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Welcome, Senri! 
(From another newbie, but oh well.) Cool, somebody else is reviving old topics....
I think everyone who's said that working for the Lone Power wouldn't make sense as a price is right -- that's hardly something that would give the energy for a major spellworking back to the universe or the Powers.
Pouring in everything of yourself.... interesting. I'm a bit inclined to balk at the idea of any price going so far as to destroy the wizard completely -- but then, that could be a logical extension of a system where a wizardry important enough and big enough can be paid for with time off your life -- up to all of your life. (Which makes more sense than it first looks like, I think -- at least, the idea of yielding to death sooner gave me pause. But even aside from the assumption of an intrinsic power in sacrifice and/or the fact that you'd no longer be using up energy, in a system where entropy's constantly increasing there are, according to physics, always tradeoffs -- you can reduce it in one place by raising it in another, and balance it with energy... and I'd be making more sense if I had reviewed thermodynamics more recently and it weren't almost midnight, I hope. But at any rate, the wizard is accelerating her own death in exchange for delaying the universe's....)
On the other hand -- "What's loved, survives." I'm not sure if it'd be possible or helpful to get rid of the effects of people loving you, and that might be the only way to get rid of yourself completely.
I did think, initially, that the higher price might possibly be to use up all the energy you could *ever* have had for wizardry, and thus not be able to do it any more -- without actually losing it in the sense of having it withdrawn and losing all memory, and so on, maybe not even losing the Speech. You'd still, perhaps, be able to fight entropy by more common methods -- conserving energy, easing pain, talking to people -- just not do the magic. But it'd be easy to argue that that's not "higher," and as several people have pointed out, if the Powers are still investing energy in other people and counting it worthwhile, it doesn't seem that this would make sense. Then again... time doesn't work quite the same for them.... *frowns and tries to figure out how that would affect it*
Losing someone you loved would be a high price indeed, but there are two problems -- while it might be harder, it doesn't seem as if it would pay back any more energy, and it does seem that if you've essentially borrowed energy that requires a life-payback, you'd be expected to pay it back yourself unless someone else actually volunteered.
So what would be very high cost for the wizard, higher than dying and something a Senior doesn't want to talk about, but ultimately productive as far as the Powers and universe are concerned....
...I wonder if it could be something like what Ronan did with taking the sea in? Well, that isn't the best example -- this would be much more extreme, for one thing.... Not ceasing to exist, but binding yourself to exist in a way you weren't made for, becoming the spell you're paying for? This might be a variation on pouring your whole existence into it, actually. I don't know if it would work, or help, but it would probably seem very dramatic to those outside it and might be harder than just dying. You'd be stuck there at least as long as the spell had to work, for one thing. Possibly in combat with the Lone One, depending on what kind of spell it was -- a binding, or something? -- it seems like direct attack would be one of the few things that might require that much energy. (Then again, I would have guessed that stopping the universe from expanding would cost more than the Mobius spell! But no, that one was shared among a thousand plus young wizards, so perhaps that made it more affordable.) In that sense it might be a bit like... staying locked with the Lone One for a long time to keep part of It out of trouble -- but perhaps until 'you' ran out, or the end of the worlds, whichever came first.
Just speculating.
Edited to add: Alan reminded me of this -- given that wizards' power diminishes with age, fluctuates with hormones, and can be augmented by trading time off their lives, it might help to look at this in light of the idea that apparently it's the wizards providing the power from their own... being, in general. (It'd be possible that everyone has such energy and most simply don't use it because they intrinsically lack some tools or aren't offered/don't choose the rest of them.) A life-price spell is cashing in all of your life at once; if it's on a delay, the Powers essentially lend the energy. It's not that they stop giving it to you; it's that you always had a certain potential maximum amount to use, and you used it all.
In that case, it actually could make sense to use up all of your wizardry present and future, at once, for one big thing -- and then not be given more, because it did come from you, after all. And it might be that this could be regarded as a higher payment from the wizard's side of things, especially if you do forget, even if it might technically involve less energy since you still keep enough to live. (If you remain the sort of person who would have been a wizard afterward, maybe your still being alive and trying to help things would work....)
Though that wouldn't explain why Carl didn't want to talk about it, unless that it's too emotional to discuss someone who did do that voluntarily as opposed to the dangers of hypothetically losing it involuntarily for oathbreaking.
[This message was edited by PK on 23 July 2003 at 22:38.]
(From another newbie, but oh well.) Cool, somebody else is reviving old topics.... I think everyone who's said that working for the Lone Power wouldn't make sense as a price is right -- that's hardly something that would give the energy for a major spellworking back to the universe or the Powers.
Pouring in everything of yourself.... interesting. I'm a bit inclined to balk at the idea of any price going so far as to destroy the wizard completely -- but then, that could be a logical extension of a system where a wizardry important enough and big enough can be paid for with time off your life -- up to all of your life. (Which makes more sense than it first looks like, I think -- at least, the idea of yielding to death sooner gave me pause. But even aside from the assumption of an intrinsic power in sacrifice and/or the fact that you'd no longer be using up energy, in a system where entropy's constantly increasing there are, according to physics, always tradeoffs -- you can reduce it in one place by raising it in another, and balance it with energy... and I'd be making more sense if I had reviewed thermodynamics more recently and it weren't almost midnight, I hope. But at any rate, the wizard is accelerating her own death in exchange for delaying the universe's....)
On the other hand -- "What's loved, survives." I'm not sure if it'd be possible or helpful to get rid of the effects of people loving you, and that might be the only way to get rid of yourself completely.
I did think, initially, that the higher price might possibly be to use up all the energy you could *ever* have had for wizardry, and thus not be able to do it any more -- without actually losing it in the sense of having it withdrawn and losing all memory, and so on, maybe not even losing the Speech. You'd still, perhaps, be able to fight entropy by more common methods -- conserving energy, easing pain, talking to people -- just not do the magic. But it'd be easy to argue that that's not "higher," and as several people have pointed out, if the Powers are still investing energy in other people and counting it worthwhile, it doesn't seem that this would make sense. Then again... time doesn't work quite the same for them.... *frowns and tries to figure out how that would affect it*
Losing someone you loved would be a high price indeed, but there are two problems -- while it might be harder, it doesn't seem as if it would pay back any more energy, and it does seem that if you've essentially borrowed energy that requires a life-payback, you'd be expected to pay it back yourself unless someone else actually volunteered.
So what would be very high cost for the wizard, higher than dying and something a Senior doesn't want to talk about, but ultimately productive as far as the Powers and universe are concerned....
...I wonder if it could be something like what Ronan did with taking the sea in? Well, that isn't the best example -- this would be much more extreme, for one thing.... Not ceasing to exist, but binding yourself to exist in a way you weren't made for, becoming the spell you're paying for? This might be a variation on pouring your whole existence into it, actually. I don't know if it would work, or help, but it would probably seem very dramatic to those outside it and might be harder than just dying. You'd be stuck there at least as long as the spell had to work, for one thing. Possibly in combat with the Lone One, depending on what kind of spell it was -- a binding, or something? -- it seems like direct attack would be one of the few things that might require that much energy. (Then again, I would have guessed that stopping the universe from expanding would cost more than the Mobius spell! But no, that one was shared among a thousand plus young wizards, so perhaps that made it more affordable.) In that sense it might be a bit like... staying locked with the Lone One for a long time to keep part of It out of trouble -- but perhaps until 'you' ran out, or the end of the worlds, whichever came first.
Just speculating.
Edited to add: Alan reminded me of this -- given that wizards' power diminishes with age, fluctuates with hormones, and can be augmented by trading time off their lives, it might help to look at this in light of the idea that apparently it's the wizards providing the power from their own... being, in general. (It'd be possible that everyone has such energy and most simply don't use it because they intrinsically lack some tools or aren't offered/don't choose the rest of them.) A life-price spell is cashing in all of your life at once; if it's on a delay, the Powers essentially lend the energy. It's not that they stop giving it to you; it's that you always had a certain potential maximum amount to use, and you used it all.
In that case, it actually could make sense to use up all of your wizardry present and future, at once, for one big thing -- and then not be given more, because it did come from you, after all. And it might be that this could be regarded as a higher payment from the wizard's side of things, especially if you do forget, even if it might technically involve less energy since you still keep enough to live. (If you remain the sort of person who would have been a wizard afterward, maybe your still being alive and trying to help things would work....)
Though that wouldn't explain why Carl didn't want to talk about it, unless that it's too emotional to discuss someone who did do that voluntarily as opposed to the dangers of hypothetically losing it involuntarily for oathbreaking.
[This message was edited by PK on 23 July 2003 at 22:38.]
It also seems odd that Carl would be unwilling to talk about this when he explains how you might lose your wizardry as a consequence or penalty for oathbreaking. It may have to be something that, like death, is ordinarily seen as some sort of defeat.
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