Vae asks...

[sythyry]

The apology do I make now for not replying so well the last of my questions; each and every response that comes to me I shall give a reply today.

And -- what sort of monsters do you and your people suffer from?

Comments

[bloofox.livejournal.com]

We have many kinds of monsters, but few of them are sapient. We have horrible diseases that kill people outright, or worse steal their minds away little by little by little and take away everything that makes them who they are. Or others that rip away their ability to do things. Fortunately, we have been making steady progress to destroy these monsters.

But the worst monsters of all are the poisonous thoughts that invade people's minds and cause them to act harmfully to themselves and others. They are insidious because the people so afflicted will actively fight to protect the thing that is actively inimical to themselves and others. We have not been nearly as successful in comabtting these monsters. (I blame the fact that my world also has an unfounded prejudice against technicians of the intellect and emotion.)

[zeeth_kyrah]

Now, now, many of these technicians are still in the "early alchemy" stage of experimentation, where you don't actually know what something does to a particular person until you've already tried it, and nobody really knows why these things work. Technicians of the spirit (who can observe the problem directly and work on it in its own terms) are rare because half or more of the population refuses to believe in their capabilities, and thus training is hard or impossible to find.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

And how are these spirit-technicians trained, and how do they know what they can do?

[zeeth_kyrah]

Their training often depends on the school of thought which they are led to discover. Very few know their options from a young age, and many are led to believe themselves mad. There are few to no formal institutes for training, only individual teachers who may or may not be certified to teach. Often, spirits and gods substitute as teachers when no other teacher can be found; and often higher levels of attainment must be taught in this manner.

They know what they can do by the shapes of their own magerium, but rather than a simple observation by magical sight, they must be taught their limits and the areas in which they can grow. For example, my ability to move matter is extremely limited (perhaps a level of 1), but my ability to sense and direct pure energy is very strong for my world (somewhere around a 7), and I can communicate with spirits very well (30), including an ability to translate what they say to me if they normally speak a different language (uncommon but known to occur).

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The subtle and complicated is this to me! Not mad are you, though?

[zeeth_kyrah]

Not to my knowledge am I mad, only sometimes disappointed. (:

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

The venomous mind-spirits seem particularly horrible and vicious!

[redbird]

It's not entirely unfounded; the lines between healing tech and malicious mentador are not always clear. There are still many who would "heal" some of us of who and how we love, for example. (For Vae's information: in many places in my world, a marriage between two women, or two men, of the same species is rejected and treated as a sign of disease, sometimes with more hostility than traff primes find in most parts of the World Tree.)

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Not happily would I accept this hostility! For my wife and I are both women, much of the time, and terrible monsters are we, and thus should not visit your world unless it is to bring great and widespread woe.

[redbird]

Nor do many of us accept it happily. Some of us manage something similar to what you suggest—for example, I usually try to avoid places where I'm likely to meet this hostility, especially if I'm with my female partner. And I spend some energy on trying to enlighten some of the ignorant, and tell others like me who are stuck in such bad places that they are not alone, and that the world isn't all like that.

There are days when I would wish you and your wife on some of the evil-doers: the ones who are not merely ignorant, but actively enjoy their hatred, or encourage it in others because they think it will help them gain power or money.