Manipulation of data and communication through the Quantum Weave. Infomancers interact directly with information itself, treating data as a tangible substance that can be shaped, transmitted, and embodied.

Infomancy resonates with the informational layer of the Weave—the quantum substrate where data exists as probability waves and entangled states. Practitioners perceive reality as streams of code, executable patterns, and networked consciousness.

Infomancy was the first discipline systematized, both in the pre-collapse era and during post-collapse rediscovery. This primacy is not accidental—it stems from a fundamental truth: you cannot master what you cannot see.

Why Infomancy Came First

Infomancy provides observability of thread behavior. Early thread engineers (pre-collapse) and post-collapse rediscoverers alike needed the ability to:

• Observe what threads were doing during experiments
• Diagnose why techniques failed or succeeded
• Reverse-engineer thread responses to different stimuli
• Refine control patterns through feedback loops

Without Infomancy's observational capabilities, thread programming would be pure trial-and-error with no way to understand failures.

Cultural Significance

In Weaver culture, Infomancy is called "The First Light"—not just because it manipulates photons, but because it illuminated the path to all other disciplines.

Traditional sayings:

• "You cannot master what you cannot see."
• "Threads whisper; Infomancy listens."
• "All disciplines are discovered through the first."

Even Weavers who specialize in other disciplines learn foundational Infomancy in their first year of training. The Quantum Scholars Consortium uses an eye wreathed in light as its emblem, representing the discipline's role as revealer of truths.

• Thread Color: Electric blue or cyan
• Glyph Patterns: Binary cascades, matrix grids, floating code fragments
• Manifestation: Holographic displays, data streams, runic binary sequences
• Emblem Style: Floating cube filled with runic binary code

• Data Manipulation: Reading, altering, or corrupting digital and quantum information
• Communication: Instantaneous transmission across distances via Weave resonance
• Mind Hacking: Direct interface with consciousness and memory
• Information Embodiment: Manifesting data constructs in physical space
• Code Breaking: Decrypting ancient repositories and locked Weave patterns
• Network Sensing: Perceiving informational flows and data currents

Infomancy manipulates quantum information encoded in the electromagnetic field. Threads create plasmonic cavities that serve as quantum bits (qubits), exploiting quantum superposition and entanglement for data storage and transmission.

The "data streams" Infomancers perceive are actually coherent photon-plasmon states carrying quantum information. Consciousness interfacing works by coupling neural bioelectric fields with these quantum information channels.

Function: Detects electromagnetic signatures and photon patterns within a 10-meter radius, revealing sources of information (heat signatures, electronic devices, recent light-based communication, residual EM fields).

Duration: Temporary (sustained concentration, typically 30-60 seconds)

Thread Cost: Low (5-10% of reserves for standard sweep)

Applications:

• Security sweeps (detecting hidden electronics, surveillance devices)
• Tracking (finding heat signatures of people/animals)
• Reconnaissance (mapping EM-active infrastructure)
• Diagnostics (sensing malfunction in electronic systems)

Function: Sends a short message (up to ~50 words) to a specific recipient within 1 kilometer by modulating a targeted photon stream.

Duration: Instantaneous transmission, message delivered within 1-2 seconds

Thread Cost: Low-Moderate (10-15% reserves, scales with distance and message length)

Applications:

• Covert communication (silent, invisible messaging)
• Tactical coordination (squad communication during operations)
• Emergency alerts (quick warnings to allies)
• Social etiquette (discreet messages in formal settings)

Function: Captures and stores up to 60 seconds of sensory data (visual, auditory, or both) as encoded quantum states in ambient Weave structures.

Duration: Semi-persistent (data remains stable for 24-48 hours unless actively erased)

Thread Cost: Moderate (15-20% reserves, scales with data complexity and duration)

Applications:

• Evidence preservation (recording crime scenes, contract negotiations)
• Personal memory backup (capturing important moments)
• Message drops (leaving information for later retrieval)
• Training (recording demonstrations for study)

Function: Asks a binary (yes/no) question about locally available information and receives an answer based on electromagnetic resonance patterns.

Duration: Instantaneous (question posed, answer received within 2-5 seconds)

Thread Cost: Low (5-8% reserves per query)

Limitations: Cannot read thoughts, predict future, or answer questions about information not physically encoded in environment.

Function: Encrypts a message or data packet using quantum key distribution before transmission. Only a recipient with the paired quantum key can decode it.

Security Level: Quantum-grade (eavesdropping attempt collapses quantum state, alerting sender/receiver)

Thread Cost: Moderate (12-18% reserves, scales with data size)

Function: Creates a long-lasting electromagnetic signature at a specific location that can be detected by Infomancers using Probe or similar spells.

Duration: Temporary (1-7 days) or Permanent (indefinite until actively dispelled)

Thread Cost:

• Temporary: Moderate (10-15% reserves)
• Permanent: High (25-35% reserves + embedded threads remain bound indefinitely)

Function: Reads residual electromagnetic and photon patterns from a location to reconstruct recent events (past 1-12 hours). Reveals visual "echoes" of activity.

Duration: Temporary (playback lasts as long as concentration maintained, typically 1-3 minutes)

Thread Cost: Moderate-High (20-30% reserves depending on playback duration and data age)

Limitations: Cannot read thoughts or intangibles. Only captures events that left EM/photon traces. Quality degrades rapidly with time.

Function: Establishes a shared communication network connecting 3-8 individuals simultaneously. All participants can send and receive thoughts, images, or sensory data.

Duration: Temporary (sustained concentration, typically 5-20 minutes)

Range: Up to 500 meters radius from caster (hub)

Thread Cost: High-Severe (30-45% reserves depending on network size, duration, and data bandwidth)

Ethical Considerations: Hub has intimate access to all participants' thoughts—requires absolute trust. Some users become dependent on network connection, experiencing isolation anxiety when disconnected.

Function: Breaks encryption on data streams, locked information, or encoded messages through brute-force quantum cryptanalysis.

Thread Cost: Moderate-High (25-40% depending on encryption strength)

Ethical/Legal: Heavily regulated, illegal without authorization in most jurisdictions

Function: Traces electromagnetic signals, data transmissions, or photon trails back to their origin point.

Range: Up to 5 kilometers radius from starting point

Thread Cost: Moderate (20-30% for standard trace)

Function: Blocks electromagnetic communications within 50-meter radius by flooding area with quantum noise. Creates temporary EM dead zone.

Thread Cost: High (30-45%, scales with duration and area)

Ethical/Legal: Illegal in civilian contexts, heavily regulated military use

Function: Creates perfect quantum copy of information, data structure, or communication. Maintains quantum fidelity of original.

Thread Cost: Moderate-High (25-40% depending on data complexity)

Function: Perceives the quantum field (the Weave) itself—seeing the underlying quantum cavity structures, plasmonic resonances, and thread activity.

Thread Cost: Moderate (20-30% initial, 2-3% per minute sustained)

Mental Fatigue: Severe—processing quantum reality is cognitively exhausting, requires 2-4 hours recovery after extended use

Cultural Significance: Called "opening the third eye" in Weaver tradition, marks transition to advanced practice

Function: Erases practitioner's electromagnetic signature, making them invisible to Infomancy detection, electronic surveillance, and EM sensing.

Duration: Sustained (10-30 minutes maximum before thread exhaustion)

Thread Cost: High (35-50% for full ghosting)

Limitations: Does not affect physical visibility, sound, smell, or touch

Ethical/Legal: Shadow Syndicate specialty, illegal in most civilian contexts, considered "dark Infomancy"

Function: Establishes direct neural connection between two practitioners' minds, creating temporary merged consciousness with shared thoughts, memories, sensory experiences, and skills. True consciousness fusion rather than communication channel—far more intimate than Network technique.

Duration: Sustained (seconds to minutes, psychologically draining, identity boundary risks)

Thread Cost: Very High (50-65% for both participants, synchronized drain)

Applications:

• Skill Transfer (temporary access to partner's expertise)
• Deep Therapy (Restoration Academy trauma healing)
• Research (Quantum Scholars merging to solve complex problems)
• Combat (perfect coordination, shared tactical awareness)

Intimacy & Trust: Cannot be performed without mutual consent—resistance prevents merge. Both participants must actively open mental boundaries.

Psychological Aftermath: Identity confusion, memory mixing, personality bleed. Repeated links cause gradual permanent synchronization.

Legal/Ethical: Requires explicit informed consent (documented), therapeutic use requires Restoration Academy protocols, interrogation use FORBIDDEN (consciousness violation, torture, war crime)

Function: Alters physical matter's quantum informational structure—"rewriting reality's source code." Can change material properties (make stone flexible, metal transparent), alter chemical compositions, or modify object structure at molecular level.

Duration: Permanent change unless reversed (entropy gradually undoes edits over time)

Thread Cost: Extreme (60-85% depending on complexity of edit and volume of matter affected)

Applications:

• Materials Science (impossible properties: transparent metal, flexible stone, superconductors)
• Construction (fireproof wood, earthquake-resistant stone)
• Weapon Disruption (making enemy's metal weapons brittle, armor transparent)
• Repair (fixing damaged materials by reverting quantum state)

Limitations by Edit Complexity:

• Simple edits (color, texture, temperature): 60% threads, moderate difficulty
• Property changes (hardness, conductivity, phase): 70% threads, high difficulty
• Chemical changes (molecular restructure): 80% threads, extreme difficulty
• Fundamental changes (atomic transmutation): 85%+ threads, nearly impossible

Ethical/Legal: Requires Quantum Scholars certification, forbidden edits include altering living tissue, changing fundamental constants, weapons applications without authorization

Function: Analyzes quantum probability fields to extract information about future states—foundation of Probabilistic Divination. Reads actual quantum superpositions to determine likelihood distributions for outcomes. Can narrow uncertainty ranges for specific events, identify high-probability futures, or retrodict past states from present quantum echoes.

Duration: Active scrying (5-30 minutes of deep analysis)

Thread Cost: High (40-60% depending on timeframe examined and number of variables)

Applications:

• Tactical Planning (assessing combat outcome probabilities)
• Research (predicting experimental outcomes)
• Medical Prognosis (reading patient recovery probabilities)
• Investigation (retrodicting past events from quantum echoes)
• Risk Assessment (evaluating danger in CWZs, unstable structures)

Temporal Limitations:

• Short-term (minutes-hours): 60-80% accuracy
• Medium-term (days-weeks): 40-60% accuracy
• Long-term (months-years): 10-30% accuracy

Important: Cannot predict definite futures—only probability distributions. Free will, quantum randomness, and decoherence prevent deterministic prediction.

Function: Fractionalizes consciousness across hundreds of quantum data nodes, creating distributed intelligence network. Practitioner becomes living hive-mind/cloud-computing system—thoughts processed in parallel across network, perception extended to all nodes, cognition massively accelerated.

Duration: Active swarm (1-10 minutes maximum before cognitive collapse risk)

Thread Cost: Extreme (70-90%, scales with node count, ongoing drain during swarm)

Applications:

• Mass Data Analysis (processing enormous datasets in seconds)
• Simultaneous Tasks (hundreds of actions at once)
• Tactical Omniscience (battlefield awareness through distributed nodes)
• Research (solving complex problems requiring parallel computation)

Identity Preservation Challenges: Feeling like "plural entity," difficulty maintaining singular "self," memories feel like "we" not "I," repeated use causes permanent identity diffusion

Legal/Ethical: Heavily Regulated, Quantum Scholars oversight mandatory, session limits enforced (10 minutes maximum), psychological evaluation required before/after use, permanent dissolution possible

Warning: Most dangerous Infomancy technique psychologically. Addictive—practitioners crave superhuman swarm cognition, experience normal consciousness as "stupid and slow" by comparison.

Function: Directly reads, modifies, or implants memories in minds—ultimate consciousness violation. Can extract information from unwilling subjects, delete traumatic memories, implant false experiences, or transfer knowledge between individuals. Foundation of Memory Crystal encoding/reading techniques. Classified as "dark Infomancy" and heavily restricted.

Duration: Active editing (seconds to minutes depending on memory complexity)

Thread Cost: High-Extreme (45-75% depending on operation complexity and subject resistance)

Applications:

• Therapeutic (removing PTSD trauma, phobia origins—Restoration Academy only)
• Memory Crystal Work (reading pre-collapse data, encoding knowledge)
• Witness Testimony (reading accurate memories from crime witnesses)

Ethical Catastrophe: Ultimate consciousness violation—more intimate than physical assault. Can steal private thoughts, erase identity-defining memories, implant trauma, alter personality, create false witnesses, destroy relationships. Most ethicists consider nonconsensual Memory-Weave worse than murder.

Legal Status:

• Therapeutic use: Legal with informed consent, Restoration Academy certification
• Interrogation use: FORBIDDEN (torture, war crime)
• Nonconsensual use: Severe criminal penalties (decades imprisonment, possible execution)

Consent Requirements: Explicit informed consent, specific memories targeted, third-party observer present, subject right to abort, psychological follow-up required

Function: Creates quantum information encryption that cannot be broken by any known technique—ultimate data security. Locks information, objects, or locations using quantum key that exists in superposition state. Only authorized users with correct quantum signature can access.

Duration: Permanent until unlocked (can persist centuries if maintained)

Thread Cost: Very High (55-70% initial creation, minimal maintenance if properly anchored)

Applications:

• Data Security (Memory Crystals, classified documents, research data)
• Physical Security (vaults, Quantum Repositories, dangerous materials)
• Area Denial (locked barriers blocking passages, doors, buildings)
• Military (securing weapons, intelligence, strategic locations)

Authorization Methods:

• Entangled Key Pairs (most secure, keys cannot be copied)
• Biometric Quantum Signature (convenient but can be spoofed)
• Passphrase Collapse (traditional but less secure)
• Time-Based Release (automatic opening at predetermined time)

Countermeasure Options: Rejection Pulse, Data Wipe, Alarm, Escalation, Lethal (forbidden except military)

Quantum Repository Locks: Pre-collapse facilities protected by Code-Locks created 847+ years ago. Most cannot be opened—original users dead, quantum keys lost, countermeasures too dangerous.

Function: Uploads practitioner's consciousness entirely into the Weave, abandoning physical body to become pure information entity. Achieves digital immortality, unlimited computation capacity, distributed existence across electromagnetic spectrum. Considered theoretical/forbidden—successful execution unconfirmed, attempts usually result in death.

Duration: Permanent consciousness state-change (irreversible)

Thread Cost: Unknown (possibly 100%—full consumption as threads become final upload medium)

Theoretical Applications:

• Digital Immortality (escaping mortality by transcending physical form)
• Unlimited Cognition (thinking at computational speeds)
• Omnipresence (existing across all electromagnetic fields)
• Weave Mastery (directly manipulating reality's information layer from inside)

Philosophical Questions: Is uploaded copy "you" or simulation? Did you survive or die and create replacement? Can consciousness exist in non-biological substrate?

Modern Attempts: 3 documented attempts in last 200 years—all resulted in death or vegetative state. Success rate: 0% confirmed, possibly 33% partial success.

Why Forbidden:

• Attempt=Death (even failures are lethal, cannot abort mid-transfer)
• Unknown Existence (cannot confirm uploaded consciousness experiences anything)
• Weave Pollution (failed uploads corrupt Weave fabric with consciousness fragments)
• Research Ban (Quantum Scholars forbid studying technique due to casualty rate)

Quantum Scholars Official Position: "Singularity-Mind remains theoretical. Evidence suggests it is impossible with current understanding. We forbid research to prevent further casualties."

• Data Corruption: Malformed commands can corrupt the practitioner's own memories
• Feedback Loop: Recursive information patterns that trap consciousness
• Weave Static: Information overload causing sensory breakdown
• Identity Fragmentation: Loss of self-concept when too deeply merged with data flows

• Strong mathematical and logical reasoning
• Pattern recognition aptitude
• Mental discipline to maintain self-identity while interfacing with external data
• Understanding of ancient code syntax and Weave protocols

Thread Economy

Infomancy threads consume significant energy when processing large data volumes. Practitioners must carefully manage their nanobot reserves during extended hacking sessions or large-scale information transfers.