chalk

[alicornucopia]

In Paraasilan, Esmaar, a pair of roommates are about to break a rule that, compared to the one about running in the corridors or even the one about unlicensed teleportation, is there for a good reason.

In unison, they complete their shared spell.

~~~

with Adarin (Aestrix)

with Ekador (kappa)

with Brilliance (kappa)

with the admin (kappa)

with Teah (kappa)

with Katran (lambda)

with Hall (kappa)

with Joy (kappa)

with Kalinda (Christy Hotwater)

Comments

[or_coincidence]

"Hmmmm. What if you cast a spell on a specific part of a person? Like, I don't know... making the end of your nose glow?"

[alicornucopia]

"Sometimes that'll fall apart - oh, you know what's a good example of that, there's this ultra-basic one-trick spell called the Lanfen trace, it makes the tip of your right forefinger leave a glowing white trail wherever you move it until you reverse the spell. If I shift while that's on, my natural form doesn't have fingers per se and the spell breaks."

[or_coincidence]

"Aha. Hmm... actually, you said you could take objects with you, what about if they're glowing objects?"

[alicornucopia]

"That'd be a good thing to try, I can get a lamp or something and tuck it and check that, see if it still glows - it might not, but it's an easy test."

[or_coincidence]

"Yes. And you can do different kinds of glowing things. Does fire burn in Lialen?"

[alicornucopia]

"Suspect not - if my sleeve catches fire and I shift and shift back it will not be on fire anymore."

[or_coincidence]

"That seems pretty conclusive," she giggles. "But if you tuck a non-fire lamp that's on and then bring it back does it still... lamp?"

[alicornucopia]

"I don't know about lamps in particular. I did once tuck a waterspout that was still spouting and then when I shifted again it was still doing so..."

[or_coincidence]

"Waterspouts spout water?" she guesses. "That's interesting. Is there a way to find out if it was spouting while it was there?"

[alicornucopia]

"Not without looking and seeing if there's a lot of water floating around the relevant place, I don't think."

[or_coincidence]

"Hmm. Which you can't do because it's very dark there, right... are there scrying spells that don't rely on light?"

[alicornucopia]

"There are spells that'll do sound, but I didn't hear anything either."

[or_coincidence]

"I wonder if you could make one. A scrying spell that shows you what's somewhere without needing the things it shows you to be illuminated where they are."

[alicornucopia]

"Maybe... I'm envisioning dizzying practical problems with what 'source' the objects are supposed to be lit from in the rendering..."

[or_coincidence]

"Project an illusion lit as though the objects are in the room the illusion is projected into?" she suggests.

[alicornucopia]

"What if Lialen is completely tiled with solid stuff...? I guess as long as you aim at specific objects they could be divorced from that context in the scry..."

[or_coincidence]

"Yes. You could have it show you just your dragon shape, or just the lamp, or whatever. At least, if that's the sort of thing that sort of spell can do."

[alicornucopia]

"Shouldn't be a problem, it's not customary because most scries are supposed to produce some information about context but - yeah, I think 'my dragon shape and objects tucked therewith' is sufficiently concrete."

[or_coincidence]

"Great!" beams Blueberry. "You can do that, then. And all the things about glowing things are less urgent but still interesting."

[alicornucopia]

"And I'll see about a nice crisp analysis of oomph, too."

[or_coincidence]

"What does an analysis do exactly?"

[alicornucopia]

"Lets you look at magic. Often other wizard magic, but not necessarily."

[or_coincidence]

"How does it do that?"

[alicornucopia]

"I'm not sure what kind of 'how' you mean - for devising one for oomph I'm going to design what I want oomph to look like, since it's not in discrete units like wizarding power I'm probably going to go with a metaphorical substance in a metaphorical graduated cylinder, and then while I have that spell on, if I look at a unicorn I will be able to literally see this cylinder however full it is. I'm probably going to use you as a baseline because I've met you, with enough leeway that if you suddenly doubled in oomph the spell would handle it - I'd make a new version if I needed to handle ranges bigger than that."

[or_coincidence]

"Yes, that's what I wanted to know - how it presents the information. If it matters to your spell, unicorn magic comes in colours - every unicorn has a specific colour that their horn glows when they're doing magic. My horn doesn't usually glow, but when it does it looks like this." She concentrates for a moment and a pale blue glowing aura appears around her horn; it doesn't quite just emit light, because if that was all, the colour wouldn't be so clear. "So if you made your substance look like the glow, you'd get a little bit of extra information about what the unicorn's magic looked like. The colour doesn't make any practical difference, but it seems tidy to show it anyway."