the Laws of Energy - GM Essay December 2000

Well, I think I state repeatedly I’m a writer. I’m actually a big follower of Hal Clement, a very widely-respected hard sci-fi writer. I’ve had the chance to meet him a few times and discuss things. For those of you who don’t know, hard sci-fi is SF that’s stands up under scientific scrutiny. It’s in some ways harder than just making it up as you go along and in some ways easier. I’m quite envious of Mr. Clement’s immense scientific knowledge, but then again, he’s been to colleges and I haven’t, so he’s got more years of education.

Well, Sailormoon is pretty far-fetched, I’ll admit. It’s very hard to justify it scientifically, if not impossible, but I set down a couple of base rules.

  1. Senshi have a finite amount of energy.

  2. They cannot remain in senshi form indefinitely because of this fact and must de-transform or they will burn out and die, based upon law number one.

  3. They have restrictions on their powers. See law 1.

  4. When a senshi increases in level, the amount of energy available increases as well.

  5. Guardians are senshi.

  6. Senshi, when resurrected, had to use their energy in one of three ways:
  • Put all of their energy into having powers when in non-transformed state.
  • This is the guardian clause. All guardians were senshi who put all of their energy into untransformed powers. Since they used so much energy on this (it takes more energy to have untransformed powers) they ended up in lower-energy life forms, but most with the ability to talk, some (as it turned out) with the ability to communicate telepathically, and all with the ability to identify senshi in their group. It takes a lot more energy to maintain these forms.
  • Put some of their energy into untransformed powers and some into transformed powers.

  • This is the weaker senshi clause. Weaker senshi can have some sort of strong untransformed affinity with their element, but their senshi attack powers are weaker because not all of their energy is dedicated to their senshi form.

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    • Put all of their energy into transformed powers.

  • The stronger senshi clause. All of the stronger senshi put all of their energy into their senshi forms, have no untransformed powers, but stronger senshi powers. They may have an affinity with the realm of their element, but it turns out that the division here is probably half and half.

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    Well, there you go, I think those were all of the rules. And thus you have a system which, while not hard SF, adheres to rules. I’d like to take a little time to discuss the last law in a bit more detail.

    Let’s say that, hypothetically, every senshi has 2 energy points to start with. The following is a table demonstrating how those points are managed.

    Untransformed

    Transformed

    Clause 1 (Guardian)

    2

    0

    Clause 2 (Weaker)

    1

    1

    Clause 3 (Stronger)

    0

    2

    So, logically, the guardians have stronger untransformed states, the weaker are evenly balanced (in theory, but in practice you have to remember that it takes more energy to maintain untransformed powers), and the stronger have strong transformed states. Eventually, when a senshi progressed, s/he gains an energy point or something to that effect.

    I hope that made sense to everyone.
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