Other Place: How Is It Not Teleportation?, nipping a problem in the bud Options

[Kagetenshi]

In Earthdawn, there is an Eight-Circle Illusionist spell entitled Other Place. Its effect is to link two doorways together; oddly enough, it is an Illusion but the effects are real.

[KarmaInferno]

I'd say that Teleport isn't nearly as much of a problem in a high-magic environment like Earthdawn.

Perhaps when magic levels and the experience to use it rises to a sufficient level in the Sixth World, such magics can be possible again.


-karma

[Toptomcat]

It has the feel of an Einsteinian wormhole with a Pratchett/Adamsesque feel of 'if you don't think about it, it works' perspective added to it.

[Crimson Jack]

I don't play ED, but it seems strange to me that the spell is labeled as an illusion.

[Kanada Ten]

Sounds a bit like how the Tardis worked to me. You move it closer in the fifth dimension.

[Solstice]

Teleportation (in real life) is taking the placement and orientation information of molecules from one place and mimicking them in another. This doesn't seem like an illusion much....

[mfb]

magic underwent a major overhaul, in between T4W and T6W. it works pretty much completely differently in SR than it did in ED. heck, SR's magic might not even come from the same source as ED's magic. there are certain similarities, sure, but on the whole, they're wildly divergent. laws that apply to SR magic--no teleporting, no time-mucking--don't necessarily apply to ED magic.

[DrJest]

I prefer to think of it as the lever issue. Think of the mana level as your lever. The magic you want to do is the weight on the other end. Your ability is the push on the lever.

Downcycle, the lever is really short; so even the mildest forms of magic (aura healing, reiki) require a lot of push to get anything done.

Shadowrun is in the upsurge; the lever is getting longer, so heavier weight can be shifted.

Teleportation (which, incidentally, results in the instant death of the entire away team the first time Kirk says "energise" - but I digress*) is a really big weight. So big that only the hugest talents, if any, can pull it off at this stage (and by that I'm referring to such game-breakers as Immortal Elves, Great Dragons, etc).

In Earthdawn, the world is just coming off the peak of the manacycle curve. The lever is really long, and even humungous weights can be shifted by the sufficiently talented (we ARE talking about an eighth circle spell, after all).


All right, just this once :) As soon as you hit the button, you get completely disintegrated, your component atoms broadcast to the target location and reconstructed from scratch there. It's not you; it's, in effect, a clone. Personally I favour using the wormhole idea for your teleportation needs, it's a lot cleaner :D

[nezumi]

Just an aside, I always wondered about the legal and moral implications of teleportation, since you're effectively killing the person. I also wondered why in Star Trek they didn't beam Scotty down, then recreate him from the buffer a few times and what not. Then, with three or four Scotties, they could really make that trash can fly. Oh yeah, and do that to Uhura too, she was a hottie.

Edit: About the Scotties... Maybe there wasn't enough space in engineering for all the chubbies?

[Kagetenshi]

Heresy! There is always room for James Doohan.

~J

[Halabis]

Maybe it isn't teleportation because the intervening space is covered by walking through the metaplanes. Remember, free spirits can disappear and reappear some place else any time they want. That pretty much fits the description of teleportation until we stop and think that they are really traveling to the metaplanes, moving there, then coming back. I would assume this works on a similar principle.

[Tanka]

Sounds like Travelling in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.

Basically, you linked the two areas you want to go between together. It created a door in reality to the area and you just stepped on through.

That's a very, very dumbed down version, but that's about the jist of it.

[ES_Riddle]

Perhaps it is an illusion because it tricks you into stepping through a fourth or fifth spacial dimension while convincing you that you've only stepped through the first three. If you see it for what it is you realize that it is a logical impossiblity to do what you're going to do, and the whole mess collapses.


As an aside, I've always liked Adams's views on teleporting

Ford: It's unpleasantly like being drunk.
Arthur: What's so unpleasant about being drunk?
Ford: Ask a glass of water.

[Herald of Verjig...]

I immediately remember three ways to get around real quick in Earthdawn. One is the one argued here. The next is a spell to take a shortcut through the plane of fire. The last is a side-step into the astral to go jogging there.

In the other two cases, it is very explicit that the travel still occurs, just that it isn't in the physical, and doesn't take anywhere near as long. I would blame the relative ease of the actual travel portion of this spell as a consequence of the hatred the Doorites* have to being visited (although they love helping people through).

*denzines of the metaplane of doors, in a state of war with the metaplane of curtained passageways, although both do about the same for outsiders who show up, they alter memory away any knowledge of the place and push them out to the location they claim to be seeking

[Spookymonster]

[Stumps]

Illusion:
"An erroneous perception of reality."

Erroneous:
"Containing or derived from error; mistaken"

So an illusion is a perception of reality based in a mistaken belief that it is true.

Law: Teleportation cannot happen
Illusion: I can teleport

The only logic that can follow to justify it's placement in the illusion section is that of the theory that states loosely, "We cannot fly because we think it's not possible."

So, creating an illusion strong enough for your mind to accept as reality could make it reality.

(NOTE: this is a bunch of BS, but hey, whatever...I'm just trying to make sense of their reasoning.)

As to why it's not in SR but is in ED.
Simple.
Reason 1)
*ZAP!*
*Troll grins evily at the enemy as he lowers his panther cannon*
*BOOM!!*

Reason 2)
"Hey look, a sniper on the roof"
*ZAP!* (teleport up to sniper)
*sniper rolls against surprise*
*Mana Bolt Sniper*

[Kagetenshi]

Keep the description in mind. It must be cast on the destination first, then the departure location, and the two cannot be more than a mile apart. The above would only work if the mage had already linked a door on the roof with a door near where the team was, and anyone who didn't resist and break the spell would be able to see through and use the portal themselves.

~J

[Stumps]

I've been reading some stuff on quantum teleportation that's got me wanting to read more on it by Anton Zeilinger.
To quote a piece of the real basic level:
"Two particles (are first) entangled. Then a measurement performed on one of the particles jointly with some matter that contains information to be teleported. The measurement erases the information from it's original location, but because of the entanglement, that information resides in an encoded form on the second particle, no matter how distanct it may be. The information can be decoded using the results of the measurement as the key."

Basically, think of it much like Moving a File on your computer to the Recycle Bin.
As it erases from Directory A it recreates itself in the Recycle Bin.
We see the process of the teleportation of the file via a status bar that shows the progression of the teleportation.
In computers, however, we call this "transferring" rather than teleportation.
And we can do it to any location, anywhere in the world, as long as there is a connection for the transferring of information.

In SR/ED, the transferring connection would be the astral plane, and the file would be the target of the spell.

As to it's place as an illusion...I don't know.
I don't have ED.

[Crimson Jack]

Maybe in the fourth world, "illusion" meant something other than what it means today...? ;)

[mfb]

*shrug* my idea fits the facts much more closely than anything posted so far. in ED, teleportation was possible because a different set of magical laws were in place.

[FlakJacket]

Only a mile? Well I suppose that could be got around by having a chain of linked distances. Would be very handy for cities and getting around sneakily. Hell, just have a chain or burried little rooms- they'd only have to be a metre by a metre with a gate on opposite sides- every mile or so that you can just run through.

[Herald of Verjig...]

Among the endless uncountable metaplanes, there is plenty of room for the truly absurd. Or there is just one metaplane, and the absurdity came with the visiting mage (probably due to actually reading that thread about troll brain size).

[Zeel De Mort]

Well, the tenth circle Nethermancer spell Gateway lets you (or others) essentially teleport up to 5,000 miles. That's not bad, and not an illusion.

But as to illusion spells doing a similar thing - that's entirely possible in ED. In that setting, if people believe something enough then it can actually come about. See The Passions, the importance of Names, lots of other illusion spells, etc.

[Rev]

Around half the spells of an illusionist in earthdawn were illusions, and the other half real. They even had real and illusiory versions of the same spell. Imaginary bolt, and real bolt, or something like that. The imaginary one did more damage I think, but could be resisted as an illusion. The real one existed because you have to keep people in doubt about whether they can resist or not.

Anyhow the main thing is that they aren't really "illusion spells" they are "the spells that illusionists can learn".

[akarenti]

I just thought the spell took shortcuts through Astral Space/netherworlds, and used illusion magic to protect the travellers from seeing/being seen by whatever happened to be in said netherworlds at the time.