Doodles! (Solo)

[Marcus Dymez]

9th Day of Summer, 512 A.V. Eager steps hit the stone path towards the East Wing this day, as Marcus strode anxiously to his first Glyphing class. He had sworn to stick with Auristics for one more season, and so, for the sake of further knowledge, Marcus had decided to drop his favored shielding course for a random newcomer. Only after enrolling in the class and looking into the field further did Marcus find a gem lurking behind the haze of the unknown. Always one to look for way to amplify his potential, glyphing promised to be one of Marcus' most beloved fields of magic. Needless to say, he was excited. Perhaps that was why the whole atmosphere of the class seemed off. Marcus had taken his seat, expecting to be lectured on the arcane secrets of amplifying the life force that creates magic, Djed. He imagined a sagacious, elderly professor covered in white hair, drawing complex symbols, and demonstrating his ease at magic. Marcus had let a soft sigh out when the professor, a near-sighted woman with a bit of heft to her, had started off the class with a picture of a circle. An empty, round, circle. Behold the power of magic. "Hello class," she said, with a high-pitched voice reminiscent of an twelve-year-old cousin Marcus had once had the displeasure of babysitting, "My name is Professor Lanegely. And today is your first day of Novice Glyphing. Shall we begin?" To be fair, Marcus knew how slow it can be to grasp subjects, and could only imagine how difficult it is to teach such things. After all, he had already gone through this process with three arts of magic, but his expectations made this 'grounding' quite harsh. If Marcus was anything however, it was adaptable, and after getting over the initial disappointment caused by his own excitement, he threw his entire being into the class. "Now, who can tell me the three basic types of glyphs?" Marcus looked around to his peers as the professor asked her question, and noticed a severe lack of interest on their part. Half of them were either pre-occupied with their own thoughts or stuck on another subject; phased out from this version of reality. Then, there was the other half, Marcus included, who simply had no grasp on the subject, and were too hesitant to get the question wrong. After an entire minute elapsed, it became apparent that the instructor would not be moving on from this point until someone had answered, and so Marcus cleared his throat and steeled his courage. He stood, and spoke out with a tinge of hesitation in his voice. "I believe, ma'am, the three types are Focuses... Uhm, Barriers I believe, and..." Marcus froze for a moment, scouring every shadowed corner of knowledge as to not to leave it as that. Valiantly his brain sent messengers to find the missing key to the trinity, so that it may save the land it resided in. But Marcus didn't draw up squat, and resigned himself to that fact. With a more confident voice, he shrugged and stated, "I haven't the slightest clue ma'am." Sitting down amidst a few idle chuckles and snickers, the professor slowly stated the last building block, Triggers, tapping on the board with each syllable. She then went to work writing each of the three words on the board, underlining them and having the class repeat the names five times a piece. Marcus meanwhile contemplated the word 'elementary'. What drew his attention next however was an intellectual challenge, and he oh-so-delighted in such games. Underneath each of the categories written on the board was a glyph, which Marcus had assumed was simply an example meant to drill in the lecture. The glyphs were in fact scrambled: the first was a large, elaborate shape with winding curves and edges; the second was actually multiple little shapes, arranged in a neat circle; the third looking like a sentence written in ancient tongue. The professor, visibly proud of her class preparation, gave one clue to help the class solve the possible. "Think about the names," she stated, and Marcus set to work understanding this new art of runes and arrangements. He easily eliminated the barrier one, obviously pairing it with the circular arrangement, which he imagined as a fence or keep. The other two were slightly more difficult, but after pondering the meaning of the trigger, Marcus knew it would have to be put outside the barrier, which meant the concise sigil on the right was the best guess. That left the focus as the eccentric work of art, which Marcus grasped easily after some thought. He arranged the finished chart neatly in his mind, and content with his work, waited for a moment before the professor announced time was up, and confirmed his thoughts. Call it scholars pride, but Marcus loved moments like this. The next exercise would be hand's-on, and as the professor's assistant walked around passing out small sticks of chalk, Marcus suddenly loved this class a lot more.

[Marcus Dymez]

The mundane professor stood at the front, explaining the new exercise once the assistant had made his rounds. The students would be experiencing first-hand the intricacies involved with creating sigils, as well as the difficulties. It seemed simple when a master scribbled a myriad of random-seeming runes, but in reality one accidental stroke or embellishment on a single glyph could sabotage the purpose or execution of the entire sigil. Marcus however, only knew of the first half of that statement, and went into this 'game' with a playful sense of arrogance. The first demonstration would simply be the use of the focus, which is the central glyph of a sigil. Elevating things further, the professor also encouraged any practitioners of other magical arts to attempt the glyphs on themselves, and experiment with the flow of their own djed. Seeing that as yet another challenge, Marcus would soon find things not as easy as he hoped. Marcus eagerly took the shard of chalk he had been given, and set out on his assignment with bold determination. Marcus began on his palm, casually drawing a three-pointed star in the center of his hand. He neglected to add any details or curvature in his focus, and hastily went straight to testing its performance. While there was indeed a slight increase in the flow of his res, Marcus could not notice it, and disappointed with the outcome, he became disappointed in himself. He knew that effort would be required and, as with most things, proportional to the reward. He went to modify the design on his palm, when he noticed something the professor had hoped her students would realize on their own; the glyph, used up by Marcus' test, had vanished. Chuckling to himself, he slowly and precisely started drawing out a six-pointed star, his dedication overshadowing the pain of the rough chalk digging into his palm. After the outline of the star was completed, Marcus drew converging lines in the interior, and linked them together with inward-facing triangles. On the outer edges, Marcus embellished the points of the star, intricately improving his design until he had grown content with the result. Marcus had spent half of the professor's alloted time for this experiment, and grinned to himself as he extended his hand in front of him, slightly upward, and concentrated. Suffice to say, Marcus was not prepared for such a boost. The amount of res released through Marcus' palm was enough to cause the wizard to become slightly light-headed for a brief moment, as the djed in his body was not used to such quick extrusions. Marcus grinned wildly at the resulting cloud that he had swirling around him. Wary of wasting so much of his own djed, he attempted a trick his reimancy professor had taught him; bringing down the res to his body, he lightly sifted it through his rugged robe, and condensed it against his skin, the ethereal gel sending shivers down his spine as he slowly let the djed return to him. It would take a few moments, but the experiment was a thrilling success. The next step for Marcus would be to not only become more proficient at drawing these glyphs quickly, but perhaps more importantly, learning how to combine them all together into a coherent sigil. Luckily for him, there was one more surprise to be had in this lecture, as the quaint and overall dull professor withdrew from her satchel a small scroll, unrolling it atop her desk. Copying it to the board in the quickest calligraphy Marcus had ever seen, she revealed a complex sigil of unknown purpose, and smiled into the crowd of curious faces. "Alright class, let us begin the final exercise of the day." This time, Marcus' excitement was matched only by his determination.

[Marcus Dymez]

The silence in the room was palpable as the professor stood at the front of the classroom, the cryptic glyph at the front holding the attention of even the most distracted students. As she began to explain the final introductory exercise, Marcus gave his full attention to this mundane-seeming professor of magic. "Our final lesson of the day concerns the creation of a full sigil. Once you are comfortable with the basic functions of single glyphs, these sigils will become the main focus of your work as glyphers. Now, for your task. Up here is a sigil I have created using only the concepts you have learned today. Understanding the purpose of other glyphs and sigils is a crucial skill for glyphing, and so, using only your eyes, I want you to create your own sigil that replicates the functionality of my own, as closely as possible. You have the remainder of class, now, Begin." Marcus stared out at the blackboard, dumbfounded at the assignment given to him. But this clueless sense of stasis lasted but for a moment, as Marcus regained his momentum, and headed into this challenge with zeal and dedication. Let come what may. Marcus spent a few minutes mapping out the various sections of the diagram before him, examining precisely what it is he needs to design before he even began to contemplate it. A barrier was obvious, surrounding not one, but a duo of focuses. Marcus thought on the purpose of a dual-focus arrangement, extrapolating his limited knowledge to grander scales. Higher-capacity for storage perhaps? A stronger surge of power? Marcus had no definitive answer to this design curiosity, but he decided that whatever the professor had in mind could easily be scaled down to involve a single focus. That being settled, Marcus moved onto the next problem, which would be so easily simplified. Outside of the interior barrier was, what Marcus assumed, a trigger, surrounded by another barrier, this one thinner, with 9 small slits around the perimeter of the circular glyph. This complicated things, as now Marcus had no clue about what the trigger's actual function was. He searched desperately for a pointer; anything to tell him what needed to be done. He looked to the trigger itself for his answer, hoping his limited knowledge of Ancient Tongue would come to prove useful. That plan did not start off well, but as Marcus mentally ran through his list of vocabulary, he found his answer. Knowing little to no grammar, Marcus had studied the Ancient Tongue more as a formality than anything else, but some of the words still rattled around in his mind. One of these was the word Ruwe, which roughly meant below or under. The rest of the trigger was gibberish without some serious study, but Marcus had gotten what he needed. The entire design finally made sense to him, as he began sketching out his own glyph on the desk. The chalk etched swiftly as Marcus drew a flowing focus, surrounded by a thin barrier of vague hieroglyphs pointing inward, signifying the direction of the shielding. Outside of this, Marcus wrote the word, Ruwe, as well as a line with a broken slash through it, hoping to code in the breaking of the barrier. As for the outer barrier, Marcus had reasoned out that this was to act as directing lines, restricting the released magic in specific points. Likewise, the young student mimicked this design, hoping his etches were sufficient enough to contain whatever magic would be used as a test. Marcus sat in silence for one minute, then two, and three, as time ticked on as if it had become stuck in tar. When the professor announced the end of the lesson completely, Marcus was confused, and slightly furious. Where was the grand finale, the show of effort? Not one to become angry often, his slighted rage beget curiosity from his mind, which was soon to be satiated as the professor gave her last words of the class. "Your final lesson of the day was one you must always keep in mind. Glyphing is a very personal art of magic, despite the physical form it takes, and it is your own being that will decide how your sigils are formed, and your glyphs drafted. I want you all to erase the sigils you have created, and go on from this class with a new understanding. Your coursework is in the syllabus, due next week. I wish you the best of luck, and Welcome to Glyphing." Marcus, a tinge of sorrow in his mind, contemplating sweeping away his hard-earned work, and stood at his desk. He was conflicted, his head filled with both a serene sense of clarity, and an agitated feeling of disappointment. He decided to do things the right way. Speaking the word inscribed in the ancient language, Marcus watched as the glyph released nothing but air, the chalk disappearing in a subtle puff of white smoke. Smirking, the newly-skilled scholar gathered his thoughts, and made his way out of the classroom. Things would be quite different now... Marcus looked forward to every moment of it.

[Cascade]

Adventurer's Loot Marcus's Loot : Marcus Skill XP Reward Glyphing +3 Drawing +1 Lore: Zeltiva University: East Wing Professor Lanegly Glyphing: Focuses, Barriers, Triggers Glyphing: A Personal Art Of Magic A well done thread. I appreciate the detail that you put into it... please continue doing that. Also, may I suggest diving your paragraphs into smaller ones? Some people find it difficult to read large blocks of text, and diving your paragraphs further might help. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to PM me!