Talk:BAbEl
Ed. Mmm. Interesting. When was the year of aug 21 where books older than that survived? That would set the tech level sort of. And if it was like 1900 AD there would be almost no books to find. Probably all the old book collectors would house the pre 1900 with the post and all would burn together. I presume all computers got erased too.
Ben: I remain amazed what can go up here in 24 hours. J think this sounds like a phenomenal setting. I think there Are a lot of implications to this that will present themselves with some mastication. For instance: how do you teach kids to read or write? Even if you figured it out why would you? Those that could write would be seen as very dangerous. What about hieroglyphics and pictograms? What about art or other subjectively varied forms of semantics? If a single letter doesn't burn, what about words strung together randomly?
I'm sure we can all come up with many of these. Too bad you aren't in town Friday when I need to drive to Olympia, we could discuss. My other point at this time is that I think demons are too overt right now. The books burning thing is mysterious and scary. The demons seem out of place next to that. I think they should be more shadowy
~~ Thanks Ed. Good questions. The year of Aug. 21 is the same year the Burning started (2251). Basically, the "cut-off" date is about 3 weeks before the beginning of the Burning. I'm not set on that exact year or anything, but I do want there to be the possibility of quite high tech stuff. But, exactly as you say, a lot of things that were older than the cut-off got lost because they were stored nearby to post-cut off books, etc. And a large percentage of high-tech electronics, included pretty much all computers, were hosed. There is still room,though, for very complicated syntactical structures (and here the line gets tricky, leaving room for a lot of in-game mystery and debate). And I definitely want there to be some tech that still works even though people are pretty sure that it should have burnt. Handling any tech like this is very tricky though, as entering any new semantic content (heck, writing your name on the side of it) will start a fire. Many people learned on the day the Burning started, getting a rude awakening when they responded to their emails in the morning.
One theme that I want to use for Scholars could also be extended for people who want to use high-tech stuff. I envision that Scholars can make use of "scrolls" to cast powerful spells, where scrolls are just imperfect copies of old writings. So, for example, one might copy the first sentence of this paragraph as 'O_e the_e t_at _ wa_t . . .' Filling in the blanks would then complete the work and release the power. The trick, though, is that the code for filling in the letters can only be used one time, or known to only one person, because if two people know the code, it becomes a written language through which meaning can be deciphered, and will burn. Thus, each Scholar has his own unique code - known as a Beetle - that he is at great pains to hide (this gives rise to a popular phrase "keep your beetle in its box"). It can, clearly, become a serious problem if someone who wishes you ill discovers your Beetle.
Anyway, something like this could conceivably work for tech-savants, who could have their own unique programming code/language. But such a thing would be incredibly difficult and complicated to construct and hold in your head, because - for one thing - you couldn't write it down in any way that linked it to another language. No dictionaries for you!
