[The Sanctuary] Inner Strength Outer Strength Part 1.

[Kavala]

Timestamp: 5th of Fall, 511
Location: Sanctuary
Purpose: Shielding Training
Status: Closed

Kavala had never saw herself as more than a healer. In fact, learning magic never really came into play in her mind until she was older and understood how dangerous the world was. Nor did she truly understand arcana since most of her pavilion and thus her upbringing had been more focused on breeding animals than being involved in any forms of arcana. In fact, the Sapphire Clan was well-known for their skill as Webbers. Much of the Web laid down by the Drykas is thanks to the Sapphire clan and Arin Drivankali whom Eachann often claimed the Denusks were direct descendants of. And while other pavilions had reimancers also are born from these families and are known for their intuition and ability to learn magic, none of the Denusks had strayed from their webbing traditions.

Kavala wanted to change that.

Not only did she want to master her webbing, but she wanted to utilize it along with shielding to really form a connection of safety within Sanctuary and their surrounding lands. She wanted them all to be interwoven, connected, and protected.

That's where shielding came in. It was her next course of study and one she was passionate about. Shields could do anything really... keep the cold out of stalls and out of their living quarters or keep heat in. Vermin could be discouraged, while good things encouraged. Kavala was excited to learn and set about making it happen. She'd already read her text once, in the copying of the library text into her own words and into her own notebook. It had taken hours and some of the information she'd absorbed already. And in anticipation, Kavala summoned her djed and it rose like a song in her, spiraling from her core and coating her left hand. She let it pool there, like unpurposed res, and formed a light uneven layer around her off hand. She had djed a plenty. This was a discovery she'd made beforehand certainly, but she new next to nothing about turning all her djed into shields. She watched the energy coil around her hand coating it and decided it was time to begin learning.

[Kavala]

Learning meant more studying. It was just what Kavala needed to get her mind off some of the baggage in her life. It was fall coming into winter and she had lots of time on her hands. Tasival was toddling now, but even though he roamed and got into things, he was still a good enough baby that he gave her lots of chances to study as he played. And right now, his main interested was focused on his blocks – stacking them up and unstaking them – and creating or destroying things. He’d build them up happily and knock them down just as easily. The Konti mother would have been annoyed if he did something as silly as cry each time the blocks tumbled. But Tasi was a good boy and he only laughed then stacked them back up again. Thus occupied, Kavala had a half of chance to get some studying in. If Kavala sat on the floor close to him, it gave her plenty of time to pop open her book and began reviewing her notes.

The djed coating her hand seemed to linger like a promise, but she left it there, wanting first hand to know how to turn it into a shield.

Kavala's book was copied from the library of course as all of hers were. Once borrowed, Kavala carefully copied the original texts into blank books of her own procured at the Market. She had a ton of them and picked up extras whenever she was in the city on Market Day. Not only did she use them for her studbooks, but she also used them for meticulous medical notes and her ongoing knowledge of herbs.

But she wanted a magical library too. So this book, nearly a year old, had been borrowed and copied. At the time, she’d gotten a good overview of shielding. However, copying and studying were two different things. Now that this book had gathered dust on her book

Shielding, unlike webbing, is a personal magic. It ties itself closely to its crafter because it uses the caster’s own djed to weave very specific three dimensional barriers These ‘sheilds’ of magic were primarily invented to block other djed, but as a shielder gets better at shielding, they can craft these weaves in order to block really specific things. And while webbing, being a world magic, is perfectly happy existing without its caster shielding is a bit more dependent. While shields are designed primarily around recognizing and nullifying foreign djed, shields can also be used for a wide variety of things not limited to enclosing or blocking elements like water or air (wind).

Simple enough, right? Kavala thought, knowing nothing about weaving. But she could take djed and make it into ropes and weave much like one did with webbing. Still, magical umbrellas were an interesting idea. She wondered how hard it would be to make one over the top of a galloping horse and rider to keep them out of the rain? Smiling to herself, Kavala made a mental note to practice it. It would be a good thing for both horse and rider.

She glanced at the coil of djed around her hand thinking it would take a whole lot more effort to form one around a horse and rider. Pushing herself she expanded the djed outward causing it to spiral like a rising note in a song around her wrist and the palm of her hand. She thickened it, pushing more and more essence that she contained out into the mess and trying to expand it perhaps to cover her arm.

Having a tangible buildup of Djed on her arm made her understand her next reading all the more easily...

As she read on, it became clear to Kavala that shields had actual size, shape, thickness even if a mage was casting something to be flat. They had to think in terms of structure and dimension… multiple dimensions. Front back, up down, inside outside…

She liked that idea... the idea that one sleepless night on the edge of Riverfall could result in learning like she'd not had the opportunity for even in her youth. Glancing back down at the arm coated in Djed, she decided she'd definitely work on shielding from water as one of her first lessons.

[Kavala]

A mage using shielding had to always think in regards to the whole spacial dimension and not just flat. People just starting to learn shielding may not be able to protect an entire buildings because they had limitations on how big of shields they could create. But instead, new shielders often picked just one room in a building to protect as the viable option. They could also protect doors, windows, and the chimney. Even a roof needed protected. And each shield needed a purpose. When thinking about structures for example, one couldn’t help but think of the small stuff. A hearth, for example, would have a smoke vent in the roof. If someone shielded the hearth vent correctly, they could block it against water and yet let smoke draft. A well gone muddy could still be used if a shield blocking earth was erected over the wellhead allowing only clean pure water to gush up when the pump was applied.

Okay, thought Kavala, just what COULD she do at first learning shielding? This caused Kavala to flip ahead in her book, skimming for a few, until she got to where she wanted to get with the discipline.

Don’t expect miracles just beginning the practice of shielding. A student of this art will be doing good to extrude djed, shape it, form it, and cover or surround things with it… namely objects. Start small. Start with inanimate objects because if one tasks or purposes a shield wrong, a living thing within could be harmed.

Novice shielders can do several things easily enough. Tasking and purposing djed is fairly simple. The trouble comes when a sloppily cast shield is crafted over an object. Even if tasked excellently, the shield will most likely be imperfect in size, shape, thickness, and even in intent. More masterful shielders often keep some of their original shields around just to track their progress. Equating these shields much like patchwork quilts, they become great teaching tools later. So the best novice shielders can expect are imperfect shields and as such must always strive to make their weavings with absolute equality in thickness and complexity, even on the smallest most unimportant shield.

Beginning shielders cannot weave permanent shields nor can they anchor a shield and have it exist long after they’ve departed. Novice shielders can only have a shield that does one thing at a time. This isn’t the end all be all of shielding though. Stacking shields or layering them are not possible at this level either since the sloppy nature of novice shielders tend to result in bleed over and nullification of shields. As shielders grow more complex with practice, layered shields and multiple purposed shields can be made. Permanent shields can be left in place, and most importantly rather than blocking djed, older more experienced shielders can cast shields that will absorb djed and make themselves stronger in doing so.

The last most important thing about shields at the beginning stage was that they could not exceed the size of the caster's total body... in volume, not in shape. The volume can change and be manipulated, twisted, turned, even be made complex. But the total volume had to remain the same. None of this casting was instantaneous. Time needed to be taken to meditate to produce res, slick it on something, and then weave it into a shield.

Kavala nodded, glad she left space in the margin and bottom for notes when she actually sat down like she was doing and started learning this art. She twisted, grabbed for a quill and the small bottle of ink sitting on her side table and then checked her son. Putting it beside her on the floor, she uncorked the ink, dipped the quill and began writing a small note in the margin.

The bottom line is that shields block djed. That is the sole purpose of their existence and their original design. Everything else is a manipulation or bastardization of this one simple task. Modern shields can allow djed in but not out, out but not in, or completely block the passage of djed from both sides. Shielding has evolved until it has a virtual unlimited amount of uses ranging from filtering djed as it was originally intended to filtering out a wide variety of substances and objects through layering and tasking.

Shielding mages can, once a shield is successfully woven, add additional duties onto the shields when the mages were of sufficient rank and know-how. These additional duties could range from then secondarily and tertiary tasks of blocking weapons or people from passing through shields.

Again, based on expertise, the range and expanse of what a shield can block depends completely and utterly on the mage – incorporating both and the knowledge of the mage with the inherent talent and ability each shielder had with their art form.

Layering and Tasking? Hrm… Kavala thought. What in the world can that mean? Tasking, sure… perhaps setting a task for the shield to perform like filtering out djed… so maybe layering was the combining of individual tasks to form a very whole and perfect shield. The Konti dug deeply into her notes to see if anything she was thinking remotely made sense. Flipping a few pages, Kavala finally came upon the section. Re-reading carefully, she tried to understand and hold within her the definition she would need to be a successful shielder. In magic, nomenclature was everything. You needed to have clear concise labels on what you did for your highly ritualized magic to work. In glyphing this was certainly true. And it sounded as if in shielding it was as well.

[Kavala]

Focus Kavala. Alright, the Konti thought… technical definition of tasking. Kavala skimmed the section, first looking for terms and then really reading for meaning. She trailed her fingers across the section written in her own handwriting and reviewed what she’d wrote.

While shields are arcane in nature, they are comprised of djed which is produced from a singular individual and is by its very nature something of an extension of that individual. Thus shields, once completed, can be considered a living thing with all the vulnerabilities and strengths of other living things. Much like other living things, they can be nurtured and as a result they can grow and adapt and if old enough can ‘learn’. Neglected shields can wither and die, slowly losing their ability to protect against whatever they are tasked too.

Each shield starts out knowing one thing, and that is what its original caster ‘tasked’ it to do. The caster decides the task, infusing the shield with the caster’s will as to what the shield will do. For this reason, strong-willed individuals are far better suited to become shielders than perhaps hotheaded weaker-willed mages are.

Kavala read on. Evidently the way it worked was that shielders first and foremost learned to task shields with the blocking or absorbing of djed. Beginning shields always had these traits. What sort of djed the shields blocked was of course up to the caster. Kavala nodded, thinking reimancy would probably be the first thing she'd think to block. Later, as she read on, she could see that students moved on to blocking types of things like senses... sight, smell, or sound. Of course, this didn't make them invisible.. it just made it undefined. So.. Kavala thought of an apple and decided she'd try to weave a shield around one blocking the apple smell and making it more nondescript... and see if her horses would still be greedy for it. Maybe she could do the same with sight... trying one obfuscated into something nondescript and then try one without smell... she wondered which the horses would ignore and which they'd go for if either. So, she picked up an apple from the basket on the table, transferred the Shield she'd worked on that was lurking on her arm onto the apple, and as she moved the djed over it, she thought about blocking out the scent of the apple, visualizing the apple's natural delicious aroma to coil and twist, trapped within the glowing shield she erected over the apple.

Once she thought she was done, Kavala took a deep breath, concentrated, and slowly looked at the apple with what she called 'othersite'. The auristics lit up the apple, making the shield glow all around it. Kavala smiled, sniffed at the apple, smelled nothing and then looked for flaws in the shield with her auristic sight. There were thin spots, unevenness, and even a place she'd failed to cover at all. Slowly, she went about correcting this, adding in more djed in the places that needed it.. whispering to it to block scent... block the delicious apple scent.

Once done, she tossed the apple lightly in her hand, decided Tasi was fine for a moment, and wandered off the veranda to offer the apple to a subsequent group of horses that mainly ignored it. Finally, three horses later a young colt nuzzled it, probably recognizing its appearance, and took a tentative bite. Once he bit into it, the horse was greedy for the rest and Kavala gladly gave it up.

Kavala was back with her son in sight in just a heartbeat afterwards.

It was interesting. Blocking sound created an absence of sound that made things feel unrealistic to those listening... so one would have to task a shield to block say one specific type of sound and not all sound in order to make the shield applicable and believable if say someone was trying to conceal ones movements through the grasslands.

Interesting. Very interesting.

[Kavala]

So, thought Kavala, tasking shields was the basic hardcore beginnings of learning the art once one mastered manipulating the energy and producing enough to cover what one wanted covered. Glancing around, Kavala picked up the first thing she could lay her hands on and came back with a ceramic mug. Holding it in her hand, she turned the object over and over examining the mug. Concentrating, Kavala summoned her djed, letting it coil up from the depths of her soul. Some mages physically saw their djed being produced as a sort of light show of brilliant energy. Others felt it, like it was a living thing or a coiling snake growing from an unknown origin. Kavala heard hers, almost like a sudden swell of music produced deep within her. It rose to sing through her and weave around her hands, slowly coating the mug she held within. As the djed formed, slipping from her body to coat the mug, Kavala concentrated. “Block Djed… block djed….” The book wasn’t too informative on what sort of djed but as she produced and covered the mug, Kavala slowly started to see what it meant. Block djed… what sort of djed… all djed that wasn’t ‘itself’… meaning her djed.

Astute people understood inherently that people’s djed was as unique as their fingerprints. To task a shield as she wove it, Kavala suddenly understood how to do it. Anything that was not its core makeup, the stuff that formed it, should not be allowed into it. Anything that was not ‘her’ as such… suddenly became alien and unallowed. As she spun her djed into a weave that covered the mug, it was so incredibly clear to her. “Not me.. not allowed…” she kept saying, thinking, feeling as she produced her djed and wove it around the object. When she was done, it was glowing in her eyes.

Taking a deep breath, relaxing, Kavala felt for the part of her gaze that she used to look at things’ with Auristics. It took a few moments, a breath, then another, and she was switching to her inner vision. Her azure gaze became even more luminous as she looked first with her heart, then her head, and finally with her auristics. Kavala examined the shield covering the mug, looking for cracks, flaws, or even abrasions. There were thin parts, places where her attention had waivered, but overall it was decent. And it oozed the feeling of no admittance to anyone that held it. When she was done, Kavala’s sight dropped back to normal and her gaze lost its glow. She carefully closed her hands back over it, began again, and wove the thin places stronger, trying to get a feel

Kavala sat the mug down, stood up, stretched, and walked away. As she walked away, the strangest thing happened. She could feel part of herself still there, with the shield. All she wanted was a drink of cold water from the well. But it was disconcerting, knowing where the mug was even as she walked away. The shield on it was part of her.

It was then that Tasi needed her, gently starting to cry his cry of hunger from the corner where he quietly played with his blocks. She immediately turned around, bipassing the mug that was now covered with its anti-djed shield and picked up her son. He snuggled in her arms, his mouth immediately going for her chest, so she bared a breast for him to feed and immediately went to settle somewhere that they both could relax while he did so.

Continued here.

[Gillar]

THREAD AWARD Good work on Shielding training; Kavala continues to find new ways to grow and new directions to expand. Shielding 5 Auristics 2 Lore: Taking notes from texts on magic Lore: Basic principles of Shielding Lore: Following instructions from texts on magic