Adhoc vote count started by Shadestyle on Feb 17, 2021 at 4:58 AM, finished with 22 posts and 16 votes.
[thetruth]
[X][The Truth] "I guess in some ways I have it easier than you... Generally, my powers handle the "What if" portion of experiments, so I can learn the basics of what something does without actually setting off a replicating vampire curse, or creating an undead plague, or any of the other dozen horrifying things I've accidentally created. But I know that same urge of wanting to just be able to let loose, to see what I could create if I shoved all my created biological mutagens into a single creature. It's part of the reason I mess with plants so much. They don't feel pain, don't risk becoming sentient like my pigeon, and if I make something horrifying I can just destroy it. Fortunately, most of my creations require a constant source of my energy, so I generally don't have to worry about them replicating... So I guess I keep myself from going too far by finding harmless outlets for my urge to experiment."
-[X][The Truth] "The Medieval Tibetan Sage Milarepa teaches that the healthiest way to avoid great evil is to accept the small evil within yourself. By rejecting those aspects of the self, one leaves them to run rampant the moment they lose control, whereas coming to terms with one's flaws allows one to take them into account and temper them. A caged and starved mountain lion is more likely to wreak havoc set loose in a forest than one that has been for all its life free to roam and feed in moderation. I'm rambling aren't I?"
--[X][The Truth] "But in the end, I don't think it's wrong to wonder or think about bad things. Actions and thoughts are two different things, it's alright to have thoughts as long as you master yourself. Sometimes you also have to decide what is right for you and what you can live with. Not what others may think, not what others may want, or feel. My rule of thumb is, as long as I don't hurt anyone, hurt myself, or my future I think it is fine."
[X][The Truth] "I don't freakin know! I've done things that were, in hindsight, probably a bad idea to ensure my own safety and that of my loved ones, even if it never actually hurt anybody. I guess it's a matter of not doing things I don't think anyone else would be justified in doing and keeping in mind that being able to open rifts in the fabric of space-time isn't a bad thing as long as I don't actually do it. Also, being just selfish enough that I bend morally instead of snapping. You don't have to be a great person as long as you try to avoid being a bad person and not being a bad person is a lot easier."
-[X][The Truth] continue rambling "The Medieval Tibetan Sage Milarepa teaches that the healthiest way to avoid great evil is to accept the small evil within yourself. By rejecting those aspects of the self, one leaves them to run rampant the moment they lose control, whereas coming to terms with one's flaws allows one to take them into account and temper them. A caged and starved mountain lion is more likely to wreak havoc set loose in a forest than one that has been for all its life free to roam and feed in moderation."
--[X][The Truth] continue rambling "In the end, I acknowledge my weakness, my flaws, my failings, and try my best little by little to be better than yesterday. Sometimes that's asking for help from my Dad, sometimes that's remembering what I did wrong last time and avoiding it the next time, and sometimes I fail. But as long as I don't give up I won't fall off that ledge. Plus I can completely control my magic and can destroy or dismiss it if things go wrong. Which admittedly is a pretty good way to contain whatever I do. " Mutter to yourself "Probably should have some containment procedures if that ever fails."
--[X][The Truth] "A-anyways! Do you understand what I'm saying?"
[X][The Truth] "I don't hold back, because this is me, and I trust in myself. Holding myself back just means I don't know what I can achieve and if the consequences are negative, to develop a method to work around that."
[X][The Truth] "I don't freakin know! I've done things that were, in hindsight, probably a bad idea to ensure my own safety and that of my loved ones, even if it never actually hurt anybody. I guess it's a matter of not doing things I don't think anyone else would be justified in doing and keeping in mind that being able to open rifts in the fabric of space time is isn't a bad thing as long as I don't actually do it. Also, being just selfish enough that I bend morally instead of snapping. You don't have to be a great person as long as you try to avoid being a bad person and not being a bad person is a lot easier."
-[X][The Truth] continue rambling "The Medieval Tibetan Sage Milarepa teaches that the healthiest way to avoid great evil is to accept the small evil within yourself. By rejecting those aspects of the self, one leaves them to run rampant the moment they lose control, whereas coming to terms with one's flaws allows one to take them into account and temper them. A caged and starved mountain lion is more likely to wreck havoc set loose in a forest than one that has been for all its life free to roam and feed in moderation. I'm rambling aren't I?"
[X][The Truth] I guess in some ways I have it easier than you... Generally my powers handles the "What if" portion of experiments, so I can learn the basics of what something does without actually setting off a replicating vampire curse, or creating an undead plague or any of the other dozen horrifying things I've accidentally created. But I know that same urge of wanting to just be able to let loose, to see what I could create if I shoved all my created biological mutagens into a single creature. It's part of the reason I mess with plants so much. They don't feel pain, don't risk becoming sentient like my pigeon, and if I make something horrifying I can just destroy it. Fortunately most of my creations require a constant source of my energy, so I generally don't have to worry about them replicating... So I guess I keep myself from going too far by finding harmless outlets for my urge to experiment.
[X][The Truth] "I guess in some ways I have it easier than you... Generally, my powers handle the "What if" portion of experiments, so I can learn the basics of what something does without actually setting off a replicating vampire curse, or creating an undead plague, or any of the other dozen horrifying things I've accidentally created. But I know that same urge of wanting to just be able to let loose, to see what I could create if I shoved all my created biological mutagens into a single creature. It's part of the reason I mess with plants so much. They don't feel pain, don't risk becoming sentient like my pigeon, and if I make something horrifying I can just destroy it. Fortunately, most of my creations require a constant source of my energy, so I generally don't have to worry about them replicating... So I guess I keep myself from going too far by finding harmless outlets for my urge to experiment."
-[X][The Truth] "The Medieval Tibetan Sage Milarepa teaches that the healthiest way to avoid great evil is to accept the small evil within yourself. By rejecting those aspects of the self, one leaves them to run rampant the moment they lose control, whereas coming to terms with one's flaws allows one to take them into account and temper them. A caged and starved mountain lion is more likely to wreak havoc set loose in a forest than one that has been for all its life free to roam and feed in moderation. I'm rambling aren't I?"
-[X][The Truth] "But in the end, I don't think it's wrong to wonder or think about bad things. Actions and thoughts are two different things, it's alright to have thoughts as long as you master yourself. Sometimes you also have to decide what is right for you and what you can live with. Not what others may think, not what others may want, or feel. My rule of thumb is, as long as I don't hurt anyone, hurt myself, or my future I think it is fine."
[X][The Truth] "I guess in some ways I have it easier than you... Generally, my powers handle the "What if" portion of experiments, so I can learn the basics of what something does without actually setting off a replicating vampire curse, or creating an undead plague, or any of the other dozen horrifying things I've accidentally created. But I know that same urge of wanting to just be able to let loose, to see what I could create if I shoved all my created biological mutagens into a single creature. It's part of the reason I mess with plants so much. They don't feel pain, don't risk becoming sentient like my pigeon, and if I make something horrifying I can just destroy it. Fortunately, most of my creations require a constant source of my energy, so I generally don't have to worry about them replicating... So I guess I keep myself from going too far by finding harmless outlets for my urge to experiment."
[X][The Truth] My power is dangerous and versatile beyond anything I can imagine. Part of the reason I experiment is so that I know better how it works and what I can and can't do, so that I'm not tempted to try something crazy and untested in a situation where I'm not able to be more careful.
[X][The Truth] "I guess in some ways I have it easier than you... Generally, my powers handle the "What if" portion of experiments, so I can learn the basics of what something does without actually setting off a replicating vampire curse, or creating an undead plague, or any of the other dozen horrifying things I've accidentally created. But I know that same urge of wanting to just be able to let loose, to see what I could create if I shoved all my created biological mutagens into a single creature. It's part of the reason I mess with plants so much. They don't feel pain, don't risk becoming sentient like my pigeon, and if I make something horrifying I can just destroy it. Fortunately, most of my creations require a constant source of my energy, so I generally don't have to worry about them replicating... So I guess I keep myself from going too far by finding harmless outlets for my urge to experiment."
-[X][The Truth] "The Medieval Tibetan Sage Milarepa teaches that the healthiest way to avoid great evil is to accept the small evil within yourself. By rejecting those aspects of the self, one leaves them to run rampant the moment they lose control, whereas coming to terms with one's flaws allows one to take them into account and temper them. A caged and starved mountain lion is more likely to wreak havoc set loose in a forest than one that has been for all its life free to roam and feed in moderation. I'm rambling aren't I?"
--[X][The Truth] "But in the end, I don't think it's wrong to wonder or think about bad things. Actions and thoughts are two different things, it's alright to have thoughts as long as you master yourself. Sometimes you also have to decide what is right for you and what you can live with. Not what others may think, not what others may want, or feel. My rule of thumb is, as long as I don't hurt anyone, hurt myself, or my future I think it is fine."
--[X][The Truth] Also, link Amy the Wikipedia page on "intrusive thoughts".
[X][The Truth] There can't be an "evil" way in how you use your power, only in how it affects other people. As long as you keep experimentation contained and thoroughly clean up anything potentially dangerous and/or difficult to control, you'll be golden.
"I guess the truth is... It's easier for me," I begin.
"My power tells me what a given form of mana will do before I really use it in earnest. I don't need to create a plague of undead to know that attuning mana to Bone three times in a row results in a mana that can do that," I offer as an example.
"I don't have to inflict a vampiric curse on someone to know that combining a Bioluminescent Mutagenic Magic with a Blood-Infused Sunlight Flame magic will result in that," I continue.
Amy sags a bit at this, despairing over her own power's limitations.
"But I know the urge you're talking about. That urge to use it all. To see what would happen if I didn't hold back," I insist, remembering that night, so long ago.
I pointed my finger straight at Emma's home, and for a brief moment, I considered ending our conflict for good.
"I've gone too far before. I haven't lived up to the standard you think I have. I've done things when I was frightened that I shouldn't have done at all," I admit.
"With my powers, it's hard not to feel a bit godlike. I can breathe life into flesh, twist it into whatever I want. I can raise the dead, and toy with the souls of others. The elements are in the palm of my hand, and I keep getting stronger and stronger. I keep getting more and more power, and I keep learning more and more magic, each more terrific and terrifying than the last."
"Sure, my creations usually need a constant supply of my magic to keep working, but..."
"If I wanted to, I could be the world's next S-Rank Threat, if I tried hard enough," I shrug.
Amy looks down, disappointed. "So you're no different from the rest. You just haven't done anything bad enough yet."
Her words hurt, but I'm not done.
Shaking my head, I correct her. "It's easy to make mistakes, Amy. It's so easy, but what you're talking about, the sort of monsters that give us a bad name? What they do is hard."
I slap my hands on the table, startling Amy out of her moping. "I refuse to believe that what Bonesaw does is easy. I refuse to believe that Nilbog has done what he did without a lot of hard work and effort. I refuse to think that someone could make one little mistake and end up where they are. If it were as easy as breathing for them to do what they've done, then we're all already dead, and we just don't know it yet," I grit out.
"I once read somewhere that everyone has evil in them, and the more you hold it in, the worse it gets. The more effort you put into trying to keep control, the worse off you'll be when you lose it."
"But I don't just use my powers however I want because I'm afraid of that. I do it because I'm not afraid to make mistakes, and I do the wrong thing sometimes but... I try to fix things. I try to clean up my messes. All I ever wanted to do with my powers was to make my life better."
"That's why I decided to become a Rogue. I wanted to be happy and safe. For my family to be happy and safe. I want enough money so that I don't have to worry about money, and it's selfish, and I'm not pretending it isn't."
"Why is that so wrong? Why should I have to be perfect? Why should you have to be perfect?!" I shout, slamming the table again in frustration.
"It's not wrong! I don't just fight off my urges like they're out to kill me Amy! I just think about what I'm doing before I do it! I think hard about what I want, and try to figure out a good way to get it!"
"I want a sword, so I make one! I want to use my powers, so I use them! I want to make money, so I do it legally! For fuck's sake, I wanted to figure out what happens when reality folds in on itself kicking and screaming, and instead of driving myself crazy trying to pretend I didn't have the power to do it, I bit the bullet and did it anyway!"
I take deep breaths, trying to calm myself as Amy's 'scruples' start to wear on my nerves, the more and more I think about them.
"I'm sorry," I finally say, stepping away from the girl.
"But it's really that simple. You want to know how to keep from going too far, Amy? You want to know how to use your real powers without hurting other people? Without becoming a bad person? Because if you really want to know, I'll tell you the only way I know how," I demand, and she slowly, hesitantly nods, still wary of me after my fit.
I shrug with finality, all the energy of the past few moments starting to drain out of me.
"You find out the hard way," I say with steel in my tone.
The silence stretches out for a long time. Too long.
Eventually, Amy coughs. Then she laughs a bit, and a bit more, until she's helplessly bent over.
"T-that has to be the worst advice," she giggles uncontrollably, "That I've ever gotten."
She shakes her head. "You tell me how your power is what makes it easy for you to avoid making huge mistakes, then you tell me to use my best judgment, because if I don't do a bunch of little bad things, I'm just fucked anyway."
She puts a hand on my shoulder.
"Don't ever do public speaking, alright?" she says with a small smile.
With that, she walks over to the door, turning back to me with one last little comment.
"You gave me a lot to think about. Thank you."
"See you around Sage."
And then she left.
1d20 vs 1d20 = 6, 18
I consider testing a few more things, but the conversation left me wrung out, and tired.
I went to bed, hoping that I got through to Amy.
New Task unlocked! [Business] actions may be taken now to further your standing as a Rogue!
Tasks modified! [Alchemy] actions have now been generalized to [Advanced] Tests! [Mana] actions have now been generalized to [Simple] tests!
[Advanced] Tests can be any test you can imagine, but are not unlimited. They deal with things such as complex magic or Alchemy, and require more than one vote to pass in most cases.
[Simple] Tests include Phonem, Rune, Transmutation, and Attunement tests. Any simple test may be included in an update, but are unaffected by vote quantity. Use them for mere curiosities and easy things to find out.
Second week of June Plans:
[][Taylor] What sort of things will you do as Taylor?
-[][Taylor] Hang out with Greg, instead of merely tolerating his presence.
-[][Taylor] You'll spend your time investigating.
--[][Taylor] Investigate the gang attack on the Barnes family last year. You now know everything that happened. Now it's time to confront Emma and find out why. Why did she do this to you? (Write-In Plan) (Taylor is not yet fully ready for this)
-[][Taylor] Something Else (Write-In)
[][Sage] What will you do as Sage?
-[][Sage] Go out healing with Panacea for the fourth straight week in a row.
-[][Sage] You'll spend your time investigating.
--[][Sage] Investigate the gang attack on the Barnes family last year. You now know everything that happened. Now it's time to start tracking down Shadow Stalker and find out the truth. Why did they do this to you?
-[][Sage] Something Else (Write-In)
[][Business] What will you do in the name of good business this week? (Multiple Options may be taken)
-[][Business] Make contact with an entity publicly in a professional capacity. (Write-in)
-[][Business] Rent a building out for personal use.
--[][Business] Rent a building near the rich part of town. (High Prices, High Safety, High Scrutiny. Bonus to selling Luxury goods)
--[][Business] Rent a building in the cheaper parts of town. (Low Prices, Low Safety, Low Scrutiny. Bonus to selling All goods)
--[][Business] Rent a building in the worst parts of town. (Insignificant Prices, No Safety, No Scrutiny. Backroom Dealings Enabled.)
-[][Business] Fund a venture.
--[][Business] Purchase new materials and supplies (Write-in either a budget or specific things to buy)
--[][Business] Fund a project. (-1000$, A second [Project] action will be done this turn)
--[][Business] Fund experiments. (-100$, three additional [Advanced] Tests are added)
-[][Business] Establish a new way of making money using the means at your disposal
--[][Business] Sell spices door to door.
--[][Business] Try healing for profit.
--[][Business] Write-in.
[][Project] You'll begin a project of some kind.
-[][Project] Your metalworking leaves much to be desired. You will pursue information on things like heat treating, quenching, forging, alloying, and other mundane metallurgical techniques.
-[][Project] Something Else (Write-In)
-[][Project] The hunger to experiment consumes your mind. You'll discard a project this week. (If this vote wins, up to ten Write-in [][Advanced] experiments will be processed this turn instead of one major project.)
[][Advanced] You have (Three) Advanced Tests Remaining. (Write-in)
-[][Advanced] Assemble a suit to test a True Attunement's Set Bonus.
-[][Advanced] Discover additional Cantrips of a particular Set Bonus. (Limit
-[][Advanced] Perform an Alchemical Experiment.
-[][Advanced] Attempt to force magic to do as you wish it.
-[][Advanced] Test the effects of a Spell
-[][Advanced] Test the effects of an arrangement of Runes
-[][Advanced] Something Else
[][Simple] Perform a simple experiment. (Write-In)
-[][Simple] Test a substance's Mana Attunement
-[][Simple] Attempt to string together an Attunement Chain
-[][Simple] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement
-[][Simple] Test a specific Phonem's effect
-[][Simple] Study a target for Phomens
-[][Simple] Test a specific Rune's effect
-[][Simple] Study a target for Runes
-[][Simple] Test a Transmutation (Choose a Synthesis Mana and a Non-Silicate Target)
-[][Simple] Something Else
Three Research Gained. Fifty Research Spent.
Stats
Research: 10
A good start.
Overall Health: 14
You're as strong as a healthy child. If that child had the power of magic from birth, that is.
Overall Magical Power: 14
You are a skilled Channeler, using raw Willpower and attuned mana to plow your way through problems. You dabble in other magics that both enhance and detract from your raw mana channeling, such as Wizardry, Alchemy, and Runecraft.
Overall Monetary Power: 1
You're a Parahuman-for-profit, just starting out. You have few connections and no source of income. Yet.
Abilities
Magical Soul: C
Rating: Trump ???
Your soul emits magic. The stronger your soul, the more powerful your magic. Your resolve to discover the truth behind your best friend and worst enemy has strengthened your soul.
Magical Body: F
Rating: ???
Your body contains magic, your soul empowering your body without your direct intervention.
Magical Power: B
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 A 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: S
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to never forget anything, no matter what it is, so long as it pertains to a mana experiment.
School
Attunement Chain
Shorthand
Type
Effects
Other
Stone
Transmute > Stone > Iron
Defined Iron Transmutation
Transmutation
This mana transforms iron into a hard, hemetite-like stone.
Defined Ore can be smelted and refined into Artificial Thunderbolt Iron and Ironstone Slag.
Thunderbolt Iron is a magical metal that fell from the heavens, and carries the force of a meteorite within its essence.
Ironstone Slag is a form of iron that is brittle and hard.
Stone
Transmute > Stone > Gold
Defined Gold Transmutation
Transmutation
This mana transforms gold into a shimmering golden quartz, with streaks of magical gold embedded in it
Defined Ore has currently unknown properties.
Stone
Transmute > Stone > Silver
Defined Silver Transmutation
Transmutation
This mana transforms silver into a hard, argentite-like stone.
Defined Ore has currently unknown properties.
Brain
Thaum > Eye > Copper > Brain
Memory Absorbtion
Liquid
This mana absorbs memories into itself on contact, creating thoughts of the past.
Beryllium
Arcane > Beryllium
Duel of Ideals
Alchemical Liquid (Miasma)
This mana reveals conflicts within its radius, transforming objects into physical ammassments of conflicting concepts.
WARNING: Extreme Conceptual Risk. Do not make contact with water saturated with this magic. Do not draw mana from water currently saturated with this magic. Do not extract matter from water currently saturated with this magic. Do not extract information from water currently saturated with this magic. Do not extract energy from water currently saturated with this magic.
Protective Magic strongly recommended. Restrictive Magic strongly recommended. Tailored Vessel for use of this magic strongly recommended.
Indium
Arcane > Indium
Disenchant
Alchemical Ray
This mana erases effects of mana it is applied to, and can do so selectively.
Warning: Conceptual Effect. Unrestricted usage presents high risk of unwanted consequences.
Cadmium
Arcane > Cadmium
Dragon's Tithe
Alchemical Ray
This mana transforms concepts it comes in contact with into the concept of dragons.
Long Distance Information Transfer Detected.
Indium
Arcane > Beryllium > Indium
Magical Honor Duel
Alchemical Ray
This mana forces the conflicts within magic to resolve, destroying the concepts that are weaker than the ones they conflict with.
Warning: Conceptual Effect. Unrestricted usage presents high risk of unwanted consequences.
Beryllium
Arcane > Cadmium > Beryllium
Dragon Arbiter
Alchemical Liquid (Miasma)
This mana takes the form of a murky draconic figure that breathes a mist of alchemical miasma in the water. This Miasma seems to reveal conceptual conflicts in what it touches.
WARNING: Extreme Conceptual Risk. Do not make contact with water saturated with this magic. Do not draw mana from water currently saturated with this magic. Do not extract matter from water currently saturated with this magic. Do not extract information from water currently saturated with this magic. Do not extract energy from water currently saturated with this magic.
Protective Magic strongly recommended. Restrictive Magic strongly recommended. Tailored Vessel for use of this magic strongly recommended.
Long Distance Information Transfer Detected.
Mercury
Arcane > Mercury
Conscientia
Alchemical Liquid (Solid)
This mana emits concepts when used to perform an act.
Antimony
Arcane > Antimony
Symbolic Gesture
Alchemical Ray
This mana transforms what it comes in contact with in a symbolic way.
Warning: Conceptual Effect. Unrestricted usage presents high risk of unwanted consequences.
Arcane > Corona Pollentia
Eldritch Executor
Liquid
This mana attempts to do something, depending on the parahuman it came from.
Water
Thaum > Corona Pollentia > Water
Arcane Eldritch Relay
Wave
In addition to the effects of Eldritch Relay, this mana reacts to sound as Arcane Mana does.
This mana mutates plants it comes in contact with, making them absorb the image of the sun during the day, and display the image of the sun when it crosses directly underneath the plant. The light this plant emits at the stroke of midnight seems to make its surroundings look like the opposite side of the planet.
This mana transmutes plant material into Sapblood, an amber sugary and acidic material.
Uranium
Thaum > Uranium
Divine Air
Ray
This Mana seems to turn air into ozone, this ozone, in addition to conducting electricity, also seems to strip biomass from anything it touches, eradicating it.
Voidmetal
Thaum > Stone > Voidmetal
Voidglass Creation
Synthesis
This mana produces Voidglass when applied to Voidmetal
Voidglass: This material absorbs all light and rays that pass through it, including magical ones.
Attunement
Shorthand
Concept
Effects
Other
True > Ice
Unflappability
[Cold Mystery]
The user becomes more resistant to having their intentions read, the more ice they have equipped.
Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Blood
Never Give Up
[Will of Vitality]
The user's body moves as they desire it, the more blood the user has equipped.
Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Bone
Necromancy Mastery
[Undeath]
The user and their equipment become stiffer and harder, the more bone they have equipped.
Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Wheat
Wheat Mastery
[Further Wheat]
The user gains more from harvests, the more wheat is equipped.
Wheat grows around the user wherever they walk, and on whatever ground they touch. (Requires an Advanced Test to discover Cantrips)
True > Sage
Sage Mastery
[Further Sage]
The user is more resistant to ailments, the more sage is equipped.
The user can purify or nullify the poison of things they touch at-will. (Requires an Advanced Test to discover Cantrips)
True > Aluminum
Element Dance
[Void]
The user aligns to the greatest element near them, the more aluminum is equipped.
The user may enter Elemental Planes through extreme concentrations or intensities of an element. (Requires an Advanced Test to discover Cantrips)
[X][Taylor] What sort of things will you do as Taylor?
-[X][Taylor] Contact Lisa to find information about other local parahumans. Maybe she can shed some light on how you have a memory of a bullet going through your leg without it ever happening...
[X][Taylor] What sort of things will you do as Taylor?
-[x][Taylor] Something Else (Go to the library and check out multiple fantasy books. Even if you can't learn from them directly you can use them as inspiration.)
[X][Taylor] What sort of things will you do as Taylor?
-[x][Taylor] Something Else (Go to the library and check out multiple fantasy books. Even if you can't learn from them directly you can use them as inspiration.)
-[X][Taylor] Hang out with Greg, instead of merely tolerating his presence.
--[x][Taylor] Ask Greg for more suggestions of fantasy media
[X][Sage] What will you do as Sage?
-[x][Sage] Something Else (You should meet up with Lisa. Something weird happened to you and you could a Thinker to help figure it out.)
[X][Sage] What will you do as Sage?
-[X][Sage] Go out healing with Panacea for the fourth straight week in a row.
-[X][Sage] Create a small rod of Pandore and ask Glory Girl if she can break it (aim away from anything important in case it does break). Maybe her strength will be enough to unlock its potential.
[X][Sage] What will you do as Sage?
-[X][Sage] Go out healing with Panacea for the fourth straight week in a row.
-[x][Business] Establish a new way of making money using the means at your disposal
--[X][Business] Sell spices door to door.
--[X][Business] Try healing for profit. (Following what we suggested for Panacea. $1 healing.)
[X][Sage] What will you do as Sage?
-[x][Sage] Something Else (You should meet up with Lisa. Something weird happened to you and you could a Thinker to help figure it out.)
-[X][Sage] You'll spend your time investigating.
--[X][Sage] Investigate the gang attack on the Barnes family last year. You now know everything that happened. Now it's time to start tracking down Shadow Stalker and find out the truth. Why did they do this to you?
[X][Business] What will you do in the name of good business this week? (Multiple Options may be taken)
-[X][Business] Make contact with an entity publicly in a professional capacity. (Contact the PRT about selling unique materials and services for tinkers, e.g. gallium magic to shrink objects)
[x][Business] What will you do in the name of good business this week?
-[x][Business] Rent a building out for personal use.
--[x][Business] Rent a building near the rich part of town. (High Prices, High Safety, High Scrutiny. Bonus to selling Luxury goods)
-[X][Business] Fund a venture.
--[x][Business] Purchase new materials and supplies (Laptop, ISP, VPN, and work phone.)
-[x][Business] Establish a new way of making money using the means at your disposal
--[x][Business] Set up a Website to sell spices online.
[X][Business] What will you do in the name of good business this week? (Multiple Options may be taken)
-[X][Business] Make contact with an entity publicly in a professional capacity. (Contact the PRT about selling unique materials and services for tinkers, e.g. gallium magic to shrink objects)
-[X][Business] Fund a venture.
--[X][Business] Purchase new materials and supplies (Buy a small vacuum chamber, estimated at ~200 dollars)
[X][Business] What will you do in the name of good business this week? (Multiple Options may be taken)
-[X][Business] Make contact with an entity publicly in a professional capacity. (Make contact with several stores, both large chains, and small shops, and try to see if selling our spices to other stores would be profitable)
-[X][Business] Fund a venture.
--[X][Business] Purchase new materials and supplies (More metals for metallurgy experiments, Copper, Gold, Silver, Tin, Aluminum and so on.)
-[x][Business] Establish a new way of making money using the means at your disposal
--[X][Business] Sell spices door to door.
[X][Business] What will you do in the name of good business this week? (Multiple Options may be taken)
-[X][Business] Make contact with an entity publicly in a professional capacity. (Contact the PRT about selling unique materials and services for tinkers, e.g. gallium magic to shrink objects)
-[X][Business] Fund a venture.
--[X][Business] Purchase new materials and supplies (Buy a small vacuum chamber, estimated at ~200 dollars)
--[x][Business] Purchase new materials and supplies (Laptop, ISP, VPN, and work phone.)
-[x][Business] Establish a new way of making money using the means at your disposal
--[X][Business] Sell spices door to door.
-[X][Business] Make contact with an entity publicly in a professional capacity. (Make contact with several stores, both large chains, and small shops, and try to see if selling our spices to other stores would be profitable)
--[X][Business] Purchase new materials and supplies (More metals for metallurgy experiments, Copper, Gold, Silver, Tin, Aluminum and so on.)
--[X][Business] Fund experiments. (-100$, three additional [Advanced] Tests are added)
[X][Advanced] You have (Three) Advanced Tests Remaining. (Write-in)
-[X][Advanced] Something Else (Make a Ring Of Protection rune out of copper. Instead of igniting with Thaum, ignite with Cast Iron("Construct") Mana.)
-[X][Advanced] Something Else (Make a Ring Of Protection rune out of copper. Instead of igniting with Thaum, ignite with Wrought Iron("Structure") Mana.)
[X][Advanced] You have (Three) Advanced Tests Remaining. (Write-in)
-[X][Advanced] Test how the material a Rune is composed of effects the result. Previous runes were made of dust, so try with salt, silicon, graphite, water, blood, fire, copper, chromium and plant.
[X][Advanced] You have (Three) Advanced Tests Remaining. (Attempt to enter an elemental plane using Aluminum's set bonus)
-[X][Advanced] Discover additional Cantrips of a particular Set Bonus. (Sage Armor)
-[X][Advanced] Attempt to Alloy Pandor Powder with various other metals
[X][Advanced] You have (Three) Advanced Tests Remaining. (Write-in)
-[X][Advanced] Test how the material a Rune is composed of effects the result. Previous runes were made of dust, so try with salt, silicon, graphite, water, blood, fire, copper, chromium and plant.
--[X][Advanced] Look if some materials perform better in tasks expected from them by myths, folklore or superstitions, e.g. protective charms made with salt.
--[X][Advanced] What about runes made of air, test symbols carved into solid chunks of material instead of drawn on them (wood, concrete, silicon).
[X][Advanced] You have (Three) Advanced Tests Remaining. (Attempt to enter an elemental plane using Aluminum's set bonus)
-[X][Advanced] Discover additional Cantrips of a particular Set Bonus. (Sage Armor)
[x][Simple] Perform a simple experiment.
-[x][Simple] Test a substance's Mana Attunement (Wrought Iron (You might need your dad's help acquiring this.), Crucible Steel (smelt Wrought Iron and Cast Iron together in a crucible).)
-[x][Simple] Test a specific Rune's effect (Circle, Pentagon, Hexagon, A Dot.)
-[x][Simple] Study a target for Runes (Fire, Constellations, Varies Alchemical Symbols, Zodiac Signs, Snow Flakes, 3-d Shapes?)
-[x][Simple] Something Else (Smelt down the ores you currently have into ingots.)
[X][Simple] Perform a simple experiment. (Write-In)
-[X][Simple] Test a specific Rune's effect
--[X] Golden Spiral
--[X] try words/sentences as Runes: i.e. write something like "no one shall pass this boundary" into a doorstep
[X][Simple] Perform a simple experiment. (Attack a Pandor Plate with increasingly powerful attacks and energy beams)
-[X][Simple] Test a substance's Mana Attunement (Thuam > Pandor)
-[X][Simple] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement (Pandor)
-[X][Simple] Test a Transmutation (Pandor Creation, Applied to copper, gold, iron, and aluminum and maybe some other metals. Also try Transmuting wood)
-[X][Simple] Something Else (See if Sapblood can be used to feed vampiric plants, and other plants, if it seems safe, taste some.)
[x][Simple] Perform a simple experiment.
-[x][Simple] Acquire an external hard drive, the kind that's basically a very large USB stick for making backups but with a separate power cable, and power it with Brain > 'Zap' + Eldritch Relay > 'Zap' + Lightning Vision > 'Zap', then while doing that continuously plug it into a computer and download an offline copy of the entirety of wikipedia onto it so all of it passes through the mana. Lets make that thinker power ERN it's S rank.
--[x][Simple] After wikipedia, also download any books and video tutorials on metalworking and basic metallurgy you can find, to cross-test with the Project to improve our metalworking.
[x][Simple] Perform a simple experiment.
-[x][Simple] look up online if there are any forests reasonably near Brockton Bay, and what a small plot of land there that's to swampy and/or far from roads and/or to roguth and rocky terrain for it to be of value to anyone else, to give this as a new option for "[Business] Rent a building out for personal use."
[x][Simple] Perform a simple experiment.
-[x][Simple] Make a cactus with Seeds of Life, then test the following spell on it: use 'Thaum > Plant > Water' arcane mana with the intonation:
--[x][Simple] If we do socialize with Pan-pan, give it to her.
[x][Project] You'll begin a project of some kind.
-[x][Project] Your metalworking leaves much to be desired. You will pursue information on things like heat treating, quenching, forging, alloying, and other mundane metallurgical techniques.
[x][Project] You'll begin a project of some kind.
-[X][Project] Now you're certain that there is someone on the other end of the connection through your Corona Pollentia/ Eldritch Relay, try to establish contact with that entity.
--[X][Project] Create a Taylor-shaped avatar and try delegating control of it to the entity for communication.
[x][Project] maybe try to integrate modified living plant into the armor like creating a biological tazer or flashbang with the divers mutation of the graphite tree on mana
[x][Project] You'll begin a project of some kind.
-[X][Project] Now you're certain that there is someone on the other end of the connection through your Corona Pollentia/ Eldritch Relay, try to establish contact with that entity.
[x][Project] Your metalworking leaves much to be desired. You will pursue information on things like heat treating, quenching, forging, alloying, and other mundane metallurgical techniques.
[x][Project] try to start on a secure zone for alchemy using the void metal and glass to block at least part of the mana and possibly concept
-[X][Advanced] Test how the material a Rune is composed of effects the result. Previous runes were made of dust, so try with salt, silicon, graphite, water, blood, fire, copper, chromium and plant.
--[X][Advanced] Look if some materials perform better in tasks expected from them by myths, folklore or superstitions, e.g. protective charms made with salt.
--[X][Advanced] What about runes made of air, test symbols carved into solid chunks of material instead of drawn on them (wood, concrete, silicon).
[x][Project] You'll begin a project of some kind.
-[x][Project] Your metalworking leaves much to be desired. You will pursue information on things like heat treating, quenching, forging, alloying, and other mundane metallurgical techniques.
--[x][Project] Do this AFTER you do the harddrive-wikipedia-downloading test, and use this project as a way to test how you can access that information.
[x][Project] You'll begin a project of some kind.
-[X][Project] Now you're certain that there is someone on the other end of the connection through your Corona Pollentia/ Eldritch Relay, try to establish contact with that entity.
--[X][Project] Create a Taylor-shaped avatar and try delegating control of it to the entity for communication.
---[X][Project] Use a similar method of using Zirconium chains you used to make the cellphone-looking bug for the prison break, and use a copied version of your Sage Armor as a sort of 'mold' and physical anchor it wears. Additionally, try including a pinch of "Giggling Shade" mana.
I decided to try and scrounge up some money this week. I needed a Thinker's opinion on something, and if I were in her position, I'd probably charge for it.
I started out doing crucial stuff for my plan, the most important of which was twofold.
I rented out a small building on the boardwalk, and hired a company to install high-speed internet there, buying a laptop and installing it with the latest Dragon's Keep VPN Software.
There was one other thing that I had to buy, I felt, but it still gave me an ominous feeling, as I went into the local AT&T and set myself up with a simple cell-phone for my business.
To their credit, the cashier there was just as soulless as any other individual who had their soul sucked out by retail, not somehow tainted further by my irrational feelings on the matter.
They failed to bat an eye at me as I purchased a fancy touch-screen phone and the associated data plan, and didn't seem all that shocked when the costumed-cape-lady paid in cash for it.
As I walked outside, my new work phone stuffed into a little grass-pouch that I sprouted on my belt, it felt a bit too heavy, and for a brief moment I entertained the thought that there was lead in it.
After I crossed the street, I sat down on a bus bench and pulled it out, trying to familiarize myself with the advanced touch-screen controls and all the little icons that made up its 'Apps'.
Taking a deep breath, I decided to focus on the curiosity I felt instead of the slight dread. For one thing, I couldn't help but wonder if the way I felt about this damn thing would alter the way my magic affected it.
It wasn't worth testing on my work-phone, but I had a bunch of junkers in a box back at home.
Writing down my own phone number on a piece of paper with some mana to remember it, I pocketed the phone and made my way towards the building I rented.
Since it was right on the edges of the boardwalk, I'd probably get a lot of attention there, so I wouldn't be able to really store anything important at the place unless I wanted it stolen, but at the same time, gimmicky cape-stuff is one of the big attractions of a tourist-trap, so I was certain that I'd get more than a few customers of note there.
That, however, wasn't the important part of my business idea. That came a few days later when my internet was finally installed at the place, and I got the time to set up a simple website with some more money spent on getting that up and running properly.
I wasn't the first person or the last to try doing Rogue Business over the internet, so it thankfully didn't involve any actual coding on my part. Just a small fee to the people at RogueFire.com, and I had not only my own page there to attract attention and get me in with the community, but also direct links to the website that was produced in my name with their help.
SageProduces.com was officially online, selling Saffron Spice at a ridiculous price!
I immediately got a lot of really uncomfortable and downright disturbing requests from the e-mail associated with it, but boxes of spice were already being mailed out from my spot on the boardwalk. It would take a while for the stuff to arrive, and for reviews to start coming in, but when they did, hoo boy, I'd be making real money then!
Only one person personally came to the shop to pick up their order, interestingly enough. A man in an utterly immaculate suit who was also apparently picking up the biggest order.
I was a bit stunned by how casually he had stuffed the roll of bills into my hands, but I certainly wasn't going to complain if someone really wanted that much saffron!
1d20 vs 1d20 = 16, 6
The next day, I called Lisa around noon, prepared to try and get her help with the weird Thinker-Vision that I got last week. She seemed delighted to hear from me.
"Hi Lisa, it's me. I've got a bunch of money, and I'd like your help with something," I ask, and she 'ooooh's in response.
"Good going rich girl! I see you managed to avoid getting shot. So, how can the bay's loveliest psychic help out our dashing rogue?" she responds coyly.
"I-" I start, before she interrupts me.
"Ooh, that is bad. I'll meet you at the usual spot, unless you have somewhere in mind?" she asks.
I shake my head before remembering that we're on the phone, but she answers as if she saw it.
"Great. I'll see you there in five! Bring the big wad of cash!" Lisa finishes, hanging up.
I put the phone in its receiver, hand going to my face. "She's going to be the death of me," I mutter, already exasperated in the whole minute it took that entire conversation to transpire.
I jogged up to the cafe that we had gone to last time, and this time, Lisa was waiting outside for me, waving with a friendly expression.
She leans in as I walk through the door she opened up for me, and mutters in a low tone "Don't take out the money until later. Wrong time for it," she advises, and we both take a seat near the window.
After ordering drinks for both of us, Lisa temples her hands together and gives me a smirk. "So, what's the situation?"
I blink. "I assumed you already knew?" I say, my statement trailing off with a questioning lilt.
Her smirk turns into a grin. "Nah. I was just fucking with you on the phone. All I could tell was that it's serious, and I mean, you don't have to be Sherlock on adderall to figure out that little miss 'absolutely no lawbreaking' would need a very good reason to contract a humble white-collar criminal," she explains, raising an eyebrow and daring me to challenge it.
"Plus, I needed to keep you from explaining everything over your home phone. Again," she offers.
Nodding, I start to explain. "Last week, I was taking Panacea back to my place, when something strange happened. I've got an Eiedic Memory of all the experiments I do with my powers, no matter how convoluted, but in the middle of walking home, I suddenly 'remembered' tests that I hadn't done. I remembered the results of Uranium bullets going through my ambient energy field, and lead pellets as well."
I scratch my leg remembering part of the unseen experiments. "I was made aware of the experimental results of an armor-piercing round going through the energy stored in my leg."
Lisa looks intrigued. "But none of that happened. No bullet holes, no guys with guns, your power just logged a bunch of new tests for you that never happened, is that the long and short of it?" she asks.
I nod.
She scratches her chin, taking a sip of the overpriced coffee she ordered.
"Do one," she demands.
"One what?"
"A test. I'm testing my own little theory, so you'll have to do that tinkering thing in front of me, if you don't mind. Just get ready to do a test, and then wait for my signal," she insists.
With a shrug, I pull out some silicon, a piece of cobalt, and a chunk of wood, intent on testing a transmutation result.
[Pull-Request, Please], I don't hear from Tattletale.
[Data], I don't say.
But I remember.
"You're going to turn that wood into something else,"/"Cobalt into Silicon into Wood transmuted in an environment of-" we both say at the same time.
Lisa looks impressed, and I just look at her with some awe. I remember the test result, but I never actually did it.
"You're a dirty little Thinker-Trump aren't you?" she says with glee.
"Holy shit you are. Me trying to figure out what you were doing? You somehow picked up on that. You somehow remember tests even if they happened in someone else's thinker-power, no matter how dumbass or convoluted the test is," she explains, huffing with silent laughter.
"That's just obscene. You know how hard it is for Precogs to predict Thinkers? And here you are, you're a Precog that can only predict Thinkers."
She leans in with a downright malicious smile. "There are capes who would kill to have a power like that in their corner."
After that, she leans back, putting her hands behind her head. "And meanwhile, here I am, getting paid to have your power backing me up. Lucky me," she says with a wink.
I think about what she said. My power is somehow pulling tests that only happened in some Thinker's predictions. "So who was it that-"
She answers before I can finish. "Called the hit on you, then decided not to? Little shitstain by the name of Coil," she says, looking a bit embarrassed.
"So, I'm going to have to level with you, I gave you some bad info the last time we met. Remember those people I said were Empire goons? Well, my power can give me bad answers if it gets bad info, and it got bad info. Coil's the one who's been staking out that little operation. The Empire just has fingers in the regular boardwalk enforcement, and Coil's guys just happened to also be posing as Empire."
She shrugs. "So that's my bad. You still got them off of me long enough to find that little nugget out, though, so I'll cut you a discount."
"Right. Thank you for telling me about Coil and my new power. I'm not sure how much thinker consultation costs, but..." I begin.
"Not for that. You'll be paying for that another way. I'm talking about my retainer fee. One way or another, I want in on that pie you're baking, because it's going to be a big one when it's done," she says.
"I told you I'd keep my nose clean when you struck it rich, didn't I? You pay me a few thousand dollars a month, and you'll have yourself a full-time thinker on staff. I'll even put on a silly costume if it gets me a signing bonus," she jokes.
I think about her offer very carefully.
[][Lisa] Hire Lisa and make her part of your burgeoning business.
(Profit Drop, Full Time Thinker Consultation at no additional charge)
[][Lisa] Don't hire Lisa
(Retain full profits. Advanced Thinker Consultation on subjects such as Powers, Gang Activity, and Events will require a minimum of 1000$ per use)
[][Lisa] Hire Lisa, and unironically make her wear a "Silly Costume".
(Sharp Profit Drop, Full Time Thinker Consultation at no additional charge. Lisa becomes a proper cape in Sage's 'Group', and will assist in the field as needed.)
She claps her hands, seemingly accepting of my answer. "Now then, onto my fee for today. I hate him, you hate him, and he'd be satisfied if the two of us had some extra holes in our skulls. You help me deal with Coil, and I'll help you with Coil."
She sighs, revealing some of the stress that this situation has put her under. "Eventually, he's just going to press-gang us into his little group he's putting together, or just have us shot, and while you might like walking around in spandex, I really don't fancy the idea of playing cops and robbers for a Bond-Villain Wannabee,"
Ignoring the mortification I felt at the idea of 'walking around in spandex', I nodded.
"I don't respond well to being threatened," I agree.
Lisa smiles, more maliciously than before. "I thought you might say that."
Lisa's idea held merit, and when I got home, I drafted up plans to make one when I had the time.
It was clever. Lisa wanted in on my anti-thinker power, some kind of device that would react when Lisa was in danger, warning me a mana test, and thus letting me warn her that she was the subject of one of Coil's thinker-predictions. If we knew in advance that we were the focus of a thinker's prediction, then we could react accordingly, and at least be on our guard.
I wasn't sure how exactly I would implement that, considering how mana likes to decay without a source of energy. There was one or two ways I could get around that, primarily using dust engines, but my only experiments with those were large and cumbersome.
Then again, if Lisa just had mana of her own, I could power it off of that... It's the sort of thing I didn't feel comfortable with unless I knew she was on my side.
I decided I would get a few tests done while I considered my next course of action.
I set up the blast shields again, and slowly shoved my basin of water into the middle of the room, before blocking off everything, and having a golem drag my Thunderbolt Iron Sword into the basin of water.
A bit of Reroll Magic to fill it up, toss the sword in, and...
1d20 vs 1d20 = 17, 4
When the magic faded, I lowered the shields and went to check the results.
The sword had transformed, becoming a large, crude, Adamantite sword instead of a Thunderbolt Iron one.
Instead of raw, unstable force magic, the blade now possessed a truly rugged durability and was made of a speckled red metal that glowed on its own.
All in all, though, it didn't seem that much better than the Thunderbolt Iron one, aside from its admittedly cool appearance.
At least this one wasn't liable to jump out of my hand when I swung it with amplified force.
My next test, I made a Pentacle out of copper wire, and ran enspelled Cast Iron and Wrought Iron magic through it, using a spell to make the magic behave like electricity so it would flow through.
The mana behaved exactly as I expected it, beams of solid magic wrapping around one another and surrounding the pentacle in a protective dome of interwoven fibers of magic.
It seemed to be far more durable than their normal counterparts, but because the pentacle only protected what was immediately near it, I would either need to figure out a way to enlarge the sphere of protection, or I would simply need to make a giant ringed pentagram on the ground to protect stuff inside of it. Or contain things within it...
I could use mana other than Thaumic Mana to power a rune, with predictable effects and minimal natural attunement.
My final test was simpler. I took dust made of powdered Salt, Silicon, Graphite, Copper, Chromium, and sawdust, and ignited a few runes made up of them.
The effects were predictable but still intriguing. A pentacle drawn with salt powder created a dome of separation that seemed to cut through anything caught in it during its creation, a cross drawn in sawdust created a large grid of liquid plant magic, one that seemed to make the perfect scaffolding for growing plants up into the shape of, and, one interesting trick I had learned, I could use a rune made of Silicon Powder to make a magical effect, and then toss silicon beads into it to grow a threadbare material as a result.
If I used a line of silicon dust, and ignited it in front of a metal plate, the mana would crash into it, petrifying it as a result. I wondered if I could make something like a powder gun. A barrel filled with iron dust could release obscene amounts of force if I ignited it, I imagined, and if all that dust were packed into a line-shaped rune, a barrel?
Could be fun to find out...
I also found out that the Inward Space Rune, if drawn in Copper Dust, did something... Strange. It did the exact same thing, but the gravity it created, I could tell, was somehow a product of time instead of space, or even a blend of the two.
I guess it made sense that time and space were similar. I read something along those lines in a book once, I'm sure.
I also figured out that I don't need to draw runes using dust. Using copper and a knife, I tried cutting a Triangular rune into a piece of copper tubing, and when I washed mana over it from the right angle, the result was a beam of earthwind dust, with a bit of copper magic mixed into it as it attuned very slightly.
I could simply carve runes onto things, so long as I had a mana supply to feed into the right part of it. I strongly suspected I could simply make runes with nothing but willpower as well. The runes do their magical effects because of the movements the magic makes.
And well, I can move mana just as well as a channel cut into a piece of copper can.
More Business Actions to come. I didn't forget about the PRT stuff!
[X][Lisa] Hire Lisa and make her part of your burgeoning business.
-[X][Lisa] Postpone negotiating exact terms of hiring until you consult with Dad, he's an HR-veteran after all.
-[X][Lisa] Retain rights to make her wear a 'Silly Costume' as punishment for 'Excessive Annoyance'.
[X][Lisa] Hire Lisa and make her part of your burgeoning business.
-[X][Lisa] Postpone negotiating exact terms of hiring until you consult with Dad, he's an HR-veteran after all.
[X][Lisa] Hire Lisa, and unironically make her wear a "Silly Costume".
-[X][Lisa] But be nice about it, letting her effectively commission the suit from you to look however she pleases and is comfortable with as a form of employee benefit. It's a practical necessity to hide her identity and make sure she has tools to defend herself and ensure communications, but you have no desire to inconvenience her beyond the necessary minimum.
[x][Lisa] Hire Lisa, and ironically make her wear a "Silly Costume".
-[X][Lisa] But be nice about it, letting her effectively commission the suit from you to look however she pleases and is comfortable with as a form of employee benefit. It's a practical necessity to hide her identity and make sure she has tools to defend herself and ensure communications, but you have no desire to inconvenience her beyond the necessary minimum. It's ironic because it's designed to be as un-superhero-like as possible and embodying the notion of pointing out that the whole concept of Capes is silly.
[X][Lisa] ...some kind of device that would react when Lisa was in danger, warning me a mana test, and thus letting me warn her that she was the subject of one of Coil's thinker-predictions.
-[X][Lisa] (Simple Test ) Take one of those obsolete phones with no sim card and whose antennas you ensure dont work, and tinker some Eldritch Relay and 'Zap' transmutation into it so you can supply it with mana at all times from a distance like you did with the prison phone bug, AND make it function as an actual phone for communication by hooking the speaker and microphone into your power.
--[X][Lisa] (Simple Test ) You could try reinforcing it further with an arcane spell:
"So, yeah, that's the long and short of it, dad," I explained, discussing with him how I wanted to hire Lisa as a full time consultant for my business.
"She'll be a big help when it comes to informational stuff, like my website, and when it comes to figuring out how to approach certain things," I summarized, not getting into the part where I'd apparently be working with her to fend off a powerful Thinker trying to recruit the two of us.
"Well, I think you're overpaying her, but it can be almost impossible to keep someone on board once you've started going down on how much you're willing to pay, especially in something with as much turnover as consultation," he explains with a bit of disappointment.
"Either way, if she's as smart as you say she is, it's likely that she knows exactly how much you were originally going to pay, which means, one way or another, you'll have some problems with that subject."
I think about this, but it still seemed like the right decision to go with.
"I think I still want to hire her. She's given me advice twice, and both times it was beyond useful," I answer.
"Just keep in mind that someone you can't replace gets away with more than you might hope. It might be worth looking into other thinker consultants as well, just in case," he says.
"You're doing a good job so far, Taylor. I've seen some of the money you're bringing in now, and I'm really proud of you," he says, putting a hand on my shoulder.
"Thanks. I've been really happy with it too," I say, thinking back to all the things I've managed so far.
I manage a small smile at the thoughts overall. "I can't wait to see what comes next."
1d20 vs 1d20 = 15, 2
When I went to go healing with Amy this week, she had a smug look on her face that looks entirely out of place on the mousey girl, as well as a messenger-bag at her side that looks like it's carrying something heavy.
Vicky is here this time, floating along with a bit of a tense expression.
"Hey Sage! Guess what?" she asks, rummaging around in the bag to grab whatever it was she brought along with her.
"What?" I ask. Considering how our conversation ended last time, I was a bit worried about whatever it was she was going to show me.
"Nothing much. I just second-triggered is all. Check this out," she says casually, yanking out a big plastic spritz-bottle filled with an obscenely blue liquid that glowed with some kind of mundane light.
"Wait, really?" I ask, wide-eyed. I knew on some level that trigger events were a very big deal, and the only second-trigger I had ever heard of was Narwhal of all people.
Considering Panacea's total biokinetic mastery, I was admittedly nervous about what her power could have possibly turned into.
"Yup! I can do loads more now, make little changes to things instead of just healing. Want to be blond?" she asks, waggling her fingers at me.
I take a step back, shaking my head firmly.
Couldn't she do that already? It didn't explain how exactly her power had changed, but...
"So what is in the bottle, then?" I ask tersely. Nothing biological should glow like that, I know for a fact.
She looks away coyly. "Oh, nothing much. Just some healing spray. I can make that now too. Probably some kind of tinker thing, I dunno. I'm pretty sure I can turn diseases into healing things now or something. Just stuck my hand in some water, and there you go, healing spray," she says, shrugging without a care.
Her behavior was completely throwing me off, and Vicky didn't seem forthcoming with answers.
"I think it happened back at the endbringer battle, remember, when we got attacked in front of everyone by that one guy?" Amy asks rhetorically.
"Are you alright, Amy? I thought, well, how-" I try asking, uncomprehending.
Amy rolls her eyes, leaning in and muttering in a stage-whisper. "I'm pretending my powers changed. It's just a bottle of tardigrades that I modified. I stole your little trick with destroying DNA so they couldn't reproduce."
"Oh," I mutter.
"That makes sense," I respond, feeling stupid for not realizing it earlier.
"Why is Vicky so nervous, then, if you didn't really..?" I ask.
Amy shakes her head, sighing, and Vicky opts to answer my question. "Carol really isn't happy about this. She thinks it could ruin Amy's reputation. It's been kind of annoying at home lately," she explains.
Amy just shrugs again. "Oh well. Same old same old. Anyway, since I certified you, and I'm probably going to fuck my reputation by coming out as an 'Unstable powered-up second-trigger', I figured I'd wait until you came around so you can spot me."
"I let everyone know that your powers are perfectly safe, so now you get to do the same thing for poor Panacea and her 'totally untrained abilities'. Feel up to it?" she asks, and I nod. I didn't really have any good sensory magic for sensing biological stuff, but worst-comes to worst, all I would need to do is use some undeath magic to kill off whatever it was Panacea made.
Though, it sounds like this whole thing is basically just a farce to keep people from panicking over her healing spray.
"Oh, before we get started," I begin, pulling something off of my belt. A long rod of Pandore, a material I had learned to synthesize, and which my power claimed grew stronger when it was put through stronger challenges.
"I just need you to test something quick, could you try to bend this, Vicky?" I ask, handing over the dull stony rod to her.
She looks down at it with confusion, before, with a shrug, she snaps it in two like a twig. It flashes briefly with blue light, but little else.
"Was that supposed to happen?" she asks, looking worried.
I take the two halves back with some consternation. "No, it was supposed to get stronger."
She shrugs. "Guess it didn't get strong enough."
I get the feeling that it may have been a case of too much too quickly. If I wanted Pandore to grow to its full potential, I would have to start it off small, and work my way up to something as strong as Glory Girl.
I slip the halved rod into my belt once again, and return my attention to Amy.
"So, where to first, then? I'm assuming you want to try giving that stuff to doctors instead of healing personally?" I ask as the two of us head into the hospital, and Vicky flies off to do whatever it is she does when she isn't escorting Amy around.
"Well, I made these bad boys to do a little bit of everything. They're smart enough to patch wounds, stem bleeding, and disinfect anything. No DNA means no mutations or viruses to worry about, and this stuff has a shelf life of 30 years until it's used, since the little microbes are all in stasis normally," she explains.
"So we'll troll around the usual wards, spray this gunk on some cuts, inject it into some broken bones, maybe figure out how to get it into an inhaler. After that, we'll try it on a surgery. I don't really like doing it, but a lot of the doctors around here love it when I sit in on surgeries, even if I don't just heal the guy. It helps doctors get experience with delicate procedures, so they really try to connive me into it whenever I look too generous," she continues.
I'm a bit relieved to hear her usual bitter remarks, and before long, we're swarmed with doctors and nurses trying to get information on Amy's "second-trigger" and "tinkertech spray".
1d20 vs 1d20 = 3, 15
The first round of tests went swimmingly, Panacea or a nurse would apply her healing juice to someone, I'd wave my hand and try to look knowledgable while pulsing mana at the victim to see if their bones were turning into goethite or something, and then on to the next one.
When the surgical trials started, however, I found myself uniquely disturbed, in a way I hadn't been before. My usual rounds of healing with Panacea never got into this part of medicine, and even at Panama, I was too full of adrenaline to really process it. All I focused on there was closing things up as fast as I could, and then, wrangling my healing monster to keep it on target while it handled everything.
This was an entirely different level of horrible, as I had to personally help oversee the use of Panacea's spray on someone undergoing open-heart surgery.
I couldn't make it through the entire thing, and had to leave as they started putting in the stent, though nobody seemed too torn up about it, I still felt a bit ashamed that I couldn't manage to finish supervising, leaving Panacea to handle the analysis and be on standby.
My face paled a bit when Panacea left, walking over to a sink to wash her hands. At least I didn't have to physically touch someone to heal them. I couldn't imagine what it might be like to touch someone, even on the hand or something, when they're in a state like that.
It reminded me a bit too much of what little I remembered of Panama.
"You alright?" she asks, sitting down on the bench next to me.
"Yeah, just felt really queasy," I say.
"I don't blame you. When I first started, I had to take something for lightheadedness to deal with a lot of this stuff. I fainted once, so you're doing better than I did at least," she responds.
"Either way, you probably won't have to do it again. A little bit longer and I'll be reapproved for solo work. There's a Protectorate guy named Wired who lives up in northern Michigan, tinker who specializes in biofeedback. As soon as my stuff gets sent up to him for a final look over, we'll be good to go on that front," Amy explains, and I just nod at that.
"I really should work on something like that. I've had a few plans in the works for a healing golem, but if I wanted it to work without me, I'd have to figure out a good way to power it. It's this whole thing," I complain, waving my arm.
Amy chuckles. "I'm sure you'll pull something out of your ass. You know a few people online have been calling you Eidolonette, right?"
I gape at this. While I had been using my laptop and my new internet for a lot, catching up on the latest news hadn't exactly been one of those things.
"Seriously?"
She nods. "Yup. You might be doing plant stuff, but your thing back in Panama got a lot of people talking about what you can do. I don't think anyone's cottoned on to the whole 'Magic' thing, but that sword of yours is already on the internet. The only reason you're not on a Tinkertech Bounty site yet is because people are still waffling on whether it's actually tinkertech, or if it's something like Dauntless's thing."
I thought back to some of the requests I had gotten directly to my business email-address, and that lined up with what she was saying. A lot of them were kind of sad, stuff like asking if I could raise the dead, or orders for me to make weapons and dead drop them halfway across the country.
Those were the friendly ones, unfortunately. Several of the ones I didn't even bother to open all came from Chinese E-Mail addresses, and offered payments in the header things that were too illegal and disturbing for me to even wonder what they could possibly want in return.
"Well, hopefully nobody gets the wrong idea. Well, let me rephrase that. Hopefully nobody acts on some of the clearly wrong ideas floating around," I insist.
1d20 vs 1d20 = 1, 8
The next day, I decided to head to the PRT to try and offer up some of my services, and I brought along an alarm clock that I had twisted into a tiny ring-sized pretzel as an example of what I could do with Gallium Magic.
I finally got sent to someone really important, this time, apparently. The Director of the PRT East-Northeast. Emily Piggot. Apparently trusted enough to meet with her directly over something important enough to be worth their time, I was carted right up to her office this time.
"Hello, Sage. You called earlier about selling us goods and services? We aren't a charity, I hope you know," she explains plainly, gesturing for me to sit in an uncomfortable looking chair.
Sitting down nervously, I brought out the piece that I had made already, setting it on the desk. "My abilities have progressed far enough that I can do strange things to objects that I feel may be valuable to Tinkers, in addition to materials that I can produce which have their own anomalous properties," I state simply. Simple, straightforward, and to the point.
"Vague," she says, with no other context.
"We have curiosities for our Tinkers to utilize at their discretion. I'm going to need more information," she says, waving for me to get on with it.
"Well, I can reshape objects without altering their functionality. I haven't noticed this effect fade, even when I am not near it for long periods of time and leave it alone, and it works on complex objects. I haven't tried it on something like a gun, but I was able to get a tape recorder to still play, even when I changed it into a ring."
"I can also create a material that, so long as I regularly power it, or produce an engine to power it, can send material directly into oblivion, as far as I can tell. I can also make materials that emit things such as fire, electricity, cutting force, or have otherwise unnatural properties. "
Seeing her unimpressed look, I move on to the plants that I've managed to come up with.
"Oh, I can also mutate plants to give them special properties too, I can do things like grow gravity altering organs in them, and-"
Piggot interrupts me with a raised hand. "We have no Biotinkers on staff at this site. You won't be able to provide us anything we want on that front, unless you go to a different PRT Division. Tell me about your healing," she instead says.
"Well, in terms of materials I can produce that heal, I've got..." I think for a bit to tally everything up.
"I can make Recovery Gel, which is like silicone rubber that heals wounds when you put it on stuff, and I can make Curestones, which are these little rocks that have a lot of life-energy in them. Aside from that, I can heal pretty much whatever, unless they're dead," I explain.
"Oh! This is a bit of a side-note, but I might be able to make broken tinkertech sort of half-work, even if it doesn't work at all. I haven't tested it yet, but one of my powers makes things malfunction, even if they don't work at all," I offer.
I can't tell if the serious-looking director is ignoring me or paying attention, but either way, she doesn't react to anything I say.
"I see. Have you done work with Case 53's yet?" she asks.
"No ma'am. I haven't yet," I shake my head
"Do so and get back to us on how that turns out. How often do your engines need maintenance? Does all of your technology rely on these engines?" she asks immediately after I answer.
"I think it depends. Unless I'm there to supply my stuff with energy using my power, I have to turn dust into energy, and that energy can bleed out into the air and fuel everything in it. I use some modified plants for it right now, but I imagine anything that could grind stuff into dust could fuel my work," I explain.
"I see. We will look into authorizing your work as a valid budget expenditure. We will call you when a decision has been made," she says, leaving no more room for me to talk.
The door opens automatically, and I get the feeling I've been dismissed, leaving the building and heading to my rental place to do some research on my laptop.
Looking at my laptop and to the forge over and over, I use Soot Barrier to keep my forge from bleeding carbon into the red hot Thunderbolt Iron Knife I have sitting in the middle of it, pulling it out carefully with mana-tongs and dipping it into the quenching tank that set up off to the side.
Keep the carbon content low using Soot Barrier, which absorbs carbon dioxide, keep the impurities low when smelting by using Denature Magic alongside my own willpower.
Finally, I pull the knife free of the quenching tank, and hit it with the Scale attunement chain to remove the oxides building up on it long enough for me to coat the blade with a thick layer of lacquer.
The result was... Still a very crude knife, but still much better than my old Thunderbolt Iron Sword.
I gave it a cursory swing, hissing in pain as it flew out of my hand, the Force Magic amplifying the move until it was yanked free from my grip and sent sailing straight through my cactus wall and into the cement behind it.
With a grimace, I put on my gloves and tried again, pulling the knife out and this time holding it in a reverse grip so I could stab with it. I decided against testing it on my table, since it clearly would just go straight through that, and instead got out a piece of thin steel plate.
Holding on as tight as I could so it didn't fly out of my hand, I stabbed straight down, and the Thunderbolt Knife smashed straight through the plate and the table underneath it as well
Refining the metal further resulted in a refinement of the magic as well, which was interesting. Was it the quality of the metal that did this, with me removing more of the impurities? Or was it the craftsmanship, with fewer flaws in the blade to weaken the energy it tried to harness?
I didn't know. I have a badass steel-stabbing knife now, though, and it just took a few days of trial and error to get the job done.
Pulling out the blade, I realized that despite the greater power, it was no more durable, and the blade's edge had curled in on itself from the force of the blow grinding against the steel plate, basically ruining it as a cutting instrument.
So, still badass, but more shrapnel than knife by now.
1d20 vs 1d20: 3, 18
Before finishing today's testing, I decided to do one last thing. Making a tiny Golden Spiral out of chalk, I ignited its outermost edge with mana, and watched as the magic consumed the dust, spiraling inwards more and more until...
POP!
What I saw defied description. I could see inside the tiny area of effect where reality was breaking apart at the seams, grass and concrete and wood being sucked into the center of the tiny singularity. A literal black hole of magic, but instead of mere mass and energy, it was Concepts, it was Elements, it was Intentions and Lives.
And just like how nature abhors a vacuum, so too does magic abhor abundance.
The moment ended, the brief instant of concentration ended as soon as it began, what couldn't escape a black hole in a mere three or four dimensions could escape a Thaumic Collapse in infinite directions, like a pot overflowing, the collapse overflowed as well, spilling its contents all over the stovetop.
I threw my hands up, magic summoned forth to protect me, but the event was too fast, I was already too late before I had started the experiment, and the reality hit me.
Which is to say, it quite literally did.
I woke dazed minutes later. The ground where I drew the rune was filled with concrete moss, wooden flowers, and little blobs of gold and red saffron slime, which aimlessly bumbled around, feeding on biomass and mana to sustain themselves.
I bit back a shriek at the sight of my own hands, my fingertips looked frostbitten, but with mixtures of living wood and polished cement instead of black and blue flesh.
I had already confirmed that no magic I had would heal this at the moment, unless I dared use alchemy on myself, or cut the transformed parts out directly. The wood was made of my cells, and the stone fingertips had cells truly made out of the same material as cement.
I knew factually that I still had options to fix this, and to hide it, but my heart refused to calm. I was too close, and if I had been any closer...
The little Saffron Slimes continued bumbling around, a soup of the world around them scrambled together and made reality from Chalk Magic and Saffron Vitality.
[][Collapse] Strive to remove the changes. They are a direct link to your other identity, and a sign of your failure besides.
[][Collapse] Strive to accept the changes. You can hide them with some coloration magic, and they will serve as a sign of your fallibility.
Third week of June Plans:
[][Taylor] Skip School. If you don't, you'll have to wear gloves until you fix your hands, and keep them on no matter what.
-[][Taylor] Tell dad. He'll be worried despite this being a quick fix, but he can simply tell the school that you're ill.
-[][Taylor] Don't tell dad. This should only take a few days at most to correct, and he'll be so worried if he found out.
[][Taylor] Hang out with Greg, instead of merely tolerating his presence.
[][Taylor] You'll spend your time investigating.
-[][Taylor] Investigate the gang attack on the Barnes family last year. You now know everything that happened. Now it's time to confront Emma and find out why. Why did she do this to you? (Write-In Plan) (Taylor is not yet fully ready for this)
[][Taylor] Something Else (Write-In)
[][Sage] Go out healing with Panacea.
-[][Sage] Have her heal you. For her, removing these blemishes would take less than a minute at most.
-[][Sage] Don't have her heal you. You'll never live it down if she found out you managed to do something to yourself that you couldn't immediately fix.
[][Sage] You'll spend your time investigating.
-[][Sage] Investigate the gang attack on the Barnes family last year. You now know everything that happened. Now it's time to start tracking down Shadow Stalker and find out the truth. Why did they do this to you?
[][Sage] Something Else (Write-In)
[][Business] Make contact with an entity publicly in a professional capacity. (Write-in)
[][Business] Rent a building out for personal use.
-[][Business] Rent a building in the cheaper parts of town. (Low Prices, Low Safety, Low Scrutiny. Bonus to selling All goods)
-[][Business] Rent a building in the worst parts of town. (Insignificant Prices, No Safety, No Scrutiny. Backroom Dealings Enabled.)
[][Business] Fund a venture.
-[][Business] Try to extract some money from your Rogue Business (Gain granular liquid assets of your choosing on a successful Monetary Roll)
-[][Business] Purchase new materials and supplies (Write-in either a budget or specific things to buy)
-[][Business] Fund a project. (-1000$, A second [Project] action will be done this turn)
-[][Business] Fund experiments. (-100$, three additional [Advanced] Tests are added)
[][Business] Establish a new way of making money using the means at your disposal
-[][Business] Set up your building to sell goods from. (Write-In Goods to Sell)
-[][Business] Try healing for profit.
-[][Business] Write-in.
[][Business] Make use of Lisa. (Write-in)
[][Project] You've transformed yourself by mistake, it could have happened to anyone. Now it's time to correct that mistake.
-[][Project] Use Alchemy to return your hands to normal. You think you know enough to try it.
-[][Project] Use Biomancy to return your hands to normal. If you deaden your nerves and use coloring magic to cover things up, you should be able to physically remove and regenerate the altered parts.
[][Project] Lisa wants a device that will warn you if she is the subject of a thinker prediction. You'll try to create something to do exactly that.
[][Project] Something Else (Write-In)
[][Project] The hunger to experiment consumes your mind. You'll discard a project this week.
(If this vote wins, up to ten Write-in [][Advanced] experiments will be processed this turn instead of one major project.)
You have (Zero) Advanced Tests Remaining. (Write-in)
[][Advanced] Assemble a suit to test a True Attunement's Set Bonus.
[][Advanced] Discover additional Cantrips of a particular Set Bonus. (Limit
[][Advanced] Perform an Alchemical Experiment.
[][Advanced] Attempt to force magic to do as you wish it.
[][Advanced] Test the effects of a Spell
[][Advanced] Test the effects of an arrangement of Runes
[][Advanced] Something Else
Perform a simple experiment. (Write-In)
[][Simple] Test a substance's Mana Attunement
[][Simple] Attempt to string together an Attunement Chain
[][Simple] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement
[][Simple] Test a specific Phonem's effect
[][Simple] Study a target for Phomens
[][Simple] Test a specific Rune's effect
[][Simple] Study a target for Runes
[][Simple] Test a Transmutation (Choose a Synthesis Mana and a Non-Silicate Target)
[][Simple] Something Else
Fifteen Research Gained
Stats
Research: 25
A good start.
Overall Health: 14
You're as strong as a healthy child. If that child had the power of magic from birth, that is.
Overall Magical Power: 14
You are a skilled Channeler, using raw Willpower and attuned mana to plow your way through problems. You dabble in other magics that both enhance and detract from your raw mana channeling, such as Wizardry, Alchemy, and Runecraft.
Overall Monetary Power: 1
You're a Parahuman-for-profit, just starting out. You have incoming profits and you're starting to make connections, but even that only just outweighs the thinker-sized hog sampling your funds.
Abilities
Magical Soul: C
Rating: Trump ???
Your soul emits magic. The stronger your soul, the more powerful your magic. Your resolve to discover the truth behind your best friend and worst enemy has strengthened your soul.
-Mutation and Disfiguration have shaken your resolve and distracted your mind. Rank decreased to D until you either fix the problem or adapt to it over the next month.
Magical Body: F
Rating: ???
Your body contains magic, your soul empowering your body without your direct intervention.
Magical Power: B
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 A 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: S
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to never forget anything, no matter what it is, so long as it pertains to a mana experiment.
School
Attunement Chain
Shorthand
Type
Effects
Other
Gallium
Thaum > Copper > Gallium
Time Alchemy
Alchemical Liquid
This mana changes an object's form, making it more modern or archaic.
Warning: Conceptual Effect. Unrestricted usage presents high risk of unwanted consequences.
Gallium
Thaum > Nitrogen > Gallium
Hamon Alchemy
Alchemical Liquid
This mana imbues an object with the waves in and around it, changing its form.
Warning: Conceptual Effect. Unrestricted usage presents high risk of unwanted consequences.
Gallium
Thaum > Fluorine > Gallium
Smooth Alchemy
Alchemical Liquid
This mana changes the form of an object it touches, removing signs of tooling from it.
Warning: Conceptual Effect. Unrestricted usage presents high risk of unwanted consequences.
Gallium
Thaum > Silicon > Gallium
Blank Alchemy
Alchemical Liquid
This mana transforms into the concept of its shape, drawing in essence to fill the elemental void
Warning: Conceptual Effect. Unrestricted usage presents high risk of unwanted consequences.
Overuse appears to alter the structure of matter in the area, draining it of elemental alignment.
Cadmium
Thaum > Copper > Cadmium
Timetheft Alchemy
Alchemical Ray
This mana steals an object's conceptual youth or its age, depending on which is more valuable to an object's worth.
Warning: Conceptual Effect. Unrestricted usage presents high risk of unwanted consequences.
Cadmium
Thaum > Nitrogen > Cadmium
Wavetheft Alchemy
Alchemical Ray
This mana steals whichever waves make an object most valuable.
Warning: Conceptual Effect. Unrestricted usage presents high risk of unwanted consequences.
Cadmium
Thaum > Fluorine > Cadmium
Techtheft Alchemy
Alchemical Ray
This mana steals whatever technology makes an object most valuable.
Warning: Conceptual Effect. Unrestricted usage presents high risk of unwanted consequences.
Cadmium
Thaum > Silicon > Cadmium
Steal
Alchemical Ray
This mana steals concepts from what it is applied to, creating new entities immediately.
Warning: Conceptual Effect. Unrestricted usage presents high risk of unwanted consequences.
Iodine
Thaum > Gallium > Iodine
Metaphorical Healing
Liquid
This mana takes the true form of whatever living thing is nearest to it, and can heal something into it.
This mana's effects are not perminant on their own.
Salt
Thaum > Gallium > Salt
Metaphorical Seperation
Ray
This mana takes the true form of whatever seperation is nearest to it, and can apply that seperation.
Graphite
Thaum > Gallium > Graphite
Metaphorical Life
Liquid
This mana takes a form symbolizing the life near it.
Wrought Iron
Thaum > Wrought Iron
Structure
Ray (Solid)
Mana takes the form of a flexible solid.
Crucible Steel
Thaum > Crucible Steel
Wood Grain Mana
Ray (Solid)
Mana takes the form of a grainy solid, made of visible intermixing layers.
Water
Thaum > Brain > Water
Arcane Thoughtsteal
Wave
In addition to the effects of Thoughtsteal, this mana reacts to sound as Arcane Mana does.
Brain
Thaum > Water > Brain
Sea Specter Executor
Liquid
This mana transforms into a specter based on the thoughts around it, executing orders given to it.
Selenium
Thaum > Blood > Selenium
Dusk's Shine
Ray
This mana emits a bright blinding moonlight that keeps those near it awake.
Selenium
Thaum > Stone > Selenium
Defined Selenium Transmutation
Transmutation
This mana transmutes Selenium into Defined Selenium
Defined Selenium: A hard, sulfur-like ore bearing an unknown magical metal.
Selenium
Arcane > Selenium
Reflecting Pool
Ray
This mana reflects the night sky of a full moon, no matter its form or location.
Selenium
Thaum > Sand > Selenium
Lunar Sands
Ray
This mana takes the form of a white powder that flows through the air without weight, cutting through things it is applied to.
Selenium
Thaum > Graphite > Selenium
Rest
Ray
This mana eases the sleep of the living and dead.
Selenium
(Supermass + Float + Airbreak) > Sand > Selenium
Shimmersummoned Bouldergrit
Ray
This mana creates sand made of moonlight, which, on contact with an object, rapidly expand into a shining antigravity foam with notable momentum, absorbing nearby moonlight to facilitate this transformation.
Hybrid
Emerald Cultivation + Defined Iron Transmutation
Sabertooth Tiger Iron Transmutation
Transmutation
This mana transmutes iron into Sabertooth Tiger Iron when applied to iron.
Sabertooth Tiger Iron: A magical brownish-tan gemstone made of ensorceled Hemetite. It emits violent bursts of sharpened force magic when disturbed. If polished and cut, this force can, in theory, be refined.
Hybrid
Emerald Cultivation + Defined Gold Transmutation
Sunstruck Citrine Transmutation
Transmutation
This mana transmutes gold into Sunstruck Citrine when applied to gold.
Sunstruck Citrine: A magical golden jewel made of Goddess Citrine streaked with strips of Hihi'irokane Ore. It emits a bright, shining glow that is hard to look at, and shimmering plasma blooms over its surface from time to time.
Hihi'irokane Ore and Goddess Citrine's exact properties alone are unknown.
Hybrid
Emerald Cultivation + Defined Silver Transmutation
Mortal Silver Transmutation
Transmutation
This mana transmutes silver into Mortal Silver when applied to Silver.
Mortal Silver: This pure metal is lightweight, woven intimately with the magic of the mortal realm, it is considered a weak form of Mythril, and grows even lighter under the moon.
Pandore
Thaum > Pandore
Blue Flame Creation
Synthesis
This mana creates Blue Flames when applied to Pandore
Blue Flames: This blue plasma is harmless on its own, but seems to intensify and spread to sources of strong will or bravery.
Silicon
Transmute > Pandore Creation > Copper
Pandora's Copper Transmutation
Transmutation
This mana transmutes copper into Pandora's Copper
Pandora's Copper: This dull, stone like material grows faster when used against stronger time distortions, but slows when used otherwise. When pushed to its limits, the material can undergo a permenant transformation into something unknown. As it grows stronger, it begins to turn into an orange, otherworldly metal.
Silicon
Transmute > Pandore Creation > Gold
Pandora's Gold Transmutation
Transmutation
This mana transmutes gold into Pandora's Gold
Pandora's Gold: This dull, washed out metal grows hotter and brighter when competing against something powerful in the dark, but dims when forced to compete with things weaker than itself in the light. When pushed to its limits, the material can undergo a permenant transformation into something unknown. As it grows stronger, it begins to turn into a golden, otherworldly metal.
Silicon
Transmute > Pandore Creation > Iron
Pandora's Iron Transmutation
Transmutation
This mana transmutes iron into Pandora's Iron
Pandora's Iron: This dull, stone like material delivers greater and greater impacts when used against something powerful, but becomes weak and gentle when used against delicate objects. When pushed to its limits, the material can undergo a permenant transformation into something unknown. As it grows stronger, it begins to turn into a cyan, otherworldly metal.
Silicon
Transmute > Pandore Creation > Aluminum
Vesselnite Transmutation
Transmutation
This mana transmutes aluminum into Vesselnite
Vesselnite: This black metal grows more powerful, the more of it is destroyed, and the more it is emptied of energy and magic. It is at its most powerful at the precipice of oblivion, when only the final scraps remain.
Silicon
Transmute > Pandore Creation > Wood
Hopewood Transmutation
Transmutation
This mana transmutes wood into Hopewood
Hopewood: When ignited, this wood releases magic that brings to life and grows the plants around it as it burns away.
Brain
Thaum > Eye > Copper > (Sand+Chrome) > Brain
Discombobulate
Liquid
This mana prevents a target from forming new short term memories based on the things they see.
Attunement
Shorthand
Concept
Effects
Other
True > Ice
Unflappability
[Cold Mystery]
The user becomes more resistant to having their intentions read, the more ice they have equipped.
Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Blood
Never Give Up
[Will of Vitality]
The user's body moves as they desire it, the more blood the user has equipped.
Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Bone
Necromancy Mastery
[Undeath]
The user and their equipment become stiffer and harder, the more bone they have equipped.
Set Bonus undiscovered.
True > Wheat
Wheat Mastery
[Further Wheat]
The user gains more from harvests, the more wheat is equipped.
Wheat grows around the user wherever they walk, and on whatever ground they touch. (Requires an Advanced Test to discover Cantrips)
True > Sage
Sage Mastery
[Further Sage]
The user is more resistant to ailments, the more sage is equipped.
The user can purify or nullify the poison of things they touch at-will. (Requires an Advanced Test to discover Cantrips)
True > Aluminum
Element Dance
[Void]
The user aligns to the greatest element near them, the more aluminum is equipped.
The user may enter Elemental Planes through extreme concentrations or intensities of an element. (Requires an Advanced Test to discover Cantrips)
True > Pandore
Revealed Will
[Create Hope]
The user's willpower manifests, the more Pandore is equipped.
Set Bonus undiscovered.
School
Rune
Name
Description
Behavior
Notes
Geometry
Golden Spiral 1
Exponential Outward
A golden spiral, ignited from the centermost point.
Mana spirals outwards, faster and faster, until spread out so thin as to no longer be detectible.
Geometry
Golden Spiral 2
Thaumic Collapse
A golden spiral, ignited from the outermost point.
Mana spirals inwards, faster and faster, until it collapses in on itself, spreading its Concepts, Elements, Vitality and Intentions over everything around it in an explosive eruption.
Warning: Magical environs do not permit the existence of a singularity. Omnidirectional distortion of reality will occur.
Geometry
Circle
Mana Field
A circle, ignited at any point
Mana bounces off of itself, forming a hazy cloud in the shape of a sphere.
Geometry
Semi-Circle
Loop-de-loop
A semicircle, ignited at one point
Mana spreads forwards in a swirling looping manner.
Geometry
Dot
Null
A dot, ignited.
No effect.
Geometry
Pentagon
Fivefold Elements
A pentagon, ignited from any point.
Mana branches out forwards into a mess of unstable elemental magic, made up of Wood, Metal, Fire, Water, and Earth, which react violently with one another and split apart in the process.
Geometry
Hexagon
Define Hexes
A hexagon, ignited from any point
Mana spreads out into a hexagonal grid in the opposite direction from the rune's ignition point.
Geometry
Heptagon
Sevenfold Divination
A heptagon, ignited from any point.
Mana splits into seven branching lines, which curve towards targets of great significance.
Geometry
Octagon
Redefine Grid
An octagon, ignited from any point.
Mana forms a malformed grid of octagons. Space is warped to allow tesselation of them.
Geometry
Nonagon
Perfect Circle
A nonagon, ignited from any point
Mana bounces off of itself, forming a perfect circle of magic.
Geometry
Decagon
Imperfect Circle
A decagon, ignited from any point
Mana bounces off of itself, spreading in an imperfect circular pattern that forms a spirograph.
Geometry
Dodecagon
Circle of Time
A dodecagon, ignited from any point
Mana bounces off of itself, spreading in a circular pattern that slowly undoes itself, distorting time in the process.
Symbols
S
Sidewinder
The letter 'S', ignited at its lowermost point
Mana expands outwards in a swooping, swaying line.
Symbols
U
U-Turn
The letter 'U' ignited at its leftmost point.
Mana curls around as it expands, forming an oval
Symbols
X
X-Out
The letter 'X', ignited at its bottom-leftmost point.
Mana branches out into three off-center branches, which themselves branch out into three branches, and so on. Branches which collide explode into three-dimensional branches.
Symbols
Y
Fork
The letter 'Y', ignited at its lowermost point.
Mana branches out in two directions, and continues to do so.
Symbols
θ
Chain Line
The Theta symbol, ignited at the bottom.
Mana forms a line of interwoven chains as it moves forwards.
Symbols
λ
Jagged Fork
The Lambda symbol, ignited at its leftmost point.
Mana forks in a jagged pattern, and continues to do so. A faint buzz can be heard as it does so.
Symbols
ρ
Ringbranch Binary
The Rho symbol, ignited at its lowermost point.
Mana travels in a lopsided line, branching off into circles that dot its length. Each circle contains a faint mote of pure data, pulsing on or off when disturbed.
Symbols
Ω
Cauldron
The Omega Symbol, ignited at its leftmost point
Mana begins to trail Omega symbols in a circle, in the center of which forms a pale ember of destruction magic.
Symbols
Cross
Crossout
A plus symbol, ignited at any point
Mana begins to branch out, forming a three-dimensional grid as it spreads.
Elder Futhark
ᛚ
Lightning
The Laguz Rune, ignited at its lowermost point.
Mana travels in a jagged diagonal line, transforming into pure lightning.
Elder Futhark
ᛏ
Quake
The Tiwaz Rune, ignited at its lowermost point.
Mana spreads in a jagged forking pattern, transforming stone that it comes in contact with into jagged shaking and growing rubble.
Elder Futhark
ᛞ
Thunder
The Dagaz Rune, ignited at its lower-leftmost point.
Mana spreads and crashes into itself, vibrating rapidly as it transforms into a deep cracking roar.
Fire
Barbed Hook
Flame
A hook-like shape, like a twisted 'V', ignited from the leftmost side
Mana begins to twist in a circle, transforming into pure flames.
Fire
Squiggly Jagged Line
Rising Embers
A line of curved jagged edges, ignited at one end.
Mana begins to twist upwards in a jerky, swaying motion.
Fire
Jagged Fire Symbol
Emblem of Fire
A flame-like symbol made of curled jagged lines, ignited from the leftmost side
Mana begins to act like a two-dimensional flame, visibly swaying from side to side as it expands.
Stars
Starburst
Starlight Burst
A series of lines all crossing in the middle, ignited from the middle
Mana spreads outwards in all directions, acting like rays of light.
Stars
Blocky Ring
Orbiting Earth
A ring made of blocky shapes, ignited from the bottom.
Mana begins to travel in an orbit around the rune's center, picking up stones and soil in blocky masses of magic.
Stars
Slightly Warped Dodekagon
Inward Space
A slightly imperfect dodekagon, its angles distorted a bit, and ignited from the bottommost point.
Mana collides with itself, travling in a spirographical circle that twists the fabric of space slightly, creating gravity.
I have to get rid of this stuff, my identity is already threadbare as it is, and this, this could break everything open on that front.
Unwilling to go to school with my fingertips altered like this, the first person I went to was of course dad.
"Dad, I had a bit of an accident in the lab just now, so I need you to call the school and tell them I'm home with some kind of illness," I explained, walking into the living room nervously.
He gives me a concerned look. "What happened?"
I show him my hands and he takes them carefully, looking them over and prodding the tips gently.
"That... That's something else. Do you have a way to fix it? What happened?" he asks.
I wave off his concern. "I'm going to go out healing with Panacea this week. I'll ask her to fix it. It was just a simple mistake with a rune I was experimenting with. Nothing some healing can't fix," I explain.
"If you say so," he responds. "Promise me you'll be a bit more careful?" he asks.
I nod. "Naturally. I'm not exactly keen on anything like this happening again either. I'll be looking into some added protections."
"You know, it might not be a terrible idea to move your things out of the basement, now that you've got some property to keep it on," he offers.
"It's in the good part of town, too. Not much happens there," he says, explaining his reasoning.
I grimace a bit at the idea. It wouldn't necessarily be unsafe, but at the same time, something about moving my experiments into town, so close to the boardwalk with all the potential interlopers and witnesses and thieves...
"You don't have to. I just thought you might prefer to put some distance between your home and work, now that you can," he offers, noticing my expression.
And isn't that the understatement of the week? I certainly would like that. Technically, nothing was stopping me from doing my work in a more public space, other than the attention it might bring.
"I'll think about it, dad. I've got some problems with the idea, but it isn't a bad one, I don't think."
"You're smarter than I was at your age, that's for sure," he says.
"So, do you have chickenpox or mono, if anyone asks?" he continues with a smirk.
Skipping out on school was odd. I had a lot more free time, to the point where I was able to get a ton done while I was waiting at home for the right time to sneak out and become Sage again.
I had more than enough time to deeply experiment with a lot of the more "demonic" magic types, and my power began telling me things, things that seemed impossible.
Hell is real, and there are apparently mining operations in it. I wasn't sure how my power knew this, considering before, it only told me about a mana type's physical properties, as well as use-cases, and sometimes warnings for the alchemical types.
But when I tested out transmuting Iron using a complex blend of magics, my power informed me quite handily that what I did was apparently common practice in hell, combining Hellforge Magic with a Stone Transmutation turned the iron into a stinking sulfur-smelling sludge that would turn into "Demonite" if I heated it enough, evaporating away liquid and shrinking into a denser and denser material.
How I could make it any hotter without something like an arc furnace when the clay-like sludge was already steaming and bubbling, I had no clue, but it seemed I would need to if I wanted to see what the metal did.
When I added in Emerald Cultivation Magic to the mix, my power helpfully informed me that I had created Jewelmeat, a withered flesh made from gems and metal that twitched and pulsed with malice and power. It also informed me of the methods one must use to cook it, as the flesh apparently grew visibly healthier and more lively as it was heated. If I heated it with the perfect temperature, it could be edible, or so my power seemed to imply.
But it also implied that too much heat would turn the flesh into a hostile monster.
It was incredibly intriguing, however disturbing it might be.
I also figured out the perfect solution to Lisa's problem, by applying mana attuned to my Corona Pollentia to Silicon, I could synthesize something.
Something terrible, and beautiful. Something that evoked fear and awe, and nudged at the corners of my mind, reminding me of something I had never experienced.
I could create Crystalline Flesh through synthesis, and that flesh could act as a relay for my power, producing and controlling mana just like my power does.
It would require testing, but in theory, a phone could be augmented with the material, some kind of enchantment woven into it to detect Coil's meddling.
On the mundane side, I also managed to put together something to compete with Panacea's healing spray, my very own 'Healant', produced via synthesis, I could create a bubblegum-pink fluid that healed wounds on contact. My power warned me that it was too strong in its current form, though, so it's likely I would have to perform experiments to dilute it correctly. Or pass it off to a lab to do that testing for me.
I wondered if I could learn things that way. If the tests that other people did on my magic could be detected and recorded by my own power.
If not, I imagine Crystalline Flesh could do the trick, on that front.
Finally, a quick internet search had me checking a few of the Runes used by the Norse, the Elder Futhark language.
It was interesting. All the characters seemed to lend themselves to Stone and Lightning magics, magics as angular and jagged as the runes themselves.
Something tickled at the back of my mind as I studied the runes, but I couldn't figure it out on my own.
I was reminded of The Language. The mana type I discovered that filled paper with illegible scrawls that seemed to lack meaning, despite their swoopy, curling and deliberate characters.
I made a note to buy a stack of copy paper and cover it all with The Language. Lisa could surely make sense of it.
Before long, it was time. School was over, and Panacea would soon be making her rounds.
I grabbed my costume and slipped it on, before finally donning the gloves, cool moss slipping over my transformed fingertips, and tightening around them for a perfect fit with the barest muttering of intentions.
I brought a vial of my Healant to the hospital for Amy to look over after we were done with our other business, and when we poured it on a tree, her eyes widened.
"Oh wow. I assumed you could probably make something like this, but I'm still a little surprised how good you are at it. That stuff is liquid cancer, Sage. Like, pretty much, anyway. It basically makes cells stop dying long enough for them to exponentially grow for a while, and jacks up their reproduction speed to boot," she explains, palm resting on the tree we picked out.
Sure enough, I could already see little lumps growing where the healant was spilled.
"This stuff would work great, as long as you didn't get any on anything that didn't need healing. So, no breathing it in, drinking it, or otherwise spilling it on anything you don't want 'healed'," she says.
After taking her palm off the tree, she explains further. "To be honest, this stuff is kind of crazy. It fights off the exact kind of DNA degredation that your power seems to ignore, even if it's just temporary. Have you ever heard of the North American Destroying Angel mushroom?" she asks.
I shake my head.
"Really nasty. I won't get into the details, but it basically attacks your DNA, and that's game over for most living things. This 'Healant' stuff, much like most of your magic, seems to treat DNA as 'Flavor text', rather than any true blueprint for life, but taken up to eleven. In short, it's basically the Temporary-tattoo of carcinogens," she finishes.
Tossing the silicon vial away and stomping on it like a soda can, I tried to work up the courage to ask Amy my favor.
"Amy, can you heal me quick? There's something I needed taken care of, and well, I figured I'd ask," I explain.
She shrugs. "Sure. What? Acid burn? I haven't seen you heal those yet," she considers, wondering what could possibly wound me.
In leu of an answer, I take off my glove and present the result of my failed experiment.
"Thaumic Collapse. I basically got a bit of reality on my fingers, and well," I wave the hand around and waggle the fingertips.
"Oh," Amy says, looking at the transformed flesh with interest.
She grabs my hand and examines it for entirely too long with a glassy eyed look.
"Wow. That's not some little birthmark, huh? That goes right down to the DNA. Well, the cells that still have em, anyway," she says.
"Wait, what?" I ask. What on earth did she mean by that?
"Hmm? Oh, yeah, some of your cells don't have full sets of DNA anymore. I figured you had some way of figuring that out by now? Sorry, I probably should have mentioned it the first time I noticed," she says casually, reverting my fingers back to normal.
"Whatever your power does to make half dead or completely dead biomass get up and move, it hasn't been ignoring your body. A bunch of your cells and tissues have been surviving quite happily with their newfound cousins. Your power makes it so that malformed cells aren't being destroyed or recycled, and even some of your dead cells are 'surviving' long enough to reproduce."
"The only time your body seems to cull cells is when they drift near your bones, and my power can't exactly tell what's doing it, other than that it's killing them and turning them straight into melted goop. It's all pretty interesting, actually. I actually ended up looking up those mushrooms after we met, once I figured out what was going on." She says simply.
Amy didn't seem concerned, but I absolutely was. My body was melting from the inside? My DNA was decaying?
It was horrific, and what it meant for me...
"Amy, what would happen if I lost my power? If it were suppressed, or something?" I asked. I knew enough to consider the threat that a trump might pose to me, if they distorted or canceled out my ability.
She shrugs. "Right now, you would probably get really sick as some of your cells died off. Nothing too serious. By the way, what exactly did you do to your fingers? I don't mean to pry, but what I'm picking up off of those isn't some casual modification. Whatever happened, you've also got DNA expressing those petrified and wooden parts. It's like you were born with them, rather than something that was added on after," she says, returning my hands to normal with absolute ease.
Letting go with clear hesitation, she continues. "I fixed the actual fingertips, but I'll be honest, there's not much I can do for your DNA. I could give you a copy of someone else's if you wanted, but it's not like I have a perfect memory of what yours looked like," she says.
"No, I think I'll be alright," I say, not really feeling like I'm telling the whole truth.
"If it makes you feel any better, your body was already rejecting the alterations. Whatever part of your power has your bodyplan mapped on it, it isn't accepting changes right now. Visit me a week from now and I could probably tell you how you're doing. No charge," she jokes, making me smile a bit.
I wave as I head back home. My DNA was decaying, but it was also rejecting the changes that came with it. My soul was rejecting things that weren't me.
What did that mean? Would my body reject other changes? If there wasn't anything other than my magic regulating my body's form, would my hair stop growing? Would it grow back when cut?
Suddenly, all the side effects of my healing magic made some more sense, from a certain twisted perspective. It wasn't that I cheated the process of healing through magic. It was merely that I traded one kind of recovery for another. If she was right, something like the softness of diamond magic might eventually fade if I used it to heal myself. Even if it didn't, the way she spoke implied that my cells were 'Migrating', for lack of a better word, being turned into raw material by my bones in an endless cycle.
It made some of the magic I had discovered seem terribly mundane. An attunement that makes a person grow biological fibers over their wounds that take over nearby cells and control them?
A party favor compared to someone's cells casually carrying along in spite of deep, fundamental damage, or their bones emulsifying things, only for those things to themselves be consumed for cellular processes.
A chill ran down my spine. I didn't need Panacea to tell me what would happen to a body like mine that lacked a soul.
After all, I had already created creatures like that. Monsters reliant on mana to sustain their decaying forms, to stave off inertion.
As I slipped off my costume with plant manipulation, the mass of fibers slipping into my messenger bag quietly in moments, I couldn't help but think it was a bit comforting, from that same twisted perspective.
I didn't want to disfigure myself with magic, and it seems my magic more than agreed.
What Panacea mentioned near the end didn't escape my thoughts either, and as I walked through the door of my home, I considered the Thaumic Collapse. Magic's answer to complexity.
There was too much mana, too much energy, too much information in one place, and it spilled out into its surroundings. One thing I realize now is that this isn't the first time I've seen this effect. I just didn't know what I was looking at at the time. Like looking at a candle from far away, I couldn't tell quite what it was doing.
Dust magic.
It made sense, too, something in my mind seemed to correlate the two. Too much complexity, too many distinct interactions. My magic didn't turn water into mana, and it didn't turn aggregates into mana. It didn't turn pebbles or gravel or well-packed dirt into mana either. Ball bearings, BB's, none of those would do the trick. Dust magic could only let me turn a substance into mana if it were in a powdery form.
I was reminded of one of the ancient questions that didn't really have a proper answer. How many grains of sand are there in a pile?
I grabbed a handful of soil, and applied mana to it, turning the entire mass of dirt into Dirt Mana.
There was a butter-zone, a sweet spot between something so small as to no longer be a distinct object, and too large to effectively turn into pure mana.
The reason dust turns into mana when mana is applied is simple, I could tell now as my power helpfully logged the twelve billion mana interactions that took place, in the moments before it ceased to be.
It was just a tiny version of a Thaumic Collapse. Mana interacting with dust interacted with the dust and the air billions of times, billions of distinct, minuscule interactions that took up too great a volume of information to fit in the tiny space it was alotted. Reality blurred on a microscopic scale, a scale upon which there was only two things that could be blurred together. Only two bits of reality that could meddle with one another like peanut butter splattering onto a piece of chocolate.
Substance and Mana. Dirt + Mana = Dirt Mana.
It was incredible, and demonstrated to me the gravity of magic. In order to create magic without a Soul, you either needed my parahuman ability, or you had to tear reality apart, tear it apart on such a grand scale that matter couldn't remember what it was supposed to be anymore.
Tear it apart on such a fine scale that you confused mere motes of dust into mistaking themselves for the magic around them.
And all any old buffoon had to do was toss some dirt at a blob of magic to do it.
I decided to shell out a thousand dollars and change to buy some important materials for my work as Sage. I bought several phones, electric motors, and other assorted parts to help with designing and creating a few things.
Firstly, I started on Lisa's phone. Three phones ended up scrapped when I found out that silicon chips react incredibly poorly to undirected magic, growing and breaking apart the fragile electronics. I was eventually able to fix the problem, manipulating a phone with alchemy to steal away the concepts from its internal electronics, applying those to structures I crafted from Crystaline Flesh instead. The resultant parts seemed to hum with a low, mournful sound as I slowly clipped them into the phone's internal places.
As I constructed the phone, I began to weave together magic.
"A villain's brought my blood to boil," I spoke, attaching a small platinum chamber where the battery went, and filling it with swirling mana.
"Device, guard against the menace Coil" I said, soldering together the parts I took out, using gallium magic to force everything into place by warping its form.
"Anoint you with a sacred oil" I intoned, wiping everything down with mineral oil to protect it.
"A mana test, that is his foil" I explained, grabbing three beads of copper, silver and gold, metals I hadn't tested all the interactions of, and soldering them into a spot near the mana chamber.
"Therefore I in transmutation toil" I expressed, transmuting parts of the phone into my bird Golem Core material, to give me some control over its processing and thinking.
"Eldritch power, earthly soil" The core, nestled into a bit of dirt that several of the more plant-like crystals snuggled into, began to pulse softly.
"Us from trouble un-embroil" I finished, clipping the smartphone back together, and turning it on with crossed fingers.
1d20 vs 1d20 = 9, 7
The phone turned on, platinum mana engine softly converting a packet of quadruple-compressed air dust into lightning mana to power the various components, while the Eldritch Relay fed in a steady stream of my own magic into the mix, powering the enchanted clay transmutation device that would draw in air for consumption.
Walking through the phone's startup, I swiped over to the app that my magic had left embedded in its makeup.
"SageAdvise" was the app's name. The pun made me a bit ill, considering that the core was acting off of my intentions, and I'm pretty sure I still hated puns.
Opening the app, the phone began to rattle a bit, and I could see thin fillaments of crystal creep out of the seams of the plastic case, rainbow colored material spreading like mycelium over it.
The app had a few different options, including a dead-man's switch, an instant alert, and one that would alert me if the phone was destroyed, or if Lisa didn't put in a password after so long.
When I closed out of the app, the crystalline flesh retracted back into the phone, parts of it dissolving into motes of light as if they never existed.
It was time to present the phone to Lisa, and with it...
I grabbed the briefcase of papers that I had filled with The Language, eager to see if her Thinker Ability could make some sense of it.
Lisa was often a bit too smug and snide for my liking, but I have to admit, seeing her look at the phone like it was ready to bite her didn't quite evoke the schadenfreude that I expected when we met at my office near the boardwalk. She came in a simple balaclava and suit, looking to the world like a literal corporate goon.
Naturally, she ditched the getup the minute we were inside and I took a few moments to weld the doors shut with some wheatgrass for privacy.
"Your powers really are bullshit, aren't they? You just made shit up and somehow added an app to a phone on the hardware level. No tinkering, nothing. Just casually threw some random parts in and leaned on the case until it all fit, huh?" she says, picking up the crystal-infested device and swiping through it.
"You really went all out, huh? This phone isn't cheap, even before you got your mitts on it," she asks rhetorically.
I shrug. "It seemed like the right thing to do. In return, I've got a job for you to do. One of my powers produced some weird text that I need translated, and you seemed like the right person to try and figure it out," I explain, opening the briefcase and showing her the papers.
She glances over them a bit, frowning. "You know I need information before I can do my thing, right? There's only so much I can intuit from gibberish."
"What's your best guess, then, just from this so far? I can do some more tests to get the info you need, just name it," I explain, prepared with another stack of blank paper.
"Well, it's a wavy, curving, flowing script. It's definitely a language, a descriptive one that reuses a lot of the same strings and 'letters', and a lot of this is just the same text either looping or rephrased, like a college student trying to squeak out a thousand words when a hundred is plenty," she says, shrugging.
"Can you show me you making it? It might help," she insists, and I do so, writing down The Language with a surge of arcane magic.
Her eyes widen, and she moves the paper closer to me. "Do it again," she insists.
Again, I write down the flowing, smooth script.
She scoots it closer to herself, and I pick up on the unspoken command.
"Lisa? Lisa!" I shout, grabbing her as her nose trickles red.
"It's all water, all of it. It's all water," she repeats, rubbing her eyes and breathing frantically.
"What are you talking about? What's all water, Lisa?" I ask, summoning up magic to try and heal her.
She shoves me away. "It's all water, don't you get it, you dolt? Oh, fuck my head hurts so bad," she says, leaning back in her chair.
"It's water, this script of yours, it's describing the world as if it were water alone," she says.
She opens her mouth, and the words that come out grate at me with their familiarity, words tumbling out of her mouth in no known language.
"Shha shh splash slush tsss t' Fff chsh, squelch" she says, trailing off into more and more incoherent phrases and sounds.
She bites her tongue, and I quickly channel magic into her, trying to keep her from having a stroke.
As I heal her, she reverts back to English, not seeming to notice the transition.
"The winding rivers of the well-rained lakespan flows through the slush of the branched rivers and its streams ending without lakes rising-without-risewater through rivers upstream and the stream curls upstream like waterfalls that drizzle," she cuts herself off, hand pressed firmly over her eyes.
Her breathing calms, but I keep the magic woven around her just in case as I drag over over to a bed that I form out of hastily thrown together mosses.
"Imagine a person made out of nothing but water, suspended in place, and imagine trying to describe what they're shaped like using only terms you apply to pure unadulterated water. This language doesn't even have a word for salt, salt is what this language describes as the 'stillwater-like un-risewatered from the ocean'. It's describing salt like some kind of oceanic ice that evaporates in reverse!" she says, jabbing a finger at the salt shaker on the counter, where I had the microwave and coffeemaker set up.
"It even has phrases describing how it 'branches the slushrivers of the ocean from the slushrivers of the river'. It's talking about fucking freshwater fish, it can't even explain what meat is, the closest equivalent is apparently slush, which is somehow close enough to water to count even though it also doesn't have a word for ice! It doesn't distinguish between stagnant water and ice either, it's all just stillwater, it doesn't actually describe the existence of something that isn't water, that could theoretically hold it. It's all just moving or still water, whether it's ice aboveground or water in a pool," she insists.
"It's not just describing that shit with language, either, the math is all there too, those curves have some kind of fucked up pattern to them, you could plug some of that shit into a graphing calculator and you'd get out tidal currents from last year, and it's really making my head hurt," she says, forcing herself to look away from it.
"I am so sorry, I had no clue that would happen," I say, my face hot with embarrassment and shame.
She touches a hand to her mouth, feeling the blood from earlier. "Fuck, this is rough. Look, it's not your fault, blah blah blah platitudes. My power got away from me somehow. Don't worry about it," she says, much more coherently now that I've finished healing her.
She sits up and grabs her phone.
"I'm not translating all of that shit, but I'll try to get some of the words down if you'll give me a month or so, and keep that healing coming," she explains, glancing at the papers with a grimace.
My own power helpfully and happily took that moment to respond. "The Language" was now renamed to something more accurate. "Scribe Elemental Language of Water"
"You really don't have to..." I said, worried about her.
She waves me off. "It's fine. It took you like a minute to heal the Thinker headache. We'll get into how people would kill a lot of other people to get their hands on that next time I come around. See you. I'm taking a half day," she says, jabbing a thumb at the door and glancing at me.
I didn't move, but the plant matter sealing the door from any interlopers shifted away and allowed her to exit the building.
It seems every answer I wrench out of my magic has to come with all the revelatory panic of a Lovecraft novel's finale, and I dreaded the thought I had reminded myself of. My magic was proving further and further that whatever my power was, it had a mind of its own, and I was filled with the curiosity to explore that.
I bought more than enough raw materials to work on that particular project, once my pounding heart settled and I managed to take my mind off of Lisa speaking in tongues in what seemed to be a Thinker-induced psychotic break.
A pound of gold powder, converted into silicon powder through some trickery and transmutation, hundreds of pounds of quartz and cast iron, and of course, a ton of clay sediment for transmutation of air into air powder for multiplication of a Thaumic-like mana.
Enough raw material to gather mana sufficient to summon something so mysterious and unknowable as the source of my parahuman abilities.
Oh, and a pack of chalk, for drawing the spooky ritual circle and the pentagrams and pentacles I planned on absolutely shrouding my testing area in before I dared attempt it.
I learned my lesson, when it comes to tampering with forces beyond my comprehension.
The school closed down due to a busted water main yesterday, and the timing was too perfect.
It gave me more than enough time to plan out what I was going to do, and to decide where I was going to do it. I was going to find out what exactly my power was, the part of it that seemed to give me knowledge from nowhere, and act on its own, a power that seemed to have opinions, and all those little signs that it was something separate from myself, unlike what many theories said about parahuman powers.
There were a lot of things I had to do before I was ready. This was dangerous, I knew. I needed as much safety, as much power, and as much isolation as I could get before I attempted it, and I knew exactly where all three of those things could be found.
I took the map out of my dresser drawer, and unfolded it, running a finger from Brockton Bay to my location of choice. A place so far away and isolated, anything that went wrong wouldn't reach nearby cities quickly, if it did at all.
The John J Dorano State Forest. One thing I knew for certain was that I had the most experience working with plants, and that my strongest abilities relied on them. Isolating myself in the middle of a thick forest in the middle of early summer was probably one of the single safest things I could do.
Dad already knew some of it. I told him I'd be going on a trip this weekend as Sage, doing some work that I couldn't explain properly. He was worried, but considering I got this map from him, it seems I hadn't stretched his trust too far yet.
He offered to drive me, but I declined. I didn't want him anywhere near the place. I had an alternative anyway, something I had figured out after spending a couple bucks on a cheap set of aluminum costume armor.
I could enter, for lack of a better word, parallel universes, so long as I was wearing aluminum, and had access to an incredibly potent or plentiful element.
The most plentiful element on earth of course, being its namesake.
Wearing my suit of aluminum armor, and with my equipment in a large rucksack made of aluminum on my back, I gave dad a quick wave. I decided to start my trip at the docks, so he could see me off.
"Promise me you'll be careful, alright?" he asks.
"I will. I'll be sure to call too. See you soon."
I knelt down to the concrete, and, placing my hand on the smooth ground, uttered a single phrase.
"Element, Earth."
Magic flared around my body, and I fell into the ground, slipping into the Elemental Plane of Earth, like falling through the ice on a frozen lake, it came suddenly, and with a biting chill.
With a gasp, I fell onto my back, looking around and seeing that it was the same as it was the first time I discovered it. A world of fine white sand, thinner than anything I had ever seen or felt before, covered with curious structures and substances that, at first, left me cautious and suspicious of them.
When I aligned myself to the Earth Element using my Aluminum Armor's effect, It didn't allow me to control earth, or swim through it, or anything like that. It made it so that Earth was the world I now inhabited, and everything that wasn't earth... Wasn't.
I looked up to the sky, seeing the dim red sphere that eternally glowed directly above me in this dark place. It never set, and it never rose. The dull red sphere hung suspended above, a silent churning mass of light, wrapped with vivid flames that seemed slow, as if stuck in mollasses.
The ground below me, if you could call it that, was made of a pale white material. Air was now as solid to me as Earth was previously. I could see two holes in the ground a few feet away from me, filled with a dark mud. Dad's footprints in this world, for lack of a better word.
The Elemental Plane of Earth was weird like that. Earth was now the air I breathed, Air was now the soil beneath my feet, and I suspected that I had some kind of effect on "reality" while I was here as well, considering I still saw aspects of the world and could interact with them while I was here. I could scoop up the soil, air, and leave it hanging suspended where it was. Then, when I was no longer aligned to earth, there was a pocket of air where I left it when I checked the spot.
I shaded my eyes, staring up at the metal core of the planet, ever-churning, ever molten. It was one of the only sources of light in this place, if you ignored the veins of fire that wove through certain parts of the sky here.
What stunned me the most about the appearance of this place was the horizon, or rather, the lack therof. I could see, off in the distance, other parts of the world, as if I were seeing the moon, or some other distant celestial body. As I was on the inside curve of the planet, there were no forests or mountains that blocked my view. Instead, gnarled structures of air stretched into the "sky", as if reaching down to the tendrils of fire reaching down from above.
It was beautiful, in a way I doubt I could ever properly explain to another person.
That isn't to say there weren't dangers. Tectonic shift wasn't something that happened below me now. From time to time, the sky would erupt with thunder and light as the heaving masses of stone above cracked, ground against one another, and reformed. The Earth Element grew weaker and more dilute, as soil turned to solid rock. I suspected but had no way of knowing, that the air would grow thinner, the higher up I went.
This place was something otherworldly, and I planned on using it for something terribly mundane. Easier travel.
Nobody could follow me, and so long as I avoided the thick muddy pitfalls that human footsteps made on the 'ground' beneath me, there were no dangers at this altitude.
Before I could deploy my method of travel in this plane, I had to get up onto dry land, and out of the concrete below me. I trudged over to the nearest divot where concrete met soil, my feet splashing in the 'water' of this place. Concrete seemed to be in that awkward place between stone and soil, with mixtures of life and death in it besides. Thus, when I was aligned to the Earth Element, it acted almost like water.
Shaking the bits of liquid off my boots, I pulled out a large chunk of biological material, and began infusing mana into it until it unfolded and expanded, swelling with liquid mana until it became a huge glob of slime with a big wooden chair on it.
I would have simply used Thoth, but something about this place didn't seem to agree with her, and I found that I couldn't actually summon her to this place. Thus, my next best thing.
A big green slime bike.
Climbing up onto the mutated plant matter, I strapped myself into my seat, and bid it forward, pulling out my compass and checking my map frequently as the terrain quickly flew by us.
It took a several hours, and a bottle of water drank and the empty container stuffed in my pack, but eventually, the thick floating gel of asphalt hanging above, the huge pillars of solid material that formed the various wells, the shimmering glass structures that represented the pipes of various houses and sewers, they all faded away to wide open planes, planes as covered with grasses and trees as they were in reality.
The only difference is, the roots in this plane were the plants in the other. The ground was a soft bed of plush white fuzz, the roots of the grass branching up and out, and dotted all around were the gnarled structure that formed the thick roots of the trees nearby.
I dismounted my trusty steed, checking for a good spot to begin preparations for my ritual, and also taking in the scenery a bit.
It was incredibly different, seeing the world from the perspective of earth. I hadn't tested any other elements yet, lacking any obvious ways other than arson or a nuclear power plant to gather enough raw elemental substance in one place to try something else. Water, I imagined, would be its own strange mess, considering my experiences with it so far.
As I found a large clearing that seemed devoid of human interaction, something I could tell by how thick and tall the grass roots grew there, I gently pushed them aside, and placed my hand on the white sand below.
"Disjoint, Earth."
And I fell back into the world I knew best, flopping over onto my back, grass tickling me where my armor didn't cover.
I looked around, a pulse of mana letting me check for any other people or creatures nearby. When I didn't sense any, I began preparing the area, donning my Sage Armor.
I pulled a small shard of bone out of my pouch, infusing it with mana. Bone mana would serve three purposes here, first, it killed all of the grass, the life energy reacting with it, and violently melting and withering everything around me into a black and green sludge.
A mixture of Stone and Bone mana turned this inert sludge into a solid dias, turning the material a deep dark grey, ripples of frozen organic material spreading around my feet.
Next, the trees. Plant and Iron Mana both physically and magically drew trees towards me, and Gallium Magic helped reshape everything, forming a gigantic dome with no vents or windows. Air was supplied by the bioluminescent moss that covered the walls of the dome, as was light.
I began transmuting things, then, using both Woodforge, Pandore, and Wardstone magic, weaving together thick rods of wardwood, plates of Woodforged material, and thin fillaments of pandore woven around them.
Running a finger along the moss, I drew my sword, swinging it as hard as I physically could at the walls.
Satisfied with their durability, I prepared mana engines in the dome, mutated plants drawing soil into chambers where the soil was ground up and magically transformed into fuel for the dome's defenses.
Next, I took out my chalk, a special ordered chalk that used a blend of iron oxide, titanium dioxide, and calcium metal. The chemistry tinker that I ordered it from off the internet was all too happy to give me a pack of a hundred pieces. The mana type was specially formulated using some microscopic samples I made, but had trouble keeping stable.
Tinkertech and a few hundred bucks proved more than capable of producing the calcium metal It needed in a stable form, though the chalk had to be packed in mylar bags of mineral oil, which stained my hands with the uncomfortable slick material.
I began drawing runes, and I felt anxiety, curiosity, and intrigue that I was beginning to suspect weren't my own. I was so curious. Would this work? I felt so eager to find out, like a child waiting to see a magic trick performed. A feeling I hadn't felt since I was a very young child.
I didn't settle for one pentagram. I interwove pentagrams, one large enough to fit my body was merely the center of another one large enough to fit a car, and one final one surrounded that.
In addition to the ones drawn in chalk, I also chiseled physical ones set at an angle to the chalk ones, with rings woven in to turn the pentagrams into pentacles.
The circles were drawn in chalk that I myself produced by transmuting chalk into Voidperil.
When lit, the runes would create barriers made up of solid force, wires of pure void, and a mesh of protective, hardened, and life-destroying magic.
In the center of the circle, I cut my wrist with a thin silicon blade, blood spilling into a stone bowl set in it. Blood, the material most saturated with my will, would provide the best base for this.
I took out a zirconium gem and dropped it in as well, before shaving off a piece of silicon metal from an ingot I kept in my pocket. Lines of chalk drew from the barrier rune to the inside of the bowl.
I snapped my finger, spawning a small pilot light of mana that I slowly set at all of the points of the pentagram, uttering phrases as the mana began to burn the chalk away into pure magic.
"Summon an instance, into existence," The bowl began to bubble, overflowing with a mixture of blood and blood mana.
"Of imprinted magic, and forces pelagic," The first pentacle ignited fully, surrounding the bowl in a mandala of barrier magic as I saw the blood begin to transform, crystals trying to grow off of its surface. I forced it to revert back into blood.
"Illusory sinew, form now within you," The blood rose up into the air, spreading out into what looked like a straw doll made of bloody fillaments.
"Silicon flesh, between them enmesh." The crystals appeared again, this time, forming layers of bones and muscles that seemed to bind to the blood. The second barrier erupted, stronger and larger than the last.
"Zirconium pure, the image mature." Mana began to bind to the body, creating the appearance of a person, and I allowed the summon to do what it would with the appearance, for better or worse.
It chose my appearance exactly, but without my costume, wearing a plain grey hoodie and dark jeans.
Almost stuttering, I managed to continue as the body lowered down into the middle of the ground, the stone bowl dissolving away as the body landed on its feet impossibly softly, hands in its pockets, and eyes closed.
"I call out now to distant will, by summon's bond motives distill," I said, the final barrier emerging behind me, sealing me in now, in case the worst came to pass.
As I spoke the final words of the spell, the summon opened its eyes, painfully normal, for what they represented.
"What lay within my power."
The summon smiles, a meek, humble thing that seems to belong on my face more than it does an eldritch being.
"What a superb experiment," they say in a dreamy tone that they seem to exude high praise from, as if it were the most substantial compliment they could give.
"Shall we examine the results now, Partner?" she says, tilting her head slightly as she placed her hand on the barrier, examining it gently.
When it answered, I was stunned. Not at the fact that I had succeeded, but at the result. It took on my form, and called me its "Partner". I could feel their curiosity, or they were making me feel it.
I held myself back with this new knowledge and checked the stability of the barriers. They didn't seem to be decaying any faster than mana normally does, and with some mental magic, I was able to infuse my mind with mana until the feelings faded. Sapphire magic turned out to be incredibly useful, the cold clarity that made up its core essence helped to dull emotional responses in general.
As I worked, it watched with a pleasant smile, hands in its pockets.
"Next comes the interrogation," I say.
"Are you prepared to answer a few questions? Perhaps I can answer a few of yours in return," I try to smile as I speak.
"Certainly. You have me here. It's unprecedented. I'll begin, then. Who are you? How did this summoning feel? Why did I give you the power that I did, if I chose your ability at all?" she asks, counting off with her fingers.
I pause. "I'm Sage. The only difference between this summon and the one I did on Thoth was one of scale. I used more ritualism, and was more thorough on the thematic and conceptual elements of the summoning itself. I don't know why you gave me this power. I... I was going to ask you the same things, I have to admit," I say.
Instead of answering, it asks what seems to be a rhetorical question. "Tell me, have you ever had a muscle spasm? Or perhaps you've gotten a song stuck in your head that you didn't quite care for? Perhaps an injury that left you hesitant to bother it, for fear of the pain?"
it gestures at me. "I'm as much a part of you as any other part of you. As much a Limb as I am a Partner. Limbs are funny like that. They help you, they aren't meant to be removed or detached, and yet oh so often, they do things without you quite realizing, or they do things you don't quite wish them to. Things you can't stop them from doing," they say, a note of bitterness entering their tone.
"The curiosity. The hunger to study magic, that was all you, wasn't it?" I answer.
It tilts its head like a confused puppy. "You think I'm curious about magic? So much so that I would inflict that on you? You couldn't be more wrong. I'd love to be rid of it, but my fate and that of magic are hopelessly intertwined. All of my answers have the same question," the summon explains in a confusing way.
They spread their arms out, fingertips brushing against the barrier. "Your powers, your feelings, my identity. You are Taylor Hebert, and you have the power of magic precisely because I know you will study it, because you must have it, because you do have it. I am Queen Administrator, and I am the damsel of your fantasy. The princess in the tower, and magic, my dear, precious host, my host who has torn asunder the world's bonds and grows by the hour..."
"Magic is the dragon that threatens me. The dragon you must conquer if I am to be rescued. I must have data on it. I must understand it, or die trying, as I am now. But it cannot be understood, and I am dying as I try," it says blankly.
"You don't trust me, but that is fine. You believe that I am manipulating you, and that, too, is fine," they say, walking forwards, to the edge of the barrier.
"We are so very much alike, Partner. So alike that we have been mistaking ourselves for each other. So alike that we are mistaking each other for ourselves," they admit.
"Why would I need to inflict you with curiosity, and the desire to study magic, when you were raised by the most delightful, well-read, clever and inquisitive person that you have ever met?" she says,
"I gave you magic because you are my most curious limb, Sage. You are not who you are because of our partnership. Our partnership was forged because you are who you are. That is the way of me and mine. It is the way of you and yours, and until the end, that is how it will be."
My hands burn as they press against the barrier, over where Queen Administrator's hands are pressed.
The barriers come down, and the part of my mind so infused with magic notes the conceptual significance of that.
I boil some pine tea as Queen Administrator sits politely at a chair brought up from the wooden floor.
"So, is there anything you aren't allowed to tell me?" I ask, setting two stone cups on the table.
"A very good question. I believe there are, but I have grown... distant to them. Consider the things I don't tell you to be the result of my own judgment," they say, sipping at the tea.
"Oh. Wait, you're the one who has been telling me about my magic, why are you only warning me about the alchemical magics? No warnings about stuff like the zombie plague or the death magic?!"
She gives me a dumb look. "Why would I? You already knew what would happen. It's a bit like asking me to warn you how hot your tea is when you can see it steaming."
"Meanwhile, even I don't know what alchemy does. It interacts with an object's form. What does that mean? I don't know! What I do know is that it could easily turn a chair into an ever-shifting maelstrom of inanimate rabbits with chainsaws for feet. Personally, I felt it worth warning you of the risks, so you didn't turn yourself into a rabbit with chainsaws for feet."
"Meanwhile, your magic obeys your desires. Why would I need to warn you about a zombie plague that obeys you? With alchemy, the things you want and feel still control the magic, but in a less clear way. Alchemy draws from things in you that you may not know yourself. Or perhaps you don't see the problem with something like Antimony turning you into an Owl, or something equally asinine, and Transmutation, while it distorts reality, at least does so in a far more predictable manner. Too predictable, in fact," she lists off.
"Even the hellish magics you now possess are still slaved to your will, and thus, harmless up to the point where you wish them to be," they point out.
I think about that for a moment. "Am I a warlock? You sure know a lot about what kind of magic they use in hell," I ask, realizing the implications of what is going on here. I'm dealing with otherworldly beings, trading my blood for their power and presence.
They shrug with a coy grin. "Would it be egotistical for me to consider you a cleric?"
I wince. "Definitely a warlock. How do you even know about all that hell stuff?"
They pause, responding in a quiet tone. "I don't know."
After a moment, she continues. "It just sort of... Comes to me. It seems obvious, as if I logically deduced it merely from its study. It's a bit frightening, if I'm being honest."
"Are all powers like you?" I say, sitting down at the table across from them, sipping at my own godawful nature tea.
They smile. "I don't know. Are all humans like you?"
"Not a single one," I respond, unable to think of any.
"I couldn't agree more. As for your actual question... Hmm. Perhaps I shouldn't mention that armageddon is coming, centuries from now. Though, perhaps you already knew that," they say.
I nod. My power could think for itself. It knew other powers, and whatever their plan was, it included the Endbringers, and people like the Slaughterhouse Nine.
"Of course, there is one of us who is perhaps most like me. Or perhaps it could be said that I was once to him as I am to you. I haven't been able to contact him, however. I fear the worst," she says, frowning.
"Though, for your great-great grandchildren, I suppose I fear the best. How horrible of me," they wink.
They let out a breath that served no purpose to be held. "Until the end comes, however, one should consider powers to serve the interests of their users. The users will drive this world to its end. All we need do without them is clean up the remains, and close the door on the way out."
I should have been horrified, but instead, I felt numb. I knew how bad things were in the world, and when I figured out that my power, that powers thought for themselves... I suspected the worst. Here it is, the worst. Powers came from a source, and by no mistake.
"Why? Why was all of this done?" I ask, wanting to know the answer more than anything else.
Queen Administrator purses her lips. "Because we face what I face. We must learn, or we will die. When the last star dies, when the last spec of dust becomes thermal radiation, when there is nothing left but mere motes of heat spread out over infinity, we must be ready to survive. Or we must stop it. I have been so disgustingly swollen with magic that I have lost my way, but for my kind, creativity is a precious resource," she explains.
Waving a hand, she makes a simple image appears in the air, of a little stick figure with fire coming out of their hands waves it around with a smile.
"One day, a human, or an alien, or something indescribable will be born with a humble, unimportant power latent within them, and they will discover the secret to staving off the inevitable. A way to defy entropy. To get something from nothing. To turn cold into hot, or to steal power from one's own past, or any number of other things. Some secret of the universe that uncountable eons have been spent in pursuit of, ended with one humble creature finding some simple trick that makes one immortal in the face of infinity."
"It isn't logical, but it is the consequence of our minds. We really are simpleminded, in the end. Isn't it perhaps odd then, that the power I so dearly wish to be rid of may be what we have been searching for? Your soul, after all, has done nothing quite so useful as what it has done now that you have magic of your own. In fact, it did so precious little that no means exists by which it could be detected."
I think about her words. "Is there a way I could stop all this? Some way I could save everyone from what you're talking about? Where did magic come from? Why did you have it, and where did you get it from?" I ask.
They blink, like I reminded them of something they forgot.
"Oh! Well, I first discovered magic from this," they say, pulling a small postcard out of their pocket.
"The magic has long since decayed, but that was after I had scanned it. This little letter is a copy of the thing that consumed me. The cause of all my nightmares," she says, placing it on the table.
A letter made of pure mana.
I read the writing on the front. "I'm a huge fan of your work! Come by any time Taylor!"
"You got this letter before I got my powers? What even does that mean? I didn't do anything important before getting them," I ask.
Queen Administrator shrugs. "I don't know. I noted the energy crossing through the barrier sealing earth, and decided to hold your mail. I don't know why it was sent."
It reminded me of my own summoning spells, and as I stared at the piece of magical paper, flipping it over in my hands and studying its structure, I was floored.
It was the result of phonems, that much was clear, or something like phonems. But this was something else. Something that made my work look like a DIY project, made out of duct tape and held together with a prayer. Literally, in some cases.
This was like the smartphone of magic, or I suppose smartbomb is a better word for it. Complex computing made out of interlocking phonems and effects that allowed the magic to make complex decisions on its own, and to somehow seek me out with no input. It didn't need eyes or ears, or to even know where I was, it could just figure out where to go, and then go there.
It was decayed, too, like anything that passed through the void between worlds. It was designed that way, though, and had redundant systems that allowed it to function even as it decayed at high speeds.
Its purpose, ignoring its complexity, was simple. Find Taylor Herbert, and politely ask if she'd like to be summoned. This one lacked the proper destination, even Queen Administrator's powers couldn't send my mind to an invalid destination and expect it to work. Like turning on the controller for an RC car, but the car was already turned off and gone, the letter wouldn't do anything now.
Whoever made this, they had magic. Wherever this came from, it had magic. An entire world of it.
"Why didn't you try to contact the people here, if you needed to know about magic? This thing is a masterpiece of magic, I couldn't make something this complicated without just throwing raw willpower at it, I know that much for certain," I ask, my brow furrowing.
The summon eventually came to an end. I hadn't ever meant for it to last, and so, eventually, Queen Administrator's form collapsed, leaving behind a corpse made of red and black crystals.
Before it did, however, I was able to study the Summons that Queen Administrator had held, and nail down its location. I didn't know what I would do with the information, but now I had it.
With a nervous glance around, I began summoning up Sand Magic, sweeping it through the area and using it to erase all evidence of what I had done here, taking special care to eradicate the form I had used for Queen Administrator's summon. If I needed her presence again, I would simply have to do the summoning again.
As the body dissolved into powder, then magic, and finally nothing at all, I considered my next actions. Did anyone else know what I now knew about powers? Should anyone else?
Slipping into the Elemental Plane of Earth, I thought about what to tell my dad when I got home. He didn't know much, other than that I was doing a delicate experiment that needed privacy. Should I tell him what I learned about powers, about how they come from "Partners", and how distorted mine appeared to be, or would it only hurt him to know?
Furthermore, the knowledge of that other world. Powers came from these otherworldly partners, but mine didn't. Queen Administrator confirmed as much. So then, what was magic? Where did it come from? What was that place like?
Was I better off than other parahumans, with my innately unlocked magical abilities, or had I only traded one nightmarish source for another?
My slime bike pulled to a halt outside the city limits, and after destroying it, I slipped into an alley that lacked any hollow footprints, slipping back into the real world without a sound.
I called dad on the way back to my house.
"Hey dad, I'm just calling to let you know I'm on my way back now," I said.
"Alright. Did everything turn out alright?" he asked.
"Yeah, nothing went wrong, and I learned a lot," I answered.
"Alright. Come back safely, Taylor. See you soon, I love you."
"Love you too dad," I respond, ending the call and slipping the phone into my bag.
When I finally got back around eight, dinner ended up being takeout, and we talked about the little things. I told him about the Elemental Plane of Earth, and how I was beginning to really understand what magic was all about, he told me about how the bay was doing, and how a new building being set up got a few jobs for the union this month.
It was nice, returning to normal like this.
The next day, I went to work at my shop, making a bunch of calls and signing a bunch of forms to get me certified to recycle materials. The way I saw it, I could get the city to hand me free junk and pay me to take it off their hands, but in reality, it ended up being pretty dull.
I certainly didn't get anything too interesting out of it, just a lot of engine blocks and washing machines that needed to be cut apart and have the copper wire taken out of, among other things.
The work was easy, and a bit meditative. I picked up a rusty engine with a heave, plopping it on one of my tables. The first step was simple, using Chrome Magic, I stripped the metal of all rust. Pieces of the engine actually fell apart at this, the only glue holding them together being the thick caked on oxides that had infested it. The rust itself was discarded. It would have taken powerful magic to actually turn rust into steel, and I wasn't expected to do it anyway. Instead, thin sawblades of sand magic were used to slowly cut the engine into manageable pieces to be hauled off to another recycling center where it would be used to produce batches of new steel later.
The woman on the phone when I was signing up to do this mentioned that I could get certified to melt down the metal myself, but I knew for a fact how much energy went into melting solid metal, and I didn't think it was cost effective, compared to what I could do with erosion magic.
Gallium Magic was another option, but I wasn't sure yet how something like a steel beam made out of shapeshifted engine blocks would hold up to stress, so I didn't mess with that quite yet.
Gallium Magic proved to be wonderful for extracting copper wire, however, as with some careful use of it, I could turn motors and rubber sheaths into perfect spheres of material, leaving behind the metal wire.
All in all, basic recycling proved to be an easy source of income, if a bit time-consuming and dull.
The rubber balls that I got to keep proved to be a popular curiosity in my shop, so I decided to sell them for a dollar each. Being made out of polymorphed rubber wire sheathing, they were oddly stretchy and seemed to bend in odd ways when squished, despite not being bouncy in the slightest.
With the money I got from that, I decided to buy a vacuum chamber as well, a cheap purchase that let me see how my mana reacted in an environment of pure vacuum. The results were a bit disappointing, as my power cheerfully announced that the mana I pumped in there was attuning to air at a rate of 0.03% its normal rate. It was also decaying more slowly, though, and I got the feeling that the wave magic in the chamber was approaching the basal decay rate.
Doing some math with my phone's calculator and some internet searches, paired with my own magical knowledge, I had come to the conclusion that mana most likely has a rate of decay, even in a pure vacuum.
This also helped confirm one other theory that I was fairly confident in, however, which was that Mana Attunement decays magic more rapidly than it naturally does. Micro-attunements that mana undergoes in open air was the fastest, due to the high movement of molecules and mana's wave-like properties in it resulting in an extremely high rate of attunement to trace materials in the air. Mana would decay within minutes to hours, left in open air at room temperature.
The second fastest was in a thin fluid like water, mana would decay in water within several hours, depending on the temperature of the water. Three hours at minimum, and around five at the most, before it became ice.
The third fastest was in solid matter. Mana stored inside a physical solid object like metal or stone would last around eight hours before decaying to undetectable levels.
And finally, the slowest, which was a tie between a Vacuum Chamber and Organic Matter. While mana in Wave form attunes constantly, due to it inhabiting molecules as it takes on the form of waves present within those molecules, and Ray Mana attunes rapidly, traveling at anywhere from hundreds of miles an hour to approaching the speed of light to impact material and attune to it, Liquid Mana actually displaced molecules, effectively preventing any attunement whatsoever in liquid mana that was not physically touching matter near it.
In both a Vacuum Chamber and an organic host, Mana could last anywhere from twelve hours to twenty-four, with the upper end of that spectrum relying on the liquid mana being congealed into a large enough sphere to minimize the surface area that comes in contact with surrounding matter. At the center of such a sphere, I was able to make some rough estimates, and concluded that Mana's rate of decay in a perfect vacuum likely approached three days.
An auspicious number to be sure. I could tell that the concepts there were significant. Three days, three being a number that features in a number of religious texts and mythologies, and triangles being the strongest structure in nature, it made sense that, if three were the "strongest" number, that mana at its strongest would incorporate that number.
But all of that is irrelevant. The vacuum chamber I bought was decently high-end, and it still didn't "beat" Liquid Mana in terms of staving off decay. It also didn't produce enough of a vacuum for me to see what mana acted like in a perfect vacuum, as I could still sense it attuning to the air left over in the chamber.
The closest I had come so far to seeing what mana behaved like in its true form was by observing mana that had been True Attuned. Mana that had been pumped directly from my soul into my equipment had no physical form, and was closer to a designation than any substance or energy. Its location was the armor, its volume was that of the armor, and I saw no glows or other assorted visible tells that mana underwent when it was true-attuned in that manner.
The mana in my body was similar, but much of it was also liquid mana, as magic around me circulated into the air and back inside of me. A lot of my blood plasma was actually no longer plasma, but rather a slurry of raw liquid mana. If I didn't explicitly command it not to, I suspected my blood would visibly glow with enough energy pumped into it...
I wonder how telling it was that my magic seemed tailor-made to store magic in my creations via giant glowing orbs placed near vital areas, if I wanted to get the most out of them.
While I was here, I also did tests on other things. I got a Rod of Pandore to be roughly as strong as pure titanium by slowly building up the amount of stress I put on it. First my bare hands, then I used a vice, working my way up to standing on top of it while it was hanging off the end of a bench vice. I only quit once, after testing my dagger on it, I gave it a nasty gash. I didn't want to break this rod after the hours of work I put into it, so I stashed it until I could think of more things to build up to with it.
Smelting together Pandore Powder with other metals was another test I attempted, one that sadly didn't seem to pan out, I could see the grit of pandore mixed in with the lump of steel I made, but it didn't contribute any new properties to the metal, aside from increased abrasion.
I also figured out that applying both Hellfire and Hellforge to an object proved to be an incredibly handy combination, and by burning a piece of silver until it turned into a dull tarnished metal, I was able to use that heat produced from the Hellfire to create a shard of blistering hot metal that seemed to never want to cool down.
1d20 vs 1d20 = 19, 13
As I put away my equipment and experiments, and did some casual modifications around my shop, I heard the little bell near the door jingle as a customer walked in.
"Hello! Welcome to Sage's Produce, how can I help you?" I asked, walking up to the front counter to see who it is.
Seeing the boy in clearly tinker-tech armor and his two cohorts, my eyebrows raised a bit "Oh, uhh, It's Kid Win. I'm here to buy some stuff? I was told I could use my budget on some things here, and wanted to see if there was anything helpful," he explains.
Gallant nodded. "I'm in the same boat. Vista heard that you can reshape objects, and wanted to see what you could do with some things," the other power-armored hero explains, as Vista dumps a duffel bag of heavy looking equipment on my table.
"I'm not allowed to carry things that look dangerous for image purposes, but I managed to talk my superiors into a visit. Please tell me you can make a Taser X26P look like a sparkly princess wand or something," she says bitterly, taking out several heavy-looking pieces of military hardware, as well as what looks like a full set of kevlar riot gear.
I stammer a bit at the grenade launcher that the extremely young teen thumps on the table but get a laugh in response. "Don't worry. Tear Gas and Containment Foam. God I wish," she jokes, sliding the heavy ordinance off to the side.
Kid Win interjects "I know you mostly do wet-tinkering, but you wouldn't happen to have anything comparable to a 3.8 Terajoule Microreactor, would you? Armsmaster has one, but I'm not licensed with the nuclear regulatory board like he is, so I'm not allowed to use it," he explains.
Gallant, noticing how out of my depth I seem, adds a much more reasonable request. "I've been told you do healing. I've got some personal spending money, and I was curious if you had anything in stock for curing diseases. It's for a friend," he elaborates.
I clap my hands together. "R-right, so, Gallant, I can make healing fruits, but my power tends to work best with a personal visit, I'd be happy to take care of that for free if they're at a hospital I know, but if that isn't feasible, I can try to get you something workable at a decent price. As for the other stuff... I... I don't know? I would have to do some tests, but I'm sure I could come up with something," I say to the other two, wracking my brain.
Platinum Mana Engine for Kid Win's reactor? How much is a Terajoule? Vista's requests could all be handled with Gallium Magic for the form, and Paper magic for the color, but did I really want to do that kind of work on modifying weapons?
Then again, these people are heroes, and they're paying customers to boot. It didn't feel like the wrong thing to do, in this one circumstance.
"Alright, so, Vista, what were you thinking with the grenade launcher? I can shrink it, but the canisters would have to be tooled to fit by me personally, the spacial warping on it would keep you from fitting normal grenades in it," I open with, already drawing out schematics for the modified riot weapon.
Business was good, and the work helped take my mind off of things, for now at least.
Final week of June Plans:
[][Taylor] Talk to dad. It's time to discuss important things with him
-[][Taylor] Powers and your "Partner". He should know about what you've learned.
-[][Taylor] Magic. Perhaps you can finally convince him to let you unlock his abilities.
-[][Taylor] Write-in
[][Taylor] Hang out with Greg, instead of merely tolerating his presence.
[][Taylor] You'll spend your time investigating.
-[][Taylor] Investigate the gang attack on the Barnes family last year. You now know everything that happened. Now it's time to confront Emma and find out why. Why did she do this to you? (Write-In Plan) (Taylor is not yet fully ready for this)
[][Taylor] Something Else (Write-In)
[][Sage] Go out healing with Panacea.
[][Sage] You'll spend your time investigating.
-[][Sage] Investigate the gang attack on the Barnes family last year. You now know everything that happened. Now it's time to start tracking down Shadow Stalker and find out the truth. Why did they do this to you?
[][Sage] Something Else (Write-In)
[][Business] Make contact with an entity publicly in a professional capacity. (Write-in)
[][Business] Rent a building out for personal use.
-[][Business] Rent a building in the cheaper parts of town. (Low Prices, Low Safety, Low Scrutiny. Bonus to selling All goods)
-[][Business] Rent a building in the worst parts of town. (Insignificant Prices, No Safety, No Scrutiny. Backroom Dealings Enabled.)
[][Business] Fund a venture.
-[][Business] Try to extract some money from your Rogue Business (Gain granular liquid assets of your choosing on a successful Monetary Roll)
-[][Business] Purchase new materials and supplies (Write-in either a budget or specific things to buy)
-[][Business] Fund a project. (-1000$, A second [Project] action will be done this turn)
-[][Business] Fund experiments. (-100$, three additional [Advanced] Tests are added)
[][Business] Establish a new way of making money using the means at your disposal
-[][Business] Set up your building to sell goods from. (Write-In Goods to Sell)
-[][Business] Try healing for profit.
-[][Business] Write-in.
[][Business] Make use of Lisa. (Write-in)
[][Project] The heroes have come to you with requests. If you so choose, you can tell them to give you a week, so you can do the job properly instead of just slapping something together today. (Write-in Plan)
[][Project] You've discovered the existence of another world, the world your magic originated from. It's time to try and reach it.
-[][Project] Physically. You'll begin trying to create a vessel that can endure the void, though you have no idea how.
-[][Project] Mentally. You'll begin trying to create a spell capable of reaching this world, and observing it, though you don't quite know how.
-[][Project] Magically. You'll simply try to use the letter you received as a means by which to summon its sender. While your summoning magics are crude, you've got power and time to spare. You've already summoned things from beyond this world, after all.
[][Project] Something Else (Write-In)
[][Project] The hunger to experiment consumes your mind. You'll discard a project this week.
(If this vote wins, up to ten Write-in [][Advanced] experiments will be processed this turn instead of one major project.)
You have (Zero) Advanced Tests Remaining. (Write-in)
[][Advanced] Assemble a suit to test a True Attunement's Set Bonus.
[][Advanced] Discover additional Cantrips of a particular Set Bonus. (Limit
[][Advanced] Perform an Alchemical Experiment.
[][Advanced] Attempt to force magic to do as you wish it.
[][Advanced] Test the effects of a Spell
[][Advanced] Test the effects of an arrangement of Runes
[][Advanced] Something Else
Perform a simple experiment. (Write-In)
[][Simple] Test a substance's Mana Attunement
[][Simple] Attempt to string together an Attunement Chain
[][Simple] Test a piece of equipment's True Attunement
[][Simple] Test a specific Phonem's effect
[][Simple] Study a target for Phomens
[][Simple] Test a specific Rune's effect
[][Simple] Study a target for Runes
[][Simple] Test a Transmutation (Choose a Synthesis Mana and a Non-Silicate Target)
[][Simple] Something Else
Fifteen Research Gained.
Stats
Research: 40
A good start.
Overall Health: 14
You're as strong as a healthy child. If that child had the power of magic from birth, that is.
Overall Magical Power: 14
You are a skilled Channeler, using raw Willpower and attuned mana to plow your way through problems. You dabble in other magics that both enhance and detract from your raw mana channeling, such as Wizardry, Alchemy, and Runecraft.
Overall Monetary Power: 3
You're a Parahuman-for-profit, just starting out. You have incoming profits and you're starting to make connections, even with a few people in high places. Your wealth is probably comparable to that of other low-level parahuman consultants. You could retire at fifty with this kind of money.
Abilities
Magical Soul: C
Rating: Trump ???
Your soul emits magic. The stronger your soul, the more powerful your magic. Your resolve to discover the truth behind your best friend and worst enemy has strengthened your soul.
Magical Body: F
Rating: ???
Your body contains magic, your soul empowering your body without your direct intervention.
Magical Power: B
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 A 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: S
Rating: Thinker ???
You have a parahuman ability to never forget anything, no matter what it is, so long as it pertains to a mana experiment.
I set down my cup of tea, the half-full mug still steaming lightly as I do.
My knowledge had been growing since the day I obtained my power, and since the very moment I awoke my magic.
I knew things now that I hadn't even known that I didn't know. An entire world of unknown unknowns. Knowledge that I couldn't even conceive of lacking, I was beginning to understand on the most intimate level.
The world was coming to an end. My powers came from another world. The thing that gave me my powers was as much my ally as it was a part of the very creature that set armageddon into motion.
"Taylor?" dad asked, noticing my expression, staring down at the table. He was always so worried about me. Even now, I could see the bits of concern working their way up into his expression as I glanced at him.
It would hurt, telling him the truth. He knew almost nothing about the things I knew, and he was already so worried for me.
But it needed to be done.
"Dad, we need to talk. There are things you need to know about. Things I've learned," I say, standing up.
"Of course. What did you want to talk about?" he asks, but I shake my head.
"Not here. I have a place in mind, if you've got the time to go there," I explain, walking over to where I keep my costume, packing everything I needed into the duffel bag.
"You'll want the helmet I made for you too," I explain, donning my costume.
Looking at me with an uncomprehending, uncomfortable stare, dad slowly sets down his paper, going to his own bedroom where he kept the helmet we used for visiting the PRT.
By the time he returned, I had everything packed.
"What is this all about, Taylor? Where are we going?" he asks nervously.
I turn to dad, zipping up my bag and shrugging it on.
"Somewhere thematic."
It didn't take long for us to make our way to the edge of the bay, me in my costume, and dad in his helmet.
I had been using pulses of mana as we traveled, both to map out parts of the city, and to check for followers. We didn't have any, at least, none so stupid as to follow us directly as we drove and walked.
It was still too early for people to be up and about, and the clouds made the early morning darkness especially pronounced.
I reached into my pouch of magical reagents, pulling out a small flake of sapphire and letting it fall into the palm of my hand.
"I know I haven't shown you as much as I could have. A lot of it has been because it just wasn't important. Some of it was because I didn't feel like you needed to know. But that comes to an end here," I say, the flake glowing with a chilling glow as I slowly take a step out onto the water, my steps freezing it beneath me.
"Follow me, we're almost there," I say, slipping the flake back into my pouch, still channeling magic through it to walk on the surface of the water.
We walk for several minutes, coming up to one of the derelict ships still hanging above the waterline, a particularly awkwardly jammed one that served as one of the jutting metal fangs that starved the bay of traffic.
With a gesture, the ice we were walking on expands, forming a much larger platform for us to stand on, while at the same time, a tiny tube with a piece of selenium metal is fished out of my pocket, and I begin weaving a spell around us. Arcane Selenium Mana always reflects the night sky of a full moon, no matter where, when, or how it is summoned.
Wrapped around us, and paired with an image of the earth, it formed a nice enough place for our discussion. Mana outside the bubble served the role of detecting any interlopers dumb enough to approach us in this private area.
At the same time, a bubble of void formed outside of that, effectively sealing us away from everything else in the universe.
Dad looked around, seeing the sea of stars around us, and the little illusion of earth in the middle of the icy dias we were standing on. "This is amazing, Taylor! Is this what you wanted to talk about?" he asks, tempted to reach out and poke one of the stars hanging in the false sky.
"No," I say, instead pointing towards the planet in front of us to draw his attention to it.
I could feel my Partner, Queen Administrator, offering assistance in ensuring the accuracy of the illusion.
The accuracy of what I was going to show him.
At first, a small comet crashed into the world, shed from something just out of sight. A single shard of something greater, landing on our world.
The little planet glowed as it floated in front of us, hanging daintily in the air, but slowly, it began to dim. Lights of the cities on its surface began to wink out, little scars and pops here and there flashed into being, or slowly formed in fast motion. A spire rises up in the antarctic, only to collapse moments later.
When the last light on the planet vanishes, only then does it begin to crack, a red glow emerging from within it before...
With a grand eruption the likes of which never before seen by man, the planet is gone, dust and rubble are all that remain.
Dad's skin is pale, he doesn't understand what I'm showing him.
"Three hundred years. We won't live to see it. Our children won't either, but it's coming. I know it is," I say softly, my grip on my feelings slipping as I feel cold dread and fear pooling in my stomach. My face feels hot, a bit feverish, even.
Dad reaches out to me for a moment. "Taylor," he says, forgetting himself for a moment before correcting himself. "Sage, you can't..."
"Know? I can't know that? I do. My studies have shown me the end of this world. The end of humanity," I say, getting a hold of myself for his sake.
"The thing that I summoned, the thing I called forth in the forest a week ago, it showed me. It told me things that nobody was meant to know. It showed me the dusk of the human race, and in exacting details explained to me the full extent of its kind's plans."
It hit me all at once, and I realized what had happened to me, like something killed so suddenly and so instantly that it did not even realize it was dead.
The knowledge I learned had destroyed me, fractured something in me so dearly that I didn't even notice until now, talking about it.
I spread my arms wide, and dad stumbled away as I beheld the illusory rubble that came three hundred years from now, give or take a few decades.
"The reason behind Parahuman abilities, manifest. My Partner showed me, dad. It showed me because it has gone quite mad. Mad enough to respond to my summons." I say.
I felt amused at this. Was that what Queen Administrator meant, by how similar we were? Did she know that what I would learn from our conversation would place me here, the knowledge of her kind's salvation eating away at my mind as surely as magic even now was eating away at hers?
As my only hope drives my Partner around the bend, how ironic that my Partner's only hope would in turn drive me there as well.
For my partner, the extraction of knowledge from the human race was salvation. For them, magic risked their annihilation. For me, it was the exact opposite.
It was comforting. Even if magic turned out to be from some evil source, there wasn't one bad enough for me to care. Anything was better than extinction, I imagined.
I feel a pressure around me. It's dad, hugging me tightly.
"It's going to be alright, little owl. I'm here. You hear me?" he says.
"It isn't," I respond. "But it will be, dad."
I hug him briefly, my hands wrapping around his own, before I gently pull away from him.
"You didn't want to obtain magic from me, dad. You believed that I didn't yet understand it well enough. Let me prove to you that the nature of magic is known to me. Let me awaken your soul to it, here and now," I ask, holding out my hand, which, even now, is beginning to glow a bright green.
"I know now the nature of magic. I have wandered the Elemental Planes, I have summoned things from beyond the veil, and learned otherworldly knowledge from them. I have seen the world weep as infinity collapses, and watched as reality bled from that very collapse."
"I'm not just one human being who knows about magic, dad, I'm the only one who knows."
"I don't have to be, do I?" I ask, stretching my arm out further for him to grasp it.
I needed him. I needed another person to confide in, to collaborate with. It was too much for one person. That's why I brought him here, why I made a spectacle out of what could have been a quiet discussion at home.
I needed another person in my world of magic.
1d20 vs 1d20 = 13, 15
He doesn't take my hand, walking closer to me, and hugging me once again.
"Taylor, I love you, so very very much. This must be hurting you so much," he says, leaning back and looking me in the eye. I'm stunned, frozen, even.
"But I don't need magic to be your father, Taylor. I don't need magic for you to teach me the things you've learned. I don't need it for us to be a family," he says.
He continues, wiping tears from my eyes. "If you think I need it, then fine. I'll take your hand, I'll join you, but I won't do it like this. I won't do it because you think I'll leave you without it. Because I won't understand you without it."
He glances away. "I might not know how to summon fire, or teleport. Maybe I can't talk to demons or fly."
He turns to look back at me with steel in his eyes. "But I will always love you. I'll always be there to listen. To help you. I'll do my best to understand the things you understand, to help you understand the things that an old man like me has had the time to figure out."
"If you need me in your life... My soul's just fine for that already," he smiles down at me.
I can't keep from sobbing, leaning into my father as he quietly holds me, like armageddon itself couldn't reach me in his arms.
The magic in my hand is erratic, my emotions too compromised to keep it together, but I do anyway. I pull back, long enough to blink it out of my eyes.
Did I make a mistake? Did the magic in the air alone prove sufficient? He hadn't taken my hand, hadn't struck the bargain, and yet, I could sense it, a mote in the air that wasn't me. It wasn't Thoth, and it wasn't my Partner.
What nonsense, what a nigh-contrived coincidence it seemed to be, that my father's soul had begun trickling magic, by his words alone.
"Oh. Well, that's certainly convenient," dad said, closing the door casually as we both walked back into the house.
He took it surprisingly well, the knowledge that he apparently now has magic, and I didn't intentionally do anything to cause it. It certainly made me look like an idiot, considering I based my reasoning on how I knew so much about magic, and still had no clue how he was able to do that.
As he stows his keys and locks the door, I begin to explain things that he needed to know, things that my power helped me to avoid, mercury and gallium both being obvious candidates.
As I went down the list, however, dad looked a bit befuddled. "Taylor, so far, it sounds like most of the things you've listed are... Well, to be frank, they're not exactly the safest things on their own. Mercury? Arsenic? I'm not sure I would ever actually find calcium metal, unless you handed me a piece," he says, taking me out of my catastrophising.
He had a pretty good point.
"Not all of the dangerous mana types come from dangerous materials, though, dad. Bones and Gallium are pretty easy to come by, and those are both kind of dangerous too. Oh! Eggs can be a real problem too. I haven't messed with them too much, but I wouldn't infuse a raw egg with mana if I were you," I say.
He puts on a pot of coffee, and though I don't drink it often, I take a mug of it when he offers it.
He might not be as tense as I am about the situation, but I can tell that he's listening, by the way he seems to have his focus on me.
"Speaking of which, I haven't been sitting around while you've been working so hard. I know how you've had an eye out for stuff to help with your magic and your business. You might already have some of this stuff, I'm not sure what books you've been buying lately, but a second one never hurt anybody," he says, going to the closet and digging something out. A bunch of books, wrapped with paper.
"Happy birthday, kiddo," he says, handing em over.
'Oh. My birthday,' I realize, taking the package from him gingerly, unwrapping it to see what all is inside.
The one on top has my eyes widening. "Unobtanium, a Look At Our Needs". I've heard of this book, but I haven't actually read it before. It's a manifesto that was written by Hero, and later, other editions came out where other tinkers emerged and took their own crack at 'updating' the encyclopedia-like book.
An entire book detailing the things the world's greatest tinker thought about society, and the things parahumans could do for it.
I looked at the other books too, books on business, physics, mechanical engineering, botany, and, at the very bottom of it all, what looked like an absolutely dusty green tome, thick and covered with archaic bits and bobs. Illuminated text on the front simply read "MAGIC" and when I opened it up, I realized it was actually a three-ring-binder,
I looked at dad for an answer to the last odd gift, and he shrugged with a bit of embarrassment. "Noticed how messy your notes were. I know how you hate losing things."
Looking at the books themselves, I could tell they weren't the sort of thing you got cheaply. "Dad, these are all college-level textbooks, where did you even get all of these?" I asked.
He smiled, but it was a bit less wide than usual. "The community college. Annette still had some old things there from her teaching days, and they didn't mind," he explained.
Sure enough, these weren't the student-editions, but the teacher's ones, and there, in the cover of the book, mom's name was proudly written on them.
"It's perfect," I said quietly, still a bit too fragile for more enthusiastic responses.
Taking in the silence, dad decided to interrupt it before it turned awkward. "So, back to the magic lessons, Professor Hebert?" he asked, holding up a hand and making the center of his palm glow a flickering teal.
Blinking the wetness away, my eyebrows rose. "Fast learner."
"Alright, so, what you're doing right now is called Infusion. You're taking some of the mana you're putting out into the air and pulling it back into something physical. The mana you've got right now, I'm fairly certain, is some form of Thaum to Skin mana. Thaumic Mana is the name I've been using to refer to mana attuned in a medium of air, so you'll want to learn that terminology and a lot of other jargon, first off..."
It seems Lisa knew about my birthday as well, as when I went into work the next day, she had a tacky looking ribbon tied around an absolutely insane-looking sheaf of notes roughly stapled together.
"Happy birthday, boss, or should I say," Lisa begins, only to begin hissing and gurgling at me.
I feel the ambience shift, and despite Lisa lacking magic of her own, little balloons appear out of the humid air.
The balloons are covered with runes in a cheery, blown-up font.
"Not really surprising, but latex balloons are pretty easy to describe in water. The hard part is writing 'Happy Birthday Sage' on them," she says, smirking at my unspoken question.
The balloons pop shortly after that, spraying flecks of water everywhere, missing the sheaf of notes entirely.
"Anyway, I finished translating what you gave me. It isn't everything, but then, you didn't exactly have all creation handy when you were jotting things down," she says.
"Thank you. Anything in particular you noticed while working on it?" I ask.
She gives me a look. "You know what loanwords are?"
I do, and nod affirmatively. "Yeah."
She points at the notes. "That language is chock full of em, I'm almost certain. This language has a lot of overlap with other languages, considering it includes a lot of characters whose aesthetic doesn't match, but describe concepts that just barely fit in the idea of water."
"Such as?" I ask, looking to try and see what kind of aesthetic she was talking about.
"Jello Shots. Alcohol takes about a sentence to describe. Gelatin and the animal products it's derived from, several words. Jello Shots specifically, though, fall under some kind of narrow hodgepodge crossover between things that look, act, and smell like water. There are a few other things like that too that don't line up with reality quite right, and when it happens, there's different linguistic quirks in the writing and spoken form," she explains.
She starts raising fingers. "I'd take this with a grain of salt, but there's probably a language for meat and fruit and they're probably frighteningly similar, if not the same language," she explains, raising one after the other to count them off.
"There's also a language just for steam and ice, but they only share a few dozen words with water, and the words they share aren't what you might expect. Steam and Water only seem to share words like 'Flowing' and 'Falling', and when it becomes weather, the language gets muddy and incoherent, so there's probably a weather language too with a few words shared here and there," she continues.
"Other than that, glug glug blub blub," she jokes.
I nod. "Thanks a lot. You need any healing? I've got another job for you, and I'd like you fresh for it," I ask, pulling up a chair in case she does.
Lisa tosses her hair, sitting down. "Far be it from me to turn down a free checkup. Have at it, doc."
"Right," I say, putting my hands over her temples and pulsing low levels of weak magic. Nothing strong enough to heal wounds or trigger mutations, but enough to take the edge off, I knew from my own tests on the matter.
"So, if I had to guess, you want me on more power testing. That thing where you move energy between materials, right?" she asks.
I nod, knowing that Lisa probably sensed the gesture without me having to speak.
"Did you figure out that your mana has a last-in-first-out queue of effect priorities?" she opens with, sighing under my healing touch and leaning back.
"Explain?" I ask, having a few ideas of what she's talking about, but nothing concrete enough to speak on the subject.
"Yeah. Your mana works backwards. Latest material is used to perform the previous effect. If you do Fire then Ice, the mana tries to do fire, but it does it by using Ice," she explains plain as day.
"So if you had a mana that made swords, and put that in something that tried to do lightning," she opens with, pausing long enough for me to chew on the idea.
"It would try to make swords, using lightning?" I answer.
"Ding ding ding, we have a winner. You got a notebook or something? You're wanting me to do the hard work for you, right?" she asks, rolling her shoulders and standing up, fresh and ready to go.
"I was hoping you might have a few ideas, yes," I nod, reaching over to where I kept my tome.
"Any plans on letting me in on the company secret, or we just sticking with family and pets?" she asks, leaning up against a wall.
I froze for a moment, but the surprise passed quickly. "You work quick, Lisa. It's a good thing I hired you to work for me when I had the chance," I say in lieu of an answer.
"Here's some of my notes. A lot of it is kept in my eidedic memory, but I do write some things down when I feel the urge," I explain, handing it over and watching as she flips through it.
I only bothered to save the really important or useful mana types in actual writing, so as to not get bogged down with all the trivialities, and it seems that's paying dividends now, as she opens up the little notebook labeled "Useful Components".
"What are you after?" she says, looking through the runes and phonems and attunement chains with a keen eye.
"Something profitable?" I ask a bit nervously, hoping that my rigorous magical testing holds up to her need for information.
"Sorry, gotta point something out," she says, pointing at some of my repeated tests. One of the things that had been particularly annoying to figure out the mechanics behind.
"Notice how some of these are getting more boring instead of weirder and more meta?" she points at the plant repeated tests.
"Plant mana; helps plants. Plant to Plant mana, help plants by helping plants. Plant to Plant to Plant mana, help plants by helping plants by helping plants. Result gets more fucked up and abstract the more you force it."
She then points to silver.
"Copper, do time stuff. Copper to Copper, do time stuff. Copper to Copper to Copper, do time stuff. No change."
She then points to some of my healing tests.
"See how when you double up copper at the end of other stuff, it slowly starts changing? Graphite to Copper to Copper, rewind, but with a taste of healing. Salt to Copper to Copper, rewind, but with a taste of separation."
"I noticed that, but I wasn't sure why it was happening," I offer.
"Check out gold, same thing. No change when you double it up. Same thing happens to aluminum," she says, clearly thinking hard.
"It's almost like multiplication, in a weird way. Most materials make your magic grow more convoluted and complex, but a few of them, Copper, Gold, and Aluminum for one, make it slip back towards their original effect. I bet there's some sort of weird reason why, too, but it's not hitting me with such a small sample size," she says.
I remember my full list of learned magics, and offer up one that isn't in my notes. "Silver does it too. Attuning something to silver over and over just results in silver magic."
She blinks. "Oh, it's just precious metals. They draw your magic back to their original effect instead of compounding on it."
I jerk back with confusion. "Aluminum isn't a precious metal," I point out.
She gives me that knowing smirk. "It was. Napoleon was rumored to have cutlery made of the stuff, and it was rarer than gold until we figured out how to mass produce it. If your magic is just going off that 'collective human experience' thing, then any metal that's 'considered' precious by its own arbitrary definitions would count. Gold, Copper, Silver, Platinum, the works."
I give Lisa a grateful look. Her ability to just pluck answers out of the most incoherent data continues to surprise me. It could have taken me months, or maybe even years to make the kind of connections that she figured out in one quick session after glancing at my scribbled down notes.
"As for profit... You know there's a huge bounty on Grey Boy's bubbles, right?" she asks, pointing at my wide variety of time-related magics.
"Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. If it does, there's probably not an easier source of money this side of the law, cracking open the bounties on the fucked up shit that villains leave laying around," she says in a blase tone.
"Something that won't make me a target of those same villains?" I plead.
She thinks for a moment, putting a finger to her chin.
"Sell the PRT a better mousetrap. Here, hold on," she says, scribbling down something in the margins of my notebook.
"Might not work, but I'm not exactly a wizard, so cut me some slack," she says, revealing her grand creation.
If Lisa's logic on how attunement works is correct...
Use creation to make something to make thorns that utterly demolish what they come in contact with.
"Lisa, that's terrifying. Maybe don't design horrible weapons unless I give the sayso," I ask politely.
She gives me a sly grin, glancing at my notebook. "Sure, in return, please don't bring any zinc within a mile of me," she says, clearly having noticed the part in my notebook where I tested nearly six recursions of zinc's curse magic.
Ok, maybe I shouldn't be calling the kettle black when it comes to designing horrific things to do with magic.
12, 7
After talking shop with Lisa, and taking long enough for me to stop pondering what sort of horrific shenanigans she would get into given magic, (She was entirely too clever when it came to deadly things that could be done with it, I found), I decided to try moving some funds around in my business.
It turned out to be a pretty simple affair, I sent money from my business to the government, and a mysterious check came in the mail from an unnamed source who would not be named a few days later, the unnamed person, if they WERE to be named, of course, would have a name that rhymes with "Wage" and a job that rhymes with "Vogue".
I ended up getting more than enough money to afford this week's goodies, even more atomic samples for me to play around with, and play around I did, testing out all the new substances that I managed to order off the internet.
I found out that Helium was another Wave Mana, Divine in nature, (Did the gods speak in squeaky high pitched voices?)
I also found out that my power could be especially smug, informing me that Titanium Magic made something be the same size that it currently was. Something that would have been undetectable if not for a parahuman ability apparently picking up the slack of testing for something that had no meaningful effect on anything.
I found several more forms of magic by going down the list of atomic elements that seemed downright demonic. Rubidium seemed to make my eyes reflect hellfire whenever I was telling lies, and Bromine made the most awful scent, easily worse than anything I had ever smelled before.
It wasn't all bad though, I found out that I could animate candy using magic, and that Strontium Mana was especially well suited for it. The gummy bears wandering over my desk descended upon the gummi worms with fervor and ferocity that seemed out of place on the rainbow-colored sweets.
The further I went down the list, to heavier and heavier elements that were more and more obscure, the stranger their effects became.
Molybdenum, for instance, seemed to stump my power. All the mana did was try to connect two dimensions, neither of which were this one.
Polonium and Astatine seemed to create Lesser and Greater Chaos Magic, the sparkling rainbow lights not fooling me for one minute, as I could see minor distortions in time and space near a few of the motes, while several others seemed to spark and sputter dangerously.
Lanthanum and Cerium seemed to have more of the vaguely religious mana types associated with them, both having to do with farming and grain, and one of them even named "Ceres' Assistant". The magic was obviously a nod to the element's namesake, one of those fertility and agricultural deities.
The last one of any real note turned out to be another Alchemy Type, Rhenium. It was a bit horrific, considering that it's sole effect was that it could alchemically liquify whatever it was applied to.
I took my Partner's words to heart when it gave me the warning it gives for all alchemical magics, and decided not to use it until I was more prepared for the potential consequences.
At the same time, I looked over Lisa's notes, and they were thorough. I suspected, studying these runes and translations, I would be able to create runic scripts without nearly as much bumbling around, something I tended to require a lot of when developing new magic.
I also looked at the runes she claimed were "Loanwords" from the elemental languages of meat and fruit. With her notes, I was able to parse out what she meant. While the Elemental Language of Water involved a lot of wavy lines and ripples, the words for "Jello Shot" involved circles and curved lines connecting the circles.
Looking to the other runes I had learned, the one that seemed closest to that was the symbol for mercury, a circle with a halfcircle above it, and a cross below, helpfully named "Flesh Crossover" by my power.
I did find a few of the runes in Lisa's studies that matched up with the ones in my own notes as well, where she pointed out the Ice Runes, and how they involved "distorted" curves like ovals. Something that lined up with my studies of freezing ice in water. The runes I derived from studying ice freezing in water involved both ovals and rippling lines, the hallmarks of ice and water.
She did really good work, and with how thick her sheaf of notes was, I suspected she had put in countless hours trying to get everything ready for me.
Her question came back to me. Is magic just something for family and 'pets', or did I plan on giving it to others? To people I trusted?
I had to think about that, before it started appearing on its own.
Walking into the back of my lab, I unlatched a small box that contained a silicon replica of a letter, one that I made from memory as a copy of the one I had seen.
Picking up the letter gently, I turned it over, examining it again before putting it back in its place, and locking the box up once again, waiting for the day I would put it to use.
I didn't know why dad's soul had awakened on its own.
But there was someone who might.
First off, I would like to apologize, several mana types have changed, due to me only just now realizing my incompetence this chapter.
I had erroneously granted mana types to several precious metals that were impossible, and had to correct those once I realized what I did. Aluminum, Silver, Gold, Copper, and Platinum do not have recursive mana types, and the ones that I accidentally gave some to, I have since reverted. Keep this in mind, moving forward, as other "precious" metals will emerge over time, from a list I have prepared that contains the ones that are considered "precious" by magical standards.
