Servantmaking

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Servantmaking is the only form of magic from the Cycle universe. Anyone from Cycle can do it, but it does require practice, training, and, to do anything complicated, considerable time and talent.
==Types of Servants==
===Shines and Shades===
Shines and shades are basically variously-sized pixels of light or darkness, extracted with some effort and by hand from a normal source of same and then persisting independently. They can only exist on and move along solid surfaces, though they can do this underwater and through arbitrarily small gaps. They may be puppeted or programmed. Shines can "see" but not hear, and will absorb written programmatic instructions that they are piloted over - this means that larger shines can hold more instructions and that very tiny handwriting is useful. Shines can be used to display pictures, keep time, illuminate solid objects that they can get onto, etc. Shades are less popular but are functionally equivalent.
===Pets===
Pets (or, when distinguishing from the kind that one doesn't apply magic to, "animal servants") are natural animals that are turned into servants by the application of servantmaking concentration/effort. They retain their animal characteristics, including biological needs and vulnerability to damage and death, but also respond to verbal instructions. They have personalities appropriate to the sort of animal they are - a pet insect will have very little personality but a pet dog will have a normal dog amount and display this while and in between carrying out instructions.
===Automata===
Automata are mechanical contraptions which operate according to instructions that are physically fed to them in any of a number of ways (e.g. written on a cartridge or paper tape and introduced into a part of the mechanism). These instructions can be changed, although the automaton will continuously carry out whatever instructions it's holding until they're taken away from it (runaway automatons made by people who didn't know what they were doing can be a problem).
===Golems===
Golems are animated sculptures which obey instructions written on their forms. Their instructions cannot be changed out like those of automata, but golems unlike automata have senses and, if sufficiently elaborate, can learn things from direct experience. Really elaborate golems can speak and may be personable, but this quantity of programming takes a long time and a lot of golem surface area.
===Puppets===
Puppets are sculptural or mechanical objects which have no programmatic instructions and are intended solely for puppeting about in useful ways as useful extensions of the servantmaker. They can still be yoked to specific servantmakers (although nonservantmakers can't make use of them) but alternate users can only be designated by acts of servantmaker will, not by phrases or instruction alterations.
==Controlling a Servant==
Servants may be controlled in one of three ways:
*Direct puppeteering (concentrating on how one wants the servant to move or behave; difficult to do to more than one at the same time but best for fine in-the-moment control)
*Written "programs"
*Verbal instructions from the servantmaker themselves or people designated thereby.
This designation process (which can include lines in their written instructions, or things like key phrases or other contingent criteria) may be sufficiently vague to allow other servantmakers to collect partial control of a poorly monitored servant. Servants of all kinds retain their identifications of people through reincarnations.
Category:Incandescence
Category:Magic
Category:Cycle