Conceptually Imposed Materials

= Canon = CIMs (alternatively cimmats, pronouned sim-mats) are reality-warping conjurations (materials) designed to express an abstract functionality (concept) that interfaces with local physics rather than following them (imposed). Various concepts and goals can be imposed, as well as assorted implementation details, since reality warping is already in play. Oftentimes if a reality warper dictates something that is not possible under normal physics without a plan or system in mind as to why, yet is definitely capable of making it happen, a CIM will form with the details autogenerated depending on the type of warping and user's personal preference. Most commonly, it will form a conceptual weapon in the form of a physically manifest reality structure that outputs abnormal results into the physics-obeying situation around it, possibly infectiously if necessary or useful for organizing certain abstract effects. Some CIMs, especially those generated secondarily as part of carrying out abstracted effects, used as shells by concept summoners, or meant to be layered onto base existences by aestheticians, are 'carriers' designed to handle data behaving in ways that are not normally physically possible for temporary periods and translate interactions appropriately (i.e. temporarily squashing something into a space that does not line up without causing compression problems or functionality failures, growth/shrinking effects, causing output abnormal magics to interface correctly with object recognition). Otherwise, many are 'arbitrary generators', meant to output anomalous physical and nonphysical results in order to get effects that are not possible through normal interactions such as excessive force or durability. The main difference is whether being inside of one is meant to translate for an internal body while accommodating for outer reality, or to pressure outer reality into compliance with an effect, but in many cases this classification is not strictly binding.

When you test the strength of a Conceptually Imposed Material, instead of the material being stronger then steel because it has stronger atomic bonds in accordance with physics, it's stronger because someone grabbed the concept of "stronger then" and applied it to the concept of "steel", or just because someone made the material and imposed 'this material is stronger then steel', and in some cases because of a generic conceptual intensity applied to something possessing material durability such that its shear, tensile, yield, etc. stress capacities exceed steel. If you investigated you might find normal steel and a series of micro-enforcement processes that lead to it being anomalously better on a macro scale, or an opaque contiguous field that weighs a bunch, depending on the concepts involved.

This allows for various forms of Reality Warpers to do things which do not genuinely make sense without concern for logic; for instance, it is likely that most of the Baicar Race began as Conceptually Imposed Pseudosapients, and many of the cakes they have conjured are likely CIMs for similar reasons.

= Proposed Canon =

= Otherworlds = CIMs in DtG are basically the same as the proposed version above, other then the bit about Baicars.

The functional manifestations of CIMs strongly resemble the Imaginary Elements of Surgecrafters of the Elixir Sovereignty in A Simple Transaction I; a Conceptually Imposed Fire acts like actual fire, instead of acting like Conceptual Fire. The distinction is something like the difference between a substance which moves like flame but faster and hotter, and a substance which can unleash all forms of potential energy into a more disorganized form of direct energy including politically, kinetically, and so on; though it Is possible for a Conceptually imposed fire to behave like the second, it requires the imposed concept be 'conceptual fire' instead of 'fire', so to speak.