Charging Magecraft

by **Eanos** on November 22nd, 2013, 8:31 am

80 Fall, 513AV

From the forge came the sound of a hammer tapping steadily but the sound did not disturb the Isurian smith as he sat at his workbench at the back of the shop, instead the sound was a soothing counterpoint to his thoughts. His fingers turned a page on the tome which sat open there, lit by the dim light of the lantern that was the only light in the shop for all that by his reckoning Syna was now at the peak of her travel across the sky above.

He had spent much time this season with the physical side of smithing and too he had delved deeper than he had intended into the uses of personal djed such that even now he could hear the temptation calling in the back of his mind, whispering to him of how little it would hurt to indulge and how much he would enjoy it, and that was distracting.

For some time he had put off his studies of magecraft and his reasoning had seemed sound enough for each time he wished to put his studies into practice, then he needed to borrow at least tools from the Magecrafter here if he did not borrow his laboratory. It irked Eanos to be reliant upon another in the way that he was dependant upon the Magecrafter, and that alone was perhaps the core reason for the interruption in his studies, though he rarely admitted to that and instead had created a raft of excuses instead.

He had wanted to become independent, had thought that he might be able to achieve that, but instead it had dragged him into the use of personal djed once more. He started to understand why the Magecrafters laboratory so often seemed unused and why he was always instead immersed in study, for surely he faced the same issues and more. Once Eanos had thought that Magecraft was the solution to the problem of personal djed use as all of the world magics ought to be, but his experience so far was proving to the contrary as personal djed magics were just useful and as far as he could see necessary to produce the environments and tools which made most world magic possible.

He had made some progress in his studies of Shielding which was where he had left off his last attempt at the study of Magecraft, recognising that it was necessary, in addition to Glyphs to the creation of a place that was properly safe for the working of Magecraft. This season too he had come to realise that Reimancy was probably the key to the charged elements which allowed the djed flows to be altered by Magecraft, and it was that question which had led him back here to the study of the craft to see if he could shed any more light on that, his pride still keeping him from simply asking the Magecrafter for the answer which would have been by far the simplest route.

by **Eanos** on November 22nd, 2013, 9:43 am

Turning the page once more he stopped and started to read, his eyes tracking slowly over the symbols wondering as he did so who had written this; clerk or mage? The former only worried him if they had made a mistake somewhere such as missing out a line or a word but given the cramped style of the lettering he somehow doubted that anyone who took pride in their skill with writing would have produced this.

Pushing his distracted thoughts to one side he read once more about the steps, seeing if his new levels of knowledge might read more into the words than he had the last time. He doubted that he would come to know more about the structural possibilities of magecrafting, but now he began to wonder if he had been foolish to allow his pride to stand in the way of learning this craft. Back when he had first studied it he had seen the possibilities, within the very limited window of swordsmithing to overcome some of the minor obstacles that the craft presented. Low level magecraft items would not be impossible to make, but the issues came at higher levels because every extra step came at a proportionately greater cost. Now though the truth came to mind for he had forgotten or deliberately overlooked the fact that even now he could use magecrafting to enhance his blades, ego notwithstanding.

It was the very structural elements where he gained an advantage over most mages. He knew how to make swords that were sharper and more durable than most smiths and so he had no need to waste a step in order to cover up the deficiencies of a poor blade and he refused to even consider the idea of magecrafting a badly designed toy in order to allow it to stand in battle against a properly executed blade. Added to this was his ability to enhance the structure of the blade with his gnosis and already he had saved two steps that a magecrafter would have needed to spend. This gave him pause for thought as with his eyes on the ultimate prize of Mastership he had not really considered what he could do with the low level of proficiency that he had now achieved. The fact was that those two steps already exceeded his abilities as a magecrafter and ignoring the time that it was involved in all of this, crafting and magecrafting it should be possible to take his blades to a new level now.

He had always known this but it irked him that it should take until now for that knowledge to really come home enough for him to take steps to put it into place instead of merely thinking about it and then getting distracted into something else. There was a blade right now in his forge which would be the perfect candidate for any such experiment, forged as it was as a test piece in its own right.

He paused to muse over the structural elements, running through in his mind the possibilities that were offered, and which combination might produce the best sword. He also realised with some amusement that he could not afford to underestimate the time such a sword would take to make properly and that the price would have to reflect that.

by **Eanos** on November 22nd, 2013, 10:16 am

His mulling though did not last long because he realised that he might be overlooking something far more important for magecrafting, unlike his smithing was not limited to structural effects. It gave him pause too to wonder if his gnosis could be used for more than he had ever tried to use it. That would need to wait though and now he turned back to the book to continue his research and revision.

For a practical man the behavioural effects of magecraft had never especially interested him, but now he reached the point where his weaponsmithing skills were starting to be perfected and he no longer needed to consider magecraft as a prop for that his mind had started to open to the possibilities that this gave.

He’d idly thought before about using it to make a blade move faster and while he could see that it would be an advantage to the wielder he wondered how the swordsman himself would cope with the effect. He could imagine that if he applied the effect to one of his hammers then he might well find it hard to control for the hammer would be taking control. For a novice smith it might be useful and it surely would be the same for a novice swordsman who needed an advantage over more experienced swordsmen.

Eanos however wasn’t especially interested in crafting items for novices and he doubted that there were few who could afford the price that they would command. Other effects might be interesting though and this seemed a much more promising line of enquiry. One that occurred to him immediately now that he had considered his own craft and indeed would be the perfect test of the usefulness of the effect would be if he could increase the force of the strike. From his reading of the text it seemed to be well within the normal range of possibility for the skill. For a hammer it would allow him to use a lighter hammer and yet have the effect of a heavier one. It would take considerable time to adjust he suspected which would have very poor results for the thing he was smithing, but once he had managed to make the adustment then it meant that for example when doing heavy forging and welding he could work faster and without the fatigue that using a very heavy hammer entailed.

He knew too that a two handed sword strike was much more powerful than a single handed strike. It was one of the reasons that his preferred blade was intended to be used two handed, but many fighters style was instead for a one handed grip. Giving them the ability to hit harder for less effort or just harder for the same effort seemed an obvious way to give a swordsman an advantage. It would of course put the blade under considerably more stress which only increased the need for it to have the best structural abilities. He mused the point for a moment, recalling that he would have the possibility of adding two magecraft effects to a blade which might well need it where a hammer would not.

by **Eanos** on November 22nd, 2013, 11:25 am

Before he finalised his mind on the where to experiment next with magecraft he knew that he should consider the final possibility for a step, though it was one that he had ignored more than the behaviours, considering it only suitable for more advanced mages.

He read the section on Intelligence and mused on it for a while, realising that he knew little of this or on what it could do. For him it was problematic for a swordsman in the same way that it making the blade faster was, for it interfered in the control that the swordsman used and this could make it more dangerous than not. Again for a novice swordsman, to impart into the blade all of the knowledge of a master swordsman so that the blade did the fighting would be useful but once more was not what he was interested in.

Having realised that he had been wrong about the behaviours, he sat back and considered this in more detail before he wrote it off. With Glyphing a mage could perform an action and then store that action in the focus for later release. It seemed to him that imparting intelligence worked on a somewhat similar basis only it was a permanent effect rather than a one off one.

If he put aside the question of weapons for a moment, could he think of a use for this in his own work? What if he were able to impart his own skills into a tool? It might well be useful for an apprentice, but then the apprentice would learn nothing and in effect would become the tool of the tool. He could imagine times when it would be useful so that he or the apprentice could focus on other parts of the task, so as a teaching tool it might be useful.

He was struggling to see how it might be used directly. There was a note on overgiving of the items, but it seemed more that it would be useful with high level magecrafted items. Once more it seemed that he could not imagine some way of using this type of effect in his work so perhaps he had been right after all that this was something for future use and an aspect which he should bear in mind for now to see what might strike him in the future.

As he continued his reading it seemed to him that the intelligence aspect was more tied in with the magical one such that it allowed the item some control over what or how it used the personal djed. This one perplexed him slightly for it made no sense that an item could have unlimited personal djed and unless it was a one use effect which was unusual for magecraft then how would the item recover the djed except perhaps gradually over time?

He also realised now he had read past the summary that the intellectual ability at this level was more a question of activation of a behavioural step. This now made much more sense and could even have some application with weapons though again it was more suited to novices he suspected.

The usefulness of the magical effect continued to elude him, though it might well be that his personal djed skills were not especially suited to this as only shielding seemed useful and then he might as well just shield the item. Borrowing another mage seemed the only possibility here so he put the idea aside for the time.

by **Eanos** on November 26th, 2013, 9:36 am

Barely had he put the idea aside though when a memory struck him and caused him to roll his eyes. It had barely been a ten day, if that and he’d been considering the ways by which he could use magecraft to create a lens for auristics, the sort of lens which was a common feature in many a magecrafters laboratory and one which he’d previously dismissed without further thought as not being necessary for him given that he could see the djed flows directly with his own vision. Of course magical traits were one of the traits which magecraft could build into an item which meant that the wizards own djed was not being used, even if course it meant that the item might not last in use for too long before it went into overgiving. Most of the time, so he’d read when that happened it simply stopped working, so he made a mental note to be careful about that and not to push the item when that happened since he could always use his own vision and allow the lens to recharge, though he wasn’t entirely sure how that happened with an inanimate object.

How he had managed to forget the idea he couldn’t imagine, but that now gave him two projects for the making and both were ones that he had not previously considered so it was proving a productive session. It also reminded him of the need to take a step back from time to time so that he could see the bigger picture. It was all too easy to get drawn into the detail of crafting, using techniques familiar to him from being an apprentice and not taking even a breath to consider if that technique was still appropriate or if there were another way of doing things. If he could eliminate some of the need to use auristics on a regular basis then his own djed reserves would remain much healthier and the risks of the sweet whispers might well remain suitably banished.

With projects now firmly in mind he now turned to the tables in the books to check how they could apply to those projects for there were a number of limitations which reflected his lack of expertise in the craft. He checked the magical traits first and noted that he would be limited to a novice level of auristic view in the lens. This was not what he needed at all for a novice would not be able to see into the structure of metal. This was a problem that he hadn’t foreseen as he’d assumed that he would be able to install a Competent level of auristics into the item. But that required him to be Competent in magecrafting and he was some way off that yet. It also required three steps and three steps required a reagent which was where it became much more complicated. He checked the list of reagents, raising his eyebrows at the list for they were all unavailable to him and he had no particular desire to go on a quest merely to create a lens. He did however note at the bottom that blood could be used, which would mean that only he could use the lens. This wasn’t going to be an issue since only he would be using it, but it did mean that the construction would be possible at some point. He would need to consider the possibilities of gnosis and if that could bypass the limitation, but for the time being it appeared that he was restricted for now to the heavy hammer.

by **Perplexity** on November 30th, 2013, 5:23 pm

Riddled with Rewards!

Eanos

Magecraft	+2 XP
Planning	+2 XP
Research	+1 XP

Lores :

Notes :

Solo Charging Magecraft