[Flashback] Vocal Activation (Solo)

[Eridanus]

Day 23, Summer of 505 AV
Late Morning
MCL4

A new season, a new syllabus. For the past season Eridanus had been purely focusing on enhancing the physical aspect of items via Magecraft. Now, it was time to move on to a new syllabus, though he would still be under Professor Wejerx and the paradigm of Resonant Harmonics. From the brief note he received before today's session this season they were going to focus on intelligence.

Fortunately, he had read the Magecraft Handbook which was pretty useful in giving him a hint as to what they were going to do despite it being rather vague on details. It seemed that magecraft was capable of not just changing the physical structure of an item, but also able to enchant some sort of intelligence to it as well.

He just had this feeling that the session today was going to be an interesting experience.

[Eridanus]

The familiar creak of the door resounded in the silent laboratory, and the vantha glanced up sharply to find the recognizable figure of his boisterous mentor enter the room. What was more interesting was the fiddle he cradled carefully in his hands. It looked like any other ordinary fiddle, except that it was exquisitely crafted and had numerous sigils and glyphs both painted and carved into its body.

"Morning, Professor," the vantha greeted, to which Wejerx acknowledged with a grunt. He went to a corner of the room, the part of the lab that was often designated as the 'box corner' due to the numerous boxes and containers stacked there. These containers were actually filled with djed-charged water, and often held various magecrafted items that were cooling down or were suspended in a different formula of djed-charged water for suspended or paused operations.

The Professor tapped several as he identified the labels on each of them, finally grunting again and pulling out a steel crate. He motioned for his student to come over, and passed him the fiddle while he continued to undo the clasp of the crate. Grasping a pair of glyphed tongs that was hanging on one of the steel suspenders that connected two shelves at the 'box corner', he gingerly fished out a metal bowl-shaped object.

That suspiciously looked like a frying pan.

"A frying pan...?" Eridanus suggested curiously.

[Eridanus]

The Professor proceeded to place the mysterious object on the pedestal, before returning the tongs to their original place.

"Yes. It was a suspended operation, because the client asked to extend the deadline. Which suited us actually, since we have a bunch of other projects that had tighter deadlines. The apprentice that I had who was working on this had already proceeded to bigger operations, so the two of us will finish this today."

Taking the fiddle from his student's hands, Wejerx gestured for Eridanus to proceed towards the pedestal, continuing his explanation, "And yes, it is a frying pan. One that belonged to a particularly wealthy but eccentric mage that, for client confidentiality purposes, I will not name. He is, however, considerably well known amongst gentlemanly circles. To get to the point, this is in essence an MC3 operation, or more specially the 3rd step of an MC3 operation. The first is a Magic Enhancement of Fire Reimancy at Novice, while the second is a basic Behavioural Enhancement that utilizes this Fire Reimancy to generate a constant flame at a specified temperature below it. In essence, it is a self-heating, stand-alone frying pan."

Eridanus knew what he was supposed to do already, and he placed his hands over the steel pan, extracting djed from his hands as he focused on the object even as Wejerx continued his lecture.

"We have only covered Structural Enhancements, but this season we will focus on Intellectual Enhancements. That's right, today we shall gift this frying pan a rudimentary level of intelligence to allow it to do its job. Since it is only a Step 1 Intellectual Enhancement, we only need to focus on getting two things right. Stimuli, and Behaviour-Trigger. Cause and Effect. Fortunately for us, there is only one behaviour, and the client only specified a single Stimuli to trigger this behaviour. This simplifies our job tremendously."

[Eridanus]

By then the vantha was already shaping and folding the formless substance that was his djed around the pan. Using the edges of the marble pedestal as the anchors, he created a large dome that covered the entire surface of the pedestal, enveloping the frying pan within its grasp.

Wejerx droned on, "Simply put, our job is as thus. To provide the necessary intellectual framework for this frying pan to activate its sole Behaviour when two words are spoken, a vocal trigger of 'Flame On'. Don't look at me like that, the client specified the exact wording, not me."

Eridanus was quite used to this, and he weaved the instruction pattern of the shield quickly just like before, to absorb djed and to task against sound coming from the outside. Tweaking the djed threads that formed the shields, he added glyphs that would cause a 'toggle' effect by touch so that it would be more convenient for Wejerx to activate or deactivate the shield.

"Unlike Structural Enhancements, Intellectual Enhancements are more structured-"

"Professor, did you make a pun?" The vantha interrupted, having finished the preparations that he was doing.

"Yes, that pun was intended. Now let me finish," Wejerx grumbled. "Now magecrafted intelligence cannot beat high-level Animation constructs, but it is of no matter for the only reason why the need for designing intelligence on magecrafted objects was because of the introduction of Magic and Behaviour enhancements. An object too stupid to use its own powers is bound to break, at the best case scenario."

"The worse case?"

"The item breaks the user and itself."

[Eridanus]

"As mentioned briefly in your Magecraft Handbook that Stonemiller insisted you to have, there are five known steps for Intellectual Enhancements: Minor, Moderate, Greater, Major and Superior. Before you ask, no there is no sixth step and above, but some magecrafters hypothesized that it is possible in theory, just that there is no known example of it yet."

Eridanus returned to the table that held the cluttered instruments, noting that Wejerx had already placed the fiddle down on the desk.

"Shield's up," He muttered as an aside, though he was pretty sure that the Professor already knew when he glanced in the direction of the pedestal.

"You better remember everything I said, boy. I hate giving lectures, and the only thing I hate more than that is repeating what I said during a lecture," The magecrafter warned, his eyes twinkling in partial sternness and partial mischievousness. It was hard to tell when the man was joking or not, but the vantha always believed to err on the side of caution.

"Fortunately for Resonant Harmonics, there are already designed templates for Intellectual Enhancements, with variations to be made for the unique Behaviours or Triggers. There is also no actual Initial Push or Further Shaping in the way Structural Enhancements have them. Instead the 'Initial Push' is the application of the specific grade of Intellectual Enhancement, while the 'Further Shaping' is the customization of the operation to fit the specific Behaviour or Trigger, or Stimuli, if you prefer. In other words, the 'Template Application' and the 'Tailored Customization'."

Wejerx took out a sheet of parchment from his robes, passing it to his student. It was a sheet of musical notes that Eridanus recognized from past memories of his vantha seeming, but also there were little scribbles and pictures above to specify how exactly the notes were to be pressed.

So that's what the fiddle is for!

[Eridanus]

Fortunately, he was somewhat knowledgeable in music theory, and he had the tendency of learning fast. Scanning through the sheet quickly, he held the fiddle carefully, and played the first note.

Screech.

Both professor and student winced, and Wejerx pretended not to notice as he proceeded to superficially observe the item so as not to give his student undue stress.

Screech.

Eridanus tightened his jaw, his resolve growing. Holding the strings more firmly this time, he pulled the bow again, finally producing a shaky but proper note. The secret apparently lay with holding the string down firmly while producing the note in a single clean strike with the bow.

He looked at the next succession of notes, firmly memorizing them and practised shifting his fingers through the combinations required. Finally, he played them, and after a few tries he produced a shaky but barely acceptable melody.

At least there's no screeching or squeaking.

"Ready?" Wejerx finally called out, his finger ready to poke the shield to disable it.

"Yes sir."

[Eridanus]

"Shield down in three... two... one..."

Cautiously, apprehensively, Eridanus began to saw at the fiddle with the bow. Using the little bit of muscle memory gained from that short period of practice, he transited from one note to the other at a careful and meticulous pace, afraid to mess up any notes.

The melody written in the musical score that Wejerx gave him was a strange one. It was technically intriguing, with mechanically precise chord progressions that somehow produced a lifeless but aesthetically acceptable piece of music. Yet, it did not obey the common trends in the music that people love, and in the music popular amongst bards.

It was as if... the sonar quality of the instrument was the primary goal, with the actual sound of the melody an unneeded side effect.

Isn't that... the main idea of Resonant Harmonics?

That little bit of information unsettled him, for it made him think. Even as he played away at the fiddle, he thought about his past experiences with the drum. The beats he played were guided by Wejerx's direction, but ultimately he poured his emotions and his feelings - his intentions - into creating the beats.

Yet, this time there was no soul, no feel. Was Resonant Harmonics about the soul of the music, or was it merely sound waves reverberating to create the desired djed pathways within the magecrafted item?

[Eridanus]

The piece was a relatively short one compared to the usual length of songs played by bards. It was only written on two sides of the same parchment, and the vantha soon reached the end of the first page. He quickly flipped over to the next page and continued playing.

The melody seemed to change pacing in the second page, but he could not quite put his finger on it. Indeed, the vantha continued playing as instructed, carefully following the fingering on the fiddle and trying his best not to create scratchy sounds - though he did so about a third of the time if he was careful, and half the time if he was not.

From his observation and inference, it was quite possible that the first page was to create the stimulus, while the second was to specify the behaviour that would be triggered by the stimulus. He assumed that the piece was short due to the simplicity of the enchantment, since there was only one behaviour and one trigger required.

That would mean more complication would result in longer and more complex pieces.

That also meant that he had to improve his fiddle playing and note-reading skills if he wanted to perform any better in Intelligence Enchantment. The drums were pretty simple, since it was just pounding on it with the rhythm being guided by his emotions. However, a more complex instrument like the fiddle required more dexterity and delicacy.

[Eridanus]

Eridanus continued focusing on getting the notes right as accurately as he could. However, his subconscious could feel the power of the sound waves created by the fiddle in the distance. The energy created from him playing the notes - transformed by the glyphs and who-knows-what carved and imprinted onto this customized fiddle - reached the frying pan on the pedestal.

Charged with energy, the djed pathways within the frying pan began to move sluggishly. The residual energies discharged by the pedestal kept the djed pathways of the item stabilized while the energy from the fiddle pushed the pathways in places he could not know precisely. That was why these customized items were effective black boxes for Resonant Harmonics. One only needed to know to operate them, but not how these items affected the changes in the items.

He assumed that he would learn such advanced knowledge later on though, and so was not bothered by his lack of knowledge.

Finally, he reached the end of the piece, and with the last note, he kept his fingers tightly held on the bow of the fiddle, dragging the last note out for dramatic effect.

Prodding the shield again, Wejerx remarked, "And... that's the end!"

"Eridanus, there is a little more things I have to finish up here. Will you go and renew your shield?" Wejerx asked, taking out a scroll of vellum from one of the drawers and began jotting down notes while muttering to himself.

[Eridanus]

Eridanus headed towards the pedestal, and his passive senses could tell him that the area was crackling with energy. Shifting djed to his head, he fed djed to his eyes, focusing on the aura coming from his shield. It was inevitable that he could view the surrounding area, and he could see vast amounts of wear-and-tear in his shield now as a result of attempting to stop any residual noise as well as energy that came from the fiddle and elsewhere from entering and negatively impacting the frying pan.

Bringing his attention to the frying pan, the vantha inspected the item's aura, noting the charged pathways that flowed like magma. The positions and directions of quite a few pathways were changed, though the change was unlike that of Structural Enhancements. He had to take note of the difference.

Nodding to himself, he shut down his flow of djed, and brought his hands over the shield. Extracting more djed, he layered them over the shields, carefully filling in the holes created by the intense deterioration from the aftermath of the magecraft operation.

When enough djed was extracted and slapped onto the shield, he spread out the substance, making sure to keep the new shield consistent in depth. He also took care to mix the old and new djed together so that there would not be any particularly weak point, making everywhere equal in strength and mixture of old djed and new djed.

He touched up on the tasking, tweaking and putting the instruction patterns in place while adding glyphs to stabilize the shield. He added glyphs throughout by weaving the spare djed threads within the shield, enhancing the shield's longevity as well as strength in withstanding the charged djed from entering and spoiling the magecrafted item inside.

Satisfied with his work, he dusted off his hands, bowing to Wejerx - who grunted in acknowledgement - and finally left the lab.