Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
You know, this talk about the forgetability mark has me thinking: maybe we should commission a painting or two of Mathilde?

Just in case we ever get it, and also so people can put a face to our deeds in the future.
 
The secret behind it is that it doesn't actually affect the mind of those caught in it, which could be resisted by the strong-willed - it alters reality in such a way that to those inside it time runs just a little bit slower, indirectly slowing reaction speeds and disorienting even the most highly-trained of combatants. Many elite warriors train to be able to fight when in altered states, but you've never heard of any that have trained to fight effectively when the passage of time becomes a variable.

This makes me wonder what would happen if instead of making time run a little bit slower, we do the opposite and make it run a little bit faster. Would that be an army buff? Make people react just a bit faster and all.
 
Most Apprentices get introduced to him by an older Apprentice telling them the year Melkoth was born and asking them how old he is. Some Apprentices who can't let the puzzle go have their sense of time compromized for weeks or even months afterwards, and though it leads to a fair number of missed classes, the Grey College considers this very good training on avoiding harmful mental influences. Through trial and error you'd managed to deduce it down to a five-year range before you'd realized it was wiser to let the matter rest.
I feel like Mathilde was one of the ones who spent several months missing classes for this.
 
This makes me wonder what would happen if instead of making time run a little bit slower, we do the opposite and make it run a little bit faster. Would that be an army buff? Make people react just a bit faster and all.
Maybe, but I can see some problems with the idea that we'd need to solve first. Number one would be including a targeting/friend-or-foe mechanism- if it affects everybody caught in the area, there's a very good chance you'd end up buffing some enemies too. Number two would be having the people using the buff be actually still able to use act and fight at full capacity; time acceleration is likely to be just as disorienting as time deceleration, even if the effects are positive.
 
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Mathy has no room to talk on the subject of going for Enthusiastic Walks when you are supposed to be working.

I wonder how much Reputation Asarnil and Deathfang have accumulated over the centuries? Clearly enough to be name recognisable by someone with absolutely no contact with them or their work.

I feel that I have learned much, yet am somehow more ignorant than when I started.

And suddenly the EIC looks a lot less like loophole abuse.
Yeah, remember that the winds tend to make human wizards have some overarching personality traits, explosive tempers for brights, peerless arrogance for lights, wildness and adhd for ambers, grey wizards tend to be cagey and paranoid, so they tend to build up a spy network... (regardless of what level they're on even a journeyman will likely have some contacts wherever he's stationed/journeyed too.
 
He settles himself into your guest quarters, rummages through your library, side-eyes Wolf suspiciously, and spends a fair bit of time grumbling about Khazalid before he's good and ready to start teaching, but you wait patiently, confident his advice will be worth it.

[Learning Melkoth's Mystifying Miasma: Learning, 91+28+5(Library: Ulgu)+20(Coin)+20(Room of Dawn and Dusk)+???(Melkoth's tutoring)=???.]

And it is, in a way.
I'll proudly admit I laughed loudly when I read that. Hitting +150 on learning a battlemagic. It's a shame you can't master it on a learning roll... (And yes, I did go to the spellbook to check, just in case.)
 
But through it all Melkoth is there, nestled into the armchair he brought with him from Altdorf and with one eye on you and one eye on a book from your library.
I love that he brought his favourite chair along. :lol:

I feel like Mathilde was one of the ones who spent several months missing classes for this.
Mathilde: "I skipped Diplomacy class to learn algebra so I could estimate how old you are!"

Melkoth: "Sensible."

Regimand: "NO."
 
It's a shame that the thread is usually so allergic to self-improvement actions. I'd be up for having Mathilde learn an Anatomy Learning skill.

And a daemonic meta-biology one, which might be a little more practical.
 
[Learning Melkoth's Mystifying Miasma: Learning, 91+28+5(Library: Ulgu)+20(Coin)+20(Room of Dawn and Dusk)+???(Melkoth's tutoring)=???.]

Holy shit. Let's go.

I assume he knows at this point that our Staff of Mistery makes the entire process actually pretty safe? Because god I want some reactions from either of them to Mathilde's continued bullshit.
 
only 8 spells left before Loremaster of Shadows trait.

slowly but surely, slowly but surely...
Aha, merely all of the remaining spells left to go.
P / Cloak Activity: Allows you to perform an action while appearing to perform something entirely different for up to half a minute.
U / Shadow of Death: Makes you seem fearsome to all those who look upon you for one minute.
U / Steed of Shadows: Not to be confused with Shadowsteed, an insubstantial pegasus or drake appears under an ally within short range and carries them across the battlefield at incredible speed.
U / The Enfeebling Foe: An entire group of enemies feel their muscles begin to fail them and their weapons grow heavy in their hands. Medium range.
U / The Withering: The mirror to the above spell, instills weakness and doubt into a group of foes within medium range.
U / The Penumbral Pendulum: A ghostly and razor-sharp pendulum of immense size appears above the wizard, then falls in the direction of their choosing. Anyone that fails to get out of the way will suffer horrendous damage.
U / Pit of Shades: Creates a vortex to a horrifying hell dimension within medium range that drags in anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby.
U / Okkam's Mindrazor: Summons illusory weapons for an entire group of allies within medium range that shred the very consciousness of their enemies, with strength equal to their courage.
Assuming I didn't miss one.
Thats a lot of battle magic spells. Dunno if it will be easier to create approved spells though.
Feels like we're actually quite far from that trait.
 
It's a shame that the thread is usually so allergic to self-improvement actions. I'd be up for having Mathilde learn an Anatomy Learning skill.

And a daemonic meta-biology one, which might be a little more practical.
I wouldn't say allergic. The general action pattern since establishing herself in K8P has been:

1 action Max+Johann
1 action Ducklings+EIC
2 job actions
1 self-improvement action
1 blue-sky/flavor-of-the-week action
+(free paper from Serenity)
 
Melkoth has jumped up in both my list of favorite characters and in my list of possible threats. Given his mastery of using Ulgu to do wibbly wobbly things with time, he's the most likely candidate for inventing a time machine, something which must be prevented at all costs, lest Mathilde drown in a tidal wave of angry apprentices. :V
I disagree in the strongest possible terms; given his mastery of using Ulgu to do wibbly wobbly things with time, he's the most likely candidate for inventing a time machine, which would facitiate angry time traveling apprentices from the future dropping in for a friendly visit. This is a good thing :)

And I want time traveling apprentices from the future as much as Omegahugger wants Abel back.
 
[Learning Melkoth's Mystifying Miasma: Learning, 91+28+5(Library: Ulgu)+20(Coin)+20(Room of Dawn and Dusk)+???(Melkoth's tutoring)=???.]
...Mathilde is officially bullshit. Now I get why Boney have me a meow rating on my comment about playing with metaphorical tigers. Considering that we got plus twenty from Regimand while learning Smoke and Mirrors, which wasn't his area of expertise, that is a very big number indeed.
 
"This is beginning to sound like something that songs will be sung about," he says with a grin. "And I'm of the opinion that there ought to be a verse or two in glory of Ulric in those songs. The Winter Wolves will ride with this Expedition."
Honestly, I've been getting increasingly worried that Borek is going to embarrass us in front of all the people we're gathering.

Call it vain, selfish, whatever. The more the problems pile up, the more it looks like we're dragging people into a shitshow.
 
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Speaking of Mathilde and bullshit it struck me as odd that Melkoth was looking suspiciously at Wolf of all beings and then I realized why might be. He has taught that spell to a lot of people, in this own words three generations of Battle Wizards, he has taught to to people with favorable traits and people with high learning, he knows broadly what that looks like. From that perspective that Mathilde did might look odd:

[Learning Melkoth's Mystifying Miasma: Learning, 91+28+5(Library: Ulgu)+20(Coin)+20(Room of Dawn and Dusk)

+28 Learning: he would know how that look, this is Mathilde's ability to take in the information he is giving it to her
+5 Library: Ulgu: he knows what is in those books, he has used their like before, hell he may even have written them
+20 Room of Dawn and Dusk: he is used to working in such conditions the whole college is shrouded in it

So riddle me this, how did Mathilde roll 111 on a 1d100? She did not just get lucky, he got unnaturally impossibily lucky. If this were any other LM I would not think they would notice the subtle machinations of the gambler, but this is Melkoth teaching his signature spell.

So, something is off, she is learning too fast, too well. Is it the familiar? Suspicion comes naturally to Grey Wizards.
 
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Especially Petty Magic. Trying to make spells that can be used with any Wind is like trying to build a ship in a bottle, except the bottle is invisible and intangible and you don't know for sure whether you broke it until you're done.
I thought that petty magic was essentially eight different spells with an effect so simple and replicable that seven moderately talented Magisters can develop said spells using just the insights gained from the original developer.
 
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