Attrapulsion

Attrapulsion is a school of knowledge and techniques based on manipulating a phenomena similar to electromagnetism. It is not yet known how attrapulsion works, only that it can be reliably exploited. Practitioners of attrapulsion learn to manipulate this magnetism, either by mentally coupling to an object called a handle, or by devising arrangements of attrapulsive materials to form stable machines, which permanently uphold a static attrapulsive effect without the need for further energy input. Research continues.

Certain metals, stones and ores are more or less attrapulsive and can be used to create handles or other attrapulsive tools. Attrapulsion takes years of dedicated study and practice to master, but is not based on innate or inherited abilities, and can be learned by anyone through education and apprenticeships.

Coupling Handles

The basic tool used by pulsers to exert mental control over the attrapulsive field and create attrapulsive effects via coupling, a skill that must be developed over years of dedicated study and practice.

Handles are made from refined attrapulsive materials, and are traditionally thin, straight rods, but can be a wide range of other shapes. More recently, handles are sculpted to fit the palm of the hand in a roughly teardrop shape. Other styles are designed to be worn, including gauntlets, bracelets, rings, neckbands or diadems. High-quality handles used by experienced pulsers are often decorated with unique relief designs.

The orientation of the materials determines the valence of the effect. Advanced handles or other tools can be created with moving parts which allow pulsers to switch valence rapidly, enabling more complex effects and techniques.

Attunement Process

Practitioners must attune themselves to specific handles to effectively manipulate them. This attunement process is typically just spending a lot of time practising with a particular object. This limits the number of materials a practitioner can control effectively, although experienced pulsers will be able to attune more quickly to new objects. This can lead to practitioners specialising in controlling specific materials, as well as the potential for unconventional paths to mastery by focusing on rare or unique materials.

Certain substances, called dampeners, can weaken or neutralise attrapulsive effects, (including coupling) leading to potential applications in security measures, anti-attrapulsion devices, or protective clothing and accessories.

Sensing and Echoes

Attrapulsive effects leave behind temporary echoes, residual energy signatures which skilled practitioners can sense and interpret to learn about recent attrapulsive events or the techniques used. Skilled attrapulsers can sense the presence and strength of attrapulsive energy in their surroundings, allowing them to locate raw materials, predict the behaviour of objects, and detect the recent use of attrapulsion.

Effects on the User

Prolonged use of attrapulsion results in mental and physical fatigue for the practitioner, with more complex or powerful effects causing faster fatigue. This creates a natural limitation on practitioners’ abilities, preventing them from becoming too powerful or overusing their skills. Inexperienced pulsers may face challenges such as accidental effects, difficulty with attunement, objects moving in dangerous or unpredictable ways, and mental overexertion.

Applications

Stable Machines

Stable machines are devices created by crafting and arranging rods into specific configurations, producing attrapulsive effects without the need for a pulser to couple with them. Sets of rods or other tools arranged in specific patterns form attrapulsive arrays, which can create powerful or complex effects. The use of stable machines and attrapulsive arrays can lead to innovative architectural designs, and city-wide defenses based on attrapulsion. Although simple, worn amplifiers are examples of stable machines.

Machinettes

Machinettes are small stable machines that do useful jobs, like door locks and amplifiers. With careful engineering and arrangement of miniature rods, attrapulsive forces can be pinned, forming static fields that enable objects to hover or levitate stably.

Rememberer

A rememberer is a cutting-edge machinette constructed such that it captures and re-emits sound vibrations with a time delay. It is essentially the attrapulsive equivalent of an analog delay circuit.

How Attrapulsion is Understood by the Academic Literature

Since the discovery of Attrapulsion in the last century, Longbridge academics have developed a model for how attrapulsion works. It is roughly analogous to electromagnetism, but has some important differences, mainly that either the energy used in producing an attrapulsive effect either does not appear to be conserved, or that it does not take extra energy to sustain an effect once it has been created, provided that it is created properly.

A properly created effect reinforces itself through carefully placed patterns in the attrapulsive field, creating a stable minimum in the gradient of the field according to the desired shape, called a trap. This feat is called alignment and is intensively and actively studied by contemporary academic pulsers. To create alignment, the valances of the incorporated materials must be balanced carefully to create a stable trough in the gradient such that the machine will self-correct to when nudged. Improperly crafted traps ’relax’ over time, releasing the gradient trap and destroying the effect, or sometimes implode dramatically when the alignment is lost.

Attrapulsive materials have an intrinsic property that academics call ‘valence’, which is a kind of charge. The valance can be either one way or the other, which academics call ‘firthic’ and ‘ternic’, after the opposite-but-equivalent directions on the bridge. Opposite valences represent oppositely signed traps in the gradient and will attract and annihilate each other. Similar valences will repel. Combinations of both can move the stable point to some mid-space between the two sources that acts as the trap in the gradient.