exploratory kidnapping

[alicornucopia]

In this room are two women, one gray and sixty years old, one just thirty and red-haired, both wearing elaborate outfits. The younger casts a spell.

In this room is now also a third person. (On whom the elder woman promptly also casts a spell, which she had at the ready.)

Comments

[missnicegirl]

"That's a reasonable reason for me to talk to somebody, I guess... oh, there, you caught ialdae," she says, lowering him back to the floor. "Ordinary levels of it for a dragon, it seems like. I'm not completely sure how to teach you how to see it without an analysis - hmm, but if you cast any magic-seeing analysis on yourself and then took it off, it might generalize. So if you have one for witchcraft or wizardry or anything then you can try that."

[alicornucopia]

"I've got loads," says Kaylo, and he looks one up and casts it. "Just take it right off again?"

[missnicegirl]

"Wait a tick first if you want, but I haven't seen any indication that it takes ialdae a long time to learn an analysis, especially now that it's been taught so many of them."

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo waits a tick. Then he reverses the spell.

[missnicegirl]

The visualization of the analysis doesn't go away.

And after another tick, he starts to see more things. Matilda, for example. Matilda is extremely visible. She has ialdae like the sun has heat and light.

"Ooh," she says. "My ialdae learned your wizardry analysis. Neat! So that's how your ceiling lights work!"

[alicornucopia]

"It's a nice analysis, isn't it? This is gorgeous. I like it. I like it very much," says Kaylo, peering around.

[missnicegirl]

"It's very tidy! And isn't ialdae great? I don't have any dragons to transplant magic to or vampires to make immortal, but I can show you how ialdae's version of lightcraft works," she sends a little sparkly ball of pale blue light flitting in a circle around the room, "and sorcery," she levitates herself a few inches and bounces in the air and settles down again, "and colour-change magic," her bright blue hair ribbon becomes bright red.

Ialdic magic-seeing knows how all of these things work, and is very helpful about sharing this information with Kaylo; it is not purely a visual phenomenon. The ialdic light-ball has all the functionality of light-balls with no restriction about who it may be used on; the ialdic levitation is a pure application of ialdae to cause a thing to move, and similarly with the colour change. Just standing around not doing anything, Matilda is constantly generating a vast quantity of undirected ialdae which collects around her, giving her that sun-like appearance.

[alicornucopia]

"Oh, this is just cheating, I'm going to get my entire list pared down to a weekend hobby and have to take up sailing," says Kaylo, laughing delightedly.

[missnicegirl]

Matilda giggles.

"Ialdae is very handy! Do you want to help me figure out how to make everyone immortal after you're done figuring out all the magic things you want to know? What is your list?"

[alicornucopia]

"List is, here, you can look at it -" He rummages in his desk and turns up a clipped-together stack of papers in many colors of ink with questions, some crossed out, most annotated with marginalia.

[missnicegirl]

"Thanks!" She peruses the list.

[alicornucopia]

It includes things like channeling capacity: what the fuck and nail down where conjured matter &c comes from once and for ALL and firebirds: why and evolutionary history of wolfrider mindlinks, compare/contrast w/ unique green and likely disparate power requirements for different dragon types; explain.

[missnicegirl]

"What about channeling capacity? And what are firebirds and wolfriders?"

[alicornucopia]

"Channeling capacity is pretty well understood practically speaking. Wizards know how to use it, how to tell how much of it someone has, we even have a half an idea of why some people have more of it than others, we can increase our supply by getting familiars - and nobody knows what it is. Firebirds are a... bird. That does fire. They live near the sun. Wolfriders are two parallel species, wolves and riders, who have natural mindlinks with their opposite numbers starting when they're a couple days old."

[missnicegirl]

"Well, let's figure all these things out," Matilda says brightly. "What sorts of wizard spells could you cast to teach ialdae how to look at channeling capacity or find out where conjured matter comes from? Do you think it might be from the same place dragons and vampires keep the forms they're not using? I think those are the same place; I wasn't paying specific attention to it at the time but I've seen dragons and vampires and their shapeshifting magic seemed kind of similar in a lot of ways."

[alicornucopia]

"...I have hypothesized that those are the same place but I was doing it about twenty percent because of a novel I read and wasn't sure if I was overweighting it because it was elegantly describable," says Kaylo, starting to bounce one leg excitedly. "I can cast the CC-checking spell. On me or you, which will work better?" He dives for his bookcase.

[missnicegirl]

"Well, I'm not sure. I've had my CC checked before and my ialdae didn't pick up how to do it, but maybe it'll catch on if it sees it a few more times..."

[alicornucopia]

Kaylo finds the spell. "I'll do it on myself, maybe it'll work better if it sees, you know, a result." He casts. He gets a respectably high result. "Behold my livelihood. Eh?"

[missnicegirl]

"Hmm."

Matilda reads the number, then peers at him.

"I can sometimes teach my ialdae to see things just by concentrating at it, I haven't found anyone else who can do the same thing but it can't hurt to try and I can tell you what I find out even if yours doesn't pick up the trick..."

So she concentrates on seeing Kaylo's channeling capacity, now that she knows its magnitude.

[alicornucopia]

The number floating in the air vanishes presently. Kaylo sits, open for inspection.

[missnicegirl]

Some ticks pass by.

"...I think I've got it," she says. "It's... well, it's a something. It has a magnitude. And it represents the size of wizard spell you can cast. And if you meet or exceed it you die? That's kind of terrible!"

[alicornucopia]

"That's why it's useful to be able to know exactly how large it is, yes."

[missnicegirl]

"That sounds like the sort of thing I would like to figure out how to fix," says Matilda.

[alicornucopia]

"That would be pretty swell. I would still like to know what it is you're fixing, somewhere in there."

[missnicegirl]

"That usually goes along with figuring out how to fix things. I figured out plenty of things about dragons in the course of fixing all those dragon-related problems!"