Raineh Daze

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Tyaethe

"It's an amount that comes in quite helpful for this particular task," she countered with a shrug. It was a lot easier to get a feel for mana first time if there was a lot of it involved in the process, and by the same token why it was extraordinarily rare for anyone of enormous power to not be somewhat aware of it even as a child, the pool of mana waiting just below the surface and all too easy to direct to something. "My instructors as a child thought it ridiculous I wished to be a knight and not a mage."

They would have particularly had a point if she had continued ageing normally. Tiny, intermittently frail, half-blind and facing some rather obvious challenges where combat was involved? Becoming a vampire had certainly had one or two perks in regards to sticking to her childhood goals, even if the costs outweighed it.

Watching from the outside, she was never sure how difficult this task was meant to be. Just calling on mana? To her, it was as easy as breathing, no matter her lack of magical skill to go with it. For someone without the same high aptitude... was this supposed to be a first-time thing, or a week-long meditation? Fortunately, she was saved the need to come up with any empty platitudes by Fionn's success... although, as pleasing as that was, the paladin still wasn't sure if that was expected or not.

"It's more a halo around your palm," she supplied helpfully, "Yours is green."

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Tyaethe

"Once you know the feeling, you should be able to practice on your own. You don't mind if I touch you, do you? This needs some contact," Tyaethe answered, waiting for the okay before moving into position, kneeling on the window-seat and placing one hand on Fionn's back and using the other to grasp the back of the former mercenary's hand. Given their comparative size differences, it was both somewhat awkward and made for a fairly ridiculous sight... but on the other hand, what else could you do?

"Mana pushed out of a body with no real spell or aim behind it typically becomes light, although in the case of children throwing a tantrum or the like it can be rather more destructive. There's some use to doing it this way--unlike a proper light spell, you can gauge how much mana someone can channel, and indirectly how much capacity they have, from how bright it is," Tyaethe explained, "But it's only an unintentional effect of concentrated mana, and a terrible way to illuminate something at the same time.

"What I want you to do is focus on the feeling of mana going through you. It should 'pull' on something, and if you replicate that pull yourself, that's it: you channel mana. After that, it's all about magic spells and structures and theories," she continued, adding, "Oh, and close your eyes. This might get a little bright."

Sure enough, what followed was a sensation, cold and hot, soothing and electrifying all at the same time--mana without purpose, pushing through from Fionn's back and down to his hand, the path being forced through his body rather than hers. It was only brief, but the rush of power was a constant tug on something.

'A little bright' was also an understatement. Even through closed eyelids, the light was painfully intense to look towards. It was also a vibrant, monochromatic scarlet, which made for a rather odd combination before it abruptly winked out, Tyaethe sitting back on her haunches.

@The Otter

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Tyaethe

Tyaethe sighed. There was no point pursuing this conversation if he was going to be stubborn about it for some reason. Might as well make the most of the situation, if Fionn was willing to tough it out for whatever reason. The guy was being entirely too nice for his own good, after all.

"If you don't have anything else to talk about than my health, I could show you the most basic magical exercise," the paladin said. Honestly, calling it an 'exercise' might be a stretch--it was the metaphorical equivalent of moving your arm simply to show that you could. But for anyone that hadn't unintentionally done anything magical in their life, it was a necessary requirement to actually trying to learn anything more advanced. And the one part of formal magical tutelage that Tyaethe was experienced with, or knew enough to show other people.

@The Otter

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

The ability to create enchanted items doesn't need a balancing mechanism, because we're talking something you do like once per story arc, when other characters might be more invested in personal investment in their own skills. xD

(Also I don’t understand the parentheses part)

things are only likely to go boom if you were trying to make something that was meant to be boomy in some regard

Really it’s a hold-over from my misconception of how items are enchanted, and how magic works in this world in general. I always tend to view magic as energy, so I default to magic being wild and volatile if mishandled. Admittedly, enchanting through runic engraving should’ve shaken me free of the idea, but instead I likened it to coding, or wiring and funneling energy through a system. Enter an incorrect value in the wrong place, or make a mistaken typo, and the sequence either fails or crashes.

That's not entirely incorrect--if mishandled it's wild and volatile, but the thing is that this isn't the same as destructive. And much like 90% of coding errors, what happens if you get it wrong is "nothing happens" or "everything grinds to a comical halt" rather than "and this overcharges something and breaks thing permanently."

Mana on its own is more of a motive force.

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Tyaethe

"Tarts are good," Tyaethe said, holding up a fork full of the dessert as evidence, "But custard tarts are better. Particularly the spiced variants. There was a chef in the past who was particularly in favour of putting whatever savoury ingredients we had spares of in tarts like that, they seemed to be a particular fan of experimenting with custard."

Any similarity with the perceived flavour and texture of elven blood was unlikely to be a coincidence, although whether the preference for this particular dessert came first or the way blood was perceived would be hard to tell--the girl had both been initially raised amongst the higher levels of nobility, and the chance she had much opportunity to sample elves before the Iron Roses were founded was low. She couldn't, herself, remember which she had first tried, only that there was a distinct similarity between the two.

"You don't have to force yourself to talk to me, no matter how little anyone else might. I am both a vampire and your considerable elder, it's only to be expected."

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Tyaethe

"Ah, but I mean that it all tastes the same if I only focus on what my body is telling me. There's something magical in it, vampirism is very intricate in some ways. Where it came from and how it got to this stage... I don't think anybody knows except the gods, and it's not the sort of thing they like to answer questions about."

His last question was answered by the vampire picking up the spiced tart, taking a bite before continuing. "No great magic, but there's enough in there to be somewhat usable. I don't know if it would be enough to take up any sort of spellblade path without being implausibly efficient, but you could probably learn a few useful things like fire starting or creating light. It's more common amongst humans than you'd think, especially in parts of the Velt population; it's just below the threshold most people will spontaneously cause anything to happen and people don't have time or means to test."

It also wasn't something most mages considered. She only knew because 'trying to understand your status as a vampire' brought you into contact with the most obscure theorists sometimes.

And if Fionn wanted to talk, Tyaethe wasn't going to force him to leave. Probably. "No, most people don't want to talk. It's hardly a loss, I'm content with things as they are."

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Tyaethe

"Preferences? Well, for some reason, people tend to divide into different broad flavours. Blood is blood, there's still the same metallic flavour to it, like if I were to drink my own or some animal's," as consuming them did nothing for her, "But there's qualities to it that don't map well to words. Echoes of flavour and scent, trying to understand things that don't have a taste in a way that's like it. Humans seem to split into three types--call it sweet, sour, and savoury. There's an occasional sweet-sour type, too. I'd say elves are mostly spicy, either sweet or creamy or both on top of it. I haven't met enough to tell how it changes between the different elven peoples."

The vampire took the offered arm, thumb running across the veins as she looked out towards the entrance in thought, "Dwarfs seem to only have the one big type with small variation. Malty, like ale, that. Hundi... mostly, they share the same types as humans, although there's a nuance to it. Once, I met one that was oddly spicy, although I can't say if that was recent elven ancestry. These types are far more noticeable than almost anything else, but I guess there's some small variation due to background. The scions of nobility are distinct from farming backgrounds.

"Although, there's two things far more apparent than even that. The magically powerful are much richer, all flavours stronger, and any characteristic magic leaves its own echoes. It's also more filling, drop for drop, but it takes enormous mana reserves for it to significantly change the amount needed. And I can taste the alcohol if someone's been drinking; it can actually get me drunk quite easily when drinking normally doesn't."

She tilted her head. "But preferences... I rarely think about it. It's not as if I can be picky, and it's only if someone is horrifically sick that it would taste bad. If I had to choose, I would favour the elves, but individuals? Merilia rarely contributed and doesn't visit often but she was strange, almost like a sorbet. Elionne... she didn't stand out too much at first, but after sainthood? Almost like the finest steak and old Ithillane wine at once, and literally intoxicating at the same time. Almost impossibly delicious and filling, but a bad idea to drink often at all..."

Question answered, the vampire finally lined Fionn's arm up to her satisfaction and bit down, the pain sharp but brief... and, despite the likely small holes such fangs could make, his blood obviously flowed far more freely than anticipated, only a minute or two passing before she released him. Although she could have taken longer about it, Tyaethe had no intention of making this anything more than a functional necessity.

"You needed me for something?

@The Otter

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Why would failure cause everything to explode rather than just not work is the big question

Like, unless you're trying to make something with a somewhat similar effect where 'it isn't working as intended' could be 'destructive release of extra magic in a way that explodes', I don't see why they'd go boom.

uh, wall of text incoming, because i'm copying the magic information stored elsewhere:

The TL;DR version is: every living creature generates mana. Sapient races generate more, and individuals amongst those races can have such an excess that it can be moved through certain patterns to effect spells. Dwarfs, for example, never have a sufficient excess (but are sensitive enough to its flows to design some incredibly intricate runework), and almost every elf does. Humans are somewhere in the middle, and Hundi are odd--Hundi mages are rare, but when they do crop up they're often very powerful.

The act of spellcasting is therefore a matter of taking sufficient mana for a given effect and forcing it into the proscribed pattern. How this is done often shows the type of magical education a particular person has received: the various magical colleges like to take an analytical approach, and their spells are strongly formulaic, even if the resulting phrasing doesn't make sense in normal speech: they focus on creating a general language to describe the flows of mana. Similarly, when conducting rituals, circles outlined in chalk or similar tend to be heavily geometric. Self-trained or hedge-witch trained mages tend to have far more personalised spells, or use other methods of casting entirely--singing, or dancing to maintain a long-term effect, etc.

The purpose of such guidance is to associate the movement of something as ephemeral and invisible as mana with material actions, making it easier to control. With practice and experience, the spellcaster can cut down on the necessary ceremony (at the cost of some efficiency). It is possible to cast magic directly through willpower alone, but this requires either a vast reservoir of mana to pull from, or means honing a very specific talent to the point of being instinctive.

(An analogy could be made that the pattern required is like filling a series of channels in order. With a spell and enough practice, ONLY the correct channels are filled, whilst skipping steps or less practice overflows in places--normally just wasting mana. Simply willing magic to happen is akin to flooding the entire plain, regardless of channels, and taking the resulting backlash into your own soul; it's very dangerous if you can't cushion it with even more mana, on top of being orders of magnitude more wasteful)

Runes are the physical depiction of these patterns, adapted to the medium (from its material to its very shape and function) they are being incorporated into to facilitate the flow of mana from whatever the source is. Unlike ritual casting, this isn't some method of conceptualising the pattern to direct mana from yourself (or channelled through yourself); it is the pattern... in dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of tiny symbols, carefully attuned to the object in question: such accuracy is impractical for active spellcasters.

Due to their own low mana capacity, dwarfs would prefer external sources of crystallised mana, while the magically gifted can power them directly. The third case, of blessed items keeping to the limits of magic, are powered by the deity in question.

The origin of these patterns is twofold: many were made part of the world during its creation and by the actions of the gods in earlier times. This encompasses essentially all elemental manipulation, for instance. Other ideas were reified by enormous effort of archmages over the years, branching off of something that's 'close enough' to exist; many subtle variations on emotional effects or extremely specific healing spells came around in this way. A third category is to use mana in place of a similar enough process--the action of the soul to sustain life, which leads to every form of undeath but also beneficial necromancy for medical purposes (where the relationship between the physical and metaphysical is too damaged).

'True' Witchcraft, by contrast--although something that is only known generally to magical scholars from historical accounts--doesn't follow any established pattern. No matter how much mana you have, you could never replicate them through the medium of spellcasting. A mage with enough practice can teleport limited by their mana for range; the correct witch can place two places side by side or overlapping with a distance-independent amount of effort. The exact nature of this is kept a closely guarded secret by the few practitioners who know the why rather than simply how. A noted similarity of some recorded acts of true witchcraft with the abilities of demons has not, however, yielded a satisfactory working explanation to replicate it.

Mana in sufficient quantities, decoupled from life, can crystallise into a self-perpetuating form. The 'common' version would be magical crystals and gemstones, either intentionally imbued into such for their own stability at enormous cost over time or a pure version left after great battles (the deaths of dragons are particularly likely to leave them as the body decays, explaining the particular dwarven interest on top of their shared mountain affinity). This stable mana crystal acts as a facsimile of a soul, continuing to passively generate more. It can also exist inside a soul, where it is instead known as a mana reactor and invariably associated with sapient undead, which is approximately as effective as the soul itself was in terms of mana creation, unlike the much weaker magical output of a physical object.

like, does it actually add anything to the character if they have a random chance to harm themselves or make things that may randomly not work when tested, as opposed to e.g. taking a lot longer and having to make multiple attempts before things work as tested?

(and 'explode and destroy the item' seems like it would be limited then to 'I keep trying to make flaming swords')

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Tyaethe

"If I bite directly, it hurts less and closes up almost as soon as I'm done," Tyaethe answered, opening her mouth wide to show off her teeth clearly. Very shiny, particularly the rather noticeable fangs that one finger was tapping, "There's some sort of magic involved in these to help with that, although I don't know what or if that's standard for all vampires. As for how much... well, that's rather hard to say, isn't it? It's not as if I go around filling up jugs to measure it out first. Enough to take it easy on a hot day and a bit of dizziness, not so much you're in danger. I've been doing this for over two hundred years, I know when to stop."

The question of how much she needed was an interesting one but hard to answer. Enough to keep going and stop feeling so hungry? If she were to just rest, that would probably cover anything up to a week or more. But combat always drained more. And if she were to answer in terms of feeling fully satiated... that was something a single person couldn't manage, no matter how much she drank.

There was the barest twitch of an eyebrow at the question about sitting down, the paladin biting back a comment on how the floor was right there if he wanted to sit down... driving off another person that was actually considering the idea wouldn't help her. Better to put up with it so she could deal with this hunger. Moving towards one end of the window, Tyaethe answered, "Yes, you can sit down."

Blades of Iron Roses: An Anime-Inspired Knight RP

Tyaethe

"You'd be amazed at the number of people who assume that I have a predilection of going for the necks of defenceless maidens, for reasons I suspect are tied to tawdry minstrelsy. Stopping the bleeding isn't the real concern; I'd have to rip a throat out for it to not close, but there are other practical considerations." And the social ones, of course, it could be construed as something far different. No doubt why the stories had such an obsession with imagery like it.

She adjusted her glasses before continuing, "Everyone gets asked eventually. It would be detrimental for the knights' continued health to focus on too small a pool, and the more who agree, the better prepared I can be in case of emergencies. You've simply arrived when I need to find someone."

"Now, are you willing to assist me? I won't turn you away if not, but I won't be able to assist with anything physical."

Well, anything physical that didn't rely on finding the smallest person around.

@The Otter