As you stare at the blank chalkboard and fidget with a piece of chalk, it occurs to you that you've never really created a spell from scratch before. The Multidimensional Aethyric Projection doesn't really count, that's just corralling Ulgu into the required shapes, which is just an alternative manifestation of the basic techniques of spellcasting. And with Mathilde's Mystical Matrix you had a design to work off. But this time, you've only got your objective to guide you: create a spell that allows for travel over broken terrain. Apart from that single end goal, you're starting completely from scratch.
Actually, that's not entirely true, is it? You flick your eyes over the books on Ulgu theory you've already stacked up in your Room of Serenity, and sigh to yourself when you realize it didn't occur to you to bring up the one you wanted. Another trip down to your library and back and you have a stack of books on the very basics of Ulgu spellcasting, and as you skim through the books and start inserting colour-coded bookmarks, you consider the problem in the back of your mind.
Most spells are only recorded as a set of instructions that will create a specific effect, without any record of the logic behind those instructions. Some were never recorded out of selfish pride or paranoia on the part of the inventor, others were invented by the Elves or by civilizations lost to history so the College only has access to the spell itself, still others are so steeped in a specific Wizard's unique viewpoint that they could only be understood by themselves. Consider Shadowsteed: to your mindset, Ulgu is not a swift wind, nor one especially attuned to horses. If you'd never heard of the spell, you'd think it better suited to Hysh or perhaps Ghur. But you tend to think first in terms of Elemental Ulgu, the fog and the shadow, where the inventor of the spell was much more Mystical and drew inspiration from the inexorable march of dawn and dusk that loop the world every day. Most Grey Wizards can cast the spell, but few could recreate the underlying logic unless they dedicated themselves to the study of the moments on the cusp between day and night.
But that's not the case for every spell. The Lesser Magics held in common between the Colleges are so simple and widely-known that they make ideal examples, and entire books have been dedicated to reverse-engineering them, written by Wizards of every College. The one you have your eye on is Skywalk, the spell that allows the caster to walk on empty air for a few precious seconds. It does seem like a natural starting point.
[Incorporating Skywalk: Learning, 62+28+7(Library: Sevir)=97.]
It's also significantly easier said than done. The Lesser Magics are universal because of the very small amount of magical energies they use. Basic Winds theory states that the more of a Wind is concentrated in one place, the more tempestuous it is, which is why Battle Magics are so powerful and so dangerous. The flip side to that is that very small amounts of Winds are much more malleable, to the extent that their identity can be completely lost. This is sometimes referred to as Earthbound Magic as small amounts of it can be drawn out of almost any mundane object, and this undifferentiated magical energy is believed to be what allows for witches, hedge wizards, the Hedgewise, and Elementalists to create magics that don't align with the Teclisean model. It's also believed to power the Runes of the Dwarves, which take in whatever Wind is available and somehow break it down into undifferentiated magic, which would be believed impossible to do in large quantities if the Dwarves weren't so clearly doing it.
What all that amounts to here and now is that Skywalk cannot be simply scaled up. Increasing its effect would require more power, which would require more Winds, which would change the nature of those Winds, and you would now have to alter the spell to obey the nature of that Wind. Celestials could do it easily, and you think Lights could work something out. You think Ulgu could manage something similar, but creating a second entirely new spell would require even more time.
[Using Skywalk as-is: Learning, 54+28+7(Library: Sevir)=89.]
Using one Wind to manipulate another is a fairly well-established idea, albeit in the form of Necromancy. What about using a Wind to manipulate itself? Can a larger spell create localized Skywalk at enough of a distance to keep the small amount of energy from being influenced by the much larger amount that the spell as a whole would be made of? Now you're finally able to mar the perfect blankness of the chalkboard as you begin to play with thaumaturgic equations. Most spells try to remain as self-contained as possible to remain under the caster's control and so that outside forces and influences can't get involved, but this would require the creation of spells at a considerable distance. You picture a massive rolling fogbank with a core of solid Ulgu, with uncountable strands descending like puppet strings to create and maintain the same tiny spell over and over again, and you frown as you picture the complexity of it.
[Minify Skywalk: Learning, 93+28+5(Library: Ulgu)=126.]
Lesser Magics aren't just spells, they're training tools. They're designed to be as easy to cast as possible. But they aren't as simple as possible. If you assume a competent and skilled caster and strip the spell right down to the bone...
Days pass in a haze of equations and revisions as you rebuild the spell over and over, only interrupted by other Wizards checking up on you. Regimand spends three hours decoding the thaumaturgic glyphs for one of the later revisions of the spell before he figures out what it's supposed to be. Melkoth manages to cast it, but grumbles about a knot in his brain for the rest of the day. By the end of it you've got it down to eleven concatenated symbols and you're no longer entirely sure why it works. It would never be worth the time to teach this version of the spell to someone, as it would take ten times as long and save them a minuscule amount of power. But if you're going to be using the same spell hundreds of times a second, every scrap of concentration and power you save yourself will be an immense help.
With the first component of the spell completed, it's well past time to take a break before you lose the ability to communicate in anything but Praestantic equations.
---
You'd been internally debating the matter of the coins of the Grand Urbaz for some time. On one hand, it's a great deal of work that can't be handed off to anyone else for reasons of secrecy, and that's time that could be spent preparing for your rapidly approaching jaunt into the Chaos Wastes. On the other, a complete numismatic history of both Tylos and Strygos wouldn't just be a notable historical artefact in its own right, it would also shed light on forgotten chapters of human history in the Old World. After all, the peoples of Tilea and Estalia are believed to be descended from those that survived the fall of Tylos. And though Strygos was ruled by the vampire Ushoran, its peoples were still a cousin tribe to those that would go on to found the Empire, and history might have been very different if they weren't there and Waaaghs were able to flow north towards the nascent Empire unimpeded.
Of course, the Nehekharan portions of history are rather better known, and many of the rulers on those coins are still ruling over the deserts to the south. But they tend to be inhospitable to visitors, so there could still be value in those portions of the vaults, even if the information still technically exists somewhere amongst the sands. And if you're already going through it all for coins from Tylos and Strygos, it wouldn't be much extra effort to catalogue and collect the Nehekharan ones.
The Tylosian coins are fairly straightforward. They don't have the date of minting like modern coinage, but you're able to deduce a year for all of them by the date they started being deposited. Most of the golden coins are dedicated to either Myrmidia or a man who appears to be the city's legendary father of the Tilean people, Tyleus. There's also representations of Verena, Morr, and Shallya, as well as a God you don't recognize. From the symbology you'd guess Taal, except you're fairly sure Taal is one of the Northern Gods, and wouldn't have been known to the ancestors of Tilea. There's also some of the Dwarven Ancestor Gods scattered throughout. The silver coins are largely dedicated to temporal rulers, and judging by their turnover either they were elected to a temporary position of power, or Tylosian politics were especially rambunctious. You also see several dedicated to local prestige projects, temples and aqueducts and bridges and lighthouses. In some of the chronologically last coins, the depictions of a grand tower sends a shiver down your spine when you realize what it must be depicting.
The Strygosi coins are even simpler. The early coins from when the city was Mourkhain are largely dedicated to its ruler Kadon, bearing one of his face, his pyramid, or his crown. The only exception are ones bearing a different face entirely, its eyes closed and its features seeming more Arabyan than northern, which you spend some time puzzling over. When Ushoran claimed the city the coinage increased substantially in quality and started using a regnal calendar, which is extremely uncomplicated with an immortal ruler. It gets somewhat tedious to see the same fanged face on every single coin, so it's the silver coins that capture your attention, bearing the banners of various Orc tribes and Waaaghs and the year they were defeated. There's a lot of different victories commemorated. You feel a new appreciation for how incredibly difficult it must have been to build a civilization in the Badlands.
The Nehekharan coins are easily the most varied. Nehekhara was a land of city-states and each of them minted their own coins in glory of their rulers and their Gods, which means that even though there's only really a representation of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Dynaties, there's still a dizzying array of coins to catalogue, dating from Lahmizzar to Alcadizzar. That last one causes an itch of familiarity at the back of your mind and it takes you some time to realize why, and upon comparing the Nehekharan coins depicting Alcadizzar to the Mourkhainian ones with the unknown face, you find they're as identical as the quality of the coinage could reasonably permit. What few historical records there are agree that Mourkhain was founded by the Lodringen tribe, so why were they commemorating a Nehekharan King on their coinage? Did they take in Nehekharan refugees? Did Alcadizzar escape the fate of his homeland and spend time in Mourkhain? You put the matter aside as something to investigate in the unlikely event you ever have more time than you have things to do.
Apart from the odd sense of familiarity that the Nehekharan coins depicting a hooded snake cause you, the rest of the cataloguing is uneventful, and after weeks of work you're left with enough coins to fill several coin cabinets that Belegar had a hobbyist carpenter of Clan Angrund put together. You tuck them away in your vault for now, and when you have the time you'll figure out a way to have it plausibly introduced to the historical record.
---
As you and Adela start to put pen to paper on the matter of the Lighting Mechanism, Adela's rough edges start to show. As you can't see lightning-powered lighting being at all practical you're happy to have her take the lead on this one, but it quickly becomes apparent that Adela is not very suited to collaboration, having a strong tendency to disappear inside her own head as she uses her uncanny memory to consult her mental library. As the days drag on and she clearly struggles to wrap her mind and her pen around the alien logic of Azyr, you start to quietly take notes on the side in case you need to write the paper yourself.
Thankfully, consultation with Hubert manages to push past Adela's writer's block, as if there's one thing about magic he knows it's lightning. From there she gamely pushes on and though she starts to flag before all is said and done, the resulting paper is close enough in quality to the one you were mentally preparing that you put the matter from your mind. It's not exactly a groundbreaking paper, but neither was your first contribution to academia, and Adela seems delighted to have her name on something, and doubly so to have it alongside yours. And even if it's not going to set the world on fire, in academia it never hurts to keep your name out there.
[Adela writing the paper on the Azyr Lighting Mechanism: 15+20+10(Adaptable Mechanic)+2(Library: Azyr)+5(Uncanny Memory)+10(Fresh)=62.]
[Coaching Adela through writing the paper: Diplomacy, 6+14+2(Library: Azyr)=22.]
[Hubertian consultation: Learning, 83+14+2(Library: Azyr)=99.]
[Writing the paper yourself: Learning, 43+28+2(Library: Azyr)+10(Fresh)=83.]
[Using Azyr to Create a Bright and Even Light, 2485. Subject: Uncommon, +0. Insight: Agreement, +0. Delivery: Competent, +0. Alien, +1. Thorough, +1. Secondary Author, -2. Total: +0, raised to minimum of +1.]
The rest of your time is spent seeing to the incorporation of various increased security measures into your dungeon. As unwilling guests go, Qrech has been a comparative delight to host, seemingly content with his life of model-making, the companionship of Skufit, and his near-complete Diploma of Near-Eastern Studies from the University of Altdorf. But you know his psychology well enough that you know that it is built upon a foundation of an inability to return to his Clan, and if that changed, so would his contentment with his current living situation as his loyalty to Clan and Empire took precedence. So with you about to spend months away, it's a sensible precaution to upgrade the security measures around your dungeon to ensure that he can't get out, and nobody else can get in unless you want them to. By the time you and the team of Dwarven artisans is complete, gaining entrance to the penthouse is only halfway to gaining entrance to the dungeon, and it could also serve as a makeshift panic room if need be.
---
Thus concludes the work Mathilde performed these past months, but not every waking moment was filled with work. With whom did she spend her free time, this past year? The four with the most votes will be chosen, not counting those locked in.
[+] The Wizards of Karak Eight Peaks (locked in)
[+] Social interaction initiated by someone else (locked in)
[+] EIC Reports (does not cost a choice)
Romance
Any victors from the below will trigger a subvote for how you'll spend time with them. Choosing any of these will represent a first tentative expression of romantic interest. While this would not be a soft-lock, it could be awkward to walk that back if Mathilde decides her heart lies elsewhere.
[ ] [ROMANCE] Journeywoman Panoramia
[ ] [ROMANCE] Magister Johann
[ ] [ROMANCE] Elector Countess Roswita van Hal
[ ] [ROMANCE] Baron Anton Kiesinger II
[ ] [ROMANCE] The Ice Dragon of Karag Zilfin
[ ] [ROMANCE] Chief Bombardier Oswald Oswaldson
Fellow Wizards
[ ] Gretel, who's apparently spending her newly-earned wealth to make herself at home.
[ ] Hubert, as he settles in to his niche with Ulrikadrin.
Karak Eight Peaks Notables
[ ] Belegar, to discuss the northern Karaks and the Expedition.
[ ] Elder Hluodwica, High Priestess of Esmerelda and civilian leader of the Eight Peaks Halflings.
[ ] Francesco Caravello, proud Viceroy of the Undumgi.
[ ] Sir Ruprecht Wulfhart, leader of the frontier town of Ulrikadrin.
Foreign Relations
[ ] Barak Varr, to watch the progress of the canal.
[ ] Stirland, to see for yourself how the war against Sylvania is progressing.
Friends Abroad
[ ] Kasmir, to see how he's keeping himself busy in Sylvania.
[ ] Julia, to see what she has gotten up to as Stirland's most experienced spy master.
[ ] Eike Hochschild, to get to know your future business partner.
Following Up
[ ] The Amber College, to check in on the salamanders.
[ ] The Gold College, to see what's become of their research into Skaven technology.
[ ] Follow up on your donation of the Skaven organ-vat, and see what has been made of it.
[ ] Pay a visit to your fief, to see if anything has changed. It probably hasn't.
[ ] Other (write in)
- There will be a two hour moratorium.
- Feel free to make suggestions for other social actions.
- Melkoth didn't get involved in the spell creation process because he wasn't needed. If Mathilde had hit a roadblock or it turned out the Skywalk approach wouldn't work, then he would have been brought in. Same sort of thing as when you use the Coin on something and then you obliterate it in the first diceroll.
- Melkoth and Regimand will be attending Duckling Club.
