Glyph's and paper... lots of it (hadrian)

[Coren]

Coren leaned once again back in his chair, seemingly trying to weigh the consequences he would have to face with each discipline, though he already knew which choice he would make before the small explanation what the dangers where he got from hadrian. “Well I think I'll take glyphing then, I don't know anything about magic jet and that discipline sounds safe enough to start with. No risk to blow my own hands off like with things like reimancy. At least not as long I don't use it with reimancy” Coren said, a smile hidden beneath his mask. “So what do we need to start practicing glyping in the first place?” Coren continued to play the fool. Now he just had to either make himself really look like he didn't have a clue on how to draw glyphing sigil's and try not to let his masters style come out. He didn't doubt that the man before him would notice he had been deceiving him if his focus glyph looked completely different from hadrian's. “We probably will need paper and ink, just wait a sec and I'll be right back with both of those.” Coren quickly stood up and dissapeard from hadrian's vieuw for a few chimes. Before he came back with a small pack of paper and a vial of ink and a quill. Carefully dropping it off on his own table before handing over the ink and quill with a few pieces of paper to hadrian. “I have my own quill and ink on me at the moment. So lets start?” Eagerness was easily audible in his own voice.

[Hadrian]

"All right," he said, taking a moment to sharpen the quill nib with his dagger, then preparing himself. "So glyphing can accomplish a few things: storing magic, releasing magic, restricting magic, channeling magic, splitting magic, combining magic, taming magic, and enhancing magic. It does not create magic, but can be used to encrypt a wizard's findings, often within personal notebooks most commonly called grimoires. "A glyph is a single symbol or rune. A sigil is a collection of glyphs drawn to a purpose, most frequently upon a magic scroll or within experimental laboratories. Glyphs can look different from wizard to wizard; they are basically powerful as symbols in the caster's mind. The most common sort is based on the written language of Nader-canoch, which also serves to help one pronounce incantations recorded with glyphs. "Are you familiar with Nader-canoch?"

[Coren]

Coren had just finished pulling his quill and ink out of his pockets when hadrian began to explain what a glyph could do, so coren quickly snatched up a piece of paper and began to write down the essence of what hadrian was saying as quick as he could. “Okay, talk a little slower so I can write it all down please?” Coren asked of hadrian. “I do not want to miss anything as I am writing.” He said before once focusing completely on writing down what hadrian was saying. Glyphing is a branch of world magic that without value by itself since it cannot create magic at all. But there are quite a few things it can do to already existing magic. Storing and releasing magic. Restricting, channeling and taming wild magic. Splitting and combining magic. Enhancing magic. A glyph is the basic symbol used in the discipline. While a Sigil is a group of glyph's that is drawn to accomplish a single goal, like storing djed, is called. The way a glyph looks is also different from practitioner to practitioner. So they are essentially just powerful symbols in the caster's mind, most of the glyph's are at least partially based on one of the way's nader-canoch could be written so most of them do have some things in common. Coren looked up from his writing as hadrian stopped his explanation for a few moments and asked if he knew anything about the ancient language. “Yes I know the basic's of it.” Coren replied honestly as he looked over the paragraph he had written down to check for spelling mistakes. “I have to correct you on one thing though, while it might be that glyphing is based on a way how nader-canoch was written down. There are quite a few way's of writing the language. Thanks to the fact it predated the time when qalaya granted us the knowledge of writing. For example, there are a few books here in the library that use the vani alphabet to write down nader-canoch. I can point you towards them later if you want.” Coren offered, hoping that he wouldn't be offended, you never know how testy mages could be. “But one question, I know you are going to explain to me how to do those other things later, but how do you encrypt something using glyphing?” Coren was fairly interested into how to do that, sure he was planning to teach people later down the line but he didn't want a newly initiated mage to blow himself up trying to do stuff he wasn't able to yet.

[Hadrian]

After spending years at the University, Hadrian had little patience with people who could not take notes, whether in short hand or just jotting down the main ideas rather than every single word. He sighed and waited, then squinted at the correction. "I didn't say it was based on Nader-canoch. I said that one of the most common variants of glyphing is based on a written form of Nader-canoch. All languages can be transliterated into a different alphabet... but I may like to see this Vani transliteration at some point. "To answer your question, think back to what I said. Glyphs are different from wizard to wizard. They might find their root in some language or alphabet, but they invariably change to fit whatever symbolic needs of the wizard's mind. So once you have your own glyphs, only someone familiar with your glyphs would be able to read them. It isn't infallible, but it certainly makes things more difficult to decipher, unless you're dealing with a code-breaker. But that skill doesn't always go hand in hand with magical skill, and it's even less likely that a wizard and a mundane code-breaker would be working together... Unless the contents of your grimoire are highly valuable and less than common. "But here, a practical example." He took a piece of paper and his own quill and sketched out a simple sigil using glyphs taken straight from the last popular alphabet before Nader-canoch became a mostly dead language. Sketching out an absorbent focus, he ringed it around with a simple barrier as the spell would not be difficult, and two vaguely hand-shaped triggers. "Focus," he said, pointing. "Barrier. Triggers. These are basic elements of sigils. Now, I plant the spell into the focus..." He laid his right hand over the focus and opened himself fully to his Auristics, which permeated the room, finding whatever in Coren he wasn't bottling up tightly, getting a chaotic sense of purposes from all the people who had come here with the direst of needs, and it took him a while to filter through it all and make sense of it because his problem was no longer strength or sensitivity, but the ability to sort through the enormous amounts of information he could sense. The focus glyph glowed a bright white, and then he released his Auristics, closing himself off to that much awareness. It could break a brain. "Now all you have to do is put your hands on the triggers and say hea, and the stored spell of Auristics will open you to the world around you, but only briefly. Paper and ink are weak materials for storing magic."

[Coren]

Coren mulled over what hadrian said for a while before shrugging. “Well it seems that I should work on my common for a bit then, sorry for misunderstanding you on that part.” He said with a tinge of embarrassment in his tone, though it quickly faded as hadrian began running over how glyphing could be used to encode documents. It would just be like using an alphabet you cooked up all by yourself, but would have the added protection that most people wouldn't want to go messing with magic looking writings since it might lash back out. Coren smiled underneath his mask as his mind cooked up some small ideas on how to use his own glyph's to code his own writings, maybe he could even try to hide a few sigil's as traps for people who where snooping inside his research without permission. He stuffed those ideas towards the back of his head and leaned in closer as hadrian drew the basic sigil composing of a focus, barrier and trigger that had almost been burned in coren's mind by the years of practice. Still he had made himself out to be completely unknowing about magic so he should continue to play along. He ignored the small prickly feeling at the back of his neck as hadrian put his hand over the sigil and stored a spell inside of it. At the instructions on how to use it and what coren interpreted as an invitation to go and try the scroll out. Coren grabbed the scrol and put his hands on the triggers of the sigil. Taking a deep breath to try and brace himself for what was going to happen. “Hea.” As soon as coren triggered the scroll the world seemed to suddenly explode in a rainbow of colors and strange sounds seemed to drill themselves into his skull. Even though coren had tried to prepare himself for a sudden strange shift in his perception he hadn't even thought that aurists could see all of this! Coren clutched his head and scrunched his eye's shut as he tried to block out all the information that was flooding into his mind. All the information suddenly cut of as the spell finally had burned itself out after what had felt to coren like an eternity,But was actually barely a chime, leaving coren with one killer headache. The paper on which the sigil had been drawn crumbled into dust “That....” Coren groaned out as he rubbed his temples in the faint hope the massive headache would die down. “Was pretty unpleasant. Hadn't thought that the flow of information from auristic's would have been that much.” Coren took a few more deep breaths to try and steady himself before trying to get back to the task at hand. “Well, ack to the glyphing. You said that that sigil had three main components, the Focus, barrier and trigger.” He grabbed a piece of paper himself and sketched down the same basic design Hadrian had used drawn just moments before. “What do those components do exactly? And are they the only components or are there others that can be used in a sigil?” Coren asked as he tried to ignore the headache. Really happy that his mask hid his facial expressions though.

[Hadrian]

Hadrian frowned, not quite expecting that reaction, but he surmised that it had to do with his slow process of acquisition as opposed to this Coren's immediate plunge into the deep end of a master's abilities. He shrugged, and then sighed. Apparently the spell had addled the masked man's brain, or perhaps he was just not the best at logical apprehension, so Hadrian spelled things out for him. "Much as I just showed you, the Focus holds the spell. The Barrier blocks and restricts magic. The Trigger releases the Focus generally, or at least lays out the requirement to breach the Barrier, which usually releases the Focus. You can, of course, make it more complicated. There are also Paths and Switches. Paths channel the djed from one sigil or glyph to another. Switches split the flow. Those are just the tools for constructing a sigil." With his own skill at Auristics, he could sense the disruption of the natural flow of djed within Coren's skull. That generally denoted a rather painful headache. He sighed. "And there you have it, the basics of glyphing. Now to whom will you recommend me for jewelcrafting?"

[Macabre]

Thread Award

Coren
XP: Glyphing +2, Negotiation +1, Subterfuge +2, Writing +1
Lore: Auristics is a Sense, The Grand Oath, Feeling Auristics, The Components of a Glyph

Hadrian
XP: Cryptography +1, Negotiation +1, Teaching +4, Glyphing +1
Lore: N/A

Notes: Hadrian’s patience is unfathomable. If you have any questions about the grade, please PM me!