"Okay — so not like a hard numerical limit, but rather one based on people's perception," he observes, scribbling this down. "What about events that happen in mutually contradictory ways for different people? Like two people both winning a lucky coin flip, and the fact that they both remember winning just doesn't come up because they move in different social circles? How much of that kind of thing is okay, and how important is it that everyone stays in one causally connected universe?"

She purses her lips and hums. 

"I feel like at minimum that should be opt-in? I also seperately have an intuition that that's icky and not super allowed, but I also also have an intuition that weird time magic is fun and interesting? Probably the best synthesis for that is that there's some sort of selection effect around changing how you interact with time and casuality, such that if you want you can pursue that branch of magic, but that also unmoors you in a relatively symmetrical way that allows for some of that kind of weird stuff to happen, but I'm not the most sure of that..." 

She fusses her fingers timidly back through her hair. 

Hammond taps a flipper to his lip in thought.

"That kind of opting-in to a particular kind of magic — that ties neatly into my next set of questions. Are there other things that magic shouldn't be able to do? Are there limits on what kind of 'happy ending' destiny should be able to provide, given enough time?"

"Personally... I feel like there ought to be in principle a diagrammable map of how causality has happened? It might be hard to understand, but it should be notionally constructable and notionally reconstructable. Beyond that... probably make it impossible to kill people? You can maybe quibble a bit about that but I think that having some sort of stasis thing that you can set up that means that you can be resuscitated conditionally that you have to generate with a clear head, an honest heart and arbitrarily large amounts of thinking time is probably enough to cover those problems. There's probably more of that kind of restriction against certain very bad things happening that are perfectly colorable, but I feel less comfortable saying that I have a good enough solution, there. Honestly... I don't think you need any particularly absolute rules, there, as long as big bad things have enough of a defense over offense bias? There's no reason to say that it's axiomatically impossible to blow up earth if it's instead just sort of trivially stoppable, say. I don't want to prescribe any particular limits to the happy ending thing, beyond the 'no killing people' rule. I suppose you could add some sort of rule restricting creating conciousnesses that don't or wouldn't endorse existing? Arguably that's covered enough by the happy ending rule, though." 

"So no real limits, except that there is a way to diagram causality and there's no real death," he notes. "And you prefer making defense easy over imposing strict limits. What are your thoughts on afterlives? A lot of places seem to end up with those as part of the whole 'no true death' thing."

"Oh, bother," he adds, after a moment of jotting. "Do you happen to have a spare pen I could borrow? Mine's run out of ink."

"Here." 

She walks over to a cabinet and pulls one out, and passes it over to him. 

"I think they're a bit of a boondoogle, to be honest? I feel like there's no real need to have an extra special realm for activities to do while being dead, when you can just not be dead and do those things? I don't have any objection in principle to them existing, if you're not going to just ressurect everyone and make everyone properly immortal, but they're not nesscary for my ideal by any means." 

He takes the new pen and makes some little circles to get the ink flowing.

"That makes sense," he agrees. "Indifferent ... to ... afterlives."

He flips back to the beginning of his list of questions and looks over them again.

"So, is there anything else you want to cover about the outcomes or broad approaches of magic? I feel like I've got a pretty decent handle on what you're picturing for the happy-ending destinies part, but there's another set of questions about aesthetics that I'd like to go through if you're amenable."

"I generally like more comprehensive systems of magic - it should probably be reasonably fast to use and at least a little intuitive to start people off with. Beyond that.. magic should be fun to study, I think? Having a bunch of different subfields that work best for those with different mentalities and virtues and all might be good. But I think that's blending into aesthetics, so!" 

She meanders back into her chair. 

"Hit me?"

"One way magic systems can vary is whether the magic comes from within an individual, from tapping into natural forces, from some purposive entity, or a combination," he begins. "Which of those would you prefer?"

"I mean... You've already established that the magic is going to ultimately come from the Will of Magic, right? But beyond that... personally like magic coming largely from a given person's soul and/or biology, with the rest coming from comsological forces or 'the spirit world' or something like that, mostly in connection with big rituals and really technical stuff. Feel like when it's just personal it can make things too white roomy and doesn't offer enough incentive to go out and touch grass, you know? But having it be in and of you is also important to me."

Hammond nods.

"The Will of Magic isn't really purposive in the way I meant it," he notes. "I was more referring to things like gods or spirits. But if you prefer a mix, that's good to know. I take it that you wouldn't want 'personal magic' and 'ritual magic' to be completely different subfields? You'd want them to have some level of crossover or synergy?"

"Yeah - something where as you slowly learn more you get more comfortable with group casting and tapping into those sources of power." 

"Okay, that makes sense. You mentioned magic having subfields — how were you imagining those being arranged? In an elemental system, by what mental traits work with each kind of magic, or something else? And do you see the subfields being baked into how magic works, or arising more naturally as the product of people imposing structure on a more integrated fundamental reality?"

"I kind of like the idea of it being a mix of those? One way I was picturing it was that there'd be a certain amount of magic intuitive to people from the moment magic awakens that correlates with their character, but that 'fields' persay aren't strictly enforced? Probably there's some sort of classical elemental cycle and a few other things like that, but you can specialize or create new subfields arbitrarily by working with things mechanistically or doing weird things on a spiritual level. That's probably my favorite option, but you could also just have it be that there's a few different dimensions of magical potential based on the virtues you have and 'fields' coming out organically from different tradeoffs between the factors, and I could see that being just as good." 

"When you say 'create new subfields', do you mean essentially giving a name to a space of possibilities that were already there, or more like creating a family of related techniques or spells by doing a big ritual?" Hammond clarifies.

"I was thinking for the former, but the latter is cool too, especially if it works to create spell subcomponents." 

"Alright! Let's see ..."

He scans down the list of aesthetics questions.

"What do you think using magic should look like? Is it a purely internal thing, or should there be gestural or verbal components? Do magical effects manifest as subtle shifts in the environment, brightly glowing special effects, or something in between?"

"I think it should probably depend on your mastery and what kind of magic you're doing? My thought is that most instinctive magic would usually require all those components and be just - flashy, but the more you learn the more subtle you can be and the more effortlessly you can do it. I do like big brilliant rune circles and flaring auras of power, though, so maybe make those optimal for big rituals and digging deep for raw power? I do also like big epic magic things that start off slowly, though, and some magics that are less blatant overall should probably be easier to hide. I like big rune circles too 'cause they're a natural starting point for magic research! Do feel a bit like a lot of that sort of thing just sort of comes out of thin air. Probably magic done with spirits is more subtle, since it's slower and more already part of the world." 

He scribbles this down.

"How do you feel about fueling magic in different ways? Rituals involving sacrifice, or consumable material components, that sort of thing? Do you think magic should interact with mental or physical stamina?"

"I feel like most magic should be pretty easy? I get the idea of having sacrificial magic being a big useful part of things, but if we're trying to make things just work well... I guess it can be possible but just not very efficient, such that it's usually not worth it? Being more magical and using more magic if anything I think should help physical and mental stamina. Being able to 'overdraw' into your stamina pools is classical and a fine thing to include, but I think mostly that should be for extreme feats of endurance, sloppiness or competitions where very marginal edges matter. I just... don't like getting rid of useful things." 

Hammond scratches his head with the tip of a flipper.

"When you say you don't like getting rid of useful things, what exactly do you mean? Just existing physical things, or more broadly? If there were some kind of resource that naturally regenerated over time that you had to consume to create magic effects, would that trouble you?"

"Mostly it's just that I don't like the idea of - some sort of magic being undoable, or magic being - something likely to be bad for you, if you use it a lot? I feel like a good, positive magic system should encourage you to use it a lot, and making it heavily lean on any resource besides maybe itself - even an internal readily regenerating one - kind of goes against that. Naturally regenerating resources are a little better?" 

She taps her fingers against the table. 

"If the regeneration rate is reasonable enough, a lot of the concern fades away, and I just have a mild dislike for it as a 'bookkeeping' thing, you know?" 

She ducks her head down a bit timidly. 

"Oh, that makes sense!"

He notes this down, apparently oblivious to her chagrin.

"That sort of ties in to the last group of aesthetic questions — you want magic to be used a lot; how long do you think it should take to learn magic to different levels of competence? How long do you think it should take to cause different kinds of magical effect?"

"It's hard to be even kind of comprehensive, but..." 

She sways her head from side to side in thought, her arm swinging up around the back of her chair. 

"Improving your body to peak human should probably be pretty trivial, with the magical girlfriend's help, or without it, if those aren't a thing. Learning magic should probably be kind of S-curvey? Though I think a big problem with a lot of magic systems is that you have to wait a good while for your 'character concept' to come online, and that just sucks. You should be able to do a handful of things in a given general field pretty quickly - within a week, probably, and basically immediate for really simple and primal things. But then probably it transitions to a long journeymanship of maybe a decade or so, and then a slower, steadier paradigm at the master level? Having that be something discrete could be cool, but that's not an opinion I hold super duper strongly?" 

"By something discrete, you mean having specific levels of achievement that are actually set apart from each other, instead of being a continuous increase in skill?" he clarifies.