Solo [Sultros Blades] Inner Space

[Eanos]

15 Fall, 512 AV, Sultros Blades Outside the Citadel the sky seemed as black as it was within, a sable envelopment that had long driven most of the inhabitants of the city indoors. The darkness was not threatening, nor was it the result of a hostile attack, instead it was the mere ending of a day and most of the cities inhabitants now were indoors where various forms of lamp or torch returned a memory of the days light. Within the fortress itself the shop of the smith, Eanos now lay quiet and the forge fire was banked. He had come to learn that few appreciated the sound of a forge in operation when others were trying to sleep and while his shop was surrounded by the solid walls, still in the evening quiet sound echoed further than it did in the bustle of the day. He sat in the back of the shop where the dim red glow of the coals were more than enough for his dark adapted vision to see by and sketched slowly on a sheet of parchment that had been scraped thin by dint of long use. His mind was largely absent from the design that he worked on, a commission for a customer, and though that might seem remiss of him, the work was simple and his aim was to find an intuitive design for the decoration and that meant the disconnect of conscious mind from hand was an interesting experiment. While his hand wandered freely, the remainder of his attention was centred on his continuing quest for mastery of the elusive skill of magecrafting. In the recent past he had concentrated on simple metalworking so that he was now at the point where a simple delve into the metal of a blade with his auristic skills no longer generated a headache. He considered it now perhaps the time to resume his studies and to attempt a more balanced approach with the majority of the time spent on world magic which did not carry the same penalty on his personal stock of djed. His time had not been entirely wasted, for above him, a box on the shelves contained the two books on magecraft he’d bought and which were now well read. Added to this were various conversations and teachings which he’d had with his sometime master in the craft here, the resident magecrafter, though that relationship currently was somewhat difficult because of the strains that had resulted from the Masters protection of the Citadel. The whole, including his initiation into the craft in the Silver Tower had now led him to realise that his previous attempts had been somewhat flawed and doomed to failure. In the course of time he needed to expand his studies beyond what he knew and into other forms of djed working, for he was now convinced of the view that all were merely aspects of one larger craft. Even an Isur though could not do everything at once and so he attempted to do one step at a time.

[Eanos]

Perhaps the most telling of all the realisations that his contemplations had revealed was that he had attempted to short cut the proper path. It wasn’t a surprise of course, but that it has been doomed to failure wasn’t something that he’d allowed himself to accept. He was a skilled enough smith to know that a master could review a process or try something new and thus find a quicker or better method, but the chances of a novice managing that were so slim as to be negligible. So it was back to basics and a contemplation as to the nature of magecraft and how it could best be utilised by someone of his skills. Of course he might be expected to know that, and buried somewhere in his memories of the Silver Tower were doubtless clues which might in time make sense, but not even to Isur of the Pitrus clan were the secrets of mastery revealed when they were admitted to entry. His mind sought patterns, to see if he could identify overlaps from other systems of manipulation and here he was closer to a scholar and free from the restrictions of a school where competing disciplines discouraged explorations of commonalities. He knew nothing of voiding but it seemed to him that it had a tie in with glyphing in its use of focus points and the ability to store items. It seemed that he had set up his previous magecrafting ritual along somewhat similar lines, though it had been inevitable given his focus on the glyph. In magecrafting there was a pedastal of some sort which acted as the focus point of the work. The difference it seemed to him was that instead of distorting reality such that a breach was caused, instead reality itself was permanently warped. Glyphing was relatively quick, easy and was short lived. Magecrafting was exactly the opposite which sort of hinted that reality was more easily ripped than it was bent, but that it also repaired the tears. However, the point was the pedastal and he saw no reason to change this from his previous use of an anvil. What he had yet to explore was the relationship between smithing and magecrafting. The example he had seen here with Adrian had been a delicate affair of manipulating the djed on a finished item. He doubted however that this was necessary and that instead the process of working the piece could and perhaps should be incorporated into the magecrafting. It went without saying that there were some potential issues with this given that a magecrafting step could make the piece unworkable, but on the whole with some care it could be an interesting combination. It was this combination that he suspected was what set apart the Isur from the other Masters of the craft and made Isur work all the more desirable and relatively unobtainable too. In time, he could see the use of a specialist anvil, but he couldn’t as yet quite figure out the best way to make such a thing. He mentally added it to the list of the more advanced tools to be made.

[Eanos]

His brow creased in thought Eanos eased forwards and ran the fingers of his left hand across the banked coals of the forge, smoothing and gently shuffling the coals which now glowed more dimly. The glow reflected lightly in the gnosis marks of that arm, but he paid it no attention for it was as familiar to him as well, anyone else's arm would be to themselves. He dug his finger in and took out a coal that still glowed red and toyed with it as he thought further, the heat more discernible with the fingers of his right hand and took stock of the space around him, looking with new eyes at the potential for warding the space for the work to be done. He could of course simply use space in the Magecrafters suite where protection was always available, but aside from the relative inconvenience of working elsewhere for days on end while his shop stood empty, there was an element of pride involved. There would be times when he needed help, but if he never stood on his own two feet and learnt the basics, if he never made a mistake and paid the painful price of it, then he would never really learn. An apprentice in his opinion, who could not undertake the basic skills without supervision was one who was a long way from ever being a Master of the trade, and he intended to achieve that rank sooner rather than later for all that it was in any case a long way in the future. This process of reviewing each stage seemed to him to be key to his eventual progress. The coal had cooled down and he tossed it back into the forge, idly wiping the film of white ash between his fingers. So far he had spent time on the preparation phase, constructing the glyphs one by one, activating them in turn, but it was the nature of glyphs that they degraded over time. Charcoal or chalk turned to dust and needed to be redrawn. Even steel would rust and distort. He had a feeling that he needed to find a way to overcome these limits so that he could achieve a more permanent level of glyphs. He ran through the runes he used in his head and decided that he had used two broad types; to restrict magic and to channel it. One was for safety to block outside distortions and to protect others from his own mistakes, the other to ensure that the magecrafting was targeted where it should have been. He paused in his thoughts and his brow furrowed. Was he reversing the problem? Runes failed when their power was exhausted, so even changing to steel, as had been in his mind would only reduce the time to redraw, and likely would not even do that as he’d still have to spend the time in recharging. Perhaps though he hadn’t been wrong after all. Why could not the runes last forever? The issue was the supply of power and ensuring that the rune itself did not degrade. He felt he was getting closer to the idea which had been playing in the back of his mind. Magecraft used glyphs in the process of creating, but he could see no reason why Magecraft couldn’t be the power source for them and the degradation could be overcome too. It was something to think about more and he retired to continue mulling the idea until he fell asleep.

[Eanos]

When he woke the problem was not solved in his mind but the sleep had given him a new perspective on it. All of his questions ran in circles. Every line of thought regarding how one skill could be deployed immediately became entangled in the need to employ other skills. His dreaming self it seemed had come to the conclusion that he picked at the threads of a large tapestry and he stood too close to see the pattern. The knot he sought to weave would not be made on the first try, not even on the second, the third or the hundredth try. No, it was not that simple and was not going to be resolved that simply. The problem was complicated and worthy of a Masters attention and knowledge. He could ask and be guided, and indeed that would be necessary, yet first he wanted his own plan and not the plan that his Master deemed suitable, assuming of course that he even managed to gain his attention for long enough to actually request one. The Isurian smith smiled to himself at the thought for the real issue was the he was unable to properly frame the question that needed to be asked. The solution which had been eluding him was to reframe the question at a much simpler level. The knot he sought to master was too complex and required resources to tie which he did not yet possess. It did not however stop him from tying a simpler knot and with the simpler knot create a simpler pattern. It would from a Masters point of view be slipshod but then he wasn’t a Master and his work would of essence be slipshod compared to that of a Master. The flaw was perfectionism, a trait about which he’d been warned in his training though in itself it was a better to err on that side than that of recklessness when dealing with powerful energies. He realised that once again his thoughts had circled and grimaced. Give him hot iron and an anvil and he was happy. He could create anything that his mind could imagine, well almost, but this was hard, so much harder, to beat out ideas in his mind instead of with a hammer. So then. It was time to focus his thoughts, forget the larger picture and accept that whatever he made initially was going to be limited, likely flawed and would once he understood the craft of Magecraft better need to be remade. But at least he would have started even if the foundations were rocky. So what were his abilities and resources? He had a workshop here where he could craft metal and the skill to do so. He had access to the Magecrafter and his laboratory, so tuition and the resources to learn, thouh this was not without limit. He could read auras to see how things were inside and how the djed flowed. He could create glyphs to restrict and change the flow of djed. So far he had relied upon this as the basis of much of his magecrafting, and yet he still faced limits here, some of them down to his own abilities ands some to the nature of glyphs. Glyphing was world magic and so immense in scope yet it had it’s own restrictions. So much for what he knew now. The first step then was to move beyond. It was time to see the Magecrafter and borrow his library, time to move back to personal magic and to incorporate Shielding into his abilities.

[Eanos]

There could be few who had never heard of Shielding, yet few understood how it worked in detail. It had been Eanos’s experience in the Silver Tower in Sultros that it was yet another form of working for which there were few rules and that each mage needed to find his own way. He sat now in the Magecrafters own library, his nose twitching slightly from the dust that his arrival had shifted into the air combined with a slightly musty acrid smell of leather and parchment which had at some time become damp. On the desk in front of him was a tome which had been drawn from the shelves by the Magecrafters own hand along with an admonition not to attempt to remove anything else from the shelves. From another such a warning might have been one he’d be tempted to ignore, but he valued his skin too much to risk the ire or magic of such a man. The mage had been amused that it had taken this long for Eanos to come to him for this and there had been little justification that the Smith could offer, even had he been willing to acknowledge that the lack was in his own arrogance and pride. His fingers ran over the cover of the book tracing the embossed patterns idly but his mind was elsewhere. He’d ignored shielding in the pursuit of Glyphing and it had been a decision which made sense at the time. His primary focus of personal magic had been and was Auristics for it tied in so closely with his smithing and his studies of Magecraft. What little personal djed he had access to had been used for Auristics to the extent that he’d pushed well into overgiving and been forced to back off. Now he felt better and the after effects had faded, but still, he could easily use his available personal djed for Auristics. Glyphing had offered the ability to shield against djed and was world magic so used none of his own abilities. He had however he know properly appreciated that there were compromises in that approach for Glyphing worked by interacting with djed and if there were no djed then the glyphs, at least from the point of view of storing things in focus points remained inactive. There were ways around that of course, but the glyphs were temporary and whilst he had in mind the ability to overcome that with Magecraft, success in such a thing was a long way off yet. Shields offered a better solution to some of what he used glyphs for and his recent discussion with the Magecrafter had reminded him that although the shields required some maintenance, it was very little and indeed could do so themselves by absorbing djed from the workings. How had he allowed such a blind spot to develop? Why had he been so focused on Auras to the point of overgiving? He knew the answer of course for it was his own pride and ambition. What absorbed his mind now was in wondering what else he had missed. What else was obvious and necessary yet he was ignoring it in his blind rush to be the best and the first? This would set him back at first, spread his skills out even more thinly than they were already, yet it needed to be done and it was pointless to rail against necessity.

[Eanos]

He opened the book carefully and started to read, his nose assaulted once more by the smell of ancient ink. He read slowly and carefully, a fresh sheet of parchment by his side on which he made notes. Not all of the notes were copies of what he read, some were of things that the Magecrafter had said and others were reflections of his own or questions for which he had as yet no answers. Much of what he read he skimmed through for there were basics that any mage would know, especially one who had been schooled in the Silver Tower, but he did not skim too much for the revision was always useful and he was not willing after wasting so much time already to miss something that might be important but buried in with the trivia and basics. The book reinforced what he had suspected, which was that Shields existed in certain forms but that how they were made was very much a matter for the individual mage. It made him feel like a child for it seemed clear to him that they were dabbling, even the most experienced of mages. Somewhere there was the real magic, and shielding was a fragment of it. That much seemed clear to him. Shields were a recognised effect, the end product, but the fact that the method of making them could be very different indicated that the same process could produce very different end products, ones which he couldn’t even imagine. He moved on, for the thought whilst interesting was not new and not especially relevant to his studies. He already knew how he worked with his own personal djed so likely enough it would be simplest to use the same technique in this study too. He was making assumptions though so he returned to his reading to see if there were further insights in understanding how other mages had worked. His notes tried to break down the ways that shields could be created, knowing that this was still very much conceptual and that he would learn much by studying real shields. He had however already read that he would only be able to see shields of a level equal or lower to his own level of skill, which meant that as he sat here he could see no shields at all, so that was an interesting fact for the future but not at all relevant to the here and now. Experience and ability of course drove how large and how complex a shield could be. That would be true of any skill. Some wove their shields as though they were cloth, others layered them like paint, each seeking to create a shield that had a physical presence, one with a certain size, shape and it’s own physical location. He tried to visualise the process in his own mind, wondering which would suit him better, or if indeed there was another way, something more suited to him, something perhaps more in keeping with how he crafted metal? His thoughts quickened with interest and he scratched notes quickly on the parchment. Metalworking was normally done in sheets rather than by weaving, yet sheets could be alloyed or layered. The layers could be bent and twisted. Somewhere lurking in the back of his mind was a wish, a way in which magic and metal could be combined. It seemed that for most a weapon was made and then processed with magic, but he wanted to combine the two in the creation. His notes stilled and he frowned as the thought evaporated before he could pin down the detail, but he was not put off, now he was a step closer even if the end was still out of sight and unimaginable.

[Eanos]

He returned to his reading and added a note that shields were not just driven by the ability of the mage but also by the intent and effort involved. It was a conundrum familiar to the smith for there were always choices in the making of anything that came across his anvil. Decisions and judgements had to be made and were a balance between the intended use of the item with the cost and the standards that the smith was willing to apply. In this case, a shield created to protect a magecrafting session would require greater care than one thrown up to prevent someone walking through a door whist the smith was busy with something. A smile formed on his face as his reading now reached a paragraph where the author compared the weaving of a shield to the finest of chain mail. It seemed to him that the author did not understand the process of making chain, yet he was forced to reassess the thought. Arrogance was a dangerous thing and he had almost allowed himself to make a mistake. What was faulty was his own understanding of how the shields could be created. It gave a new insight into his thoughts about how he would create a shield. In his earlier thoughts he had envisioned a weave which involved long individual threads but there was no reason that shorter ones could not be used instead. Chainmail was different to normal weaving because there could be multiple interlinks between the rings. Shields could be created with multiple purposes, tasks, he reminded himself. Perhaps tasks could be assigned to individual rings, or multiple rings reinforce the task. It seemed to Eanos that this was a potential key to his thoughts on how metal and magic could be combined. Perhaps he needed to start with chain and experiment from there. His pen scratched furiously for a while while he tried to get all of the thoughts from his mind onto paper. He finished his note and moved onward with his study. He’d known already that he could only perceive shields of his own level and lower but he’d not appreciated that in fact the shields were by nature invisible. Now that the idea had been opened it was of course perfectly logical for djed was itself invisible. He amended his thoughts and notes for of course djed was invisible to the senses, but not to a mage and he would be able to perceive the aura of a shield, he just wouldn’t be able to see the structure very well or at all of one made by a mage of greater skill than himself. He paused and reviewed his notes so far, ignoring the side notes he’d made regarding his own thoughts about the interaction between shielding and what he already knew. So far it all seemed consistent and he could imagine how he might start. Some details were however not yet clear to him, in particular how a particular task was associated with or built into the shield. He could see however that he was not yet done with how shields were made so for the time he continued reading to see if what he sought might yet become clear or as seemed likely there was much that he did not yet know.

[Eanos]

His pen scratched to a stop once more, unnoticed to his mind which had been taken up with the idea that shields were unique to the caster and also were to an extent alive themselves for they were built with the djed of the maker. Left to it’s own devices that djed would deteriorate slowly but if the maker or another mage maintained them then they could survive and adapt. The thought which had stilled his pen was a wondering as to whether magecraft could resolve that problem? Was it possible to power the shield in some way that was independent of the mage? His pen tapped the paper impatiently, perhaps, but he suspected that it was somehow easier to create the shield with magecraft, but it was at the moment beyond his understanding as to how it might be achieved. He turned the pages in the tome and focused on the tasks, his objective before his mind had become distracted. He had in part turned to Shieldcarft as a field of study because he had become unsure about how magecraft and indeed glyphing related to the everyday world. Just how was it that a focus point worked? His understanding was that in theory only djed and items infused with djed could enter the focus. But he was sure that his understanding was not complete and even if his pride would allow him to simply ask, he could already predict the scorn that would be directed towards a student, especially one hailing from the Silver Tower who did not bother to engage in his own studies and would not be able to argue the issue roundly. He would have admitted that in large part his personal pride was less at stake than that of the Isur and their Silver Tower and he would not tolerate the suggestion that that the Isurian training facility produced poor students. His initial reading confirmed what he expected, which was that shields worked by blocking and absorbing djed, though it seemed to him that absorbing would always be preferable where it was practical to do so, though he wondered what would happen when a shield absorbed too much. The speculation opened his mind to the idea that perhaps blocking might be the better default. However, it was soon clear that more than this was possible, which concurred with his previous understanding, though he was not really yet clear on the mechanism. He mused, his lips forming a pout as he felt a degree of dislike towards the vagueness of djed working. A smith was always in control of metal, at least when he could see the aura of it. Every piece of metal was a unique alloy, even the most ‘pure’ of metals was that way. Every piece reacted differently to heat and working, yet always in a way that was understood and could to a degree be predicted. Failures in smithing were nearly always the result of an inability to see things happen in time to correct the course of action. Yet with djed working it seemed that far too much was not understood and instead every mage had to grope along blindly until they chanced upon something that worked and could be repeated. Yet even then they could only really demonstrate the end result which might allow others to reproduce via a different path.

[Eanos]

Irritation flooded the magesmith and he laid down his pen to stretch his fingers. It seemed that shields could be tasked to block senses, though he could imagine no immediately practical reasons for him using a shield in such a way. It could though perhaps be useful as a part of a weapon. An invisible sword for example would be very useful indeed, though it could be quite difficult for the owner to use as well. It probably wouldn’t be the sort of weapon which would go down well with the Knights either and given that they owned his forge, it might well be quite counter productive to even think of selling such a thing. Still there might be uses for such things and invisible armour would be less controversial, especially if sold only to respectable people. He continued his reading and then barked a laughter as it appeared that the author was quite well aware of what people might have been thinking. It turned out that it would not be invisible at all, it would instead be like a shadow, visible as in blocking the light but not invisible. Armour though would still be a viable option perhaps, but no better than such worn under clothes. He discarded the idea for now, but kept his notes as perhaps there would be a use which later came to mind. Certainly a block on sound for privacy would have a market, but not so much in metalwork. His pen paused. Or perhaps not, for it would do much to reduce the ire of his neighbours who were disturbed if he worked late into the night. Pleased to finally have a practical use for the magic, he continued his studies. The tome started to become more technical than his abilities allowed him to understand so he started to skim that section, attempting to understand the gist of what it contained even if he was unable to follow all of the technical discussion. The impression he got from the remainder of the discussion on tasking is that it was indeed possible to construct shields that could block things other than djed but it required much more complex construction. As such it wasn’t news to him as he’d experienced such shields, so whilst the confirmation was useful it didn’t leave him much further on in his quest for knowledge. It seemed likely that he would not make much further progress until he had enough experience with the creation of shields to be able to grasp what the book had been discussing. He shut the heavy tome and set it aside, reading once more through his notes. There were some advanced elements to the magic which it seemed would be useful, but also clearly it was going to be a long path to get there. The early levels of shielding as with any apprenticeship would not produce work that was of any particular worth to anyone, but that did not concern him. Such works were always childish in conception and execution, but all things had a cycle of which the start was a necessary part. He couldn't imagine what his early work would be useful for, and it would make it even harder to use his auristic skills, but equally he was sure that he could find a use and in the longer run this was going to be useful when he became a fully fledged magecrafter, and that alone made all the effort worthwhile.

[Perplexity]

Riddled With Rewards Eanos Experience Skill XP Earned Drawing + 1 EXP Magecrafting + 3 EXP Glyphing +2 EXP Shielding +2 EXP Logic +3 EXP Organization +1 EXP Planning +2 EXP Lores • Lore Earned • Searching For Inspiration • Magecraft Theory: Bending or Tearing Reality • Magecraft Theory: Permanent Glyphs • Glyphing Theory: The Decay Rate of Glyphs • On the Disciplines of Magic: Threads of a Tapestry • Shielding Principle: The Weaving of Djed • Shielding Principle: Absorbing Djed • Shielding Principle: Blocking Djed Notes : A lot of people forget that there’s more to being skilled in magic that just being able to throw fireballs in a combat situation. Research and theory is an important part as well. Thank you for an interesting perspective on learning magic. If you’ve any questions regarding your grade send me a PM.