Closed A Theoretical Debate

[Alses]

Timestamp: 64th Day of Winter, 512 A.V. The morning was still cool and tranquil in the city of stars, and Syna's lemon-yellow rays lanced down between the dramatic striated spires of the Misty Peaks to bathe celestial Lhavit in abundant light. The sky was flawless, a powder-blue bowl without a cloud in sight, clear and crisp and achingly cold, and beneath its perfect azure curve Lhavit glittered and shone, truly the Diamond of Kalea and the Queen of Cities. Abundant sunlight sparkled off the skyglass and flashed into hard brilliance on the shimmering mantle of snow that festooned the upper reaches of the buildings, a thousand spires and turrets each with their own jaunty cap of it and their windows patterned and marbled with a million creeping fingers of frost. There was a pleasing prickle in the air, just cold enough at ground level to be classed in that rather invigorating sort of way as 'bracing', instead of – as with the rest of the mountain range – being planted squarely in the category of 'shrieking brass monkey'. In the squares and courtyards of the airy city, traders and shopkeepers gathered close about braziers of cheerfully-burning firewood, warming cold-reddened hands by the blazes and roasting chestnuts by the bushel on the red-hot iron. Samovars clustered thickly wherever one's gaze cared to fall, from vast communal contraptions to delicate personal engines adorned with gilt and silver – Lhavit was, after all, where tea addicts went to when they died. The markets of Lhavit brimmed with tea, fuelled by the collective passion for the beverage in all its manifold forms, and it was in many ways a crucial social lubricant for the city; a newcomer might stand awkwardly at bay on the edges of it all for a while, but sooner or later a citizen made generous and brimmed with warmth by the tea would schlep out of the busy throng and pull them in to take their place with teacup and saucer. The city drew everyone in; Lhavit dazzled with grace and celestial perfection, but her heart wasn't to be found amongst the soaring spires and inspired architecture, rather in the people and their tea, a subtle insinuation carried on warm liquid and conversation. A thousand variations on the theme: chai, masala, white, green, fruit and herbal, spiced and many more were grown in the stepped and terraced fields which reached down from the mountain peaks all around Lhavit, and still more were carefully nurtured in the hothouses of the wealthy or imported from all across Mizahar, carefully crated up and shipped across the endless Ahger Ocean, that dark and mysterious expanse of wine-dark water which lapped the docks and quays of Port Tranquil, the sound of the wavelets on skyglass curiously muted. Alses had arrived by way of the sea, had spent weeks traversing the dark, silent waters. The sun had called, of course, all those long days on the deck keeping out of the way of the sea-hands, but it was the vast and dark expanse of the whispering ocean that had held her attention, continually drawing it down from the heavens to the fathomless depths all around. At night, she could have sworn she'd seen lights and shifting figures beneath the steady swell, and her mind conjured up fancies of long-dead peoples drifting through palatial hallways fathoms underwater. Ahger; The Silent Palace in the ancient tongue – a well-named ocean if ever she'd seen one. The tea-markets might have been Lhavit's beating heart, but it was the colossus of the fabled Bharani Library and the marble bowl of the Basilika, sheltering in its ample lee, that were her brain. Amid the dreaming shelves, where Seekers padded their silent way along glyph-guided routes, safeguarding the greatest singular store of knowledge on Mizahar, secrets for which men had spilled entire oceans of blood rested, pinned between covers with ink and parchment. Whenever some calamity or misfortune befell the city, the first recourse of the government was to consult the great library's records for a solution – the Council of Towers, the Day Lady and Night Lord, even Zintila Herself all seemed to keep the maxim 'Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it' at the forefront of their minds, a policy which had served the starry city admirably down the ages since its founding. The Bharani Library, then, was something akin to the memory of the city, a repository of experiences and ideas set down on paper, but the Basilika which abutted it, ah, that was where the cut and thrust of debate, of theory and counter-theory, of hypothesis and conjecture and outright argument all came together in a boiling charivari sometimes barely-constrained by the stepped amphitheatre. Of course, such theatrics were, in truth, very rare, Lhavit being a courteous and law-abiding place in the main, but nonetheless the Basilika was the dynamo of new ideas and fresh thinking in the city, where radial and intelligent scholars disproved the outmoded concepts of hidebound old graybeards – sorry, correction, where indigent young rapscallions scrabbled around in the books and drank too much and spouted whatever half-sloshed nonsense came into their heads without pause for reasoned reflection or experimentation. Perspective was everything. A Alses rested herself discreetly on the sun-warmed brass railing of one of the many soapbox pulpits scattered throughout the Basilika during the daytime, listening intently to her current opponent. She hadn't actually intended to take the pulpit today, but correction was ever in her nature and the frightfully earnest foreign scholar currently opposite her had been so very wrong on some of the finer points of magecraft – one of the very few areas she felt confident enough in to challenge him about. “...and furthermore it is a well-known fact that magecraft is what might be termed a 'proud' discipline and thus magecrafted items do not work well with other disciplines of magic; indeed, there is a relatively narrow range of uses for other disciplines incorporated with magecraft, still further lessened by the necessity for a practitioner of that particular discipline to attend the crafting.” It really was quite comfortable, leaning on the sun-warmed railings, but louche insouciance wasn't quite the thing for a sensible discussion. When her opponent wound down and it was her turn, insofar as could be determined within the bounds of an informal debate, Alses pulled herself up into a suitably graceful stance, one hand resting companionably on the brass, and directed her full attention to the visiting scholar opposite her. He'd made some good points – some very good points - earlier, about secondary and tertiary conduits, linking them with a djed theory she'd only vaguely heard of but resolved there and then to learn more about if at all possible, and she'd started to worry she was making a fool of herself, but now he'd evidently crashed off the end of his theoretical expertise – and it was theoretical; he'd said as much in his preamble to the small audience. “With all due respect to our learned friend, we disagree with him on several points there.” She raised a hand, theatrically, to forestall any comments – this was a public debate, albeit an informal one, and a certain amount of grandstanding seemed par for the course. “I accept, of course, the assertion that magecraft is, as you say, a proud discipline – which is a very good term for it, actually.” Her opponent inclined his head with a smile at the compliment; that was how these things went – argument and counter-argument with politeness like razors, if things got a bit...heated. She continued: “That is a fact, and one borne out by experimentation; indeed, we have seen several inventively-mangled examples of someone trying to combine magecraft and animation together in a single construct-” she pulled a face “-which is not something I'd wish on anyone. However, there is a very wide field of application for magic during the creation phase of an artifact's assembly, where the only limitations are time, resources and the ingenuity of the crafting magesmith. Take, for instance, auristics. Bound to a ring, it could serve as a trinket for wealthy ladies wishing to keep their figures, acting as a proxy for their sense of taste. A powerful merchant might use it to detect lies by the wavering of the auras it grants him the Sight to see, or to find poison in his meals. An artist might find a use for it as an inspiring muse, drenching the world in a million colours, and the criminal element might use them to evade pursuit or to infiltrate their target building – the possibilities are almost endless.” She paused at that controversial last; the scholar stepped forward, perhaps thinking she'd finished, but she forestalled him once more with a gesture. “Finally, I must also mention that a practitioner need not always be present to guide an infusion. Indeed, from our own experiences working for Ald'gare Dusk-” and dropping the name sent a gratifying ripple through the small crowd “-we found that certain properties could be conveyed to an artifact without needing a guiding practitioner. Flux, for example, can be leveraged through a sufficiently harsh djed-injection method for speed and vitality from an essential fluid – like blood – without actually needing another mage there to direct the process. We shan't mislead you – it's not the most forgiving of processes, and needs constant vigilance on the part of the magesmith lest everything collapse, but it is nonetheless possible and most definitely beneficial.” Her opponent spread his hands in a conceding gesture. “I take your points, my lady,” he called over, gracious in defeat. “I bow to your superior knowledge in the field.” Alses gave him a bow, deeper than was necessary, even as delight unfurled its wings inside her and put a broad smile on her perfect features. He'd been an excellent debating partner, and quite outclassed her on the theoretical side of things. It was a shame, in a way, that his practical magecraft was so woeful; she doubted he'd ever actually wielded hammer and djed together in a lab. “And I to your superior theoretical knowledge; I shall look up that theory you mentioned the first time I have a chance to!” A smattering of applause rippled out as they both left the pulpits, bowed ceremoniously to one another and then drifted out aimlessly amongst their erstwhile audience, their discussion concluded and precious pearls of information and opinion shared with one another and distributed amongst the educated citizenry who frequented the Basilika.