Solo [Lab 25-Z]Of Humble Beginnings

[Clyde Sullins]

41 Winter 516

Clyde let out a sigh, staring at the empty pedestal before him and the lab beyond. Not a sigh of sadness, but something close to contentment. It was the feeling Clyde most often felt when he began a new project, particularly Magecrafting. At the start was endless possibility, optimism, chance. And at the end he was left drained both emotionally and physically and saddened by the ending of the moment of excitement.

Then he was left low and cold until the next chance came to enchant something, to do the impossible, to spit in the face of the laws of reality and break them as easily as most people broke wind.

Holding his staff Cha Clyde spent another few moments lost in thought before beginning his task. Across the room sitting on his lab table was a set of shackles. Two hand cuffs- rings of metal with a lock matched by a key, the two cuffs of steel connected by a chain.

His first testing of his lab would be to make an item he’d not made before, at least not with Magecrafting, Djed shackles.

He understood their principle in Glyphing, but he’d yet to make a pair with Magecrafting. Propped up on the lab table next to the shackles was a book from his own shelf, which explained in the vaguest of terms how it was done. This combined with his own understanding of the way it was made with Glyphing and his knowledge of Magecracting should see him through the project, or so he believed.

But of course this wasn’t even the real task, but simply the first step. A trial, before the proper test was made. But before he could do that he’d need to prove he could do this, before he added on any further complexity.

Heading over to the table he read through the book, reading for the third time the small entry on the subject.

“Antimagic items, in this case djed shackles, are done by creating a tap so to speak within the wearers djed. By externally creating this artificial tap a small flow of djed is loosed from the wearer at a steady rate. Not enough to have other effects, but enough so that building up the djed to cast magic becomes impossible. This however is easier said than done, and the alteration needed to create such an item requires a degree of skill few possess.”

Setting aside the book Clyde picked up not the shackles, but instead a pot of inscribing paint. Before he began he would isolate the pedestal with a powerful warding, to keep out external djed and to siphon off the excess from the process. Clyde had it down almost to a science due to the number of times he’d created similar wards for a Magecrafting pedestal. Of course, his skill in Glyphing also helped in the task.

Beginning his work, Clyde laid out the first layer of the ward around the pedestal. Instead of barriers however he started with pathways, four of them with openings at each of the four points of the pedestal as seen in Clyde’s mind.

Words: 521

[Clyde Sullins]

The innermost layer of glyphs seemed to almost transfer from Clyde's mind to the stone floor of the lab, lost in his work as he was. To Clyde's perception he had only just begun and already the first layer was done, but he knew in reality he'd spent a fair number of chimes painting them out.

As was common in his work he made a maze of glyphs that seemed to snake and curve about at random. Curving, winding, almost looping back upon itself at points, painted an overall picture that seemed random. However if one spent a bit of extra time a symmetry of sorts became apparent, a reason to the seeming randomness.

Or at least, it did to Clyde's mind with his understanding of the glyphs and his warding. He had long given up on trying to understand what he knew from it being obvious, and what he only knew because he had the skills and understanding to make it make sense. Perhaps to a less skilled glypher it would appear to be a confusing mess of lines and symbols no matter how long they peered at it.

The innermost layer of glyphs was a syphon, and thus he did not make it a barrier. It was meant to be open, a maze that sapped at the runoff and excess djed of the reactions, pulling it into and along its twists and into a series of focus within. Four openings in the pathways split open at each of the four cardinal points, each of these splitting and breaking into several smaller pathways and one large one and then mazing about for several feet. Each of these pathways would finally end with a focus, one large one for each of the main paths, and three smaller ones for each of the smaller paths. In total that made twelve smaller focus and four large, a total of sixteen or four times four. The symmetry of numbers smiled at Clyde, strengthening the warding for its purpose.

Once that was done he did do some barriers, a triple layer that ensconced the syphon layer.

Next was the holding layer, each progressive layer getting larger and larger as it circled and grew further away from the pedestal. The holding layer was meant to capture anything that made it through the inner syphon layer, or the outer blocking layer. It was the thickest individual layer, a good three feet outward in all directions from where it almost touched the outer ring of the triple barrier blocking the syphon layer.

This layer was also the most complex, a weaving maze filled with focus of varying sizes, and four focus large enough for a person to stand on. The layers were made so that it all wove together, with a subtle trigger glyph activating a blocking barrier to block off the entrance to each focus, thereby capping it off when full and stopping any from leaking back out.

Once blocked off the barrier block became part of the pathway, and the djed funneled past would not knw the difference from this and the original pathway. Not that the djed would know anything, but in Clyde’s mind he saw the entire process as a stream of living fluid leaking through his maze.


WC: 545

[Clyde Sullins]

Once the holding layer was complete, he would add another triple layer barrier, to cap it off.

That only left the outer layer, meant to stop any external djed from getting in. It reflected the inner swooping nature in a new manner, that of an endless arc and curve. Instead of making a solid wall, it was an endlessly swooping and curving. It was meant to arc djed around it instead of outright blocking it, thereby making it more effective at keeping djed out while also being much sturdier for not having to directly oppose incoming djed. He’d learned the trick by experimenting with pathways as an alternative to blocking djed, in a technique he called stealth glyphing- a variation in and of itself on an anti-magic level warding.

Any magic cast at it wouldn’t so much be stopped, as forced to miss the glyphing. This would be less noticeable than a barrier, Clyde reasoned, as it didn’t outright stop anything. Since the entirety of this outer layer was a series of pathways, three stacked layers of them each with the same function and capability, it took quite a while to complete. Technically one layer of this would be enough for his needs. However Clyde believed in redundancy, and preferred to take his time and get things right as opposed to using lesser warding, or the odd tools Magecrafters without glyphing used to get by.

Along with that was the fact that work now meant less later. If he made one good set of warding meant for any level of item being made, he’d not need to make a new warding for each enchantment. Instead he could simply repair any small damage to this one, perhaps expand upon it another layer, and then begin without all the work he did now. But as this was the first thing he would be doing in his lab it meant the greatest work up front, and the time and energy being expended to create the warding even though it was perhaps beyond what was needed for the particular item.

Once Clyde was done he paused, feeling the stiffness in his arms and back from his sustained posture. He’d surely spent several bells, quite a few of them, working on his warding. Considering all he’d done that was still rather quick for such a complex warding, something that would have taken days if it had been at all possible for a lesser glypher.

Ready almost for his work, Clyde decided to take a break here before he finally began his actual enchantment. A break to clean off the paint he’d gotten on himself, put away his glyphing things, get a drink of water, and relieve himself. He knew once he got going with Magecrafting he’d not be likely to come upon again for quite some time. If he lost himself in his glyphing, that was nothing compared to how he did when he worked his Magecrafting.

WC: 492

[Clyde Sullins]

Done with his prep work, Clyde was ready to finally begin. He waited a few bells more for the paint to dry, lest he mar anything by passing over it, and then began in earnest. Taking up the item carefully, Clyde headed over the warding to the pedestal within.

He couldn't help admiring his work one last time, the complex network of warding spanned a good seven or eight feet in every direction from the pedestal in a rough circle.

Over time he'd expand that till the entire floor was covered, and then the walls, ceiling, doors, until every inch of entrances was warded. It would make the lab a magical dead zone of sorts, and make it impossible to properly cast magic for the most part except upon the pedestal itself, but that was perhaps the best considering its use for Magecrafting.

Carefully as if the chains and cuffs were made of glass, Clyde laid the item across the middle of the pedestal. As it was one contiguous item the entire thing was the Magecrafted item. Already as he began he thought on further improvements, items he might special order for his next instance for use as the base item.

At the moment though he was simply proving a theory and working out the principles for himself.

Heading back to the table where he’d laid the shackles, he began to take out his tools. A series of hammers ranging in size from tiny to a more reasonable size for perhaps a forge hammer were his particular tools of the day. Each of these would be filled, absorbing the more powerful djed of the ingredients gathered and stored for his use. Taking up the tiniest hammer, perhaps one meant for pycon and small enough to hold between two fingers, Clyde struck a tiny bit of odd black material that looked like a bug’s chitin. Considering the piece of chitin was the size of his palm he couldn’t imagine what it had come from, or how it could indeed be chitin.

Once that hammer was full he passed on to the next hammer, this time using it to strike a small white stone. Both the stone and chitin seemed to lose its essence as they were struck, their djed syphoned off and leaving them lesser of what they had been. That higher order djed however channeled by the proper tools, and released into an item in the proper way, was how Magecrafting at its base worked.

Magic was the use of djed to do something beyond normal, and altering an item to make it open a tap in someones djed and thereby unable to cast magic fell into that.

One by one Clyde would continue, filling each of the hammers with djed ready to be used.

Once they were all filled Clyde took one and headed over to the pedestal, preparing for his first use. Canting his arm just so, angling the hammer, he focused on the image of a tap in the side of a bucket, loosing a bit of water so the bucket could never become full. He focused on this image as he swung, pulling up at the last moment so that he did little more than tap the edge of a shackle.

WC: 545

[Clyde Sullins]

As he worked Clyde felt the familiar touch of djed on his skin. As the hammer made contact, the djed was directed and sent into the item in a particular way- aimed by his will along the lines of djed within the item. The djed surged forth from the contact, and emptied into the djed pathways of the shackle that wound throughout its being.

Subtly, oh so subtly, these had been shifted. Expanded. Altered. Changed. Enough subtle changes to these and the item would be changed at its inner djed level, thus acting and interacting differently. Then it was just left to cool the item down and solidify the changes to make them permanent.

Pressing on to the next hammer, Clyde released its djed into the shackles, aiming for a point on the opposite cuff. As each strike was made he focused on the image of the tap in the bucket, willing and pressing the djed in the same manner with his hammer, opening its djed in a similar way.

It was unclear to Clyde what did this. The hammer, his intent, the way he struck the hammer upon the item, none of these, all of these, or some other thing he wasn’t aware of. Still, he could innately feel the rightness of each strike, akin to a blacksmith knowing just before and after he struck the proper hammer blow needed to work the metal. Or so he imagined a skilled blacksmith knowing, as he wasn’t a skilled one himself.

In a bell he’d emptied all of the hammers one by one, pressing the djed into various djed pathways and points of the item both literally and figuratively, along with transformatively, metaphysically, and a few other words involving subjects of math he didn’t fully understand and had only read of in passing in the Great Library and couldn’t fully recall.

Once he was done charging the item, Clyde headed across the lab once more, taking out a small basin. Using a pinch of mineral power he dusted the base of the basin, along with painting a small focus onto the bottom over an existing symbol cut into the bottom of the basin.
Filling it with clean water used specially for cooling off items, he stirred it up, letting the water mix with the mineral powder and wash over the fresh symbol he’d painted.

Done with his work Clyde headed back to the pedestal, taking the charged item off the pedestal in an act of finality. He’d only done the one step upon the item, the step to give it the anti-magic properties, and so it hadn’t taken but a single day for him to complete his work.

Now all that was left was to let the item cool in the water, take it out, and test that it worked.

WC: 469

[Languish]

Here Lies Your Grades

Clyde Sullins :

Skills	Amount
Mathematics	+ 1
Painting	+ 2
Magecrafting	+ 1
Organization	+ 1

Creating the Same Object with Different Disciplines	Lore of Glyphing: Symmetry Strengthens the Effects	Lore of Djed: Not Alive, but Fluid	Lore of Painting: Personal Style is Arced and Swooping
Lore of Glyphing: Better Safe than Sorry in Warding	Lore of Magecrafting: Take Care of Self Beforehand	Lore of Magecrafting: Djed Shackles	Lore of Organization: Creating Layers of Protection

Consequences :

Djed Shackles may be added to your inventory. Please don't forget to remove the ingredients that were used in the process. Materials covered by Bureau of Sahova for job.

Additional Comments: I love Clyde's view of magic as an art. It comes through very clearly, and I can almost see him dancing as he crafts. It almost reminds me of the way movies depict sociopaths working on their passions.

I would like to see, though, what each of the steps is for. For example, you mentioned something akin to bug's chitin. Would this chitin intercept magic simply because of its hard and impenetrable properties, or does bug chitin specifically have something to do with anti-magic properties? The same might go for the stone. Overall, though, I don't think not knowing took too much away from the thread, and I still felt like I had a good idea of how the shackles would work. Ignore me.

Don't forget to edit your request in the grading queue to show this thread has been graded. If you have any questions or concerns, please PM me.