CURSE YOU, FINGERS
Oct. 5th, 2010 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yukieI really wish I was better at drawing tech. Because like - I KNOW what the interior of the Mana Fortress's pilot's chamber looks like in my head completely, I could build it if you gave me stuff for a model, BUT I CANNOT DRAW IT WORTH A SHIT.
...Damn it. This means I need to stop slacking off and get some minor drafting supplies XD; French curves and stuff. I keep meaning to do it and putting it off.
Oh well. D: In lieu of art, have some of my many words! This ma not be canonical to the big old collab proper but it is to the stuff in my head? XD
Suffice it to say, the Fortress does use mana - and a lot of it - to stay aloft. It's almost a tiny floating city. It was manufactured in the first place to be a flying fortress, back during the Ancients' War. Most of the details of that war are lost on account of because there was a near-apocalypse. That tends to happen when the Mana God-Beast headbutts your floating city...
There's enough space for quite a few people to live and work in there. The army that used it was of a good size.
The Fortress has one pilot. This was done to ensure that no one would just up and crash it because they could. The pilot can steer the Fortress from anywhere inside it because of the way the Fortress and pilot interact.
The pilot's chamber doesn't look like anything you'd expect an airship's cockpit to be. There's a big damned window in the front, and two large sized !quartz crystals about three feet apart before the window. They're identical, and both have a flat place for the pilot to place his or her hands on. Once the pilot does this, the Fortress is aware of them as its pilot. No, i don't know how the Ancients did that either. Either way, you end up with a pilot who is linked to the Fortress and thus can see where he or she is going in any flat shiny surface within the fortress. The control panel is with the pilot at all times. It's visualized, and manifests according to that. It will in all probability look different for every pilot depending on what they think it should be. (To get an idea of what this might look like, watch Noble Darcia on Wolf's Rain when he invades the facility the 'flower' is in. The conjuring he does, that flat plane of sigils, looks a lot like what you might see conjured by the Fortress's pilot.)
So the reason the Fortress has only one pilot at a time (it can have more than one pilot overall, but only one can fly it per sortie) is because it connects to the pilot's aura and mind. The mana flow of the pilot becomes part of the Fortress and communication occurs through that channel.
So yes, the Fortress has some limited sentience. It isn't necessarily self-aware, but it has an AI of a sort.
That's why Randi didn't just jack it and tell it to destruct itself. It wouldn't have acknowledged him as the pilot.
In closing, for now - those weird !howling noises are made by the Fortress itself. No, the Fortress is not a spacewhale. I'm not entirely sure WHY it makes those noises. It has something to do with mana flow and strain on the propulsion/flying mechanisms.
Blar blar more as I think about it!
...Damn it. This means I need to stop slacking off and get some minor drafting supplies XD; French curves and stuff. I keep meaning to do it and putting it off.
Oh well. D: In lieu of art, have some of my many words! This ma not be canonical to the big old collab proper but it is to the stuff in my head? XD
Suffice it to say, the Fortress does use mana - and a lot of it - to stay aloft. It's almost a tiny floating city. It was manufactured in the first place to be a flying fortress, back during the Ancients' War. Most of the details of that war are lost on account of because there was a near-apocalypse. That tends to happen when the Mana God-Beast headbutts your floating city...
There's enough space for quite a few people to live and work in there. The army that used it was of a good size.
The Fortress has one pilot. This was done to ensure that no one would just up and crash it because they could. The pilot can steer the Fortress from anywhere inside it because of the way the Fortress and pilot interact.
The pilot's chamber doesn't look like anything you'd expect an airship's cockpit to be. There's a big damned window in the front, and two large sized !quartz crystals about three feet apart before the window. They're identical, and both have a flat place for the pilot to place his or her hands on. Once the pilot does this, the Fortress is aware of them as its pilot. No, i don't know how the Ancients did that either. Either way, you end up with a pilot who is linked to the Fortress and thus can see where he or she is going in any flat shiny surface within the fortress. The control panel is with the pilot at all times. It's visualized, and manifests according to that. It will in all probability look different for every pilot depending on what they think it should be. (To get an idea of what this might look like, watch Noble Darcia on Wolf's Rain when he invades the facility the 'flower' is in. The conjuring he does, that flat plane of sigils, looks a lot like what you might see conjured by the Fortress's pilot.)
So the reason the Fortress has only one pilot at a time (it can have more than one pilot overall, but only one can fly it per sortie) is because it connects to the pilot's aura and mind. The mana flow of the pilot becomes part of the Fortress and communication occurs through that channel.
So yes, the Fortress has some limited sentience. It isn't necessarily self-aware, but it has an AI of a sort.
That's why Randi didn't just jack it and tell it to destruct itself. It wouldn't have acknowledged him as the pilot.
In closing, for now - those weird !howling noises are made by the Fortress itself. No, the Fortress is not a spacewhale. I'm not entirely sure WHY it makes those noises. It has something to do with mana flow and strain on the propulsion/flying mechanisms.
Blar blar more as I think about it!