A particularly frustrating dimension of returning to this site after so many months of . . . ::gestures vaguely at everything:: . . . is my inability to locate prior writings. Like, I’ve been able to sift through previous posts on just about any topic, finding the one that says the thing I’m trying to say again (but in a different way) and it makes the whole process that much smoother. I rather dislike repeating myself because I feel as though I’m making absolutely no progress, despite knowing that this site is as much a part of my creative process as anything else . . .
And so I find myself rambling again. Which is appropriate, in a way, since the topic is the spell confusion.
Well . . . more accurately, the topic is magic that produces a general feeling of confusion, disrupting actions and making a mess of things. I’ve come across an enchantment spell, breath of bewilderment, which I’m trying to fit into the offering for second level magics. It’s evocative in the sense that there’s a tangible, physical effect involved (the caster breathes out a cloud of smoke that causes any creature it touches to be momentarily distracted and confused); it targets a wide number of creatures; and its duration is short, making it useful for disrupting a fight (or any situation, really) but not so powerful as to dominate it entirely. Indeed, as written, I don’t feel there’s much change required to make it work. It simply causes any creature that fails a save to lose their next round of actions, as though stunned. (I probably won’t include the knockback or stagger effect, since forcing up to 24 creatures to lose their actions in combat is a pretty significant thing.)
Regardless, simply reading this spell has me pondering what to do with similar magics. Confusion, for instance, is a classic (going all the way back to Chainmail); but . . . well, I’m not sure how to put it other than to say: I don’t like the spell’s effects. They’ve always felt too narrow for my tastes. In terms of practicality, they’re okay. Each round, an affected creature rolls dice to see what action it takes. The list is short, allowing a chance of acting normally, but mostly results in the target doing nothing because its thoughts are addled and its mind is mush.
It’s just . . . these two spells make me wonder how many more there are, that follow a similar theme, that of confusing the target and making them incapable of taking meaningful action.
. . . actually, there aren’t that many. Bafflement causes a creature to become confused and disorient, incapable of any ration action or conversation. Chaos works like a mass confusion, affected several targets at once. Delerium only affects a sleeping creature, causing it to talk at random, potentially revealing important information. Discord causes affected creatures to turn against their allies. There are three different distraction spells that generally have the same effect, preventing their targets from taking meaningful action for the spell’s duration. And there’s a few spells that deal with memory alteration or suppression, or that hypnotize the targets; either of these could be used to create a confusing situation or to limit a creature’s ability to take actions.
Looks like I need to branch out a little . . .
It’s generally understood that the average human brain has 100 billion neurons. Not all of them are connected to each other, of course, so there total number of possible connections is difficult to state with absolute certainty. Still, more interested and better educated persons estimate that our minds have the potential for upwards of 10^15 connections. (That’s a quadrillion, a number that’s so large, it should break most minds just trying to imagine it; but that’s a post for another day.)
Our nervous system contains over two billion nerve endings in just our skin (the largest single organ of the body). The body as a whole has around seven billion nerve endings. Most of these are specialized, receiving certain types of information, such as pressure, heat, pain, etc. We receive over 11 million bits of information (through the central nervous system) every second but can only consciously process about 50 bits per second.
This consciousness barrier is critical to understanding how “confusion” magic might work; but let’s put a pin in that and address the word, itself.
confusion (noun):
- lack of understanding; uncertainty.
- the state of being bewildered or unclear in one’s mind about something.
Synonyms include: (for the former) indecision, hesitation, skepticism, doubt, ignorance; and (for the latter) bewilderment, stupefaction, shock, daze, wonder (or wonderment).
Interestingly, confusion is also a medical term, usually a symptom of a larger problem (like a concussion, high fever or hypothermia). There are three types of a confusion (medically speaking): hypoactive, hyperactive and mixed (the patient bounces between low and high states of activity).
Okay, set that aside for a moment, we’ll come back to both points soon enough, let’s look at one more: how do we think? That is to say, what is the process by which we generate conscious (or unconscious) thoughts?
This one is a bit trickier, mainly because it’s a field I don’t understand all that well and I’m concerned I’m going to mess it up. Regardless, from what I can gather online, the theory goes that the human mind is not too dissimilar from a computer (although the theory was first advanced back before computers were ubiquitous in modern society), in the sense that it receives information, processes that information, and either stores it for short or long term use, or discards it.
Naturally, there’s a lot more detail that goes into the theory. There are several levels of cognition, i.e. the process of receiving, interpreting and storing information. Memory comes into it, as a distinct process of retrieving and using stored information. But for our purposes, the general shape of these cognitive processes might be understood as:
where the critical focus is that first starburst, the “difference between input and prediction.”
In other words, I envision this one aspect of enchantment magic (i.e. confusion) as being a sort of mental static. We’re messing with the signals inside the mind, causing information along one set of pathways to become jumbled, replaced with something unexpected, or simply cut off entirely.
Basically, confusion magic fucks with the mental processes that generate cognition. And this is where we can bring ourselves back to the points listed above:
- The body receives information and passes it through the central nervous system* to the brain;
- the brain has to process that information before it can either 1) reject it entirely or 2) store it for immediate or long-term use; and
- there’s a hierarchy of mechanical effects, in terms of:
- how debilitating the effect is;
- how long the effect lasts;
- and how many persons are affected at one time;
- all of which can be sorted according to key words or terms, which helps create a range of confusion-like spells.
* excluding the autonomic system, because the effects of messing with the body’s automatic processes, like breathing or heart rate, should fall under necromancy or alteration.
We should note that there are certain effects which we must exclude from the offering, on the basis that they already exist under the illusion school. Blindness or deafness, for instance, are two spells that interfere with the body’s ability to perceive its environment. We might think of them as interrupted sensory information within the body, probably at the point where the brain is processing information; but it’s just as easy to think of them, since they’re in the illusion school, as creating a barrier between the outside world and the body. The point of interruption is external, not internal; and I see this as another critical point when understanding how enchantment magic functions. These spells target the body’s (or mind’s) inner workings, as opposed to acting as an outside force on the body.
Thus, this line of spells ~ which would include key words such as confusion, bewilderment, ignorance, stupefaction, daze, wonderment, etc. ~ work by disrupting the mind’s natural processing abilities. They substitute information or block it entirely (or some degree of both), causing a general sense of hesitancy as the person tries to figure out what the hell is going on around them (a form of hypoactive confusion); or we might describe the effect as reacting to false or misunderstood stimuli (a form of hyperactive confusion). Remember, though, since we’re talking about crossing wires within the mind, as opposed to receiving bad information from the outside world, we want to remain a little fuzzy on the exact details. A spell like confusion might make a person hesitate, attack an ally, move a random direction for no (externally) discernable reason, or perform a handful of other limited actions (like letting their guard down against an obvious threat).
In this way, this particular spell becomes a baseline for comparison to other similar magics. At the lower end of the spectrum, we should have spells that simply cause their targets to hesitate (distraction, daze); while at the higher end, these spells should result in targets taking different actions, up to and including the literal opposite of whatever they intended.
Further, I can see this leading to a better offering of “memory altering” spells. A spell that suppresses a character’s skill for a period of time (including, possibly, the ability to wield a weapon or to wear armor effectively). Another that forces the target to forget the past few rounds or minutes of time. At the highest levels, something that lets the caster go after specific knowledge or memories.
Okay, I think that’s good for now. Off to write more spells . . .
Crossing the 'Verse 
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