Heh. On the subject of the Fidelius, a bit of unplaced, first-drafty material from the story:
In other news, my research into the mechanism of the Fidelius
finally paid off. It was simple, elegant, and totally, completely
off the wall. It had to have been created by either someone with
a grasp of computer programming, or else a complete lunatic.
It all comes down to the Akashic Records. Now, some will tell
you that the Records are a metaphor for the wisdom of the ages.
Others will tell you that they are literally real, a mystic
encyclopedia logging the existence, lifespan and relationships of
every object (both living and not) in the universe. As with many
things both magical and not, *both* views are true -- depending
on your frame of reference.
The Fidelius treated them as literally real -- and as though they
were set up like a database management system, where records are
linked to each other through a series of pointers. The spell
creates a new pointer from the designated Secret Keeper to the
item, concept or whatnot that it is cast to hide. It then looks
for everything else in the Records which also points to the
secret, and nulls those pointers out. This task it accomplishes
quickly through Similarity effects which use the fundamental
shared identity of the pointers to gather them together and act
upon them as a single entity.
Once that's done, the Secret Keeper becomes the only pointer to
the secret. He can share the secret, but what's happening is
he's actually sharing a redirected link through his record to the
secret's record. The relay through him is unnoticeable, and
keeps the secret at one remove.
The magic maintaining this "alias" effect also employs a nasty
little hack that uses the Akashic Record for anyone he tells the
secret to as a sudo for root access to that person -- sort of
like knowing a True Name -- and directly applies an overriding
compulsion that prevents them from sharing the secret. That was
the part I wanted to circumvent. Like most security holes it was
obvious in retrospect, and I wanted to plug it before some other
clever asshole came up with the idea to use the Records as a
back door to anyone they wanted to hit -- like me! -- with a
Contagion-based attack.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
In other news, my research into the mechanism of the Fidelius
finally paid off. It was simple, elegant, and totally, completely
off the wall. It had to have been created by either someone with
a grasp of computer programming, or else a complete lunatic.
It all comes down to the Akashic Records. Now, some will tell
you that the Records are a metaphor for the wisdom of the ages.
Others will tell you that they are literally real, a mystic
encyclopedia logging the existence, lifespan and relationships of
every object (both living and not) in the universe. As with many
things both magical and not, *both* views are true -- depending
on your frame of reference.
The Fidelius treated them as literally real -- and as though they
were set up like a database management system, where records are
linked to each other through a series of pointers. The spell
creates a new pointer from the designated Secret Keeper to the
item, concept or whatnot that it is cast to hide. It then looks
for everything else in the Records which also points to the
secret, and nulls those pointers out. This task it accomplishes
quickly through Similarity effects which use the fundamental
shared identity of the pointers to gather them together and act
upon them as a single entity.
Once that's done, the Secret Keeper becomes the only pointer to
the secret. He can share the secret, but what's happening is
he's actually sharing a redirected link through his record to the
secret's record. The relay through him is unnoticeable, and
keeps the secret at one remove.
The magic maintaining this "alias" effect also employs a nasty
little hack that uses the Akashic Record for anyone he tells the
secret to as a sudo for root access to that person -- sort of
like knowing a True Name -- and directly applies an overriding
compulsion that prevents them from sharing the secret. That was
the part I wanted to circumvent. Like most security holes it was
obvious in retrospect, and I wanted to plug it before some other
clever asshole came up with the idea to use the Records as a
back door to anyone they wanted to hit -- like me! -- with a
Contagion-based attack.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.