[Sanctuary] A Firm and Steadfast Hand

[Kavala]

Timestamp: 68th of Spring, 511
Location: Sanctuary
Purpose: Gyphing Training
Status: Closed

Kavala opened the book. There was anticipation and satisfaction knowing with Raiha babysitting, there was finally time for her to study glyphing. First and foremost she wanted to read the text, learning the key concepts and understanding what was needed to actually learn the skill. The Konti healer had some idea of what glyphing was – she wasn’t in a turnip field or found under a rock. But the details were sketchy. All she really cared about was that rumor had it gnosis could be stored in glyphs and that meant her healing ability could be stretched out, taken with others while she wasn’t present, and utilized when the need arose.

Kavala flipped past the credits, the elaborate illustrations and got right into the heart of the reading. Her eyes scanned the page and read the introduction digesting what she read and in turn flipping open her blank journal and dipping her quill into a pot of ink.

She carefully wrote out her notes, wanting to refer back to them later in case she struggled too much.

Glyphing falls under world magic and is considered one of the oldest forms of arcane in Mizahar. Common in the pre-valterrian times, glyphing is far more rare in the post-Valterrian world. This magic consists of a user being able to draw or inscribe meaningful symbols and signs – runes even – on objects to form complex sigils and pictures. The artwork itself has no magic but can act as a storage and manipulation mechanism for other forms of magic and gnosis.

These sigils can do the following with other forms of magic or gnosis:

• Store
• Release
• Tame Wild Djed
• Channel
• Deflect
• Confine

Many famous scrolls and cryptographed lore sprang from glyphing and although once common is far more rare these days.

Interesting. Kavala looked thoughtfully at the paper and wondered at the ramifications. Could dreamwalking be captured in a scroll? Did it work on all gnosis’ or just some? She could see lots of experimentation in her future for certain when it came to the discipline.

But why wasn’t Glyphing more common? Kavala turned back to the book and began reading anew. The answers were there, not very far into the text it seemed.

Sources claim glyphing, for obvious reasons, should never be considered a primary magical discipline. Glyphing itself is a supportive system of djed storage and spell manipulation. It does NOTHING on its own, but when paired with another sort of magic can become a strong personal tool. One needs to learn something, anything, first before they get into the complex use of this discipline. Glyphing cannot AFFECT or transmute the magic it houses or works with. The magic used with glyphing must be manipulated first and foremost outside of the glyph. All the glyph actually does is hold the magic frozen until such a time as its needed.

So why is glyphing so powerful? Simply put Glyphing is almost universally practiced by serious mages because it allows glyphers to direct towards others powers that are normally confined to the self. This fact completely and utterly broadens the scope of many disciplines enormously.

So this was no light endeavor. But then what was, Kavala wondered. Everything had its limits and Kavala was starting to think that a glyph was perhaps only as strong as its artist and only could contain what that arcanist themselves could produce. She liked this idea, this concept, and the inherent built in checks and balances.

The Konti shifted, getting more comfortable and re-dipped her quill, ready to launch into the next section, which indeed was more of an overview. Azure eyes skimmed the page, noting the book talked a great deal about the past and what glyphing meant to wizards of old. That fact in itself was fascinating. Kavala always wondered what the differences in magic from before the Valterrian and afterwards truly meant to the wizards of the world. Had the world changed so much then? Or was it just that the easy living of before the cataclysm softened the wizards compared to the wizards after the Valterrian who’d been forced to fight for survival like everyone else.

[Kavala]

The Konti read on, then redipped her quill and began to write once more.

Glyphing, it seems, was commonplace in the easy times of the Suvan and Alahea Empires. Considered a basic wizards skill, most arcane practitioners learned glyphing almost as they learned their first element in reimancy or took their first steps casting shields. Like writing and arithmetic, glyphing was a staple in any wizards skillset. In some of the larger wizard schools that existed before the end of the world, glyphing was a basic level class and considered nothing special.

Because it was so commonplace some of the more intricate knowledge of the art was lost because when something is considered everyday knowledge it often isn’t documented well and as a result the Valterrian took a great deal of glyphing knowledge and erased it from the face of Mizahar as it snuffed out the lives of glyphers everywhere. In modern days, glyphing is considered mysterious, mystical and is highly prized, especially new practices and uncommon uses. Glyphs in the past were extremely common in wizard’s labs because they could really help wizards contain or control their somewhat dangerous or daring experiments. That is another reason why glyphs are a very important tool both in the ancient word and the modern arcanists’ toolbox.

It never hurt to understand what drove a demand in the world. Surely there was a demand for good glyphs and lost glyphing knowledge. Kavala wondered if anyone she knew had practiced glyphing in the past, in a way she could dreamwalk to and learn from. The Cytali founder certainly hadn’t. Perhaps someone else closer… someone she could pick out as having an aptitude.

Kavala would have to look. Random searches always bore fruit at times as well. Who knew what one could latch onto searching the Chavena, stroking strange Chavi’s and easedropping into lives. Maybe she could even use the book written here in her hand as a source, perhaps it had a name in it.. or a sitation that would give her a direct line to one of those students who sat in the first year glyphing class and worked through exercises… ones she could eavesdrop on and learn for herself. Just because that world was gone from this one didn’t mean it was lost. No, Kavala knew, nothing was lost ever.

Time for the next section though. Kavala drew the ‘what ifs’ back into the distance of her mind and re-dipped her quill, turning the page on her journal and beginning to take notes even as she read from the text she’d carefully copied when she’d borrowed it from the library all those seasons ago.

The beauty of Glyphing is that it allows narrow scoped varieties of magic, such as personal, to be broadened and used on other things such as people, places and things wherein normal use of the personal magic only results in the mage themselves being affected. Auristics is a good example. Also, multiple effects can be added, stacked on in ways that normal casting would not allow. A classic example of this is morphing. Beginning morphers can often only morph themselves or small parts of the body due to the amount of knowledge they have learned or by the amount of djed they can produce. But a morphing glyph can affect the person its used upon, and or multiple morphs can be stored on various different glyphs and triggered relatively quickly – one after another – to produce the desired effect.

Kavala liked that idea a lot. It would be nice to store the cleansing ability of her gnosis, then stack it on a forced bruise heal, and then maybe some laceration or wound healing plus maybe a broken bone healing in another glyph. She could help a lot of people with glyphing, the healer was realizing quickly reading the book.

So skimming further, skipping ahead eagerly, Kavala learned two things for certain. All glyphs looked different. Each individual wizard devised their own basic glyph set and worked out from there. The second thing she realized is that learning more about glyphing came through practice, not theory. Glyphing’s theory and concepts were pretty much set in stone – what a beginning student knew whats in fact what a very powerful master glypher knew. The master could just do more with more complex concepts intertwining serious cause and effect magics into his art.

[Kavala]

So… the first things first. Kavala sat down to design her first and most basic glyph. The basic glyph would be the core of her design and the thing she built all the other glyphing elements around. She wanted it to be a design that would be easily recognizable as HERS and belonging to Sanctuary's Healers if that were possible. It was only good for business, right? Immediately, Sanctuary’s horsehead sign came to mind. Kavala wondered if she could modify it as her own glyph base and go from there with it. Confidence would come. Certainty in what she drew would be achieved only through time.

So working on a scrap paper, Kavala carefully drew and redrew the rearing horse logo until it was a series of lines that formed the shape of a horse without one lifting a pen overly much and yet still allowing for space to store other elements if those were necessary. The Konti liked the design and thought it spoke a great deal to what she was about and what she wanted to do. Once satisfied, Kavala copied the base design into her journal with the date, leaving several pages for additional glyphs to be put into the mixture so she could look back and see how she progressed.

Now that she had the design, how in the world was she going to get something ‘stored’ in the glyph. Kavala picked back up where she left off, dipping her quill and once more taking notes. It seemed there was some key concepts she was still lacking. Once understanding came within those concepts, she’d be ready to glyph in a serious manner.

Kavala carefully noted the time, date, and why she picked the design. The design itself could be interwoven with arcane symbolism that changed with the purpose of each glyph and what it did.

[Kavala]

Okay, it was time to get serious. Kavala needed to know all the parts of a glyph and what they stood for if she was going to have any success in drawing and filling one. Loading, to her, seemed to be a good word. Drawing and then loading a glyph with the proper components. First though, like in all things, there was nomenclature to wade through. She once more dipped her quill, furrowed her brow, and began to take notes, this time re-sketching some of the examples from her copied book into her journal and labeling them. Kavala was that type of learner. She learned by doing, not necessarily reading – and note taking was very much a part of that. How would one learn it if they just looked at it and didn’t take the time to reproduce it?

Kavala needed to understand the dynamics, the components, and what was what when it came to the actual art of glyphing. She read on, taking careful notes as she did.

Runes can be any shape, size, color or design. They can be created in any way and placed on anything. They can be painted in blood, ink, ashes, anything even water, so long as the design will last enough to be useful. Regardless of what they are used for or comprised of, once a glyph has been used, the runes will disappear within it and it will be considered ‘exhausted’. Tattoos on the human skin disappear, ink vanishes, stone might crumble, and scrolls vanish. For this reason, the existences of glyphs are rarely long-lasting. They often have to be completely and utterly redone quite frequently.

Runes used in the magic of Glyphing are called Glyphs. Scholars suspect that runes may be a primative form of written ancient tongue, but nothing is known for certain. Language is power, so this could indeed be a potential origin of this artform.

The entire collection of glyphs that make up a task is called a Sigil. Sigils always contain one or more components, depending on what they are used for. The complexity of the purpose of the sigil depends on how complex the glyphs in it are and what they are purposed for.

Okay, confusing, thought Kavala, but she’d get it sorted out when she could. There were multiple parts of sigils, components, like any good medicine had. The purpose of the medicine depended on its components. Kavala smiled. Everything made sense when put into healer terms for her. Alright… composing the medicine… erh Sigil.

The Basic Building Blocks of Sigils

While not all sigils will have all of these components, definitely some of them could be readily found. More complex sigils might indeed have all of them.

• Focus - A single, large glyph that stores magic. Think of it as a sieve that magic slides into, flowing downward into space that before did not exist. There, in that inbetween space, the magic is held until it is released. The magic will release at the same speed it was fed into the focus. Focus' can look like anything but usually have meaning to the caster and are distinctive from one mage to another. Some people consider focus' very important. Even physical objects can be stored inside a Focus, provided that they contain magic in them and can pass through the Focus. For this reason, glyphs come in all shapes and sizes. They have to in order to accommodate what is held within them. Anything magical, even magecrafted items, constructs, summoned creatures... even wild djed... can be stored.

• Barrier - A barrier is a series of glyphs, usually arranged in a circle, that surround another part of the sigil. They block and restrict the magical effect inside, typically contained in a Focus. Without a barrier a focus cannot hold the magic contained within it. All glyphs need barriers.

• Trigger - These are small separate glyphs that act to raise and lower the barrier. You need to use a trigger to lower a barrier to store magic in a glyph, then a trigger once more to raise it so the magic can be contained. Then, once glyphs are needed, the trigger glyph will need to be utilized to lower the barrier a final time to release the magic. Glyphs generally are destroyed after this second lowering.

• Path - A Path is simply a set of two barriers formed as a wide path of boundaries which can be used as a 'road' for a magical effect to travel on. It is used to channel magic where desired or connect different sigils. Paths are used in more complex glyphs or to link two magics together. Just like Barriers, they can transport the magic stored in a Focus, but require a master user to channel hostile magic. So most paths consist of a simple second line inside the barrier.

• Switch - A Switch is a single glyph, typically painted in a different color. It is used to split a magical effect into multiple parts, or merge multiple effects. The division is either power-wise (splitting big effect into small effects), or function-wise (splitting two effects of the same magic). Typically used with Paths.

Setting aside her reservations on her drawing skill, Kavala started sketching out a simple glyph and labeling it carefully turning her simple original design into a full fledged sigil. Her original horse design became the focus. The circle of arcane symbols became her barrier, and a careful inverted triangle holding her initial became the trigger. The resulting image was distinctive and something that she was satisfied with. Her design did not have a path or a switch, but she was fine with that at her level.

[Kavala]

So she knew the beginning. And as her book stated, all glyphing was seemed to be composed of the ability to store things via magical pictures. Figuring out how to do it was another story. Her barrier runes, Kavala decided, were best done in Pavi and composed of any and all words she could think of that meant boarder or obstacle. Thinking carefully, Kavala began to list them.

The Barrier

obstruction, bar, barricade, blockade, bound, boundary, confines, curtain, ditch, enclosure, fence, fortification, gully, hurdle, impediment, limit, moat, obstacle, palisade, railing, rampart, roadblock, stop, trench, wall

Once those runes were listed in Pavi, Kavala had her barrier. Her trigger word on her new glyphs would be release. It was easy to guess even if one didn’t know Pavi and since the glyphs she planned to make were not going to be dangerous or deadly, then obfuscating the meaning did no good at all.

The Trigger

Release

The Konti smiled. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Now though, there was the practical application. How did a healer of Rak'keli make a glyph function for her benefit and the benefit of the people in Sanctuary?

Kavala chewed on the end of her quill before redipping it. The feather tickled her lips but she only furrowed her brow harder. At this point in her life she was young, not exactly power hungry, but control hungry. And in studying magic – all the forms she’d explored so far – she was beginning to see a trend. It was more about INTENT and Will than anything else. What went into these glyphs were completely and utterly about her will.
So, at her level and with the knowledge she had, it was important to practice as often as she could. Nothing she made would be reliable, that was for sure, but nor would they be deadly. She could use glyphs to augment her staff and spread her gnosis around which was important in their line of work. Sick animals came into the Sanctuary all the time but often they didn’t know what caused the illness or how it spread. One of the things Kavala routinely had her staff do was wash their hands. That seemed to help keeping people and other animals from getting sick or spreading illness to fast. She wondered if she could take her gnosis ability to cleanse wounds of illness like rot or dirt and make a quick and simple way for her staff to utilize this ability even when she wasn’t around.

It would require painting lots of glyphs on walls though and storing that gnosis ability into them. Kavala didn’t relish doing it by hand so she carefully went and found a piece of hide just slightly larger than two people’s hands laid together as if splayed out on the wall. Then, carefully copying the design she’d created, Kavala laid it out on the hide far and wide large enough for two hands to be laid on the horse in the center which was the focus. She carefully sketched the barrier in all the pavi words. Then taking a sharpened scalpel, Kavala began to cut out the design carefully making a stencil. Once she had it cut out, she waxed it heavily treating it against water and paint. Then, putting it in a simple frame of wood Aweston helped her make, Kavala had the perfect pattern.

She ran around the exam room doorframes and stenciled the glyph design around each and every space someone could easily reach, making it more of an arcane decorating than anything else. She added stencils by the front entrance, and painted them on the doorframes around the office and philtering lab on either side. It took her most of the afternoon to do so. But when she was done, she had roughly a hundred of the designs. She carefully cleaned the frame and hide stencil, and stored it away. She’d need it again soon.

Then, after a bite to eat and a bit of rest, Kavala went about laying her hands on each stencil and tapping her gnosis mark, causing the cleansing sterilization ability of her gnosis to flow into each design, one at a time. It was exhausting work, especially figuring out how to trigger the barrier to come down, which allowed the glyph to be filled, and come back up. But she needed the practice, for sure, and if the glyph didn’t work, she had dozens more that could. The brilliant part of the idea, Kavala figured, was she’d automatically know when they needed redone because as they were used, the glyphs vanished. No glyphs on the wall meant Kavala needed to get busy and put more up.

Instant hand sanitizer. She was proud and was glad that even though glyphing was such a simple thing, it had complex uses if one could be creative enough.

[Stranger]

XP Award!

Kavala:
Glyphing: +5
Writing: +4

Lore:
Knowledge of Arcane Symbols

Notes:
I apologize for the delay. I read this once, but wanted to read it again to learn about glyphing myself. Way to bring it to life. So much less dry than studying the lore all alone. The way you broke up her writing from the rest of your text was very clear, and helpful, too. Great work, as always..