A Different Kind of Door Ficbit – Furlings

~ crossovercreativechaos

DiZ crossed his arms, looked away. “We weren’t involved in the genetic manipulations. Virus or symbiote.”

“But you do know about them,” Daniel observed.

“Enough to know they never should have been permitted to exist.”

Jacob didn’t think it was a coincidence that Teal’c was somehow between Sam and DiZ. Not at all.

“My area of research was the Keyblade itself,” DiZ went on. “We suspect it is, in fact, a Furling artifact.”

“Furling?” Curiosity livened Sam’s face, brought color back to too-pale skin. “Sir, that’s one of the Four Races – from the meeting place on Ernest’s planet.”

“But we’ve never found any other Furling artifacts,” Daniel added. “Ancient artifacts, yes, usually when Jack sticks his head in them-”

“Hey!”

“-And we’ve met the Asgaard and the Nox,” the archaeologist finished. “But the Furlings-”

“Appear to have confined their activities to worlds the System Lords never knew of,” DiZ interrupted. “Some of those planets, it seems, still have human colonies. One, whose name I was unable to obtain from Nirrti’s database, was the home of Naminé’s people. Nirrti found it, and the addresses it held of still more Furling-known worlds. One of which the inhabitants call Destiny Islands.”

“Riku’s homeworld,” George noted.

“And, apparently, a weapons store for some of the remaining unused Keyblades. The children found them playing in a cave.” DiZ’s tone was dry, and no little disgusted. “Or perhaps the Keyblades found them; apparently an unknown part of the cavern simply opened after untold centuries, hours before the Heartless arrived.” His lip curled. “Nirrti wasn’t expecting resistance. She was… very surprised.”

“Unused Keyblades?” Sam asked.

DiZ nodded. “Nirrti had previously unearthed several bodies of past Keyblade users on Naminé’s world. Those Keyblades were inactive; apparently they need to integrate with a living nervous system. But enough remained to investigate, and when we matched their potential for energy manipulation to the legends that had been stored with them…” He shrugged. “It was a very interesting technical problem.”

21 thoughts on “A Different Kind of Door Ficbit – Furlings”

  1. Furlings are so darn useful when writing anything in the Stargate universe because we have essentially no confirmed canon facts about them beyond them being involved in a four way alliance with the Asgard, Nox and Ancients.

    There are a few things that are implied to possibly be them, or might be attributed to them, but nothing confirmed.

    So you can attribute basically any characteristics or technology you want to them in fics, and there is essentially nothing to contradict it in canon. So useful.

    The traditional explanation for strange technology in Stargate can often be, “when in doubt blame the ancients,” but for any new technologies or crossover ideas you want to bring in that don’t quite jibe with the way the ancients did things, well there’s the Furlings to blame for it instead.

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  2. Sufficiently Advanced Technology, ho!

    Though honestly it’s surprising how many people see “defined repeatable processes that result in repeatable, predictable results” that are called magic and immediately dismiss it. Just because someone doesn’t know how it works doesn’t make it “magic, don’t gotta explain shit.”

    I’d actually argue that most defined magic systems including the one used by most of the Kingdom Heart cast (except Genie, his stuff is literally “bend the universe over and make it my bitch” magic that can’t really be quantified in the same way as Fire/Fira/Firaga) fall under the heading of natural phenomenon that can be studied using the scientific method.

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    1. Any magic system in a *game* is almost always this by default because it runs on computer programing of some type. And computer programing is logical at the end of the day.

      As humans, we *like* things to “make sense”. And one of the ways we got magic to “make sense” after the Enlightenment was to conceptualize it as sub-set of physics that was controlled in a way that didn’t involve obviously *physical* means.

      You can condense an aweful lot of “magic systems” by doing the equivalent of making the wires between the light switch and the light invisible and unable to be observed with normal observing equipment. But make it so that flipping the light switch still turns the light on/off. Just now make “flipping the light switch” something you do not by flipping an actual switch, but by doing some type of mental exercise.

      And this is when some Buddhist ideas about how it’s the mind the defines reality rather than the other way around start making more sense than less…

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      1. I mean sure, but science is all about observable phenomenon and “magic” especially things like telekinesis are phenomenon that just haven’t been observed and a PROPER scientists will respond to seeing people casting spells not with “HERESY! THAT CANNOT BE!” but with “Huh, do that again,” followed by “I wonder how that works? There’s testing to be done!”

        The Buddhist idea…I’m not going to say it’s impossible or that it’s completely incompatible with scientific inquiry but it does seem to rest on a basic assumption that there isn’t a base reality we all interact with which is the fundamental opposite of the natural sciences which utilize that base assumption then use observation and testing to define what that base reality is and how it functions while always keeping in mind (or at least the scientists are supposed to) that what we see and observe is not the totality of reality and there is always room for something previously unseen to pop up and throw everything into disarray until the new thing has been properly understood.

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      2. To be clear, I’m talking in the setting of most games with magic systems like Kingdom Hearts. The magic *is* the physics of the setting and in-universe is treated as such.

        *In such a setting*, the Buddhist ideas make more sense. Because you decide to do something with your mind, which then happens in reality. So yes, your mind *does* define reality in that sense. What you think affects reality in a very direct way.

        Granted, this can also be true IRL in a more abstract way if you’re really good at visualizing real life in your head. I can visualize what my room looks like when it’s clean *and* the process of how I would make my messy room look like that in my head before just… doing exactly that in the physical world. When your “mental world” reflects the physical world as accurately as possible, then what works in one very often will work in the other… which starts making the “order” of which affects which not so clear-cut.

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  3. My headcanon: Interdimensional energies harnessed by the Ancients. I consider FF14, A Realm Reborn as a record of the Ancient civilization that created the myriad systems that are present in a majority of the games.

    Also the absolute idiots that created the various crisises imperiling the worlds. I headcanon the Primals as being the berzerk, darker side of the Guardians/Summons/whatever that are the Summons. 

    Magic in Final Fantasy is in my opinion linked to the Crystals, save for the necromancers of Spira. Through the lens of the crystals, magic spells siphon off elemental energies from areas with a too much of it. Volcanoes have high Fire and Earth energy, Seas Have Water, Snowfields have Ice, ect. This produces more energy than used, making it infinite, which is why Final Fantasy nations tend to be so stable.

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    1. You…haven’t played FFXIV in a while have you? While it borrows a lot of references and inspirations from other FF series it is unique and distinct and even the other worlds it does connect to are not actually the other Final Fantasy worlds. This has been made very obvious by the Shadowbringers and Endwalker expansions. The only potential point of contact between Ethyris (the world of Final Fantasy XIV) and any of the other Final Fantasy games is the Hildibrand side-story character Gilgamesh. And that’s only potentially because it isn’t confirmed to be the same Gilgamesh from Final Fantasy V.

      …and actually while I think it’s heavily implied that every appearance of Gilgamesh post FF-V is the same guy, I don’t think it’s ever been confirmed one way or another.

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    2. I mean…DiZ could just be being a mad scientist here. They’re not exactly known for being acquainted with reality (never mind sanity) even when they’re not bad/evil guys. And the Tok’ra…well they’re not Goa’uld.

      Usually.

      Well they try anyway.

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      2. “I mean…DiZ could just be being a mad scientist here.”

        That does not make his line better. If anything, it makes it *worse.*

        “And the Tok’ra…well they’re not Goa’uld. Usually. Well they try anyway.”

        :bone dry voice: Well, they ought to try harder. Too bad Jacob could never give them lessons….

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  6. Well. What was that Axel said about problems and disasters, and the differences thereof? Problems have solutions, but in a disaster, one could only ride it out and pray? DiZ sees a problem, his solution is a disaster, and it looks like DiZ’s method of categorizing found a home in someone unexpected.

    At least Axel has the capability of empathy, even if he ignores it when necessary?

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    1. Axel’s moral compass still works: he is (as far as I know) a good guy in a bad situation. DiZ is a bad guy on a too-long leash working on the good guys’ side.

      I’d rather have Axel, no matter how smart DiZ is.

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      1. DiZ sounds like he’s one of those people that you either have to kill out of hand or try and make use of in a way that isn’t too distasteful. And this is actually an interesting, if thorny, moral quandry. What DO you do with the brilliant but amoral scientist? Do you let them do their thing until they cross the line and then kill them because they’ve crossed the line? Throw them in jail until some well meaning moral busybody decides that the jails are too full and what they did wasn’t too bad (and when rapists, murders, and kiddy diddlers are being released early just because the jails are “too crowded” or the sentences were “too harsh” an amoral scientist is probably going to be released too), or do you sit on them and make use of them while hoping you can keep them from going too off the rails?

        …and of course the whole “Do you kill them” also runs into the thorny issue of who you get to kill them because there’s a world of difference between killing someone in a combat situation and an execution of someone who is – at that moment – not an imminent threat to you and yours and the act of killing someone like that is going to be rough. Historically I think that’s why death by firing squad was a thing. So that the soldiers who shot didn’t KNOW who actually killed the convicted. Made (presumably) a little bit easier on them and made it less likely they’d decided to become some sort of vigilante judge and executioner.

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