The science of eye-beams and the basilisk's stare

It may come as a surprise that the ancients devised scientific explanations of how seemingly magical creatures operated. Their magical powers had logical basis behind them, rather than being purely inexplicable. For example, the philosophers believed that the eyes saw by sending out beams that touched the environment and relayed its qualities back to the viewer.

This played in the deadly gaze of the basilisk. In medieval bestiaries the basilisk was highly venomous, not necessarily petrifying. The basilisk's stare was harmful because its eye-beams carried its characteristic venom, which would travel through the eyes to the brain and from there be circulated to the heart and the rest of the body. This is why mirrors were effective, as the basilisk would envenom itself when the eye-beams were reflected back at it.

The 3pp Lost Lore: Ecology of the Basilisk posits that the basilisk's eyes release a form of radiation, which is basically the same idea.

Oddly enough, these kinds of eye-beams did exist at one point in the D&D lore. According to the AD&D article "Infravision & Your Fantasy Hero," the 90' and 120' forms of infravision worked by sending out infrared beams.

This concept of eye-beams could be speculated as the basis of gaze attacks, like those of the catoblepas, gorgon, medusa, vampire, etc. Do all creatures have eye-beams of sorts, or only some, or only during certain instances? This seems like a fertile field of study.

Infravision links

• https://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~leirbakk/rpg/adnd/society/adnd_society_infravision.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20161009085709/https://www.frontiernet.net/~jamesstarlight/Infravision.html
• http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/infravision.html

Celestial spheres cosmology

The “celestial spheres” are an outdated model of the solar system dating back to Aristotle.

The Aristotelian universe consisted of the world in the center (composed of the four elements air, earth, fire, and water), the celestial spheres above (composed of the fifth element ether), and the spherical firmament of the fixed stars surrounding all.

A modern interpretation of the Aristotelian Universe, with the earth in the center, the elements above, then the celestial spheres, and finally the firmament.

People actually believed this was how the universe worked. It supplanted earlier models in which the world was flat, the heavens or “firmament” was a literal dome which separated the world from the “waters” of primordial chaos, and the underworld was another dome under the flat Earth which complemented the heavens. (A model I mentioned in past posts. It roughly informs the omniverse and world axis cosmologies.)

This model influenced some retroclone writers. The Pathfinder cosmology (specifically the Golarion campaign setting) based the organization its elemental planes on Aristotle’s. The Blood & Treasure cosmology (specifically the Nod campaign setting) adopts Aristotle’s cosmology wholesale, and combines it with that of Dante’s Inferno too. As I mentioned in a previous post, Nod’s cosmology goes even further and makes each of the planets an outer plane. ADDEDUM 11/21/2019: The Voidspanners setting also uses a variation of the Aristotelian celestial spheres. Unlike Nod, these are mundane planets and not outer planes as planets.

Why is this remotely relevant? It occurred to me that I was going about campaign cosmology all wrong. This should be common sense! There is no reason why the multiverse cannot contain multiple universes with different cosmologies. A flat world, celestial spheres, solar systems, etc.

In future posts I should like to describe a multiverse consisting of multiple universes with different cosmologies.

Make dragons magical again!

The recent release of Pathfinder 2e has reinvigorated my interest in dragons, mostly because PF2 has doubled down on having a bazillion different kinds of dragons with their own pseudo-naturalistic ecologies. On the one hand, I'm perfectly fine with using random generation tables to create dragons. On the other hand, I'm pretty sick of dragons being reduced to glorified dinosaurs.

Dragons are found throughout world mythology. There are primordial chaos dragons like Apepi and Tiamat. There are many-headed dragons like Hydra. There are she-dragons like Echidna and Chimera. There are tons of weird magical features, too. A dragon's hoard might be cursed, causing misfortune to thieves or turning you into a dragon yourself. Dragons are often seen as omens of disaster, or conversely as benevolent gods who bring life-giving rain. Dragons are often invulnerable, except for some tiny weak spot the hero must find through wit. Alternately, they have regeneration that requires cleverness to overcome, such as the Greek Hydra or the British knuckers.

Dragon body parts may have a variety of effects. Consuming a dragon's heart grants knowledge of the language of the birds. Dragon's blood is a possible ingredient in the elixir of life. Bathing in dragon's blood confers invulnerability, assuming you survive the bath since dragon's blood is often toxic, corrosive, flammable, or all of the above. If it doesn't cause "dragon trees" or monsters like amphisbaena or scytale to sprout. Sowing a dragon's teeth like seeds might cause hoplites to sprout from the ground.

There are a few stories of dragon's having precious stones in or on their bodies that contain their power. The draconite stone is extracted from the head of a live dragon and has magical properties. The pearl of a Chinese dragon might have the power to generate food. In some Korean tales, falling stars contain wish-granting jewels (Korean yeouiju, from Sanskrit cintamani) that may grant a serpent's wish to become a dragon.

Mythology is full of weird stuff like that. It's a great way to make dragons feel magical again.

Obsolete scientific theories in fantasy physics

As part of my intention to design a fantasy setting where nature is part of magic, I looked to obsolete scientific theories in the real world. Over the course of history, people have believed in a lot of stuff that was later proved false. In the fantasy world, however, these make a great alternative to real science and should help make for a more consistent fantasy setting.

Magic and technology, or why I dislike Starfinder

Starfinder is a spin-off of Pathfinder which takes place in outer space. As with typical modernist fantasy, like its predecessor Dragonstar, it treats magic and technology as separate. In Starfinder specially, the use of magic is on the decline as its role is being taken over by the convenience of technology.

I consider this convention, in a word, stupid.

The physics behind martial arts (aka weeaboo fightan magic)

In my campaign setting, really more of a cosmology at this time, martial classes have "martials arts" or less charitably "weeaboo fightan magic." The reason? Having Conan the Barbarian adventuring alongside Naruto is stupid. Since my cosmology does not make an arbitrary distinction between magic and non-magic, but defines nature and technology as types of magic, it is natural for martials to develop wuxia and other capabilities that would be considered supernatural in real life. In fantasy land, this is par for the course.

Defining life in a magical cosmology

I stated before that my cosmology runs on fantasy physics rather than real physics. There's no separation of magic and nature, the magnetic/solar/fundamental fields are the magical fields, etc. One thing that is of relevance is the definition of life. In real life, there are a few different criteria for determining whether something is alive. For example, living things require sustenance and reproduce themselves. In fantasy this definition is complicated by the existence of demons, elementals, constructs and undead, among other things.

So what does the monster eat?

There is a tv trope called "The Needless," describing characters which lack one or more of the same physical or mental needs as humans. In AD&D, every monster had an entry for "diet." 3rd edition ignored all that and made numerous monsters into perpetual motion machines. The vast majority of the time this detail is pointless and nonsensical.

Some physical contradictions of typical fantasy settings

I mentioned before that most fantasy campaign settings operate on the conceit that magic and nature are two different things. The fantasy world operates according to modern science while magic is haphazardly tacked on to explain any divergences. This leads to numerous bizarre contradictions which many gamers are painfully oblivious to.

Fantasy diets

All creatures in the fantasy world require sustenance to survive. That said, these diets do not necessarily resemble conventional diets.

• Physical diets: the creature feeds on something physical, such as air, food, drink, soil, fire, warmth, etc.
• Abstract diets: the creature feeds on something abstract, such as color, shadows, emotions, memories, life force, psi energy, etc.
• Passions: the creature does not feed per se, but must fulfill a specific series of actions in order to sustain itself, such as mimicking a diet despite otherwise lacking any sign of digestion, tormenting victims in a specific fashion or pursuing unfinished business.
• Anchor: the creature has no diet or passions, but its continued existence is dependent on a physical or abstract anchor such as an amulet, a temple, a bloodline, or faith in an institution.

The Winds of Magic

As modern humans we take it for granted that the fantasy world operates according to real world physics with magic added to let us cheat. Unifying magic and nature requires detailed explanations about how physics in the fantasy world is fundamentally different from our own reality.

Magic versus mundane: why the distinction?

A while ago I read an essay titled "Breaking out of Scientific Magic Systems" which discussed, among other things, the tendency for tabletop role playing games to segregate magic from mundane physics and offered alternatives to doing so.

The principle of four humors

A common peeve of mine is the tendency for fantasy writing to rely on real science to inform how the fantasy world works rather than on the obsolete scientific theories believed by the classical philosophers. So forget everything that you know about real world biology. This is fantasyland, where real physics take a back seat to fantasy physics!

Monster ecology needn't be constrained by reality

Many bestiaries devote word count to describing the place of fantastical creatures within the ecology of the fantasy world they live in. Commonly, they are described in ways analogous to the animals of our own reality. They eat and procreate in the fashion of real animals, sometimes with a fantastical twist. All to often, however, these monsters feel less like monsters and more like cryptids or speculative alien biology projects.