A Little Birdy Told Me

RE: A Little Birdy Told Me [Emy]

Vanora Lawful

As an elderly magician and therefore not one to be trifled with, Vanora mostly spent her days corrupting the young, complaining about the past, and painting vulgar pictures. Vulgar meaning that they depicted irregular spells and such a chaotic mash of spell patterns that any magician worth his salt would have exploded at seeing how nonsensical they were. In Vanora's opinion, it was always a good thing to encounter a so-called impossible problem from time to time to really get the brain up and running. Theoretical puzzles were good for the heart but that was all she would be doing, thank you, very much! She would leave the experimenting to other magicians who were younger and better able to take an explosion or two.

That afternoon, Vanora was sitting in her designated three by three feet art studio to the left of her desk and finishing up on her latest piece. It was called, quite appropriately, "Magician's Folly," a depiction of multiple, different colored spell circles created by magicians of different theoretical schools. Just the sort of thing that a young, ambitious magician would try to master without knowing any better. There were maybe two or three dozen spells in total on that painting, some completed, some left purposely incomplete. Overall, Vanora was quite pleased with it.

"Door's open!" she called out when the knock sounded. She didn't bother to go answer it herself because firstly, she was a teacher and secondly, she was an elder and thus didn't have to deal with that sort of thing herself.

RE: A Little Birdy Told Me [Emy]

Vanora Lawful

Vanora took one look at the student who had entered and, upon hearing his introduction, set her brush down and leaned forward a little in her chair. "Well, it's about damn time a real magician came in! Or would you prefer a different term for yourself?" While many of the students in her class were in fact the traditional sort of spellcaster, most of them were not and only took her courses as a poor man's substitute for Hogwarts.

"Pull up a chair, son," the woman ordered, waving a careless hand towards the one in front of her desk. "I'm too old to be shuffling around all willy-nilly. If you want to talk about magic, I'll be more than happy to take a few shots at it.

She snorted and leaned back again. The canvas she was painting on glowed for a moment as the paint instantly dried and preserved itself, before it rolled itself up to make room for a new canvas that was already unfolding on the easel. With a dab of orange, Vanora began a new picture with careful strokes all done a decisively lazy manner. "While you're at it, you'd better tell me who your roommate is. God only knows what people have been saying about me behind my back." She smiled wickedly, half at what she had started and half at Enelen himself. "I need to figure out more ways to keep everybody on their toes."

RE: A Little Birdy Told Me [Emy]

Vanora Lawful

Vanora took note of the way Enelen used his magic, already trying to pinpoint exactly what type he was using. Since he had specifically said "the magic of this world," she was assuming that he was from elsewhere and that differences in usage were only to be expected. It was always a good thing in her option, however, to have magic of the less flashy sort. Not everybody was some pigheaded warlock ready to take on the world.

The name of his roommate did ring some bells. "Ah, the spirit of Lake Tai, you mean. Yes, we have met a few times. Kind of hard not to when you've been around as long as we have." She meant that in regards to the island but really, it could have been a general comment as well. Though she wasn't really one for traveling, that place was relatively well known in the family. It was the price they paid for associating with the Ishikawa. "He's rather nice but not one to venture out so often. To be honest, I'm surprised they finally decided to room him with somebody after all this time."

She flicked a bit of green against her canvas. "Eh, mage, is it?" That wording didn't slip by her attention. "If that's what you prefer, then don't go settling for second best!" Vanora said. "I'll tell you now, though, it's best not to stroke my ego too much, son. If you want a "great mage", I'll have to redirect to my mother. If you want a practical one who's convenient and won't make you feel like you're about to explode in your own skin, then you'll have to put up with me for the time." Helen Laughingwood was one of the finest magicians in the world, and that was obvious in the way that she could make the blood in somebody's veins feel like worms with her mere presence alone. Vanora was not exempt from this. This was why she could appreciate technology.

"Hm, I'm not really sure what I can really tell you at this moment. Magic is a tricky thing. Entity, rather. There's many different views on how to do things. Magicians are just a small group of the general sea of spellcasting." The woman jerked her finger to the side, where her earlier painting had quickly folded itself. "See that? That contains about twenty different spells from twenty different creators in twenty different sub-schools of what we like to call "general" or "traditional" magic. Absolutely none of them are the school that I belong to, though I can dabble in them if I'd like." Rather cheerfully, she added, "If you don't have the right mindset for a particular school, though, that's an excellent way to blow yourself up. The ones here wouldn't be fatal but they could send you into the infirmary for a week or so."

Actually, now that she thought about it, she had a fantastic idea for what spell she could paint in this free corner. Something concerning water, Vanora thought. She was so specialized in fire that it was nice to do something with the other elements on occasion. "So does your magic work without the staff? Or is that just a learning tool for you?" she asked as she painted. "For that matter, what do you specialize in? Do you see magic as a living entity or simply a substance? And if it's alive, do you think it could be sentient? Is this a give and take relationship or is it the sort that you just take until your body decides it doesn't want to anymore? For that matter, what sorts of elements do you dabble in, if any at all?"

All of these were very general questions that Vanora was used to asking. And, despite the fact that she was working on something else, she was very much paying attention to what these answers were. Most people who came to her for this sort of discussion liked to put theory to use. She wasn't about to have a student blown up in her own office while she was there just because she give him the wrong school to research.

RE: A Little Birdy Told Me [Emy]

Vanora Lawful

"We do have a word for that sort of magic in this world," Vanora said. "If it runs off of living essences, then that fits the general description of either necromancy or druidism. Since you've said nothing about raising graves or talking to trees, I'm going to assume that neither of those are accurate fits. Feel free to correct me."

"As you might have been able to tell, my school of thought does see magic as a living entity." She painted out a pseudo-Arabic based spell triangle as she spoke. "The way we see it, Lady Magic is very active in the world and has opinions of its own. You perform magic at it's leisure, so you had better damn well respect it as you would your own mother."

"Doesn't mean that you always have to listen to its rules, though." Never one for rules herself, Vanora had practically fallen in love with this school the moment she had heard of it. Now, seventy odd years later, she was still practicing it. "That's where the real working comes in. If you try hard enough, you can make spells so convoluted that by the time magic figures out what the discrepancy is, you've already convinced it that the sky's green and the grass is blue. A large part of the craft, though, is sacrifice. You can sacrifice your time to figure out the loopholes or you can sacrifice your ability to see if you want to just get to the point of things."

"For the most part, tools are for beginners in my school. Staves are common only for older folks who have problems with running after dragons when they're trying to harvest spare scales." Which meant that pretty much nobody really used staves if they had any real connection to a true magical community. This sort of business was very well regulated these days. "There are some people who use them for looks, too. I suppose you can put your spell circles on them if you want but there isn't too much room on a staff to do that. Wands, though, are strictly for beginners. If your magic is already too good for them, it'll blow them up."

The old woman shrugged. "We've got some elemental focuses around but those vary considerably. It's generally accepted, though, that if you're using elemental magic for normal things like levitation and dusting, you're not a magician. You'd be an elementalist instead. Or a mage." Vanora elaborated, "The difference between a mage and an elementalist is that mages normally stick to just one or two elements. It's a bit tricky at times. I've got a fire specialization myself but that was the result of magician's work so I'm not considered to be a fire mage."

RE: A Little Birdy Told Me [Emy]

Vanora Lawful

Listening to Enelen speak, Vanora found herself very intrigued. Based off of everything he was saying, it really did seem like his magic was a subset of what could be considered as necromancy. Loosely, anyways. The part about animal sacrifices and souls certainly stood out. "Ectomancy," she said after he had finished, the word finally coming to her. "You would all be ectomancers, then. It's a person who uses soul magic. That's the grey area around necromancy, druidism, and thaumaturgy -thaumaturgy is otherwise known as divine magic, holy magic, that sort of deal. It's uncommon to find those sorts of spellcasters, and even rarer to actually call them ectomancers, but that's what they are."

She knew better than to be satisfied with just that conclusion, however. "I suppose that wands and staves here usually operate in the same way," Vanora said. "I'm not sure how connected you are with your staff but most people tend to create key mechanisms for any tools of magic they might use. It makes it so that if you drop your wand in a fight, your opponent can't just pick it up and turn it on you. That, however, is because most people do not tend to make their own tools. This sort of trade is very commercialized these days. You could go into a shop and walk out with a dozen wands if you really wanted. If you pay the right money, they might be all compatible, even. For the people who do make their own, however, I think that the key mechanism comes instinctively. Certainly, making your own seems to be a personal matter as well but most people don't have the time for knowledge to do that themselves anymore."

"Spellcasters here usually do have their own pools of magic. Even if so people call theirs mana, it would probably not be exactly the same as your idea of mana. There is a tendency to call on outside forces, too, so that at least is a common characteristic." Having the fundamentals being more or less the same was always a good thing but still, Vanora found it strange to think of magic as merely another element on the periodic table.

"It's rare that somebody can simply extinguish their magic through overuse because as long as there is magic in the world, it will fill the void, even if you have no magic of your own to regenerate. It simply takes time. Those rare cases I mentioned usually involve people who violated some of the most sacred laws of magic and were caught in the act. More often than not, you would find people giving up magic voluntarily, or having it taken from them by various higher entities."