chalkweaving has been performed.

This means, most simply;

• Chalkweaving involving a lot of chalk produces a lot of light.
• Chalkweaving done really well produces more light too.

In practice, it tracks quite well when you consider phenomena such as the Switchboard’s armillary stars, basins of colossal quantities of chalk, and how they are immensely bright, giving light to the entire Switchboard. Chalk rituals as well - under these rules - emit considerable amounts of light, and more so when they are done with as stringent as possible adherence to their schema.

In addition to this though, is the relevance of light to the concept of Infamy that exists with regards to Striders in the Switchboard.

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Weft Dynamics

Calcodynamics deals with - primarily - chalk at the macroscopic level, interacting with various kinds of pattern and weave that make up the Switchboard, as well as the mechanics governing them that - in turn - govern the operation of the Switchboard. That being said, it is also essential to discuss further how chalk operates ‘at the ribbon level’, a field we can call Weft Dynamics.

The Information Mass/Density Problem

As outlined in Void_5, The Hands as Chalk and elsewhere, the information - weave - within pattern in the Switchboard induces mass, and this mass in turn induces a curving effect along the fourth spatial axis, from which the Switchboard obtains its gravity analogue - a curvature along space itself. However, it follows that large things in the Switchboard would induce enough curvature to pull more and more of the Switchboard towards themselves, and as they do, become more and more capable of doing this exact thing.

It follows then, that inevitably, the entire Switchboard would collapse in upon itself, creating an object so incomprehensibly dense with information that the spatial distortion induced by it would result in exactly what happens in our world when such a phenomenon occurs; a singularity, or black hole.

This is dreadful.

The rectification of this is found, however, in the equations that yield pattern themselves. As equations fold chalk ribbon to yield weave, encoded into this process is instructions to fabricate repulsive substructures. They can be imagined as the pillars in a building that keep the decking above from collapsing to the floor below it. These substructures serve double duty in ensuring the stability of more complex folded patterns, as well as inducing a rule of sorts in the Switchboard; differentiated, unique, distinct patterns, have an apparent disinclination to deviate too strongly from that state without external action.

Things that are simply prefer to be what they are, and as such, the Switchboard does not collapse in upon itself into a spherical bolus of supermassive calcic fury.

These ribbon-level substructures are employed similarly in the mechanics that facilitate the performing of the Flash Protocol by Striders, making use of scaffolding-like structures to bear a suffusion of chalk and realize complex weave in mere moments.

Pattern/Weave Complexity

Weave and pattern can be described as complex, but what observable and measurable qualities of a pattern dictate whether it is complex or not?

Immediately, I can give the following;

• The abundance of property weaves within the structure.
• The general intricacy with which the pattern is folded.
• Emergent properties that stem from the manner by which the pattern is made.
• In the cases of various kinds of ritualism, prominently calcic ritualism; the number and nature of components expended in forming the pattern.
• Whether the pattern relies or utilizes praximechanics in some manner.
• The compaction of the pattern.
• If the pattern is something alive.
• Etcetera.

Complex weaves generally have a number of common properties as a result of their complexity, such as being far more information dense and difficult to unweave.

Pattern Compaction

Repulsive substructures exist in pattern as a means of maintaining the stability of the weave, as well as its differentiation and distinction from other weave in the Switchboard. However, at the microscopic level, these repulsive substructures are chalk ribbon themselves, and additionally posses length.

In theory then, it is possible to compact pattern - physically - in a manner that causes its repulsive support substructures to shorten considerably, leading to a tangible physical shrinking of the pattern. Generally, this is done by unweaving the pattern and reweaving it with a more capable equation. This doesn’t reduce the information mass of the pattern in any manner, but it does reduce the physical space occupied by the pattern, something that can prove useful in a number of applications.

It is particularly the case that Striders and other flavors of nomad and sojourner in the Switchboard make use of pattern compaction to ‘shrink’ the physical space occupied by their usually voluminous kits. Far simpler weave - such as the kind you’d find in more elementary objects like tents or sleeping backs - can be compacted down to considerable small sizes, unwound and deployed as needed. More complex implements such as relic weapons that have a number of additional calcic clauses built in such as rituals are far more difficult to compact in this manner.

Pattern Compression

There is a far less elegant form of pattern compaction that is employed on some occasions; instead of unweaving pattern and reweaving it in more compact form, it is possible to forcibly compel the repulsive support substructures to shorten via application of external physical pressure - quite literal squashing pattern and compelling to take this new, compressed shape.

What allows for weave to be compacted in this manner is its Spring Coefficient, a measure of the dynamics surrounding the repulsive support substructures, more specifically;

• Ease of Compression
• Pressure Exerted on the Compression Front

Generally, to maintain the compression state, a ‘compression front’ is employed, this being a calcic over-structure that is ‘wrapped’ around the compressed pattern, keeping it in the compressed state. However, because the substructures are not physically shortened, and only compelled to be, they exert an amount of force upon the compression front, that renders the entire pattern relatively unstable.

Generally;

• Low Spring Coefficient;
  • Easy to compress
  • Little force exerted on the compression front
  • More stable structure
• High Spring Coefficient
  • Difficult to compress
  • More force exerted on the compression front
  • Less stable structure

Equational Compression - Optimization Equations

The question of how to reduce the information mass of pattern is one that plagues the denizens of the Switchboard, particular those who are far more disposed to travelling the lengths of it, these being the Striders. The Strider Protocol being heavily constrained by one’s total information mass means there is a hard cap on what can bring on a sojourn, or how far one can go with what they’re carrying.

As such, in circumstances where it isn’t possible to simply shed the load one is already carrying, it becomes necessary to optimize the weave of what must come along for the trip. This is done using Optimization Equations, general purpose equations that are capable of subjecting existing patterns to a number of methods - ranging from complex folding algorithms to downright tricks - to reduce the information mass of the pattern while maintaining its integrity.

The means by which it does so - in more detail - isn’t far too dissimilar to what is used by compression software in our world. Under weave however, the general tactic is various forms of ‘culling’; working to remove non-essential details and complexity from a pattern, while maintaining utmost functionality.

The resultant of this, often, are considerable changes to the visual appearance of the object, as equational compression can - say - reduce a colored cube featuring a gradient of shades from light to dark, to a single color or small handful of them, reducing the overall amount of information in the pattern.

In a sense then, pattern run through optimization equations may come out the other end with simplified color profiles, lower ‘resolution’ textures, perhaps even bits of the geometry shorn off as though it were an object made of polygons in 3D software, and its shape budget were suddenly constrained.

Naturally, there are means to reverse this process to reobtain the pattern that was subjected to optimization equations to begin with.

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Hyperweave

By most metrics, chalk can be viewed as somewhat inert. Chalk in latent dust form, solid crystalline form, activated ribbon form, bound pattern form and stable weave form all share a somewhat common thread between them; they are stable forms of chalk that outside of most calcic interference, will remain in their current states. There is a final form of chalk however, that is defined by the extreme conditions necessary for its formation - and by extension the extreme nature of the chalk itself.

This is chalk in the ‘hyperwoven’ state, more commonly referred to as hyperweave.

Nature & Formation

When pattern undergoes the rather unrefined physical compression, it can be done to a fairly considerable degree with suitable conditions - but only up to a point. Beyond a certain threshold, the unstable structure begins to show signs of failing, and the distinction of and within the pattern gradually begins to degenerate. The resultant is a churning, furious, calcic slurry, merely awaiting an outlet under the immense pressure. As it is nearly impossible to exert and maintain uniform pressure across the entire compression front, inevitably something must give in the over-structure, and the pressurized calcic slurry surges out and forth - crackling with violent animation - as hyperweave.

Upon being provided with an outlet - an aperture - hyperweave is able to form and be released into the local environment, the preferred shape it takes being that of frenzied, discordant bolts, crackling outwards and in nearly random directions. Typically, once hyperweave is released into the environment, it is skewed by minute spatial distortion, and thus typically crackles towards the most chalk-dense entity in the vicinity - this often being Striders, presenting a considerable hazard towards them.

The manner in which hyperweave is released is determined primarily by the shape of the aperture that is provided to the undifferentiated calcic slurry that serves as its birthplace. With no true aperture provided, hyperweave surges outwards towards the most calcically dense subject in the vicinity, and - if possible - tears the aperture from which it emerges open further, resulting in it beginning as a fairly powerful release, then tapering off at the end. As it is released, the pressure exerted by the compression front is no longer present, and the repulsive support substructures violently restore themselves to their original state, resulting in the hyperweave structure collapsing as it travels, in an attempt to restore itself to the original pattern shape from which it was made. The degeneration of the pattern structure, however, is often permanent, and hyperweave tends to resolve itself into calcic ribbon once released into the environment.

That being said, for the brief moments it exists, it is a truly mighty phenomenon, travelling at speeds rivalling the Strider Protocol and inflicting considerable lattice damage to whatever it strikes. Based on the release aperture it is provided, hyperweave can be restrained to beams, increasing its lifespan in the environment, the distance it can travel, and its destructive potential.

Utilization

One of the larger-scale applications of hyperweave exists in industry - SB_Technology - as hyperweave is an immensely effective means to move colossal amounts of chalk over equally colossal distances. Emitter and receiver apparatus are able to form and launch beams of hyperweave, and ‘catch’ it at a destination. When working under ultra-long-distance applications as this, relay apparatus that re-compress hyperweave midflight, as well as rifled release apertures that stabilize it via applying spin are used to move hyperweave across interplanetary distances, facilitating grand applications such as Wellspring drilling and powering interstellar fleets - and even small, even minuscule applications such as powering minute devices.

Further elaboration on this will be done in SB_Technology.

On smaller scale however, hyperweave is used by Striders and other denizens of the Switchboard as a weapon, due to the considerable unravelling effect it has on lattices.

Effects

Being hit by hyperweave has been described as - and is particularly similar to - being hit by the full calcic radiance of a armillary star. Though less powerful, it rips and cascades through the lattice of a target, inflicting considerable unravelling, and saturating a target with unharnessed, wild chalk. It takes on inductive properties and can ricochet throughout the lattice, and even strike a target, reform, and ricochet to another target, chaining between them and doing substantial, though diminishing damage.

One of the greatest dangers presented by hyperweave is hyperweave formed from pattern that is able to re-differentiate itself with time, resulting in hyperweave that can resolve into - say - the large object that was compressed to form it. Should this re-differentiation happen within the lattice of a Strider, the results can be catastrophic, akin to detonating a bomb within their very body.

Chalkweaver Combat

Hyperweave saw inevitable adoption in combat due to the considerable damage it does to all that it strikes, as well as its chaining, unravelling and inductive properties. How each individual subject used hyperweave - harnessing its raw damage potential, suppressing unravelling power, or spreading inductive power - is up to them. But those who can harness hyperweave cultivate considerable notoriety, as hyperweave in use is a memorable, visual spectacle, one to wow allies, foes and onlookers alike.

Generally, forming hyperweave in combat must account for the context that is an active engagement, and as such, forming hyperweave needs to be fast to be worthwhile. For this reason, Striders who are able to harness hyperweave are only capable of doing so via exploiting the foundational mechanics behind its formation, via assistance by some other power they possess - and often a mix of both. It is very commonplace to see Pale Amarans use hyperweave, as one of the most practical ways to get the compressive force needed to form hyperweave, as well as a large enough supply of chalk to compress, is through curvature manipulation and access to the Stardrip Cycle respectively.

Proposal: Hyperweave ‘Cooling’

Thanks Hex. As the name states, this section deals with hyperweave. As such the section on hyperweave - here - is recommended reading.

The Doctor’s Remarks

During the revision of the hyperweave concept, the good doctor closed with some notes;

In our case, there’s also something like a hydraulic press effect Keeping the pressure from all sides is difficult So the “bolts” of chalk you’ve talked about are like… stray strips of the ribbon crackling outward at the weakest point of the pressure

Light (like) holding a light in your hands and seeing rays come through the gaps in your fingers.
Or squeezing playdough.

(…)

There’s an interesting mechanic you could play with here.

(…)

Equations are complex enough that sometimes the folding pattern is beyond analysis There’s simply too much going on It’s the reason you can’t replicate a person, for example But this also sort of implies… that whatever the equations are that do dictate a person’s lattice… …they are finer than normal The folding pattern is especially efficient with a person This further implies two things Compressing a person to the point of hyperweave would be extremely difficult But if you did

It's a nuke.
It's a fucking nuke going off.
Like a star going supernova.

Almost right. It’s like a star. Period Do you see where I’m going with this?

(…)

It might feed into an idea I had about how Striders maybe die in the Switchboard...

(…)

Just the opposite.

(…)

How they're
born?

One thing that’s slightly bothered me is the rather fast and loose way you play with evolution It kind of violates the sensibilities of finding a watch in the desert and deducing a watchmaker. Where’s the watchmaker in the Switchboard? In our world, the actual science behind the origin of life and evolution of intelligence is extremely complex and intricate Buoyed by the carefully balanced interplay of multiple mechanics I’ve always felt your explanation was lacking just that one essential bit of “where it all actually comes from” Cryo, do you know how the stars in our world work?

(…)

In our universe, there is the force of gravity. This simply says that mass attracts mass. Left to its own devices, matter would clump together, becoming denser, attracting matter even more strongly And this would accumulate mass until the whole thing forms a black hole, and even then it wouldn’t stop What prevents this from happening then?

(…)

In our world, this is prevented by nuclear fusion The more pressure you put on atomic nuclei, the closer you get to crossing a threshold where the nuclei fuse When they do so, the nuclei get faster, and release photons, which knock into other nuclei, and together create a radiation pressure that pushes outward, balancing the compressing force of gravity Though occasionally, jets of solar matter will spurt out from the star in a coronal discharge, a solar flare

(…)

Do you see it yet?

(…)

Check it: In the Switchboard, information has mass, which curves space. Like in our world’s general relativity, this curvature can attract more information mass. At the dawn of the universe, perhaps there’s simply scattered bits of blank ribbon. But quickly, even the slightest amount of information will attract more.

(…)

Are stars
Are stars hyperweave?
Are the Armillary stars hyperweave? 
Is that we're you're going?

As the information compresses

(…)

Whatever simple folding patterns exist Shatter Become finer Creating new folding patterns more intricate and infodense than could be created otherwise Structural equations arise out of folding patterns, out of the forced pressure of information curvature On that scale The churning of patterns The incomparable pressure

Are you pitching a model for the genesis of the Switchboard itself?

You get the same crackling jets of ribbon This time carrying incredibly complex, infodense patterns Cascading out into the vacuum of space Slowly losing momentum… Collecting into vast swaths of chalk It has to be what I said about stars.

(…)

The ribbons lost momentum and crystallize Embedding complex structures Waiting to be thawed out. In the Switchboard, as in our world You are starstuff

So, cooled hyperweave... gave rise to life?

(…)

But in the switchboard

(…)

You’re not really star stuff It’s not that the star is producing substances that can’t be created elsewhere

(…)

It’s the info. So yes. Armillary stars are hyperweave.

Cosmological Genesis

There are two critical takeaways from the good doctor’s notes;

• Armillary stars are, in reality, colossal hyperweave engines.
• Cooling hyperweave can give rise to the emergence of complex weft structures.

This proposal is a revision to one of the most pivotal, foundation mechanics upon which the Switchboard operates; spontaneous equations as described under the mechanics of chalk. These were equations that, under the right conditions, arose from latent chalk in the environment and folded chalk around them into incredibly complex patterns. But what on earth could be the ‘right conditions’? What would be the seed necessary for such a thing to take place.

The doctor outlined the answer to that question already, but I will restate it here; hyperweave cooling.

Spontaneous Equations

Relevant reading for this section include Hyperweave and Hyperweave Cooling.

The armillary stars of the Switchboard, churning basins of the most packed hyperweave in all of the Dancirah, illuminate the Switchboard with their deific glow. Even as their massive information density ensures all that strays too near is pulled into their violent interiors, on occasion, flares of stellar matter - the most dense hyperweave in the damn universe - lash out from their coronas, and enter interplanetary space.

As this hyperweave cools and reconstitutes back into pattern, it becomes skewed by the locale in which it finds itself - adding impurities almost - and the resulting pattern is the indescribably complex chalk that makes up the pattern of fold equations. Bearing a relatively self-correcting nature, they evolve and are realized in ‘finished’ forms, growing in complexity and viability over the course of iterations, taking in more and more of the Switchboard as skews to their lattice structure and overall functionality.

This phenomenon is called Equation Spontaneity, and spontaneous equations - and the armillary stars of the Switchboard by proxy - are the source of all complex pattern in the Switchboard.

These equations act on the latent chalk in the environment and yield a variety of phenomena. Particularly, spontaneous equations are the source of the Switchboard’s many cosmological structures, such as the Wellsprings, planets and other oddities. Seeding planetary equations, they then evolve over time, they then weave chalk attracted towards their growing information density into planetary material, and further skewing of the equation’s calculus yields the planet’s qualities; mass, gravity, spin, spin axis, day and night cycles, biomes, the like.

In addition to this, spontaneous equations seed the formation of Teks, as the Astrolabe facilitates the conditions for their arising from seemingly nothing, to serve the its purposes of smaller-scale remote computation.

Where the cooling of hyperweave is truly remarkable however, is in the seeding of elementary life. The mindspun are elementary intelligences seeded from the cooling of hyperweave that has been skewed by the presence of higher intelligences. They roam the Switchboard in a manner not too dissimilar from the ancient First Thinkers, and inhabit ‘vessels’ throughout the Switchboard to more meaningfully interact with it.

The scientific consensus on how the Strider and Weave Protocols and the Third Kin arose was from cooling hyperweave skewed by Astrolabic calculus, the Astrolabe itself stoking the flames and manning the forge that would yield the Switchboard’s mightiest entities and the powers that made them so.

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Latent Chalk

Both the Strider Protocol and the Weave Protocol function by expending chalk to perform actions, chalk that is accumulated actively or passively via information affinity. Chalk exists in ‘clouds’ of it in dust form in the general environment, and though the concentration can be low, it is present. This is ‘Latent Chalk’. Weavers draw from it extensively when using their powers.

This section delves into world mechanics heavily reliant on concepts outlined in SB_Astromechanics.

Latent Chalk tends to accumulate in already fairly information-dense regions, drawn towards them like water moving from a high point to a lower one. Latent Chalk often accumulates into crystalline form, become crystal chalk, depositing itself and often growing to colossal proportions. We see this often in the Wellsprings, regions of immense information density fed directly by armillary stars.

Spontaneous Equations

Relevant reading for this section include Hyperweave and Hyperweave Cooling.

The armillary stars of the Switchboard, churning basins of the most packed hyperweave in all of the Dancirah, illuminate the Switchboard with their deific glow. Even as their massive information density ensures all that strays too near is pulled into their violent interiors, on occasion, flares of stellar matter - the most dense hyperweave in the damn universe - lash out from their coronas, and enter interplanetary space.

As this hyperweave cools and reconstitutes back into pattern, it becomes skewed by the locale in which it finds itself - adding impurities almost - and the resulting pattern is the indescribably complex chalk that makes up the pattern of fold equations. Bearing a relatively self-correcting nature, they evolve and are realized in ‘finished’ forms, growing in complexity and viability over the course of iterations, taking in more and more of the Switchboard as skews to their lattice structure and overall functionality.

This phenomenon is called Equation Spontaneity, and spontaneous equations - and the armillary stars of the Switchboard by proxy - are the source of all complex pattern in the Switchboard.

These equations act on the latent chalk in the environment and yield a variety of phenomena. Particularly, spontaneous equations are the source of the Switchboard’s many cosmological structures, such as the Wellsprings, planets and other oddities. Seeding planetary equations, they then evolve over time, they then weave chalk attracted towards their growing information density into planetary material, and further skewing of the equation’s calculus yields the planet’s qualities; mass, gravity, spin, spin axis, day and night cycles, biomes, the like.

In addition to this, spontaneous equations seed the formation of Teks, as the Astrolabe facilitates the conditions for their arising from seemingly nothing, to serve the its purposes of smaller-scale remote computation.

Where the cooling of hyperweave is truly remarkable however, is in the seeding of elementary life. The mindspun are elementary intelligences seeded from the cooling of hyperweave that has been skewed by the presence of higher intelligences. They roam the Switchboard in a manner not too dissimilar from the ancient First Thinkers, and inhabit ‘vessels’ throughout the Switchboard to more meaningfully interact with it.

The scientific consensus on how the Strider and Weave Protocols and the Third Kin arose was from cooling hyperweave skewed by Astrolabic calculus, the Astrolabe itself stoking the flames and manning the forge that would yield the Switchboard’s mightiest entities and the powers that made them so.

The Micro-Spontaneous

Conditions in the Switchboard may induce the creation of Emergent Minds, elementary calcic intelligences that arise through the folding of chalk under rigorous self-correction mechanism and selection. They cannot live very long without vessels however. Coincidentally, what often causes these Emergent Minds to emerge is the presence of objects and oddities with specific kinds of very dense pattern, the kind that forms primarily in objects that are very old and/or have seen use in the hands of Striders and Weavers. These objects are usually denoted as Relics. Emergent intelligences that arise around them usually emerge with singular prime directive, a doctrine; protect what it is that brought them to be. This is accomplished by the construction of a Vault, which serves as both protection for what caused the intelligence to arise, as well as a body for the intelligence itself. Often, the first few ‘building blocks’ of the Vault spontaneously evolve as well, granting the emerging intelligence a baseplate upon which to build. This is further elaborated upon in SB_Astromechanics.

Happening on a much smaller scale, a spontaneous equation can evolve using some object or concept as a ‘seed’, which dictates the outcome. Around objects, the results are Relics, items granted additional power from equations encased within them. Objects already containing considerable amounts of information act as sinks, more information pooling into them, subsequently resulting in spontaneous equations. This is further elaborated upon in relics.

Teks are another product of the micro-spontaneous equations. These are powerful equations that grant Weavers powers, taking the form of chalk ribbon, often encased in chalk crystal, or in transit across the Switchboard on chalk currents. Finding one of such Teks is no mean feat. A vast majority of Teks wielded by Weavers are seeded by scraps of patterned chalk moving across the Switchboard Sky; ideas from Weavers themselves, bits from other concepts lost in the Switchboard, etc.

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pNarrat: ‘Reverse’ Equations

In reality, there is no such thing. A ‘reverse’ equation is merely an equation. The ‘reverse’ prefix is merely appending a modifier to it that denotes its nature relative to something else.

Consider this hypothetical; suppose a chalk equation denoted by ‘E123’ can fold A, B and C into D, how does one get A, B and C back from D? Equation E123 only works in one direction, and there is no means to put D back into E123 to get A, B and C. What is needed is an equation that specifically does this - a hypothetical E321, for example - that can take D and fold it into A, B and C. Further complicating things, there is no way to get E321 from E123.

E321 in this example, is the reverse equation of E123. This example makes it amorphous how useful a reverse equation actually is, but to give a more complex example, if it were possible to obtain equations and reverse equations by merely studying the lattice makeup of any one thing, you could unravel just about anything into ribbon chalk, and that fold it back together into what it initially was. This could give you - for example - an entire jumpship in your back pocket, as ribbon chalk occupies considerably less space than the result of its folding.

More practically however, reverse equations would allow for the near-perfect deconstruction of material phenomena. If an incoming projectile struck armor plating imbued with a reverse equation that mirrors the equation that would have formed that projectile, on impact that projectile can be reduced to mere chalk, surrendering all of its otherwise effectiveness in an instant. Expanded outwards, the usefulness of such a thing is nearly boundless.

It is somewhat good then, that there is no real way to acquire or fabricate reverse equations. They cannot be obtained from regular equations - which are themselves already hard to find - and the calcic writ of them is so rare in emerging spontaneously and possessed of such finnicky structural soundness that even if the various slot machines that govern the on-goings of the Switchboard did indeed yield a deluge of reverse equations every other day, spread over the space of the Switchboard and the time of its tenure, they would still be incredibly difficult things to find.

That being said a break in this rule is via the usage of the rule-defying glass of the Vitric Shelf, specifically in the application of the nullscope, a device intended to - if it existed - obtain categorical, ledgerial truth from pure vacuum. The nullscope would allow for obtaining just about any reality from the depths of the Ledgerial Current, including reverse equations.

As such, searching for and cataloguing reverse equations is a major interest for many in the Switchboard, as the ability to transmute things directly from one less desirable form to a more desirable one has appeal that is clear to anyone who ponders it long enough. Many dream of finding the reverse equation that would allow them to negate the powers of some other great being in the Switchboard, and thus allow for reaping the praximechanical benefits that come from doctrinal conquest.

For the time being however, the reverse equations that have been found see usage in the creation of medicines and defensive utilities in the Switchboard.

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Lap #4: The Praximechanics, Part 1

This is where things can get a little hairy, as here we delve into a very esoteric set of mechanics under which the Switchboard operates. Careful reading of this section is recommended.

Knowledge, Power, Quantity and Quality

Outlined in The Hands as Chalk and The Strider Protocol, those who possess the Weave Protocol - Chalkweavers - are able to draw chalk into their Straits and subject it to various manipulations, allowing them to interact with the Switchboard at the macro level, and with its more grassroot fundamental mechanics. While simply possessing chalk does indeed make one more powerful, this scaling is non-linear in a sense, in that not all chalk is made equal.

Consider that if it was, the most obvious path to power in the Switchboard would simply be having large amounts of information - such as a colossal book filled with a memorized string of alphanumeric data, as simply having that data in a sense would be having information, and thus induce a proportionate increase in strength. For many reasons, this could not be the case, and so mechanically, the power derived from the knowledge of a piece of information is dependent on its quantity and quality. We called the quantity of information ‘knowledge’, and the quality of information what it causes; ‘power’.

Thus;

• Knowledge: The physical quantity of information.
• Power: The realized potential of knowledge based on its quality.

Knowledge is fairly straightforward; it is accumulated by merely being, sensing and thinking. A being’s mere presence in the Switchboard passively imbibes it with knowledge, and as such the many old places and things in the Switchboard are filled with ancient chalk.

Power is a bit more complex. Determining the ‘quality’ of knowledge is achieved through deducing what questions can be answered with that knowledge. When faced with the question of “What is the composition of quartz?”, knowing the composition of iron isn’t particularly useful, the reason why being that the knowledge had and the answer sought are not well correlated. These correlations are an element of information tangibility, and are the more formal way of describing the ‘bridges’ between chalk patterns - or things - in the Switchboard. Power is obtained from information by its efficient usage, this ‘efficient usage’ being finding how it correlates or connects with other things in the Switchboard.

This makes use of a principle known as Bayesianity.

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Correlation and Bayesianity

Bayesianity as a real-world concept is incredibly complex, and explaining it in its entirety is far beyond the scope of possibly the entirety of Project Samsara. I will attempt to summarize it as much as possible, to provide a form of it that is most usable to our purposes.

Bayesianity, modified for the Switchboard context, is the efficient usage of information done through perceiving accurate correlations between entities, concepts, whatever, with the aim of drawing conclusions as reflective of reality as possible.

So how do we get power out of our knowledge of the composition of iron? We must take a tangent to look at the world and understand that it is - for the most part - perceptible and as a result, interactable with. All things that exist in any sense where that word is usable are perceptible and interactable with in some manner and too some degree, and in the rare instance they are not, their effects on other things can be perceived and interacted with. Think how we can’t see gravity but it’s effects are very clear on things that we can see.

From this we obtain another truth in information tangibility; nothing in the Switchboard has zero correlation with any other and arguably every other thing in the Switchboard. It is always possible to construct a chain of correlations between any one thing and any other thing in the universe, and this chain allows us to use what we know about the thing at the start of the chain to obtain answers about what sits at the end of it. Any knowledge about any thing has non-zero correlation with any truth about any other thing. It can be lower than other fistfuls of knowledge, but never zero. All things in the Switchboard are correlated with other things in varying - but non-zero - degrees.

Bayesian thinking - thinking with the aim to construct models of reality as accurate to reality as possible - is performed in the Five Straits - the ‘mind’ of calcic beings - and is situated primarily in the computational strait, the line of the Five Straits that is primarily concerned with ‘thinking’. Perceiving the link between any question and any bit of information possessed - the correlation - requires an unencumbered computational strait, and the efficiency of using information and correlations to answer questions is the computational strait’s degree of bayesianity.

High bayesianity is good, and translates to a tangible ability in the Switchboard to make maximal use of the chalk at a person’s disposal. Low bayesianity - the product of a mind that sees correlations where there are none - impairs the wielding of chalk in the Switchboard, producing negative power, almost. Certainty about an answer is irrelevant if the means used to reach it are faulty.

Bayesianity is seeing patterns only when they are truly present, and deducing correlations only when they truly exist.

We can then talk about escalating tiers of bayesian ‘mind-engines’; using our example on the composition of a piece of quartz, we can begin with a poor, faulty, barely bayesian at all engine that erroneously correlates the possessed knowledge of - say - the composition of a piece of calcite, and concludes that that it is quartz. The fact that this example barely even follows to you, the reader, shows how lacking in bayesianity - and thus, any sense whatsoever.

An engine a few notches above could make the distinction between various materials when seeking to answer the question of “What is the composition of quartz?“. Given an ensemble of granite, plastic, wool, iron and wood, they can make use of their knowledge about these materials to deduce which would be the most useful in answering the question that is the composition of quartz.

A mind-engine in it’s final form is one that can make use of even the slightest correlation to answer questions. Any knowledge had - in the hands of a master Bayesian thinker - could have relevance to any question at hand, so long as this thinker is willing to plumb the very depths for the dots, and connect the lines between them, no matter how short or inelastic the cord. In the question of the composition of quartz when that of iron is known, the master Bayesian goes down to the fundamental; both iron and quartz are made up of elementary particles - protons, neutrons and electrons - and observing that the behavior of these particles is not unique to iron, but rather exists in both the iron and the quartz. With this connection made, it is possible to deduce the composition of quartz.

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Secrets

This is a brief section that talks a bit more in-depth about the whole thing ‘power from knowledge is determinant on how it answers questions’.

There is an additional modifier to the power granted by possessing a piece of knowledge’s ability to answer questions, and this modifier is how desirable is the answer to the question at hand.

The Switchboard is filled with a litany of secrets. From the various locales and sectors of space once covered by maps, now lost, to the flavor of an unmarked can of drink in a cupboard, nearly everything unknown by anyone in the Switchboard could be described as a secret, but more accurately there is an amorphous threshold that a piece of knowledge crosses to become a secret, what allows it to cross that threshold being how sought after that piece of knowledge is.

Under this secrecy system, all knowledge in the Switchboard could be seen as having an invisible metric tied to it, curiosity, that describes and is raised by the number of thinking entities that are pondering that question to which that knowledge is the answer.

When a secret is discovered by a denizen of the Switchboard, it invokes truly arcane mathematics within them, which can be best understood as them being paid a considerable dividend of chalk due to the machinations of bayesianity. The more people desire this piece of knowledge, the more benefit - power - the sole or few possessors of it reap.

In turn, this also means that a secret provide gradually lessening power to those who know it, if more and more people come to know it. This is the primary reason why much of the chalk that saturates the Switchboard, serving only to be used as fuel in grander things, is so utterly useless otherwise; everything about it is already known, and this is the case with many other things. There is no curiosity, and thus there is little to no power reaped from knowing.

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How Does It All Translate To… Anything?

The mechanics outlined above have varying ramifications on how the Switchboard as a whole works, but a means of understanding them comes from operating on the idea that they are the bedrock of a secondary meta-power system.

The vast majority of the chalk in the Switchboard is of considerably low quality, considering that the Switchboard is utterly suffused with it. The result of this is that when chalk is ‘in use’, per se, it is almost always for its ‘material’ usefulness as both the shape of the result of that task being performed and the fuel for making it possible. Two denizens of the Switchboard meet, and they weave chalk and hurl it at each other until one fells the other. Chalk has been used yes, but it hasn’t truly been employed in a manner where the mechanics outlined above come into play.

In a fight between otherwise equally matched Chalkweavers, the winner will be the one with the computational strait honed by bayesian thinking. Through conscious effort exerted to deduce conclusions most accurate to reality, and operate alongside those conclusions, they are made more able to fold and weave chalk, and thus to defeat the less-bayesian thinker.

This conscious effort to form a mental model of reality most accurate to reality stems from a decision to regress the mind-engine, the Straits, to a state of utter blankness - the Blank-Slate Mind - and then rebuild the previously cluttered, dogmatic, biased mind with new blocks and a more bayesian toolbox. Doing this translates rather straightforwardly to one who is more suited to wielding chalk, as their mind more accurately mirrors the world around them, and thus it is easier for them to form patterns of chalk in their minds, and then realize what they formed in reality through the Weave Protocol.

Bayesian thinking allows for most accurately and efficiently translating what is true in the mind to what lies in the world, because what is true in the world lies in the mind.

Of course, being fallible beings, even if one were to succeed at the process of achieving a blank-slate mind, there is no guarantee they will follow through with the demanding rebuilding process bayesian thinking demands. Instead, denizens of the Switchboard do something slightly different; constant loops of learning and unlearning, sliding closer and further from bayesianity like a ship at sea, as they progress through their lives. What is formed by this ideological back and forth, is addressed in-canon as doctrine.

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Doctrines

A doctrine in the Switchboard is a fancier, but more in-canon way of referring to a worldview. These worldviews - doctrines - are held by characters in the canon and denizens of the Switchboard, with implications on mechanical fronts.

Doctrines are interesting things, serving as a strange mix of a narrative tool as well as a world mechanic, in that the doctrine held by a character has effects both on them as a denizen in the universe in which they exist, and they as a character in the canon we peruse.

What does this all mean?

The Formation of Doctrines

Lets take a practical example. The Spyndl Academy is an entity in the Switchboard and a prominent one at that. It occupies both in-universe and in-canon significance through its considerable lore, the relationship many other characters have to it, and it has to them and other entities in the Switchboard, and how many characters hinge on the Academy for a non-trivial amount of their guiding principles. The Spyndl Academy thus has a philosophy behind it, shaped over the years by what it was when it was established and what it has had to become as time passed to ensure its own survival and relevance, and realize its many aims.

The culmination of these things is the Spyndl Academy’s doctrine, their beliefs, their worldview formed as a response to the Switchboard around them, which guides - if not compels - them to act in certain ways. Doctrines are formed through perception; observing patterns and the correlations between those patterns, whether those two things are actually present or not. The Spyndl Academy doctrine has been honed over many processions through considerable amounts of internal correction by those who adhere to it, but even so it is not perfectly bayesian. The conclusions they reach may still deviate non-trivially from reality, and the ones that don’t may not necessarily have been reached with concrete, bayesian thinking methodology.

The formation of doctrine is thus fairly simple, as doctrines can arise from the simplest things and proceed to weave themselves into the Switchboard Current. Subconscious actions as seemingly trivial as sparing insects instead of crushing them once they disturb oneself forms doctrine, just as deliberate actions such as outlining a set of rules to be followed by a group of individuals subject to those rules is also creating a doctrine. As will be necessary, doctrines will clash with doctrines, and the superior ones will triumph over those formed with poor methodology, granting doctrinal power to those that adhere to that doctrine.

Adhering by or ‘Playing To’ Doctrines

Adhering to a doctrine is a set of conscious and unconscious actions, traveling down a spectrum of consciousness levels and competence. Adhering to a doctrine is a matter of subjecting one’s actions and the thoughts that guide them to the yardstick of the doctrine’s principles, with closer adherence conferring greater doctrinal power, but also a burden to defend that doctrine, as well as additional losses suffered by both doctrine and adherent when they fail to.

Beginning at unconscious incompetence, one who aspires to adhere to a doctrine will be repeatedly failing to do so, and not even be aware of it. It can be a Spyndl Operative choosing to sour relations with Spyndl Academy allies through poor behavior. Their inability to properly ‘fulfill’ the tenets of their doctrine shows poor adherence to it, and thus very little doctrinal power is reaped.

Conscious incompetence is the next stage, and is marked by the presence of analysis mechanisms even if what is gleaned from them isn’t necessarily put into actions. Awareness of the tenets of doctrine and thus what is mandated, encouraged, allowed, inconsequential, frowned upon, heavily discouraged, forbidden, or outrightly considered heretical is the first step in becoming more adept at adhering to doctrine.

Conscious competence is the next step, and is marked by deliberate, calculated action towards adhering to a doctrine. It is knowing the tenets and rulebooks and cross-referencing every possible avenue of action against what is penned down in the literature. It is asking “What is right according to these principles?” and aiming to act as true to the answer to that as possible.

Of course, there are times when one may have to act against their doctrine’s interest, often for selfish reasons, and the riskiness of this is that those who turn on a doctrine they are well-versed in incur considerably more praxis backlash upon themselves and other adherents of that doctrine, compared to those who are still floundering at the tiers of incompetence. It can be viewed as levying harsher punishments on those who should’ve known better; we only wag a finger in the face of a blasphemous new convert, while we hang a priest for the exact same offence. To choose ones own personal doctrine over a collective one is a slight that does not go unanswered for on the praxis level.

The final tier is unconscious competence, and it is the domain of zealots. Acolytes ask and then act. Zealots simply act, because to some it would appear that their very computational straits have been unspooled and restrung to always act in unquestionable, unfailing service to their doctrine. The doctrinal power conferred upon zealots sees them grow nigh transcendent, and every praxis conquest reaped by a zealot is fed back to their doctrine and other adherents in spades. That being said, the absconding of a zealot triggers praxis backlash that can leave a doctrine torn to shreds, and its adherents drowning under the current of surging calcic wave.

Doctrinal Power

The bayesianity of a doctrine is the strength of that doctrine. When a doctrine is more bayesian, it is stronger, but it then raises the question of what ‘stronger’ means in this context. To answer this, we must consider the existence of personal doctrines. Any Strait-bearing denizen of the Switchboard will inevitable formulate a doctrine of the self; a collection of conclusions that form beliefs which in turn inspire and compel action. The bayesianity - and thus, relative ‘trueness to reality’ - of this personal doctrine are a product of the bayesianity of the computational strait.

Personal doctrines often ‘borrow’ principles from larger, ‘collective’ doctrines, such as the doctrines formed by many denizens of the Switchboard who all align their interests as optimally as possible to form the Switchboard’s various groups - such as the Spyndl Academy. When the personal doctrine draws only from clean, bayesian wells, the result is strength manifested in the Weave Protocol; more efficient handling of all things calcic, as described in the example above of otherwise equally-matched combatants. The personal doctrine - the doctrine of the self - is maximally powerful when it is maximally bayesian, with maximal bayesianity achieved primarily through repeated iteration upon current convictions and the conclusions they formed from to drag them in line with reality; what is true.

It could then be said that the Weave Protocol’s power and the ability for a denizen of the Switchboard to interact with all things calcic in general, scales off of the ‘purity’ of their internal belief systems. The narrative result of this is that clashes between characters in canon are analogous to clashes between differing doctrines, and in most cases, the doctrine truer to life would triumph. We realize this in truly tangible form through Praxis.

The Praxis Protocol

Praxis and the praxis powers are the meta-power system element of it all. Praxis is the realization of doctrine tangibly. The mechanics of doctrine are majorly passive and relegated to the background, but praxis seeks to change that. Almost at will, a denizen of the Switchboard may strike with the power of praxis, and attack a target’s doctrine with their doctrine, their mundane action transcending to the doctrinal level. When such a thing occurs, a protocol-level mechanic - the Praxis Protocol - is invoked by the Astrolabe, and chalk bends to conform to the result of the grand arcane mathematics carried out in the realization of doctrine striking out against doctrine.

The Operators of the Spyndl Academy draw upon the Academy’s doctrine for a litany of their powers, and in fighting for the Academy and thus its doctrine, even latently, they prove the strength of the Academy’s doctrine - the literal trueness of it - compared to other doctrines, which has physical ramifications in the Switchboard. Bearers of the doctrine that had its flaws exposed see a tangible diminishment of their power, a literal weakening in their actual strength, both physically and calcically, while the bearers of the superior doctrine feed on the enforced truth of their power and grow stronger as a result.

It can be thought of as two large reservoirs of chalk being wagered against each other. This chalk is drawn from all those who adhere to that doctrine - all of Spyndl’s Operators, for example. When a praxis act is performed, it is done ‘in the name’ of a particular doctrine, against another doctrine, and this act is immediately ‘picked up’ by the Astrolabe, triggering the Praxis Protocol. Imperceptible ledgers are consulted, and dice are rolled almost - one doctrine’s attack against the other’s defense - and a numerical modifier determined by the doctrines’ bayesianity is added to the result. The winning doctrine thus takes a dividend of chalk from the losing one, and this chalk enters the reservoir, and is ‘paid back’ almost to all those who adhere to that doctrine.

As a doctrine engages in physical-ideological warfare, its followers win or lose tithes of strength. These praxis interactions are happening almost all the time, even outside of battle, but it is in the brief moments when an adherent of a doctrine strikes down the adherent of another where the most monumental shifts in the power-balance of doctrines in the Switchboard are observed.

Titular Powers

Infamy under the doctrine of passing is recommended reading before this section.

Titular powers are powers conferred upon those who, at the intersection of yarn and doctrine, have let an aspect form and shine forth. Those who dwell in the Switchboard come to call the bearer a title that may precede or succeed their name. Some may bear multiple titles, and not all may confer powers upon them. But when the calculus resolves in favor, titular powers are bestowed upon the worthy.

As titles are derivative from actions, and actions from principles, titular powers are thus related to the doctrine that prompted them to take root, and furthermore operate under praximechanics. The praxis nature of titular powers allow them to operate beyond the confines of ordinary chalk, and thus titular powers go a length in cementing the place of their bearer in the Switchboard.

Titular powers themselves however, are not like swords to be wielded or supernatural feats to be blasted at foes. They are more like crowns, regal indications of prominence that sit atop a subject’s head, the capstone atop all that they are. Being related to doctrines, titular powers are regularly bestowed upon doctrinal zealots, who benefit from their boons passively.

As a hypothetical, a common title borne by the Spyndl Academy’s strongest is that of the Sojourner. Highlighting the nature of the academy’s operators to be adventurers and explorers, the title of the Sojourner is conferred upon those who have proven their skills in flight and discovery. The titular power conferred upon Sojourners, thus, is even greater dexterity with the Strider Protocol, granting them empowered skydancing, a praxis-mechanical lightening of their information mass, and greater efficiency of their stride equation.

On Narrative

I sought to build the Switchboard off this system as I felt there must be a way to truly realize a mechanical explanation for tropes or such seen in other works of fiction. The underdog hero strikes out against the tyrannical subjugator, but comes to falter under the crushing weight of their evil. When all seems lost, they recall all who have fought with them and for them, all who are relying on them, all who helped them, and from this they draw the strength necessary to overcome the most terrible evils, the direst odds.

In the Switchboard, this is a mechanic and a narrative tool. Colossal, powerful, but poorly-formed doctrines held by terrible foes and the powers and forces they command - may be toppled by ragtag, cobbled-together groups of those who truly fight for real truth, and this is as acceptable and grounded in the canon of the Switchboard as calculus and trigonometry is grounded in our reality.

When a praxis power is invoked, a praxis attack made, it is a statement, a move with heavy narrative weight. It is a rubberstamping of the happenings of the canon’s characters, by the canon’s world. It is the ‘Amen’ that ends a prayer. It is the ‘Aiat’ that ends a ritual chant. It is the period that ends the sentence I placed before it.

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Lap #5: The Astrolabe

Writ upon the Astrolabe, the toothpick keeping this whole sandwich together.

The Grand Calculus

The Astrolabe functions via its calculus. This calculus describes the seemingly pondering - the calculations - performed by the incomprehensible clockwork mechanisms that make up the entire astrolabic structure, as well as the result of those calculations as they are distributed throughout the entire Switchboard. The Astrolabe is - most simply - a colossal computer, whose input and and output have attained a universe’s scale in size and complexity, and as such, the processing step in-between must exist similarly.

Perpetuation

Scholars of the Astrolabe have set about studying the physical structure of the Astrolabe as well as the effects it yields in a bid to find out as much as they can about it, working to develop theories about its manner of operation. Chief amongst them, is that of the Astrolabic Perpetuation, a theory that the whether by pure coincidence, the product of a level of deep mathematics none can grasp, or by being guided by some external unknown force, the Astrolabe seems ardent about perpetuating the Switchboard.

In a sense, the Astrolabe’s mathematics yields results that always bring about ‘more Switchboard’. Should there be a hypothetical ‘end state’ of the Switchboard, a state in which all that there is comes to a standstill, the Astrolabe’s calculus selects for outcomes that avoid this end state.

This has led many to question if the Astrolabe, in a sense, selects for entropic outcomes, and for the conditions necessary for further increased entropy. That perhaps, the Astrolabe’s calculus tends the entire Switchboard towards grander states of disorder, for reasons still unknown.

The Calculation Process

At the crux of the Astrolabe’s Calculus is working towards a resolution. This is a change made to the Switchboard that is exerted over its entirety generally, or to localized spaces otherwise. Astrolabic Resolutions are the source of much study and ire in the Switchboard, as at their core, they are the very Switchboard gradually growing and changing in manners that may or may not be conducive to its denizens.

To begin the process, the Astrolabe first executes one of the many subroutines under its Core Operational Protocols, this particular one known as the Reflexive. The Reflexive is a time-bound subroutine that the Astrolabe calls upon to evaluate itself, triggered either through specific circumstances or after an amount of time on an internal clock has passed. The Reflexive takes a litany of measurements relating to the Astrolabe’s function, but in particular it measures the entropy generated within the Switchboard since the last resolution cycle. Should a dynamically-selected threshold be surpassed, the Reflexive passes control over to perhaps the most senior of the subroutines, the Resolver.

The task of the Resolver is to parse all changes to the Switchboard made since the last resolution cycle and yield a new resolution or set of resolutions that fulfill criteria outlined by the Astrolabe, primarily that of the Perpetuation. The Resolver executes a number of sub-functions that serve towards fulfilling this end, with the Index Subroutine - the subroutine responsible for populating the Astrolabe’s ledgers with information from the entirety of the Switchboard - being one of the most noteworthy.

When resolutions are reached, they are inscribed into the Astrolabe’s ledgers, and exerted upon the entire Switchboard via the Armillary Stars, in a manner elaborated upon later.

Protocols

On occasion, the Resolver will have need to facilitate the ability to do something that is traditionally not possible with the current state of the Astrolabe’s clockwork mechanisms, and as such, the only means forward is for the Astrolabe to engineer additional mechanisms of counterwoven barristeel, incomprehensibly complex gearworks that dictate and define the means of doing a thing into being. These are the Protocols.

When the Resolver decides that something needs to be possible, a protocol is realized into being to make it happen. These protocols can be thought of as vastly elevated calcic equations that fold chalk in a manner that cannot be grasped, to facilitate changes in the Switchboard that permeate the entirety of its space, redefining the ledgers and the compute performed using them. Often, protocols can be ‘tapped in to’ or even outrightly wielded by denizens of the Switchboard towards their own ends, as protocols serve a double-duty of being long-term, massive entropy generators.

On occasion, existing concepts or functions in the Switchboard are elevated to protocol-level status, to take on an astrolabic component in their nature. This allows their function to evolve beyond its initial make, and thus interact with the Switchboard in a manner similar to the Astrolabe’s calculus.

Protocol Master List

A list of the currently existing protocols, subroutines and functions in the canon.

1. Core Operations Protocol
   • Reflexive Subroutine
   • Resolver Subroutine
2. Ledger Protocol
   • Index Function
   • (Tentative) Cast Addendum Function
   • (Tentative) Vow Addendum Function
3. The Strider Protocol 4. The Flash Protocol 5. Collapse Protocol (though this is more of an imperfect protocol)
4. The Weave Protocol
5. The Drift Protocol
6. The Praxis Protocol
7. The Breach Protocol

Computational Apparatus

Over the many processions counted by the Astrolabe and borne by the Switchboard, the Astrolabe has utilized various physical apparatus in the resolution of its calculus. Much like distributing a computational program across various machines to lighten the computational load on each individual machine, as well as hasten the overall completion of the task, the Astrolabe has similarly, across the ages, utilize other entities structures as computational apparatus, towards its end of computing the entirety of the Switchboard.

The Dawn of the Dancirah is recommended preliminary reading for this section.

In the earliest before-times, the overall complexity of the Switchboard was low enough such that the Astrolabe alone was able to compute its entirety with minimal difficulty. The Switchboard and the Astrolabe existed in this manner for many, many processions, until the interactions of the various simple components of the Switchboard of then, accelerated by the radiance of elementary stars, proved sufficient to cause the resolution of calculus that caused the first thinking weave - the First Thinkers - to arise in the Switchboard. Guided by a prime directive to serve the Astrolabe, the collective swarm of the First Thinker entities served as the Astrolabe’s first true computational apparatus.

They patrolled the early Switchboard, guided by a prime directive to serve the Astrolabe. They did by aiding it in its calculations as ‘monitors’, scouring the resultants of the Astrolabe’s latest calculations and feeding that information to it to inform the next. This relationship of sorts fed the First Thinker’s prime directives, which served as their sustenance and allowed them to grow - a phenomena that academics much later would conclude could very well have been the birth of doctrine. As they fed the Astrolabe information on the Great Sky, its calculations served in turn to shape it further, its mathematics causing armillary stars to birth in calculated regions, Wellsprings to take root in the interplanetary space and begin their growth and glow, and fragments to break off of those Wellsprings to form planetary equations, from which the calculated folding of chalk gave rise to the planets. These formed the first Cradles. The monitoring First Thinkers would observe all of this, and feed it back to the Astrolabe.

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Because of this, the Astrolabe stopped using its own power to ‘draw’ information from the entire Switchboard to inform its calculations, as this was slower, less accurate, and the currents of chalk it induced to pass information to it was itself causing inaccuracies and damage to the information and the Switchboard as a whole. Thus, it came to rely on the First Thinkers feeding it information on the Switchboard.

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The Astrolabe’s original Index Subroutine presented the problem of how merely observing how the Switchboard had changed, and relaying this information back to the Astrolabe, caused further colossal changes to the Switchboard in and off itself, resulting in the need for earlier resolutions of the calculus, as well as never allowing any resolution to truly ‘resolve’ the changes made to the Switchboard, as any changes implemented to the Switchboard were made outdated by the process of even concocting them. For this reason, Astrolabic calculus was stricken with endless inaccuracies and deficiencies - which the rise of the First Thinkers served to solve.

Many events spanned and defined the Dawn of the Dancirah, but in particular - and relevant to this subject matter - was the conclusion of the First Praxis War between the First and Second thinkers, the Vermeil. The scale of the catastrophe exceeded anything that had ever occurred in the Switchboard before, and the Astrolabe was forced to respond in kind, swinging the pendulum back in a colossal resolution that gave rise to its greatest creations yet;

Never had the Switchboard known or seen such chaos and catastrophe, nor had the Astrolabe ever had to compute all of it to a point of resolution. Its barristeel stretched to the limit, its primordial mechanica strained beyond any thinker’s ability to comprehend. Its calculus seemed irreparably broken, but through stress and strain, its systems resolved with its most radical creations yet; the nine astrolabic spheres, the Strider and Weave Protocols, and the third generation of thinking weave.

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Our focus are the nine astrolabic spheres;

The nine astrolabic spheres formed by the Astrolabe began their stately halo dance around it, in a cycle that would come to be recognized as a functional calendar. These spheres served primarily as secondary calculators for the Astrolabe, serving to mitigate the sheer computational load offloaded upon it. On these spheres however, did the third generation of Thinkers arise, inhabiting recognizable bipedal human forms that are familiar to us today. They arose defined by protocols of Weave and Stride, granting them the power to interact with the Switchboard on the ‘microscopic’ or rather ribbon level, as well as the innate power to cross huge spans of it in mere seconds.

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The nine astrolabic spheres formed served as a means to compute the now immensely chaotic Switchboard, and one astrolabic sphere alone was powerful enough as a computer to vastly outstrip the compute power of colossal swarms of the First Thinkers. As a response to the defection of their duty by the First Thinkers in part, and the fact the Second Thinkers the Astrolabe realized as their stand-ins didn’t serve the purpose of acting as an alternative to the Index Subroutine, the resolution calculus resulted in something more purposeful and permanent; entire planets that would serve as secondary computers.

It is perhaps for the best that the astrolabic spheres arose when they did, as the rise of the Third Kin would herald in the most frenetic state of the Switchboard in all of its tenure. The build-up to the Second Praxis War and the war itself suffused bounteous quantities of pure chaos into the Astrolabe’s compute queues, and without nine planet-sized assistants, it likely would’ve buckled under the compute load far earlier, and brought about the Refrain earlier than when it did.

But it didn’t, and instead the Astrolabe lasted, the Reflexive running its circuit and seeing no need to call for the intervention of the Resolver.

But it was only a matter of time, and eventually all the loans taken by the Switchboard of then would have to be repaid, done so in a cataclysmic resolution that would be called ‘The Refrain’.

The time came for the Astrolabe to begin another grand resolution of its calculus, and without the Overseer Collective or Adamant to feed it its needed data with which to carry out the resolution, it carried out its Index Subroutine, inciting mighty currents of chalk to flow from all corners of the Switchboard towards it, bringing with it swathes of information ripped from armillary star, every Wellspring, every planet, every Vault and shattered Nexus. From the geysers of chalk from the Challenger Dark, at the lips of jaws feeding into the Vitric Shelf, from every Third Kin and other thinking entities that still persisted, resulting in a storm of chalk that surged and scorched the Dancirah, the Great Sky descending into thrashing calcic chaos the likes of which had never been seen or conceived off in the minds of thinkers.

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Bearing the brunt of it in particular were the astrolabic spheres, home to a majority of the Third Kin. They were drowned and pounded by storms of chalk beyond compare, as the information of every event since their rising from the chalk deserts was drawn to the Astrolabe to resolve its calculus, in the grandest calculation carried since possibly the first equations that birthed the Switchboard in its entirety.

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And when the Astrolabe resolved its calculus at last, and the storm subsided, its decision was fatal. Reaching out with unseen hands, the Astrolabe shattered the nine astrolabic spheres, resolving its calculus and bringing the Switchboard to a state of rest it hadn’t known since the dawn of the First Thinkers.

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While the Astrolabe could compute the entirety of the Switchboard using the astrolabic spheres, it did not have any means for conveying imprints of the nature of the Switchboard back to itself as the First Thinkers had once done. For this reason, it had to utilize its Index Subroutine once again, on the largest scale it ever had, resulting in Switchboard-wide cataclysms that reshaped its landscape permanently. This was the Refrain.

What confused many, however, was that it was not entirely apparent what change or resolution the Refrain brought about. Not immediately anyway. Scholars of the subject would soon come to realize that the Astrolabe had rebuilt its own toolbox of how it performed the task of pulling information from the Switchboard and resolving it; by deploying an equation across the entirety of the Switchboard that transformed all of its stars into novel entities - the Armillary Stars, that obtained the power to take in imprints of the Switchboard for computation, and compute those inputs in line with astrolabic calculus, greatly reducing the compute load on the Astrolabe like never before, as well as ensuring the Reflexive won’t call on the Resolver for a while, this change in particular bringing about the ‘divine calm’ that followed the Refrain, and assured the Third Thinkers that the world was stable enough for them to build upon permanently;

But as said before, with this final resolution, the Astrolabe settled to an almost divine calm, and the Academy’s researchers concluded that it had at last resolved its processions-long pent-up calculus, having seemingly been waiting for an opportunity to do so, through the various offensives and the Second Praxis War. They concluded that, should nothing so grand as the Thinker Conflicts ever occur again, the Astrolabe would remain fairly calm for processions to come, assuring the rattled Third Kin that they could at last, begin to explore, build and inhabit - permanently.

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In addition to the Armillary Stars, the Astrolabe began utilizing greatly empowered equations - Teks, as they are more commonly known in-verse - to perform smaller scale computation in more targeted contexts. Teks further aided in the postponement of the Resolver-call by the Reflexive, as Teks further reduced the burden on the Armillary Stars. Astrolabic mechanics working alongside the mechanics of spontaneous equations give rise to Teks exactly where they are needed, further facilitating the Astrolabe’s computation. Much of difference between what prompts the Astrolabe to seed the formation of a star or a Tek is a matter of focus and ‘reach’; generally, the scope of the computation that needs doing informs the apparatus deployed to do it. Teks work excellently in reconciling local mathematics, focusing to resolve specific calculus, while stars serve the function of exerting the Astrolabe’s influence over the entire Switchboard.

What is meant by ‘reach’ and ‘exerting influence’ requires us to dive into the mechanics of ledgers.

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pNarrat: Resolution Classes

Consider this following writ;

The Radiance Cycle

Addendum from the revisions carried out in The Astrolabe.

The Radiance Cycle is a result of fixed, periodic grand resolutions carried out by the Astrolabe at the end of the yearly procession.

When the armillary stars amass ledgerial information from recording the on-goings within their ledgerial spaces, they grow even more chalk-dense and unstable than they already are. As a result, over the course of a procession, they glow even more brightly, and spit out greater quantities of calcic radiance and hyperweave flares, each ascension in ferocity marking the passing of the seasons - from lumies, to encendyr, to the final conflara, where the stars burn with biblical wrath.

Once the end of procession is reached however, the Astrolabe draws, and the armillary stars dump the entirety of their ledgerial load into the Current, which is then fed to the Astrolabe for it to begin its grand calculus, and enact the subsequent resolutions.

The lulls and surges in radiance ferocity over the course of a procession are the result of minor draws executed when sending urgent ledgers to the Astrolabe, or when a star - for whatever reason - accumulates more ledgerial data than is normal, or is unable to dump accumulated date into the current. When a surging star begins dumping its ledgerial data, a week of surge is followed by a week of standard stellar activity, and then a week of lull, where the stars are calmer. These activities also lead to changes in stellar mass and apparent size, which is an informal measure used by many to make guesses and estimations on when the next surge or lull will take place.

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It would help to elaborate on the concept of Astrolabic Resolutions by establishing that the Astrolabe is in fact, constantly resolving the calculus of the Switchboard at any given time. Where resolutions differ is in measures of scale.

The highest tier of resolutions are Grand Resolutions, resolutions that encompass the entire Switchboard. These have happened on three occasions;

• The rise of the First Thinkers
• The rise of the Second Thinkers
• The rise of the Third Thinkers, following the First Praxis War
• The Refrain, following the Second Praxis War

These resolutions are the product of the Astrolabe’s calculus, and bring about immense changes in a manner enveloping the entire Switchboard. Considering what they have brought about when they occur - both the rise of civilizations and their near collapse - many have come to fear them happening again. Fortunately, they are the product of the Astrolabe being unable to resolve its calculus in a more muted fashion for whatever reason, and following the relative stability in the cosmos that followed the curtains rising on the era of the Third Kin, observers of the barristeel construct have detected everything but building chaos from it.

All the same, many fear that they are long-overdue for a second Refrain, a resolution that will swing back the pendulum swung by the Third Kin civilization. They have expectedly come to attach all manners of significance to this idea, and have used it for the basis of actions good an bad.

Following the Grand Resolutions in scale, however, are the resolutions that are a resultant of the Radiance Cycle described above. As stars fill with ledgerial matter, they surge more and more powerfully until they reach a threshold, at which they dump ledgerial data into the Current to be fed to the Astrolabe. Following dumping data, the stars lose tangible calcic ferocity and still somewhat. However, they never dump all matter they have, and as such, over the course of a procession, stars build in ferocity until the turn of a new procession, when a massive draw is executed and stars dump the bulk of their matter into the Current to be passed to the Astrolabe for processing.

At different times during the Radiance Cycle, the Astrolabe performs smaller-scale resolutions with dumped stellar matter. The Seasonal Resolutions happen at the turn of the Radiance Cycle’s seasons, marking the transition between lumies, encendyr and conflara. A week of lull in stellar ferocity follows each seasonal resolution, followed by a gradual escalation of stellar ferocity to a level expected for the current season.

The Processional Resolution occurs at the beginning of every Switchboard year, after the stars have massively dumped their calcic matter. This resolution is far grander, particularly because it triggers a total refresh of the current state of praximechanics, elaborated upon further.

Descending from the Seasonal Resolutions in scale are the much smaller Local Resolutions, which are often domiciled to a single star or cluster of them, rarely going above a few regions with regards to cosmological architecture. Occasionally Astrolabic calculus can induce a local, more target resolution, perhaps to reconcile older ledgerial writ with the current state of the Switchboard.

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Ledgers

The Astrolabe’s calculus is performed upon imprints taken of the Switchboard, immensely complex calcic ‘mirrors’ of the slice of the Switchboard from which they are taken. The Astrolabe, however, cannot perform computation on the imprints as-is, and instead their contents need to be separated and sorted into distinct categories. These categories take the shape and form of the Astrolabic Ledgers, constructs of chalkweave that record the ontology of the Switchboard.

The ledgers of the Switchboard are faultless records of all that is and occurs in the Switchboard. For every thing, entity, concept, phenomena, person, idea, space, power - everything - there is an associated ledger that records all that there is to do with it; its nature, all that it does and is done to it - everything. The result of this rigorous recordkeeping is the raw material the Astrolabe’s Resolver Subroutine utilizes in its calculus to produce resolutions.

The creation and inscription of ledgers is handled by a protocol-level function; the Ledger Protocol, a function made manifest in the Astrolabe’s cosmic brass-works that take in, digest, index and store colossal imprints of the entire Switchboard in the form of the largest calcic library that has existed alongside - and perhaps even is - time itself; the Current. The Calcic Current as it is most commonly known, is a sea of ledgers, connecting the Astrolabe, the Armillary Stars, and every and all things that have and currently dwell within the Switchboard.

Ledgerial Mechanics

Outlined in the following are the various mechanics related to the Switchboard’s Ledgers.

Indev: Ledger Classes

Based on the calcic information inscribed within, there are two major classes of ledger;

• Indexer Ledgers; that store what is recorded to them.
• Astrolabic Ledgers; ledgers that store what is recorded to them, but the information recorded to them has been done such that it can be exerted.

Writing to Ledgers

There are number of actions and phenomena that prompt the Ledger Protocol’s Inscription Subroutine. Generally, any action performed within a Ledgerial Space will trigger the inscription subroutine to encode it in the appropriate ledger. Occurrences in ledgerial spaces generally write to Indexer ledgers, as these are primarily records of things that are, and happen.

Far more complex means of interacting with calcic reality that occur in ledgerial spaces, however, may prompt the inscription subroutine to write to an Astrolabic ledger. Of note, the most common prompters of astrolabe-level inscriptions are;

• Ledgerial Casts
• Praxis Impositions

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Ledgerial Casts

Ledgerial Rituals and the act of employing them - Ledgerial Casting - are a derivative from the Chalk Ritualism, and a kind of calcic ritualism defined primarily by;

• The colossal scale of the ritual as demanded by its schema, both in size and component/resource expenditure.
• The fact that they interface with the Ledger Protocol, to add or modify the contents of Astrolabic Ledgers.

For this reason, Ledgerial Casts are an immensely ‘big deal’ in the on-goings of the Switchboard, as they are primarily the only means to directly, consciously modify the functionality of the Astrolabe itself - albeit to necessarily limited extents.

The ‘limited extents’ are an amorphously-defined authorial caveat; for all intents and purposes, the denizens of the Switchboard can only ‘end’ the Switchboard in manners I allow them to. The in-canon explanation for this is that the Astrolabe’s systems via the Ledger Protocol vet the intentions of a ledgerial cast as well as their ramifications to a lesser intent, and the result of this is that any means of ‘ending the Switchboard’ via ledgerial cast is a result of the fallibility of the Astrolabe itself - or rather, my having chosen to open this path.

A means of understanding ledgerial casts is to view them as a suggested GitHub commit to the main branch that is the normal Switchboard. Should the Astrolabe’s systems vet the proposed change as compliant and suitable, they are folded into the main branch and the ledgerial cast is said to have succeeded.

This also means that there are circumstances where ledgerial casts can fail, and this is primarily due to rejection by the Astrolabe’s systems. However, it is entirely possible that a ledgerial cast only failed due to temporal context, and a proposed addendum to the Astrolabic Ledgers that isn’t welcome now could very well be welcome later. For this reason and the following, ledgerial casts are immensely -prohibitively - expensive, and any initiative to perform one is often the product of many many elements and persons in the Switchboard.

In practice, a ledgerial cast is a supersized ritual by all metrics. While the geometry required to perform a standard calcic ritual may only ever occupy a few square meters usually and affect a proportionally-sized region of space when resolved, ledgerial casts - by virtue of editing the very laws that govern the Switchboard - will necessarily be expanded in size and resource expenditure in order to be carried out.

Ledgerial cast’s being supersized rituals, thus have their demands scale similarly. Multiple Striders are often needed. Components are needed in bulk. Flowers can be replaced with fields of them, the ritual specifically designed to incorporate the harvesting point of those flowers in it’s declaration stage. In place of candles, braziers holding immense amounts of Wellspring fuel are burned atop high towers. Maps are often not even used, but if needed, they are often replaced with the very Strider that walked the path meant to be depicted in the map, though the Strider isn’t consumed in the cast. Marks vary, and are often the only thing that doesn’t scale with size, but often do in value.

Ledgerial casts come with an additional complication as well in form of marks; they always demand a measure of counterwoven barristeel - the physical material of the Astrolabe - to be carried out. For this reason, a ledgerial cast actually demands visiting the Astrolabe, or acquiring the material from someone who has.

In the current canon, the physical structure of the Astrolabe is under watch and defense by the Brass Monastery, who are the arbiters of what ledgerial casts can be performed in the Switchboard as a result. Acquiring counterwoven barristeel requires making a case to the Monastery, or acquiring it through clandestine means.

The absolute largest ledgerial casts may use armillary stars as their candles, and constellations of them as their maps, siphoning inconceivable amounts of chalk into its purpose. Flowers are replaced with entire planets, which can be stripped of them entirely and consumed without remainder. Coalitions of storied Striders, often title bearers, are the only ones capable of initiating and maintaining these casts.

Every single ledgerial cast in the history of the Switchboard was a history-defining event - expectedly - featuring organization and collaboration from Striders all over, who - recognizing the power and knowledge they held - employed it to shape the Switchboard as they saw fit. By all metrics it is the final form of chalkweaving as a power; power to shape - to an extent - reality itself.

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The Current

When living things in the Switchboard die, or more particularly entities with memory straits, their lattice unspools into pattern and ribbon, losing its many collective functions. This chalk returns to the Switchboard, may it may dissociate further into dust chalk and become latent in the environment, or joining more chalk and deposit as crystals in a Wellspring, or be lost to flux storm and become stardrip in the Void, or be obliterated by violent randomness from a armillary star.

The fate of a deceased’s chalk in the Switchboard is unknowable and varied, but there is one bit of certainty to it all; chalk always returns to the Switchboard in some regard. Things that live are cups of intricate pattern scooped from an ocean of discordant weave, and eventually they will return to that ocean, one way or another. It led to a ponderance of a ‘cyclicality’ intrinsic to the Switchboard; a universal underlying rule that sees the Switchboard subject to a universe-spanning calcic recycling system of sorts. That all chalk comes from the Switchboard, and will return to it, but be pulled from it once again, in the birth of new thinking weave and emergence of other phenomena.

The Sil’khan call it ‘The Leydin Dance’, the Fel-Arcad; ‘The Great Weave’, and the Vahnkin gave it the name ‘The Endless Tide’. All are terms for the same thing; the philosophy around knowledge that the Switchboard’s chalk is ancient and newborn at the same, existing in a unending loop that sees the powers and knowledge of the ages before bestowed upon the ages now and the ones to come. Most simply, it is called The Current.

The Current describes a system by which all that once was once becomes all that is, and this in turn becomes all that will be. As things die in the Switchboard, all that they were - pattern, ribbon, memory, their power and intellect, the ritual schema they knew, the principles they held, their Teks and powers and relics - all return to the Switchboard in some capacity, to be redistributed and reemerge, reborn in new hands and at new corners, on new frontiers, in a mechanics-level insistence that the Switchboard continues to exist, and proceed in a manner. The knowledge of ages past lives on in ages now.

It is this knowledge of the Current that sees many beings in the Switchboard struggle to survive and thrive not just for themselves, but for their progeny, that they may cultivate and pass on powerful chalk. In a bid to escape death, the beings of the Switchboard do the next best thing - strive to escape irrelevance. By passing on what is accumulated in their time, all that they’ve accumulated being ‘marked’ by their lattice, they persist onwards even beyond the grave. The Current makes this possible, being a mechanism that both facilitates, a doctrine that is practiced and thus proven true, and a law that is abided by in every action of bequeathing and inheritance.

Believed to be the baseline doctrine held by all in the Switchboard is the desire to live and continue living, often to persist even beyond death. When there is no higher reason to live for or cause to fight for, denizens of the Switchboard fall back on this elementary truth on the praxis level. To live is to imbibe the doctrine of living. To live in the Switchboard is to cultivate weave that will be left behind on death. To live is to defy death. All these things are done irrespective of conscious effort, and thus all who dwell in the Switchboard passively contribute to the Doctrine of the Current.

The Ledgerial Current

Recommended reading The Astrolabe.

The Astrolabe is the mechanism that sets into motion the entire Switchboard. The ledgers record the on-goings of the Switchboard as the Astrolabe shapes it, from the dawn of the Switchboard to its present moment. And the Current is an endless sea of ledgers.

Stemming from the Astrolabe roots is the stalk. Feeding it are the armillary stars - the leaves. The Current is a colossal, yet intangible library of all of the Switchboard’s ledgers, and tapping into this stream is how the Astrolabe obtains the information necessary for performing its hallowed calculus.

The lives and deaths of the denizens of the Switchboard are captured by the armillary stars near which they dwell, and written to the ledgers as is their purpose. Via periodic requisitions, these ledgers are sent down the Current, where they stand as records of the existence of the Switchboard, and are read by the Astrolabe in the performance of its calculus.

Stretching from the dawn of Switchboard to the present day, the Current is Time Itself, solidifying into the canon and cultures of the Switchboard as something that exists even beyond what bears the title of divinity.

A quirk of the Current is that, for reasons unknown, it cannot be perceived by the denizens of the Switchboard. Even with the Weavesight, none can say where the Current truly ‘is’, and it remains unknown if the Current ‘is’ is in manner that can be interacted with, even if one could find and see it. Many suspect that perhaps, the Current’s inability to be observed and thus, interacted with, is an insulation possessed by higher functions against tampering. A preemptive measure taken as insurance against whatever is the answer to the question, “What are the limits of the Third Kin? What remains that they cannot do?”

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Lap #6: The Praximechanics, Part 2

A second go at the praximechanics to put grasped writ to use.

On Names and Tales

Valuable reading, ledgers.

None in the Switchboard have defeated death - not completely anyway, and certainly not from a lack of trying. While there are many schools of thought in the Switchboard that work towards finding a means to defeat death, there are others who feel differently. They believe that with the years allotted to every denizen of the Dancirah, there is time enough to accomplish plenty, and become more than what one was when they began. They believe that one should be born, live a fervid life of violence and passion, cultivate a name for oneself that will be spoken of in the processions to come, and die storied and accomplished. Return your chalk to the Current, so that greater beings may be realized in your wake.

It is on the cultivation of names that I wish to focus on. The importance of names in the Switchboard is Astrolabic; all things that bear a name in the Switchboard become subject to the Astrolabe’s transcendent calculus, and to perform this calculus the Astrolabe must maintain a record of named existences in the Switchboard. This record is one of many, and known as a ledger, and all things that exist and all that happen to things that exist are recorded in them. It is from these ledgers that the Current flows forth.

As a being exists in the Switchboard, the details of its existence are filed in the ontological ledger, under their name. All that they do, from every eyeblink made to every king felled, is stored in this manner, and as they do more, they extend this record, and increase the prominence of their name. They strike the marble slate of the Switchboard with a chisel, marking their names deep into the ledger that never fades. Alongside their names is their stories - their Yarns - and it is these yarns that are at the crux of the Doctrine of Passing. All who live cultivate a Yarn, and it may be a great or feeble one. At the end of each yarn is death, at which the Astrolabe places the bookend and marks the end of one being’s tale.

But there is a tad bit more to it than that.

Alongside the stories of those who lived are their doctrines; their personal doctrine of the self. Just as names are tied to stories, names are tied to the doctrines cultivated through the passing of the subject of that story as well. And though the death marks the end of a story and the Astrolabe marks the end of yarn, the doctrine of the bearer of that story lives on, and inspires more who arise in the Switchboard.

There are thus times when denizens of the Switchboard have lived in a manner that has earned them a name beyond the one they took for themselves. The name by which one is addressed is an identifier, but subsequent names may be evocations; instead of distinguishing a thing from something else, they are meant to summon forth something that the name has come to represent. A feeling. A phenomena. A moment in time. A series of actions. There are times when a denizen has these things converge upon them, and all who see it recognize it. A name is too distant, so they call them something else; a title.

At the intersection of yarn and doctrine, titles form. They are marked in the Astrolabic ledger as the moment when the culmination of action and the principle behind it reach a point beyond a threshold, this threshold being the recognition of a multitude of other beings in the Switchboard. This recognition is parsed under doctrinal mechanics, and the title becomes a praxis power conferred upon the bearer. These are titular powers, and they are as rare as they are mighty.

All aim to cultivate a yarn in the Switchboard through maximal usage of their time allotted to them in passing. It is the only means afforded to those who wish to persist beyond death.

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pNarrat: Infamy

There is an interesting mechanic that has emerged in the Switchboard, from the intersection of various other mechanics, and the deliberate narrative choice of characters ‘playing up’ to this mechanic, consciously or not. It is the mechanic of infamy.

The Blank-Slate Mind describes the following when talking about the mechanical significance of secrets under the interplay of knowledge possessed and the power reaped from possessing it;

Secrets

This is a brief section that talks a bit more in-depth about the whole thing ‘power from knowledge is determinant on how it answers questions’.

There is an additional modifier to the power granted by possessing a piece of knowledge’s ability to answer questions, and this modifier is how desirable is the answer to the question at hand.

The Switchboard is filled with a litany of secrets. From the various locales and sectors of space once covered by maps, now lost, to the flavor of an unmarked can of drink in a cupboard, nearly everything unknown by anyone in the Switchboard could be described as a secret, but more accurately there is an amorphous threshold that a piece of knowledge crosses to become a secret, what allows it to cross that threshold being how sought after that piece of knowledge is.

Under this secrecy system, all knowledge in the Switchboard could be seen as having an invisible metric tied to it, curiosity, that describes and is raised by the number of thinking entities that are pondering that question to which that knowledge is the answer.

When a secret is discovered by a denizen of the Switchboard, it invokes truly arcane mathematics within them, which can be best understood as them being paid a considerable dividend of chalk due to the machinations of bayesianity. The more people desire this piece of knowledge, the more benefit - power - the sole or few possessors of it reap.

In turn, this also means that a secret provide gradually lessening power to those who know it, if more and more people come to know it. This is the primary reason why much of the chalk that saturates the Switchboard, serving only to be used as fuel in grander things, is so utterly useless otherwise; everything about it is already known, and this is the case with many other things. There is no curiosity, and thus there is little to no power reaped from knowing.

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The summary of it is that there is tangible calcic reward from having the answer to a question known by many. This in turn means that - were one to attempt to game this system - they could hypothetically place an object in a box, and try and get as many people as possible to question what is in that box. By knowing the answer to that question, our box owner would reap calcic dividends issued by the Astrolabe.

This same logic applies to Striders themselves.

As questions are posed about a Strider, that Strider themselves grows additionally stronger. It follows then, that the most effective way to reap additional passive power in this manner, is to incite as many denizens of the Switchboard as is possible to pose questions about oneself, and the easiest way to do this, is to create a unique identity, and to do that, one must cultivate an extensive list of very visible feats - be it defeating powerful opponents, conquering vaults, writing ritual schema, utilizing signature abilities such as the Flash Protocol, moving alongside other strong or interesting individuals, more things in this vein.

In a sense, one must become infamous.

By placing a definite wireframe of the self in the minds of thinking weave in the Switchboard, the passive, unconscious desire to give solidity and shape to this wireframe - to fill in this hole, as it were - causes many in the Switchboard to pose questions. By having the answers to those questions, a subject reaps calcic dividends that empowers them further. This further empowerment enables them to do grander things, and the doing of grander things prompts further questions about the one who did them, resulting in even more calcic dividends reaped. This loop, once set into motion, is a passive generator of raw potential for the subject of its operation.

For this reason, it is essential to give enough definition to the wireframe to enable asking coherent questions, but not enough definition so as to obtain the shape - the answers. For this reason, Striders do things such as;

• Broadcasting their names and the ways they are identified (such as titles)
• Naming and announcing their abilites when they are used - particularly the Flash Protocol and other high level techniques - so that interested parties can ask better questions such as “What are the mechanics/power/counters of (ability name)?” rather than just “What was that?”
• Developing and using signature and unique combat styles, weapons,
• Cultivating additional means of identifying themselves such as visual flairs - specific colors and patterns of light that emerge when performing techniques and casts, for example.

By working to cultivate a name for oneself, and existing in such a manner that that name becomes known to as many as possible, the subsequent questions posed about that name leads to the bearer of it reaping tangible calcic dividends.

The Raconteurs

Understanding of Switchboard mechanics and metamechanics inevitably leads to inquiry on how to optimize the processes tied to them, and thus reap maximal benefit with - if not minimal effort - than at least to the utmost extent feasible with whatever one is ready to give. Infamy is one such mechanic that the denizens of the Switchboard - knowingly or not - seek to exploit. Exploiting infamy, however, is a task that demands a very specific approach, when what it means to ‘exploit infamy’ is actually seriously looked at.

Effectively, exploiting infamy to reap the maximal amounts of praximechanical strength obtainable from it requires providing an incomplete jigsaw puzzle to as many people as possible. Incomplete enough to reap the power that comes from pondering the missing pieces, but not so incomplete that those who try and engage with it are turned off by the lack of detail, or the excessive redaction and veiling of what are meant to be the most interesting bits. Considering that infamy itself as a concept manifests tangibly mostly as a retelling of events, exploiting infamy requires getting as many people as is possible to engage with the retellings enough to inquire into the finer bits of the subject of that retelling.

In a sense, the means by which infamy is exploited is by circulating - in no uncertain terms - literature that tells of the feats of the infamous subject in question. Circulating literature rather than relying on rumor allows for more valuable and targeted questioning that stems from having more of the foundational and auxiliary facts, which in turn manifests as greater praximechanical strength reaped by those who posses the answers to those questions - such as the subject aiming to cultivate infamy for themselves.

It is thus a common practice in the Dancirah to engage with circulated tales of the feats of various persons from all corners of it. Spyndl Operators in one sector, Feljourn mercenaries in another, Vahnkin apostolics, Lancaster pirates and brigands, Fel-Arcad artists - there is a latent but tangible incentive for one to circulate a tale of their doings in hope of reaping a modicum of power from it, and there are those who engage with it - as they would with any other kind of literature or media really - as it is decidedly entertaining to read of grand pursuits and altercations from across the stars. That they deliberately have holes in them - such as leaving out the true workings of a technique, for example - is understood to simply be a part of the appeal, and there are many who work towards deducing what has been redacted even as those who did the redacting reap literal dividends of power from their curiosity. Beyond just their appeal as works of art, is the possibility of piecing together one secret or another from the amalgamation of material, and in turn reaping part of the praximechanical benefit that their cultivator has worked so tirelessly to cultivate, robbing them almost of the fruits of their hard labor.

As such, the dilemma makes itself clear; easy power can be cultivated from thin air by merely circulating the recounts of how one obtained their accolades, but there is a tangible risk of losing the power one has cultivated and then some to someone skilled enough to piece the totality of the shape from the pieces of vacuum. Too tempting a practice to wholly forego, some choose then to invest heavily into dedicated crafters of these recounts who work to script truly gripping tales - while simultaneously giving as little away to possible secret-hunters as possible.

Spyndl’s Operators in their climb to prominence in the Dancirah and the annals of the Switchboard are particularly well known for this, and so great was the demand among them for practitioners of this specific craft that it fell eventually into the hands of entities engineered specifically for this very task. Like the Fel have their Verdant Minds for the administration of their arcologies, the personage of Spyndl crafted the Raconteur Minds, purposed minds engineered for the sole task of thumbing through all manners of anecdotal accounts and after-action reports, and organizing them into - functionally - narrative. This is then circulated among the extensive audiences of the Dancirah, who have come to derive entertainment from the many escapades of the Spyndl’s strongest striders.

Expedition of this production is done with Raconteur Engines, an application of Purposed Minds and the inevitable result of realizing that many hands make light work. These amalgamations of cultivated evolved elementary intelligences were very capable of synthesizing stellar recounts as instructed by their exacting commissioners, but for some the engines proved unsuitable for the quality they desired their recounts to attain. The amalgamation of Raconteur Minds yielded capable storytellers yes, and many even exhibited a sort of ‘stamp’; a subtle but traceable collection of consistencies between their products - diction, sequencing of events, an overall evidence of emergent style - that made it clear when a retelling was from a specific engine, but it was clear to the most exacting that the combination of minds in this manner manifested a subtle but visible regression towards the mean - where more minds typically produced better work faster, but different amalgamations of minds eventually produced work indistinguishable from each other. This would not do for those who saw the recounts of their deeds particularly highly, and overall saw the craft as much greater than merely farming the curiosity of the masses for power.

The recourse, then, was finding an entity that would be supremely capable of a unique retelling of accounts, one engineered for this very purpose - but also bearing a semblance of this not being the case. Discerning commissioners demanded ‘artists’ as it were, singular minds that would realize what they desired with a flair and personality exhibited nowhere else. This task expectedly fell to the beings exalted above the Purposed Minds; the Nuthi. Bestowed with cognitions superior to the Third Kin in metrics of raw compute power, while also bearing carriage and natures indistinguishable from them, they were uniquely situated towards satisfying the most discerning of tale-bringers in spinning their yarns into grand, star-spanning ballads. Serving as the exclusive privilege of a select few, the Raconteur Nuthi are a protected class of creatives, and their placement, charge and the nature of their coming into being makes them all noteworthy for having ‘more than a few eccentricities’.

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pNarrat: Praxis Power-Shuffle

The document above, The Doctrine of Passing, The Blank-Slate Mind, SB_Astromechanics and Praxis Impositions are recommended reading before this section.

Perhaps one of the simplest means of interpreting praximechanics - though arguably somewhat reductive - is to imagine doctrines in the Switchboard as factions, and each faction existing in a sort of conflict with others, represented by measures of the weight of one faction against another. This ‘weight’ is obtained primarily by the summation of the weight of personal doctrines of all living beings that align themselves with that faction, as well as the metrics of the doctrine’s own bayesianity.

To simplify things even further, the doctrinal conflict is a measure of worldviews relative to the actual state of the world, and of answers to questions about that world. The holders of worldviews more aligned to reality are more powerful, and the holders of accurate answers to widely-posited questions similarly so.

As a very simple example, much of the Spyndl Academy’s might stems from their doctrine and knowledge. Being so old, they have an understanding of the reality of the latter Switchboard that stems from having been there for the near entirety of it. Being dedicated to doing just so, they have been a foremost force of inquiry into the function of reality. In a sense, ‘Spyndl-ism’ - to convert a methodology of approaching the world into a set of beliefs about it - is a fairly bayesian manner with which to engage with the Switchboard. Spyndl-ism is additionally a product of its adherents’ own personal convictions that derive tenets from Spyndl-ism, and in turn, reap dividends in the form of praxis powers and tangible strength via the praxis mechanics.

However, doctrines are not static things. Both below and above Spyndl-ism are innumerable rival doctrines each with their own approach methodologies and each with their own measures of bayesianity. Far more bayesian doctrines that Spyndl’s exist, but this does not guarantee any kind of higher post above Spyndl except for bayesianity itself. The bayesianity of a doctrine is better viewed as something that multiplies rather than adds. A poorly-bayesian evil empire that commands hundreds of planets, tens of thousands of military starships, and millions of highly-capable infantry is still a force to be reckoned with even with poor rating on the bayesianity scale. And conversely, an immensely bayesian monastic sect on an unknown planet in a dark sector will never be more than that.

But power can change hands. The evil empire can be collapsed under endless corruption, and the monastic sect emerge to storied prominence under the guidance of ambitious but rational leaders. And similar can happen with regards to doctrines and the praximechanics; gradual shifts in the bayesianity of a doctrine manifests tangibly as a weakening of all who adhere to it.

However, the state of a doctrine’s bayesianity is spatially determined. Praximechanics only function in the range of armillary stars, and the nuances of their function - the current bayesianity ‘level’ and thus the power reaped from it - is a product of the star’s own ledgerial record, which is in turn a product of Astrolabic resolutions. In a sense, when a star gets updated via Astrolabic resolution, so does the doctrinal standing of everything in its range, and thus who they interact with the praximechanics.

This has very interesting ramifications on narrative.

For one, the doctrinal standing of any given doctrine is an average across all adherents to it, which does in fact mean that adherents of the doctrine who are poorly bayesian can in fact cause a weakening of everyone who adheres to that doctrine - even more bayesian ones. If a doctrine is being contended with by another doctrine, losses incurred ripple throughout the Switchboard and affect all adherents. Conversely, doctrinal victories - through contending with other doctrines, honing one’s bayesian engine, cultivating knowledge, the like - has a similar ripple effect.

But this is conditional on stellar ledgers. If massive praxis activity in a cradle has caused a doctrine to surge in strength, only when a draw function passes this information from star to Astrolabe - and the Astrolabe updates portions of the Switchboard through a resolution - does the surge in doctrinal strength become felt anywhere other than within the range of that star’s ledgerial influence. Processional Resolutions update the largest portions of the Switchboard with fresh ledgerial data, followed by Seasonal Resolutions though traditionally, they are not used for praximechanical function. Local Resolutions are really only performed when circumstances are abnormal enough to prompt them.

Praxis power is thus effectively region-locked. Striders going on very far-flung operations relative to the Astrolabe learn this and must deal with it rather frequently, as the Astrolabe is not fond of updating sectors of the Switchboard that see little by way of change or activity. They can thus be operating on ledgers many, many processions old, some even predating the Spyndl Academy and the Third Kin entirely.

Narratively, this means the the Switchboard exists in an endless dance of balancing power between persons, the ramifications of this being numerous. Exploiting a weakening in a faction’s leadership or followership based - not solely in the realm of politics, but principle itself - can allow for weaker members of a doctrine to usurp a stronger one. The earnest need to prevent this from happening compels many in the Switchboard.

Link to original

Lap #7: Esoteric Mechanics

Writ on the more fringe behaviors of chalk and the mechanics of the Switchboard.

Glass - Critical Read through it from start to finish.

Lap #8: Application

This lap is in fact non-essential, and instead you can being a Topical Competency run instead to delve deeper into a subject of choice. If you are interested in where chalk and it’s mechanics are rather immediately and fairly simply applied, you can begin with the below. It is greatly encouraged that you pursue a Topical Competency run instead, however.

• SB_Technology

  • Communications and Compute

• SB_Physiology

  • Birthing and Being
  • SB_Biota

• Chalk Ritualism

• Weave and Warfare

• SB_Astromechanics