khuioduan | 02 ☘ voice

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02 ☘ voice

I encountered something quite strange recently.

[Trahearne's normally calm tone has a stressed edge to it. This seems to be bothering him more than the otherwise measured voice post might let on.]

Has anyone else noticed spots of magical activity? Ones dealing with negative energy in particular. Those I observed seemed to have mild effects, such as floating lights or inexplicable patches of dead grass. I found it curious enough to spend some time investigating one of these areas.

The effects were quite interesting. It felt much like my necromantic magic was given a boost of energy. It was easier, and faster, to cast spells. [Here, he pauses before continuing,] The problem came when my summoned minions stopped responding to my commands. I destroyed them once I realized what was happening, but I am concerned by that fact that it happened at all.

I'm going to ask at the Aisling Tower about this phenomenon, but in the meantime, I would advise other spellcasters to avoid using their skills near any areas of strange activity.

[OOC: This is specifically dealing with this month's Metaphysics 5 activity in case you're wondering!]

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[Judai hasn't been experiencing anything like it himself, but...]

You summon minions, you said? And they're not reacting to you all of a sudden?

That's right. I had no sense that anything was breaking my connection to my minions, but they acted as though they were refusing to follow my orders.

...Huh.

[Excuse the small silence while he thinks.]

...How do you summon?

I use my magic to open a small portal to another plane, which my minions emerge out of. At least, that's how it normally works. I suspect my magic is simply creating them now, since it would be impossible to access that plane while being on this world.

Portal, huh...

[Rokuta had mentioned something like that, too, and also that it couldn't work the way it used to back on his home.]

[But at least it doesn't sound like what Judai had first been thinking of, which involves blanking out the "access point," as it were.]

That must feel kinda weird. [Both the fact of the magic doing something else now, and...having to destroy the minions.] Has something like this happened before? [Trahearne had mentioned "minions" in the context of that dragon, though Judai hadn't commented on it at the time.]

It is quite.... unnerving. In all my years of practicing magic, this has never happened. Not even once. I never considered that it could even be possible.

Feels worse than the Talents, right?

[Because that's just a weird additional skill, and isn't changing anything, from Judai's point of view.]

Uh, you said necromantic magic?

Oh, absolutely. As unsettling as a new tattoo and associated Talent is, it's proven to be harmless.

And yes, I did say that. I am a practicing necromancer, after all.

Hehe, I guess that's one way of putting it. [Judai certainly can't hurt someone with his Talent, but he did try to use it to scare people, which he wouldn't call harmless. Then again, no one did get hurt in the end, so.]

Necromancer, huh? Sounds neat. How do you practice it? It's not just minions, right?

Necromancy itself is something of a broad term. Practitioners use types of magic that channel 'negative' energy, such a blood magic or death magic.

There's quite a wide variety of spells that necromancers use, though other than my minions I tend to use life force manipulation. I can use my own supply to power certain spells, or siphon it from others.

[...Death magic, huh...]

[...Okay, so he doesn't find himself as freaked out as he probably should be. He's known about dark duels for a long time now, and he recently met a guy who uses shadow magic. Not to mention he himself had created something once that—]

[But anyway.] Does it, uh, you know...use an item or a magic circle or something like that? [He rubs at the back of his head.] Maybe whatever it's getting corrupted by is...uh, you said there were certain areas it was happening in?

Using tools does tend to be a large help. Some spells can be cast without those, but there are many others that must be channeled through a focus or a weapon.

I have no way of searching them all out in a city this large, but the areas I did find were generally small and out of the way, thankfully.

Maybe it was the focuses that were getting corrupted, too? [But...that probably makes things more complicated, when there's a perfectly reasonable explanation about it happening in certain areas.]

Guess we'll all just have to be careful with magic. Right before the tourney, too!

[Valdis still can't see, so she's been mostly ignoring the network, but Trahearne's announcement leaves her blood running cold and she can't help but respond.]

Have you noticed any areas where this is more common?

[If there were any specific places she should avoid, it was important to know. She couldn't afford to lose control of her magic at any time, much less now.]

The few I saw weren't clustered around any particular location, no. But I also didn't purposely seek out more of them. Going through the whole city would take quite a long time.

Were they more toward the borders of the city? Within the city itself? Around the Tower?

[Hila could probably sense them, but keeping her ka here long term was draining. The prospect of stumbling into one by accident...she remembered how the Void had reacted within the underground of Keeliai all those years ago. The delight of death and power.]

And your abilities, it increased their power?

I found the floating lights in an alley near the southern edge of the city. The dead grass was in the back yard of an empty house in the residential district. I never would have seen that one if the fence had still been standing.

And yes, I would say it did. The magic in these areas was heavily sympathetic to what I'd call 'death magic', but I'm not yet sure if this is a natural occurrence.

[Wonderful. If she hadn't been concerned about wandering the city without perfect sight before, she certainly was now.]

I see...how does your death magic work?

[Perhaps there would be enough differences that she wouldn't need to worry.]

The exact mechanics vary depending on the spell, but broadly speaking? The spells either shape magic into a useful form, use one's life force to power various effects, or pull magical constructs from another plane of existence. Since that plane I typically draw my minions from doesn't exist on this world, I'm fairly certain my minions can exist here by virtue of using my personal inherent magic to create them.

So not the classic idea of my world then.

[Even Solomon didn't actually raise the dead, that was impossible really, but Solomon had used what was already there. It sounded like Trahearne actually summoned from another realm.]

Because you don't use materials in Konryu, but from another plane?

Yes, that's correct.

At one time, the necromancers of my world did in fact use bodies for their magic, but once alternate methods were discovered those became much more common. When a minion comes from another plane, you can send it back when you're done with it. The many issues that arise from using corpses, both ethically and functionally, simply aren't involved anymore.

[If Trahearne's magic was so different from other death magic she had encountered, perhaps the weaknesses in the veil wouldn't affect hers. Perhaps that was wishful thinking.]

What plane do you draw from?

Surrounding Tyria is a plane called the Mists. It's said to be what connects the multiverse together, that each world floats within the Mists like islands.

There are many realms within it, but minions are said to come from a part of the Underworld called the Bone Pits, which is full of the remains of those unlucky mortals that tried to travel into the Underworld and met their deaths there. It could be only an ominous story, of course, but given how pieced-together our minions look I'm inclined to think there's some truth to it.

There is often some kind of truth in myth, but stories never seem to understand everything.

[She digresses, however]

Since you are the expert of your own magic, do you believe these areas are dangerous?

I believe the areas aren't dangerous in and of themselves. If someone near them used abilities that could tap into that death magic, as mine did, there's every possibility that it could have unforeseen consequences. In either case, a good dose of caution never hurts.

[Unforeseen circumstances were different from actual danger, but not by much. As long as she didn't use anything related to the Void, it should be fine.]

That's good at least, and caution is generally a good thing when it comes to unpredictable magic.

Indeed. At the very least, it won't be difficult to avoid those areas.

Not at all.

[Especially if you could sense them.]

Thank you.

You're quite welcome. It'd be poor of me to keep information like this to myself. I know there's other Dreamfolk that use magic as well.

I found a foot under my bed, if that qualifies.

[pause; that probably sounds more like a crime scene than a bit of magical oddity.]

um. A skeletal one. ...it's apparently happened to some other folks, too.

[he didn't murder anyone, no one call the Sentry ok.]

A foot, you say? ... It would've been more useful to be given a hand.

[Enjoy that taste of necromancer humor, Kit.]

That sounds more like the work of a prankster to me. Do you have any idea which race the foot may belong to?

[MOVING ON,]

No idea, salroka, but whoever it was, they've probably been dead an age at least. I let the science types from Aisling tower cart it off.

[Trahearne chuckles to himself, pleased with his joke.]

If they get back to you with their findings, I'd be quite interested in what they have to say. ... Though if you do find any more unwanted bones, I can always make use of them.

...you making soup stock?

[it's a joke, though not a very good one.]

No, nothing like that. I can use bones as a focus for my magic. Age may even make them better suited to the task.

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02 ☘ voice

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