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IOF FILE 737.385.A9-V]

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[sub][b][color=red][h2]Imperial Office of Investigations[/h2]

Case File 737.385.A9-V

Subject Name: [color=c25999]Parzin Elstov[/color]

Report Filed and Issued to IOF by: Investigator Namius Regin

Investigation Period: 1 Month, 3 Days

Investigation Status: Closed

Cause for Investigation[/color][/b]
[i]*Magistrate Qualoth himself summoned me for this case. Told me her reputation made her “desirable” for the efforts of our lawful power’s ambitions. I thought he wanted me to look her up and get some information out of her. The weird part is that there aren’t any records of a way to reach Parzin Elstov. No residential address, no district, not even a basic file. The Magistrate then had me open an official investigation. Everything we know outside my case came from hearsay and reputation around the outer reaches of the Empire’s territory.

*Findings soon to follow[/i][/sub][/center]

[center][u]Personal Details[/u][/center]
[table=bordered][cell][u]Age[/u] | [u]Race[/u] | [u]Nationality[/u] | 


N/A | Driisu | N/A [cell] [u]Physical Skills[/u] 

Rudimentary hand-to-hand defense capabilities

Skilled at pole-weapon melee combat
[sub]*Often sighted carrying a pole-shaped weapon of unidentifiable origins. It appears to have moving parts of some sort.[/sub]

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[table=bordered][cell](Image Here)[/cell] [cell][u]Technical Skills[/u]

Wide-scale mechanical abilities ranging from fixing firearms to modifying deep-space engines
[sub]*Imperial records show no data on where she obtained such skills. Nothing about any formal training or secondary education. Follow-up recommended.[/sub]

Speaks Driddish, Standard English, and Odesionic
[sub]*I went searching around the Driisu homeworlds in imperial space. No one knew her name.[/sub]

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[table=bordered][cell][u]Other[/u]
Astromancy
[sub]*All official attempts by the Cosmic Empire to recreate this science-defying phenomenon have failed. Evidence points to Parzin herself being the only one with the capability to perform it, investigations never result in the discovery of any other "Astromancer" than her. Whether this Parzin Elstov knows something we don't, or is simply ahead of our time, has yet to be discerned. 

*I didn’t have any problems researching what Astromancy is. Records are full of very old, very dated accounts of people tearing holes in space so asteroids don’t sack a city or the sky over Nashrom lighting up with colors as the ground lit on fire. There are two things that seem constant about what I could gather. The first is that while Parzin is an Astromancer, the last [i]recorded[/i] and [i]official[/i] Astromancer was Nelicor Brahmhum. His obituary states he fell in battle roughly two centuries ago. The second is that no one can ever reproduce the results of this “magic” other than another Astromancer. Maybe this is why she’s undocumented, but I have no explanation for this.

*Be advised when approaching her: She keeps her praxis under wraps.

*Below is an attached file from the imperial database further explaining whatever Parzin’s talent can do. Authors are unknown, and sources are nonexistent, but it’s the most intact entry I could find after scouring the records for a week. After reading through it, it all seems like fairy tales, but if there’s even a hint of legitimacy in all this, it makes sense why the Empire would want her, or her skills. [/sub]


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[i]The art of bending the laws of the cosmos, channeling fundamental forces into energy, and severing impossibilities from themselves. Astromancy is method of imposing your will onto the fabric of space, by reaching out and reshaping the strands of reality that hold creation together. Many Astromancers view their practice as a form of science, a methodology that goes beyond theories and experiments. Others see it as something sacred that is to be granted the utmost respect. In any case, it is a very old, and by all accounts, seemingly dead practice. No one knows the first thing about Astromancer except for Astromancers. The very practice is an enigma, something you can dig deep to find mentions of in academic settings, and you will find plenty of information on what it can do. However, absolutely nothing will help you to learn the art for yourself. To do so would require a teacher, and you can scarcely find one these days.

Parzin is a user of this magic, and she has been for as long as she could remember. She is one of the very few, if not, the only remaining Astromancer in the world. It is a practice that is virtually impossible to learn without the aid of another within the ranks. She is known in some corners of the world for her “strange and outdated” magic that no one in society cares for today.

For those who do understand the craft, Astromancy is known to be broken into three fundamental principles, each with their own laws and disciplines required of the student to be used. They are Metamechanics, Paranothing Theory, and the Rule of Threads

Metamechanics is the Astromancer disclipine of instilling cosmic magic into technology, to facilitate a purpose or function that goes beyond engines and motors. Metamechanical technology acts as a way to make an Astromancer’s task easier, as any piece of technology is designed to do, but the difference is the ability to perform magical functions. An Astromancer’s magic allows for them to open portals from one end of the galaxy to the next, but it may be much easier to create a device through the principles of Metamechanics that opens a portal for you. While such a thing may seem invaluable to anyone with political power, or someone who is running a business, any attempts to replicate such technology on a mundane mechanical level will turn up fruitless. Metamechanical technology goes beyond what you can see in a machine’s workings, and without the magic of an Astromancer, it will simply be a piece of technology that seems to be lacking vital elements of a device, maybe no power source can be found, or maybe current has nowhere to go. Like most things pertaining to Astromancy, metamechanical tech is virtually unfathomable to anyone without the power.

[sub][i]Examples

Cosmo-Boundary Graph: Calculates the expansions of the universe relative to the Big Bang in real time.

Tesseract: A staple among Astromancers which serves as spell book for their personal uses.

Mind Glass: A small, box-like structure that interfaces with the user’s mind to server as a semi-manual laser blaster. Meant for simple endeavors such as day-to-day self defense, but the basic principle can be modified for higher-powered blasts capable of cracking open rocks.
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Paranothing Theory is an idea relevant to Astromancy that suggests nothingness is more than the lock of something. In a dynamic such as light and darkness, or heat and cold, there is always a distinction between the something, and the lack of something. Paranothing Theory suggests that this form of emptiness does not exist, and that true nothingness is not the same as material nothingness. The latter is real, the former is not. Nothingness in this context, is said to be added and subtracted in a somewhat mathematical sense, where you are adding negative numbers in one respect, or positive numbers in another. It does not matter which is which, because they are both tangible beyond physicality. This raises a question: How is this theory applied? Most Astromancers would simply state that it isn’t a theory, but a fundamental factor of existence, the negative is no less material than the positive. Astromancers use this concept in their spell work for a more dexterous approach to their situations. To the average person, a lack of heat simply means it is cold. To an Astromancer, there is less heat than cold. Darkness is the absence of light,  it light is the absence of darkness. True emptiness does not exist.

The Rule of Threads is a universal law of the universe that all acts of Astromancy must contend with. It states the following: The universe is an ever-shifting weave of threads, and all threads in the weave react to one another. Astromancy works by bending the “threads” of the universe to create certain things, or events. For example, certain “threads” are pulled and stitched into themselves to create a gap in space- a wormhole. Another method involves binding the threads together to solidify nothingness into barrier. This is something that must be contended with no less than gravity or the laws of thermodynamics. What this means for an Astromancer is that all magic has a consequence, when you swing a weapon, you contend with the force. When you cast an Astromancy spell, you contend with the reactions of the universe. This is often described by Astromancers as a kind of SnapBack. Like the string of a slingshot, the workings of a spell are felt through the cosmos. Some have tried to break these “threads” as a way to entirely subvert the consequence, but there are no surviving records of such a thing being done, its implications. Astromancy is defined by its existence as a reality-molding practice, and it is important to remember that the Rule of Threads is simply an analogy to explain the magic used. It is something that is instilled in an Astromancer as a responsibility through training. This is a power not to be taken lightly, though realistically an Astromancer may never cast a spell of enough magnitude that the ripples could be felt across the world.

These are the three principles that every Astromancer studies, and a measure of their ability as a practitioner is how they apply these principles to their individual actions. Many Astromancers took to studying the myriads of the cosmos, some used their magic for protecting others, and some pledged their loyalty to nations. Every wielder of this magic is different. There are some things, however, that this magic simply cannot do. 

To be an Astromancer is to contend with the machinations of the universe, and the universe contends with physical laws. No matter how unfathomable or extravagant an their spells may seem, an Astromancer does not break the laws of the universe, they simply bend them. Firstly, an Astromancer cannot travel through time, or predict the future. There are ways to scry into past events by calculating the factor of the universe’s expanding horizon and finding its relativity to a targeted moment, to discern a celestial echo of what is wondered. However, to attempt to travel to that moment would subject your very atoms to an inverse shift in momentum greater than any object with atomic structure could ever even comprehend. In short, you would cease to exist before you realized it. 

Secondly, energy used by these cosmic magicians does not come out of thin air- not for most at least. Energy to cast spells must come from some place, most Astromancers use their own body as a source of magic, some draw from celestial bodies, and a rare few create metamechanical cultivators that collect a small amount of residual energy from cosmic background radiation. These machines are, by their very design, inefficient, though they offer a small pool to collect from, they require energy to gather energy. Without energy, magic is simply undoable. Nothing will happen if your spell isn’t powered.[/i]
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[u]Equipment and Possessions[/u]
Mechanical Staff
[sub]*Honestly, I’m not sure what else to call it. I’ve tailed her for a month now, and that staff is some kind of device. It opens up at one end, emits light, and crack’s open rocks. When she’s pressed for self defense, she whips it around like she invented it. I can’t identify a manufacturing origin. It’s appearance is metallic, with a rosy, tarnished finish to it.[/sub]

Tesseract
[sub]*Parzin is sometimes observed to be operating some kind of semi-solid array of blue flowing lines that levitate in the air around her hands. She manages it like some sort of computer or data pad, when talking to others, she calls it a Tesseract. I spied on her in a city where she explained to a man she was assisting with a ship’s repair that it stored information through photons and could be configured to work with a machine’s protocol. My cover was almost blown, so that was all I could gather.[/sub]

Ship
[sub]*Parzin owns a small cruiser-class ship which is near identical to a standard issue imperial fighter ship. The exterior has been modified to resemble the same texture as her staff, and the usual golden glow of the thrusters burns a strange, fluorescent purple. I followed Parzin to a city on the outskirts of the Hagril sector, and inspected the ship up close while it was in a hangar. None of the usual ID markings were left after she got a hold of it somehow. The serial numbers were ground out. The imperial seal was covered by the foreign colors. I had just enough time to swipe a glance at the cockpit from outside before she came back. It didn’t even look like a ship, most of the internals were removed, and everything that was removed was replaced with what looked like unpowered screens. I couldn’t see much into behind the seat, but I could’ve sworn it looked like a completely different ship model inside than it did from outside. Imperial ships are built to accommodate marine biologies, but it looked like a Terran could’ve flown inside it. I managed to sneak away, and Parzin seemed to take off out of the hangar unusually fast for a ship of that [s]design[/s] appearance. Not even 30 seconds after the cockpit door closed, and she was in the air.[/sub]

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[center][u]Conclusions[/u][/center]
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[sub]*Most investigations sanctioned by the empire tend to result in more data than this, but all I can come up with at the end of this is that Parzin Elstov is an enigma. Her skills are something I cannot understand any more than someone else, but based on her behavior and her usual activities, I’ve been able to at least confirm the following.

*Parzin has no loyalties or allegiances to the Cosmic Empire, and acts in her own interests independent of the imperial rule. She is not an enemy to the Emperor, but she is not an ally.

*She seems to possess a large amount of imperial credits, as well as collections of other minor currencies including Draconian gilders and Driddish crowns. The Financial office couldn’t locate an account with her name. 

*Whenever I ask locals about who she is after she leaves an area, they often speak about her with respect. Parzin has a good reputation among the lesser areas of our great empire, such as a few of the Terran nomadic tribes that still cling to the outer edge.

*At one point during my case, a unit of imperial soldiers made their way through a camp of nomads. Their trucks couldn’t pass through the valley we were in, because the locals used the edge of the road as a barricade to prevent wildlife from attacking them in the night. Soldiers attempted to dismantle the barricade, and the tribe’s people were quick to attempt and stop them, resulting in a scuffle. The commanding officer of their unit ordered the troops to fire. Parzin was there, and I watched as she simply waved her staff in front of a gunner whose weapon was aimed directly at her. She did not show fear or anger, but a wave of blinding light washed over him, and he was killed before he hit the ground. No one understood what she just did, but she continued to assail them, and eventually they retreated before their casualties became too great. This suggests that Parzin is sympathetic to lesser tribes, despite their interference with imperial operations. The act was one of self defense, but there is no denying how willing she is to bring harm to honorable soldiers of our great empire.

*All discerned evidence suggests that Parzin lives a somewhat nomadic lifestyle herself, always being on the move and making selling her strange talents to others who could benefit for a living. At the time of writing this, she has been witnessed traveling towards the capital district, and has been asking locals about the new Luminium operations that have taken effect lately. Motives are unclear.

*On the very last day of my investigation, I approached Parzin with the intention of questioning her. I told her I worked for the Investigations Office, and that the court was interested in her abilities for which she had a considerable reputation. I told her that she could be offered a position in the ranks to teach a wave of users of her Astromancy abilities, and that such a gift could be invaluable to the goals of the Empire. Her exact words were, “The magic I wield is older and more powerful than your empire, and I have no intentions of risking the old ways falling into the wrong hands.” Interpret this how you will, but it is evident that she has no desire to pledge loyalty to the Empire. The amount of power found in this one woman alone, paired with such uncaring apathy towards the Emperor’s rule is a combination that could threaten us greatly if given the chance. 

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