Community Event / Creation credible description of witch space?

[Cmdr Andy B]

Witchspace, where the laws of Newton, Einstein and Hawking hold the most tenuous dominion; a magical place where vision becomes taste and sound becomes twisting patterns of fractal colour before your mesmerized eyes. An experience that can only properly be described to another who has shared it; for how do you describe to someone tasting red? It was said that in the early days of the hyperspace jump these hops over vast distances often took hours, and many a pilot had gone mad imprisoned in that swirling mix of confusion; centuries of refinement had winnowed this interlude of insanity down to less than a second and on ships with the latest generation of drives the interval between leaving one part of real space and arriving in another was so near to instantaneous that you thought you’d imagined purple tasting remarkably like chicken.

forget punctuation and the rest for a moment, and I'm not trying to create any sort of temple here but is this a credible description of what traveling through witchspace could be like?

does it ring true to you or just sound like mumbojumbo?

also ten points and a big to the first person to name that movie

 

[Cody]

... is this a credible description of what traveling through witchspace could be like?

In a word... no. But as a hack writer, I make hours/days pass in witchspace - it's excellent for crew interactions, or lone pilots passing the time with their thoughts.

 

[Ian Phillips]

My experiences with witchspace are mostly that of suddenly being somewhere else. You just see that the 'tunnel' is coming to an end and 'Presto' there you are at your destination.

Except when it goes wrong and you actually end up in witchspace. That is - to say the least - disorienting. Nothing there at all. Until the Thargoids come to blast you into individual atoms. That is terrifying.

I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

In a word... no. But as a hack writer, I make hours/days pass in witchspace - it's excellent for crew interactions, or lone pilots passing the time with their thoughts.

I take it your a frontier player rather than just elite like myself.


what i was trying to get across is how maddening i would find it if i had to sit in hyperspace for hours to go anywhere and to provide a back story to why in the new game it will go from jumps taking time like in Frontier to it being instant again like the original, for literary purposes i'm forgetting about the instant jumps in the first game

hence the insanity inducing effects to give a justification for improving the drive in so dramatic a fashion, plus with the 'tastes remarkably like chicken' and the follow on line to this one of 'Hari had kept the Farthest Star's engines up to date, there would be no sick bags needed on his ship.' it adds a bit of tongue in cheek comedy to it

 

[Cody]

I take it your a frontier player rather than just elite like myself.

Nope... BBC Elite, Elite Plus and Oolite (which is where I write/base a little fiction). I have a still-boxed FEII with all the bits on the shelf... but it never really grabbed me.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

Nope... BBC Elite, Elite Plus and Oolite (which is where I write/base a little fiction). I have a still-boxed FEII with all the bits on the shelf... but it never really grabbed me.

similar here, i don't get you then, what do you mean by 'make hours/days pass in witchspace'? the games you mentioned all have instant transit unless you mean your stories have scenes set there?

in that case i feel i can ignore what you said, we are writing fiction after all and i need not let someone else's method of handling witchspace dictate my own unless it was a widely distributed sanctioned novel or story and even then it would only be optional if i did as fan fiction need not follow all the rules laid down for a universe

 

[Cody]

Oolite has the same instantaneous hyperspace transit as the original (as experienced by the player) - but in Oolite, there is a ship/player clock. A transit from Lave to Riedquat (6.8ly), for example, takes 46.2 hours on the ship's clock - perfect for fiction in many ways.

Oh... do feel free to ignore me. I make no critique of other writers' work, I merely answered a straight question with my highly subjective opinion.

 

[gunbladelad]

The way I see it is Witchspace is an alternate more compact dimension, with the ships in Elite being capable of making a stable "tunnel" through it in order to cross vast distances in our own dimension. My guess is that these tunnels natively distort time to some degree, but this could be altered by things such as the ship mass, speed, engine capacity and - of course - gravitational fields in the vacinity of the tunnel itself. As such a trip could last seconds or even days - simply depending on the factors.

Creatures like Thargoids are perfectly comfortable there and are more than capable (and willing in Elite) of disrupting human-made tunnels through Witchspace.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

more the sort of reasoning i was looking for here gunbladelad

Cody the problem with oolite's transit time is it wont work in a MP game where transit is instant - you cant leave one system then instantaneously appear in another 45 hours later in game time as the whole idea falls like a deck of cards done that way

when you arrive the ship in front of you that your about to crash into should of left the area 45 hours before - major immersion breaker.

so what I've attempted with mine is something that fits in with the new game to come while tipping a wink to the frontier players whom i understand are used to spending time in witchspace

 

[jptreen]

Well, the lovely thing about hyperspace travel in the elite universe is that you can pick the era you want to write in, because it seems to work very differently in different eras.

Transit will have to be virtually instantaneous in E, we know this implicitly (actually, I think we know it explicitly but can't remember from where).

From that point of you, I like your conception of witchspace. It allows all of the options.

Having said that, I'd always imagined it to be a bit more like a slow-burn version of the total perspective vortex in HHGTTG, breeding nothing but fear, loneliness, and the feeling that you are - after all - very, very small.

 

[Cody]

Cody the problem with oolite's transit time is it wont work in a MP game...

<chortles> Of that I am fully aware (though I don't do multi-player stuff myself).

 

[Darren Grey]

Transit in Frontier was instant for the player, but the clock would advance by a number of days. The only game in which you spend time in witch space is Elite.

Nothing wrong with your flavour mind, but the reason for advancement was one of convenience and practicality I imagine, not people going mad. I like to think people still go mad from brief glimpses of it Also it was never called witchspace in Frontier, just hyperspace. I imagine "Witchspace" is a colloquial term mainly used by older pilots.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

Having said that, I'd always imagined it to be a bit more like a slow-burn version of the total perspective vortex in HHGTTG, breeding nothing but fear, loneliness, and the feeling that you are - after all - very, very small.

not played that myself, does that also make purple taste remarkably like chicken?

 

[jptreen]

not played that myself, does that also make purple taste remarkably like chicken?

Have we considered whether maybe it's chicken that tastes like purple?

I think Frontier should commission a study group.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

Have we considered whether maybe it's chicken that tastes like purple?

I think Frontier should commission a study group.

can i steal that? maybe add a few lines later in the book

The Federation Science Committee once commissioned a study as to whether it may be chicken that taste remarkably like purple instead of the reverse but results were inconclusive

I can throw it in a late chapter as a reminder of the first, bit of a running joke about witchspace

 

[jptreen]

You certainly can, it'd be an honour.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

You certainly can, it'd be an honour.

the honour is all mine, the amount of brainstorming on this forum i could write a dozen book plots a week right now lol

just posted another bit of chapter 2 if anyone wants a read, its starting to knit together well

 

[drew]

In my fiction I've alternately used witchspace as either an near instantaneous transfer, or a protracted journey on based on my own requirements at the time. Played rather fast and loose with it I'm afraid. If pushed I'd favour the latter, but it seems likely E : D will go with the former.

As a 'passage of time' plot device, it can be invaluable. In 'The Dark Wheel' Jason Ryder's ship was ambused in witchspace by the Cobra that attacked him, so there is 'canon' to that effect.

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[Darren Grey]

That book also has artificial gravity, mind. Still, I think being flexible with witchspace in the literature is good. If anything it shouldn't be described too much - it's supposed to have an element of mystery and unpredictability.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

In my fiction I've alternately used witchspace as either an near instantaneous transfer, or a protracted journey on based on my own requirements at the time. Played rather fast and loose with it I'm afraid. If pushed I'd favour the latter, but it seems likely E : D will go with the former.

As a 'passage of time' plot device, it can be invaluable. In 'The Dark Wheel' Jason Ryder's ship was ambused in witchspace by the Cobra that attacked him, so there is 'canon' to that effect.

Cheers,

Drew.

can i just correct you there, he was followed through witchspace, attacked in real space

as for passage of time devices you still have a few hours on the other side b4 you get to the station, may grab some kip on the way or have an interesting adverture