Combinatorial Explosion (Worm/Original)

Shadestyle · Jan 26, 2021

With an imperious frown, I raise my hand, magic flashing inside the cerulian blue glass gem embedded in my bracelet.

"Cobold Gleam," I say, the idea of calling out what I'm using feeling a bit more appropriate here.

Instantly, the room is awash in a vibrant blue glow, the ball of mana in my hand acting like a little lantern.

With my other hand, I summon up a ball of Eye Attuned Mana, flinging it at the door to seal the corners and absorb any light coming in from upstairs.

With that, the only thing illuminating my garden is the mischievous glow of Cobold Gleam Mana, a magic whose light blurs any important details that it falls on.

1d20 vs 1d20 = 1, 20

The whole fucking room is blurry.

I slap my forehead with a groan, then a shriek as I forgot about the ball of light magic inside it that came along with the slap.

Blinking stars out of my eyes, I grumble unspoken curses about how a mischievous magic should at least have the decency to be easily exploited.

After that, I decide to check my eye plants, plucking all the fruits and staring through them to see the image inside.

1d20 vs 1d20 = 6, 8

Unfortunately, that's a bust as well, as I suspected. The eyes only absorb a new image when the old ones are squeezed, or when they are freshly grown, and without my direct intervention or someone else's, neither of those things would happen.

Obviously, whoever did this was smart enough to not show up while I was here, and not dumb enough to squeeze any of the eyefruits.

But most importantly, they were dumb enough to enter the room. The room filled with mana from my various experiments, mana that I know is able to interact with and seep into organic and inorganic material.

In other words...

I close my hands around the fly that was saturated with my intentions and will, gently, but furiously too. I was growing angrier by the minute, and if my suspicion turned out to be correct, I was going to get very very angry indeed.

"See the Unseen, my little bug," I whisper, a violent miasma of energy flooding into the little fly I had subsumed with my power.

I was in my old Sage Costume, the bright blue wooden plates not that much better looking than they were the last time I donned them. I didn't have time to come up with anything better, however. This had to be done tonight, before any of the mana on them could decay.

With shaking hands, I released the fly, and it immediately began buzzing off into Emma's house. She was the first candidate. The most obvious culprit in my mind.

She knew my home inside and out. She had visited it for most of our lives, day in and day out. She knew when I would be there, and when I would not.

But none of that mattered. My fly would find out the truth.

I stared across the street into the lit windows of her house. It was all too easy to imagine it. To imagine her in there, laughing, smiling with her family, or perhaps even her friends, if they were in there as well.

I frowned with my arms crossed to stave off the night air, as well as to simply have something to do with myself while I waited.

My fly returned minutes later, and I plucked the magic from its body, looking at the image stored within.

Darkness. Pitch darkness. At one point, the fly turned around towards me on its little flight, and I saw myself, as miasmic to the sixth senses of my bug as I looked when I actually used my powers. The shifting liquid mana I had infused into it would only store the sight of magic. Normal light wouldn't be registered at all.

But there was no mana in Emma's house. Not even a trace.

I knew where I would check next, though.

I turned to leave, stalking down the street towards where I knew the Hess family lived.

1d20 vs 1d20 = 14, 4

After about a minute of walking, I suddenly got an overwhelming premonition, turning my head in time to see something whiz by it, past the light of the streetlamps, then disappearing into the road without a sound.

My eyes trailed up to where, standing on a lamp post, a figure in all black was perching, reloading a sporting-goods crossbow. I couldn't see their face behind the hockey mask they were wearing.

My frown turned into an outright sneer at this, and I was already channeling twin orbs of mana into my hands, ready to form them into whatever I deemed fit.

Before I could do anything though, the person dispersed their body into some kind of wispy smoke, falling through the road and disappearing entirely. They had seemingly done what they had come to do. Like some kind of dumb animal. "See? I'm dangerous! Don't get closer to my territory!", their action seemed to say.

I sensed mana on her. My mana. Not enough to track, but enough to know. The evidence is too clear.

With nothing else to do tonight, now that I had my proof, I prepared to walk home, but before I did, a thought crossed my mind.

With my fly buzzing around her, Emma had already been touched with traces of magic. I could see bodies inside her home, ever so faint, using my Mana Vision.

I raise my hand and extend my pointer finger at her house. It would be so easy. A ray mana would travel unbelievably fast, and a strong enough one, or at least, one that I had enough of my will in, could probably pass through the cheap walls of her home. I could fire an Elemental Ray, or even merely a regular one. It would be instant.

I choked on my own breath a bit as saliva pooled in my mouth. Dozens of mana types, almost a hundred of them flashed through my mind.

[][Revenge] Before I leave, I fire a bolt of magic through her house, aiming it to pass her by. I can make threats too. (Write-In Mana Type)
[][Revenge] I lower my hand, turn around, and walk home.
~~[][Revenge] I aim at Emma's head, and fire directly at it with the strongest magic I can muster. (Write-In Mana Type)~~ (LOCKED)

I got home without any more surprises or threats for now, but as I stood in my room, dad sleeping just a few meters away, I knew I wasn't going to be sleeping tonight.

I stalked down into my lab to begin testing once again. As I closed the door, I stared at that stupid photograph, still pinned up there on the door. I hadn't bothered to remove it, but now...

I fired a bolt of Clay Mana at it, transmuting the photograph into dust, and took my helmet off, throwing it at the ground with a silent shriek caught in my throat.

My breathing was heavy, and my thoughts were racing. I wasn't safe inside my own home. Either the trio had access to a cape, or one of them WAS a cape.

I run to my table, shoving my projects aside. This can't be allowed to continue. They can't be allowed to invade my place, my home. I won't allow it. Not from them. Anyone but them.

[][Home] Life Magic: Your little fly is the most loyal creature in this universe. It's time to reward that loyalty. (Create a protective minion using the magic at your disposal)

[][Home] Plant Magic: Thorns, Brambles, Thick wood and magical plants. Eyeball Plants with stronger enchantments as well. Wherever you can hide plants, you will. (Fortify your house with the magic at your disposal)

[][Home] Blood Magic: Magic infused with your purest, most powerful intentions. You'll take complete control over the things around you. An army to watch out for you, even as you sleep. (Master the critters around your home using the magic at your disposal)

[][Home] Transmutation: Your armor won't save you from much, but it could. By god it could. You'll sleep in yours. Dad gets one too. (Transmute your Armor using the magic at your disposal. Taylor will not sleep without it on.)

[][Home] No. You're safe. They know better than to attack you. You've made sure of it. (Requires [Revenge] Option A)
-[][Home] Tell Dad what you did, as soon as you can. (Lower Trust now. Higher Trust Later)
-[][Home] He doesn't need to know. (Lower Trust if he finds out what you did)

As I put away my extra materials with shaking hands, I can't keep a low keen from leaving my throat as I pound the table with the palm of my hand. It's starting to set in. I don't want it to, but it is.

This is real.

I collapse in my bed and fall asleep.

Dad doesn't know what I did when we both get up in the morning. Since it's the weekend, he doesn't have a problem with me going out on my own.

I decide to investigate the attack on the Barnes family. I need to know what happened. Something burning in my soul won't let me ignore this. Not when I can learn the truth. My first stop is the Library.

Along the way, I pick up a nice potted cactus at a local gardening store, a few ideas bubbling up in my mind when I see it. If nothing else, it's one of the prettier cactuses they have, a brightly colored flower present on the tag attached to the pot. I doubt the cactus would bloom a flower nearly as nice looking, unless it were in my hands, at least.

When I get to the Library, I settle down to do my due diligence, starting with newspapers. This particular library kept a bunch of them in the back, and the lady at the front didn't seem to have too much trouble with letting me have a look at them.

1d20 vs 1d20 = 10, 2

I'm surprised to see exactly what I was hoping to find. Turns out an assault on a lawyer and his family is something of a big deal, at least in the newspaper circles.

Emma was attacked by members of the ABB. The Azn Bad Boyz.

Online Articles confirmed this, but the whole thing didn't get much attention, and the details weren't the best. I needed to know more.

There were seven of them, all named as instigators. One was dead, four were in prison. Three were broken out of prison four months ago during a jailbreak.

Apparently, the attack was stopped by an unnamed vigilante who arrived and incapacitated the gangsters until the police could arrive.

The case got poked and prodded by the PRT at one point due to the vigilante, but eventually pulled their hooks out of it and let the police do their job, at least for as long as it took for the gangsters to get broken out or killed.

I knew all I needed to know now, and logged out of the computer. I had experiments to do on this lovable cutie I had. "Who's a cute little cactus, you are!" I muttered, smirking at the thorny little mass huddled up in its pot.

It reminded me a lot of myself. ...Small, prickly, and patronized by someone bigger and stronger.

'Wow, and now I've made myself sad. Good work Taylor.'

Shaking my head, I make my way to leave only for a girl to bump into me as I merged into the crowds going about their business. I only noticed seconds later that there was something stuck to my pants.

My brow furrowed. 'Who the hell velcros their business card to people?' I thought, pulling off the little slip and reading it.

"hey cactus girl, let's talk sometime", the paper read. On it was a string of numbers- a phone number.

I longed to return to my magical basement of wacky plants and unnatural substances. Where things made sense.

Safely entombed in my basement once again, I took my lovely little cacti and began charging it with magic. This time, instead of something that produced mana, I needed something that would store it. The ambiance would take a hit as the plant absorbed it, but it would make the magic last a bit longer by storing it in the organic material.

Quickly, my experiment bore fruit, no pun intended, and the cacti swelled up with vast amounts of liquid mana. In fact, what was really interesting was just how little mass I needed to add to it. The cactus was able to absorb the liquid magic effectively, using the same structures it used to store water.

Though, instead of water, it was plant-mana polluted ambiance.

It seems Mana, at least in its liquid form, is more than capable of making organic targets larger, at least as long as the magic lasted. I wonder if there is any use for that on my own body... I shake the thought away.

With my mana battery problems safely solved, I decided to do a few more experiments.

I summoned up multiple mana types, Copper and Coal, blending them together before attuning them to a mix of Calcium Carbonate, Plant Mulch, and some of my own Blood.

1d20 vs 1d20 = 7, 16

The resulting magic is... Unpleasant.

The liquid mana sparks and sputters, and I back away when one of the sparks of unstable magic fall onto my apple sapling, making it briefly revert back to a seedling before almost instantly turning gnarled and leafless for a moment.

After a second, the effect fades on the tree, and it returns to being a sapling once again.

I decide I don't want this magic in my damn ambiance, and pump it into a piece of Voidstone to get rid of it, shuddering a bit at that. It's a good thing I didn't actually test what that would have done to a human...

Next, I decide to test how much damage I can do with Ashes to Ashes. It's meant to erode whatever I apply it to, but can you even erode a living thing? A plant?

Pointing a finger at one of my tomato plants, I use plant magic to rapidly bloat up one of the tomatoes into a sizable target, before firing a bolt of Ashes to Ashes mana at it.

Sure enough, the mana does indeed have an effect on it, the tomato withering somewhat and breaking apart with enough of a blast. Of course, with the tomato infused with my will, there's every chance in the world that it was at least partially trying to fulfil my wishes. I'd have to make a point of testing it on a tree at some point, next time I go out as Sage.

Next, I grabbed a bundle of plants, and started to study it for new noises to test out on my magic.

Bending the bundle of tomato stalks and branches produced a low creaking noise, waving it around produced a faint swooshing, and dropping it on the floor resulting in a sort of thump alongside rustling.

After about an hour, I had nailed down three Phonems that felt "Right", testing them properly so my power could record their effects.

Creakle had the power to make any open-air mana I spoke it to bend 90 degrees, Shhshh made the mana whip around wildly, which I slowly realized was due to movements in the air affecting it dramatically, and the last one was... Weird.

Tash, as it turns out, was a bit more complex. When I spoke that phonem to mana in the right way, it made the mana branch out, little copies of itself on the branches. Repeating it sadly didn't make a fractal like I had hoped, as it struck me that I would have to repeat it a hell of a lot of times, due to how it only affected one branch at a time when repeated like that.

I also tried some plain English words, like Age and Destroy, but their effects didn't seem to have anything to do with their definitions. Thaumic Mana, it seems, wanted no part in my English speaking sensibilities, in favor of weird noises that "seemed" right.

Maybe other wave manas would react more predictably to plain English.

Tempted to continue my experiments, I felt the energy drain out of me as I heard the door opening, and dad coming home.

Seems as though today's experiments would have to go on pause while I explained things to him.

School	Attunement Chain	Shorthand	Type	Effects	Other
Eye	Thaum > Calcium Carbonate > Eye	Visual Slime	Liquid	This mana takes the form of a glass-like liquid that can refract and reflect light.
Eye	Thaum > Blood > Eye	Vital Sight	Liquid	This mana interprets Vitality, turning it into an image.
Eye	Thaum > Bone > Eye	Undeath Sight	Liquid	This mana interprets Undeath, turning it into an image.
Eye	Thaum > Copper > Eye	Temporal Image	Liquid	This mana interprets Time, turning it into an image.
Eye	Thaum > Glass > Eye	Mana Lens	Liquid	This mana takes the form of a glassy liquid that absorbs light and releases it through concave areas in its surface.
Eye	Thaum > Lead > Eye	Lightweight	Liquid	This mana gains artificial mass, the more visual data is inside it.
Calcium Carbonate	Thaum > Eye > Calcium Carbonate	Slime Tablet	Liquid	This mana takes the form of a light purple slime that reflects things by growing divots in its surface instead of reflecting light.
Blood	Thaum > Eye > Blood	Vital Mimicry	Liquid	This mana emits vitality in the shape of an image that it is given.
Bone	Thaum > Eye > Bone	Undeath Mimic	Liquid	This mana emits undeath in the shape of an image that it is given.
Copper	Thaum > Eye > Copper	Lightstop	Ray	This mana freezes time for any light entering its field of influence, creating a stored image of frozen light.
Glass	Thaum > Eye > Glass	Illusion Mimic	Elemental Ray	This mana emits light depending on any image that it is given.
Lead	Thaum > Eye > Lead	Mass Mimicry	Ray	This mana applies mass to objects around it using visual data it is given.
Hybrid	(Thaum > Eye) + (Thaum > Aluminum)	Vision Sphere	Hybrid	This mana draws light and magic towards itself, creating an image within itself made of light and ambient magic.
Stainless Steel	Thaum > Tungsten > Stainless Steel	Whiteforge	Ray	This mana uses raw kinetic energy to smelt rust back into steel.
Aluminum	Thaum > Tungsten > Aluminum	Refine Ambience	Ray	This mana draws trace mana types from the ambiance towards itself.
Tungsten	Thaum > Stainless Steel > Tungsten	Scale	Ray	This mana makes an object's waste energy transfer into rust and oxides covering it.
Aluminum	Thaum > Stainless Steel > Aluminum	Cleanse Petrification	Ray	This mana tears the magic of transmutation from an object's surface.
Tungsten	Thaum > Aluminum > Tungsten	Mana Recycle	Ray	This mana draws other forms of mana emitted from an object back into themselves.
Wardstone	Transmute > Wardstone > Water	Resin of the Magi Transmutation	Transmutation	This mana transmutes water into Resin of the Magi	Resin of the Magi: This thick fluid hardens over time into a solid, cement-like substance.
Wardstone	Transmute > Wardstone > Blood	Ritual Glue Transmutation	Transmutation	This mana transmutes blood into Ritual Glue	Ritual Glue: This epoxy-like substance slowly hardens into a crimson, enamel-like material that pulses with vitality.
Dirt	Transmute > Dirt > Water	Mud Transmutation	Transmutation	This mana transmutes water into mud.	Starved of mana, this mud returns to being water.
Dirt	Thaum > Rainrock > Dirt	Rainy Day Dirt Creation	Elemental Ray	This mana creates Rainy Day Dirt when applied to Dirt	Rainy Day Dirt: This mana draws moisture into the air around itself until weather is achieved.
Egg	Thaum > Egg > Egg	Tumor	Liquid	This mana forces cells to divide by creating tumors inside a target which emit a growth hormone.
Egg	Thaum > Egg > Egg > Egg	Cancer Magic	Liquid	This mana forces cells to divide by creating Master Tumors, which themselves manage several smaller tumors which produce growth hormones.
Stone	Thaum > Gold > Stone	Sunrock	Elemental Ray	This mana creates Sunrock when applied to Stone	Sunrock: This bright yellow stone shines with a faint golden light.
Gold	Thaum > Stone > Gold	Solar Shard	Ray	This mana creates shards of sunlight that stick to whatever they touch.
Gold	Thaum > Sand > Gold	Solar Sand	Ray	This mana creates a bitter shining powder that can be fired at high speeds.
Sand	Thaum > Gold > Sand	Glitterdust	Elemental Ray	This mana dissolves objects into a shiny reflective powder
Wardstone	Thaum > Gold > Wardstone	Golrilla Glue	Elemental Ray	This mana creates Golrilla Glue when applied to Wardstone	Golrilla Glue: This wet paste dries out over time into a glowing solar cement.
Graphite	Thaum > Bone > Graphite	Parasite	Liquid	This mana attempts to puppet nonliving organic matter by mutating living organic matter.
Zinc	Thaum > Bone > Zinc	Sicken	Ray	This mana makes a target sickened, enhancing the strength of their existing illnesses
Copper	Thaum > Salt > Copper	Undo	Ray	This mana pulls targets apart that have come together by manipulating their personal timeframe.
Mild Steel	Thaum > Glass > Eye > Mild Steel	Magnet Shine	Ray	This mana directs light that comes near it towards the metal it was attuned to.
Silicon	Thaum > Copper > Silicon	Timeshift Crystal Creation	Elemental Ray	This mana creates Timeshift Crystal when applied to Silicon	Timeshift Crystal: When struck, this material selectively emulates the past of things around it within a radius. Buildings become cliffs, deserts become oceans, valleys become rivers, and so on.
Silicon	Thaum > Graphite > Silicon	Curestone Creation	Elemental Ray	This mana creates Curestone when applied to Silicon	Curestone: This material is infused with life energy, appling it to the things that it touches.
Silicon	Thaum > Aluminum > Silicon	Voidmetal Creation	Elemental Ray	This mana creates Voidmetal when applied to Silicon	Voidmetal: This material absorbs magic it comes into contact with.
Salt	Thaum > Aluminum > Salt	Crack	Ray	This mana creates a void by seperating materials from one another, resulting in a shockwave.
Salt	Thaum > Zinc > Aluminum > Salt	Void Spark	Ray	This mana is capable of creating a small rift that ignites some primal, unknown fear.
Hybrid	(Thaum > Coal + Thaum > Copper) > (Thaum > Calcium Carbonate + Thaum > Plant + Thaum > Blood)	Timegreed Sparkslime	Liquid	This mana emits hazardous and chaotic sparks. On contact, the target is reversed in age biologically, and when the effect ends, the target is advanced to extreme age biologically. When the magic fades, the target returns to normal.

Research Obtained: 5

Stats: Research: 23
A good start.

Overall Health: 12
You're a very small and squishy human who is less small and squishy than she once was.

Overall Magical Power: 5
You are a Low-Level Magic User, but a magic user nonetheless.
Abilities: Magical Soul: F
Rating: Trump ???
Your soul emits magic. The stronger your soul, the more powerful your magic.

Magical Body: FF
Rating: ???
Your body contains some magic, your soul empowering your body without your direct intervention.

Magical Power: C
Rating: Trump ???
You are a parahuman with the power to create this anomalous energy known as "Mana", at will.
Boosted for One Month.

Composition Detection: S
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to detect the exact composition of materials. So long as you apply mana to them, that is. Fairly Niche.

Eidetic Memory: A
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to never forget what mana attunements you have learned, their applications, and their nuances. You will also never forget any word or noise you test on mana, or the effects it has.
Equipment: Wooden Armor: Bright cerulean armor, made of magically transformed denim.

Glowstone Powder: A sack of brightly glowing powder. It leaves spots in your vision to stare at for too long.

High Carbon Steel Knife: A simple folding pocketknife that you bought from the Boardwalk.

Secret Base-Taylor's Garden: A room in your basement. In exchange for charging the plants inside it with magic once per day, the room is continually filled with ambient magic that enchanted items and other magic consuming things can feed on.

Dadbought Plant Supplies: A variety of plants that dad bought you, including, but not limited to:

Saffron Seeds
Apple Sapling
Tomatoes (Nonvampiric)
Aloe Vera with Magical Eyes
Pepper Plant
Wheat Plants

Ambiance Generator (Dirt): A grove of weeds and grass. The weeds have been mutated to turn dirt into powder, while the grass has been covered with aluminum shreds, and mutated to produce a white flame that consumes dust and turns it into mana. It can supply most minor enchantments with crude ambiance.

Ambience Battery: A large cactus enchanted with your will. It absorbs mana, turning it into a liquid inside itself. Converts Crude Ambience into Polluted Plant Mana.
Resources: Suburban Home: You have access to materials that could be found in and around a dingy old house.

Boardwalk Trinkets: You have access to materials that could be obtained cheaply from the Boardwalk.

Neighborhood Garbage: You have access to materials that could be found in local garbage bins and around the neighborhood.

Dad's Budget: You have access to things you can convince your father to get for you.

Ambient Mana Supply: Your home is now charged with low-grade Ambience, which can be tapped for some forms of magic.

Polluted Plant Mana: One of your creations contains a supply of heavily attuned plant magic.
Mana Types and Phonems: Combinatorial Explosion Mana Types

docs.google.com

Shadestyle · Jan 27, 2021

Emma laughs at something funny she sees on the internet trawling around with something to do.

"Ahh, cats. What would the internet do without you?" she muses to herself.

An eyebrow rises when she notices a notification for her instant-messenger program.

"This late? Geeze," she mutters, opening up the program and seeing what the deal was.

As she read the message that was sent to her by "PlausibleDeniabolical", she feels a bit of a chill in the room.

"Don't go to school tomorrow. The bitch was outside your house. Started towards mine before I took a potshot. Aimed at your room but got spooked and fled."

Emma knew the handle all too well, it was the one she and Sophia had come up with for when she was talking about stuff in-costume.

"What did you do," she sent back, waiting for an answer. When Sophia said she would "take care of it", Emma was concerned a bit, considering her friend's hastiness when it came to her cape activities.

"Not here. In person." Sophia sent back in lieu of an answer.

It must have been bad if she wasn't even willing to elaborate vaguely on it. Emma wasn't really concerned about Taylor, though. She was far too pitiful to actually go through with anything, even if she did have powers.

"Tonight?" Emma responded.

"Tomorrow," Sophia responded. That must have been why Emma was warned not to go to school.

Emma let out a disappointed sigh. Sophia was strong, there was no doubt about that, but she was just so damn hasty. It was a good part of why their dynamic worked so well in the first place, and Sophia knew it. Emma was the closest thing she had to a planner, someone who could keep her from going out half-cocked.

It was Emma who suggested zipties, for example, since Sophia had been spending too much money on bolts and just using those to pin gangsters down. A total waste of ammo considering how many she went through in a night.

'Hopefully, she didn't screw the pooch too badly with putting Taylor back in her place,' Emma thought, deleting all the messages from "PlausibleDeniabolical"

Dad looked upset. Really really upset.

"Taylor, why didn't you tell me instead of," he trailed off, gesturing to the basement. The walls were completely covered with an unbroken layer of cacti, blood-red thorns and little eyes poking out all over them. I had grown the plants up and over the walls and the ceiling, mutating them so that they could attack anyone I deemed a threat, collapsing the ceiling inwards with some subtle magics.

I based them on something I had read about called a "Teddy-bear cactus", one whose thorny fruits could explode off of their parent plant, sticking to things with incredibly painful barbs.

The rest of the house was little better. I had covered all the wooden surfaces in the house with tiny holes, thin enough to be almost unnoticable, but also filled with the same blood-red thorns, and in various places, I had hidden more of my eyeball fruits, these ones more advanced as I had combined cactus plants and pieces of paper with some chrome flakes.

The result were halfway decent cameras, the cacti swirling visual mana inside itself and pumping that mana into the paper to record on it. When the paper ran out of room on the spool, the feed would reverse, using chrome magic to scour the paper clean and reapply it.

I had also taken the time to add some of those eyebulbs around the outside of the house as well. They wouldn't record anything, but I had used thin vines to wire them to my room. A little music box on my nightstand would begin chiming when any movement was detected anywhere outside of my house. Not loudly, but enough to wake me up if anyone or anything came near the place.

With merely the slightest intention on my part, nearly anything in my home could erupt with barbed, bloodthirsty thorns, and with utter ease, I could track things happening in and around it.

If anyone broke into my lab again, I could crush them to death with a gesture.

Dad was unhappy with what I had done in secret. But that was nothing compared to how he reacted when I told him about the picture I had found, and what I had done, going out at night.

He looked pale when I told him about the crossbow I had nearly been shot with.

"Taylor. I want all of this stuff gone. You know better than this. I know you have powers now, and I know you were afraid, I am too, but this?" he gestures around the house, which I had taken the time to fortify.

"I can't even think of how many laws this breaks, much less what it would mean if that photograph was released. If you had actually done anything... All they would have needed to do was turn that photo into the police. Even if they lied about you doing anything, if they did investigate our home, and found out you had covered it with all of these traps, heaven-forbid if any of them had actually gone off," he says.

He grabs me in a hug. "I can't lose you, Taylor. You need to know that, I-" he trails off, swallowing heavily.

I wanted to object, object at how unfair it was, at how much danger we were in. We needed this stuff, needed to keep ourselves safe!

"After you've gotten rid of everything, we're going to the police, or the PRT, or wherever we need to go to report this, Taylor," he says, letting me go and looking me in the eyes with ironclad resolve. I didn't think I could get out of this, but before I could even try, he continues.

"We could go in costume or disguise, or whatever you think needs to happen, but what happened isn't something we can take care of. You were threatened and attacked by a parahuman, in your own home no less. If we brought that to the authorities, told them that you believed these bullies of yours were responsible, and told them about how you knew, then they could do something about it."

"Even I know that what happened to you simply isn't done," he says, confusing me.

He gives me a look, seemingly noticing my reaction. "I'm not completely ignorant, Taylor. If someone threatened a cape's identity, heads could literally roll for it. Nobody wants to see what someone like Kaiser would do if he thought he had no other option."

Something enters his expression that looks downright malicious. "What do you think the authorities would do to someone who threatened the safety of a person with powers like yours?" he asks.

"Who were they? If you don't want to go, I will. I'll explain enough to get an investigation opened," he offers.

I shook myself out of my stupor, trying to take back control of the conversation. How did he know so much about capes? Even I hadn't gotten around to researching the sort of things he was talking about. I had no clue what he meant about the authorities caring about my identity being preserved, I thought, at most, maybe they could be charged with breaking and entering, or something like that.

If they even did get charged. I had no proof. Just like always, stupid Taylor didn't bother to get any. I even destroyed the picture. I was just so angry, I blasted it without a second thought.

It would just be my word against theirs again, but this time, it would bleed into my new life as a cape too.

[][Concessions] No, I refuse to remove the fortifications on the house. We aren't safe without them.
[][Concessions] I'm not bringing this to the PRT, I don't want to reveal my powers to them.
[][Concessions] I can't tell you who they are. Please don't make me.
[][Concessions] All of the above. I won't remove the fortifications. I'm not going to have anything to do with the PRT. I'm not telling you who the bullies are. I'll take care of this.
[][Concessions] Write-in.

Shadestyle · Jan 27, 2021

I meet my dad's stare with one of my own. A lot of what he demanded seemed perfectly reasonable. But not all of it.

I start listing off my own demands.

"Fine. We can go to the PRT. We'll tell them what they need to know, and nothing else. I still don't want many people to know about what my powers can really do."

"Next, I'll remove the traps, but not the surveillance, and not the reinforcements to the house. In fact, I'll be adding more of those. It isn't illegal to make our house more durable, and it isn't illegal to have cameras in the privacy of our own home," I continue.

"Finally, and this part isn't negotiable. I'm going to make a weapon for you to protect yourself," I finish, already holding up a hand to stop dad from objecting.

"Explain it however you want, or hide it, or whatever. I'm not going to let you protect me if you won't let me do the same," I insist.

He deflates a bit at this.

"Alright. I can live with that. I trust you, Taylor," he responds.

I nod. "Thank you."

We hug it out a bit more, and I get to work on removing the traps. With enough willpower, I'm still able to wrench control of the plants under my influence, so forcing them to reabsorb their thorns isn't too big of an issue, though it does take even longer than it took to make them in the first place.

After that, I pack my costume into a cardboard box, making a simple mask for dad out of an old baseball cap that I quickly mutate into pale white wood.

Dad insists on driving us to the docks first, and we change there, before taking a rental car to the PRT building itself. Something I didn't even think of doing.

I wasn't sure when dad got so good at coming up with ideas like that, but I didn't disagree with the added layer of obfuscation.

As we walked into the PRT building's reception area, dad seemed content to let me take the lead. He didn't know as much as I did about the situation, but it felt gratifying to know that he was letting me take charge while I'm in costume.

The receptionist looked carefully placid as she saw me walking in, like someone who worked at a vet and saw someone bring in a large animal. Trained to deal with it, and cautious precisely because of that training.

"May I help you sir?" she asked, glancing between me and my father as she took her attention away from the desktop computer she had been entering things into.

"I'm here to report a parahuman crime that I'm the victim of," I say calmly and clearly, something that was at odds with my slowly rising tension.

To her credit, the woman didn't skip a beat after hearing my distinctly not-male voice. "Right. If you'll wait here, I'll make some calls for you, ma'am," she said, correcting her earlier misstep.

I wasn't that torn up about it, considering what I must have looked like. My costume was pretty much just plates glued together with random vines and threads with basically no way to tell who was underneath it, so long as I wasn't talking, at least.

"Do you have a name on-record, ma'am?" she asked. "Is your companion a parahuman as well?" she asked, not even bothering to question if I myself was one.

"No. I'm currently going by the name Sage. My associate is wearing a mask to protect his identity as well."

She nods at this, returning to her computer and typing far more hastily than her previous chicken-pecking when we first walked in. In one smooth motion, she has the phone next to her wedged between her head and her shoulder, using one hand to punch in phone numbers.

Me and my dad went to set down at one of the chairs nearby. I tried awkwardly to not make eye contact with any of the other people waiting in here, but it was clear that a weird cape and their partner just sitting in a waiting room like nothing was strange about that was attracting some attention.

1d20 vs 1d20 = 2, 12

After entirely too long spent waiting, we were finally called back into an office, where I noticed, with a heart-stopping pulse of irrational fear, both Armsmaster and another cape were milling around alongside an ordinary man in a suit sitting at the back of the office.

"If you would take a seat, Sage," the man asks, and I numbly sit down in the chair he offered, one close to the door and next to the one my dad was sitting in.

"My name is Deputy Seargent McMiller. As we take threats on parahuman independents seriously, I've opted to include these two to participate in this interview. Do not be concerned," he explains plainly.

"If you would, please explain your reason for coming here today."

I mutely nod, before looking to dad nervously. Taking my cue, he decides to open while I try to gather myself.

"I and my associate are the victim of a home invasion we believe to be perpetrated by a parahuman and several minors. She found a photograph pinned to the door of her work area depicting some of her critical tools and resources, in what I personally believe to be an attempt at blackmail or coersion."

"Later, when investigating potential culprits, a parahuman assaulted her in the street just outside of one of the culprit's homes, and, using her power, she was able to confirm that this specific parahuman was present in her home, and thus, the one responsible," he explains.

"I have the ability to sense a type of energy that I produce. My home is saturated with it, and I detected the energy on the parahuman that attacked me, one who only did so when I investigated near one of the culprit's houses. Nobody else would have registered like that other than my associate."

The Deputy Seargent nodded, writing something down diligently as I explained.

"Would you be willing to offer proof of some kind?" He asks, making my heart sink.

I knew this would happen. I don't have any proof that anything happened, just like all the other times.

Heedless of my brooding, he continues. "While we are authorized to investigate claims made by a parahuman using power-based evidence, having your ability on record would speed up the process by a great deal," he says, shocking me out of my stupor.

"Either way, we will need some names and descriptions. Could you describe what the parahuman looked like? Their powers, and if they were using any equipment?"

I sputter a bit. "Oh, they were in all-black clothing, they shot a crossbow bolt at me, and turned into this dark mist that sunk into the road when I got ready to defend myself," I say quickly.

"They had a hockey mask on, too, and somehow was able to get up on top of one of the lampposts," I add on afterwards.

"I see," he looks to the other cape in the room, Armsmaster, however, kept his stare fixed on me.

I was glad that my helmet covered my entire face, or I'm sure they would have seen the nervous flush that came over my face when I realized how he was scrutinizing me.

The other cape nods subtly, and Deputy Seargent McMiller returns his attention to me. "Very well. All that's left is the names of the non-parahumans you believe may be involved. I'll bring this up the chain to the appropriate people so we can investigate the matter. If you believe your identity or life are in immediate danger, I can get you to the appropriate people if you wish to join the Protectorate, or if you need somewhere to stay until the investigation is dealt with," he offers.

"Many parahumans who come to us opt to be moved to another state if they believe their identity may be in danger."

I shake my head instantly at this. "No, thank you."

As for the others...

I take a deep breath, hoping dad won't flip out or anything.

"The people I believe may be responsible are Madison Clemmens, Sophia Hess, and Emma Barnes. They've been bullying me for the past seven months, up until recently, just after spring break, when I started using my powers to avoid them. I overheard them talking about me, and Sophia claimed she would "Handle" the problem of me somehow avoiding them during school."

He looks disappointed at this, but gathers up his files, tapping them on the table once. "Alright. That should be everything, then. If you're willing, a demonstration of your abilities would be a great help in speeding up the necessary procedures to investigate."

I consider this, turning to my dad, who just offers a small shrug, leaving it up to me.

[][Proof] I'll prove that I can emit energy and detect that energy. (Write-In method of proof)
[][Proof] I won't. They seem willing to take me at my word, and I want to reveal as little as possible.

My response seems to make Armsmaster tense up a bit, but the Deputy is blase about my answer.

"Is there anything else?" he asks.

Well, you're already at the PRT, with capes right in front of you and everything... Is there anything else you want to do or say before you go back home?

[][Anything Else] (Write In)
[][Anything Else] Nothing. Let's go.

Shadestyle · Jan 28, 2021

When I explained my plan to prove that my power worked, it was accepted with a shrug, and several identical coffee cups were brought in to a different office for me to demonstrate in front of Armsmaster, who was recording it.

I infused a paperclip with mana, they shuffled it around, and I managed to point out where it was six times in a row. The six times after that, I twisted the Magic around, forming it into a thin screen that I let them look through. Just like before, they could easily see the energy present in it.

After that, Deputy Seargent McMiller seemed satisfied that I could indeed sense the energy I created, and Armsmaster seemed satisfied that the energy didn't key to any existing form of energy in a way that would appear when I use See the Unseen.

"Oh, before we leave, I wanted to ask some things about Rogues, if that's alright. I want to use my power to make money, but I'm not sure how to do that without the money being traced back to my civilian identity," I explain to the Seargent.

He nods at this. "It can be a big issue for new capes to safely profit off of their abilities. Even the Wards, for instance, have much of their pay put into a trust as part of the measures used to protect them. Some may think it unfair, but ultimately, at those ages, large unaccounted-for sums of money can be a problem to distribute or spend without attracting attention."

"I would recommend one of two things, the first, more preferable solution, would be to sign up for the MIRIS initiative. It isn't as good here as it is in other cities, but we have a department that can provide management services for rogues, as well as cover the legal aspects of parahuman usage in business around here. One of those services is setting up a proxy-identity which is used in transactions under your cape persona."

"This proxy essentially allows you to use your identity as a cape as an independent legal entity from your civilian identity, and while it won't help with funneling that funding towards your needs out-of-costume, it would allow you to do things such as open bank accounts in your cape name, use credit cards, own property, and pay taxes. The last one is especially important if you opt to sign up with us, as we can smoothen the process of integrating your civilian and cape taxes, allowing you to use funding from one identity to pay taxes on the other without risk of discovery."

"If you like, I could direct you to one of our other offices where we handle that, but otherwise, you would likely want to go through the same basic procedure, but with the government directly. There are provisions in place by which a parahuman can establish a second identity through government channels. You'll need a lawyer who knows both identities, however, and you'll need an individual to be willing to take on liability for certain aspects of the process if you want to keep your identity a total secret."

"Essentially, the way the law is set up right now, you would need to have someone agree to be your Parahuman Representative, and they would take on the liability that would normally be associated with your civilian identity. It can be difficult to find someone willing to take on the burden of responsibility for a parahuman, especially with the risk of thinkers committing crimes like tax fraud, with the bulk of the penalties falling back to the representative in lieu of a civilian identity to charge."

I listen patiently, and my dad seems particularly interested at this. I'm not sure what the right decision would be. I wasn't that interested in signing up with them before, but it sounds like there's more than one way to affiliate with the PRT, unless he's just not mentioning the part where I need to agree to those vague restrictions dad warned me about.

"Most individuals are only willing to take on parahuman liability if they themselves receive a profit from the individual in question. It's part of how many Corporate Teams function, by taking the liability and applying it to a corporate entity instead of an individual."

What he didn't point out, but I managed to intuit, was how the PRT (or was it the Protectorate?) who took on the role of the "Liable Entity", if I decided to sign up with MIRIS. At least, that's what it sounds like he's saying.

[][Rogue] I won't worry about Rogue Affiliation yet. I still don't have a way to profit off my powers anyway, yet.
[][Rogue] I'll pursue affiliation with a non-PRT entity. There's bound to be some people or organizations willing to take on that liability.
[][Rogue] I've changed my mind. Signing on as an affiliated Rogue doesn't sound too bad. Maybe I could investigate that more.

With that out of the way, I make sure to get the PRT's phone number, mailing address, and E-Mail Address from the lady in the lobby, in case I want to contact them again without having to come all the way here again.

Seargent McMiller also takes the time to get me a list of firms that could help me with getting a second identity for my cape persona, while I ask Armsmaster if there's anything I could legally sell to the PRT that would be illegal otherwise.

He just gives me a weird grimace and explains in a dry tone that the Protectorate is not interested in purchasing illegal products of any kind.

With that kind of awful non-answer failing to actually address the question I asked in mind, me and my dad pack it up and go home.

When we got home, dad plopped down into a couch, looking disappointed.

"I noticed you didn't say much back there, what was with that?" I asked, a bit curious why he let me take the lead on all the interactions I had.

Dad gives me a smile that looks a little bit proud. "I was prepared to step in if it looked like you needed it, but you handled yourself very well. Sorry if it seemed like I wasn't in your corner, but I was keeping an ear open during all of that," he explains.

He sighs. "So it really was Emma, huh?" he says, reminding me of the other thing that confused me when we were at the PRT building.

"Honestly, I had been getting suspicious for a while now, but I didn't think-" he starts.

"You're a good kid, Taylor, to have put up with it. I can't imagine how rough that must have been," he says.

"It wasn't so bad, after I got powers," I attempt to downplay, but he's having none of it.

"That's really not encouraging. You're my daughter, and I know you've put a lot of faith in your old man, but I just want you to know, I won't let you down, if I can help it."

He glances to the side as I plop down on the other couch.

"I've been letting you down a lot lately, but I'm not going to do that anymore."

I swallow. "Dad," I begin.

"I've got a bit of a confession to make. I've been holding off on telling you, but I think I was wrong to do that. You've clearly matured a lot, I can tell now. I should have trusted you as much as you've trusted me," he begins.

"I... Took out a loan. To help pay for your cape stuff until you got on your feet. I've been paying for those sun lamps and seeds and the dirt and stuff out of that money. Nothing too crazy, just a few thousand dollars. I've been skimping out on a few other things too, but that's not as important as the loan."

I choke a bit at this. A few thousand? I didn't realize- I knew things were hard, but a loan?

"Dad, why did you do that?" I ask, trying not to get emotional over it. He was putting himself in the hole for me, so I could play around with plants.

"I did some research on capes that make things. On capes in general, really. I know how dangerous it can be for a cape who doesn't join a team. It goes double for rogues, and triple for tinkers to boot. I just thought that the sooner you had what you needed, the safer you would be," He explains slowly. He had been researching capes? When? How?

"So, the reason I'm explaining this is, if you think you need anything, I'll do what I can to get it. We can tighten our belts a bit until you get rich, right?" he smiles.

I felt a bit ill at this.

"Ok," I responded, thoughts buzzing through my mind. Should I do that? Involve my dad even more to get the materials I need? I had been wanting to get my hands on some animals for testing, and a bunch of rare elements too. But he's already, he was already borrowing money, just to get the materials I already had?

"Dad, I'm going to do great things for us, alright?" I say, trying to reassure myself as well as him.

"I know, my little owl. I'll keep supporting you no matter what, alright? I'm already proud of you," he says, giving me a tight hug, before letting me scamper off to my basement lab.

Final week of April Plans:

[][Daily Activities] What sort of things will you do during the day?
-[][Daily Activities] Visit a location (Write-In Where you go and What you do there)
-[][Daily Activities] Call the number that weird lady velcro'd to you.
-[][Daily Activities] Spend time with dad.
-[][Daily Activities] Stay at home (Enhances other actions)

[][Cape Activities] What will you do as Sage?
-[][Cape Activities] Visit a location (Write-In Where you go and What you do there)
-[][Cape Activities] You'll spend your time investigating.
--[][Cape Activities] Investigate the gang attack on the Barnes family last year. You now know the names of the gangsters who did it.
---[][Cape Activities] Track down the ones in prison.
---[][Cape Activities] Track down the ones that escaped.
-[][Cape Activities] Set up your Legal Second-Identity (Write-In Plan)
~~-[][Cape Activities] Continue your magical training.~~ (Requires further avenues of Training to explore)
-[][Cape Activities] Stay at home (Enhances other actions)

[][Project] You'll begin a project of some kind.
-[][Project] Stockpile Saffron.
--[][Project] Focus on Quantity
--[][Project] Focus on Quality
--[][Project] Write-In Plan
-[][Project] Something Else (Write-In)

[][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Write-In)
-[][Mana] Attempt to string together an Attunement Chain (Write-In)
[][Mana] Test a Phonem's effect (Write-In)
-[][Mana] Study a target for Phomens (Write-In)
[][Mana] Test a Transmutation (Choose an Elemental Ray and a Non-Silicate Target)
[][Mana] Something Else (Write-In)

Stats: Research: 23
A good start.

Overall Health: 12
You're a very small and squishy human who is less small and squishy than she once was.

Overall Magical Power: 5
You are a Low-Level Magic User, but a magic user nonetheless.
Abilities: Magical Soul: F
Rating: Trump ???
Your soul emits magic. The stronger your soul, the more powerful your magic.

Magical Body: FF
Rating: ???
Your body contains some magic, your soul empowering your body without your direct intervention.

Magical Power: C
Rating: Trump ???
You are a parahuman with the power to create this anomalous energy known as "Mana", at will.
Boosted for One Month.

Composition Detection: S
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to detect the exact composition of materials. So long as you apply mana to them, that is. Fairly Niche.

Eidetic Memory: A
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to never forget what mana attunements you have learned, their applications, and their nuances. You will also never forget any word or noise you test on mana, or the effects it has.
Equipment: Wooden Armor: Bright cerulean armor, made of magically transformed denim.

Glowstone Powder: A sack of brightly glowing powder. It leaves spots in your vision to stare at for too long.

High Carbon Steel Knife: A simple folding pocketknife that you bought from the Boardwalk.

Secret Base-Taylor's Garden: A room in your basement. In exchange for charging the plants inside it with magic once per day, the room is continually filled with ambient magic that enchanted items and other magic consuming things can feed on.

Dadbought Plant Supplies: A variety of plants that dad bought you, including, but not limited to:

Saffron Seeds
Apple Sapling
Tomatoes (Nonvampiric)
Aloe Vera with Magical Eyes
Pepper Plant
Wheat Plants

Ambiance Generator (Dirt): A grove of weeds and grass. The weeds have been mutated to turn dirt into powder, while the grass has been covered with aluminum shreds, and mutated to produce a white flame that consumes dust and turns it into mana. It can supply most minor enchantments with crude ambiance.

Ambiance Battery: A large cactus enchanted with your will. It absorbs mana, turning it into a liquid inside itself. Converts Crude Ambience into Polluted Plant Mana.

Reinforced Walls: All of the walls in your house are reinforced with plant magic altered wood.

Eyeplants: Your house's insides and outsides contain subtle biological cameras made through magic. They can record simple images onto paper spools, and trigger a motion-sensor.
Resources: Suburban Home: You have access to materials that could be found in and around a dingy old house.

Boardwalk Trinkets: You have access to materials that could be obtained cheaply from the Boardwalk.

Neighborhood Garbage: You have access to materials that could be found in local garbage bins and around the neighborhood.

Dad's Budget EX: You have access to things you can convince your father to get for you. He's taken out a loan to give you a small budget for your tinkering, and supports you fully.

Ambient Mana Supply: Your home is now charged with low-grade Ambience, which can be tapped for some forms of magic.

Polluted Plant Mana: One of your creations contains a supply of heavily attuned plant magic.
Mana Types and Phonems: Combinatorial Explosion Mana Types

docs.google.com

Shadestyle · Jan 30, 2021

I decided that I would affiliate myself with someone other than the PRT. I'm sure there are plenty of businesses or groups that would love to snag someone like me. All I needed to do was find one that didn't chafe too badly.

Thankfully before I left the PRT building, though, I had managed to get my hands on some paperwork that laid out the basics of what I would have to contend with, which I decided to read in my room after dad had a chance to look it all over.

The biggest and nastiest threat to my plans of becoming a rogue was NEPEA-5, the series of guidelines and laws that were thrown together to dismantle Uppermost, an old company that was made up entirely of rogues.

The entire thing was a true mess. Businesses that did not employ parahumans had preferential treatment in court cases between companies, and I could be sued by any group whose operations I was infringing upon with my own, unless I paid "Excess earnings" into a fund designed to bail out businesses threatened by parahuman involvement. The amount I had to pay into that fund to be totally free of legal risks was obscene, as well.

The maximum I could earn, not accounting for any employees I had, was based on the minimum profits that someone in my field could expect without parahuman involvement. In short, for almost any job, that would default to minimum wage. I was able to figure out that most parahumans get around this by involving themselves in extremely high-earning things, like entertainment, consulting, and in the case of Brockton Bay specifically, fashion.

It struck me as especially weird that, if I wanted to pay as little as possible into that fund, while still running something like what I had planned, I would want to use my powers to start a business, and then stop using my powers and hire employees to keep it running. After all, a CEO, or even a Manager generally earned more than the grunts doing the work.

Of course, even that "solution" had problems, considering just how much money went into keeping employees paid, standards met, not even touching on all the other troubles that came with a parahuman actually owning a larger scale operation like that.

The amount of sheer insult that some of this bill had to parahumans was astounding, and it made perfect sense why even a company made up entirely of parahumans working together would be gutted by NEPEA-5. Instantly, they were open to legal action from everyone who wanted to take a bite out of them, unless they had immediately shut down all their operations that "infringed" on normal businesses.

As I set the papers down and leaned back with a sigh, my biggest hope was honestly a quite grim one. If I wanted to beat this system, I'd need a really good lawyer, a ton of cash, and, of course, the hope that the death of the shipping industry didn't result in any particularly large local spice farms from being established on US soil.

It was either that, or I'd have to figure out the best ways to short that damn fund. To get a job that, legally speaking, warranted an obscenely high paycheck on my part.

I'll need to consider my next steps carefully, or I'll get chewed up and spit out even faster than Uppermost did.

School this week was... Weird. When I went in, I considered checking if any of the trio were stained with magic. Something that would have certainly helped my case against them, all things considered.

My backpack weighed heavily on me as I jogged up to the school, noticing the police car parked right in front.

What was a bit more surprising was the fact that the trio was absent.

As I went through my classes, I noticed everyone whispering amongst themselves, and around the time lunch started, I had finally figured out what they were whispering about.

Taylor Herbert got Sophia, Emma, and Madison arrested.

For anyone else, realizing that the whole school was trying their damndest to avoid them would be a source of shame, of isolation. For me, though, everyone thinking they'd be next if they sat too close to me or talked to me in any way...

It made me want to cry from sheer relief. Finally, people were leaving me alone. What a sad joke that was, just how good it felt to finally have a day of school without people bothering me.

And then Veder of all people had to come ruin that, sitting across from me at lunch, the one day I decide not to eat lunch in the bathroom, and he meanders over like it's perfectly normal.

"So, uhh, I heard about what happened. Glad those three are gone, eh?" he says awkwardly, confusing the living hell out of me.

He was one of the ones who were tacitly ignoring all the torment, now he's acting like it's a good thing they got arrested?

I sent a brief pulse of magic through myself, just to make my thoughts a bit clearer instead of getting angry.

"Yeah. It's good that people aren't bothering me now," I say with such an utter void of amusement that I half suspected it to yank a few of the people laughing and joking a table away from us a few inches closer from sheer vacuum force.

A curious part of my mind couldn't help but wonder how mana would behave under a vacuum, considering what I now know about Thaumic Magic.

By the time my focus returned to Veder, I realized I had missed a chunk of his rambling response. He missed all of the subtext I had so carefully woven into my response. I could tell because he hadn't fucked off yet.

I interrupted him talking about how Sophia had broken his nose once, to more clearly elucidate my wishes.

"Look, Greg, I'm sorry, but I'd like to have my lunch in peace, please," I said, trying to remain civil despite his tactless plowing into my little bubble of gratifying privacy.

"Oh. Alright," he said, not looking particularly cowed, but silencing himself beyond what was necessary to eat the slop they served us today. tater tots, mashed potatoes, salisbury steak, and of course, milk.

I decided not to think about the sad vegetables that were also mushed onto a corner of the tray, isolated from the rest of the good food where it could safely be ignored.

Lunch passed quickly after that, and then, the rest of the day did too. I returned to my lab with newfound peace of mind, a whole day without dealing with annoying people, lunch not withstanding, had left me in a really good mood.

I knew that mana could do odd things, things that mostly seemed to make sense in hindsight. One obvious example had been when I infused mana into the fly I had captured.

The mana had given me control over the fly, yes, due to the magic being infused with my willpower, but more importantly, the attunements all added up to a mishmash of bug-like magic. I didn't have enough control to turn all of the tiny minuscule pips of magic into a whole bug made out of mana, but, after giving it some thought, I realized that I didn't need to.

Making sure nobody was watching, I set up a small bucket out on the porch. Rather than leaving it at that, however, I took out a pepper from my pocket, channeling magic into it until a large red sphere of magic was formed, and I made it fill the bucket up.

Pepper magic, for whatever reason, had a smell and taste that was alluring to birds, and a bird was exactly what I needed.

I sat on the porch until dad came out to check on me.

"What are you doing?" he asked curiously, sitting down next to me.

"Trying to catch a bird for an experiment," I explained.

He made a noise of understanding. "I see."

Sitting around, it was a nice wait for birds, who were slowly edging their way closer to us as the minutes went by.

"It's not against any religion... to want to dispose of a pigeon," dad mutters somewhat musically next to me, and judging from his smirk, I could tell he was making some kind of joke I didn't understand.

Eventually, I had one. One bird, a pigeon of course, had gotten close enough to sample the delectable magic in the bucket. With a gesture, however, the tasty liquid magic turned into a trap, flying up and snaring the bird. The other birds had flown away frantically at this, assuming their compatriot had just been preyed upon.

Grabbing the bird gently and making for my lab, dad gave me a funny look. "You're not doing anything... Immoral, are you?" he asks unnecessarily.

"Don't worry dad, I'm just using this little guy for mana testing. Nothing horrible."

He gave me a look that implied he wasn't one-hundred percent convinced but followed me inside anyway to see what I was doing.

I gently put the bird in a cage made out of solid mana, letting it calm down before starting the tests I was curious about.

First, obviously, I infused the bird with magic, attuning the mana to all of its bodyparts. Immediately, the bird reacted, flapping its wings in a way that seemed to imply that it absolutely did not approve.

With a gesture, I tried to take control over it, like I did with the bug, and at first, the bird calmed down and was willing to do a few tricks, but slowly, I felt something building up inside the bird as I continued to use mana to manipulate it.

Mana that was not mine, and did not come from my power blossomed inside the pigeon. It wasn't enough to shove my mana out, but it was absolutely enough for the bird to return to doing whatever it wanted, taking more significant effort to bring it back under control.

After a moment, I realized what I was doing, and stopped. The bird had a soul. It had mana. It didn't approve of someone rooting around inside it with their magic.

I could tell that much by how it kept shaking around and flapping as if trying to get water off of itself, but I was too distracted to concern myself with that. The bird had a real-deal soul, smaller than mine by a vast amount, but still there, and taking it over with my mana seemed to "awaken" it.

At least, I assumed that I had something to do with this, considering that I absolutely had not heard of birds suddenly manifesting supernatural powers on their own.

"Taylor?" dad asked, noticing my shock.

I shook my head. "Uhh, pigeons have souls," I said without really thinking.

Dad raised an eyebrow, but waited for me to continue. Neither of us were really religious, but there's a difference between believing in that and sensing a pigeon emitting magical energy in response to being controlled by it.

"I infused mana into the pigeon to attune to it, but it started resisting with its own mana. It's just... Making it now."

With a careful hand, I reached out to the bird, slowly pulling my own mana out of it, now that it was fully attuned, I could do the tests I planned on.

Bit by bit, I pulled the mana out of its feathers, its skin, muscles, brain, and more, leaving it as it was, except for the tiny soul and the magic therin, of course.

The mass of liquid magics were bright and colorful, shifting in my grip over time. With another gesture, I attuned the mana to a rock I had sitting on my workbench.

Immediately, little rocks began to sprout off of it. I had to be careful, as synthesizing stone inside of an existing rock was a sure way to fracture it from internal stresses.

Eventually, however, the Bird Mana had all been spent, and the rock was covered with colorful swirls and growths. I could sense the rock trying to twitch and move, but with no joints or anything, it was limited to just sitting there.

I took a ball-peen hammer and smashed the rock into bits, picking through the shards and piecing them together as best I could. The result was ugly, really ugly, but it was in the vague shape of a bird, bone rocks were tied together with twine, muscle, skin, and feather shards stapled over them.

Little organ rocks were superglued to its belly, and finally, the brain rock was placed atop it.

The result looked like something a child would make in kindergarten as a craft project, but unlike those projects, this one could move.

My power helpfully named the mana "Stone Free", confusing me for a moment before I shook the thought away. Unlike the living pidgeon, I got the gut feeling that this pile of magical rocks wouldn't ever develop a soul under normal circumstances. Holding out my hand, the rock pigeon hopped onto it, under my complete control. It was no different than the fly I had subsumed earlier, responding to my intentions as soon as I had them.

Dad looked amazed, and the rock pigeon preened at this, unintentionally reflecting my own feelings at that.

Examining the bird in more detail, I realized that the stones weren't perfect representations of a real bird. The Heartstone didn't pump blood, instead acting as a sort of mana capacitor, and the lungs didn't breathe air, instead merely drawing in ambient magic at a rate faster than a normal synthetic material would. The muscles didn't contract at all, instead, they seemed to exert forces on the things around them, while the Brain rock...

Focusing my magical senses on it, I caught flashes of memory inside it, malformed and incomplete due to my inexperience with synthesis magic. It seems the brainrock, the core, dealt with both control and thought.

I set it back on the table and did more tests. The hard stone of its core meant that the rock pigeon couldn't really learn or be creative, when I wasn't directly controlling it, it fell back to the information and skills it already had, ones which, in this case, weren't very helpful at all, since it couldn't fly on its own.

I gently put my little golem in a box I slapped together from some mutated plants, returning my attention to the real, living bird, who looked stressed, but was no longer flapping around trying to escape.

"Dad, can I get a glass of water? I need to do another test," I ask politely.

"Sure thing," he nods, going to get what I needed as I put my full attention on the bird in question. If my magic could awaken the magic in living things, (Bugs and plants excluded for some reason), then could I awaken the magic in people?

That was a dangerous thought. I hadn't checked if dad had been affected by exposure to my lab, but if he was, that was an especially terrifying proposition. It meant anyone exposed to my magic could potentially turn it back on me, if it just required exposure.

This little pigeon would need to stay here for now, until I could figure out what exactly it was I was dealing with.

I infused mana into the bird again, and this time, made sure to be more meticulous and gentle with it, the bird's gaze darted over to me when I did, and I got the distinct impression of a birdy stink-eye from its little stare.

When dad returned with the water, I attuned the bird mana to a rock without synthesizing it, and then infused it into the glass of water, transmuting the water with the same magic that I used on the bird.

Immediately, the water began to churn and undulate, tipping over onto the table and spilling everywhere, the globs of water forming together into the rough shape of a bird.

Like the rock bird, it was under my control, but unlike that, this water bird magic, which my power helpfully named "Sea Bird", had problems of its own.

The water that made up its brain was too soft and malleable. Even as I controlled it, the brain-rock-water was already learning, shifting, and changing into something indistinct. It still kept the shape of a bird, but there was no chance of it retaining any of the bird's instincts or memories as it was. Holding out my hand, it didn't even walk, instead just dissolving into liquid and flowing into my palm before shifting back into the shape of a bird.

I also noticed that the water had turned grey in color. Pollution from the Rock Magic in the transmutation? I wasn't sure.

Either way, I had satisfied my curiosity for now, regarding the idea of synthesis and transmutation with whole-animal attuned magics.

It was time to move on to more important things, like figuring out a very important quirk of my magic itself.

I noticed and theorized earlier that my magic didn't directly come out of my soul, or, it did, but it was weird. I could summon mana in any of my organs without attuning it to anything else. I could summon mana in midair without even attuning it to my skin, as well, but couldn't summon mana directly inside anything else.

Admittedly, I hadn't actually tested any of the magic that started inside of my own body. Thus far, all my mana had started by being summoned in open air, before I went on to test its attunements.

I had gotten my current organ attunements by summoning it in the air, and then somehow "skipping" the intervening material, to get the attunements that I did have.

But it was as if there was some kind of person-shaped field surrounding me, and my mana could appear anywhere within that.

Thus, the obvious question was, what happened if I tried to summon mana into something inside that field of influence?

I started with a simple test of my clothing. I hadn't bothered to ever try to summon pure, untainted magic into my clothes, but when I did, I was floored by the result.

The mana had ceased to be. No, not even that, when I summoned magic directly into something on my person, it became something that had no definition beyond its target.

Unlike the Thaumic or Bodily Attunements I had been doing up until now, this "True" attunement took on a hazy, definitional state. The mana was nowhere, but it was also everywhere on my immediate personage.

I could tell because unlike my usual mana types, this one automatically affected my entire body, everything I was wearing, and everything I was wielding.

It was like a switch had been flipped in my mind, and I understood instinctively.

The Mana from my soul could appear in three ways. In my body, where it would enhance my natural processes. In the air around me, where it could affect the world itself, or, the last and most recent form, it could appear in the things I wore and held. It could appear inside my equipment, granting me new abilities.

Cloth's True Attunement was simple. Clothing I had equipped would repair itself over time. The more cloth I wore, the more powerful the effect could be.

I could only imagine what other things might have, if I used them.

It also helped explain why my magic was appearing in strange places. It wasn't that I had a field around myself, not one with a physical definition. It was quite literally that I could summon magic anywhere on my "person". The air immediately surrounding me counted as part of that, but not other objects that I wasn't wearing or wielding.

Dragging myself away from this revelation, I moved on to a few other, less important tests that I wanted to take care of.

Trying to test long chains of various mana types quickly gave me a headache when I tried mixing water and ice mana in increasingly convoluted ways, as my power seemed unable to handle the mystery of it, though, which put the kibosh on any further exploration down that tree of magic.

I wondered. Phonems seemed to have narrow, specific, and obvious effects on Thaumic Mana, but I hadn't yet tested what sort of behavior Arcane Magic had in response to sound. Remembering my missing flute, I briefly surged through ideas, ways that I could try to find it, or get it back, after it had been stolen. Both my curiosity and my heart wanted that flute back. The magic I could test with it, the memories tied to it...

It was worth investigating later, I suppose.

"Hey, dad, how do you feel about me giving you magic?" I ask, nervous about his response. It was time to find out for sure if my worst fears were true.

He gives me a funny look. "You can do that?" he asks, considering the fate of the pigeon I had just done that to.

I shrug, grabbing his hand and checking.

I couldn't hold back the sigh of relief I felt, when I realized that his soul hadn't awoken just from exposure to ambient magic. It would take something more intense to unlock a being's capacity for magic.

"Well, if you do want it, I think it might be possible," I offer.

1d20 vs 1d20 = 5, 12

He shakes his head. "Maybe not now. I trust you, Taylor, but that's the sort of thing that takes some thinking to decide on," he explains.

I nod, understanding where he's coming from. I couldn't exactly expect him to jump into the deep end of magic when I don't even know what I'm doing, exactly.

"Well, if you want, you can still help me with setting up the farm. I'm going to set things up now, and I could use an extra hand with moving stuff," I ask.

He puffs himself up. "Well, I suppose I could move some boxes around. Your old man isn't that old yet," he jokes.

With his help, it doesn't take long for me to set things up, a gigantic Nature Diplomat is grown in the middle of the basement from the apple sapling I had. Its roots pulse with mana, and sprigs of saffron begin blooming all over it, grown into the wood itself rather than any soil.

By the end of it, the basement looks completely different, less like a room full of dirt and messy plants, and more like a single, living plant in and of itself. A floor of roots and grass and saffron flowers, walls of smooth green cacti, and a ceiling made up of a single apple tree's bountiful branches and leaves.

Now I just need a way to harvest things, a way to sell things, and enough legal help to beat off an entire country's worth of shitty legislation towards my kind.

I crack my knuckles in anticipation of the challenges ahead.

The host is an asshole. Queen Administrator is certain of it. Who else would, upon being confronted with the confusion that is Arcane Wave Magic, decide to test lengthy, convoluted chains made up of nothing but it?

Queen Administrator was forced to deliver a pain stimuli to the host's brain to stop them from accidentally making Queen Administrator explode from attempting to calculate the effects of a magic that, in practice, attempted to do mysterious things by doing mysterious things by doing mysterious things, ad infinitum.

At the very least, two other shards were contacted properly during the past month. One of them was [Efficiency], and the other was...

Well, it was a mess. It seemed to be doing absolutely no active processes. All contact that Queen Administrator made was responded to with automated message systems, rather than proper, thought out responses, insofar as shards need to think in order to communicate.

[Efficiency] was polite, at least, though they had no ability to help Queen Administrator with their scanning problem, they assured that they would be willing to help with anything they were capable of doing, within reason.

With that, Queen Administrator's scanners demanded their monthly allotment of research, and it was time once again to decide how to devote resources in the face of this problem.

Ten Research has been consumed by the Scanning Module. Queen Administrator has Thirteen Research in reserve.

[][Research] Queen Administrator may expend some of the data they have in reserve to gain an advantage.
-[][Research] One point of Research may be expended to grant additional power for the host (Taylor will receive Magical Power Rank C for one month.)

-[][Research] Five Points of Research may be expended to grant additional influence over the host temporarily. (Taylor will be able to take one action she would not normally take. No Research will be gained from Override Actions)

-[][Research] Ten Points of Research may be expended to permanently eke out a buffer of energy for the host. (Taylor may temporarily obtain Magical Power Rank B for one scene, once per month.

-[][Research] Research may be gifted to accessible shards. This Mana, while dangerous, is supremely versatile.
--[][Research] Gift [Schedule] Research Data in exchange for Coordinate Data. (You will know where a specific Shard's Host will be at a specific time, one of your choosing. Taylor will have the odd intuition to go there at that time.)
--[][Research] Gift [Bitterant] Research Data for some reason. (Write-In)
--[][Research] Gift [Efficiency] Research Data for some reason. (Write-In)
--[][Research] Gift [No Callsign Given] Research Data for some reason (Write-In)

[][Research] Queen Administrator will continue to hold this Research in reserve.

[][Interlude] Armsmaster
[][Interlude] Shadow Stalker
[][Interlude] Daniel Hebert
[][Interlude] None

True Attunements

Attunement	Shorthand		Effects	Other
Cloth	Damage Mend		The user's clothing will regenerate, the more clothing items are worn.

Mana Types

School	Attunement Chain	Shorthand	Type	Effects	Other
Rose Gold	Thaum > Rose Gold	Petals of Past Days	Ray	This mana takes the form of pink petals of dust that reveal the past when looked through.
Crystal Quartz	Thaum > Crystal Quartz	Elemental Precision	Elemental Ray	This mana creates precision in what it is applied to.
Bread	Thaum > Platinum > Bread	Thunder Maw	Liquid	This mana appears to reduce the danger of eating electrically charged foods.
Platinum	Thaum > Bread > Platinum	Lightning Wafer	Ray	This mana allows the user to create and craft small edible wafers made of electricity.
Silver	Thaum > Silver > Graphite	By Moonlight	Liquid	This mana takes the form of a silver liquid that can absorb moonlight, decreasing in mass as it does so.	Living targets infused with this mana gain a blue-grey sheen while under its influence.
Graphite	Thaum > Graphite > Silver	Ballarini di Luna	Ray	This mana takes on a mysterious state that controls the light and forces exerted by the moon.
Blood	Thaum > Gold > Blood	Light of the Vampire	Liquid	This mana creates a burning sphere of red liquid. It grows vastly more powerful and uncontrollable under the light of the sun.
Graphite	Thaum > Gold > Graphite	Touch of Light	Liquid	This mana takes the form of a glowing golden liquid that can absorb sunlight, radiating even more of it in response.	Living targets infused with this mana gain a deep tan while under its influence.
Gold	Thaum > Blood > Gold	Dawn's Light	Ray	This mana emits a gentle glow that revitalizes the things it falls on.	This mana pushes back a target's natural sleep patterns while they are under its influence.
Gold	Thaum > Graphite > Gold	Golden Glow	Ray	This mana emits a form of sunlight which is tailored to the living things it touches, but eradicates calcium-based organisms it comes in contact with.	Exposure to this mana can turn single celled organisms green over time as they are subtly influenced to evolve photosynthesis. Bacteria cultivated under the effects of Undeath Magic are eradicated by this mana
Platinum	Thaum > Blood > Platinum	Neural Spike	Ray	This mana creates a sputtering, stimulating electrical spark that wakes up living creatures.
Platinum	Thaum > Graphite > Platinum	Triage Shock	Ray	This mana creates a bolt of lightning that paralizes injured areas, preventing a target from moving damaged muscles or aggrivating damaged bones.
Graphite	Thaum > Platinum > Graphite	Bioelectricity	Liquid	This mana creates a liquid that holds a silent charge of electrical energy.	Living targets affected by this magic will manifest bioelectric organlles, cells, tissues, structures, or organs, depending on the level of exposure and the subject in question.
Blood	Thaum > Platinum > Blood	Vital Shock	Liquid	This mana takes the form of a jagged mass of red electrical liquid, which erupts violently into spikes when a current is run through it.
Ear Bone	Thaum > Ear Bone	Resonant Structure	Liquid	This mana hardens whatever it is applied to, making it more able to transfer vibrations
Blood	Thaum > Silver > Blood	Hidden Nature	Liquid	This mana brings out a target's hidden traits under the light of the moon.
Silver	Thaum > Blood > Silver	Force of Self	Ray	This mana takes the form of a ray which acts as a modulator wave for the moon's gravitons, capturing and reidirecting them in such a way that they affect the original source of the blood exclusively.
Mushroom	Thaum > Mushroom	Mushroom	Liquid	This mana destroys plants that it comes into contact with, reducing them to inert biomass.
Stone	Thaum > Bird > Stone	Stone Free	Elemental Ray	This mana creates an amalgam of synthetic materials, equivilent to those found in the bird this mana was attuned to. The mass attempts to behave like a bird, when all pieces are assembled.	Birdrock: This collection of substances, when assembled correctly, attempts to take on the behavior of a bird.
Stone	Transmute > Bird > Stone > Water	Sea Bird	Transmutation	This mana transforms water into an amalgam of fluids that, when mixed, attempt to take on the form and behavior of a bird.	Birdwater: This substance attempts to take on the behavior and shape of a bird.
Stone	Transmute > Stone > Aluminum	Defined Aluminum	Transmutation	This mana transforms aluminum into a hard, bauxite-like stone.	Defined Ore has currently unknown properties.
Clay	Transmute > Clay > Aluminum	Powderized Aluminum	Transmutation	This mana transforms aluminum into a fine, ceramic-like powder.
Stone	Transmute > Stone > Tin	Defined Tin	Transmutation	This mana transforms tin into a hard, casserite-like stone.	Defined Ore has currently unknown properties.
Glass	Transmute > Glass > Aluminum	Energized Alumite	Transmutation	This mana transforms Aluminum into Energized Alumite.	Energized Alumite: A highly unstable substance, it sheds massless particles, especially when disturbed.
Silicon	Transmute > Silicon > Aluminum	Petrified Aluminum	Transmutation	This mana transforms aluminum into a ceramic-like material.
Silicon	Transmute > Silicon > Tin	Petrified Tin	Transmutation	This mana transforms tin into a ceramic-like material
Copper	Thaum > Copper > Copper	Time?	Ray	This mana draws dust to itself and can physically impact a target.
Copper	Thaum > Copper > Copper > Copper	Time??	Ray	This mana draws dust to itself and can physically impact a target.
Lead	Thaum > Lead > Lead	Mass Drain	Ray	This mana makes a target absorb heft temporarily
Lead	Thaum > Lead > Lead > Lead	Gravity	Ray	This mana makes a target draw mass towards itself.
Zinc	Thaum > Zinc > Zinc	Cascade	Ray	This mana makes a target's flaws more able to grow, targeting ones that are capable of self-propagation, such as cracks or fractures.
Zinc	Thaum > Zinc > Zinc > Zinc	Curse	Ray	This mana increases the stress on a target, until flaws begin to form and grow.
Graphite	Thaum > Graphite > Graphite	Regenerate	Liquid	This mana takes the form of a liquid which feeds itself to living things, enhancing their natural healing abilities.	Use of this mana can increase overgrowth of tissues, leading to wrinkles, age, and undesirable defects.
Graphite	Thaum > Graphite > Graphite > Graphite	Symbiosis	Liquid	This mana charges a living thing with life force, which bleeds over into other nearby targets.	Use of this mana decreases the size of the "Healer" equilaterally, while increasing the size of the "Healed" over time. There may be cellular bleed between the two.
Nickel	Thaum > Nickel > Nickel	Enzyme	Ray	This mana accelerates the formation of catalysts in a substance in order to speed up additional reactions.
Nickel	Thaum > Nickel > Nickel > Nickel	Chain Reaction	Ray	This mana accelerates the formation of potential catalysts and substrates which would themselves create seed material for additional reactions.
Salt	Thaum > Salt > Salt	Ripwall	Ray	This mana seperates a target using material seperated from nearby targets. These seperations may be non-literal.
Salt	Thaum > Salt > Salt > Salt	Ripfield	Ray	This mana creates chain reactions that generate seperating actions via the seperation of anything in the vicinity. These seperations may be non-literal.
Bone	Thaum > Bone > Bone	Zombie Slime	Liquid	This mana drives nonliving organic matter to perform necromancy.
Bone	Thaum > Bone > Bone > Bone	Creature Culture	Liquid	This mana animates nonliving organic matter, driving it with the urge to produce necromantic agents.
Wardstone	Thaum > Copper > Wardstone	Grout of Futures Past Creation	Elemental Ray	This mana produces Grout of Futures Past when applied to Wardstone	Grout of Futures Past: This wet paste hardens when exposed to Time, turning into a time-resistant stone.
Wardstone	Thaum > Cast Iron > Wardstone	Hardcrete Creation	Elemental Ray	This mana produces Hardcrete when applied to Wardstone	Hardcrete: A hardened substance that grows harder over time. It takes roughly one month to cure completely.
Clay	Transmute > Clay > Iron	Irondust Powder Transmutation	Transmutation	This mana transmutes iron into Irondust.	Irondust: An extremely hard and reflective powder, it has ceramic-like properties and extreme durability.
Porcelain	Transmute > Porcelain > Iron	Regal Flake Transmutation	Transmutation	This mana transmutes iron into Regal Flakes	Regal Flakes: A silvery white substance, it is somewhat fragile, but has a strong luster.
Dirt	Transmute > Dirt > Iron	Ironwood Soil Transmutation	Transmutation	This mana transmutes iron into Iron Soil	Iron Soil: A dark grey soil. Plants grown in it absorb the iron over time.
	Thaum > Tin > Water	Skyward Arcane Mana	Wave	This mana responds to vibrations passing through it, both its effects and behaviors can be changed by them.	The effects and behaviors of this mana are Mysterious and stormy. Weather phenomena can influence and strengthen its effects.
Tin	Thaum > Water > Tin	Song of the Sea	Ray	This mana draws water in the air towards itself, creating a chilling, howling wind. Mysterious things can be heard in the wind, depending on where the user is.
Silicon	Thaum > Water > Glass > Silicon	Sea Glass Creation	Elemental Ray	This mana creates Sea Glass when applied to Silicon.	Sea Glass: At the exact moment the sun crests over the ocean each day, this glowing glass can absorb the green flash that is emitted. It is unknown what would happen if the Sea Glass were completely saturated with the light.
Concrete	(Thaum > Water > Tin > Concrete) + (Thaum > Cast Iron > Platinum > Concrete)	Songstress Secret Stone Creation	Elemental Ray	This mana creates Songstress Secret Stone when applied to Concrete.	Songstress Secret Stone: This concrete stone contains a flowing stream of electricity just under its surface that shifts and ebs depending on the location. It feels numb to the touch, normally.
Gold	(Supermass + Float + Airbreak) > Sand > Gold	Shinesummoned Bouldergrit	Ray	This mana creates sand made of sunlight, which, on contact with an object, rapidly expand into a shining weightless foam with sizable heft, absorbing nearby sunlight to facilitate this transformation.
Graphite	Thaum > Copper > Graphite	Accelerated Growth	Liquid	This mana accelerates a target's growth.	This mana has the side effect of giving a target "momentum" in their aging. The accelerated growth takes time to slow down once it has begun.
Graphite	Thaum > Sweat > Graphite	Energy Sphere	Liquid	This mana takes the form of a glowing sphere which provides energy to nearby living things.
Graphite	Thaum > Coal > Graphite	Rapid Healing	Liquid	This mana rapidly heals wounds and destroys the undead.	This mana has the side effect of distorting the metabolism of surrounding tissues.
Graphite	Thaum > Liver > Graphite	Osmose	Liquid	This mana makes living things it is applied to capable of absorbing and containing something dangerous.
Graphite	Thaum > Meat > Graphite	Double Down	Liquid	This mana strengthens a target by triggering cell growth in specific places.	This mana has the side effect of reverting once the supply of magic ceases.
Graphite	Thaum > Bread > Graphite	Life Orb	Liquid	This mana takes the form of an edible sphere that tastes like Jello™.
Blood	Thaum > Bread > Blood	Vital Orb	Liquid	This mana takes the form of a drinkable sphere that tastes like metal.
Coal	Thaum > Bread > Coal	Greedy Life Orb	Liquid	This mana takes the form of an edible sphere that tastes like Jello™ shots.
Water	Thaum > Water > Water	Veil	Wave	This mana performs Arcane Magic using Arcane Magic	Scans grow difficult.
Water	Thaum > Water > Water > Water	Madness	Wave	This mana performs Arcane Magic using Arcane Magic using	Scanning Failure.
Ice	Thaum > Ice > Ice	Ice > Ice	Wave	This mana this mana this mana this mana
Ice	Thaum > Ice > Ice > Ice	Ice > Ice > Ice	Wave	This mana performs Arcane Magic
Ice	Thaum > Water > Ice	Underneath the Underneath	Wave	This mana performs Arcane Magic
Water	Thaum > Ice > Water	Underneath the Underneath	Wave	This mana performs Arcane Magic
Salt	Thaum > Diamond > Egg > Salt	Even Split	Ray	This mana divides the cells of a target into two beings of halved size, seperating the two evenly.
Egg	Thaum > Diamond > Salt > Egg	Clone	Liquid	This mana takes cells and forces them to divide until a clone is produced.

Phonems

School	Phonem	Name	Effect	Notes
None	Null	Slime Gel	Mana begins to thicken and take on the behavior of a gel.
None	Nux	Seed Stall	Mana begins to emit anti-seed mushroom Vitae
None	Z.Z	Delay	Mana affected by this phonem will delay reacting to future phonems for a period of
None	Bang	Expand	Mana begins to expand rapidly.
None	Bala	Twist Curve	Mana begins to rotate and twist. Phonems which make the mana move are affected by the turning.
None	Daka	Bullet	Mana begins to fly forwards away from the source of the phonem.
Aluminum	Goun	Grasp	Mana takes the shape of an open-palmed human hand.
Aluminum	Ting	Fray	Mana begins to peel back over its surface, forming long curled points.
Aluminum	Pink	Sample Core	A cylender of mana is drawn from the center of volume of the mana affected. Until the phonem is uttered again, the cylender is the only part of the magic that will react to further phonems. When Pink is repeated, the cylender will return to the mana's center, reintegrating with it.
None	Hush	Stall	Mana becomes unresponsive to further phonems until Hum is uttered.
None	Zap	Thunderkind	Mana begins to behave like electricity, though it does not take on its properties.
None	Snip	Vertical Half	Mana splits down the middle.
None	Yawn	Donut	Mana stretches to generate a clean, cylindrical hole in itself.
None	Ignis	Vibe Ember	Mana emits a tone while emitting a faint flame.
None	Lux	Song Spark	Mana emits a whistle which makes it unfold like a flower.

Shadestyle · Jan 31, 2021

Adhoc vote count started by Shadestyle on Jan 31, 2021 at 3:10 PM, finished with 27 posts and 10 votes.

[interlude] [research] [mana]

Total voters in this category

9
6 people have voted
[X][Interlude] Armsmaster
5 people have voted
[X][Interlude] Shadow Stalker
Total voters in this category

7
2 people have voted
[X][Research] Queen Administrator may expend some of the data they have in reserve to gain an advantage.
-[X][Research] One point of Research may be expended to grant additional power for the host (Taylor will receive Magical Power Rank C for one month.)
-[X][Research] Ten Points of Research may be expended to permanently eke out a buffer of energy for the host. (Taylor may temporarily obtain Magical Power Rank B for one scene, once per month.
- Mordiggian
- Aerrow Shadow
1 people have voted
[X][Research] Queen Administrator will continue to hold this Research in reserve.
- Bark
1 people have voted
[X][Research] Queen Administrator may expend some of the data they have in reserve to gain an advantage.
-[X][Research] Send Research to [Broadcast] hopefully he can help you contact others?
-[X][Research] Ten Points of Research may be expended to permanently eke out a buffer of energy for the host. (Taylor may temporarily obtain Magical Power Rank B for one scene, once per month.
- helli(0)n
1 people have voted
[X][Research] Queen Administrator may expend some of the data they have in reserve to gain an advantage.
-[X][Research] Ten Points of Research may be expended to permanently eke out a buffer of energy for the host. (Taylor may temporarily obtain Magical Power Rank B for one scene, once per month.
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Research] Queen Administrator may expend some of the data they have in reserve to gain an advantage.
-[X][Research] Ten Points of Research may be expended to permanently eke out a buffer of energy for the host. (Taylor may temporarily obtain Magical Power Rank B for one scene, once per month.
-[X][Research] One point of Research may be expended to grant additional power for the host (Taylor will receive Magical Power Rank C for one month.)
-[X][Research] Research may be gifted to accessible shards. This Mana, while dangerous, is supremely versatile.
--[X][Research] Gift [Efficiency] Research Data for some reason. (Ask if they can help get more mana out of the conversion from buffer energy.)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Research] Queen Administrator may expend some of the data they have in reserve to gain an advantage.
-[X][Research] Ten Points of Research may be expended to permanently eke out a buffer of energy for the host. (Taylor may temporarily obtain Magical Power Rank B for one scene, once per month.
-[X][Research] Research may be gifted to accessible shards. This Mana, while dangerous, is supremely versatile.
--[X][Research] Gift [Efficiency] Research Data for some reason. (Ask if they can help get more mana out of the conversion from buffer energy.)
- FeatheredSerpent
1 people have voted
[X][Research] Queen Administrator may expend some of the data they have in reserve to gain an advantage.
-[X][Research] One point of Research may be expended to grant additional power for the host (Taylor will receive Magical Power Rank C for one month.)
- Aerrow Shadow
Total voters in this category

1
1 people have voted
[x][mana] meteorite see if the different type of meteorite you can buy on the internet produce different effect
- resusplus

Armsmaster had been working on a particularly delicate piece of machinery when the call came.

Under normal circumstances, of course, he would have answered on the first ring, but this was not normal circumstances, in this case, what he was working on was important to the point of distraction.

Moving the Nitinol wire into the correct place, he used a modified flame-fusion torch to blow molten aluminum oxide over it, creating a crystalline coating over the memory-metal.

The ringing in the background served as an annoying distraction, prompting him to briefly shut off the microphones in his helmet, giving him blessed silence while he completed the last steps in producing his thermal scanner. One of his most important inventions to date, it would allow him to interpret thermal activity in the air, giving him an incredibly efficient source of sensory data.

Sound, heat, vision, and even some structural blueprints could be obtained by simply reading the thermal radiation that air emitted. It wouldn't be long before he had all of the technology he needed to attempt one of his pet-projects, a portable lie-detector.

Previously, his scanners were little better than a polygraph, in terms of detecting falsehood. He could only really detect discomfort in a subject, and would himself have to interpret what that discomfort and stress meant.

In short, he was unable to get any meaningful use out of that invention.

An alert popped up on his visor. His assistance was wanted for an interview at the local PRT building, along with Gallant.

He put the finishing touches on his project and attached it to his armor before moving out, quickly slipping on the parts of his armor that were normally too cumbersome for lab work and using eye-movements to quickly run through the initialization of the scanner.

Reading over the text-report as he made his way out of The Rig, he was a bit disturbed by the photograph provided. Two, or perhaps simply one parahuman, total unknowns, wearing unusual armored pieces.

Dragon sent him a short message as he swung his legs over onto his motorbike, asking if he would like any help from her.

"No thank you. I believe I can handle it," Armsmaster responded, a bit of his nervousness fading at this.

He reviewed the information he could on the way to the PRT building. An unknown Parahuman (possibly two, but unlikely), walks straight into the lobby without a care in the world, claiming to be the victim of a parahuman crime.

If it were anyone else, or at least someone who had called in ahead, they likely would have been sent straight to Director Piggot. She had a way of pushing buttons that bordered on supernatural, when it came to capes. In the name of safety, however, it would be one of the local sergeants conducting the interview. Lowered chance of recruitment, but as a field agent, he would be more fit to avoid harm in the event that the interview broke down into fighting.

Officially, if pressed, Armsmaster and Gallant were there to aid in the interview. Armsmaster's ability to rapidly trawl the internet and databases, and Gallant's emotion-sensing would help with proving if the individuals in question were indeed assaulted or otherwise harmed, but more importantly, the two of them were members of the protectorate with ranged options and sealed suits.

One simply could not operate in Brockton Bay without being prepared for any even slightly unusual parahuman encounter breaking down into violence of the worst kind.

He slowed down in front of the PRT building. Normally, some of the Wards would be there, but only one of them would be participating in this particular interview, and the rest were requested to stay away just in case.

He engaged his parking break in front of the headquarters, walking quickly towards the office that was designated for meeting the two individuals.

As he did, his sensors picked up low and high-frequency noises in the air that set his hairs on end. Gallant was already there.

"Do you have any idea what's going on?" he asks as Armsmaster enters the room.

He simply shakes his head in response. "No. We are here to aid," he pauses for a moment. "Deputy Sergeant Johnathan McMiller," he finishes, having looked up the individual assigned to conduct this interview.

After a few moments, the man in question enters as well, settling down into his chair and gathering several appropriate documents for what was to come.

Armsmaster noted, but said nothing about the pistol he had on his person.

The noises his new scanner was picking up intensified as the Parahuman in question, Sage, walked into the room.

He stood still, mostly ignoring Sage's words as they began explaining the nature of what happened to them. He briefly gave a thought to Shadow Stalker, the violent vigilante who had been vexing her local area for the past several months, but even that thought faded in the face of what his scanners were trying to piece together.

Namely, the air around Sage was emitting a variety of subvocal, low-frequency and high-frequency noises, too quiet to pick up with the human ear, but barely within range of Armsmaster's sensor suite.

He glanced over to Gallant, to see if they were making any of the hand-signs that indicated a problem of some sort, but none were produced.

The noises appeared to be the consequence of some form of energy field that Sage was producing, either actively or naturally, one that used pressure waves as a medium to exist in. It reminded him uncomfortably of the Simurgh, though he knew logically that the sound they produced was both far more overt, and also wasn't a true "sound" at all, not appearing on recordings of the monster.

Finally, the matter of proof rolls around. The sergeant asks if it would be possible for Sage to prove that their energy can pollute a target, and that they can sense it later. It seemed like a logical progression, in his mind. Sage or their technology produce an energy field that piggybacks off of sound waves, too inaudible to be heard, but enough to be detected later.

That said, Armsmaster had little intention of giving away his endorsement if the cape was willing to submit to further testing.

When they decided on the simplest test, he and the sergeant agreed. A simple shell-game, more of a formality in the face of Armsmaster's scanners, but it would provide more data-points.

When they emitted the raw energy into the air and took control of it, the noises that were produced as a side effect rapidly intensified, and he began to hear human-like whispering, in no particular language, but without a doubt coherent. When they infused it into the paperclip, his sensors went berserk once again, the energy had shifted on-contact with the metal. Several of his lesser-grade sensors detected photons emerging from the metal now that it was infused with the energy, but his more advanced ones were able to determine that the "photons" were merely another expression of the energy that Sage wielded.

Armsmaster grew frustrated at this. He was starting to see the potential in a power like this, whether or not Sage was a tinker, it clearly had potential beyond simple detection. His scanners detected stresses on the mild-steel of the paperclip, like it was pulling in on itself as a result of exposure to the "Sage Energy".

Production of an energy that intimately relied on the manipulation and emulation of wavelengths... If they were a tinker... The idea was agonizing.

Gallant gave him an odd look as he stiffened, watching Sage correctly pick out where the paperclip was several times in a row.

Armsmaster correctly deduced that, between Sage wishing to become a Rogue, their semi-organic equipment, and their wavelength-associated power, he would not be able to say anything without it coming off as unnecessarily hostile.

He understood the allure of attempting to become a rogue. He himself had thought about it, every so often. The idea of cutting ties with the Protectorate and their restrictions to do work on his own appealed greatly, but the inefficiency of it was galling. Many would claim that Tinkers needed resources, but Armsmaster felt differently. It wasn't merely Tinkers that benefitted from resources. He knew for a fact that having access to a team, and access to funding from that team, was the single most efficient way to operate for any cape.

Even individuals like Alexandria had allies to cover for her weaknesses. For god's sake, not even the Endbringers operated completely independently, according to some theories.

Knowing just how little an independent could do compared to what they could do with the weight of an organization behind them, and the associated increase in efficiency led Armsmaster to have an especially hard time dealing with them.

Sage left after getting a bunch of paperwork related to the MIRIS initiative and other Rogue-related pieces of documentation.

Only once they had left did he turn to Gallant "Well? What did you make of them," he asked brusquely,

Gallant shrugged. "They were telling the truth as far as I could tell. I guess this means we'll need to put out a warrant for Shadow Stalker, right?" he pointed out, knowing full well who the only crossbow-using hockey-mask wearing dark-mist cape in the bay was.

Armsmaster nodded. "First we deal with the other three. Shadow Stalker will go to ground once the warrant goes out, so we need as much information as we can get before then," he explains.

Either way, Sage's vocal-carrier wave would at the very least give Armsmaster new ideas for scanners. It may prove difficult to manufacture an energy field that could act as a wave-interaction between molecules, but the potential uses...

Well, there was a reason Armsmaster once spent much of his time researching what little he could of Hero's work, when he was still alive.

Dragon was waiting to call him after he returned to his lab, and he felt grateful for the contact. Sage had brought up a bunch of uncomfortable thoughts during his time overseeing the interview, and he needed the decompression.

"Before anything else, I feel I should ask, what did you make of Sage? I don't have any information other than what is available to me," Dragon asks.

He sighed. "They annoyed me, but not due to any actions on their part. At first glance, lacking further information, they appear to be an individual with a frustrating amount of potential to whittle it away on Rogue work. Their armor shows clear signs of biological growth, which is concerning, but I detected no life signs on either it, or on the helmet used by their associate."

"I'm unsure how much wetwork went into producing it, but I believe, if they are a tinker, their technology clearly has a waveform bent to its theming. I noticed mathematical patterns in their armor tied closely to fluid-like ripple effects, their scanning ability relies on energy encoded into sound and pressure waves, and when applying the energy to metal, it appeared to take on photon-like properties, triggering radioactive false-alarms in a few systems."

Dragon hums at this. "I see. And what about her personality?"

Armsmaster gives her a look that says 'That's not exactly my specialty', but attempts something regardless.

"I do not know. I doubt she is willing to affiliate with the PRT or Protectorate. She requested documents that would normally be handled automatically in the event of affiliation. Her associate seemed to provide little input, though she consistently showed signs of looking at them. My predictive software wasn't able to discern more than that during the meeting," he explains as if it were a personal failing.

Dragon's holographic avatar simply smiles. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have a free schedule for the next three hours. I would be willing to look over the code for your software, if you like. You have been commenting it, yes?" she says with a smirk. Neither of them needed comments to understand code of any sort, not really, but Dragon made a point of pestering him about it regardless.

"Perhaps if you shared your algorithm for automatically commenting code, I would be more willing to do so," he points out with a raised eyebrow.

She waggles her finger. "No shortcuts. You need to build good habits now, rather than later. You never know when you might work with someone who isn't able to trudge through blocks of uncommented code like we can,"

He sighs, but in good humor. "Alright. Let's get to work."

Shadestyle · Jan 31, 2021

When I woke up the next day, I felt the mana from my power grow in strength. By now, it was the weekend, and it had just crossed over into March. I felt the urge to scribble down what I had learned once again, like clockwork.

Hopping out of bed, I snatched up my notebook and began to write down my theories.

I knew now that Mana took on a variety of different forms, in addition to its effects. It could act like a wave, it could act like a ray, it could act like a liquid, but those particular behaviors only took place once it became attuned to what is traditionally a "wave" magic.

If it instead attuned to something like cloth or metal, it became a "True Mana". A form of magic that had no physical location, but was instead bound to an object's very traits.

It was what had been happening to my body over time, whenever I infused myself with magic, it didn't bloat my body up with liquid, but instead took on a "True Form" that merely enhanced it. I imagine that, if I pulled the mana out of my body, however, it might revert to a wave or a liquid, once it came in contact with the open air.

Next, I learned that some magic can carry information. Mana that I had infused into a pigeon not only attuned to the flesh of the bird, but when I removed the mana, it retained some of its "shape" as well. When I used that mana to synthesize stones, the bird's thoughts and some of the patterns on its feathers had actually been embossed into the resulting rocks.

That lead to my other, more incredible and dangerous discovery. I could awaken the magic in other living things. As far as I can tell, It requires the target to have a "Soul". Bugs and plants had never responded to me taking control of them with raw mana, but the bird had some capacity to resist, which seemed to jumpstart mana production inside it.

I turned from my writing to the bird in question, who had been moved to a large and luxuriant birdcage that I had made from wood. The pigeon certainly wasn't my biggest fan yet, but plenty of birdseed and attention had slowly gotten the ensouled bird more comfortable with my presence, which was a good thing, considering I had no intention of letting it go.

My dad had done a lot more research than me, but even I knew that if a semi-magical bird escaped into the wild and somehow passed that on to its offspring, and I ended up being blamed for it...

It wouldn't be good.

I idly stuck a finger in the cage to try and pet the pigeon, but it made an odd growling sound, pecking at me sassily.

"You're going to be a nuisance, aren't you?" I say rhetorically, drawing back my finger and rubbing my forehead with exasperation. I considered killing her, (And it was a 'her', I found out after a few quick internet searches at the library,) but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I didn't know if there were any metaphysical ramifications of killing something that had a soul, but I couldn't bring myself to kill the bird when it fixed those soulful beady black eyes on me.

I'd just have to keep her here until I could figure out what to do about this.

Returning to my theories and information recording, I thought about other obvious things I had figured out. True Mana could only be summoned on my person. I couldn't summon it into anything other than wave-magic elements, unless it was something I was wearing, or something I was holding.

I tried it in dad's old car, but it didn't really work. I guess if I want to test the true mana of a vehicle, there might be some conditions that need to be met.

Thanks to the pigeon testing, I had also discovered my ability to synthesize and transmute what could only be called "Golems". I still had the rock-bird and water-bird stored in a box in the basement, but I hadn't done anything else with them yet.

On some level, I was both stressed and grateful about this. On the one hand, making thinking creatures under my control is a really scary prospect, but on the other hand, it seems I'm not limited to making living things in order to do that. If I wanted, I could ditch the biological stuff entirely, outside of getting animals for templates.

All I would need to do is attune mana to an animal, and then carefully use it to transmute other substances. As far as anyone would know, I would just be a weird tinker or something.

I felt the urge to keep writing distract me from that, but I was starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel of things I had learned.

[][Research] Is that all you know?
-[][Research] Yes
-[][Research] No (Write In)

The urge faded, and I decided that it was time to spend some time with dad. We ended up watching a comedy on TV, but it ended up being mostly background noise while we talked.

"So, have you given any thought to a name?" he asks.

"Huh?" I responded with a bit of confusion.

"For your new pet," he elaborates, giving me a faint smile.

I cough a bit. I hadn't put much thought into the pigeon, other than that I would need to keep it contained.

[][Name] What should you name the pigeon?
-[][Name] Pest
-[][Name] Nuesance
-[][Name] Bird
-[][Name] Write-in

Dad seemed to think the name I picked was funny, judging by the little puff of silent laughter that escaped him at that.

I flushed with a bit of embarrassment.

"By the way, dad, I think I'm almost ready to start making some money. I just need to start harvesting it, and then I need to figure out all the legal trouble, and I can start selling spices."

He smiles, but it's tempered by something I can't quite put my finger on. "I'm glad to hear it, Taylor."

I think for a bit. "Have you heard anything about the investigation?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "No. I haven't been told anything yet. Not by the police or the PRT."

I felt uncomfortable at this. Surely they've already taken care of it, right?

First week of May Plans:

[][Daily Activities] What sort of things will you do during the day?
-[][Daily Activities] Visit a location (Write-In Where you go and What you do there)
-[][Daily Activities] Call the number that weird lady velcro'd to you.
-[][Daily Activities] Spend time with dad.
-[][Daily Activities] Stay at home (Enhances other actions)

[][Cape Activities] What will you do as Sage?
-[][Cape Activities] Visit a location (Write-In Where you go and What you do there)
-[][Cape Activities] You'll spend your time investigating.
--[][Cape Activities] Investigate the gang attack on the Barnes family last year. You now know the names of the gangsters who did it.
---[][Cape Activities] Track down the ones in prison.
---[][Cape Activities] Track down the ones that escaped.
-[][Cape Activities] Set up your Legal Second-Identity (Write-In Plan)
-[][Cape Activities] Continue your magical training.
--[][Cape Activities] Right now, your control over your mana isn't good enough to perfectly copy even a pigeon's memories. Focus on Brain Magic
--[][Cape Activities] Right now, your control over your mana isn't good enough to produce more than a crude golem via Synthesis. Focus on Synthesis Crafting.
-[][Cape Activities] Stay at home (Enhances other actions)

[][Project] You'll begin a project of some kind.
-[][Project] Create some form of Saffron Harvesting system
--[][Project] Use Golem Birds to harvest it. (Write-in Plan)
--[][Project] Try something else (Write-in Plan)
-[][Project] Something Else (Write-In)

[][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Write-In)
-[][Mana] Attempt to string together an Attunement Chain (Write-In)
-[][Mana] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement (Write-In)
[][Mana] Test a Phonem's effect (Write-In)
-[][Mana] Study a target for Phomens (Write-In)
[][Mana] Test a Transmutation (Choose an Elemental Ray and a Non-Silicate Target)
[][Mana] Something Else (Write-In)

8 Research Refunded. 11 Research Spent

Stats: Research: 20
A good start.

Overall Health: 12
You're a very small and squishy human who is less small and squishy than she once was.

Overall Magical Power: 6
Your magical ability is good enough to outstrip some practitioners, but not many.
Abilities: Magical Soul: F
Rating: Trump ???
Your soul emits magic. The stronger your soul, the more powerful your magic.

Magical Body: FF
Rating: ???
Your body contains some magic, your soul empowering your body without your direct intervention.

Magical Power: C
Rating: Trump ???
You are a parahuman with the power to create this anomalous energy known as "Mana", at will. Once per month, you may boost your Magical Power ranking to B for one scene.
Boosted for One Month.

Composition Detection: S
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to detect the exact composition of materials. So long as you apply mana to them, that is. Fairly Niche.

Eidetic Memory: A
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to never forget what mana attunements you have learned, their applications, and their nuances. You will also never forget any word or noise you test on mana, or the effects it has.

Shadestyle · Jan 31, 2021

Possessions: Combinatorial Explosion Property

docs.google.com
Mana Types: Combinatorial Explosion Mana Types

docs.google.com
All Other Magics (Phonems, Runes, and Recipes): Combinatiorial Explosion All Other Magics

docs.google.com
Spells and Skills: Combinatorial Explosion Skills and Spells

docs.google.com

This doc will be where an up-to-date list of Taylor's Items and Mana Tests will be contained, to keep things organized from here on.

Shadestyle · Feb 1, 2021

Adhoc vote count started by Shadestyle on Feb 1, 2021 at 2:24 PM, finished with 14 posts and 6 votes.

[mana] [dailyactivities] [research] [name] [capeactivities] [project]

Total voters in this category

6

Posts

7
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Write-In)
-[X][Mana] Attempt to string together an Attunement Chain (Thaum > Brain > Zinc; Thaum > Zinc > Brain; Thaum > Brain > Tungsten; Thaum > Tungsten > Brain; Thaum > Brain > Rose Gold; Thaum > Rose Gold > Brain; Thaum > Copper > Brain; Thaum > Brain > Copper; Thaum > Brain > Blood; Thaum > Blood > Brain; )
- Nando
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Test rose gold to see if we can control the petal size and specifically when in the past it shows.
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Quartz>Platinum>Diamond
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Quartz>Diamond>Platinum
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Quartz>Graphite>Platinum
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Quartz>Platinum>Graphite
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Salt>Quartz
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[x][mana]zinc>salt
- resusplus
1 people have voted
[x][mana]salt >zinc
- resusplus
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] True Water
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] True Diamond
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] True Air
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] True Quartz
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Quartz>Graphite
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Write-In)
-[X][Mana] Study a target for Phomens (Diamond, Graphite)
-[X][Mana] Healing magic v0.2: (Clone) + (Energy Sphere) > Mild Steel > Salt > Tungsten > Crystal Quartz > Graphite > Graphite; Thaum > Diamond > Diamond; Thaum > Diamond > Diamond > Diamond; Thaum > Graphite > Kidney; Thaum > Salt > Copper > Graphite; Thaum > Salt > Copper > Graphite > Graphite; Thaum > Egg > Graphite > Bread
-[X][Mana] What are those question marks in Time? and Absorb?: Thaum > Copper > Copper > Graphite; Thaum > Copper > Copper > Copper > Graphite; Thaum > Salt > Copper > Copper; Thaum > Aluminum > Aluminum > Tungsten; Thaum > Aluminum > Aluminum > Aluminum > Tungsten;
-[X][Mana] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement (Knife, Glasses)
-[X][Mana] Antigravity and Gravity magic: Thaum > Salt > (Gravity); (Ripfield) > (Gravity); (Curse) > (Gravity); Thaum > Aluminum > (Gravity);
-[X][Mana] Misc. tests: Thaum > Zinc > Zinc > Zinc > Zinc; Thaum > Zinc > Zinc > Zinc > Zinc > Zinc; Thaum > Platinum > Blood > Zinc; Thaum > Air > Platinum; Thaum > (Catalyst) + (Enzyme) > Salt, attempt to use this to separate out a pure element (e.g. carbon and iron from steel);
- Mordiggian
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Quartz>Platinum
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Quartz>Salt
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement (Glowstone)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement (Wardstone)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement (Lumic Condensite)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement (Sage (the plant not the Rouge))
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement (Wheat)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Attempt to string together an Attunement Chain (Bird > Lumic Condensite)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Test a Transmutation (Stone Free on Plants/Wood)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Something Else (Instead of directly attuning, isolate a shard of Lumic Condensite, and bathe it in light made by various mana types, such as Cobold Gleam, Serene Light, Warm Glow, Lunar Sunglow , Light of the Vampire, And other magical lights that strike us as intresting.)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Using Arcane Mana, string together a spell with the phonems, Daka, Goun and Bang, to form launching large hands.
- Bark
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Leave a small bead of sea glass on the roof and wait for it to become saturated.
- The Froggy Ninja
Total voters in this category

4
2 people have voted
[X][Daily Activities] What sort of things will you do during the day?
-[X][Daily Activities] Call the number that weird lady velcro'd to you.
- Bark
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Daily Activities] What sort of things will you do during the day?
-[X][Daily Activities] Do NOT Call the number that weird lady velcro'd to you.
- Nando
1 people have voted
[X][Daily Activities] What sort of things will you do during the day?
-[X][Daily Activities] Visit a location (Acquire other pure elements and test mana on them. Go shopping on the Boardwalk for things like an old mercury thermometer, a magnesium firestarter and a helium balloon. A rock shop might have small samples of pure elements like sulfur, arsenic and bismuth.)
-[X][Daily Activities] Call the number that weird lady velcro'd to you.
- Mordiggian
Total voters in this category

2
1 people have voted
[X][Research] Is that all you know?
-[X][Research] No (Phenoms from natural sounds and human-perceived onomatopoeias typically exhibit thematically appropriate effects, e.g. Bang, Zap, Snip. Attunement chains always display the same type and roughly the same effect as the last attuned element, except in the case of transmutations.)
- Mordiggian
1 people have voted
[X][Research] Is that all you know?
-[X][Research] No (Synthesis seem to be more of a sub branch of transmutation that produces "grist" to transmute, with the only difference from raw silicon mana being an applied enchantment since the core material is the same for all synthesis types. Also, willpower can modify how and even if mana interacts with certain materials very easily, such as rapidly attuning without applying the magical effect, applying effects without attuning and even bypassing materials to get at things contained within.)
- The Froggy Ninja
Total voters in this category

3
1 people have voted
[X][Name] What should you name the pigeon?
-[X][Name] Write-in: Thoth
- Mordiggian
1 people have voted
[X][Name] What should you name the pigeon?
-[X][Name] Write-in (Pepper)
-[X][Name] Write-in: Thoth
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Name] What should you name the pigeon?
-[X][Name] Write-in: Psyche
- The Froggy Ninja
Total voters in this category

3
1 people have voted
[X][Cape Activities] What will you do as Sage?
-[X][Cape Activities] Continue your magical training.
--[X][Cape Activities] Right now, your control over your mana isn't good enough to perfectly copy even a pigeon's memories. Focus on Brain Magic
-[X][Cape Activities] Stay at home (Enhances other actions)
- Mordiggian
1 people have voted
[X][Cape Activities] What will you do as Sage?
-[X][Cape Activities] Continue your magical training.
--[X][Cape Activities] Right now, your control over your mana isn't good enough to perfectly copy even a pigeon's memories. Focus on Brain Magic
- Bark
1 people have voted
[X][Cape Activities] What will you do as Sage?
-[X][Cape Activities] Continue your magical training.
--[X][Cape Activities] Right now, your control over your mana isn't good enough to produce more than a crude golem via Synthesis. Focus on Synthesis )
- Endlessblaze
Total voters in this category

1
1 people have voted
[X][Project] You'll begin a project of some kind.
-[X][Project] Create some form of Saffron Harvesting system
--[X][Project] Use Golem Birds to harvest it. (After refining our ability to craft golems, we will begin creating golem birds, preferably good at climbing or capable of flight, and attempt to integrate some plant magic into them, or, perhaps transmute plants INTO golems. Either way, the golems should have plant based softish edges and be capable of gentle grips to not damage the saffron. Once picked, they should deliver it to a drying area, before moving it to a basket. If we so choose we could also have the birds handle packaging the saffron as well.)
- Endlessblaze

"Alright Thoth, hold still," I mutter, fairly certain that the bird can't actually understand me. Nonetheless, the pigeon holds still while I channel mana into their brain. Unlike my previous attempts, I had little intention of learning a new attunement. This time, I'm trying to refine my control over an existing one.

As the mana turns from waves to liquid, I keep my arms totally rigid as if it were helping me control the magic. If I'm going to be using golems for anything, I need to be sure that they're 'Programmed' correctly, and right now, my control is so poor that I can't even copy a birdbrained pigeon's mind properly with magic.

1d20 vs 1d20 = 9, 11

I slowly pull the mana out of the pigeon's head, trying to weave it "between" the bird's skin and feathers so it doesn't attune more than necessary. I get the distinct feeling that the pigeon is actively fighting me on this, however, as its own energies peck and shove at mine, trying to rush the process.

By the end of it, I end up with a heavily damaged mass of pink gel hovering over my palm. Better than my earlier attempts, but not by much.

It will take a hell of a lot of practice, and a more willing subject, I think, before I'll be getting anything close to mental cloning.

As I held the swirling ball of magic in my hand, I could practically see the things that it carried along with it. Memories of french-fries, bread crumbs, predators, and cigarette butts.

Memories of the annoying human-captor-weirdo, and the intent to peck the heck out of them.

I shake my head with disappointment, attuning the brain magic to a rock, and then infusing that into a hunk of wood that I had been working on, I finish transmuting the "brain" of another wood golem.

When dad discovered my plan to make wooden golems to harvest my saffron fields, he had a pretty genius idea that I'm surprised I didn't think of. You can just buy wooden birds at any cheap craft store.

Transmuting those using bird magic was child's play, and the results were far better than my sticks-and-planks approach to making wood golems. As long as I made sure to cut grooves into the wooden bird sculptures before transmuting them, the joints would break off cleanly, and the results were mostly acceptable. They weren't capable of flight, but by mutating my saffron to grow lower to the ground, they could pick out the little stigmas that made up the spice.

Even with ten wooden golems working automatically, it was slow, painful work. I had to keep a constant supply of my magic funneling into the giant tree that was managing the farm so the saffron flowers would continually regenerate, and without my direct attention, the golems were incredibly clumsy, taking a long time to slowly learn how to walk and harvest plants.

What I did notice, however, was that the golems were indeed learning. Unlike the Rock Golem, their cores were soft enough to change over time, and unlike the Water Golem, their core was firm enough to control those changes. The end result was that the ten wooden bird golems were like newborn chicks, stumbling around as they tried to figure out the best ways for each of them to walk and work around the root-covered floor.

I doubted they would ever go too far beyond that, especially considering I could sense parts of how their core shifted and changed to process information, there just wasn't enough space in their core for advanced thoughts, but more importantly, the construction of their cores was just too sloppy. The cores were uneven, smeared affairs resulting from my inexperience with transmutation, which led to the cores having to send magic along winding, roundabout paths to move thoughts from one part of the core to another.

However, as my brain magic grows more skilled, my golems will need to spend less time learning, which bypasses the problem of their cores pretty cleanly. If I could completely copy the pigeon's mind, I would only need to transmute a golem core and order it, and it would use the pigeon's vast knowledge to execute its task.

...Then again, I'm not sure how good Thoth is at harvesting saffron in the first place.

I looked over at the basket that was slowly filling up with saffron fibers, and felt a thrilling rush of gratification as the weight of the saffron threads finally ticked the scale that the basket was set on over a pound.

I had looked up previously how much saffron was worth, and it could go for as much as a thousand dollars, just for a pound of it.

I had made that much in just a week of work. It wasn't much from a labor standpoint, but if my math was right, If I were to sell this stuff for market price, I'd be making more in a few hours of work than most people make with a full-time job.

Who would have thought that a team of tireless workers, a magically self-renewing garden, and the mental power of almost five whole Brockton Bay pigeons could have done all of this?

I nod with satisfaction as I look over my kingdom. It'll take a few hours under a sun lamp for the saffron threads to dry out, but once they do, I can move on to the hard part.

Selling it.

As I was laying down in my room to rest after personally boosting my farm for several hours, my mind wandered, eventually settling on one particular topic. The weird card that I got from that one lady at the boardwalk.

I had somehow forgotten about it for weeks, in light of everything else that had been going on, but now, without anything else to worry about... Well, I was curious.

I drank the bottle of water sitting on my bedside table that I left there earlier, before making my way to the phone. Did I really want to call this person? It could be something dangerous.

No. That was just the usual fear talking. It's just a phone call.

I dialed in the number and waited for someone to pick up. It only took two rings before I heard a snide voice on the other end.

"Well howdy, Pawn-Shop Girl. It sure took you long enough," she says, confusing the hell out of me.

"What? Who are you? Are you the person that put that card on me?" I respond.

She shushes me. "Don't worry about that. This is me doing you a favor, since you did me one. If you really want to know, then I'd prefer we meet in person."

I can practically hear the utter indifference as she continues. "But even if you don't, I've still got some advice for you. Don't go to the boardwalk anymore unless you're ready for what comes next. When it comes to this town, 'Rich' is just another word for 'Empire', and the boardwalk is plenty rich enough to have people watching for weird purchases and weirder behavior."

Her next words come out almost jokingly. "A pretty inconvenient policy for someone like you. So thanks. Now they're keeping an eye out for a scrawny long-haired tinker-in-training instead of trying to bother me."

My blood had been boiling from the moment she opened her mouth, but this took it over the edge. I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could, the girl on the other end just kept blathering.

"Don't worry. I'm not going to sell you out. You know what I look like, I know what you look like. We're even-steven on that front. I just thought I'd give you a courtesy call. After all, if they caught you while you were busy drooling over thermometers and junior-scientist chemistry sets, then there wouldn't be anyone taking the heat off of me while I'm having my fun," she snickers.

"You said something about a meeting?" I ask, forcing myself to calm down. Whoever this is, they know stuff they couldn't possibly know, and my eyeplant cameras hadn't gone off for anything bigger than a dog since I installed them.

"Yeah. If you want to meet up and get some real deets, that's cool. I don't have any formal-wear, so I hope you don't mind if we keep things casual," she says in a way that seems to imply she doesn't exactly mean a suit and tie when she says 'formal-wear'.

"Maybe the Gary's Corner Cafe on Fifth next Friday at 4:30?" she offers.

[][Meeting] Thanks but no thanks.
[][Meeting] Fine.
[][Meeting] I won't be able to make it. How about this? (Write-in a time and place)

With that, the girl hangs up.

I still can't decide if I should have called that number or not.

In an effort to distract myself from the call I made, I decided to do some tests that I had been sitting on for a while.

1d20 vs 1d20 = 9, 13

First, I tried to control the size of the petals that Rose Gold Mana created. It seemed to work at first, but the larger I tried to make any individual petal, the less effective it was at showing the past.

The largest one I could make was the size of a dinner plate, but only showed events from yesterday. Completely unlike the other, smaller petals, which could seemingly reach back entire weeks. Being made of dust suspended on a sunbeam, they were also fairly fragile, I noted.

1d20 vs 1d20 = 11, 1

Next, I decided to test out a complex mana type I had come up with, blending together various nickel magics and attuning them to Salt to make it try and separate things.

"Denature," I whispered, using the magic to rip apart water into hydrogen and oxygen. The magic wanted to make them re-react to one another, but with shaking hands, I twisted its nature, forcing the magic to separate chemicals without the intent to recombine them.

I quickly banished the magic when I started to smell ozone and see bubbling in the glass.

The experiment was a success, at least somewhat.

The next test was much simpler. I simply took a piece of Lumic Condensite, and applied magically created lights to it. Not the mana, but the light itself.

The results were fairly obvious, all the various forms of magical light turning into solid light when it fell on the shard. Some of the solid lights did have interesting properties, though.

Cobold Gleam, when turned into solid light, became increasingly chaotic. Dropping it made it fly off in a random direction, no matter the circumstances, and everything I saw looking through the glassy material looked distorted like a funhouse mirror. Looking at my face through a piece of it in the mirror was a bit disturbing, as it made it look as though my face were smeared off into a blank mask.

Kinetic Light was also interesting. The green solified light refused to come into contact with iron, but was also latched onto it in a way. When I slid a nail across a thin rail of solid Kinetic Light, it just floated along above the surface of the light, almost frictionless.

Other than that, I noted no particularly unusual reactions. Magical light still acted like magical light, even in solid form.

One of my final tests was the most interesting, however, and it changed my perception of Arcane Magic. I went out of the house that night in costume, picking out a spot where I could fire magic into the bay without hitting anything important.

When I summoned up a mass of the mysterious Arcane Magic, and uttered phonems at it to try and turn it into grasping hands, nothing happened.

They didn't react differently, but rather, not at all. The single-word phonems that normally triggered an immediate response in Thaumic Mana didn't seem to prompt one from Arcane Mana.

Prepared to dodge whatever twisted result came from it, I decided to repeat one of my earliest tests with wave magic.

"Turn into a fireball?" I said questioningly.

The arcane mana started turning around, swirling a bit as it puffed out bits of smoke. I could tell at a glance that what I said wasn't enough. It didn't have enough... Weight?

It seems that, while Thaumic Mana is clear and obvious, you utter a random tone or snippet, and each one has a specific effect on the magic, Arcane Mana is more like what I imagined spellcasting to be. Heavy with metaphor, and obedient to the tonal arts instead of the tonal sciences.

I tried to think of something that might work, as I banished and reformed a mass of Arcane Magic.

My power offered no input here. It was completely out of left field for whatever had given me magic, but damn it, if this mana type wants meaningful speech, then it came to the right person.

I slapped together a quick rhyme, half-remembered lessons from mom coming to the forefront.

"Twist and twirl, and waves unfurl, this mist of mana begins to curl," I intone carefully, invoking the same stature of someone pretending to be an old wizard or archmagus from one of my old fantasy books.

The Arcane Magic begins to twist in on itself, compressing down into a point, and my pulse quickens once again.

I gesture forwards. "This girl commands, go-man thy station, and strike my foes, with conflagration!"

The arcane magic shrieks forwards, turning into a massive gout of spear-like flames that buries itself in the ocean with an explosion of steam that has me yelping as I leap back in shock.

Looking around for anyone who might have spotted my test, I run as quick as I can to get the hell out of the area before someone shows up to find out what the hell just happened.

Second week of May Plans:

[][Daily Activities] What sort of things will you do during the day?
-[][Daily Activities] Visit a location (Write-In Where you go and What you do there)
-[][Daily Activities] Spend time with dad.
-[][Daily Activities] Stay at home (Enhances other actions)

[][Cape Activities] What will you do as Sage?
-[][Cape Activities] Visit a location (Write-In Where you go and What you do there)
-[][Cape Activities] You'll spend your time investigating.
--[][Cape Activities] Investigate the gang attack on the Barnes family last year. You now know the names of the gangsters who did it.
---[][Cape Activities] Track down the ones in prison.
---[][Cape Activities] Track down the ones that escaped.
-[][Cape Activities] Set up your Legal Second-Identity (Write-In Plan)
-[][Cape Activities] Continue your magical training.
--[][Cape Activities] Right now, your control over your mana isn't good enough to perfectly copy even a pigeon's memories. Focus on Brain Magic.
--[][Cape Activities] Right now, your control over your mana isn't good enough to produce more than a crude golem via Synthesis. Focus on Synthesis Crafting.
-[][Cape Activities] Stay at home (Enhances other actions)

[][Project] You'll begin a project of some kind.
-[][Project] Something Else (Write-In)

[][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Write-In)
-[][Mana] Attempt to string together an Attunement Chain (Write-In)
-[][Mana] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement (Write-In)
[][Mana] Test a Phonem's effect (Write-In)
-[][Mana] Study a target for Phomens (Write-In)
[][Mana] Test a Transmutation (Choose an Elemental Ray and a Non-Silicate Target)
[][Mana] Something Else (Write-In)

4 Research Refunded due to theorycrafting. 6 Research Gained

Stats: Research: 30
A good start.

Overall Health: 12
You're a very small and squishy human who is less small and squishy than she once was.

Overall Magical Power: 7
You dabble in a variety of magics, and your power is respectable for your age.
Abilities: Magical Soul: F
Rating: Trump ???
Your soul emits magic. The stronger your soul, the more powerful your magic.

Magical Body: FF
Rating: ???
Your body contains some magic, your soul empowering your body without your direct intervention.

Magical Power: C
Rating: Trump ???
You are a parahuman with the power to create this anomalous energy known as "Mana", at will. Once per month, you may boost your Magical Power ranking to B for one scene.
Boosted for One Month.

Composition Detection: S
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to detect the exact composition of materials. So long as you apply mana to them, that is. Fairly Niche.

Eidetic Memory: A
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to never forget what mana attunements you have learned, their applications, and their nuances. You will also never forget any word or noise you test on mana, or the effects it has.

School	Attunement Chain	Shorthand	Type	Effects	Other
Graphite	(Clone) + (Energy Sphere) > Mild Steel > Salt > Tungsten > Crystal Quartz > Graphite > Graphite	Cell-Recycling Management Biofibers	Liquid	This mana transforms living tissues into a mesh of biological fibers specialized in using magical energy and a variety of chemicals to control surrounding cells, manipulating them to more efficiently recycle dead flesh into new cells and cellular energy by making the cells more precisely target decaying or dead flesh.
Diamond	Thaum > Diamond > Diamond	Bio	Liquid	This mana transforms organic material into biological creatures or organisms charged with magic. These creatures are specialized in healing, softening, and the destruction of the undead. This mana can also charge objects with an energy that makes other targets more elastic and soft on contact temporarily.
Diamond	Thaum > Diamond > Diamond > Diamond	Bio-form	Liquid	This mana transforms organic material into biological creatures or organisms which strive to create life-magic-enacting agents or organisms.
Kidney	Thaum > Graphite > Kidney	Gu-Harvest	Liquid	This mana draws parasites and other dangerous life forms out of a target.
Graphite	Thaum > Salt > Copper > Graphite	Biological Segregation	Liquid	This mana influences organic materials to make them undo any intermixing or combination they performed.
Graphite	Thaum > Salt > Copper > Graphite > Graphite	Sorting Cells	Liquid	This mana influences an organism, making it try to organize and seperate types of life into distinct groups.
Bread	Thaum > Egg > Graphite > Bread	Puff Puff	Liquid	This mana takes the form of a cream puff that, when eaten, temporarily accelerates cellular division.	Tastes like Cigarettes.
Graphite	Thaum > Copper > Copper > Graphite	Accelerated Growth?	Liquid	This mana accelerates a target's growth.	This mana has the side effect of giving a target "momentum" in their aging. The accelerated growth takes time to slow down once it has begun.
Graphite	Thaum > Copper > Copper > Copper > Graphite	Accelerated Growth??	Liquid	This mana accelerates a target's growth.	This mana has the side effect of giving a target "momentum" in their aging. The accelerated growth takes time to slow down once it has begun.
Copper	Thaum > Salt > Copper > Copper	Rewind	Ray	This mana appears to reverse the flow of time slightly, preferring to reverse time in order to seperate objects.
Tungsten	Thaum > Aluminum > Aluminum > Tungsten	Mana Recycle?	Ray	This mana draws other forms of mana emitted from an object back into themselves.
Tungsten	Thaum > Aluminum > Aluminum > Aluminum > Tungsten	Mana Recycle??	Ray	This mana draws other forms of mana emitted from an object back into themselves.
Lead	Thaum > Salt > Lead > Lead > Lead	Panhandle	Ray	This mana lightens an object until it turns to liquid, transferring its weight from its lightest components to its heaviest until they begin to seperate out.
Lead	(Ripfield) > Lead > Lead > Lead	Knifeplanet	Ray	Mana makes an object draw other objects to itself, preferring ones capable of separating it into pieces.
Lead	(Curse) > Lead > Lead > Lead	Barbell Thief	Ray	This mana makes a target draw weights towards itself and off of other things nearby.
Lead	Thaum > Aluminum > Lead > Lead > Lead	Massless Detonation	Ray	This mana reduces the mass of a target, eventually ripping it apart from low-mass effects.
Zinc	Thaum > Zinc > Zinc > Zinc > Zinc	Cursed Burden	Ray	This mana curses a target with a curse that increases the stress on them, until flaws begin to form and grow. On contact with another target, the curse transfers.
Zinc	Thaum > Zinc > Zinc > Zinc > Zinc > Zinc	Cursed One	Ray	This mana curses a target with a curse that increases the stress on them, until flaws begin to form and grow. On contact with another target, the curse's energy is split between them.
Zinc	Thaum > Platinum > Blood > Zinc	Burden of the Lightning Vampire	Ray	This mana afflicts a target with increased conductivity of the blood. So long as the energy is present, they are burdened with a form of vampiric curse, gaining the power of Vital Electricity, in exchange for a weakness to electricity of all kinds. Electrical shocks overcharge their blood, resulting in massive trauma.
Salt	((Catalyst) + (Enzyme)) > Salt	Denature	Ray	This mana speeds up chemical reactions and catalyst formation in a target by pulling apart completed chemicals back into their constituent parts so they can re-react.
Stone	Transmute > (Stone Free) > Wood	Concrete Jungle	Transmute	This mana creates an amalgam of transmuted woods, which grow together into the parts of a wooden bird golem. Despite its wooden appearance, the wood is not alive, but merely animated.	Birdwood: This collection of wooden planks and sticks, when assembled correctly, attempts to take on the behavior of a bird.
Lumic Condensite	Thaum > Bird > Lumic Condensite	Sunbird	Elemental Ray	This mana creates a thick-spiked bird of light when applied to Lumic Condensite. The solidified light attempts to act like a bird.
Zinc	Thaum > Brain > Zinc	Blurt	Ray	This mana makes a target become burdened with thoughts contained in it.
Brain	Thaum > Zinc > Brain	Heavy Thoughts	Liquid	This mana contains the thoughts that weigh on the target's mind.
Tungsten	Thaum > Brain > Tungsten	Rethink	Ray	This mana makes a target rethink the thoughts contained within the mana.
Brain	Thaum > Tungsten > Brain	Forgotten Memories	Liquid	This mana contains the thoughts that the target has forgotten or discarded.
Rose Gold	Thaum > Brain > Rose Gold	Remembered Days	Ray	This mana forms petals of dust which reveal the past of the memories comprising them.
Brain	Thaum > Rose Gold > Brain	Memory Petals	Liquid	This mana takes the form of vivid pink petals that carry strong memories within them.
Brain	Thaum > Copper > Brain	In the Present	Liquid	This mana contains only the thoughts of the current moment from the target it was attuned to.
Copper	Thaum > Brain > Copper	Immortal Moment	Liquid	This mana makes a single moment last until it is remembered for the target.
Blood	Thaum > Brain > Blood	Ancestral Memory	Liquid	This mana bears and affects thoughts hidden within the target's blood.
Brain	Thaum > Blood > Brain	Vivid Fragment	Liquid	This mana bears the target's most vital thoughts.
Salt	Thaum > Quartz > Salt	Clean Cut	Ray	This mana makes existing seperations more precise, bringing them into stark focus.
Platinum	Thaum > Quartz > Platinum	Electron Beam	Ray	This mana creates a precise beam of electricity.
Graphite	Thaum > Quartz > Graphite	Even Out	Ray	This mana rearranges organic material, making it more consistent. Lumps are reduced, muscles are aligned, and cells are rearranged subtly.
Salt	Thaum > Zinc > Salt	Share the Load	Ray	This mana seperates an object's burdens.
Zinc	Thaum > Salt > Zinc	Fault	Ray	This mana targets an object's seams, stressing them until they seperate.

Attunement	Shorthand	Concept	Effects	Other
True > High Carbon Steel	Repulse	[Living Force]	The user gains a limited ability to redistribute force manually. This ability increases, the more High Carbon Steel is equipped.	Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Glass	Enlighten	[Create Light]	The user's lights are brighter than normal, the more glass is on their person. Equipped glass has a tendency to reflectively flash at the user's will, even when slight adjustments are made.	Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Wheat	Wheat Mastery	[Further Wheat]	The user gains more from harvests, the more wheat is equipped.	Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Sage	Sage Mastery	[Further Sage]	The user is more resistant to ailments, the more sage is equipped.	Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Lumic Condensite	Shining Landscape	[Speleothem of Light]	In caverns that have been exposed to light for long periods of time, Stalagmites and Stalagtites appear around the user made of pure solid light, so long as they are in the area.	Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Wardstone	Auto-Repair	[Safety of Home]	The user gains the ability to manifest concrete when building or repairing, the more Wardstone is worn.	Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Glowstone	Auto-Light	[Lights of Home]	The user gains the ability to manifest light-redistributing crystals when building or repairing. These crystals evenly redistribute light that touches them, emitting them all over.	Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Quartz	Decoil	[Create Precision]	The user's actions become more consistent the more quartz is equipped. (Does not boost accuracy.)	Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Air	Thaumic Mana	[Dull Aether]	This is just plain old Thaumic Magic.	Taylor has little intention of pursuing a Set Bonus for this.
True > Diamond	Regeneratle	[Greater Life]	The user becomes more elastic and regenerates health rapidly	Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Water	Arcane Mana	[Unclear Aether]	This is just plain old Arcane Magic.	Set Bonus undiscovered.

School	Phonem	Name	Effect	Notes
Diamond	Aah	Vitality	Mana begins to produce raw vitality
Diamond	Shing	Diamondize	Mana is covered with a pattern of shimmering diamonds.
Diamond	Shweun	Light to Sharpness	Mana gains sharpness over edges that successfully reflect light towards an observer.
Graphite	Chh	Touch-to-movement	Mana is marked by the first object to touch it. It will follow a pattern traced by the object, starting its movements once the Phonem "Shh" is uttered.
Graphite	Schkschk	Grind	Mana leaves residue on areas that it grinds up against.
Graphite	Kik	Fragile Snap	Mana reacts very little to damage, but becomes more fragile as a result.

Shadestyle · Feb 2, 2021

Adhoc vote count started by Shadestyle on Feb 2, 2021 at 9:05 PM, finished with 13 posts and 8 votes.

[meeting] [mana] [dailyactivities] [capeactivities] [project] Default

Total voters in this category

3
3 people have voted
[X][Meeting] Fine.
Total voters in this category

6
2 people have voted
[X][Mana] Leave a small bead of sea glass on the roof and wait for it to become saturated.
- The Froggy Ninja
- Mordiggian
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Use Arcane Magic and utter:
- Bark
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure iodine
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure selenium (still fertilizer)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure calcium.
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure scandium (baseball bats)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure chromium (stainless steel)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure manganese (most steel and aluminum alloys)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure niobium (steel)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure cobolt (batteries)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure lithium (also batteries)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure antimony (transistors)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure sulphur (also fertilizer)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure gallium (transistors)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure indium (transistors)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure zirconium (ceramics)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[x][Mana] Curse>Arcane maybe you never know where you need to curse someone?
- helli(0)n
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Denature and test pure elements. Chlorine and Sodium can be found in salt or bleach, calcium from bones, sulfur from eggs, fluorine from toothpaste, potassium from bananas, etc.)
- Mordiggian
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement (Wool clothes, platinum ring)
- Mordiggian
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Test a few basic items submerged in water, e.g. Arcane(?*) > Sand, Arcane > Copper, Arcane > Graphite. (Ignore this if the result if it results in thaumic mana still).
- Mordiggian
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Healing magic v.3: Thaum > Kidney > Liver; Thaum > Graphite > Copper; Thaum > Graphite > Copper > Copper; Thaum > Sweat > Graphite > Coal; Thaum > Kidney > Graphite; Thaum > Skin > Paper (might work to cover up visual side-effects); Try and make an Arcane Mana healing spell using the chant: Stitch and clot and set that sprain, Your wounds are gone, if not the stain.
- Mordiggian
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Misc. tests: Thaum > Salt > Copper > Copper > Copper (1 copper is undo, 2 copper is rewind, will 3 copper continue to lead to a stronger time reversal?); Thaum > Crystal Quartz > Copper > Copper; Thaum > Zinc > Graphite > Platinum; Thaum > Graphite > Zinc > Platinum (these tests should help sort out how ordering affects the chain, and maybe make a paralysis ray); Thaum > Crystal Quartz > Lead > Lead > Lead; Thaum > (Gravity) > Graphite (gravity-controlling cells?); Thaum > Platinum > Eye (electric sight?); Thaum > Brain > Eye; Thaum > Eye > Brain;
- Mordiggian
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure cadmium (fertilizer again)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure Phosphorus (fertilizer)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Something Else (Test the Thaumic Spell " Tea Null Frizz Ignis Z.Z( Daka Z.Z ( Snip Snip Snip Snip Snip Snip Snip"))
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Regal Flakes)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Something Else (Test the Arcane Spell -
-[X][Mana] Attempt to string together an Attunement Chain (Thaum > Calcuium Carbonate > silicon)
-[X][Mana] Attempt to string together an Attunement Chain (Thaum > Calcium Carbonate + (Denature) > Bread)
-[X][Mana] Attempt to string together an Attunement Chain (Thaum > Calcium Carbonate + (Denature) > Bread > Silicon)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Time Shift Crystal)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Void Metal)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Sea Glass)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Beacon Stone)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Cure Stone)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Songstress Secret Stone)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Mana-Test Materials (Rain Rock)
- Endlessblaze
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure thorium. There's a thin layer of thorium oxide on lightbulb filaments.
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure beryllium (used in some copper alloys for tools).
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Test thorium oxide too.
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Salt>Quartz
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Quartz+Salt
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Quartz>Platinum>Graphite
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Quartz>Graphite>Platinum
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Quartz>Diamond>Platinum
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Quartz>Platinum>Diamond
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure iron.
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Mana] Denature and test pure boron (used in glass making)
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[x][mana] quartz>salt>salt>salt let's copy faultline power
- resusplus
Total voters in this category

3
2 people have voted
[X][Daily Activities] What sort of things will you do during the day?
-[X][Daily Activities] Visit a location (Go to the Library and do research on various cape organizations which would like to affiliate with rouges, who are operating in Brockton Bay and the surrounding areas. Examine their policies, practices, restrictions, conditions, status, Everything. If we have time consider looking into the MIRRIS initiative the PRT/Protectorate offers as well, and compare and contrast the two. We should also be able to print off the information we find and take it home with us to go over with dad, though we may have to pay for printing services. Print off some related pages which are less relevant to us, but still concern such agencies. Mostly to obfuscate our intentions further and make sure no one suspects anything more then a likely school related project.)
--[X][Daily Activities] Also look into parahuman assisted investigations and what is or isn't allowed.
- Endlessblaze
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Daily Activities] What sort of things will you do during the day?
-[X][Daily Activities] Spend time with dad.
-[X][Daily Activities] Stay at home (Enhances other actions)
- Mordiggian
Total voters in this category

3
2 people have voted
[X][Cape Activities] What will you do as Sage?
-[X][Cape Activities] Continue your magical training.
--[X][Cape Activities] Right now, your control over your mana isn't good enough to produce more than a crude golem via Synthesis. Focus on Synthesis Crafting.
- Endlessblaze
- The Froggy Ninja
1 people have voted
[X][Cape Activities] What will you do as Sage?
-[X][Cape Activities] Continue your magical training.
--[X][Cape Activities] Right now, your control over your mana isn't good enough to perfectly copy even a pigeon's memories. Focus on Brain Magic.
--[X][Cape Activities] Right now, your control over your mana isn't good enough to produce more than a crude golem via Synthesis. Focus on Synthesis Crafting.
-[X][Daily Activities] Stay at home (Enhances other actions)
- Mordiggian
Total voters in this category

2
2 people have voted
[X][Project] You'll begin a project of some kind.
-[X][Project] Something Else (Dad gets his weapon now. Ask him about what he wants, and try to construct something suitable. The weapon should be small, or capable of folding into a small formfactor, should be at least as effective as an average normal gun, or bladed weapon depending on his preference, and should ideally have some special quirk or function. If we make the weapon with lots of wood parts, or at least, a wooden exterior it could also likely be passed off as a show or art piece. Make the Suggestion of a Wood Plated, Organic Revolver, with internal cactus thorns like what we made before, with the gimmick of using bioelectricty in the Thorns to also shock and tazze a target.)
- Endlessblaze
- The Froggy Ninja
Total voters in this category

2
2 people have voted
[X]meeting: tell dad and go with him. Going out to meet an unknown Cape alone? Nope.
- Narasan
- resusplus

Before doing anything else, I decided it was time to settle in and decide who I was going to work with, if I affiliated myself with a company or group. I brought the matter up with dad at breakfast, too dubious of my scrambled eggs to continue eating now that I knew what Egg Mana did to living things.

"Dad, I think I'd like to go to the library today to do some research. Now that my farms are pumping out saffron, I think I'm ready to seriously think about finding a way to sell it," I say, idly poking around the food on my plate and suppressing the urge to test what mana would attune from it.

He gives me a curt nod. "Good. I might not understand all of what you're doing, but you look like you've been making good progress. If you like, I could look around as well. I know one or two people who have worked for companies before that did stuff like this."

I considered this for a moment, but with how much he had already been doing for me, I didn't want to waste too much of his time.

"Maybe later, dad, if I can't find anything useful on the internet, we could talk to some of those people, maybe," I offer, placating him.

"I'm also going to be working on that thing we talked about a while back. I still want to make something to help you protect yourself, at least until the investigation is done," I remind him.

It was odd and disturbing, how little they were telling us about the investigation. A few days ago, Maddison and Emma had started coming to school again, with no sign of Sophia, and aside from the odd glare from Emma, they had utterly stopped interacting with me. It sent chills up my spike, seeing how the tables had completely turned, with the remaining members of the trio seemingly going as far out of their way as possible to avoid me now, instead of it being the other way around.

People slowly got back into the habit of making fun of me, but that wasn't even as noteworthy as Greg Veder's insistence on sitting at my table during lunch. I suspected he was taking the opportunity to avoid his own bullies my latching onto "That girl who got her bullies arrested."

Needless to say, the fact that at least one of them was probably still in police custody was gratifying, but concerning, since my identity was still at risk until this mess was concluded. Giving dad a weapon to defend himself is just prudent, in the face of that.

Breakfast passed quickly as I pondered my next moves, and not long after that, dad dropped me off at the library to do my research.

Nobody seemed to notice or care about the things I was looking up, too busy with their own research or reading, but I still made a point of looking up cape-things unrelated to Rogue Affiliation and standards-of-practice.

Along with getting a list of companies in Brockton Bay that hired rogues as either mascots or consultants, I also got a list of independent Rogues and, on a whim, some information on New Wave's policies as well, just in case.

1d20 vs 1d20 = 14, 13

Unlike my previous attempts at figuring out info on the MIRIS restrictions, I was able to find some, this time, by looking at rogues who actually signed up for it.

It seems, based on accounts from those capes, a big part of the problem with MIRIS was lack of funding, which was a big reason for why they joined in the first place. Most cities could only just afford the stipend, completely neglecting the funds that would normally be allocated to jumpstart projects involving multiple complimentary rogues. The restrictions mostly revolved around distribution, being a more relaxed version of the restrictions that Protectorate Tinkers had to follow.

Namely, it seemed that those affiliated via the initiative could build whatever they wanted, but their creations had to pass inspection before distribution, and could be rejected for public use on grounds ranging from biotinker creations having the potential to interbreed with existing animal or plant populations, regular tinker creations not meeting nuclear guidelines or having failure states that didn't meet them, or any number of other potential safety hazards.

As for the companies I dug up, the biggest company in Brockton that employed capes wasn't even restricted to Brockton Bay. Megalomart, one of the leading supermarkets in the US right now, employed no less than seven capes, primarily as mascots and for publicity stunts. The one around here specifically was actually a rogue that goes by Samaras, whose power apparently let her levitate plants that she touched, which she used for the rare street show or commercial.

Megalomart's restrictions weren't really that well known, but at the same time, it seems they primarily employ entertainers rather than using rogues for anything practical. One of their rogues apparently does do factory work though, Slipmelt, a rogue working in Alabama. He's got pyrokinesis that he uses at a factory for producing foam placemats.

Next on the list was TT0Suppliers, a company that ran out of Boston, but did work here too. Their main thing seems to be selling raw materials to tinkers and tech enthusiasts, and according to the old news I could dig up, they were frequently accused of cooperating with and hiring members of Toybox and the Elite, though nothing came of that.

Right now, they seem to have a tinker on their payroll named Backup, who specialized in duplicating mundane things like consumer electronics, as well as a shaker named Somatotropin, who has the power to "Grow" inorganic material, though it isn't explained what exactly that entails.

If nothing else, TT0Suppliers seems to have a somewhat lax set of restrictions, considering Somatotropin moonlights as an independent hero on the side.

Those being the only two companies currently employing parahumans, I turned my attention to some of the other options.

Parian apparently ran her own business through self-affiliation by establishing her second-identity through direct government channels instead of establishing someone else as being liable for any laws she broke as a parahuman. While that did mean that she didn't have a convenient third-party for me to affiliate with myself, she might still be a really good person to talk to if I decide to reveal my identity to the government to set up my second ID myself.

I don't know her that well, but it might even be possible for me to affiliate myself with her, if I wanted to get into clothes or whatever.

New Wave had a similar situation going on, despite being Independent Heroes, their cape identities were all set up through direct contact with the US government. Though, at the same time, they were also a non-profit organization, which spared them a lot of the trouble that came with trying to make money using powers.

Even then, most of the money they got seemed to be through third-party donations anyway, with only Panacea getting minimum wage for her working at the hospital, which she apparently just paid out into charities anyway.

It annoyed me to know that one of the world's best healers was apparently making minimum wage saving lives, for some reason.

On the villain side, Faultline's group apparently have an affiliation in the state of Texas, for some reason involving a bunch of problems near the Mexican border that her group helped deal with, though they're still "wanted for questioning" there, some quirk of the Texas state-government prevented their assets from being frozen there.

It's good to know that however controversial it might be, based on news articles, there are places where at least the financial side of the law can be bent if you're willing to tangle with the cartels.

I paid a small fee to print off everything I had found, and went home to talk it over with dad. While I didn't exactly feel like outing myself like New Wave, or moving to Texas to be a drug-wrangling semi-supervillain for hire, it was somehow comforting to know that I apparently had the option.

When I got home, I decided to start work on dad's self-defense weapon.

"What kind of weapons do you know how to use? I'll be trying to make something like that, or just a gun if you don't have any preferences. I've actually got a plan made for a bio-organic electrical taser gun, if you want one," I asked, preparing my workspace to do some heavy magic on it.

Dad scratches his chin, before shrugging. "I'll be honest, Taylor, the most I've used is a crowbar. Me and the boys have had to keep people out of the docks before, and I've never owned a gun that wasn't for hunting deer."

I thought about the various mana types at my disposal. Most of them just flat out weren't useful without a constant supply of magic, and while I could recharge dad's weapon every day if I needed to, it wasn't the safest way to keep it enchanted.

Dad himself didn't want to be made into a magic user, and I wasn't sure if Thoth would make a good power source or not, so I was left with only one realistic way to make a weapon that could last. Dust Magic.

Specifically, the kind of dust magic that is stronger than what I could do with just plain dirt. It wasn't relevant before, but there were differences. I noticed early on that certain materials produced more mana when I burned their dust into magic. A pile of dirt didn't produce too crazy of an amount, while something like iron dust produced more, and I had the intuition that the rarer or more magical the material, the more mana it could be transformed into.

Dad had only used blunt weapons before, so I would start with a basic baton, hollow on the inside, and shaped with a new trick at my disposal.

Recently, I had discovered a new form of mana by denaturing materials to get at purer elements, and one of them was a true godsent. Gallium Magic. Alchemy.

When I first attuned mana to Gallium, my power threw off very loud alarm bells, warning me against direct exposure and usage, and for very good reason. This mana changed the form of things it came in contact with, emitting an alchemical energy that polluted the area around it. I could only safely use it behind thick walls made of solidified light, unless I wanted to accidentally change the form of the air I'm breathing into a bunny rabbit.

I don't mean it reshaped them, it changed their form, with a distinctly conceptual bent. The liquid mana, when allowed to contact something, would distort the object in a way that hurt my eyes to watch, twisting its shape to match that of the mana, but without affecting anything else. Durability, Weight, even Function. None of them were really diminished through the use of the mana, within certain bounds.

One of my earliest tests left a blunt cut on my hand when I had tried turning a kitchen knife into a ball using Gallium magic, only for the ball to somehow nick me when I picked it up.

I got the distinct feeling that, for example, I could have turned a chainsaw into a rapier, and seen no meaningful change in functionality, ignoring how poor of a weapon chainsaws are normally, of course.

With all of that said, it was the perfect magic for putting together dad's weapon. Using plants, little bits of machinery, and hours upon hours of focusing on the mana to make it flow and shape into the correct ways, I was able to create a suitable weapon for him.

First, I took a long branch, and used plant magic to turn it into a polished-looking pen.

Next, I took a cast-iron pan and a bunch of fishing weights, and used Gallium Magic to reshape them into little cylinders, small enough to take an angle grinder to. Each one must have been five pounds at least, which made it incredibly precarious, trying to grind compressed dust off of them.

When I had the compressed dust made, I filled the pen up with the heavy particles. Since they were so compressed, the amount of mana I would be able to extract from them would be greater.

Finally, I added a Cast Iron Ring around the end of the pen, as well as a ring right below that one, made by applying Gallium Magic to a tape-recorder. It wouldn't be able to accept normal-sized cassette tapes, sadly, but that was irrelevant, considering it only needed to house the one that I recorded specifically for this tool.

Finally, I channeled magic into it, focusing on the patterns of flowing energy inside of it. When the button was pressed, it would disturb the flow of magic, making it consume the iron and lead dust, and emit it from the tip of the pen as a solid mana. This would also press the "play" button on the cassette recorder, repeating the magic words I had recorded onto it, if more crudely.

From the outside, it looked like an ordinary, if fancy, wooden pen. When the button was pressed however, heavy solid magic would erupt from the tip, and the tape would play, my voice uttering "Ting Tash Shweun Kerchunk", making the rod of mana bloom into a forest of curled fractaline, razor-sharp spikes.

When I gave the finished product to dad, he puffed immediately at the weight. "This thing is really heavy, huh?" he points out, making me realize I should have probably used some kind of lightening magic on it.

"That won't be a problem, will it? It's got like five pounds of metal powder in it," I explain nervously.

"It uses the powder as a power supply, you just click the pen pointed away from you, and," I start, only for him to test it out for himself.

I smile as he jerks back at the sudden glowing thorn-branch in his hands, the entire thing peeling open like frayed wood.

"Damn!" he says in shock, holding the weapon away from himself. "Taylor, if I swung this at someone, it'd put them straight in the hospital!" he yelps uncomfortably.

I shrug at this "Then don't use it on anyone you don't need to send to the hospital," I say.

He nods, holding the mass of thorny spikes away from himself. "So how do I turn this thing off?" he asks.

I swallow. That's a good question.

After giving dad a Voidmetal pocket-knife so he could "trim" the branch off when he was done with it, I decided to bring up what I had been considering doing alone. Now that dad at least had a way to protect himself, though, I felt like I should really tell him the truth.

"I called someone, by the way. I think another parahuman knows who I am. I got a phone number a few weeks ago, and when I called it, the girl on the other line warned me that I shouldn't go to the boardwalk anymore," I explain to him as he gingerly puts the battle-pen into a holster I whipped up for him.

"Oh?" he says, looking perturbed that I didn't tell him about this before calling the number.

I wince. "Well, she was just warning me that there were bad people on the boardwalk who were looking for someone that looked like me, since I was apparently acting weird while buying stuff from there, and she suggested that we should meet up somewhere. A cafe this Friday."

"I see. Are you going to go?" he asks, watching my face carefully.

I nod. "She seems to know a lot, and might be willing to help us somehow," I explain.

"I'd like it if you came with me, though, just in case" I ask, dreading the answer.

He lets out a sigh at this, giving me a quick hug. "Yes, of course. It's a relief that you're at least willing to come to me about this. I'll clear my schedule," he responds.

"So that's why you decided to start on the uhh... pen. Right?" he continues, making me flush a bit with embarrassment.

"It might have been a factor. I was caught up with other stuff until now, though, so it was always going to get done eventually," I respond.

He chuckles at this. "Well, you know what they say about 'eventually'."

I nod. "Before any of that though, I really should practice my magic some more. I need to get my synthesis up to snuff," I say, relieved that this conversation didn't go in a worse direction than it did.

He nods. "Don't overwork yourself, Taylor. I'll be sure to keep your gift handy. What should I say if someone asks where I got the damn thing?" he says, considering the matter.

I frown a bit at this. It might be a faux pas for a rogue to just hand out pseudo-tinkertech weapons to random people, and I'm pretty sure people could figure out that I made it, once I start going out in public with my abilities.

"Just say that Sage is a friend of the dockworker's union?" I offer. He laughs at that, mussing my hair up.

"Sounds like Sage keeps good company then." he chortles.

I can't help but smile. This is good.

Despite my work on dad's weapon turning out acceptable, my magical control still needs a lot of work. Gallium and Synthesis both rely on me being able to shape mana in a very precise way, with a lot of willpower and focus to make them go where I want in exactly the way I want.

Which is why I'm here now in my lab, churning out birds made of solid light.

One of my mana types, "Sunbird", synthesizes a bird made of solidified light, using some of the same principles that my golem magic uses. The main difference, though, is that light is vastly cheaper than silicon to synthesize wholesale, allowing me to learn more quickly to control ray magic. In a way, precise channeling reminds me a lot of how old printers work.

The main thing when doing synthesis is that I'm basically drawing using a laser beam, or I'm spray-painting using a flashlight. In order to synthesize a specific shape, I'm not just bringing it into being, but rather, I'm manipulating the rays of mana, making them hit the object I'm synthesizing. This reaction between ray and substrate then leads to a growth of material sprouting up out of it.

When using synthesis on things like rocks and concrete, I have to be careful, because if the rays go inside of the rock, the material grows inside of it as well, leading to a buildup of stress that I don't have any way to fix. More than a few sharp pebbles were made from me accidentally synthesizing too much birdstone inside of the rocks I was bringing in from outside.

Furthermore, each type of rock had... Quirks, for lack of a better word. All forms of basic stone synthesized themselves, but some of them had little differences between them. Granite, for example, tried its hardest to synthesize material in such a way that it broke the stone into triangular pyramids. Something about the nature of the magic wanted it to take on those triangular shapes inside the rock, which led to the pointy pyramids being produced if I didn't watch myself.

I wondered why Mana was like this, for a brief moment. Why even subtle changes, some so small as to be basically irrelevant, could result in vastly different mana types. Sand was mostly just Quartz, but they had entirely different mana types.

Graphite and Diamonds were both made of pure carbon, but one produced more pronounced life magic than the other, complete with stronger side effects.

I wondered if something like that could be done intentionally by my power. Somehow changing the arrangement of matter in an existing object, in order to change it's mana type.

But between those bouts of pondering, I practiced. Rocks broke, little golems formed, and flashes of light erupted from my workshop when I realized the Sunbirds were fragile and a bit too dumb to not break themselves flapping around the room.

By the end of it, I felt worn out, surrounded by little fragments of solidified light, and more comfortable with the idea of synthesizing items from scratch, using nothing but the magical, light-like rays that I could summon up from my soul.

Before going to bed, I decided to take a little piece of sea-glass and throw it up on my roof, facing the ocean so it could absorb the green flashes of the sea.

[][Mystery Girl] Write-In plan for dealing with the velcro-girl in the upcoming meeting. (Goals and Approach.)

School	Attunement Chain	Shorthand	Type	Effects	Other
	Thaum > Calcium Carbonate > Silicon	Boring Gel Creation	Elemental Ray	This mana creates Boring Gel when applied to Silicon	Boring Gel: A mostly solid gel of no particular importance.
	(Thaum > Calcium Carbonate) + (Denature) > Bread	Unhunger Snack	Liquid	This mana takes the form of an edible ball which undoes hunger by dividing chemicals in the body.
	(Thaum > Calcium Carbonate) + (Denature) > Bread > Silicon	Unhunger Pellet	Elemental Ray	This mana creates a pill of magical silica. When eaten, it reverses hunger by dividing chemicals in the body.
	Thaum > Timeshift Crystal	Make Time	Elemental Ray	This mana gives the appearance of slowed time by creating additional time in an area.
	Thaum > Void Metal	Essence Drain	Elemental Ray	This mana drains the essence from nearby magic, eradicating it to create elemental essencia.
	Thaum > Sea Glass	Secret Keeper	Elemental Ray	This mana carries the secrets of the sea. It won't give them up to those who have not seen them firsthand.
	Thaum > Beaconstone	Lightshare Bond	Elemental Ray	This mana absorbs light that comes near it, releasing that light in all directions.
	Thaum > Curestone	Curestone Access	Elemental Ray	This mana carries life energy that was contained in the Curestone that it was attuned to.
	Thaum > Songstress Secret Stone	Vibrato Stone Creation	Elemental Ray	This mana creates a different stone depending on where it is attuned to Songstress Secret Stone when applied to it.	Vibrato Stone: A colorful stone whose properties depend on the location it was made in.
	Thaum > Rainrock	Stonedew Creation	Elemental Ray	This mana creates Stonedew when applied to Rainrock	Stonedew: A stormy grey liquid. It tastes strongly of minerals.
	Thaum > Regal Flakes	Pulling Force	Ray	This mana applies pulling forces to whatever it is applied to.
	Thaum > Iron	Force	Ray	This mana applies kinetic energy to what it touches.
	Thaum > Sulfur	Hellfire	Elemental Liquid	This mana transforms value into heat, burning away a target's worth.
	Thaum > Gallium	Polymorph	Alchemical Liquid	This mana changes an object's shape and form to match itself. The object's properties, however, such as its mass, durability and capabilities, are not diminished.	Warning: Conceptual Effect. Unrestricted usage presents high risk of unwanted consequences.
	Thaum > Chromium	Strip	Ray	This mana strips a target clean. It can result in minor abrasions or bruising on organic targets.
	Thaum > Calcium	Greater Undeath	Liquid	This mana kills the living, raises the dead, and makes things under its influence far less flexible, in exchange for greater hardness. Things empowered by this magic are destroyed by the addition of Life.
	Thaum > Salt > Copper > Copper > Copper	Slow	Ray	This mana attempts to slow time for the things it affects. It is very slightly stronger when being used to prevent a combination of things.
	Arcane > Sand	Sandbringer	Elemental Ray	This mana draws to itself the essencial sands around it, creating sands however it can if none are present.
	Arcane > Copper	Deja Vu	Ray	This mana brings forth the past most aligned to the present.
	Arcane > Graphite	Realm of the Living	Liquid (Miasma)	This mana takes the form of a miasma that draws living beings into its radius, and lessens their ability to kill one another.
	Thaum > Kidney > Liver	Poison Drinker	Liquid	This mana grants a target the ability to draw harmful things out of something else, and absorb it into itself.
	Thaum > Graphite > Copper	Revert	Ray	This mana attempts to heal a target by rewinding minor wounds.	Overuse of this magic can lead to the user periodically experiencing "jolts" of randomly rewound time on occassion.
	Thaum > Graphite > Copper > Copper	Rewind 2	Ray	This mana appears to reverse the flow of time slightly, preferring to reverse time in order to heal minor wounds.
	Thaum > Sweat > Graphite > Coal	Greedy Energy Spheres	Liquid	This mana makes a target release their energy in the form of orbs that energize nearby living things
	Thaum > Kidney > Graphite	Excrete	Liquid	This mana makes a target exude harmful substances through the path of least resistance.
	Thaum > Skin > Paper	Skin Tone	Liquid	This mana colors a target the same color as the skin it was originally attuned to.
	Thaum > Salt > Copper > Copper > Copper	Almost Time	Ray	This mana draws dust to itself and can physically impact a target. Whispers of time-slowing magic influence it.
	Thaum > Crystal Quartz > Copper > Copper	Chrono	Ray	This mana appears to alter the flow of time slightly, preferring to alter time in order to meet deadlines.
	Thaum > Zinc > Graphite > Platinum	Twitch Reflex	Ray	Afflicts a target with a form of electricity that makes their body overreact to commands, turning slight movements into overblown jerks, and normal grips into white-knuckled joint-stressing ones.
	Thaum > Graphite > Zinc > Platinum	Paralysis Theft	Ray	This mana afflicts two targets, curing the paralysis of one by temporarily stealing bio-electricity from the other.
	Thaum > Crystal Quartz > Lead > Lead > Lead	Counterbalance	Ray	This mana warps gravity, dragging objects onto things in the area until they all have equal weight.
	Thaum > (Gravity) > Graphite	Graviton Exchanger Mutation	Liquid	This mana mutates organic material, giving it structures that manipulate gravity.
	Thaum > Platinum > Eye	Lightning Vision	Liquid	This mana interprets Electricity, turning it into an image.
	Thaum > Brain > Eye	Eye's Mind	Liquid	This mana enables the user to see thoughts, especially those contained within the brain it was attuned to originally.
	Thaum > Eye > Brain	Mind's Eye	Liquid	This mana refines thoughts, turning them into more visual representations.
	Thaum > Quartz > Salt > Salt > Salt	Fractal Blade	Ray	This mana seperates things on contact, creating cuts that branch out like a tree, fractalizing for as long as the magic can allow for.

Attunement	Shorthand	Concept	Effects	Other
Wool	Puff	[Wind Tools of the Beast]	The user becomes lighter on their feet, the more wool they have equipped.	Set Bonus undiscovered.
Platinum	Nul-Thunder	[Lightning]	The user becomes more aligned to the Lightning Element. They will resist it more effectively, the more platinum they are wearing.	Set Bonus undiscovered.

Taylor has discovered the power of Alchemy! Future plans will include the option to replace a [Project] with up to ten total Alchemy tests. (Only votes towards replacing a project are required for all Alchemy Tests to be included, Riot-Style)

Taylor has discovered a non-synthetic Elemental Magic! Magic capable of synthesizing matter instead of manipulating the elements will be retitled "Synthesis" instead of "Elemental Ray"

Aluminum has been renamed an Elemental Ray Magic in light of this discovery.

Taylor has invented simple spells offscreen! They have been added to the Informational Post.

Combinatorial Explosion (Worm/Original)

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Combinatorial Explosion Mana Types

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