Time PassesWithout your care, the Mana Impeder quickly dissolves, halving your mana absorption rate.
[+1 Mana income this turn instead of +2]> Boost processing speed to observe the animalsYou pump mana into your mind, making it move faster, speeding up your perception of time. You begin to vibrate ever so slightly, power thrumming through your crystalline core. Flickers turn into blurs, which slowly fade into figures moving at what should be a relateable speed to what the animals experience themselves. A bird taking flight. A snake snatching a smaller lizard and eating it whole. You learn much, and notice many creatures that had escaped your sight before, such as a chameleon, managing to see the moment its tongue shoots forth, entangling a fly.
But all this pales before the lightning. You were awed when you first noticed the spectacle during a thunderstorm, light and power, trembling through the air. Since then you've paid close attention during thunderstorms, fascinated by the lightning. In particular, one incident stands out, when a lightning strike happened to intersect with a leyline. The mana within the leyline became much more energetic from what you could sense, while the lightning seemed to have lost some power in turn. It appeared that it was possible to convert lightning into mana. The possibilities hinted at were very intriguing.
[Learnt Haste. -1 Mana. Gained knowledge of local fauna. You know of lightning]
> Make our way to that mana convergence!Striving for efficiency in your mana consumption, you give yourself a single forceful shove, tearing off the creeper overgrowth, and begin rolling downhill, hoping to let gravity do most of the heavy lifting for you.
It was then that disaster struck.
A small deer, startled by your sudden movement, bounded out of a copse of trees, directly into your path. If not for your sped-up perceptions you might not have noticed it in time. As it is, you barely managed avert a collision, dodging behind it, fearing that if you crashed into it, you would have veered too far off course.
You arrive at the convergence, and stop on a dime with another surge of mana. You begin slowly rotating back and forth, pushing downwards into the soil, until you are finally securely lodged over the convergence.
Finally you have the luxury of focusing your attention upon the convergence itself.
It's somewhat different from what you expected. Rather than the two lines joining together seamlessly, the two streams of mana clash against each other, forming a swirling vortex that eventually drains into the thicker outlet leyline. This is a boon to you, as it allows you to absorb more mana than expected. The vortex itself tickles a idea lurking at the back of your mind, but you fail to grasp anything solid for now.
[-5 Mana. Learned more about Leyline convergences]
What do you do over the next decade? (Pick Two)> Experimenting (what? include mana used)
> Speeding up. You have theorized a way you could pump mana into your brain to speed up your "processing" speed, essentially bringing your perception of time closer to that of the animals, allowing you to observe more of them, in greater detail. (Costs 1 Mana)
> The Sense Link bridges the gap between your mind and that of the target animal, sending its sensory input to you. What if you reversed the flow and send something to it instead? Some false memory or sensation? Maybe you could induce artificial terror? This holds potential... (Costs 1 Mana)
> Going upstream. If you spent mana to counteract the flow you might be able to travel up your leyline, possible even discovering its source! (specify how much mana to spend)
> Let's try that again. With practise comes perfection. You could try to travel down the leyline again, hopefully with better results this time. Perhaps you could spend some mana, both to shield you from the buffeting and mitigate the attenuation, so you have a better view of the world beyond the leyline as you travel along it? (If you spend mana, specify how much)
> Why
have the leylines taken the particular fixed paths they have through the landscape? You cannot sense any underlying pattern or reason behind this. If you could understand this, it should be easier to prevent leylines from jumping back to the old groove once you move them. You believe you'd get some insight into this mystery if you infuse mana into the area around leyline, saturating it with raw power until the secret is revealed to you. (Specify amount of mana to spend)
> While the Mana Impeder has improved your mana income, it is still ultimately
passive absorption. If you could somehow "invert" the mana inside you for a lack of a better term, you might be able to form a sort of suction source, pulling in surrounding mana into your being. (Requires stored mana to invert)
> Something Else?
*New*> The flow of the merged leyline is stronger, more focused, seemingly better aligned to move in the same direction. It is much harder to create a Impeder to obstruct the flow,
requiring two action slots. (Still only takes one action per turn to maintain)
> If it is possible for lightning to become mana, might the opposite perhaps be true? You would like to try forming mana into lightning. (Requires mana, specify how much)
> Rather than forming the substance itself, you would like to see what happens when mana mimics lightning's movements, striking a object with blinding speed. (Requires mana, specify how much)
> You can haste yourself, gaining a extra 2 actions per decade, for a net gain of 1 action per decade. (Costs 1 Mana)
Mana Pool: 0/?? Mana
Mana Income: 3 Mana/decade
Your weight: 10 metric tonnes
Sensory Range: 100 metres
Closest Non-"Owned" Leyline: 37 Metres
Rudimentary Leyline Manipulation : You can spend mana to interact with the leylines, twisting, pushing, pulling, stretching and holding them.
- Leyline Divination : You can send your awareness out along the leylines. You believe you can get better results if you commit mana to doing this.
Mana Impeder : You solidify your mental will to hinder the flow of mana through a leyline.
Sense Link : You connect your mind with that of a animal, sharing in the input from its senses. You believe spending more than the minimum of 1 mana would potentially give better results.
Haste : Speeds up your personal timeframe. You feel it might be slightly risky to power this spell with more than 2 mana.
Basic Telekinesis: The crude moving of objects through brute force