[Torg] Penicillin aside

[Travis James Hall]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: torg-bounces at justintimeadventures.com 
> [mailto:torg-bounces at justintimeadventures.com] On Behalf Of 
> Stephen John Smoogen
> Sent: Sunday, 28 February 2010 3:15 PM
> To: torg at justintimeadventures.com
> Subject: Re: [Torg] Penicillin aside
> 
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 8:25 PM, Travis James Hall
> <travisjhall at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> 
> I agree with this.. the issue though is WHICH tool is causing the
> effect at a lower axiom. There are stories that ancient cultures used
> various poultices to cure people. It has been assumed from some of the
> ingredients that those poultices gathered bread molds and similar
> anti-bacterial agents and that was why they worked.

You are overlooking some of the relevant facts of the example. Screw ancient
cultures. There are written records from the late 19th Century of people
applying moulds to wounds in an attempt to suppress infection.

> However that is
> speculation using a pure science look at history.

It is not speculation. There is quite good historical evidence that moulds
were used to treat or prevent infection, and that they had a degree of
efficacy. There are even records of people who were at least attempting to
scientifically determine the processes at work, apparently, again, with a
degree of success.

And there's the problem with your approach to this. You keep thinking we are
talking about something that is merely rumoured to have occurred long, long
ago without a natural cause. We're not. There is a real, natural effect
here, and if you want that to not be the case, it isn't the axiom benchmarks
that have to be changed, but the actual, physical world itself.

Assuming you don't come up with an alternative universe with a different
natural world, there really is no question of which tool provides the
effect. Given a sufficient Tech axiom, proper application of the right mould
to a wound suppresses infection.

> In a Torg universe
> it could have just as likely that they called on magic or spiritual
> means to get it to work, but our viewpoint would be different.

There could *also* be a Magical or Spiritual tool being used for similar
effect. That changes nothing about the Tech tool.

> I should not have used the word suppressed. I was thinking what you
> state below and crossed that thought with something else. What I meant
> here was that if we were at a Torg Tech level of say 10 and moldy
> bread was a spell component of a heal spell or part of a goddess
> incantation.. it would be the spiritual/magical effect that really did
> the work. However if a Core Earth person read this in a history book
> they would assume it was the moldy bread that cured the person.

But again, that's not what the history books describe in this case. Sure, a
modern reader could speculate incorrectly as to what causes the effect when
a certain ritual is performed, but the historical evidence in this case does
not describe a ritual.

I can think of cases in which what you are talking about does apply. It just
isn't this case.

For an example of that, look at kykeon, the sacred drink of the initiates of
the ancient Greek Eleusian Mysteries. It was used in rituals that were
believed to culminate in visions of the gods and the world beyond ours.
Today we speculate concerning what the ingredients might have been, but
there is no hard evidence concerning it, nor has anyone managed to
consistently reproduce an effect that closely matches what we know of those
visions, rituals and substances. We still guess at physical processes, but
as it is a ritual from over 2000 years ago that we can't reproduce, in Torg,
there's reasonable good reason to classify it as a true Spiritual tool.

> That was more my take. If the  spirit or magic axiom is 12?+.. the
> spirits could actively blunt, break, etc if they are not pleased as
> many folktales and legends of what pixies, domuvai and bogons do if
> they aren't properly taken care of. In many ancient cultures a farmer
> would need to make sure he had offered proper supplication to the
> fairy/goblin folk or they would actively make technology not work. All
> it took for the 'technology' to work was to make amends.

Yes, but then you have to ask the question, why did those spirits stop
breaking the tool when we made it better? In fact, not just stop breaking
the better tool, but stop breaking the original tool, since we can now use
the unrefined anti-bacterial moulds without supplication. (We don't, because
it isn't a very good tool, but we can.)

And your rituals to appease these spirits have to be just things that they
like to observe us doing, and so they choose to let the tool work. If it
requires actual use of a Spiritual tool by a human who isn't a trained to
the point of having the Focus skill, that needs a Spiritual axiom at 20+.

It isn't at all a good fit for the case in question.

Travis Hall