Rune self-cycling

Rune self-cycling, also called reflexive editing, is the theoretical concept that runes might be able to plant, cast, and design other runes in the spiral without or with limited human intervention. The idea was first proposed in 14 SE by Reo Yun-seo, a Ju temancer who dedicated her time in prison to documenting the theoretical implications of such a rune, which she called the keystone. Her ideas were lost for some fifty years after her death in 15 SE until Ahn Ji-yu, an archivist in one of Ju's six national libraries, and Ea "Pei" Pema, their close friend, found Reo's notes in a spot check. With help from a mutual friend and temancer, Kyo Iseul, they began the first real-life experiments in the field of self-cycling.

## Theoretical Implications

If runes can cast and plant other runes, the possibilities are almost endless. Mages would no longer need to follow rigorous, daily planting cycles to ensure runes are available when needed in the future. Systems could cast runes harmlessly before they grew too powerful and became dangerous. Systems like the towers could scan the spiral at all times, casting runes deemed too dangerous to grow before they could take effect. Healers who need to both bring an injured person to safety and start growing the runes needed to heal them could use a self-cycling system to plant runes in a safer location that was out of range and evacuate.

Runes that could design other runes, write scripts, or edit themselves would change the field of magic as it is known today. Healers could be replaced by complex self-cycling rune systems designed to diagnose and treat patients in place or while on the move. Battlefields would be transformed as mages are no longer needed anywhere near the front, and perhaps soldiers aren't either. Assassination could happen long distance and, without a benevolent force behind the spiral towers, be all but impossible to prevent.

Though Kuan rais and Seprum generals have discussed banning research into self-cycling, it is still legal everywhere in the Spiral Empire, so long as breakthroughs are properly reported. Both Kuan and Seprum have started their own mage units dedicated to research, though they are not as advanced as those in Ju and Dhi.

### Keystone System

Yun-seo's system required five runes or rune groups, undiscovered at the time of writing, to function. The most important was the keystone, which connected the other four groups and acted as a central, communicating hub. Keystones use a cast / plant updater (CPU) to interface with the spiral, either by casting existing runes or planting new ones that can be cast later.

The eyes of a keystone system 'perceive' the real world through complex systems of pointers, which likely must be designed by human mages. The keystone system Yun-seo designed predicted the weather and her system of pointers did things like measure temperature, pressure, and rain in a rain gauge. The eyes communicate the real-world results to the random adjustment maker (RAM), which, in Yun-seo's model, randomly changes part of a script or rune to see whether it predicts weather more or less accurately. Over time, and in many places, this could result in keystone systems that bare little resemblance to the original system but which predict the weather with a high level of accuracy.

The fifth component is a tear-down cord, which collapses the whole system safely and immediately in case of emergency. Yun-seo was a proponent of the limited spiral theory, which states that the spiral does not contain infinite space and energy, and therefore felt it important that any energy hogging runes have some simple way to shut down.

Modern self-cyclers believe the randomization aspect is too complex and possibly deadly. They replace it with human intervention in most cases, as the runes required for a functioning RAM may not even be theoretically possible. In this system, after comparing the predicted outcome to the actual outcome, a human mage, a temancer in the case of weather magic, improves the prediction rune, which the system can plant and cast. It cuts out some labor-intensive steps, but not all of them.

## Successful Experiments

### Child Runes

In 90 SE, Ahn and Pema created the first child a rune, a rune planted during the casting of another rune. Initially, the only thing the parent rune could do was plant the child rune. By 96 SE, they had refined the parent to create a sound, smell, or light for about two seconds as well as a child rune. Unfortunately, casting the parent rune incapacitates the mage for about three minutes.

### Rune Splitting

In 100 SE, Ahn and Pema designed Gamsu Bun-yeol, a rune that, when cast, splits a rune in the spiral into two identical runes, each of which need to go through a full growing period before they are cast. Casting Gamsu is far less debilitating than the parent rune spell, though still difficult. Strangely, unlike the parent rune, Gamsu takes almost no time to grow in the spiral.

### Long-Distance Planting

In 124 SE, the Eniac team made the biggest breakthrough in self-cycling to date when they planted a specific rune in the spiral long distance. Two members of the team were in Bhatan, the other three in Seong. The Seong team used Tasus, a random-number generating spell, to pick from a list of one hundred runes. The Bhatan team had no idea which rune was selected. Using the unique identifiers in their spiral tattoos, the Seong team planted that specific rune, channeled through the tower such that it was actually planted in the spiral Bhatan. The initial experiment almost killed two members of the team but was considered a massive success.

### Long-Distance Casting

Three years later, the Eniac team repeated their experiment, this time casting a rune in Patari while the actual mage caster was in Seong. The experiment had far fewer side effects.

## Future of Self-Cycling

The study of self-cycling is centered in Seong, where the Eniac team is based, and Somni, where Seti Somni, Menes Somni, and Cyrus Delphyn maintain their own laboratory. The two teams are in frequent communication. The Eniac team sees its next steps in streamlining long-distance planting and casting. In order to maintain funding, the Seprum team focuses on hair-trigger branding, which requires sidestepping the need for a spiral tattoo.