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Professor Marin's first class is in session.

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First Lessons [Leila, Castor and Tsaba]

Postby Tsaba on June 16th, 2013, 5:33 pm

Tsaba studied the rune carefully before pulling out a new sheet of parchment and inking her quill. She'd noticed that Dr Marin had drawn with a brush; she'd never learned to use one, preferring the finer point and easy control of a quill for writing, but perhaps it was the preferred tool for runes? She'd have to ask.

The rune didn't bear any obvious similarity to the ones she knew from the body transfer ritual, but of course it was impossible to know from just one rune. The carefully copied it onto a fresh piece of parchment as accurately as she could, silently thanking Craun for the foreign texts and Lisaelis for the knitting patterns they'd each had her copy in the past. She focused solely on the rune as she sketched it, paying attention to neither the others in the room nor the time passing. About a quarter of the way through, her quill slipped; with a hiss of frustration, she pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and started again.

The second time, she took extra care to mimic each stroke. Once she had the whole thing copied out, she sat back and inspected it. It looked right, she thought; but then, she had no idea what was ans what was not important. In the alphabet she knew, some lines were more important than others; some moved due to variation in handwriting, and some needed to stay pretty much in the right position to be legible. Was Glyphing the same? She'd need a lot more practice to know. But to her eye, it looked like she'd copied the lines reasonably well. The real question was whether it would pass Dr Marin's standards.

Tsaba put her quill down, sat back and looked up, only then paying attention once more to the rest of the room.
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First Lessons [Leila, Castor and Tsaba]

Postby Castor Riley on June 17th, 2013, 11:36 pm

Castor was surprised to find he had been chosen to draw the rune. The short rush of happiness he felt at this, however, was quickly drowned out by the realisation that he would actually have to draw something relatively well. On top of that, it was to be with a brush, a tool he had never really used before. However, what was done was done, so he just got up, saying "Yes, Professor," and took the drawing implements in hand.

He waited, standing around awkwardly as the professor drew the runes on pieces of parchment for himself and Tsaba to copy. He watched as she drew the different strokes of the geometriic patterns, trying to discern a method to apply to his own drawing, when the time came. He didn't manage to identify one.

When Professor Marin gave Tsaba her rune, he saw her searching the page, without appearing daunted at the task. Then again, Castor hadn't really known the Nuit to show much emotion. He was then beckoned to the Professor's side, who had sat down, hand outstretched. He laughed nervously when she said she didn't bite. He looked at the rune he was meant to copy. It seemed like a rounded geometric shape, containing more of the same. He wondered if he would manage it.

He placed the sheet on the desk so that he would be able to see it easily from his position. He mentally separated all of the shapes out, and decided to work focusing on the details rather than the big picture. He carefully took the professor's hand in his own, as he considered where to start from. He bit his lip thoughtfully and decided on the upper left, moving in a clockwise fashion till he was done. He poised the brush above the professor's palm. He noticed a thin scar and wondered briefly what it could have come from, before putting it out of mind, concerning himself solely with the task at hand. He inked the brush and began his painstakingly careful drawing. It felt a bit weird, at first, to be drawing on his professor's hand. The looping lines of the rune were obscuring it as he progressed, in his slow fashion, checking multiple times before every stroke of his brush that he was drawing the correct shape. He didn't even know how long he had been sitting there silently working, before he looked up. He'd done his best to copy the rune, but it looked rather different, in the end. Even though he'd managed to more or less draw the details of each separate shape correctly, the whole did not come together in the same way it had on the parchment. The pieces of the whole seemed to be in a slightly different relation to each other spatially on her palm.

He saw that Tsaba was already done with her rune and he felt he was holding up the class now. He looked to professor Marin, to see if the drawn rune might be satisfactory. Perhaps complete exactness wasn't as important. "Is this acceptable, Professor?" he asked, blushing.
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First Lessons [Leila, Castor and Tsaba]

Postby Annalisa Marin on June 18th, 2013, 8:50 pm

Anna watched intently how both of her students worked, trying to get a feel for their work ethic and how well they could apply themselves to the study they would need to conduct outside of class. Tsaba seemed to be blocking out everything else around her and was focused intently with the assignment given to her, scratching away at the parchment with her quill. Anna used quills when writing, however the brush was her preferred instrument when Glyphing as it made drawing easier for her.

Castor seemed to be approaching this task with some difficulty, though considering this was the first time he was drawing a Glyph it wasn't exactly surprising. She looked over his brush work with a critical eye for detail, noting any flaws in his design. The overall shape did not bother her over much, runes drawn by different wizards were going to look different. However the components within the rune were lacking in some areas, causing her to occasionally narrow her eyes in disapproval.

Tsaba had finished before Castor but the young professor kept silent about it, wait for him to finish up before inspecting his rune. The finished result was rather underwhelming, right off the bat she noticed several small components missing from the Focus. It was a good first attempt but it was certainly not something she would think of using in a scroll, or even as a focus for her magic.

"Castor, I want you to forget about the overall shape. It is relatively meaningless, the components within the focus are what make it special. As it is this focus possesses several flaws within it such as the spacing of certain runes and the exclusion of one or two entirely." Anna said, locking eyes with Castor.

One on one teaching was what she preferred as it made her less likely to make a mistake due to nerves. A group was okay but difficult to manage at times.

"I want you to try again with my other hand, practice and repetition are the only ways to improve in any skill, glyphing especially. If that one doesn't work then we'll move on to my feet and keep finding body parts until you get it right. The Focus is the most integral part of glyphing, pay very close attention to the runes that make it up and commit them to memory." The young professor instructed, offering him her other hand.

She glanced over to Tsaba, beckoning her over.

"Miss Tsaba let me see what you have completed." Anna said.

So far this was not turning out to be so bad, however as she had time to reflect it might have been best to go over the components of a focus rather than straight to the focus. She needed to work on presenting the information in a clear and concise way without glossing over info.
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First Lessons [Leila, Castor and Tsaba]

Postby Tsaba on June 19th, 2013, 4:58 am

Tsaba walked over and handed her parchment to Dr Marin, trying not to disturb Castor in the process. She wished that they'd been told about the individual components mattering more than the overall symmetry of the shape beforehand, but hopefully it wouldn't make that much difference. She was almost certain that she had all the marks in there. Well... pretty sure. At least fifty per cent sure. Maybe.

She snuck a glance at Castor's completed rune as she handed the paper over; it looked fine to her. But of course, she didn't know what to look for. Perhaps he'd missed out some really important stroke or something. It must be difficult to trace the complicated pattern on an area as tiny as a hand, and Tsaba was suddenly glad she hadn't been called upon to do it, having little experience with brushes -- that was something she'd need to practise with if she intended to go about drawing runes on herself.

"Dr Marin?" she asked while she was there. "If the power of a rune is just in its shape, why don't people just... just embroider them in cloth, or etch them in armour? They seem a little complicated to redraw all the time in something as easily-smudged as ink."
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First Lessons [Leila, Castor and Tsaba]

Postby Castor Riley on June 20th, 2013, 6:13 pm

Castor nodded, seeing, now that they were pointed out, the mistakes he'd made. He felt silly for not having seen them before. He studied the original rune even more closely, now that he knew the general shape was of minor importance in comparison to the individual runes. He began his work again with renewed vigor.

As Tsaba brought her finished rune to the professor, Castor saw that she seemed to have taken better care than he had with her glyph. His amateur's eye didn't discern any mistakes, though he'd only had a short glance at it. She probably would have fared much better at the challenge of drawing the rune on Dr Marin's body. The question she asked, as with most she did, was an interesting one, and Castor would listen to the professor's response before continuing with his work.

Returning his full attention to his next attempt, Castor dipped the brush in the ink again, draining some of the excess away by scraping it against the pot; he felt that some of the mistakes he'd made had been due to too much ink blotching the more complex runes, for which he would now only be using the tip of the brush. He carefully took the professor's other hand in his and began drawing once more. He worked at the runes one at a time, this time concentrating intently on the individual runes. He copied them stroke for stroke, beads of sweat rolling off his forehead as the room's heat began to turn towards the suffocating. Or was that only him?

He didn't know how many chimes had passed when he finally finished his copying work. He compared his work briefly to that on the parchment, looking at the whole now, and his heart sunk. He'd been so concentrated on doing every rune perfectly, and he had done a very good job at that, but he'd ignored the whole. Now that he looked at it however, he could clearly see that he'd accidentally skipped over one of the runes. He'd looked too closely. He swore inwardly, "Professor, I'm sorry, I've missed one of the runes. Could you look over the rest and tell me if I've done anything else wrong, so I can avoid making the same mistakes in future?" Castor was deeply disappointed in himself, but he felt a bit better knowing he could at least identify his mistakes now. Or, at least some of them. Perhaps the professor would enlighten him on others.
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First Lessons [Leila, Castor and Tsaba]

Postby Annalisa Marin on June 21st, 2013, 8:31 pm

Anna looked over Tsaba's finished product, it wasn't a bad copy by any means though it was much easier to copy onto parchment than it was to on flesh. She noted very few errors, just a few misplaced constructs within the focus that likely wouldn't affect the overall effectiveness. She was also glad that Tsaba brought up this question as it would likely save her a long explanation later down the road, truly these two seemed to be competent and astute students. Anna thought for a moment how to address Tsaba's question, occasionally glancing down at Castor's brush work.

"Both of those applications are very much possible, and could easily increase and add augmented qualities to a wizard's clothing. However the purpose of using parchment is in the construction of a scroll, a sort of portable way of transporting magic if you will." Anna said with a nod.

"Scrolls can be used to store useful magic, like transmuted reimancy and keep them ready for later uses. The art of scroll making is something you will be learning as I teach you the basic forms of runes." She said looking back to Castor's progress briefly.

She intended to make the art of constructing a scroll the final test for her students, so teaching the base components and how they all came together was a must. Today was for the focus, the next day would be barriers and after that would be triggers after that she would show them how to bring them all together into the proper way of constructing a scroll. Of course she would be putting quite a bit of magical theory behind it as well, if one did not understand magic then glyphing was meaningless.

"Technically speaking you can use and drawing material in glyphing and etching as well. I have etched runes into dirt and drawn them in blood, it all depends upon the resources available to you. However, keep in mind that once a glyph has served its purpose it will vanish. That same armor it has been etched on may crack and your embroidery may fray, scrolls will crumple to dust. It is a basic law of glyphing." She continued, feeling much more comfortable with this explanation.

Anna took another look at Tsaba's focus.

"I'd suggest you keep in mind what I told Castor going forward, the overall shape means very little. Glyphs drawn by other wizards are going to look very different from one another. Try another, remember practice makes perfect." She affirmed.

Anna looked at Castor's finished product, noting much less error in his creation than had been present in his first one. He had indeed skipped over one but that did not destroy the functionality of the whole entirely. Anna did not say this though, instead she frowned. The young wizard was something of a perfectionist, as such she imposed the same high standards on her students. She'd help him identify the issues but she was most definitely not going to let him off so easily with an imperfect rune, not when she knew he could do better.

"I see no other issues other than the one rune, however I want you to consider something. When you have a scroll do you want the product to possess a flaw that could possibly cause a deadly malfunction? Because that is what I am looking at right now." The young professor said as she made a show of examining her palm.

"Do not concern yourself with the shape of the runes, concern yourself with their placement, that is the important thing here. Function comes before form, always remember that." She said, kicking off one of her boots.

She moved her chair back slightly and offered Caster her right foot. Her gaze was hard, in fact one might call her look a glare as her grey eyes were narrow upon him.

"I trust you will be able to get this one right, if not we have plenty of time after hours." She said, it sounding slightly like a threat.

Perhaps she was mean, perhaps she was cruel, but even so it was necessary to drive home that magic required incredible attention to detail to me functional. One little slip up could spell disaster, so in a way her lesson was two fold. The obvious message of trying to get her students to understand the basics of glyphing and the subliminal one of telling them to take great care when using magic.
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First Lessons [Leila, Castor and Tsaba]

Postby Tsaba on June 22nd, 2013, 10:28 am

Tsaba tried to make sense of Dr Marin's contradictory-sounding advice as she sat down to recopy the rune. The overall shape didn't matter, but placement of the runes was important? All of the runes mattered, but they different wizards drew them differently? She bit her lip and frowned at the rune in front of her. None of it made sense.

But perhaps it was like writing. Plenty of people had different handwriting, but certain essential characteristics in a letter kept it recogniseable, even when they were placed differently. And a series of letters made a word, but the actual spacing and position of the letters didn't matter so long as they were placed in sequence. Perhaps that's what Dr Marin meant; there was a two-dimensional sequence in the glyph that mattered, but trying to space their 'letters' exactly like she did was a pointless waste of time. Tsaba wanted to ask for clarification, but she wasn't sure how to phrase it.

But if there was a pattern... Tsaba was good at patterns.

Using the edge of her scrollcase as a ruler, Tsaba used an uninked quill to divide a piece of parchment into a broad grid. The slightly indented lines would give her a sort of guide for her rune placement. She used them to place the runes that seemed to fit easily into a grid, and then filled in the rest around them. After she was done, she used a basic grid search pattern to look for anything she might have missed.

There did pick up a few stray lines and at least one entire missing rune, which she crammed into the available space. It was unlikely that her untrained eye would pick up every mistake, but Dr Marin probably would. When she had found every mistake she could, she sat back and looked at the whole pattern.

It was a good thing that the overall shape didn't matter.

Due to the indented grid she'd used, there was at least a kind of symmetry to the waves of broad and crammed strokes throughout the copy, and she was pretty sure that technically, she'd fit all the bits in, although if she'd been doing it with a brush there was no way she'd have been able to prevent some of the shapes from touching. She almost winced when she saw that one of her strokes did indeed breach a space where on Dr Marin's diagram, it had not. Of course, her previous copy hadn't been as even as she'd have liked, either. With her untrained eye it was impossible to tell whether she'd done better or worse.

She was tempted to start again, but she didn't want to hold the class up, so Tsaba took the parchment over to show Dr Marin.
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First Lessons [Leila, Castor and Tsaba]

Postby Castor Riley on June 22nd, 2013, 7:54 pm

Castor tried to wrap his head around professor Marin's instructions; on the one hand, the overall shape was unimportant, but on the other, neither was the shape of the individual runes? If none of the shapes mattered, then how did people even draw runes? How could they differentiate? Castor's mind was beginning to whir, but he prepared himself for his third attempt, hoping the professor wouldn't have to act on her threat of supplementary classes. It was such a small class and still he was the runt of the bunch.

He took the professor's foot in his palm, trying not to appear too uncomfortable. It wasn't every day he was asked to draw on someone's foot, after all. He noted that drawing on feet was a bit more unwieldy; there wasn't as flat a surface as a palm had, and it was harder to keep proper hold of it. "Excuse me," he said, as he took a tighter grip on her heel. He considered, briefly, how he would proceed with his next attempt; what should he focus on? He tried to imagine how to act on the professor's advice. He took a moment to note the spacing between the runes, and started as she'd suggested. He drew them concerning himself more with their position in relation to the rest, rather than their being identical to the originals. This resulted in a few of them being smaller than others, though still fairly similar.

When he was done, he looked up at the professor. "How about now?" He asked, not daring to examine his work too closely, feeling certain he'd completely misinterpreted her instructions and was bound for intensive lessons and the ire of his new instructor.
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First Lessons [Leila, Castor and Tsaba]

Postby Annalisa Marin on June 23rd, 2013, 12:28 am

Anna looked over Castor's Glyph first, her grey eyes searching the markings with a keen eye for detail, leaving not a single facet out. It was good, all things considered, it certainly lacked his earlier mistakes. The young professor herself knew how difficult glyphing one's foot could be, which was why they were the first things she glyphed before a practice session. It was a fine Glyph, no where near her own work but certainly good for only his third time attempting it. On a fleshy surface no less.

The young professor nodded, noting Tsaba was approaching. Now would be a good time to show exactly how Glyphing could be used as an augment for personal magic. That was the first thing she had learned, after that everything came more easily to her. Another demonstration with reimancy, though she intended to still keep it small scale and use earth this time as the fire had merely been to accent a point about the dangers of magic.

She looked at Castor and gave him a nod of approval, her expression carefully neutral.

"It is adequate, Castor. I would suggest a series of repetitions when working on your focus'. They are the crucial part of any sigil. A sigil being a series of glyphs." She said.

Anna started a low chant in the ancient tongue again, holding her foot as she did so. The act required near zero focus as to where she needed to exude the res and a small bit of the liquid substance formed there. It's generation was notably faster and much smoother than last time. The young wizard willed the tiny amount of res to form a tiny ball in the air before her, still chant as she willed the res to begin to solidify into a translucent ball. From there she transmuted it to a tiny rock, which fell to the floor between them.

The process of her casting was notably smoother but such details likely would escape them without proper explanation. The urge surged in her brain once more but Anna pushed it down easily enough, with the combined forces of her incantations and the focus in her favor it was not to difficult.

"Focus Glyphs can be used to focus a personal mage's Djed to certain areas and can augment casting. For instance, with me it makes the formation of res much quicker and more smooth. Most consider this augmentation the tool of a novice but it is in fact a crucial focus and edge in spell casting. Of course with faster casting comes the risk of burning out more easily, however it is also useful in combating desires to cast more." She explained.

"When used in conjunction with incantations it can make the act of spell casting just a bit more safe and definitely more efficient." Anna said, nodding more to herself than her students.

Anna took Tsaba's drawing and noted a part of the focus seemed a bit off from the norm. It was certainly not catastrophic, it just would make its effectiveness a little less than perfect. It was certainly not something Anna would consider using in a scroll, but it appeared solid considering this was only her second focus rune. Still the young professor frowned.

"Hmm... this is not bad, however its certainly not something that would be useful for a scroll. An focus for augmenting existing magic, possibly but a scroll would not be wise for this." She said, shaking her head and slipping her foot back into her boot.

She stood to her full height, looking to both of her students and nodding slightly.

"I'm going to let you keep those focus' as a means of study for practice before next session. I will also provide you with a list of readings that could be useful as you study glyphing. Basic ones on glyphing theory and on the nature of Djed itself. By next session I want your focus' to be perfectly usable in a scroll without risk of a catastrophe." Anna said, believing it to be a good idea to begin wrapping the lesson up.

She looked to both expectantly.

"Do you have any further questions? If not I'll draw up that list." The young professor asked, before rounding her desk and picking up a quill.
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First Lessons [Leila, Castor and Tsaba]

Postby Tsaba on June 23rd, 2013, 8:01 pm

Tsaba didn't have any questions that she felt she could phrase easily without further study, so she kept her mouth shut. She carefully rolled the demonstration rune up with her practice runes (there was no risk of mixing up Dr Marin's precise brush strokes and her own uneven quill scratches) and tucked them carefully away in her scrollcase.

What she needed was books. Books would definitely help. They would be able to tell her exactly what she was doing wrong, and how to stop it, and they could tell her that without her needing to speak to anybody.

She watched Dr Marin expectantly, quill in hand, but kept silent.
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