Update 33"Yes perhaps it's time." Raioyris sits back, eagerly awaiting instruction.
Akasha wrings her hands.
"So, we shall start learning today, after tour demonstration?"
"What I created just now is a Shadowform--a conversion of something mental into something material. But to arrive at this stage, we may first discuss simpler concepts in order to teach the basics of Shadow magic."He draws some faces on the chalfboard.
Faces. As he turns to face the class again, the Shadowform he created "walks" over to the chalkboard, and extends a single shadowy arm up to the chalkboard. The chalk begins to levitate, and is moved by the hand to draw expressions on all of the faces.
"The most basic mental concept to understand is emotion. Each emotion is a combination of various types of energy, but the basic emotions fall across spectrums: Love and Hate, Hope and Fear, Boredom and Joy, and so on. Each has a characteristic energy, which a Shadow Magic spell can lock onto. In fact, locking on is exactly the term I have in mind..."His Shadowform brings out a tray from one of the drawers at the side of the classroom. Upon it is a collection of miniatures, and the tray itself can be flipped and used as a large game board.
"We won't be playing games," he notes,
"But these are magical game pieces. We'll be studying them. Each of the Ranged pieces will fire a missile at the press of a button, and those missiles will home in on a specific emotion. Try to guess what emotion to use for each kind of target. You'll find animals, people, and other such sculptures."The class disperses and each table grabs a game board with a full set of pieces. Your instructions are to set up a single ranged piece, and echange its colored base with a different colored base representing an emotion (you choose). There are a number of different target types, including:
-A small dog, modelled as if barking
-A nobleman with his eyes fixated on a book
-A rock-shaped golem
-A shark propped up on a stand
Let's learn.
The gateway to the wonderful world of Earthweaving seems to consist of complicated lab instructions and elaborate mixing procedures. All to combine a bunch of different chemicals, each representing a letter, into a single flask. But you seem moderately successful, learning to print your name on a block of wet clay by dabbing it with some of the solution. And then, when the time comes, you try to apply your newfound skills onto a block of granite...
...the granite dissolves into letters.
"Ah, you're the first to reach this point!" says Coru.
"The mix you've prepared works well on malleable stones. But on something as hard as granite, you have to be careful about the amount you apply. Putting the solution directly on the surface causes the surface to rapidly conform, while the interior fails to react. This cracks the stone."Apparently, the trick is to use your Serro gauntlet to drag and drop genetics from the potion into the rock. This disperses the genetics more evently, and avoids cracking the stone. All of this feels rather familiar.
"Have you considered more distance?"
"I see where your coming from. But there are only so many ways to make a mirror, at least that we know of. I seems like we'd be subsidizing glassblowers more then scientists for this. Though, maybe volcanic rocks could be used..."
"You would be hard-pressed to find a peak visible at a longer distance. Perhaps you could find a further peak from Inverath Tower, but that place has been closed off for decades now.
Reflecting fire is not of prime concern. Rather, one of our graduate students currently works on a mirror for which time is said to pass more slowly, and thus you can use it to look into the past.
But these would be more advanced techniques. What we shall be learning today are the basics: how to slow an animal using your Me."He motions for a student to look into a drawer at the edge of the classroom, and the student brings out a tray of small, fluffy frog-like critters. They are as cold as statues...
"Could anyone hazard a guess as to why we practice with live animals rather than inanimate objects?"
Christine flushes a bit, but doesn't respond to the jab.
When the Professor finishes, she raises her hand:
"Will learning those techniques be part of this class?"
"Actually, yes. Water, as a liquid, is normally hard to manipulate. Therefore, a magician's chief tool when working with Water magic is the Paper Charm. They dissolve readily and impart new properties into the water, allowing you to manipulate it in more than just physical ways."She starts describing how Charms are made. You require a base, an ink, and a source of "genes," special microscopic Kahigan that impart their properties into the water when dissolved.
The base can be any sort of paper, cloth, or even a tablet. Paper is cheap and soaks ink easily; for a more permanent solution, some magicians opt to use cloth charms, able to store several uses. For certain charms, mostly unrelated to water, some may use their clothes as a base.
Most relevant to Water magic is the ink. Some inks are miscible, which means that they immediately mix with water and impart whatever genes are stored. Others are slow-acting, and a considerable subset only work upon activation with a Kahigan--that is, direct physical proximity.
The genes come in the form of dust separated in vials. Two basic genes you will be working with are called Attraction and Inertia--the former causes the water to attract itself to your Kahigan, while the latter must be activated with your Sha; it imparts a vortex in the water that is self-stabilizing. This self-stabilized form lets you extend a tendril of water up to about twice the length of your Kahigan.
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Topic: Folstag University of Magic (Between Light and Shadow) (Read 55150 times)