{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/posts/babel-ez",
  "path": "/posts/posts/babel-ez",
  "publishedAt": "2020-05-08T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "tags": [
    "ramble"
  ],
  "textContent": "::: foreword\n\nAfter I shared the old Black Nerve exclusion\nzones, it sparked conversation in a chatroom, which lead to this stream of ideas.\n\n:::\n\n::: related\n\n- Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th\n  Edition\n\n:::\n\njust realized you could probably do some tower of babel exclusion. that would be kinda neat\n\n> That would be cool! Do you think you'd want to emphasise the\n> universal primordial language like the speaking in tongues from Snow\n> Crash, or the tower that reaches the heavens like that Ted Chiang\n> short story?\n\nnot sure.  it was a random brainwave, and im not yet sure where i\nwould take it\n\nthe big hurdle with fauxclusions is you shouldnt just slap a magic\neffect inside a zone.  ideally there should be some interesting nuance\nor knock-on effect to it\n\nAW's done this pretty well with the exclusions we've seen.  so we'd\nhave to figure out what the straw that brought the exclusion was, and\nideally avoid the obvious ones\n\nso, let's brainstorm the Tower of Babel Exclusion Zone (TBEZ).\nobviously, the core idea is a language that everyone speaks.\n\nso there's three ways to handle this, either:\n\n1) it's completely mundane, just an Ur-language that was extremely\nwidespread, and the exclusion zone made it (temporarily, or\ncontinually?) antimemetic; or\n\n2) it's a universal translation effect, and the exclusion\nbroke/contained it; or\n\n3) it was a magically created language\n\nnow, there's a few things you'd have to decided about the way the\nexclusion works.  if it's 1 or 3, is it possible to go into the zone,\nlearn the language, and come back out knowing it?  can you speak to\nother people who know it outside of the zone?  and for all three, why\nwas it excluded? it would have to have been A) just the fact of the\nuniversal language itself caused it (boring), or B) some interaction\nof the language with another effect (probably memetics)\n\n#1 is pretty interesting on its own — i find the idea of a completely\nmundane language like english getting excluded funny.  \"latin didn't\ndie, it was MURDERED\".  there are a few ways you could pull this off.\nmaybe someone managed to enchant the language, or connect it some\nmagical effect.\n\nmaybe, saphir-worf style, there's a mental hazard concept only\narticulate in this language, or most ably articulable. ooh, or maybe\nsomeone went to war with the empire that spoke this language, and\ncaused the exclusion as a way to undermine it!\n\n#2 is perhaps the most boring.  (it's also sort of (WtC spoilers) [the\neventual Li'o exclusion]{.spoiler} without any other fun stuff).  you\ncould still pull an interesting exclusion out of it.\n\nmaybe there was a R&D center pushing the boundaries of the translation\nmagic, and found a way to translate the wind, or earthquakes, or the\nscreaming of stars.  maybe they translated the equations of reality\ninto some mind-warping insight, or maybe an mental hazard was found\nand the translation effect allowed it to spread too readily.  \n\nthere's also some free variables here.  was it just a spell people\ncast from time to time, in specific locations, or was there a\nuniversal translation engulfing all of babel?  or was the universal\ntranslation extending over the whole world, excluded to babel to\ncontain something?\n\n#3 i also like.  there's a few things you can do with a magical\nlanguage.  did the language augment speaker's mental faculties?  did\nit allow access to some powerful magic?  was someone using the\nlanguage as a vector for controlling people? (this might be more (1)\nterritory, but maybe it was a kind of fantasy newspeak which\nrestricted thought?)\n\nor here's a wacky way to handle the idea, maybe people had different\nideas about how to use the language.  maybe some people wanted to make\nthe language easier to speak for themselves, maybe some wanted the\nlanguage more adapted for certain kinds of spells.  the language\nunderwent natural drift and bifurcation, and babel is just the last\nplace people still speak the ancient form.\n\nand one shouldn't neglect the knock-on effects.\n\n1) are there still ancient ruins with knowledge sealed away in the\nancient language?  are there classicists who travel to the TBEZ to\nlearn the language and decrypt the crypts?  or are speakers of the\nlanguage persecuted by those who originally destroyed the empire?\n\n2) is the TBEZ a neutral site of diplomancy where wildly different\ncultures go to speak to each other?  or do the current denizens make\nthis perilous?  will the party brave those dangers, bringing their\nmysterious dead language scroll to where they can read it?\n\n3) does whatever effect which caused the TBEZ still run rampant?  are\nthere beings given form by this magical language?  does anyone try to\naccess to the zone in hopes of mastering whatever power was wielded by\nspeakers of the language?\n\n---\n\nas for TBEZ specifically as a big-ass tower, there are less\npossibilities there.  you'd probably want some big risk incurred by\nbuilding a tower that big.\n\nalthough, i do have something in my setting that could be a twist on\nthe idea.  my world has so-called \"tetratowers\",^[Future note: I have\nno memory of this.]  created by engineering around a similar effect\nwhich had allowed Total Banishment.  the tetratowers extend\nextradimensionally fourthward, but if you built one \"tall\" enough, you\nmight catch the eye of whatever it was the pulled on the Endless\nPerpendicular, or its conspecifics\n\naltho i worry that would just be a rehash of the endless\nperpendicular",
  "title": "Ideas for a Babel Exclusion Zone"
}