Crankery Friday: The parking ramp dinosaur was Rhetors trying to accomplish Incanter feats, and Incanters trying to accomplish Rhetor feats
This explains the clumsiness
In the run-up to the Third Sack, the factions “Incanters” and “Rhetors” had already established a multigenerational rivalry:
+2700: Growing rivalry between Procian and Halikaarnian Orders gives rise to Sæcular legends of the Rhetors and the Incanters.
+2780: During a Decennial Apert, the Sæcular Power becomes aware of extraordinary kinds of praxis being developed by Rhetors and Incanters.
+2787 to +2856: Third Sack depopulates all concents except for the Three Inviolates.
(Anathem)
That’s at least 87 years of those factions battling under those names.1 And it was just a battle in the Halikaarnian/Procian war going back much further. Halikaarnians and Procians were partially motivated by a desire to gain the upper hand in that metatheoric struggle:
[Moyra] was speaking of the two avout who had developed the notion of Complex Protism. "[Uthentine’s and Erasmas’s treatise] received scant notice until the Twenty-seventh Century, when Fraa Clathrand, a Centenarian—later in his life, a Millenarian—at Saunt Edhar, casting an eye over these diagrams, remarked on the isomorphism between the causality-arrows in these networks, and the flow of time.… After the Apert of 2700, various theors tried to do various things with Clathrand's Contention," Moyra said, "each pursuing a different approach, depending on their understanding of time and their general approach to metatheorics. For example—"
"It is too late in the evening for a recitation of examples," said Ignetha Foral.
Which chilled the whole room, and seemed to end the discussion, until Zh'vaern, in the ensuing silence, blurted out: "Does this have anything to do with the Third Sack?"
(part 10, MESSAL, Sphenics)
Rhetors and Incanters, despite developing the same underlying praxis, had disjoint capabilities:
"One sort of glib explanation I heard once was that Rhetors could change the past, and were glad to do it, but Incanters could change the future—and were reluctant."
(part 2, APERT, Sline)
Think, for a second, about how weird that must have been.
This praxis comes along. You want to use it to prove your metatheorics correct, or at least superior.
You propose hypotheses that, if confirmed, would be evidence your metatheorics can elegantly explain, that would be difficult for their metatheorics to explain.
You design and conduct experiments to test the hypotheses.
Your hypotheses are all resoundingly confirmed.
Just when you start to gloat, they interrupt you to report a virtually identical experience, but for hypotheses beneficial to their metatheorics, hypotheses difficult for your metatheorics to explain.
Two entirely different disciplines are founded, develop, grow. No one in your faction can do what even their most junior practitioners can, and you believe the opposite to be true, as well.
This apparent paradox doesn’t just remain unresolved: it grows, rapidly, for decades.
As the disciplines develop, they diverge. It becomes clear further development cannot prove the supremacy of either discipline. The only hope of breaking the stalemate is to use your discipline to accomplish a feat normally requiring their discipline, and without a reciprocal capability.
As described in the previous Third Sack praxis primer, the reason was because the praxis is driven by the practitioner’s consciousness. Metatheoric beliefs structure the practitioner’s consciousness, directly enabling techniques.
The Rhetors normally “change the past,” while the Incanters “change the future.” Normally, Rhetors rely on the stabilizing effect of many consciousnesses all working together to tie up loose ends and make everything coherent. But this time, they will use a single consciousness, similar to the Incanters.
It Went Like This
They use a laborer at the parking garage. He is very uneducated, so does not see a problem with a fossil being in the stone. Fossils are found in stone, this is stone, what’s the problem? His consciousness is relatively close to a Narrative where as fossil is in the garage concrete. The Rhetors “change the future,” and the Narrative shifts to that nonsensical Narrative.
However, they did not account for the effects of other consciousnesses encountering the small fossil piece. More educated minds find it, and imagine Narratives with a coherent fossil piece. If it’s a toenail, is there a toe? And many consciousnesses are connecting to that Narrative, giving it Reality, and it snowballs.
Note that even though it goes off the rails, and they bit off more than they could chew, and there were problems, this counts as a success. This is clearly magic that would normally require Incanters. Advantage Rhetors and Procians.
The Incanters, however, have been thinking similarly and aren’t unprepared. This situation clearly requires a Rhetor-style fix: they need to “change the past,” revert the records, disappear the fossil, correct the memories.
Similar to how the Rhetors did an Incanter feat, but clumsily and dangerously, the Incanters do a Rhetor feat clumsily and dangerously. They partially fix the records: they disappear the fossil.
The problem is that there are so many details that must all be coherent. The Incanters don’t know, or can’t accomplish, the Rhetor trick: roping in many, many consciousnesses to work together to fill in the enormous set of details that must be consistent with one another. The inconsistent details aren’t normally a problem for Incanters: when you convert a chunk of lead to gold, everyone expects the records to still reflect that it used to be lead.
Rhetors are breadth-first, and Incanters are depth-first, and both approaches fail in tasks best suited for the other.
While “legends” connotes “old,” tempting a less conservative figure than 87 years, 87 years is more than sufficient for our purposes.
Rhetors live in fear. If the incanter view of the world is widely believed, their power will cease to function.