The Campaign: Information Control Is Power

(Continuing from this post.)

We've tackled cloning (and its implications), and yesterday we tackled basic logistics. Today? Communications.

From the get-go, there's been Weird Stuff going around involving communications. Telepathy, interactive illusions, and many more such tropes abound in Appendix N's corpus of literature. We see this reflected in spells like Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, ESP, Speak With Animals, Speak With Dead, Commune, Message and more. (See the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide.)

What happens when you decide you want to use them without having to be that sort of spell-caster, or if you are to have to spend time memorizing each application of said spell (complete with all required components)? You make items that can do it for you.

I've mentioned potions and scrolls previously; those become available for 7th level spell-casters (with the aide of an Alchemist for potions). For everything else, you'll need a Magic-User with Enchant An Item and (likely) Permanency.

The Use-Case

Unlike Uncle George's Space Opera, in most campaigns there's plenty of ink and quills (or brushes) to go around to squiggle messages on paper or vellum and either dispatch by courier or archive in a library. Therefore the reason to use such unusual means to communicate--either in present time about present affairs, or with the future about past events (what you do when you archive stuff)--needs some form of justification. No, not by the Referee; by the user.

In most campaigns, voice is sufficient for communication when the receiptent is in the speaker's presence and there isn't too much noise; it is only when what is said cannot be openly heard that alternatives are considered. (e.g. texting to someone else at the far end of a long table). Using communications technologies to go beyond that natural limit is an attempt to artificially expand those limits, allowing command and control as if in the same room to go on across far larger distances.

Similarly, needing something other than physical text as archival media is necessary only when security is so paramount that the very medium has to become a security measure- we're well past putting Explosive Runes and Illusory Script down on a tome. For the purposes of an archive, time itself is a security threat; even the most ideal conditions only reduce wear on physical media to a minimum- it does not eliminate it entirely. If what is archived is a security threat for more ordinary reasons (e.g. you're archving how to make automata fueled by the user's determination), having it in a medium other than a book or scroll.

Having a medium that is both storage and security measure, such as an illusory persona that controls access to the non-standard archive medium (e.g. a psuedo-genie that controls who can access the widget and then what they can access, which doubles as a long-distance communications device) is the sort of use case that sufficiently competent high-level characters would desire- and, if sufficiently intelligence or wise, collaborate to create.

A Complex Creation

In both respects, coming up with a magical device that has the same function (and functionality) as Uncle George's hologram technology--while unusual--is not impossible. What makes it unusual is what is required: spells from at least two spell-casting classes (Magic-User and Illusionist). If the creator is not a demigod or greater being, then you've got a very monomanical magician-artificer (and thus someone that really wants to #winatrpgs).

At the very least, in addition to the spells that enchant and make permanent the enchantments, you'll need all of the spells in the final device. This thing is going to take a dragon's hoard of treasure to fund, and months of time in labor, but once it is done it's about as immortal as a cloning facility- especially if the creator intended that the device be capable of instruction.

No, I'm not going to give a specific outline on creating such a thing; that depends on what the user's going to be able to do with it and how.

Why?

Because the process can be replicated, and the savvy magician-artificer will ensure that this knowledge is within the archive; it's akin to selling the complete step-by-step guide to making a new copy of the very 3D Printer you just got with the printer you just got.

And reverse-engineering something that is used for long-distance communication is well within the capabilities of a Magic-User, probably within that of an Illusionist, and maybe those of Clerics and Druids- it depends on the specifics of the device and its operation. (Someone talking through magic pools in sacred groves is not going to be someone that makes magic orbs to ponder upon while waiting for Sasha The Sorceress to answer that late-night message.)

But We Can Go Bigger

Okay, making things for powerful spell-casters is one thing. What about a more general audience?

What about turning that library into a fully interactive experience, where exceptional librarians are preserved (after a fashion) as the basis for those illusory simulacra, and just about anyone can come in and make an inquiry only to get a useful answer in moments instead of "Let me see if that volume's in the collection."

What about arranging the long-distance widget to encompass a room or chamber, where the users can be in their own rooms or chambers and communicate as if all in the same space?

You can do this by the book in AD&D.

"But who would do this?"

Everyone, for the same reason it's used where such technologies are available in real life. You think merchants wouldn't throw gold at it? You think armies wouldn't march to possess it? Of course they would; leaders aren't stupid- they know advantages when they see them.

The pressure comes when--like cloning--just one player pulls this off. If one player in a campaign can get a leg up on communications and information control, they gain a massive advantage over their rivals and enemies, an advantage that those others will seek to remedy as soon as they can lest they be conquered and knocked out of the game.

Who wants to know where enemy armies are before everyone else? Who wants to know the results of battles--of wars--before everyone else? Who wants to be able to secure their secrets better than anyone else, and then transmit those secrets further and faster than anyone else?

via GIPHY

Information control is power. The means to do in a campaign what goes on daily in real life now are in the rules; you need only (a) become capable of using the component spells and abilities, (b) have the means (time and materials) to put it all together into a device, and then (c) replicate the device to create a network- at which point Network Effects kick in and the effect's impact grows exponetially with each device's creation and installation.

And that's just what a player-character can do by the book. If a current character in a campaign can do this, it is unlikely that it hasn't already been done- so such things should be found in ruins and dungeons and other mysterious Places Of Power. Entire megadungeons can be built around this idea if someone is so inclined.