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[dragnar]

Welp, I've got some time again, so once more into the breach! Maybe this'll fare a bit better than my last two poorly planned attempts.  There's going to be plenty of mechanics going on behind the scenes here, but that can mostly be disregarded at first... In fact, you don't have much other choice seeing as I'm not telling, muahahahahaha!
Haha, it's done! It's finally done! It's taken me years of saving, more than one pile of gold in bribes, and a bit more begging than I'd like to admit, but it's done! Cauldron, check. Supplies of test materials, check. Plenty of crystallized mana, check. Wand that does nothing but looks cool and magical anyway, check. The laboratory is stocked and ready, the only thing missing now is... er... Well, any sort of notes about how this magic stuff works. Of any kind. ^{_{Stupid wizards and their stupid not sharing and saying I'd be a terrible apprentice...}}

So, I suppose step one is to begin the writing of my very own Grimoire.

Spoiler: Chapter One (click to show/hide)

Magic! The force that makes the world go round! I have devoted my life to it's study, and shall begin this tome of arcane knowledge with a quick summary of everything I've learned.

• There are as many forms of magic as there are practitioners. Some coax power from plant life, others the bones of the dead. Some claim playing cards hold incredible potential, and still more work the raw elements into new forms with their wills. Annoyingly, every magical theory is mutually exclusive with every other theory - and yet, somehow, they all work.
• No form of magic is stronger than any other, whatever it's practitioners may claim. There's always a tradeoff: Speed for power, power for versatility, versatility for ease of learning. I've yet to see a form of magic that's either better or worse than another in every way.
• All magic, no matter what the theory, must draw on the existing aspects of the world to function. Necromancers draw from bone what druids draw from plants, and alchemists insist that they use a little bit of everything.
• I've managed to figure out the rudiments of my own style of magic, via careful experimentation mostly based on the preceding fact. It was surprisingly simple: All I had to do was pick a focus for my abilities, use some of my materials to charge it with an aspect, and will the power to flow into the world. admittedly, this is good for little more than flashes of light, but it's a start. All I need do now is direct the flow... Somehow. Runic diagrams? Pure willpower? I hear most alchemists simply rely on the combination of aspects to do the bulk of the work for them.

So, for the sake of tradition:
Name:
Specialty:
Starting bonus: (Anything from a magic artifact, to a supply of particularly hard to find reagents.)
First Action:

[GreatWyrmGold]

Spoiler: Timothy Magus ("Yuan-Tim") (click to show/hide)

Specialty: Reptiles
Bonus: Yuan-ti Heritage
Action: Check my snake cage to see if I have any snakes. You left it ambiguous. If not, attempt to summon a garter snake.

[griffinpup]

Name:  Korgoth
Specialty:  Gravitational attraction.
Starting Bonus:  Magical Glove (allows you to manipulate things with an invisible hand from a distance.

[escaped lurker]

Name: Jouan dé Belle
Speciality: Manipulation of Time
Starting Bonus: Enchanted Hourglass - Its enchantment makes it unaffected by your magic, giving you a good sense of how good - or bad - you are doing if placed nebst to its unenchanted twin.

[dragnar]

(Hmm, no +1s or anything, so... mix and match it is!)
Ah yes, Timothy Belle: Time Wizard! Or, well, something like that. I'll figure it eventually I'm sure. For now though, I need to get started! How shall I start experimenting with this magic stuff?

Well, to help narrow things down, let's see what I've got to work with:

• One glove of Mage Hand. Gods this thing was expensive, but it's useful for working with dangerous substances.
• One magic-immune hourglass
• One normal hourglass(used as a magical focus)
• Ten cups of the sands of time - no relation to Persia
• Five sundials
• A crucible, for rendering things into their base aspects
• Alchemical touchstones - mostly mundane really, but even non-magical folk know how to scrape an aspect or two from things with these.
• twenty varied elemental crystal things I bought off a curio dealer

And my current magical theories:

• Items can be rendered into aspects
• Focuses can be charged with aspects
• Depending on the method used to shape the energy, a given combination of aspects may do many things, or just one.
• Wizards are jerks. Yes that's a theory shut up.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Suggestion game? Alrighty then.

Render half a cup of the Sands of Time into its base aspects.

[Harbingerjm]

Do we know what our crystals do, or do we have to just guess? Physical details of the crystals, any observed oddities (ambient temperature fluctuations, light-alterations, noise generation/cancellation, etc)?

[dragnar]

Render half a cup of the Sands of Time into its base aspects.

Ten minutes of work later, I have a bubbling crucible full of refined Time. There are of course some other trade elements to it - a few scraps of earth or glass aspects I believe, but not enough to work with... At least, not at my current skill level. A closer look reveals that the sand is actually composed of three aspects though, not one! Past, Present, and Future, I can just barely make out the difference between them with these half-rate tools of mine. Probably wouldn't have noticed at all had I not chosen temporal magics to focus my studies on...

Do we know what our crystals do, or do we have to just guess? Physical details of the crystals, any observed oddities (ambient temperature fluctuations, light-alterations, noise generation/cancellation, etc)?

The crystals come in four varieties, one for each of the classic elements: Fire is warm to the touch, water is cool, earth is heavier than it should be and air practically floats. Past that though, I've got no idea what these things do.

Spoiler: Status (click to show/hide)

Inventory:

• One glove of Mage Hand. Gods this thing was expensive, but it's useful for working with dangerous substances.
• One magic-immune hourglass
• One normal hourglass(used as a magical focus)
• 9.5 cups of the sands of time - no relation to Persia
• Five sundials
• A crucible, for rendering things into their base aspects
• Alchemical touchstones - mostly mundane really, but even non-magical folk know how to scrape an aspect or two from things with these.
• twenty varied elemental crystal things I bought off a curio dealer
• Equal parts Past Present and Future aspects, in the crucible(Units? I have no idea!)

Skills:

• Apprentice Time magic
• Apprentice Focus use
• Apprentice Aspect infusion

[GreatWyrmGold]

Wonder what tools I would need to incorporate the Aspects into foci, and how I could separate Past and Present from Future. Maybe a centrifuge?

[Harbingerjm]

Wonder what tools I would need to incorporate the Aspects into foci, and how I could separate Past and Present from Future. Maybe a centrifuge?

Presumably we need to refuse our nephews dinner invitation and turn away people seeking donations, then undertake a series of Ghostbusting missions.

[dragnar]

Wonder what tools I would need to incorporate the Aspects into foci, and how I could separate Past and Present from Future. Maybe a centrifuge?

Infusing a Focus with an Aspect is a simple process, requiring nothing more than touching the raw aspects to something - the crucible was rather expensive mostly because it needs to not behave that way! But splitting them apart? That's a good deal trickier. Hmm...

A centrifuge would certainly be the alchemical way of doing things. Rely on a machine that's been calibrated to split apart even small differences like these. Unfortunately the construction of such a thing is far beyond me right now, I'd need to find and pay a real alchemist for one. Alternatively, it should theoretically be possible to simply will the aspects into different containers... But while quite simple and effective, relying too much on it would push me down the path of the mentalist - magic that can be worked without any external aid at all, but which tends to be rather weak to make up for it. There might be any number of middle paths as well though.

...

Now that I think about it, maybe I don't really have enough information to begin this in earnest. I'm not much for fighting just yet, but if I could come up with a spell or two to help in that arena, I could probably raid some of the nearby Dungeons (they're weird, I'll get into that later) for magic items and tomes to study. It would make things a lot easier if I had some more examples to dissect to get started.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Alright. Plan:

Store the mixed Time Aspects in a place that they won't get infused with the container.
Go chat with some alchemists for odd jobs we can do to get use of their centrifuges to separate the Time Aspects.

[Armok]

Hmm, his is probably above our ability now, but might make a good long term goal: trying to make a pair of goggles infused with Future, that lets you constantly see half a second into the future - very useful in a fight, giving you essentially *negative reflexes* by letting you dodge stuff that wont be in front of your eyes until half a second later and might not even have been set in motion yet, which means we can probably sell them for quite a bit.

[Grek]

We should examine the refined time. Is it about the same volume as the unrefined sands? How do the aspects differ? An especially important question to ask is about the fundamental nature of time: Where is the fundamental temporal referent located in time? Or, equivalently, does the present move through time, or does time move through the present?

If the fundamental temporal referent is at a fixed point in history, perhaps the beginning of time, or the end, then the motion of the present moment in relation to the fundamental temporal referent should slowly transmute aspects of the Future into aspects of the Present and then into the Past as the instant that any particular aspect refers to changes category. But if there is an identity between the Now and the fundamental temporal referent, that is, Past aspects refer to a certain duration antenunc and Future aspects refer to a certain duration postnuc, and the Present aspect refers to Now itself, then we should expect no such transformation, only an alteration in the effects of a certain volume of aspect as the time of application varies...

Examine the Refined Time. Determine what the ratio between Future, Past and Present aspects is, and whether this ratio is changing over time.

[dragnar]

Examine the Refined Time. Determine what the ratio between Future, Past and Present aspects is, and whether this ratio is changing over time.

I could make a few guesses about the nature of the temporal aspects, but the precision needed to perform a true analysis is, unfortunately, a bit beyond me. Still, my theory is thus: 'Aspects' are fundamental forces of nature, referring not to anything concrete, but to abstract concepts. Elemental time therefore comes in three varieties: The sort that represents 'now', 'before now' and 'after now'. If so, the effects would vary more based on the quantity used than the time of creation.

Hmm, his is probably above our ability now, but might make a good long term goal: trying to make a pair of goggles infused with Future, that lets you constantly see half a second into the future - very useful in a fight, giving you essentially *negative reflexes* by letting you dodge stuff that wont be in front of your eyes until half a second later and might not even have been set in motion yet, which means we can probably sell them for quite a bit.

Hmm. Possible, I think, but while useful, I suspect such a device would be worth less than you might imagine. Precognitive magic of that sort is almost always very draining the keep working, either on your energy or your wallet.

Store the mixed Time Aspects in a place that they won't get infused with the container.
Go chat with some alchemists for odd jobs we can do to get use of their centrifuges to separate the Time Aspects.

Well... While I've heard it's possible to enchant glass to be completely immune to any and all magic (though of course, it doesn't help with the results of magic - a fireball melts it just fine) I don't have any of that at the moment. Still, the crucible will keep the raw aspects safe enough for now.

As for the alchemist? A short trip into town reveals exactly what I'd feared: The only one I know of in the area has somewhat higher standards for help than I can meet. I could probably rent the use of some of the man's tools with about half my savings, but working for him? He wants real dungeon-divers. People who can prove they'll actually come back from a trip for reagents.

...I should probably elaborate a bit more on the process of spell-casting, shouldn't I? As good a time as any I suppose - though you'll have to forgive me if some bits of this are inaccurate:

Spoiler: Chapter Two (click to show/hide)

I've already written about what magic is, so next up are the basics of actually working it. This stuff is a lot more complex though, and I don't understand all of it - hey, if this were easy, everyone and their grandmother would be doing it.

• As I've explained already, the core of all magic is the aspects it draws on. No matter what you do, no matter how you cast, you'll need something to power it. Some magi can draw aspects out of objects on their own, but since I've yet to master spells of that kind, I'll need to rely on my crucible for this step.
• Once the aspects are gathered, they must be directed. So far, I've relied on the simplest way of doing this: Pour them into a focus, then pour them out again. This works, but as I said, it isn't good for much past flashes of light. My observations have shown me two primary methods of directing aspects used by most, but not all, magi.
• The first is used by those varieties of mage who use wands and staves and the like. As best I can tell, these instruments function somewhat like a crucible: Holding aspects, but not interacting with them. Once filled thus, a practiced flourish can weave the aspects into whatever pattern the wizard might desire. How these patterns work is, thus far, a mystery to me. Perhaps it is only a mnemonic, easing the will-driven shaping that is actually at play?
• The second sort is more physical, relying on things like rune and symbols. Watching these things in action, it appears that each part of the magical diagram represents some sort of logic or word, and together it strings together a 'sentence' of sorts that guides the aspects' use. I believe I could replicate this, though it would take many days of trial and error to discern the meaning of each symbol.