Solo [The Sanctuary] Another Disciplined Learned

[Kavala]

Timestamping: Mid Fall, 513 AV

To put it mildly, Kavala was dying of boredom. Her facility was a busy place, but in the last season of her pregnancy, no one was letting her do anything. Caelum, of all people, was quietly driving her crazy as well. She cared deeply for the Eth, but every time she turned around he seemed to be there anticipating her needs and intercepting her physical activities with a gentle word and a suggestion of rest.

Frankly, she was tired of resting. And it just wasn’t Caelum. It was Aweston, Cadra, Larik, and even Vanator who was a bit more allowing than most having known her the longest. He was a master at producing emergencies that allowed her to sit on a stool while they were handled. And at first she’d bought right into them, but after the tenth type of medicine was ‘out’ she realized that the man was just stockpiling drugs somewhere and fabricating the half truths to get his sister off her feet. And that went for the endless inventory they had her preform, saying it needed to be done.

The second time he’d asked her to count all the bolts in the armory for the crossbows, Kavala had put her foot down, just gave him a look and had promptly left – to mad to speak. She’d wandered the facility a while, looking for something to do and had stumbled upon the library. Surely no one would begrudge her reading, right? The Konti had amassed a number of books on her travels, though some of them she hadn’t had time to read. Other’s she knew about because she’d copied in her own hand, but hadn’t the time or patience to practice what was in them. It was towards these books the Konti gravitated. They were, after all, storehouses of forbidden language and knowledge… namely magic. Forbidden for some, of course, but practiced by a great many people who are less than candid that they knew their uses.

Kavala thumbed through the books she had, smiling at some of the titles, and frowning at others.

• The Art of Cooking (purchased here)
• Basic Baking (purchased here)
• Main Courses & Appetizers (purchased here)
• The Love Of Gardening (copied after borrowed here)
• Introduction To Philtering (copied after borrowed here)
• The Poisons of Mizahar (copied after borrowed here)
• Herbalism (copied after borrowed here)
• An Old Man’s Journey in the World of Glyphing
  (can train to competent) (Earned here)
• The Art of Bola (copied after borrowed here)
• Blowguns & Darts - Techniques and Usages (copied after borrowed here)
• Introduction To Auristics (copied after borrowed here)
• Basic Medicine (copied after borrowed here)
• Shielding - Beginning and Advanced Techniques (copied after borrowed here)
• Glyphing - The Art of Magical Storage (copied after borrowed here)
• The Gods - Who and What They Are(copied after borrowed here)
• The Art of Morphing - Djed Shaping Change (copied after borrowed here)
• The Art of Beekeeping (Purchased here)
• Soapmaking For All Situations (Purchased here)
  Beginning Candlemaking (Purchased here)
• Food Preservation (Purchased here)
• Beauty Aides – The Science of Lotions, Shampoos, and Cosmetics (Purchased here)
• Perfume – The Art and Design Of Scent (Purchased here)
• Waste Disposal – How To Deal With Feces Practically (Purchased here)
• Saving And Storing Seed For Gardens (Purchased here)
• Growing Edible Foods (Purchased here)

Kavala ran her hands up and down the spines. There were so many possibilities. Her library wasn’t remotely the size of the one in the city, but she was starting to get proud of it anyhow. The collection was a great start for both an arcane library and a practical one. The waste disposal book in particular had been essential to designing the within and making sure that everyone had good sanitation.

But because it was fall and almost all the gardening was done for the season, Kavala knew there wasn’t a great deal left to be done in The Sanctuary’s gardens. So a book like saving seeds and one for growing edible foods would just make her long for spring. No… what she needed was a book on magic. Her eyes instantly traveled to the Morphing book. She ran a thumb down its spine, pulled it from the shelf, and got a blank book, pen, ink, and a blotter from the stores. She then walked into the Commons, took a seat, and got comfortable at the big table there. She paused, got back up, and went to get a basket of dried seaweed and a glass of water as well. Then, she resettled again, and began reading the book, starting on the first page.


Morphing, it seemed, was nothing more than the ability to take djed and use it to transform ones body into another form. The author seemed to suggest this was easy to do and that the stuff all things were made of, the energy, was fluid and transformative. The book was a bit technical and dry for Kavala’s taste, but she waded into the first chapter, read what she could from it, and then opened her own blank book. Dipping a quill into the ink, she tapped her chin with the feather and then began to write.

Living things are made of energy. The elders knew this and thus perfected magics long before other technologies came into being. Long before we had such things as watchtowers and complex shields from shielding, we had the ability to understand that all things are at their basic primitive level made up of the same thing: djed. And that energy, that power which mages learned to harness early, is transformative. Nothing says this more than the discipline of Morphing. Morphing allows those who know its secret to manipulate their physical makeups, taking on facades of their choosing. Though this sounds easy, the practice of Morphing is not. It takes discipline, determination, and repeated practice to perfect. Morphing is not only the ability to shape one’s own matter into other forms, but it is also the study of other living things and how they work. One cannot ‘morph’ unless one knows intimately the subject one is trying to assume. For this reason, healers who are intimately familiar with anatomy in their work make excellent morphers.

Kavala paused, looking thoughtful. She tapped the feathery part of her quill on her chin and looked to the original book she was reading. It’s wording was so different than what she was trying to do. And at that thought, the Konti paused and wondered just exactly what it was she was trying to accomplish. The Healing College was on the tip of her mind and she knew that beyond classes in healing, she wanted to supplement the school with a few magical offerings as well. They would be advanced classes only for the student healers themselves, not to be taught to outsiders. They would be for people who earned their place in the ranks and came to be trustworthy enough to take as apprentices.

Among these magics Kavala thought Shielding, Auristics, and Morphing would be suitable. Perhaps others, like Flux or projection, would also be included, but that depended on the Instructors of the College knowing the disciplines well enough to teach them. Kavala did not, and though Flux and Projection had their places, she didn’t think they were things she wanted to learn. Maybe Riaris one day would be interested, and perhaps Caelum as well, though she was sure the Eth already had at least one of those in his mental know-how toolbox.

But for her Morphing was insight into her patients and a natural progression for what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. It would also help her understand kelvics better – what they saw, what they sensed, how they behaved. So all around, Kavala mastering Morphing was important. And reading this book was just a first step, one she could do while she was pregnant and not have anyone come take the books out of her hand and tell her to rest.

And that made the Konti smile.

[Kavala]

So how difficult was it to learn? Kavala flipped through her book to find out. The problem was, it seemed that there was no surefire way to learn the discipline. Unlike Reimancy here there was a definite beginning in the form of an initiation where one’s body was taught to produce res, in Morphing it just seemed to happen. AS she thought about it, Kavala began to take more notes for her own book, one that hopefully would teach her children if for some reason they outlived her.

As I sit here pregnant with my second son and confined to little or no physical labor in the last stages before he makes his appearance, I hold in my hands a book on Morphing that while it talks about the discipline, explains nothing at all how one performs morphing. In terms of learning the art form, all the book has to offer is that Morphing is learned through trial and error in the field away from the classroom. I do not have the luxury of being ‘a field’ and so here I sit in my classroom (or more accurately The Within Commons) studying a book that is less than helpful on a field that is less than reliable in terms of stability and execution. The ‘field’ will have to be my home, most likely a sturdy chair, and the experience will have to be what I can do without stressing my body too much.

Experts also agree universally that Morphing has almost no textbook theory involved and instead is learned by dumb luck and trial-and-error. Supposedly it was one of the first disciplines of magic that people developed for themselves in the category of personal magic. There are even claims that cave paintings have been spotted that show early man – long before any Konti existed – transforming into otherworldly creatures and fighting things far superior to them in strength and agility. But because of these ‘transformations’ they were able to indeed start hunting and advancing on the food chain. So in a round about way, Morphing has been responsible – these mages say – for the rise of humanity and for humanities survival. Everyone knows that humans were the first, coming long before creatures like the Dhani or Zith. Was it true then that their rise and advantage actually came from their ability to harness djed and work true magic?

But I digress. I am under what’s considered a light watch, confined to house arrest (without actually being under house arrest) and not allowed to even lift an apple to my lips. That means I feel useless and unnecessary and utterly miserable. And it is in this environment that I am going to go forth and learn something new.

Or, I’m going to die trying. That equates to practically nothing since I feel as if I am about to explode and bring forth triplets already, which in my culture is practically a death sentence... I know my newest son is putting in an appearance soon, so these lessons are simply to keep my sanity. I shall endeavor to do well at Morphing, but that depends on my state of mind and if I can indeed stay still long enough. We shall try exceedingly hard regardless.

Her writing was going to sound less like a book and more like an informal record of her how-to experiments, but Kavala didn’t care. She just wanted a record of her crazy efforts during her second child’s pregnancy to stay sane. And staying sane was priority number one. Even if that meant learning a discipline that had no how-to guide associated with it.

Kavala took a deep breath, set her quill aside, and picked up the one book she had on Morphing. She read on, curious, as to how Morphers actually got started Morphing. The book talked about meditation. And Kavala did mean meditation. The book stated that a good morpher had to meditate and concentrate to focus their magic CONSTANTLY. It was a good thing that Kavala had recently decided to invest some time and effort into meditation. The practice itself was definitely something a pregnant woman could do. And so long as she kept constantly focused on her breath, her awareness, and her djed usage, it should work to her advantage in her wish to learn Morphing.


Just weeks of constant meditation and focus. Aspiring Morphers fast meditate and empty their minds until they completely separate their minds from their physical forms, at which point Morphing first becomes possible. Back on track, the konti told herself, as she Kavala thumbed through her book on Morphing until she got to the section on learning and just frowned. The book clearly stated that morphing wasn’t a discipline taught by induction like say reimancy was or even magecrafting. Instead it was learned by trial and error, the first mages in morphing having discovered it by accident. Kavala tilted her head to the side, wondering how in the world one discovered an arcane discipline by accident. It would be about the most shocking thing in the world.

Of course, the first Reimancer must have had a huge shock as well. Kavala wondered, though, how much of it was trial and error and how much of it was God guided. They were sneaky, those gods, in their doings with the people of the world. Magic came from them, mostly, or at least that’s what Kavala believed in her mind. Gnosis was evidence enough of that, and magic itself seemed like bits and pieces of borrowed power wielded by the people smart enough to reach out and touch the djed and utilize it.

[Kavala]

Djed was in all things. Djed was the life source and the ending and beginning of everything. So it stood to reason that morphing took into account djed and utilized the power within a person to transform that physical form into something more or less or even just different than what the person originally was born to be. Kavala smiled, and dipped her quill again, ready to write.

So in starting this journey exploring morphing, I have no clear direction and no clear and concise way of moving from point a to point b to point c in an instructional way that mages have utilized from time forgotten. Instead, according to my guidebook which is nothing more than a list of do’s and don’ts if one is truthful about things… I must do as something called protohumans did, and discover Morphing’s secrets on my own through trial and error and the use of Meditation. I am not sure my meditative abilities are up to par though. I will endeavor to advance them, if for nothing more than to assist my easement into this study. It can’t, after all, hurt.

Kavala wrote a bit more into the journal, critically exploring the hopes and expectations she had of the magic, and what she was most afraid of in regards to it. Upon further reflection, the book did give her a list of limits of what a beginning morpher would be able to utilize and achieve, and that in itself was more of a guideline than she’d had previous.

In fact, it broke down all the technical levels of a Morpher (evidently one who utilizes morphing) into what they could and couldn’t do.

Beginners, it seemed, could carry out small transformations involving slow awkward transitions that were quite limited. Things like teeth or even the color of one’s skin could be messed with. But larger things were out of the question, so too were things which were complex, such as growing gills. Toes could be webbed though to assist in swimming or an unwanted freckle could be morphed into flawless skin for the aesthetically obsessed.

Kavala copied this all down, taking notes and occasionally writing sections into her journal. She truthfully didn’t want to forget a single thing.

Once a morpher reached a certain level of competency, they tended to grow bolder and had more djed to spare. This was when these mages reached the realm of shape shifter and could alter their whole body states. Kavala wondered then, how it would feel to be able to transform into an animal, perhaps a bird, and fly high into the sky away from the troubles and tribulations of life. And she could truly see, in that moment of wonderment, why protohumans (as her book called them) truly stumbled upon Morphing.

Everyone, at one time or another, wanted to be something else. When Kavala was a child, she wanted to be a white strider that could eat up the wind and cross the Sea of Grass in just a heartbeat or two. That was the drive then, the quest for perfection and change. Competent Morphers could do that… though, as she read on she discovered, they could not change their mass. Body mass was important. And it wasn’t until a morpher grew to be an expert that they could truly change everything about their being.

Kavala took further notes, writing down her observations and putting into writing her hopes and fears for learning the craft. One day she hoped that Tasival or maybe the child that was on its way would pick up her book and read from it, and walk her journey with her so that they could grow closer to her mother if she in fact was no longer here.

Kavala read on.

So when one got to be more of a morphing expert, one tended to have very accurate transformations. This included both internal and external structures. For one thing, her book claimed that snakes ‘saw’ not with their eyes but with their tongues in waves of heat. And if she grew to be an expert in morphing, then that’s how she’d see if she transformed into a snake. The Konti was fascinated. How would someone really know how a snake ‘saw’ until they were a snake? To her the idea was so farfetched that it had to be true. The author had to actually have become a snake to use such as an example. There were more examples too. The sense of smell of a dog, the eyesight of a hawk, the hearing of an owl all drew Kavala to the magic, making her want to understand it and be able to shape it for herself.

But what of masters? What did they know? Kavala read on, quickly jotting down notes in her own book of what her expectations were from how she was going to learn. Masters, the book claimed, could constantly transform. They were fluid, sometimes losing the sense of what was their true form. The author also made the statement that masters could be as large as a velispar or as tiny as an aphid on a tomato plant. Kavala was astonished. So to master Morphing was to loose ones sense of self and too take all forms in the universe into consideration and into one’s abilities to acquire.

[Kavala]

But surely there were more limitations than that? Kavala quickly noted down what she thought of the various stages of Morphing and where she could take it. In her mind’s eye, anything was possible, even growing wings and flying around like a zith. To her, that would be worth it. And she wondered, suddenly, if she could give wings to a horse. Suddenly the appeal of morphing doubled and tripled in Kavala’s mind.

Ah yes! As the Konti flipped through her book, she found a section on cautions and nodded, reading what the book had to say. She quickly jotted down her thoughts into her own book, keeping in mind that she didn’t necessarily believe everything she read, though in this case it made sense.

Morpher’s aren’t infallible. They don’t have some superhuman power to turn into monsters. Instead they are limited to organic material, no stone, and no metal, nothing that hasn’t ever been alive. From what I can discern, they can transform dead things like hair or nails, but they can’t alter the texture to make them harder than say the densest bone they’ve come across.

And from what I can tell, Morphing isn’t a beautiful transition, like say a Kelvic moving from a human shape to an animal shape. Instead, morphing seems to be more grotesque and horrifying. Flesh stretches, bone restructures itself, and matter becomes fluid to rearrange itself into the shape the Morpher wills. And these transformations don’t seem to happen in a shower of beautiful light instantly like Kelvics do. It seems going from one state to another takes time. And the amount of time depends on the extent of the change. Djed fuels everything. Morphers can only drive their changes in direct relation to how much djed they have available. I am going to assume those predisposed to be mages, i.e. well trained in other disciplines, would have an easier time morphing than those who are new to magic completely.

And the dark side of morphing is simple. If something is stretched and changed and altered too much, then it can break, shatter, or refuse to go back into its normal healthy shape. Morphing can turn the beautiful hideous and Morphers can get stuck in their shapes, which is in fact a side effect of the magic. Unfueled though, a morph will eventually fade and a morpher will go back to their original shape naturally. So this discipline is a balance. I would hazard to guess it needs a careful progression of little changes working up to bigger changes to be safe and to retain sanity. For I would imagine a byproduct of morphing is the loss of self awareness and potentially insanity. For if you took too many shapes… under too much stress… how are you going to remember your very own?

Kavala paused at that point, laid down her quill after wiping the tip, and stretched. For a book that had no instructions on how-too, her Morphing Text sure had a lot of theory and caution involved in it. She chuckled to herself, and got up to get a drink of water. Her pitcher beside the basket of seaweed on the table was empty. So was the basket of seaweed for that matter. Kavala hadn’t remembered eating it, but then again she had the taste of salt and the brim of nibbled seaweed on her tongue.

The Konti frowned, refilled her pitcher, poured another glass, and looked around for more snacks. There was fresh baked bread in the kitchen, apples, and some sort of cookie that smelled like molasses. Kavala wrinkled her nose at all of it and kept searching. She wandered into the pantry, having to turn awkwardly to get through the door, and started looking at the preserved jars on the shelves. She was all but disgusted, unable to eat any of it, when she found a jar of pickled sardines. The Konti smiled in relief, took the jar down, popped the top off and drank some of the pickling juice. Then she fished out one of the rather disgusting looking little fishes, and slurped it into her mouth. Kavala was pretty sure Cadra had preserved these to add flavor to salad dressings and soups, not to be consumed on their own, but Kavala was desperate. After finding the feast, she waddled back to her study area, sat down, and started reading again.

So… more morphing theory. Kavala actually hated this part of learning new disciplines of magic. But without the theory and bare bones understanding of the magic, sitting there trying to perform it would do little or no good for a new person. And she also wondered if it actually HURT to transform. The text didn’t say it did anywhere, and she was certain that something so important shouldn’t have been left out of an explanation. The text she had was bad, Kavala realized, because honestly it raised more questions than gave answers. Good books should be clear, concise, and very tractable. This one was all over the board.

So? Was that it for limitations? No. Kavala flipped through and found more. These limitations, however, dealt more with the ‘what about when you were transformed’ than the cautions against transforming or the limits on the use of the magic. So what did that mean?

[Kavala]

So, in addition to the limiting factors, there were other considerations to take into account. Kavala read on and then decided to add to her own notes. She picked up her quill again and began writing, trying to translate her thoughts into words so she could come back to them later and see how her thinking had changed from prior to learning to morph and after she’d managed to practice the discipline a bit.

Morphing isn’t all encompassing. Meaning, when one changes one’s body, that doesn’t mean other things about them change or that they instantly become a whole different creature. For example, if you morphed into a bird, that doesn’t mean your fear of heights instantly vanishes or that you know how to fly. Morphing into a fish doesn’t mean you can swim. All these things come with practice and patience. And learning the subsequent skills to go with the form you choose would be infinitely helpful. That’s not to say some transformations wouldn’t bring additional skills though. For example, learning to morph a pair of gills into your body would greatly aid those non-water breathing species and give them a means to survive without air beneath the waters. Could they swim? No. But they could breath, and that would be in my mind half the battle.
The other important thing to realize about Morphing is that you can only change yourself. I suspect this has to do with the djed from your body being compatible with the mater from your body and thus working well to reshape it. Literature suggests that in combination with other magics – I would guess Glyphing and magecrafting – morphing could also be utilized on others. But this would take time, effort, and a whole lot of clever manipulation.
And finally, yet another limiting factor is that if one is using morphing as a disguise, the disguise is only as complete as the mind of the Morpher can make it. You can’t, for example, look like someone else if you’ve never seen them. The same goes for making voices or mannerisms identical. Just because you look like something or someone else, doesn’t mean you are going to automatically act like that something or someone.

So in flipping through further, Kavala ran across a couple more things of note. One was of particular interest to her as a healer. It seemed that if a Morpher were injured, it was far harder to transform damaged tissue than it was whole healthy tissue. And indeed that transformation back and forth did nothing to assist the healing. Wounds on one side translated to wounds on the other side. So if one had a huge burn on one’s arm and they shape shifted into a wolf to help assist them in surviving in the forest, it would be hard first of all to take that shape injured and secondly it would be near impossible not to have the burn show up on the wolf’s leg and be just as hampering to the Morpher as a wolf as it was to the Morpher as a person.

That made sense.

Kavala was getting all sorts of good core information from the text. She was just growing impatient to try the discipline out. Book learning only got one so far. And this book, it seemed, was going to get her less progressed than usual. But the one she was writing was different; it would document her progress and her hopes. It would document her successes and failures as well.

So moving on... what was next?

All this theory was making Kavala restless to actually give morphing a try.

So the next thing the book talked about was modeling. It seemed Morphers had a library of shapes and forms they could take through repeated practices. Models could be anything, but they greatly aided a morpher because if the morpher had a model to first learn to morph off of – an example if you will like a dead corpse or a person standing in front of them they wanted to mimic – then they could do so faster and more effectively. If a Morpher practiced shifting into that shape over and over and over again until it was part of their physical magical memory, then morphing for these individuals became as easy as breathing. So it was always better, and Kavala suspected, a bit safer to have a model when morphing. And those models changed depending on the situation and usage. Models were first and foremost example creatures or things the mage wanted to mimic – say a preserved snakeskin to study scales with – and then later became a rote memory for them or a model in their head they could draw from immediately and instantaneously.

I suspect I am lucky for I run a facility that has access to all sorts of animals. Claws, teeth, horn, hooves. All are fairly widely available to use as models and then to thus become my models. I think I shall start off easy and perhaps work on claws and horns, simple things, so I can study them and learn what truthfully they are comprised of. Once I know that, I can indeed get a feel for how to create them as a morpher and thus maybe make my morphing experience all the stronger in the long run.

Interestingly enough, new Morphers don’t just will things like horns into being. My readings and literature states that often times they need to pool djed at their desired spot of transformation and then reach in and pull at their flesh and bones to rearrange them into the way they want the structure to look. I am instantly drawn to Caelum and wonder if the Eth would permit a study of his horns in order for me to duplicate them. Truthfully I cannot think of a time or a reason that I would desire myself to have horns, but the lure of the practice seems inevitable.

And all this modeling is in truth reassuring. For, not to get off on a tangent, it would be disturbing to know end to know that a Morpher who has never ran into a Velispar, per say, could harness his power and become one at a whim. I find the Gods humorous and very fair in this aspect. One cannot become what one does not know. And so to be a good morpher, one must be well traveled and well versed in a great many people and things… living things.

As Kavala set her quill aside and looked thoughtful, she realized there was only one really major thing left to learn before she made her first attempt at Morphing. It was a law of science she needed to understand... and to do so she'd was going to have to read the whole section.

Continued in: Morphing Isn't What You Think

[Taylani]

XP Award!

Kavala:

XP Award:

• +4 writing
• +5 morphing
• +1 planning

Lore:

• The stircraze of the last days of pregnancy
• Morphing: Not only the ability to shape one’s own matter but also a study of living things and how they work.
• Morphing: Learned by dumb luck
• Belief: Magic came from gods

Notes: The Lore “belief” was arranged that way to make it clears that it was Kavala’s personal belief.

Comments :

Please feel free to pm me concerning your grade if you have any questions. Don’t forget to edit/delete your grade request..

TAYLANI