So I’m in a story I’m currently writing the main source of conflict is the race to obtain an external curse known as the Knowledge Curse. In the story it’s the curse that was originally held by the founder of the Order, but was lost. Which leads to the death of a king, and the protagonist getting into a race against the order to stop them from getting it.
Option 1: The Knowledge Curse works similarly to copper metal minds from Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series. This means that it acts as a repository for memories allowing the user to store any information the user knows into the curse for later reference. The main change would be that the memories of the previous users would also be accessible to the current user, which would include Prometheus’s memory and knowledge of magic and any foresight he may have had regarding humanity’s progression.
Option 2: The knowledge curse works more akin to The Kwisatz Haderach from Dune. Where the user is able to see all of human history, giving them a limited precognition by using the patterns of history to determine the future. This isn’t my favorite, but it’s the one I’m leaning towards as it helps justify the Order’s existence. Since in my story the Order’s main goal is to unleash Chaos and reset the world to before the gods were created in hopes that new gods would again rise from Chaos to give humanity another chance of living in a world not destroyed by magic.
Option 3: It gives a perfect knowledge of magic. This is somewhat of a boring option to me, just because it makes what’s supposed to be a more utility based Curse more combat focused.
Option 4: Probably my favorite option, but may be overpowered (then again we are talking about curses so fairness is kind of moot) is that it works similarly to a Shard again from Sanderson’s cosmere. How this would work is that it gives a perfect knowledge of how the world works and things in the world interacts. So things like new technology and scientific knowledge. The main problem with this is that if anyone had the curse before the story we wouldn’t still be in the 1700s in terms of tech.
(Sorry if this is formated poorly, I’m on my phone.)
I feel like Knowledge Curse should be linked to obtaining and learning faster than the normal person, when obtained your mind feels a lot more “free” and feel like you can remember and understand things all so much clearly. (Think of learning a new language, you’d learn that in a few days like 3 days).
The knowledge curse has a limitation to it’s knowledge, it will never give you any knowledge of the future as that has yet to exist, meaning you don’t know any of the new technology and such. However, you can see the history so much more clearly throughout the ages of magic, except any knowledge before magic even existed.
The user can obtain knowledge of the past by obtaining and touching a user’s DNA or by walking on a section of land such as if you walk to mount olympus, you’ll feel yourself learning about the impacting incidents while you walk up the mountain, however this only works on places that had a major impact in history or such like the trojan war for example. Touching something like a god’s skeleton gives you knowledge the the god’s history and life, however the person of course has to have been an impact in history, it can’t be a random person. (Touching graves do not work, the physical touch must be contact between organism and organism)
So I definitely love the idea of having knowledge through touch, and I’ll make a note of it. However, I do feel like some form of foresight is necessary, because the curse originated from Prometheus who’s main domain was foresight it’s what Prometheus means.
I feel like there could be a synthesis of the two ideas where touching an object or place gives you perfect insight to it’s past, and shows you the possible outcomes of its future. So touching something like black powder could give you some insight on its application not thought of yet. Though now that I think about it that would any atom the user touched could give the knowledge of the atom bomb, so maybe not that. Still thank you for the brilliant suggestion.
I also feel like I should take this time to explain “a perfect knowledge of magic” basically it means having the knowledge Prometheus did of how magic works. Possibly even a way to create new curses (though since the user only has the power of a single curse they would be unable to do this, but they’d know how) as well as an understanding of magical energy itself. The way I see this working is that you’d have full control of your inherent magical energy able to form it into any element you wish. This is dumb and overpowered but still fun to think about.
Edit/Addendum-Foresight: I should have mentioned this in the original post, but the way I see foresight working is the same way it does in The Cosmere. That means foresight is heavily limited, all you can really do with foresight like this is read the different possibilities that stem from people’s history and connections. So while you can plan and scheme all you want, if something gets tossed in your way you didn’t anticipate your grand scheme for the future collapses. However, since it does show the possibilities, it would still give you insight on future technologies and the possible paths to those discoveries.
Ngl I was mainly going for an idea that still keeps the mc as the normal mc
I felt like if the user was able to create curses like the olympian gods, that just wouldn’t feel normal or inherenting magical energy to form any type of element as you wish.
So knowledge curse just basically acts as an entire library for your mind rather than bypassing and creating any you want through learning mechanics of like how gods created the sea curses, through thinking about it, I can see why it’s fun to think about it lol
For the learning about the insight of an object by touching it, maybe seeing far into the future could be nerfed like if you touch it, you can see what would happen to the black-powder and such throughout the future of history, however the further you go into history the more it fades and harder it is to tell what it’d become.
Like you touch black-powder, you could see black-powder becoming an explosive barrel throughout the decade, however if you wanted to see an atomic bomb from like the powder, you’d need to see 200 years into the future, however your mind starts becoming more foggy and unclear too the point it’s just way too hard to understand what it is or just no actual way to look into the future for it.
Having more experience with the curse however “level’s up” the insight range, when first obtained you can only see a decade into the future with it, if you had it for an extremely long time you could see 200 years in the future instead of the small 10 years
Okay, yeah that actually makes a lot of sense. Especially because the further you go in the future the more people there are, and the more decisions and variables there are to the point it would end up as pretty much white noise when you try to see that far ahead, which is how I want it to be. Since this isn’t specifically a curse of foresight (that’s a different curse in the story, one I gave to the founder of Semeria. It showed the founder a vision of a paradise and gave him perfect clear sight.) it’s a curse that gives knowledge of what has been and what could be. This is why the founder of the Order when he took it learned of the Olympians’ origins in Chaos and made the plan to reset the world using Chaos.
Second and potentially final draft of the Knowledge Curse and its properties:
Properties
Prometheus’s Library
A collection of memories stored within the Knowledge Curse itself, detailing the history of the world as far back to the birth of Gaia, a wealth of knowledge regarding the secrets of magic, and spiritual energy, and even advanced technologies that the Olympians hid from mortals (Re: Radios, land-based transportation, planes, and other such technological marvels.)
Mental Osmosis
By coming into contact with an object, place, or person. The user gains a full knowledge relating to the history of the person, place, or thing.
Ascended Recall
Any information that the user gains is able to be recalled with perfect clarity, that includes any information gained by all of the senses.
Thaumic Epiphany
Unlike many other curses the Knowledge Curse does not overwrite one’s magic, instead it gives a perfect understanding of one’s minds. This allows for unique techniques such as Thaumic Resonance, a technique where the curse holder is able to combine their own magic circles into different combinations. For example Glass+Ice = Frosted Glass.
Promethean Observation
Due to the knowledge of history gained from the Knowledge Curse’s record of Prometheus’s memory, the bearer of this curse gains the ability to have a limited view of Chaos’s Path. Being able to see the different outcomes of events, and the possible decisions that could lead to them. However, trying to view too far ahead leads to the view becoming clouded and unreadable, and trying to view the future of anyone else with foresight leads to a null space where neither party is able to read the future of the other.
These are the abilities that i have figured out, and am happy with. Personally I think that the one thing the curse could benefit from is… well an actual curse some realistic drawback that isn’t just insanity or death. I want some suggestions that are unique and thought through.