Joined: Sun Mar 14, 2010 2:37 am
Posts: 278
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p_a_harvey wrote: It's highly likely that the book will link us back to the same physical age again and again, but we're not demanding it.
You speak for yourself. 
I realise this is a very old thread, but it has occurred to me that since instancing is likely never going to go away, especially with the possibly impending fragmentation of Uru into multiple servers, it would be nice to work out a definitive IC explanation of it that doesn't contradict what we know of linking (as opposed to what we are told) and preferably doesn't squick anyone. Now this who-cares-what-world-this-is approach squicks me big time, so I'm going to shove my oar in and suggest another option, one which I've mooted before but which remains, I think, useful, logical and consistent with observed fact.
For the purposes of this explanation, D'Lanor's taxonomy of links is largely irrelevant, since it mostly refers to OOC distinctions, though I respect the care and diligence he has put into it. A new Nexus Age may in fact be created every time we use the Linking Book, but in IC terms I think we can simply assume there are an awful lot of little rooms in one big Nexus Age, such that the minuscule population of the city at the moment will never have to find themselves sharing one.
I am also assuming, pace those who like the idea of an infinity of identical universes, that instancing itself aside, the Age you link to is the same every time. I find the alternative frankly ludicrous (since it implies that if you, say, open the flood barrier in Teledahn before linking out, every one of an infinity of possible Teledahns has to have the flood barrier opened so that if you happen randomly to link to it you won't notice an inconsistency; I find this to be multiplying entities needlessly). And, of course, me being me, this theory does assume that there is an element of creation in the processes of the Art. Sorry about that. 
ICly speaking, what we have to deal with are three kinds of Book; Descriptive (no examples have so far been found), Linking, and Relto. On the face of it, the process is the same for each kind, with the exception that the Relto Book travels through its own link and allows linking within the Age. The other distinction that the Relto Book possesses is that it is the first D'ni Book we know of which has been created by a process akin to mass-production, in that, however many explorers are Called to the Cavern, there will always be a Relto Book for each one. Since the Calling is open-ended, so therefore must the process of Relto Book creation be. Unfortunately, there is no getting around the conclusion that Yeesha must have discovered a way of doing this without being there to control the process. It has to be, for want of a better word, Yeesha magic.
It follows that for each Relto Book thus conjured into existence there is a Relto Age, which contains a number of Linking Books: Teledahn, Gahreesen, Kadish Tolesa and so on. It seems to me likely that Yeesha Wrote this Age only once, stocked it with the Books, and then did whatever she did to arrange for open-ended, continual duplication of the Book and the Age as it stood. Thus bringing into existence, for the first time, an ever-growing number of Linking Books which are not only identically Written, but identical on a molecular level, including a Linking Book to D'ni (Earth) itself.
This is where the credibility stretches a little, because Linking Books are not the same as Descriptive Books, and yet I can see no other possible explanation; the process of duplication of these Linking Books somehow caused a shattering of the Ages linked to into an ever-growing and potentially infinite number of duplicates. I do not believe this was anything Yeesha intended; indeed, I am sure the idea would have appalled her. But it has, manifestly, happened. We have multiple instances of Teledahn and the rest, multiple instances of the Bevin neighbourhood (the fact that each one has a link to its own instance of the main city makes that quite clear) and so on. Even Ages which were not present on Relto at the time of its duplication, such as Minkata, have suffered this same shattering. Perhaps the effect is propagating along the edge of some wavefront, through the interstitial medium.
It will be seen that this theory accounts for the existence of instances, but does not explain why some Ages are instanced by Relto, others by hood, and so on, or why the KI and the Nexus are able to cut across instances and link back to the "original" Ages in some cases but not in others. I know it's incomplete. But, if there really is a group of bahro out there who are angry about something and want to commit violence on someone, I suggest that something like this does suggest itself as a possible cause for their anger...
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