Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[johiah]

Day 3, turn 11. Chilly.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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: 10/10
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

Right. Fuck the south. But there's something like... 5 more directions to be explored, right? Right. And staying here is boring.

Let's try... west, yeah. But let's not keep going west if things start feeling like they did back south.

1
In the process of crossing the river, your foot catches on something and you manage to sprain your ankle. Add sprained ankle to your status.

6
Undeterred, you fashion a basic crutch to keep your weight off that foot. Adventure awaits! Looks like the grassland on this side of the river quickly recedes into swampland, and you're pretty sure that off in the forest is what looks like an extremely lush yet quite small jungle. You decide against trying to cross the swamp, partially influenced by the cloud of mosquitoes that have decided you look like lunch. -1 health, -2 hunger, gain improvised crutch. Locations updated.

Odd ripples seem to be gathering in the tepid swamp water nearby. Things congregate in the depths...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 Name: 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: 8/10
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!

Realize that this is a magical pocket dimension and try to find a magical creature who can just give me magic, there has to be a way, it’s m a g i c.

If I can’t find one, realize that mana is inside my body, try to swirl it around and cut myself to let some blood out, to try to forcefully release mana into the environment to manipulate.


(Hopefully there’s more then one way to do magic? If I try enough, something has to work)

1
You wander off into the East, grasslands quickly morphing into very hilly terrain, and from there into chasm riddled cliffs. Eventually you stumble onto what appears to be a dimly lit cave. You wander inside, eventually ending up in a fairly spacious room at the end of the seemingly natural tunnel. This room is clearly anything but natural. 8 sides, seemingly identical, with matching gaps for a doorway on each face. Pulsing, glowing inscriptions run all over the walls and floor, lighting up as you step inside. Lose 1 hunger.

The pulses, previously aimless and running all over the room, seem to still in surprise for a moment before rushing towards the central altar, the focus point of the room. Something like blood but more... real, begins to seep out, congealing into a hovering ball above the altar. After a further pause, that formless mass twists into human shape. First a horned, red, tailed creature, then a green fanged one, then an androgynous human. The energy shifts and morphs through more than twenty forms before settling on a beautiful, green tinted lady with flowing hair that seems to defy gravity.

She stares at you intently before her face shifts into a smile. She gives a grand wave, and the room lights up with activity. Soft green, invigorating light seeps from nowhere, several small waterfalls begin pouring from the rock face. Grass and small jungle trees sprout from the ground, dirt pouring seemingly appearing from thing air. After only moments, the room now gives off a very cozy, jungle haven feel.

She lounges back on a vine that grows down from a tree to support her. "Welcome, traveler. What brings you to my abode? You seek power, I see? While I am admittedly quite limited due to restrictions placed on me by the creator of this... pocket dimension, I might be willing and capable to grant you some, depending on what you have on offer."

Spoiler: Nathan (click to show/hide)

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 lumberjack mage)
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 8/10
Mana: 5/10
Inventory: Wearing plain white robes.
1 pear
1 axe
Current Location: The Northwest Forest
Skills: Basic Teaching
   Basic Construction

Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense his own inner mana without meditating.
Can slowly move a small amount of mana from his core.
Can maintain a small loop of mana near his core while lightly distracted.
Noticed stable mana control, allowing initiation of spells in seconds instead of minutes.

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.

Chop firewood, take two. No playing with magic this time, only backbreaking, non-wizardly work that should really have been left up to the younger people, in retrospect.

5
Searching deep within yourself, you discover a rage for trees, their arrogant aloofness, that you never knew you had. More than five trees get chopped down, their leaves and branches stripped. While the trunks themselves are still whole, you now have quite the pile of arm width and smaller branches. Locations updated. Lose 3 hunger. Basic chopping learned.

"Okay, three energies, not two.  Maybe four.  Maybe eleventeen."

"And it does react to something.  The other kind of magic.  That's something, at least.  Maybe it eats magic and can do stuff with it.

It's probably not harmful to me.  At least that didn't hurt."

"Gah, this is too complicated.  Lets try one thing at a time."

Going to rename the three kinds of energy to make more sense.
There's The Blob, for the nonmoving static less real mana inside me.
There's The Flow, for the moving internal energy that reacts to my physical behavior.
There's The Sparkles, which are the newly detected pinpricks of starlight.

Hypothesis.  The flow can be fed mana to make it do things.  It needs the blob-type mana to do this.

While on the swing, to keep the flow moving calmly, try to seperate out a small piece of the blob.  Don't try to make a tendril or a rope or a complicated shape, just try to cut off a small piece of it and feed it to the flow

Try to watch if the flow does something with the magic.

After that, go chop some wood myself.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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: Headache?
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 5/10
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.  Cannot sense someone else's mana, unless it enters her body.
There are three kinds of magic inside me.  The Blob, which sits there and doesn't do much, the Flow, which reacts to physical movement, but doesn't? do much on it's own, and the Sparkles, which seem to go with the flow and have the potential to do things.

4
Worth noting that the flor never really stops moving, just that physical exertion seems to make it move faster. While swinging, you successfully pull a small ball of energy from the blob, cutting it off and then loosening your control on it. It diffuses quickly, spreading out to imperceptibility in moments. While you could still perceive, you're almost certain the flow did not react in any overt or obvious way to it.

Some seems to have filtered back into the blob, while the nearby sparkles seem to be glowing brighter. -1 mana.

4
The old man and the child, chopping wood team! After significant exertion, you manage to have partitioned one of the trees into (adult) body lengths. Too long to just toss onto a fire, obviously, but you could probably just set one end in the fire and slowly push it in as it burns. Locations updated. -2 hunger.

Spoiler: Locations (click to show/hide)

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
Large pile of green large branches
Large pile of leaves and small branches
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
Four medium tree trunks
Twelve adult length logs

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(?)

Western swamp
Mosquitoes in the trillions

Westernmost jungle

One more turn, and then the nighttime turn. If everyone votes on this coming turn, we'll just skip the night as everyone sleeps. If anyone wants to stay awake (beyond basic guard duty, if you want to do that,) they'll get a -1 to all rolls tomorrow but will get the extra turn.

I'm sure this won't end poorly.

[Nirur Torir]

Good to see this again.

Spoiler: Nathan (click to show/hide)

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 (Is now a lumberjack mage)
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 5/10
Mana: 5/10
Inventory: Wearing plain white robes.
1 pear
1 axe
Current Location: The Northwest Forest
Skills: Basic Teaching
   Basic Construction
   Basic Chopping

Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense his own inner mana without meditating.
Can slowly move a small amount of mana from his core.
Can maintain a small loop of mana near his core while lightly distracted.
Noticed stable mana control, allowing initiation of spells in seconds instead of minutes.

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.

Bring back as many armloads of branches as I have time for, eat a meal of meat and my last pear, and go to sleep for the night.
While hauling, try my mana control exercise of holding a loop of mana again.

[Knightwing64]

“What are you?”

[Devastator]

Eat my pears, the deer bits, and however many more deer bits from the supply of drying ones, which I feel hungry for.

Does eating cause any reaction from the three kinds of magic?

"Okay.. so the sparkles eat the blob.  The flow eats.. other people's blob?  Maybe the flow is defensive, or passive, while the sparkles are for active magic that does stuff?

Try to cut off a few more pieces of the blob, giving the chunks to the sparkles.

Oh, and sleep.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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: Headache?
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 4/10
Mana: 9/10
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.  Cannot sense someone else's mana, unless it enters her body.
There are three kinds of magic inside me.  The Blob, which sits there and doesn't do much, the Flow, which reacts to physical movement, but doesn't? do much on it's own, and the Sparkles, which seem to go with the flow and have the potential to do things.
Can cut off a bit of the blob and let it disperse within herself.

[johiah]

“What are you?”

"Just a nature spirit, an elemental, a dryad, if you will. The organizer of this project you all find yourselves in, (though truly it's a prison,) put me here as a potential 'thing,'" her face twists with disgust at the thought, "for you all to find."

"And what kind of person are you, to end up in an experiment such as this? I wonder..." she bites her lip, seeming almost giddy at the thought.

[Knightwing64]

“What… are you trying to say? I don’t remember what I was like outside of this pocket dimension, but I can’t quite get the hang of magic, so I’m in search of some easier alternative or at least some instructions. Power, to be exact. The fools with me are growing at a rate I am uncomfortable with.”

[johiah]

“What… are you trying to say? I don’t remember what I was like outside of this pocket dimension, but I can’t quite get the hang of magic, so I’m in search of some easier alternative or at least some instructions. Power, to be exact. The fools with me are growing at a rate I am uncomfortable with.”

Some ineffable emotion glints in her eyes, and her smile grows. "We'll see, in time."

The entire room shimmers as if seen through an extreme heat mirage. When the effect ends, she is lounging in a different position. Moments later, the insects stop their noises and all the sound in the room becomes muffled, as if the world is holding its breath. After a second that stretches into eternity, she nods. Sound returns like a diver coming back up from underwater. "I've decided. Here is my offer. I will embed a shard of my essence into your soul. It will grant you great power, an energy adjacent to the mana that mages typically use in this world. You will sidestep the issue of control, bypassing shaping finesse with raw willpower. This energy is far more capable of altering the physical world than typical mage techniques, but is completely unusable on its own for a number of advanced fields of magic." She reaches out a hand. A spire of rock shoots up through the floor, forming the shape of a sword in her palm before cutting off its connection to the ground. Another shimmer, and the stone seems to now be metal. "A gift, and an example of what is possible." The sword slides across the ground, coming to a stop at your feet.

"This comes with a cost, of course. The energy is not infinite, and must be regenerated. I give you this power, and in return you feed the shard energies and experiences. They don't have to be from you, animals and even some plants are viable. In time, when you've broken out of this prison we're all inside, I only ask that you return this shard of me to myself."

After her speech finishes the smile returns, and she gazes at you intently. "Do you accept?"

She holds out a large, vivid green and red apple. It seems to be more real than normal reality, like you're only now seeing the color red in its truest form.

[Knightwing64]

“Yes, I do.”

[johiah]

“Yes, I do.”

You step forward, grabbing the proffered apple and taking a bite.
4
As soon as you take the first bite, your senses are assaulted by a cacophonous riot of signals. The last concrete observation you are able to make before falling over as your inner ear goes wild, is the rest of the apple dissolving into a stream of red energy and flowing into your chest. Everything else is chaos. Your sense of balance and your hearing have switched places, your sight and taste are doing a dance inside your skull. Alien memories mix with your sense of touch, the feeling of plants made of bone and canyon walls too real for you to comprehend rubbing along your skin.

You quickly slip off to unconsciousness, though that is no escape from the mental medley of chaos that is ripping your psyche apart. Perhaps you'll wake in the morning.

[Glass]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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: Sprained ankle
HP: 9/10
Hunger: 8/10
Mana: 10/10
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: Outside western swamp
Skills:
-Basic Fishing
-Basic Foraging
-Basic Construction
Spells and magical knowledge: None

There is no way in hell that you’re dealing with that swamp like this.

Let’s just get back to base and get some sleep for the night. Nothing else is getting accomplished with a sprained ankle.

[johiah]

Day 3, turn 12. Dark.

Good to see this again.

Spoiler: Nathan (click to show/hide)

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 (Is now a lumberjack mage)
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 5/10
Mana: 5/10
Inventory: Wearing plain white robes.
1 pear
1 axe
Current Location: The Northwest Forest
Skills: Basic Teaching
   Basic Construction
   Basic Chopping

Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense his own inner mana without meditating.
Can slowly move a small amount of mana from his core.
Can maintain a small loop of mana near his core while lightly distracted.
Noticed stable mana control, allowing initiation of spells in seconds instead of minutes.

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.

Bring back as many armloads of branches as I have time for, eat a meal of meat and my last pear, and go to sleep for the night.
While hauling, try my mana control exercise of holding a loop of mana again.

3
The branches are already close enough to the fire, so you drag a couple of the logs over. Locations updated.

4
Things go much better this time, and you now seem to be able to hold a loop out of your core in most scenarios. Presumably falling, or being hit by someone or something, would still be enough to distract you.

Two deer bits and a pear, down the hatch. The smoking deer bits thing seems to have worked out! Gain 3 hunger. 2 deer bits taken from smoker.

Satisfied, you doze off to sleep.

Eat my pears, the deer bits, and however many more deer bits from the supply of drying ones, which I feel hungry for.

Does eating cause any reaction from the three kinds of magic?

"Okay.. so the sparkles eat the blob.  The flow eats.. other people's blob?  Maybe the flow is defensive, or passive, while the sparkles are for active magic that does stuff?

Try to cut off a few more pieces of the blob, giving the chunks to the sparkles.

Oh, and sleep.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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: Headache?
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 4/10
Mana: 9/10
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.  Cannot sense someone else's mana, unless it enters her body.
There are three kinds of magic inside me.  The Blob, which sits there and doesn't do much, the Flow, which reacts to physical movement, but doesn't? do much on it's own, and the Sparkles, which seem to go with the flow and have the potential to do things.
Can cut off a bit of the blob and let it disperse within herself.

6
You gobble on a frightening quantity of food for a small child. Hunger restored to full. Lose 2 pears, 1 deer bit. 3 deer bits taken from smoker.

The flow does speed up around your stomach, after eating. It really does seem like the flow is just a part of your bodily processes, or something along those lines. Something possibly also noteworthy is that the sparkles seem to float along in similar loops, though they are largely unaffected by eating food.

5
Similar events occur as last time. Some filters back into the blob, some filters into nearby sparkles, making them glow brighter, and the rest just diffuses into uselessness. This really just feels like pouring water from a bucket you own into another bucket you also own. Lose 2 mana.

Snoozing time, you bundle up in the blankets.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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: Sprained ankle
HP: 9/10
Hunger: 8/10
Mana: 10/10
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: Outside western swamp
Skills:
-Basic Fishing
-Basic Foraging
-Basic Construction
Spells and magical knowledge: None

There is no way in hell that you’re dealing with that swamp like this.

Let’s just get back to base and get some sleep for the night. Nothing else is getting accomplished with a sprained ankle.

2
Crossing back does not go well, but eventually you manage it without drowning. Sleep time. Lose 1 health, 2 hunger.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 Name: 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: 8/10
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!

3
Your dreams are fitful, your nightmares interweaved with memories that are not your own, fragments so vivid that you feel as if you could reach out and touch them before they drift away and out of perception. -2 hunger.



The night passes peacefully for some and fitfully for others. A soft drizzle begins some time past midnight, lasting for less than an hour. The midnight sky is still moonless. All those who sleep gain 3 health, and 3 mana. (Up to cap)

Day 4 begins.

Spoiler: Locations (click to show/hide)

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
 - 11 meals worth of various deer bits, currently smoking in the hut. Done and smoked, as of turn 11.
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
Large pile of green large branches
Large pile of leaves and small branches
Five body length logs
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
Four medium tree trunks
Seven adult length logs

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(?)

Western swamp
Mosquitoes in the trillions

Westernmost jungle

Two banked turns for Egan. Presumably, sleeping occurred.

[Nirur Torir]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 8/10
Mana: 8/10
Inventory: Wearing plain white robes.
1 axe
Current Location: The Northwest Forest
Skills: Basic Teaching
   Basic Construction
   Basic Chopping

Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense his own inner mana without meditating.
Can slowly move a small amount of mana from his core.
Can maintain a small loop of mana near his core while moderately distracted, likely until pain.
Noticed stable mana control, allowing initiation of spells in seconds instead of minutes.

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.

Return my axe to the tool-shed.

Hypothesis: Mana can affect mana. If ambient mana affects my mana strings, I should be able to form a mana sense.
Experiment: Try to form and hold two mana strings, one per hand. If I can't, then just make one. It's not the core of the experiment, but the differences from two different inputs should make it easier, like pinpointing a sound's source with both ears.
  Meditate and try to sense changes in the strings to sense mana in the environment, or in my peers.

Practice Entropy magic on a large branch. Try to cut it into sections with clean cuts, as though I was cutting firewood from a log. Try a plane or crossed # shape in my mana string, to direct the effect to a cross-section.

Wherein I try to create a new way to sense mana, without ever having tried normally, and without knowing that I have two other states of mana that are probably more useful for a passive sense. This is a good idea, trust me.

[Devastator]

Bah, I'll eat as much as I want.

Anyway.. it seems like I can move magic to the sparkles, but I need some way to tell the sparkles what to do with it.  Mmm!  Back to the beginning again.

What I really want is stuff like throwing fireballs by saying "Fireball" and waving my hands around.  With the flow responding to what I do, even if entirely automatically, and the sparkles reacting to getting fed bits of the blob, even if they don't do anything..  there should be some way of translating things I do with my body into magic, I'm just missing a key element.

Maybe it's not possible?  Maybe you can only think it into happening?  Visualize stuff?

"..I should try to think it into working the way I want."

Hypothesis:  I can think it into doing the stuff I want by visualizing it.  Instead of casting a spell that does something, lets try to cast a spell that makes it work the way I want  Or changes me so that I work the way I want to.

Try to reshape a big blob chunk into a caricature of myself.  Sit down somewhere, and shape the blob into a little me, in the same position I am.

Try to visualize the various aspects of the body as well, and add them into the little blob.  Body heat.  The various magic aspects.  Hair.  Blood vessels.  Nerves.  Try to make it into a little simulacrum, as complete and accurate as I can.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

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: Headache?
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 10/10
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.  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.  Cannot sense someone else's mana, unless it enters her body.
There are three kinds of magic inside me.  The Blob, which sits there and doesn't do much, the Flow, which reacts to physical movement, but is more of an automatic function, and the Sparkles, which seem to go with the flow and have the potential to do things.
Can cut off a bit of the blob and let it disperse within herself.

[Nirur Torir]

Bah, I'll eat as much as I want.

Anyway.. it seems like I can move magic to the sparkles, but I need some way to tell the sparkles what to do with it.  Mmm!  Back to the beginning again.

What I really want is stuff like throwing fireballs by saying "Fireball" and waving my hands around.  With the flow responding to what I do, even if entirely automatically, and the sparkles reacting to getting fed bits of the blob, even if they don't do anything..  there should be some way of translating things I do with my body into magic, I'm just missing a key element.

Maybe it's not possible?  Maybe you can only think it into happening?  Visualize stuff?

"..I should try to think it into working the way I want."

Hypothesis:  I can think it into doing the stuff I want by visualizing it.  Instead of casting a spell that does something, lets try to cast a spell that makes it work the way I want  Or changes me so that I work the way I want to.

Try to reshape a big blob chunk into a caricature of myself.  Sit down somewhere, and shape the blob into a little me, in the same position I am.

Try to visualize the various aspects of the body as well, and add them into the little blob.  Body heat.  The various magic aspects.  Hair.  Blood vessels.  Nerves.  Try to make it into a little simulacrum, as complete and accurate as I can.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

-snip-

I think you're trying to do too much at once, and that there are too many failure points for it to be a good way to support or disprove your hypothesis.
You have something you want to do. Try to break it down into the simplest blocks of effects you can, figure them out one at a time, then combine them.

For example, I want telekinesis. I'll want some sort of mana sense to make it easier, which I'm working on now. I'll probably need to figure out how to move an object with my mana strings at all, how to make it a steady effect over time instead of a quick burst, and then I'll need some way to either make my strings move faster, anchor them to the object, or hold control over all of the mana in an enclosed box mana string net.

My first effects are on the level of slowly breaking apart a pebble. You might consider starting by altering light slightly, either recoloring a patch of dirt from a certain angle, or trying to make the air look wavy like heat does. Or you could try making the mana visible directly, or able to act as a solid object.

[Devastator]

I'm not really trying anything like that, though.  I want to be able to change my body so it works more directly with the magic inside it, instead of it just being my mind making things happen.  It should theoretically be possible, since when you move your arm it's your mind telling your arm how to move.  If I get it right it should not take any concentration at all to cast spells.. I just create the fireball spell once, link it to waving my arms and saying 'fireball', and bam, fireball every time I do that if I have mana.

It may not be possible to do things this waya.

I don't know how to change my body, but I think it'll require a good model of my body, at the very least.  Maybe this is too ambitious for that, but if it fails I can break it down into smaller bits.

I could try to do it by designing the spell first, but I think I'm gonna try it from the back end.. figure out how to make mana affect ones own body first.  And vice-versa.  Maybe it'll hurt or make me sick for a bit, but it's worth a shot while I'm well-fed and healthy.


tl;dr,  I don't care about affecting things outside my body at this time.  Changing the air or altering light or changing dirt aren't things I really care about changing.

PPS, it might be a totally dry well and completely wrong, but I might as well try.