u/Crimson_Eyes

So, first and foremost: We all know the conversation about water and gemstones, but the words used for scrying reverse that relationship: The character doesn't have to have an understanding of protons, refraction, and all of the other principles of light in order to scry something, and the language used isn't even (something like) "Show me X thing I've seen before."

It's Dream-Stare.

Just to recap and outline:

Scrying works by moving photons around...but it doesn't make the thing you're looking at invisible to other people. Maybe it's duplicating the photons and sending you a copy, or there's some really deep physics related to how photons move going on, but in either case:

It's weird that you can only see things you've seen before. There's nothing in the spell's language that should be creating that limitation, and nothing about the physics involved that does it (Unlike say, trying to scry a closed book).

The limitation also isn't absolute/universal: A person being scryed while wearing a shirt with new stains on it (or lack thereof) doesn't appear as a floating head (or else we'd see a lot more of that in the series), grass that has changed heights slightly doesn't become invisible, etc.

And if I set aside the idea that the Draumr are a retcon, I really have a hard time buying that there's no connection of any kind. My gut suspicion is that the connection between the spell's language and the effect is something like "See as the Dreamers see".

Has anyone else been talking about this?

I keep seeing "[WLAN access rejected: incorrect security] from MAC address 32:75:95:ad:8e:98" in my router logs. At first, I thought nothing of it, but when I dug deeper, there are dozens of them in rapid succession (seconds apart), every day.

I tried to block the Mac Address in Access Control, but it gave me a "Duplicate Mac Address" error (even though nothing else is blocked by Access Control).

Should I be worried? Am I doing something wrong?

So, obviously Durza suffers from being a Book 1 problem, the magic system not being fleshed out yet, and us as the reader not knowing as much about the magic system at that point anyway, but looking back on it...it seems like Durza had the Varden dead to rights.

His magic is weird in ways that are handy for getting around wards.

He's got a batch of spirits fueling his spellcasting

He's positively ancient by the standards of Shades, and also by the standards of the Varden's spellcasters.

He's got Galbatorix as a frenemy and has managed to survive him for a century, so his vocabulary must be pretttttyyy extensive.

Add onto it that the Varden's best spellcasters were traitors, and it seems like, sans restrictions from Galbatorix and the desire to capture Eragon, he could have dismantled the entire Varden by himself.

Maybe he doesn't know the Death Words. Maybe there's some other factor at play that makes it undesirable for him to just slaughter soldiers en-masse while hiding invisibly in a corner somewhere.

But Durza was bad news for the Varden in a way that I don't think the books did a great job communicating, and that I'm not sure that even end-series Eragon has stopped to consider.

Like, with what we know about magic now? Forget Galbatorix. The Varden didn't have a viable plan to stop Durza.

TLDR: Wanna be able to poke people to take Monarch back, either through unblockable, incentives to allow themselves to be hit, or, if needed, just "Sure, it has deathtouch, I can afford to take the 1" style logic.

Really, the plan is "become monarch, get Jared big, lifelink for the love of the game."

TLDR: Is there an easy to way to make it so Scientific Method doesn't obsolete anything. Additionally, how would I go about modding the various religious buildings to give unique benefits/downsides?