Completed The Heart of a Glyph

[Tsaba]

25th Summer, 513 Tsaba sat at her carefully organised little desk and spread seven sheets of parchment across the available workspace. Six of them each contained a tracing, as accurate as she'd been able to make, of a focus glyph from a different book. The seventh was drawn in the hand of her teacher, Dr Marin. They were all the same glyph. None of them were exactly alike, in the same way that a sentence written in her own hand wouldn't look like a sentence written in Dr Marin's hand, despite having the same letters. What Tsaba wanted to do was separate the 'handwriting' from the 'letter' -- what was important for the glyph, and what was personal style? Her relative lack of experience with Glyphing made it all but impossible to tell. Tsaba dipped her quill and took it to a fresh sheet of parchment, carefully tracing out the lines that every glyph in front of her seemed to have in common. There weren't many. It was only a few chimes before she was frowning at the vague mess before her; whatever it was, it wasn't a glyph. But then, could she expect it to be? Different people could draw the same letter so differently that they shared perhaps a single stroke, and they'd still be recognised as the same letter. But copying down that single stroke wouldn't give you the letter; it was the peripherals that defined it, peripherals that could be placed differently by different people. Tsaba dipped her quill again and held it poised over the paper; over the bare, unrecogniseable bones of what she hoped to make a glyph. She had no idea where to go next.

[Tsaba]

Of all the glyphs before her, there was one that she'd had a lot of practice copying as accurately as possible; Dr Marin's. But it was always difficult to know how to space things, where to place the different components so that they wouldn't run into each other and so that she wouldn't miss anything. Let us assume, Tsaba reasoned to herself, that the lines that have been conserved over all example Glyphs are, while not sufficient, the most vital to the function of the Glyph. Let us take these lines to be the 'skeleton' of the Glyph. Decisively, Tsaba used the 'skeleton' in front of her to replicate Dr Marin's Focus rune. Then she compared her work with the original. Still not quite the same; she didn't have the grounding to know how to judge her own work and had no idea whether the mistakes she'd made prevented the rune from being functional, but it looked about on par with the others she'd drawn in the past. It had, however, been easier to draw evenly. In one corner of the parchment, she carefully drew out the 'skeleton' again, taking extra care to make sure she had all the strokes. Then she copied it. She kept copying it, until she'd filled every bit of available space with the set of 'core' strokes, using her other practice 'skeletons' as a guide. She didn't care how long it took. She would learn to do it without needing a guide at all.

[Tsaba]

Once Tsaba had filled the parchment with bold, intersecting strokes, she turned it over and kept going. Concentrating just on the 'skeleton', it wasn't hard to fit a good six or seven across the page even in the large, clumsy hand of an amateur. As she worked, her strokes became more even and more decisive, although she still checked a reference to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything. This is how you draw an 'a', little ones. She'd been taught a specific stroke order when learning to write, which of course had long since become second nature. Every letter was easiest to write correctly a set way, to ensure proper spacing. Were runes the same way? Was using this skeleton method actually going to be a step backwards, in the long run? Dr Marin hadn't taught them a specific stroke order; did that mean that it wasn't important? Just copy this letter until it becomes second nature. Don't worry about being exact, your own style will develop naturally. What had Dr Marin said? "The overall shape means very little. Glyphs drawn by other wizards are going to look very different from one another... 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." But there had to be some sort of... of standard, like there was a standard letter 'a' in every type of script. Keep going, kids. This might be unreadable, but if you keep working at it, you'll get better. A doctor needs to be able to keep notes. Tsaba bit her lip and kept working. If nobody was going to teach her a 'standard', she'd construct her own. But one way or another, she was going to learn.

[Tsaba]

Immortality came with a lot of drawbacks, but it also had some excellent perks. And Tsaba's favourite was the lack of need for food or sleep. She could work uninterrupted until her flesh began to wear away, if she so chose, although it would be a stupid thing to do. Of course, it meant that it was incredibly easy to lose track of time, but what of it? She had no important engagements for days. She was pretty sure she'd know if she'd worked long enough to hit a deadline, if only because she'd be running low on parchment. When she ran out of room on her parchment, she grabbed a fresh piece. This time, she copied the whole of Dr Marin's example glyph, starting with the 'skeleton' she'd derived and adding from there. She could fit perhaps thirty-five practice glyphs on a page, five across and seven down; it took about ten Chimes for her to sketch each one. It was... she glanced out the window... a little before midday, judging by the shadows. So, about six Bells' work to a page. Tsaba put quill to paper. She had work to do.

[Tsaba]

Practice glyph after practice glyph was laid out on the parchment. As she worked, the sketch became easier. She started paying less attention, which was a mistake; Tsaba refocused when she noticed that the glyph taking shape under her hand wasn't a Focus at all. It was a rune from her body transfer ritual. She hurriedly blotted it out with ink, then paused. The transfer runes were instinctive, which might be why she'd lapsed into them automatically. She'd never had to learn them. But different Nuit drew them differently. Different 'handwriting'. But the dramatic differences were instinctive, not a result of different learning conditions or something that evolved over time. Were the differences in Glyphing between wizards like that, or more like the differences that arose in the normal written word? She pulled out her Glyphing notes long enough to add Investigate differences in body transfer runes before turning back to her practice. There had to be at least one book on the subject tucked away in the library... didn't there? Zeltiva wasn't exactly Nuit-heavy, and even if such a book existed, it could be rather difficult to find. Sometimes, Tsaba really missed the Sahovan library. Nevertheless, it wouldn't hurt to look. Back to practice. Tsaba carefully filled the page, then glanced out the window. Still light; she could afford to fill in the other side. Tsaba was a scribe. A scribe with magic. What sort of magic scribe would give up on Glyphing?

[Eldritch]

Tsaba :

Skills
Drawing +3
Glyphing +3
Observation +1

Lores
-Repetition is the key to success in glyphing
-Tracing the skeleton of a focus glyph
-Looking for a Glyphing standard

Notes :

Nothing to note.

If you have any comments/questions/concerns about your grade please PM me and we will work something out.

Keep on writing!