The single drop has obeyed conventional fluid dynamics by spreading across the slime track, and with the tip of an obsidian scalpel you try to encourage the two substances to mix. They refuse, and the Vitae shows a stubborn determination to remain contiguous, apparently being drawn towards itself.
Huh, interesting. I wonder how the attraction to itself works.
Is it that it identifies itself as being part of the Wisdom's Asp or is it simply attracted to the nearest body of the liquid?
Given a perfectly level surface, would it slowly creep towards a completely separated mass of vitae and if so, how far does this effect hold and how does volume affect that?
At first you're mostly right, and you take a few notes on how the liquid regathers itself after being scattered by the darting movements of the beetle. But the beetle eventually calms, and approaches the tiny puddle of vitae to drink from it. All seems fine at first, but after about a minute there's a very tiny burst of magical energies and the beetle writhes and expires. A very small autopsy later reveals a rupture in something roughly analogous to a stomach, which you reason was caused by the sudden expansion of the Vitae transforming into the Eight Winds.
Strange, you muse. The Winds normally exist as a phase of their own, interacting with mundane matter in ways according to their nature. But in the fraction of a second the transformation from Vitae to Winds takes, it physically expands. Is the Vitae expanding like a boiling liquid does, and then transforming directly into incorporeal Wind? Or is it passing through a gaseous phase before becoming Wind? The cause of the transformation puzzles you too, and you put aside your test creatures for a while as you run some tests directly on the Vitae. At the cost of a few sample flasks, you determine that while the Vitae is mostly stable, enough agitation is sufficient to cause it to transform into Winds. Your hypothesis is that the unfortunate beetle's stomach provided this agitation. Interesting, but once more, the Vitae is not reacting to the creature itself - only to being agitated.
Okay, that definitely confirms a gaseous phase, the liquid phase is more or less inert, and the incorporeal/plasma phase is intangible to physical objects.
It seems to me we REALLY need that Power Stone class for context, because the precursor to solid power stones is liquid and gaseous Winds.
We need to to be able to try to capture it in its gaseous state without dissolution into incorporeal form.
A single drop of Vitae glistens upon the scales of a terrified lizard for a moment, before exploding into Winds and sending the test subject skittering away in panic. You coax the poor creature into a nice dark box to nurse its bruise and move on to a second test subject, and you douse most of the lights, move quietly, and provide some of the surplus test subjects from the first two phases. The lizard calms somewhat as it eats, and though it watches you carefully, it does not react to the dropper moving slowly over it. The drop of Vitae lands atop its back and the creature freezes for a moment, before carefully returning to its feast. The drop moves slowly down its side and then falls onto the floor.
Thats a very very small amount of the Winds that triggered the transformation here, got to test how it reacts to being moved gently by a spell. Hmm.
You skip right past Aves and onto Mammalia to test your newfound hypothesis, and a few volunteers suffering bruised hands later confirms it: a sufficiently strong emotion of a type attractive to the Winds will spark the transformation, and for some reason it requires less Wind concentration from emotion than it did from your own manual concentration of Ulgu in previous experiments. Is it because a Wind manipulated by a Wizard is partially shielded from the Vitae? Because Winds moving freely and drawn to emotion is somehow more reactive? Or does one or the other possess some other quality that changes how readily Vitae reacts to it? You can't think of a way to narrow down the possibilities further, so you move on to further testing of the results of Vitae consumption - though this time, of course, on a much smaller scale.
...actually for the matter, could it be that strong emotions gathers a Wind naturally, and said Wind in turn naturally generates a magical effect ON the target?
Well, we know unprotected dwarves petrify so I dare say the Winds WILL react to things they're near even without being shaped into specific effects. Probably pretty mild ones unless you're in the Chaos Wastes or something.
Vitae does not readily mix with other liquids, but very careful experimentation does reveal a way to stir it just enough to mix it without agitating enough to trigger the transformation, and before the waters can still once more and the Vitae can be drawn back together, you present the mixture to a series of dehydrated test subjects, who eagerly gulp it down. All of them show various levels of discomfort a few minutes later, coinciding with the sudden release of magical energies within them, but while the Amphibia test subjects have the energies escape through them and fill the room, the Aves and Mammalia ones have the energies initially remain within them, and they display heightened fear, anger, and curiousity responses as the Winds slowly radiate back out of them, similar to how animals act in Wind-rich environments. You increase the dosage, and find a medium-level dose that so floods the test subjects that the crowded energies are forced to intermingle and begin to curdle into Dhar. Unfortunate, but the mercy killings do provide an opportunity to do an autopsy, and you confirm that while the intermixed doses do cause internal bruising to the digestive organs from the Vitae transformation, it's not strong enough to cause severe or permanent damage.
So we learned a new thing about the gaseous state:
-Agitation, or rather, chemical damage from digestive fluids will break it down into individual Winds, which then separate and become gases.
-These gases, if compressed, mix together and form Dhar.
-The pressure needed to form Dhar cannot happen if it turns into the incorporeal form, because the Winds would escape in that case.
-Ergo, either pressure is a factor in keeping the gaseous forms of the Winds as a gas, or the incorporeal Winds are still partly tangible at high concentrations that diffusing out through the body takes too long to avoid the pressure resulting in Dhar.
Ventilation is important in storage then, as if the gas cannot escape and pressure builds, it'd form Dhar and a small amount of Dhar could curdle the entire mass in a chain reaction.
You feel confident enough in your understanding to bring in live test subjects once more, and flasks of the Vitae are carefully moved around by volunteers who are under strict instructions to remain unemotional. You then graduate to having them handle it directly, and most subjects remain unharmed. There was one overly-clever volunteer who got a little too curious about the strange, gleaming substance they were running their fingers through, but they'll heal in time. A very sceptical Dwarven volunteers very carefully replicates these tests, and though the Vitae does slide away from the prodding of a Dwarven digit, the repellent effect isn't enough to have it crawl up a test tube. The volunteer's emotions prove irrelevant to the Vitae, and the only way they are able to spark the transformation is via agitation.
Interesting tidbit on Valaya's protection, looks like a thin repulsive barrier that keeps the dwarf's warp presence inside the dwarf and other warp presence outside.
So. Vitae is safe to handle by Wizards as long as one is gentle, as they can control the magic within them and keep it away from the Vitae they are handling. It is safe to handle by Dwarves as long as they are gentle, as their emotions do not sufficiently stir the Winds. Non-magical sentients must remain gentle and also serene, as too much of the wrong emotion will draw a Wind to them which could transform the Vitae.
That is a really important precaution to note.
Did we get any Halflings to test it?
[Writing paper: Learning, 79+27+20(Necromantic Insight)+6(Library: Vampires)=132.]
Ohboy!
Magic, you know, is often spoken of as if it has laws, but what it actually has is tendencies. An Apprentice will first be taught things like propagation speed of magic through the air, and then taught all the different circumstances under which that might not apply. So while most Wizards would happily say there'd be no way for a Wizard to be present and active in real time in two different places hundreds of miles away at once, they'd likely start adding disclaimers and provisos if you asked if it would apply to an ancient and studious Necrarch Vampire. So while it is definitely news that there exists at least one spell that can break that particular norm, it is not particularly shattering news, as the origin of magic makes it fundamentally antithetical to limitations and predictability.
Sounds a lot like psychology, where the problem is that it is never a static phenomenon you're interacting with, and you can only go "most cases go like so but..."
Usually caused by active phenomenon where letting it sit there on its own in the same environment would NOT mean it stays the same
It does, however, remain a very important paper to write. If this particular ability was not limited to Alkharad - who won't be causing any trouble from his position on your shelf - then it could very well be used to mislead and befuddle Vampire Hunters across the Empire and beyond. If a Vampire could be a province away while still interfering with matters through a form of mist, they could lead any pursuer on a merry chase in any direction they pleased. So you put pen to paper and describe everything you saw of the Vampire's ability to be active in two places at once, and after some thought split the paper into two sections, the first describing the characteristics of the spell in terms a layperson could understand and not getting into the technical side of things until the second half of the paper.
You're quite pleased with the result, feeling you've managed to write a paper that could be equally of use to an uneducated Vampire Hunter as it would be to a scholarly Wizard. When you label and address the paper to be sent back to the Grey College, you give instructions that the Light College pass it on to the Templar Witch Hunters, and the Amethyst College to the Fellowship of the Shroud.
Probably the most alarming part of it is that he could take his apprentices on a ride along.
[X] Anton, to see how his firearm factory is going.
[X] King Belegar, as he scrambles to deal with having very suddenly accomplished his dream.
[X] Francesco Caravello, proud leader of the Undumgi and possible future Thane.
[X] Oswald Oswaldson, newly-minted Chief Bombardier of the Undumgi.
IIRC the factory opens this turn right?
