[Solo] An Exercise in Morphing

[Veldrys]

Spring 20, 511 AV The sun had just set and made way to darkness as the Symenestra returned to the room where he slept. He had spent most of the day at the chapel or tending to those that were in need of healing. While his skill in medicine had improved considerably since the early days at the Purging in Kalinor, there was one area that he had neglected recently. He had initially used Morphing as an escape from the grim reality of life in the underground city. The things that his people did weighed had weighed heavily on his conscience. He had disapproved of the Harvest almost as much as the Esterians did and thought that it would be better to find another way out. Changing himself, pretending that he was not Symenestra and had no part in the things they did, had been the only way for him to find a little peace. He didn’t do that as much anymore. Somewhere along the way he’d managed to become proud of who and what he was. He’d begun to understand his people a little better, although he still disapproved of all that spilling of blood. As a follower of Viratas he considered all living beings to be valuable. As far as he was concerned, it would be better to try and occasionally save the life of a Symenestra mother instead of condemning a human to a painful death. He no longer tried to escape that which made him Symenestra – maybe it also helped that he had decided to leave for the surface and was no longer confronted with the problems of the Symenestra every day - but he still had a certain interest in Morphing. An animator by the name of Velarian had told him of Glyphing, of a way to store a spell in a scroll. Maybe that was the solution, a way to save those that were currently beyond salvation. Maybe he could give those that were disfigured, that were handicapped a healthy body, at least for a while. Maybe he would even be able to protect a few women in Kalinor from the deadly poison of their children. But before he could do that, he needed to improve. What he knew of Morphing so far, was nowhere near enough. Before he tried his art on other people, he needed to perfect morphing himself. If he weren’t so worried about what people would think of him – for some the mere fact that he was a Symenestra was already enough to be careful around him – he would have asked somebody in Denval for help. But as it was, he didn’t dare to. Magic was often regarded with suspicion. He had come to the conclusion that it would be better to practice in the solitude of the room, where nobody else was watching. He was sitting on his bed, papers filled with drawings and notes scattered all around him. They contained information about the patients he had treated so far and a few studies of human anatomy. He had done a bit of research before he had decided to continue to practice his Morphing. Magic was inherently dangerous. He didn’t want to hurt himself or become stuck because he hadn’t prepared himself well enough. He had spent some time listing the similarities and differences between humans and Symenestra, the two races he would work with most of the time. On the surface humans and Symenestra were the same. They had a head with two eyes, a nose and a mouth. They had ears and hair. Both had two arms and two legs, although a Symenestra’s limbs were slightly longer. But Symenestra had much lighter bones that easily broke. They had fangs that they were able to extend. They carried a venom inside of them. They could extend countless microscopic hooks from their skin, and they were much more graceful. Humans in turn were harder to hurt. They could adapt to most environments. Where Symenestra were pale, they were colorful. Today he would merely make subtle changes to his body. With the kind of experience he currently had, he didn’t dare to do anything drastic yet. It was always wisest to start small. He looked down at his hands, pale, long fingered hands that ended in black nails. A Symenestra’s nails were hard, hard enough to make climbing rocks considerably easier. Many other Symenestra kept them fairly long. Veldrys always cut them though. He would start there, he decided. His nails already had the right length. Male humans never let their nails grow. For some reason they considered that to be feminine. Morphing was painless if done correctly, but in a way it still felt strange. The changes never happened instantly. The Symenestra watched fascinatedly as his claws slowly changed color, became pink and softer. The human nails didn’t look right on his Symenestra hands, he decided once the transformation was complete. He made another change to the part of his fingers where the nails were attached, and then he willed his hands and his entire arms to shorten. It still didn’t hurt which surprised him, even after all that time, even though the very bones in his arms rearranged themselves. As he had observed from studying humans, their bones were heavier, but he had no interest in changing that right now. On the inside he would stay entirely Symenestra. Next came his legs. Again he willed his claw to turn into soft nails and shortened them slightly. The final change was a subtle darkening of his skin. He probably looked like some kind of mixed blood now, he thought, not unamused. In Kalinor he’d considered it of the utmost importance to keep the bloodlines pure, even though there was a distinct advantage to Symenestra women sharing their bed with human men. Their children’s venom was weak enough not to kill the mothers. He still didn’t consider halfbloods to be the equals of fullblooded Symenestra. If he were to spend a longer amount of time looking like a halfblood, if he changed the color of his hair, maybe even those parts of him that produced the venom, if he did all the things he usually did looking like that, would he feel differently about them? He didn’t dare to try it out. Despite the fact that he had decided that morphing was the way to go, he was afraid of losing himself. He was Veldrys and had absolutely no desire to be somebody else. Still, despite his fear, he decided not to reverse the changes he had made to himself. Morphing wasn’t permanent. It was likely that his body would return to its previous shape before he went to the Chapel in the morning. Changing himself again would be a waste of precious energy and djed. He wanted to try out a different kind of transformation the next day. It was better if he prepared himself for that.

[Veldrys]

Day made way to night again as the Symenestra returned to his quarters for his second session in morphing. This time he had brought a mirror with him. He didn’t trust his limited abilities enough to make changes to his face without actually seeing those changes. Unlike the day before he sat down at his small table. He didn’t start with his magical experiment right away, but rather produced a fresh piece of paper and a quill and started drawing. T that had mastered the art of morphing were said to be able to change themselves without a model, that they didn’t have to see or touch themselves, but Veldrys thought it would be better if he had a picture of what he wanted to do, if he took notes about the changes he hoped to achieve. This time he wanted to make himself look a little like the people he had seen in Lhavit, a city that he had visited about three years prior. They had had dark hair for the most part. Their eyes had been dark as well, but shaped differently. The hair was where he would begin as it seemed to be the easiest to change. Veldrys‘ hair was soft and silver white. Gazing into the small mirrior that he had placed in front of him, the Symenestra first willed his hair to darken. He didn’t feel anything – just like the day before it was completely painless, but it looked strange as his hair started to change. At first only the roots darkened a little, then a few inches were black. For a moment his hair was half black, half silver, and then it was over. He had also made his hair a little thicker. Next came the eyes. At first he changed their color again, closing them as he did so. He was worried that he would experience strange vision problems otherwise, that maybe he would see flashes of light, suffer hallucinations or temporarily go blind while the transformation took place. It seemed impossible to him that something that affected his senses would be without negative side effects. As he looked into the mirror again, a pair of deep black eyes looked back at him. He was relieved to find out that his vision was just as good as before. Next he made his eyes slightly almond shaped and a little narrower. From what he had observed human faces were more angular, but he had no wish to make himself look completely human. He just made a few very subtle changes. Then he added a hint of facial hair to his cheeks, no more than a dark shadow to make the illusion of man who was neither Symenestra nor Human more believable. Finally, he repeated the transformation he had practiced the day before, turned his claws into soft nails and made his limbs a little more human. The man in the mirrior, he observed after he had taken a few moments to relax, still looked like him. There was still a considerable part of Veldrys in that face with its dark eyes and hair. The fangs were still there. He could still recognize himself. Would the people he knew recognize him though? If he changed his clothes, if he adapted a slightly different way of speaking, what would they say? If he walked into Kalinor like that, what would happen? He had no real interest in finding it out, but the matter was quite fascinating in theory. He pulled his gaze away from the mirror. Despite the fact that the changes were still comparatively minor, his changed face freaked him out a little. And of course there was the question whether transforming himself would really help him achieve his ultimate goal and not only give him a mild case of schizophrenia. He needed to be able to do more than make himself look like a halfblood, a human or even something like an Akalak, a Zith or a Myrian. Being able to transform a healthy person wasn’t enough. He needed to be able to use his Morphing on wounds as well, maybe even broken bones. Since he had absolutely no desire to break his own bones and see if he could mend them with his limited ability in Morphing, he decided that he would try it out on a shallow cut, such as the ones that he regularly inflected on himself as part of his worship of Viratas. He would do that the next day or the day after that though. Again he came to the decision that one transformation was enough. He didn’t want to cut himself and find out if he could heal himself on top of that. The fear that he would lose himself, that he wouldn’t be able to reverse the changes if he tried too much too fast was still present. Since he had always conducted his magical studies in secret, since he had never had a teacher or even discussed his studies with somebody else – apart from Velarian, and that conversation had only been brief – he didn’t know at which point he was in danger of overgiving, at which point he would get hurt. Would simply transformations, such as the ones he had done, be enough or would he only be in danger if he tried to change himself into a diffeent race and failed? He didn’t want to find it out, but decided that he would continue at a slow pace. Maybe he would take a break from his Morphing for a day. Maybe he wouldn’t attempt to heal wounds via Morphing right away. Maybe he would spend the next couple of evenings going through his notes again.

[Veldrys]

Three days passed before Veldrys decided to practice his Morphing again. The fear that something would go wrong, that he would suffer from a bad case of overgiving or get stuck, that his body would forget what it really looked like was still strong. He didn’t want to permanently walk around with human eyes, dark hair or without claws, like a crippled Symenestra, and he had no interest in having wounds that would never heal either. He liked himself the way he was. Besides, being a Symenestra on the surface was already bad enough. He didn’t want to be a weird looking, deformed Symenestra on top of it and be the target of every racist and every radical from Denval to Syliras. That constant risk that practing magic posed, the fear that something would go wrong was almost enough to make him stop here and now, to go back to a conventional kind of healing and let all the dangerous stuff be. But then again, the possibilities were so very tempting. He couldn’t stop thinking about all the things he might be able to accomplish if he mastered his magic. Maybe, he wondered as he sat there, in the relative darkness of his quarters, maybe magic was addictive, just like certain drugs. Maybe that was where the real danger was, that it affected your mind, that it made you unable to stop, no matter how hard you tried. He lit the lamp that stood on his table so that the room was filled with a pleasant golden light and closed the curtains so that nobody that happened to walk past his window would be able to see what he was doing. This time a small ceramic bowl was in front of him. It was currently empty. An old copy of the Viratassa, his most valuable and sacred book, was lying next to it. When he was confused, when he didn’t know what to do or which way to turn, he read the book. It always calmed him down and made his head a little clearer. And thus he spent the next couple of minutes quietly reciting passages from his book, saying prayers that he had already learned by heart when he had been a little boy in Kalinor. Finally, when he had calmed himself down sufficiently, he lit a candle and placed it next to his lamp. Then he drew his knife and held the blade into the flame to heat it. In the course of his work at the Purging in Kalinor he had learned that wounds were less likely to become inflamed if you hated your tools beforehand or cleaned them in alcohol. He had no idea why this was the case, whether there was some kind of magic in the blood, but he had always done it since then. Once the knife was properly cleaned, he made a quick cut across his palm, and then he held his hand over the bowl and watched the blood flow into the bowl. He said another prayer to his god, and then he put the knife away and began. The cut was not deep, but deep enough that the bloodflow wouldn’t stop immediately. He had used his left hand just in case something went wrong. First of all he used a clean piece of cloth to wipe the blood away so that he could see the small wound he had inflicted on himself better. And then he used the fingers of his other hand to pull the egdes of the cut together, much like he would before he stitched a wound. But instead of working with needle and thread, he tried to will his flesh to change, tried to will his skin to become whole again. He worked very slowly and carefully, and to his pleasure the wound began to close, until there was nothing but smooth skin on his hand much more. And then it went wrong. While the cut appeared to be gone, a large, blue bruise had begun to form on his hand. Touching it was painful. While the cut – that was shallow enough that it would soon have been gone anyway – had disappeared, the bruise stubbornly stayed where it was. Veldrys shook his head and left his quarters to get some cold water. He soaked a piece of cloth in the water and then pressed it onto the wound. From what he knew compressions and as little physical activity as possible where the best way to treat a bruise. Maybe he would also put a salve on it to prevent inflammation. And he decided that he wouldn’t try to heal wounds with Morphing for another little while. He needed to get much better at it first and learn more about the way the body worked besides. For the next couple of months he would continue with those small transformations, lengthen his claws, make them disappear or make himself more human until he felt confident to try something bigger again. His worries that he might eventually get addicted to this, his fear of all the risks associated with magic were almost forgotten. That small failure, the painful bruise hadn’t discouraged him. On the contrary, it made him want to try even harder, to put even more effort into his research.

[Tabarnac]

XP Award! Veldrys XP Award: Morphing +5; Drawing +1; Observation +5; Medicine +3 Lore: Model: Half-Blood Symenestra Male; Model: Lhavitian Male Additional Notes: Thank you for making an interesting training thread to read! As you probably know, Morphing can’t really heal wounds effectively. Clearly it didn’t work this time, but it would be interesting to see if he develops the ability to at least temporarily deal with wounds via Morphing before they break out again and require true healing or medical attention. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions or concerns. Keep writing!