Magic of the Archons

[2:20 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): Worldbuilding time
[2:20 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): An idea that came to me pretty suddenly just a few hours ago that I've been pondering and don't want to forget
[2:21 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): Urban fantasy, in an Adjustment Bureau way rather than a Twilight way
[2:21 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): The world is broadly as it is IRL
[2:22 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): The specifics of what individual cities/people/events are like is maybe a little loose, but not in an alt-history way
[2:23 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): The big difference is that, A) there is a sort of magic which has two functions, and B) a millenia-old conspiracy of semi-humans (who I will call Archons) which controls access to it
[2:24 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): The magic has the ability to store 'things', and to release things from storage (which, I guess could be considered a single function, or as more than two because of the oddity of how it works)
[2:25 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): Things is in single quotes because it doesn't necessarily store, like, physical objects
[2:25 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): It stores, state-vectors, basically.
[2:25 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): You can store an object
[2:26 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): You can also store, like, the portion of an object which makes, say, a Door in the eyes of Intellego (the inherent intelligence of the magic system, and an entity which the Archons can commune with).
[2:27 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): This will physically alter the object, not just 'make it not a door without changing any particular things about it'
[2:27 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): (In the way that some conceptual systems work)
[2:29 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): This Door vector can then be released, applying to some other part of the world (though, for things that are 'larger in scale', again in accordance with Intellego, then the Door vector will have a smaller observable effect).
[2:29 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): Not that making other things into Doors is particularly useful in this case, since Intellego is relatively materialistic
[2:29 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): A door is just a shape to Intellego, not a passage way or liminal space
[2:31 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): Magic can also store more ground level state-vectors, like 'having a position in space', which takes the associated object out of normal-space, leaving it in a state which I will call 'abstract'.
[2:32 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): (Likewise, something can be given the state of having position in space multiple times over, but this much less stable than either normal spatiality or abstraction, and requires additional magic to make usable.)
[2:37 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): Magic can be learned by humans, but due to fundamental disconnects between the mind of Intellego and the mind of humans, it can be difficult to produce reliable, predictable results with it. Even with several years of training, the abilities of a normal human will plateau, after which further aptitude requires conversion into an Archon (which involves shuffling the state of the person question around significantly, in a way which the Archons as a whole and most humans who are aware of the process consider to essentially to be a destruction of the in-coming human and the creation of an Archon who is only vaguely similar). Archons, psychologically, possess much less agency than humans, and have difficulty making complex value judgements on their own, even given long periods of time to consider. They also possess vastly superior physical abilities as well as logical thought processes and conscious control over their movements which surpass that of human intuitive or reflexive behaviors, which can make them rather intimidating sometimes when not trained in how to treat with humans.
[2:40 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): The conspiracy of the Archons began around the time of the first written words.
[2:41 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): This coincided with the discovery of magic, not by sheer luck, but also not because of writing being inherent to the magic
[2:42 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): Instead, it is because the burgeoning bureaucratic framework of early agricultural civilization which beckoned Intellego into their corner of the multiverse
[2:43 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): It began because those first discoverers felt a need to protect humanity from magic, and to protect themselves from the consequences of magic becoming commonplace.
[2:48 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): Initially, the transformation into Archon was seen merely as a way of sacrificing one human to create a more perfect performer of their duties, unfettered by ordinary desires or fallibility, with the increased aptitude for magic being a necessary and unpredicted consequence of the change in psychology (which was then further refined in more modern formulations of the transformation).
[2:55 AM] Fib (#storyless-worlds): I also have sort of vague almost-idea for a story, which involves some teens who stumble upon a sort of 'unprogrammed' Archon who they get to teach them magic so that it has something to do, provoking a response from the conspiracy, sending an Archon and a human recruit who is prodigiously gifted with magic but is still too wild psychologically to undergo the transition.