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Headscratchers / Magic Ex Libris

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  • Just what are the limits of libriomancy? Something that really got to me was the question, what would happen if a porter tried to pull out a book that never existed in reality? A fictional one. Would it be gibberish because of people's conflicting ideas of what the book would say? How would it interact with libraries with all the books in them, like the one Isaac used to pull out the book he needed in book 1? What if it was a book on magic that didn't work in the Librio-verse but did in its own fiction? Let's say, Ebenezer McCoy's Elementary Magic from Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files? What about an object that grants powers based on something that doesn't exist? Let's say, a Primer from Mage: The Ascension. It's a book that forcefully Awakens the Avatar (a special shard of the human soul that everyone has but can lose through certain rituals that makes magic possible) of anyone who reads and understands it completely. And if being a libriomancer causes books you write to be much more dangerous, how does that interact with Anti-Magic and Power Nullifier artifacts? If a libriomancer drank some weirsbane or wore a Thorn Manacle while writing, would the books still carry the same side effects? It's well established that pulling sapient beings out of a book renders them insane, either from the shock of becoming flesh and blood or from the fact that no book can detail a mind completely enough for it not to have large pieces missing. What about entities whose minds, personalities, and behaviors are shaped by belief in them, like gods in Rick Riordan's universe, the Iron Druid Chronicles, and the Scion? Would their minds eventually complete or restore themselves due to that belief? So many questions.
    • It's explicitly stated in Libriomancer that libriomancers can only pull out books that already exist in the real world as of that moment. Why this affects books and not, say, thermal detonators, lightsabers, or other such isn't clear, but given that clarity of description is implied to be part of what makes an item retrievable, "can't bring into reality because there's no common shared concept of the contents" seems a likely explanation.
    • Using libriomancy on a book you wrote yourself is dangerous because the characters came from your mind in the first place, so you get possessed immediately if you try it. As for God Needs Prayer Badly, they might stabilize eventually, but nobody wants to try that experiment because until and unless they do, you've got a Mad God running around!

  • How can balefire from The Wheel of Time undo the lock? A beam "the height of a man" only undid a few hours, so how can a beam no wider than the book undo months?

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