[Flashback] A Different Kind of Vacation (Coren)

[Eridanus]

A school to rival Zeltiva's? Eri could not help but feeling that maybe this man was a little out of his depth here. While he have not started, Zeltiva's arcane department taught the entire range from the popular Reimancy to the more esoteric branches of magic of which the names he had not heard before. Even a bloody Archmage would have trouble setting up a school by himself to rival that, for the entire arcane department was formed by a coven of the brightest and most passionate wizards willing to impart and spread their knowledge to their wards. Still, he had not known of any school for the arcane in Avanthal, and it might be great to perhaps reduce the conservative feeling people generally had regarding magic by making it more open and thus a school would be a step in the right direction. Eridanus had nothing against magic, nor the people who opposed it, for it felt that circumstances made the way everything was that day. He strongly felt that magic would be the way forward, and he hoped to see a future where everyone could comfortably use magic the way how most people naturally carry some sort of weapon displayed openly by their persons. He hoped to see a future where magic was talked about, discussed and wielded quite openly and naturally, where no prejudice occurred, where degeneration was viewed as a state where the community had to work together to help the inflicted instead of slaying the poor soul on the spot, and he knew that schools were definitely a step in the right direction, for with education came knowledge, and with knowledge came reasoning and a better world for everyone. He did not notice whatever Coren was plotting, and replied, the approval and veiled excitement evident in his voice, "I dabble a little bit in Flux, but that's about all I've got. I'm not a real mage you know, just trying to learn what I can about the arcane arts. Seeing as you're trying to open a school you must surely know more than one type of sorcery right?"

[Coren]

Coren smiled as the man gave up the name of his magic art without any trouble, he even heard some excitement in the man's voice as he began to talk. “Of course I know more then one type of sorcery, but unfortunately Flux is not one of them, never even heard about what flux is.” Coren admitted without to much embarrassment, everybody who knew a bit about magic and wizards knew how paranoid most wizards where about letting others know about their abilities, let alone teach them how it worked. So even powerful wizards usually only had fragmented knowledge about magic in general. If they knew that some disciplines existed at all. “Would you care to explain a bit more about your magic to me? It could come in handy when I'm teaching, even if I can just explain them about the basics its better then knowing nothing at all about a given discipline.” He began rummaging through his robes and pulling out a leather scroll case, a small vial of ink and a quill that looked like it had seen better day's. “You don't even have to tell me how you get initiated in the discipline, just what you know about the basics of the workings, what it exactly does and what the risks of it are. That should be more then enough for what I intend to do with it.” Coren patiently waited on the man's answer, really hoping that he would agree. “I would even be prepared to give you a few small lessons in one off the disciplines I'm capable off initiating people in at the moment.” Coren said, hoping to sweeten the deal a little bit, besides he thought the offer would be a good idea to show off his good intentions.

[Eridanus]

Wait, did he heard wrongly? The Vantha mage was actually willing to initiate him in a branch of magic? Initially Eridanus felt a pleasant surprise, but immediately after suspicion set in and he wondered if this mage had some sort of ulterior motive, and if not whether he was good enough. He knew enough about magic that certain branches of magic require a highly skilled wizard to initiate a beginner, and if done wrongly or with malignant intent the apprentice would suffer multiple complications, if not death. Still, he was not willing to turn down a possible chance, and he decided to play by ear and see how it goes. "I don't really know how to say it, since it's generally by feeling. What I think Flux is, is the redirection of the energy in certain parts of your body to another part. This helps to improve your strength, stamina, distribution of mass, whatever. But the trade-off is that you lose the equivalent, or more especially if you dabble a bit in it only like me. I can't really say what the risks are, but I suppose there were times when I felt invincible, it's a kind of high that you can't get anywhere else. No drug can replicate that, but yet it's more damaging than any drug you can get. Fortunately for me, I've always managed to stop one way or another either due to my own efforts or my friends, and I've never felt the full promise of the whispers." Eridanus wrung his hands, trying to gesticulate his feelings so as to express the full range of his expressions and intent to Coren, but the verbal explanation came up somewhat short, for he could not find the right words to describe the feeling of power, and the iron-clad discipline one needed to control it for fear of over-extending one's energy and yielding to the sweet, sweet whispers.

[Coren]

Coren rolled his eyes as Eri got a short surprised look on his face, didn't he already say he wanted to found a school that teached magic, so he didn't really get why the man found it a surprise that he wanted to teach him of all things he had to get some practice from somewhere didn't he. When Eri began explaining what he knew of flux coren pulled the lid off his and pulled out the scroll he had stored in there, motioning to Eridanus to slow down a bit as he searched for some kind of surface to be able to write on. In the end just sat down on the street and used his legs as a makeshift table and began to write down and summarize what eri was saying as good as he could. Flux Flux is the discipline of redirecting djed towards from parts of your body to other ones, improving strenght, stamina and other attributes like it, at the place where djed is forced to flow towards and losing it where you originally got the energy from. The risks are the sweet whispers and a feeling of invincibility when overgiving starts and the general feeling of wanting to use more and more of it, common to all personal magic. Coren got a light frown of his face, his hood and facemask making it fairly hard to notice, as he looked at the little bit of information he gleaned from the man's speech. And looked back up towards the man, “I mostly know what you mean with the feeling, all personal magic disciplines have that feeling if you use it. But do you have any other information about the art? For example how exactly do you manipulate the energy in your body?” Coren asked, curiosity audible in his voice. “The more you can give me the better for both of us involved. Since I would owe you more information the more you can give me.” He said, hoping to remind the man about the lessons he might receive, hoping that he would wrack his brain for anything he could say to him.

[Eridanus]

The mage began scribbling on a parchment that he had whipped out of nowhere, efficiently trying to copy down as much as he could, sometimes motioning to the Ethaefal to slow down and repeat certain words as he continued writing. After he finished, Coren seemed to be unsatisfied with the information and it was evident that he wanted to know more. Eridanus could completely empathize with that, for he was a seeker of knowledge himself, and once his curiosity got provoked in something he would usually chase it down the bitter end for better or for worse. Especially something as mysterious as magic where information about it was little and what he could glean about were like whispers in the wind - difficult to catch and hard to understand even if one were to hear it. He was glad that he went to Zeltiva University, for the people there were less self-centered and more willing to share information, and the sharing of knowledge slightly reduced the mystery of magic. Coren asked him to give more information, and Eri could detect both the thirst to know more and the thinly veiled trade offer he made. Like he thought, he would play it by ear and he guessed that it wouldn't hurt to share more knowledge, for unlike other paranoid wizards, Eridanus wanted to see a world where information was freely shared where everyone had equal access to knowledge, and so he did not feel the same need to hide what he knew like others unless he had a logical and practical reason for it. "I'm not too particularly good at it, so I'd suggest incorporating what I said into your syllabus until you go through it with a more experienced user. Just treat what I said as an anecdote from an apprentice of the art", he began, first cautioning Coren from treating everything he said as fact for he would not want to accidentally injure Coren's potential students with possibly inaccurate information, for what worked for him may not work for others. "I use a lot of visual imagery. I imagine that my body houses streams of djed, quite similarly to the blood vessels and veins in your body, but filled with raw energy instead of blood. Then I visualize pushing and redirecting these streams to the position that I want them to. If I needed to activate them in a pinch, I would use incantations or gestures to help me. Mind you, these incantations are what worked for me because I chanced upon them during meditation and practice and it seemed that the words I used created the optimal imagery that I needed to make it work. I know that this doesn't sound very scientific, but that's how I view it." He looked at the mage pointedly after he finished, wondering when he would breach the topic of handing his part of the deal over. "What magic would you give me pointers in anyway?" He asked in an innocently curious tone, but actually trying to establish the mage's authenticity and motive. He knew that certain personal branches of magic have quite a painful way of initiation and he was not sure that he wanted to trust his being to a relatively unknown stranger if he offered to initiate him in one of those forms of magic.

[Coren]

Coren gave a short nod at the man's warning, though he was planning to do that already, you never knew how accurate people who where dabbling in their art could be, though what he said about redirecting energy looked fairly plausible to him. “I was already going to do that to be honest since I'm not to sure how good your information would be. Since your not really to knowledgeable in your chosen magic art.” Coren said offhandedly. “No offense meant to you of course. But one can't write down things in a book about magic if one isn't completely sure if he is right.” He continued afterward as his attention went back towards his scroll, carefully listening when the man began to slowly explain and tried to summarize what eri said. Sometimes piping up and asking for a repeat of what the man said so he could be fairly sure he didn't miss something important. For manipulating the djed, an apprentice of flux said he mostly used visual imagery, in his case seeing the djed in his body as a mass of veins filled with raw untransmuted djed and pulling and pushing on it to get the djed to where he wanted it to be. And he mentioned said that the use of gestures and incantations. (Ritualized motions of the body and spoken sentences to enhance concentration and aid in the guiding of the djed.) are always useful for trying to manipulate it. Just as with most other personal magic froms. As the man mentioned it wasn't very scientific coren just let out a good natured laugh. “Most of personal magic isn't an exact science right now, I'm not even sure if it ever was an exact science, even in ancient alahea which is described as a country that had very advanced understanding of magic in general.” He said in a pleasant tone before gently beginning to blow on the still mostly wet ink, trying to make it dry faster. When the man asked about what kind of magic he would be getting pointers on he just smiled cheekily behind his mask. “First of I said you where getting a lesson in a discipline of magic, not just some pointers.” He said as he slowly began rolling up the scroll again. “The magic discipline I'm going to teach you is called shielding, which is well, shielding objects or persons from magic, sound, light and whatever you can think of really, though trying to block out some things would require that you have more skill with it then others.” He ended his little explanation and finally stowed away the scroll back into its holder and stuffed that into one of the pockets in his big cloak and began picking up the other supplies he had laying on the ground one by one putting them back where they came from. “Is that enough explanation about what I'm going to teach you?”

[Eridanus]

Eridanus felt a pleasant delight when the mage corrected the mistake that he made on purpose, a mistake made to test the mage subtly if he intended to hold up his end of his alleged bargain. The delight doubled when he learned that the magic in question would not be Reimancy or Projection, two disciplines he knew required experienced practitioners to teach. This delight came along with a surge in curiosity, for he had not really heard much about this branch of magic at all. Honestly speaking, he had heard snatches of it mentioned in conversations when he accidentally overheard fellow students and professors talking to each other while walking by, such as "Remember to shield your gate before commencing acceleration" or "You need to overlay your shields in front of this circle" or "Try to multi-task your shields or it won't be efficient" but he had just casually assumed that they meant it quite literally and physically. Apparently he was proven wrong for in front of him stood a mage who claimed he knew of an art that actually has the word shield in its discipline name, and it wouldn't take a genius to realize that it was probably a defensive art. Eridanus did not know much about magic, but he did know enough to find out more about the initiation process before committing himself any further, for he did not know enough about this magic form or magic in general to make any educated guesses. "How will you... initiate me then? Is there an initiation process in the first place?" the Ethaefal began, eager to know more also but cautiously checking for himself any possible safety hazards that he might face.

[Coren]

Coren just laughed at the little bit of nervousness in the man's voice as he asked how he would be initiated in shielding. “there isn't really an initiation procces its mostly some meditation exercises as the first part and a lot of trail and error after that to get the basics down.” he said in the most sincere and soothing voice he could manage, learning shielding was after all not really that traumatic or painful. Especially if you compaired it to the initiation of projection. “Anyway, its getting late and I'll probably won't have the time to teach you the magic today.” Coren said with a bit of dissapointment in his voice, “But I'll still show you the statue of morwen and we will meet right in front of it a few chimes after the morning meal so we can start on the teaching then.” Coren offered, hoping that the man didn't take it as trying to weasel out from his part of the bargain.

oocSorry for the short post

[Eridanus]

Eridanus nodded in relief, glad that there was no form of initiation process. That meant it was the kind of magic that one can pick up through books or the kind that can be self-taught. While no less dangerous that then other forms of magic, there tended to be a much lower amount of safety issues regarding these forms of magic, and he should do fine with a teacher. "No problem", the Ethaefal said, "I know that you don't believe in my story about my race, but you'll believe it soon enough tomorrow. Make sure you take a good look at my aura, Aura-Reader, and see that you recognize it tomorrow." He decided to have a back-up plan, just in case that did not work out, and bent down to scribble something in the snow, something that was small enough such that only Coren would be able to see it, especially in the dimmed lighting. He pointed it at and said, "My code-word to you tomorrow", and he walked back to his cabins, internally excited at what the next day would bring. If Coren went forward to inspect the snow, he would see a short phrase written in Vani, "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus". It was completely nonsensical as far as Eridanus was concerned for he picked it out of the insane swirl of his imagination, and if he was the one who said it to Coren there would be no mistake as to who he was, regardless if a snowman or dragon spoke these words to Coren; in those cases the mage would have no choice but to logically assume that the snowman or dragon was Eridanus.

[Cheshire]

Character: Eridanus Experience: Flux +1, Observation +1, Interrogation +3, Meditation +1, Teaching +1, Subterfuge +1 Lore: Skyglow Hold (Basic), Magic: Shielding Character: Coren Experience: Observation +1, Shielding +1, Interrogation +3, Intimidation +1, Persuasion +2, Writing +2, Teaching +1, Subterfuge +2 Lore: Ethaefal (Basic), Magic: Flux Additional Note: Great thread guys! Keep up the great work! I'm gonna level with you. I had no idea what subterfuge was until this thread so I learned something too! PM me with concerns.