Day 3, turn 10. Chilly.(The wood is so I have a whistle made from wood which doesn't break in five seconds. I'll just make that change.)
Since the focus is on my eyes, lets get to work. Run down to the river and use my reflection, and my notepad, to communicate with my magic.
Theory: If my magic is in my eyes, it can get input from them. If my magic can see, I can work on communicating with it.
Draw a caricature of myself. Keep talking about everything I'm doing, maintain a steady commentary. Point out parts of my body on my reflection, on my body, and on the drawing, nursery rhyme style. Write down the words, say them out lound, point them out and put my hand on the relevant body part.. everything I can think of to link all this together.
At the end, try to see if I can get the loops of magic focusing on a part of my body by naming it or by otherwise indicating it. By words, by touch, by thinking it, by writing it down.. Try each of these methods and see if any of them can let me direct the magic in my body directly.
Use the whistle, and blinking, to indicate correctness. If it works, I want to provide feedback.
After that is done and the loops have settled down again, head back to the main area. Take a piece of wood and some rope, and use it to make a rope swing, hung from one of the trees.
Lastly, go meet up with Eli for one last experiment. Can we sense each other's magic?
Name: Alice
Description: Roughly 11 years old, with unusual blue hair. Not known as a mage, but has demonstrated spontaneous abilities in the past. Has vague memories of both successes and accidents related to said abilities in the past.
Status: Noodle Arms.
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 8/10
Mana: 10/10
Inventory: A uniform of thin yellow unusually light cloth. Reasonably sturdy despite that. Three sealed packages of pure water. A paper notebook and pencil. Two pears. One meal of Deer Bits. An Axe. A knife. A basket. An empty water package. A wooden whistle.
Current Location: Near the Shack
Skills: Basic Foraging, Basic Chopping
Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense magic inside herself easily.
There are active loops of magic as well as some kind of inert stationary ball of magic inside Alice. They are separate things.
The loops are too integrated to be recognized by Alice's normal senses.
The loops can be influenced by what parts of the body are under heavy use.
6All of these communication attempts don't really yield results, though that in itself is informative. Physically moving a limb, doing exercise, getting injured, all these things do cause this second magic in your body to flow faster around the relevant parts. It seems utterly unresponsive to thoughts or speech, however. Naming limbs, drawing, talking, none of these things cause the mana to react.
While concentrating on your internal energies you discover a... third? energy floating around in there. This one feels like countless little stars of inert energy dispersed across your entire body. Similar in feel to the first energy, and yet distinctly not. Definitely similar in that it feels... unrealized, more like a potential than something active. It seems to drift along with the currents of your blood, and the flow of the second energy. Things can't ever be simple, apparently. Your head hurts from all this thinking!
Lose 3 hunger.5Building the swing is pretty easy, just some simple knots and a bit of wood cut down the middle lengthwise to make a decent seat. You have it up from a younger tree on the edge of the forest.
Locations updated.4It seems yes, but also no? Regardless of concentration or physical contact, you both find yourselves incapable of sensing the other's energy. Except for in one particular, very notable instance. If Eli pushes her mana into your arm, you can definitely feel it. A ghostly feeling running down your arm, and you note that the second energy in your body reacts quite aggressively to the intrusion, flowing faster around the area and tearing apart, for lack of a better word, the white shapeless mass of Eli's magic. She lets out a gasp of surprise as she loses control of the tendril.
Name: Nathan
Description: A thin, reedy, middle-aged man. He's easily excitable, and seems almost happy about this magic learning project. He has the impression that he was apprenticed to a harsh master, who held him back and kept him as an apprentice for long enough to frustrate him. He doesn't remember having any particular specialty, and suspects he spent a lot of time traveling to remote areas.
Status: None (Not a wood mage)
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 10/10
Mana: 5/10
Inventory: Wearing plain white robes.
1 pear
Current Location: The Genesis Field
Skills: Basic Teaching
Basic Construction
Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense his own inner mana.
Can slowly move a small amount of mana from his core.
Can maintain a small loop of mana near his core while lightly distracted.
Spell Concept: Destruction/Entropy/Separation - Can slowly break rocks down into coarse gravel, by focusing on the image of breaking things down, and on what is in a rock to separate.
Spell Concept: Combine/Enthalpy - Can join gravel back into pebbles by focusing on the image of combining similar yet diffuse materials. Inefficient mental image.
Spell Concept: FIRE - With a mental image drawing parallels between a stick and a fire, can inspire mana to motion and heat up a stick until it begins to smolder. Obviously inefficient, as it costs 3 mana.
Find an axe, either from the supply shed or from someone who has one, and go into the forest to harvest firewood by felling trees. I intend to spend this turn and the next doing so and hauling it back.
Practice my mana control by holding a loop of mana outside my core while I work.
If there's a wheelbarrow, sled, or anything to help haul the wood back in the shed, take that with me.
1You grab an axe, and head off to chop wood.
Add axe to inventory.Unfortunately, it would seem that lumberjack was not part of your past life's skills. The concentration needed to keep a loop running to the edge of your skin, outside your core, is enough that you fail to actually chop any trees down. Every time you went for a swing, the loop would destabilize and you'd have to focus on holding it steady again.
4At least that part progressed well. While no actual wood was chopped, by noon you feel like your mana control is much more stable. You can consistently sense your core without having to drop into a meditative position, and pulling a tendril out grows ever easier and faster. Beginning the process of breaking down a pebble takes only seconds now, rather than minutes, for example.
Lose 2 hunger.Name: Aaron
Description: Vaguely foreign, with red hair and a slightly-taller-than-average stature. He feels rather certain that he specialized in enchantment and fish. And that this was not what he signed up for.
Status: None
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 10/10
Mana: 13/10
Inventory:
-Practical cloth-and-leather clothing
-Solidly-built, ornately-carved fishing rod that may also be an arcane focus
-Serrated knife
-Straight knife
-Hatchet
-Flint and steel
-Basket
-4x Bluegills (being dried)
-0x Cooked Bluegill Fillet
-3x Dried? Bluegill Fillet
Current Location: Genesis Field
Skills:
-Basic Fishing
-Basic Foraging
-Basic Construction
Spells and magical knowledge: None
Aaron stumbles into camp, looking dazed.
“South desert sucks. Everything is wonked. Don’t go there.”
Just... lay down. Feel the world. Try to deal with the... whatever it is. Become one with the universe or something.
4You wonder if this is the mana poisoning that Mr. Voice In The Sky mentioned. It's all you can do to lie there and resist the call of the voices whispering sweet nothings from the void. You are you, you are Aaron, you are not Jon or Charlie, nope nope nope, Eli does
not look tasty, you don't eat people. Gradually, the voices fade, and your thoughts begin to untwist themselves. Hopefully there are no... long term consequences.
Lose 3 mana.Name: Eli
Description: A young lady with blue and yellow eyes, dark skin, and perfectly normal pointy fuzzy ears and tail, like anybody else would have. Vaguely recalls using different sorts of energy to kill large things for the purpose of eating said large things. Definitely is the best and stronger than everyone else.
Status: no
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 10/10
Mana: 10/10
Inventory: Spider-silk dress with horned beast embroidery, Straw hat, Brass earring, Shoulder bag, Bag's worth of shiny rocks, Belt, Pickaxe, Shortsword
Skills: Basic Combat, Basic Cooking, Basic Foraging, Basic Construction
Spells and magical knowledge: Self Energy Pool Awareness
Location: home
Set some meat smoking. Also try to sense Alice's energy, perhaps through physical contact.
You get a fire started in the smoking hut, and hang up all 16 remaining deer bits. Presumably they'll be done later today.
Locations updated.4It seems yes, but also no? Regardless of concentration or physical contact, you both find yourselves incapable of sensing the other's energy. Except for in one particular, very notable instance. If you push your mana into Alice's arm, you can definitely feel it. You get a vague sense of some energy running parallel to her blood. It feels quite different to that of the shapeless unformed mass in your core, like it's already in motion and active, rather than waiting for something to give it form. It reacts quite aggressively to the intrusion, flowing faster around the area and tearing apart, for lack of a better word, the white shapeless mass of your mana tendril. You can't help but let out a gasp of surprise as you lose control of the tendril, and what remains of it snaps back to your core.
You realize something, as you're sitting there and meditating in the aftermath. That looping, active energy you felt in Alice is something that you also have. Separate from your core, and running through your body.
Lose 1 mana, lose 1 hunger.(wot, the basics? I’ve been spamming mana actions every turn, booooo, magic is hard, who would’ve thonk it?)
LEARN BASICS OF MAGIC
BE BADASS
ACQUIRE REALITY BREAKING POWERS
ame: Amon Solos
Description: A handsome young man, his face serene and calm. A well known mage, he coveted this chance to improve his power and become one of the greats. Took a chance and thinks this is mighty suspicious.
Status: Wary
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 9/10
Mana: 10/10
Inventory: Spotless (a small jam stain) purple robes and a sentimental carving of a magician made by his grandma. A note about invisible bears. 3 deer bits and a basket.
Current Location: Genesis Field, pile of logs and sticks and a basic leaf bed
Skills: Basic Combat, Basic Crafting
Spells and magical knowledge: Knows how to tingle very good, can manifest a small tendril of “mana” that when allowed to snap hurts really bad, apparently. Mana is now a fuzzy blob! Progression! Tendril is now better and more stable, hurrah!
((To clarify. This game is supposed to be about you discovering how the magic system works. There's a drastic difference between telling the GM "become god" and telling the dm "using the godhead I managed to bind from the god I killed last turn, ascend to godhood by becoming one with the nascent energy of it." One is you telling me to do a thing and figure out how you do it, and the other is you telling me how *you* are going to do a thing. It's the difference between "make a log cabin" and "use the logs, nails, and other tools I have to begin constructing a cabin" The magic in this is intended to be a slow, deliberate progression, as your characters peel back the veil of ignorance hiding the magic system that I already have figured out. This involves experimentation, and guesses on your part. Don't just tell me the end result, tell me your proposed steps to get to that end result. Apologies if I didn't make that clear enough in the original post, I would have linked the enchanter RTD I had in mind as an example if I'd been able to find it. I suppose it doesn't help that the dice are currently indifferent to your existence, as well.))
2Reality breaking powers gotta start somewhere, and so you spend your time practicing more on sensing your core and drawing a tendril from it. Before too long you're distracted from your practice, however, by watching a pair of singing birds on the edge of the forest.
Lose 1 hunger.
The genesis field:
A rickety shed: (Basic tents, blankets, padding. Simple tools such as swords, knives, axes, shovels, pickaxes, all in limited quantities. Torches, linen, etc. etc. Nothing obviously magical, though. About two days of smoked meat, for eight people.)
- 1 broken knife
- small pile of shiny
rocks
Alice’s tent
Meat smoking tent
- 16 meals worth of various deer bits, currently smoking in the hut. Should be done turn 11 or 12.
Amon’s small pile of straight sticks and small logs of varying lengths, a basic wood and leaf bed.
Lots of grass
River heading from North to South on the West edge
Three very small piles of different sized firewood
Cooking fire
-Four fish drying overnight (hopefully?) above the campfire
Rope and wood swing, on the edge of the forest.
The Northwest forest:
A small cluster of pear trees (about half stripped of fruit)
Felled younger tree
The Northernmost foothills:
Shiny rocks, boulders.
The edge of the world
Southern badlands
Clay beds near the river
Southmost glass/something desert
The edge of the world
Dangerous(?)
Apologies for the delay on this turn. There was some deliberation on how exactly I wanted to do... more than half of you, really. Certainly an interesting turn as far as helping me nail down exactly how some of these things work, feel, etc. The new Crypt of the Necrodancer multiplayer dlc certainly didn't help, either. But it's out now, so all well that ends well?
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Topic: Roll to learn magic (5/8) Day 5 (Read 17504 times)