Keeping a low profile ~ Samheen 26th

[Guest]

Gilanor closed the door of his dorm room behind him as he headed off in the direction of his elementalism class. Since the Professor's departure he had continued his own research into the layers of energies, trying to find the opposites sides of the coin. Since the energies of light and shadow had with effort been mutable so that drawing on one allowed a connection to the effects of the other he had been searching for matches among the other energy forms.

Light to Fire; Light to Cold; Light to Sound; Light to Death; Light to Air; Light to Earth; and onwards through the combinations of energy forms.

Exploring each combination of energies was timing consuming as Gilanor didn't expect to achieve the same immediate results he had in the Aether Domain with Light and Shadow. So he was careful not to either abandon the explorations of each combination with out due trail, not to expect each connection of feel the same. At its base all of them were connected to each other yet at the higher level of physical manifested energies that he was still exploring it seemed the connection between the energies forms was a spider web of links. At times he wondered if the shielding that he practiced maintaining whenever he drew upon various energies forms was hampering him, yet he always made sure to put it in place. As the only way he was going to get used to manipulating the energies forms through the shielding was if he continually practiced with it in place.

When his explorations touched on the connections through the linkages to Light, Earth or Shadow he had sought to make use of the gateway that the Professor had shown him previously. Hoping the Professor hadn't sealed away the prisms before venturing to the surface with the rest of the forces that the City had sent and indeed, it seemed, was still sending upwards. Exploring the linkages in that realm with the saturation of the Aether energies would he believe provide him greater insights and speed his progress in their explorations.

These studies had consumed a fair portion of his free time, yet were not the sole uses to which he had put his time. As he made sure his commitment to class work, and work in the library continued to be met on more than just some shallow level. For he didn't just want to scrap through any of his classes, but rather he wanted to achieve the best he could in everything he took on. So far he was fortunate in that his class schedule for at least the near future seemed to focus on the subjects of illusion, elemental forces, alchemy, and magical theory.

Though even with just these four subjects he had found numerous books in the library that he had added onto his research and reading lists. Yet there were so many other subjects in the library that he had been tempted to explore beyond the core of his current studies. The texts such as ‘Mineral properties and their energetic alignments’; or ‘The symbolical nature of mathematical calculations on the manifestations of Aetheric energies’; such subjects and others seemed to tease him with the potential of their explorations, and the challenge they would pose to his mind. Yet he resisted their temptations at least for present and focused on his class studies and his own private research into the energy connections.

All this would be more than enough to keep anyone busy yet it had not been the sole research he had been undertaking just the ones that he used to show to anyone wondering what he might be using his time for while his Master was absent. For the puzzle of the scroll and the secrets passages had not rested unattended but using the entrance his Master had shown him he had ventured into the passages on occasion to gain knowledge of their extent. Yet here he did not push or make haste, for he took his explorations into them slowly and surely indeed.

[Tristam]

OOC: OK, here is a summary of the time over the time jump. Let me know if this matches what you were thinking. If so I'll move on to your class in the next post.

Truly Gilanor set an ambitous schedule for himself, as industrious within the Guild as the Ascent was without. The class schedule was rather disrupted as the Guild scrambled to find replacements for the various Professors that had chosen to ascend.

Chaotxi had arranged for a senior student to cover his class but confessed to Gilanor that he would learn better on his own. Professors Valen and Markov had remained and instead sent their best students to lend their efforts to the Ascension. Rumor had it that Markov was all too happy to remain but was upset at the amount of equipment and materials cleared out from the Guild's storerooms. Valen on the other hand had eagerly volunteered his services and was turned down. Arriving at his class on the 25th, Gilanor found that walls resembled half melted candles into which the message, "No class today", had been burned.

This left him plenty of time for his own study and researches. The prisms were still in place and Diamon was once more happy to converse and observe Gilanor in his training. He gained more facility with substituting light and shadow but found the Aether realm was not condusive to working with other energies. Back at the Guild, Gilanor had only a limited time to investigate the various energy pairs. Starting with pairings of Light he had some success with the energies of Light and Fire being interchangable. For weaves of illumination, he could use sub-threads of flame and for warmth sub threads of light.

As for the tunnels, Gilanor had some time for explorations but not much as his various experiments left him rather fatigued and possibly not up to the challenges his master predicted. The initial stretchs as shown on the map seemed pretty straightforward and offered nothing more challenging than navigating the dark and finding the right path.

[Guest]

As Gilanor moved along he considered the mistakes he had made over the last couple of days. His Master had said it he should proceed slow and steady, and yet he had pushed himself hard in all directions. While some of his studies, and research had progressed he had done so in a reckless and fatiguing manner. He would have to learn to moderate his activities, and not try and pack so much into the time available. Better to take a bit of extra time with something than push himself to the point where he might make mistakes somewhere else from sheer exhaustion.

He was glad he had slept well last night, and no doubt the exhausted state in which he had been when he collasped into bed had assisted in soundness of his slumber. Considering the class ahead he had to wonder if it would even be held, or if he would simply find another flame carved message again.

[Tristam]

Gilanor entered the chamber where elementalism was taught to find Professor Valen at the center of it, literally the exact center as he floated some five feet off the ground. As Gilanor watched the flame carved walls were being smoothed out, speading out in waves like ripples in a pond. When he was finished, the walls shone faintly with bright polish.

Valen turned lazily in the air and brushed some of his wildly floating hair out of his face. "A student, eh? Didn't think we had any of those left." He spit bitterly. "Shouldn't you be above ground smiting the ungodly or some such?"

Valen spun around swiftly to face Gilanor fully. His hands clenched into fists and fire danced about his knuckles. "Everyone should have that chance! Agreed?" He thundered.

[Guest]

"It depends on where their skills are better needed I guess, but personally Professor I'd rather be learning more about the nature of energies than smiting the ungodly." Gilanor said calmly as he took in the mood of the Professor.

"It seems that the need for the campaign have already drained the school of so many of the best of the Professors, I must say I'm glad a few of the best such as yourself were allowed to remain to continue lessons. Though in a way I feel sorry for those mages that did get asked or forced to go along. After all I have no doubt that at least some of them will be pressed into following the directions of someone with no concept of their abilities, nor the brains or skills to appreciate them." Gilanor said absently, as he walked over and set his pack down next to a table, and placed his text down on the armrest.

"Certainly some of the Dark Knights I know of have absolutely no concept of what a mage such as yourself is really capable and and they are likely to be the ones placed in charge of the campaign, military matters generally being preceived as the area of skilled warriors and all that. " Gilanor continued as he slipped into his choosen seat and looked over at the Professor again.

"Indeed from what I heard even some of the best of them can be quite narrow minded about the capabilities of magic. Can you image taking directions from a metal brained oaf like that? Some silk tongue lackey place in charge of your assigned division you thinks that the limit of your capabilities is to throw a few balls of flame about, and scare a peasant or two, now that would be degrading wouldn't it? After all when they establish things like chain of command sometimes you can end up with incompetents in the worst of places. Likely best to avoid that whole situation, after all now that the dangers of going to the surface seem to be out of the road, likely it will be far easier in the future for an individual to seek adventure without having to put up with things like military chain of command. I almost pity those mages that are involved in the campaign I'm sure they aren't going to have a pleasant time of it having to deal with the lack brains who they'll have to work with time and again."

[Tristam]

"No mage worth his salt would follow the orders of a fool." Valen snarled. "So either I am not worth my salt or I must think my fellows wise." He muttered to him himself. The Professor unclenched his fists and the fire within them burned out.

"So you have come here to learn. I should honor that at least." Valen let himself drift down to the firm earth and stand before Gilanor. "So then seeker of knowledge. What do you seek here this day?"

[Guest]

"If I said everything I can, would I sound overly eager or foolish?" Gilanor asked, as the corner of his mouth twisted into a slight smile.

"Though to tell you the truth what I seek is to to deepen my understanding of the elemental forces, so that I can find parallels between their pathways. This understanding I believe will enable me to draw on them from the opposites sides of each their coins. This should enable me to gain a better understanding fundamental nature of energy itself. I made, what I at least believe to be, a break through in my understanding the other day via something you showed me, so I'm quite eager to see what else I might be able to apply in different ways. Thus my desire to learn everything as I do not know what provide me the next breaking through in my understanding of base nature of all energy forms."

[Jadmai]

Valen nodded at the student slowly, "To me it sounds as if you seek knowledge, just for the sake of having having kowledge. When you have it, will you just horde it for yourself, do you have have any real plans for it?"

"What can be dispensed to you will be priceless in nature, society could benefit greatly from your education--or are you one of those that thinks that is not your concern?" The question was not as biting as the words made it to be, it was just an inquiry into Gilanor's though process.

"Perhaps you think, I've overstepped my bounds? You've paid your passage into this institution and that should be it?" He said with his own smile.

"Come, sit down, tell me your thoughts, and of this breathrough you mentioned."

[Guest]

Gilanor moved to take a seat near Valen considering his explanation of his goals and desires as he did so.

"I must admit that I do seek to understand more simply for the sake of achieving that understanding, than any power that it might bring me or anyone else. Though I didn't have this goal before I started studying here in a way I guess it found me more than the other way around. For when I started here I simply sought to learn enough of Magick that I might be able to protect myself well enough that I might travel the world and see other places." Gilanor explained, shrugging ruefully as he considered the goal that had first brought him here, and the extremely limited consideration that had been behind that goal. Then again escaping the influence of your family wasn't exactly something that was going to automatically inspire one to the greatest of heights.

"I guess at that point I saw magick as simply a tool that simply required training, and practice yet wasn't far different from any other profession or art. Yet my attention was arrested by a statement in my first class here, where Professor Dhorn indicated, that there are no true Archmages among our people. I was dumbfounded to say the least for I had already seen a few examples of what I thought in my ignorance were truly marvelous, and Masterful feats of Magick. He explained that while there were numerous Masters who while being Masters in their area of study, none them possess a true understanding of the fundamental nature of the energies that make up all things." Gilanor paused, flicking a glance at the Professor as he wondered he agreed with this statement in the same fashion that Professor Chaotxi did.

"I've been seeking to overcome the limitations that my perceptions place on the energies available. Firstly, I’ve been attempting to see the true nature of the energies of the Aether and thus bypass the veil that my physical perceptions apply to them. Secondly, I’ve also sought to make use of gathered energy in a fashion where the result doesn't match of the source of the thread of energy as such." Gilanor considered for a moment how to approach the explanation of what he thought to be his breakthrough though he was aware that others might also be more than capable of already having achieved it.

"Now having been trying to see the beyond the surface nature of the energy I found that I could after a time see fault lines or fractures within the thread. For example with a gathered thread of shadow energy I felt a sense of divided energy within it such as the shadow of a tree, or the chill of the night. I thought at first that these fault lines might also lead me in the interconnections between energies. Yet that wasn't the case at all, for I was still simply working with the limitations my physical perceptions had placed on the energy." Gilanor considered explaining about the Aether spirit that had been at the training place that the Professor gate had taken him to, but didn't see the point in adding the background information.

"Yet after some thought and the awareness that of course light and shadow for example are indeed at their core the same basic energy than they aren't interlinked in some way. Rather they simply are the same energy and that their differing manifestations in the Tether have altered them to our physical perceptions, and those to how we see them on the Aether itself. It was then an idea occured to me one for which your class had been its source of inspiration. As during your class we had of course constructed first wind and then fire shields to provided physical protection. Yet in both those cases there was a common point which was the impression of motion onto the gathered energies. Yet I had not gathered any thread energy to provide that energy of motion, rather I had simply impressed by will that aspect of energy onto first the air energies and then the flame energies." Gilanor's tone of voice carried with it the excitement he still felt over the realization that he had made, yet his words were still precise and unhurried.

"That proved to be the key for you don't have to be able to perceive a truth of something in order to make use of that truth. Our will is the prism or focal force that enables us to manipulate the energies and I think the correct application of will might also be what is required to overcome the awareness of our physical perceptions. For by application of will I impressed cold upon energy I had gathered from the warmth of light, and formed it into a weave shaped like a dagger. When I cast the dagger at stone it left a layer of frost upon the area where it struck. I've been able to duplicate the results, and achieve others. Yet to achieve the same results at present is still more tiring than simply using the energy that I perceive, at present, to match the type of physical manifestation that I required directly. For example Light or fire for heat effects, sources of shadow or cold for frost effects. I'm still working on overcoming some physical perceptions when impressing energy towards the results I desire." Gilanor said, watching the Professor to see how he reacted to what Gilanor had shared with him.

It was the Professor's class and instruction that had given him the idea for what he had tried, and he just hoped he would be receptive to the concept that Gilanor had developed. Indeed he even hoped that he might well provide him with other suggestions of what he might try, for with Professor Chaotxi he felt he needed someone to give him some additional pointers.

[Jadmai]

Valen grinned with what could be an air of amusement as well as one of superiority. “Your kind is a special one. We rarely come across it. You see, most of us, as we develop our capabilities, are happy enough with the opportunities the applied art of magic offers us. We can set things on fire, move things around, and so on and so forth. In the very same way the maker of catapults makes use of the fact that things fall down without truly knowing why they do so, in fact.

So basically, you ask whether it is possible that the energies we use in our weavings are in essence not qualitatively different, but are only perceived so because of the modalities of our perceptual system, if I catch your drift? Personally, I think this is the case indeed. Whether this implies that one perceived form of energy can be transformed in an other without investment of a different source is an entirely different matter.
All that surrounds us is energy. And in our attempt to influence these energies in other than purely physical ways, we have created a system of theories and concepts that bring order in our observations and actions. Per definition, we use labels to discern between things we perceive as differently. This here”, the professor pointed into thin air, “is a blurry strand of shadow energy, and that there is a knife sharp bit of metallic energy. What do these labels refer to? They refer to a particular characteristic of this substance. The shadow energy I associate with slow movement, with concealement. The other strand, I feel, would be very suitable to split or slice things. Now the real question is whether that difference is a quantitative or a qualitative one. Are they two instances of the same thing that behave differently because of other energies influencing them, like two waves of water can vary in speed, velocity, and form? Or are they two things that differ on a more fundamental level?

For me the answer is clear. The priests of Molten can create flames as hot or hotter than any flame that will ever sprout from my fingers. Yet they do not perceive the action required to do so as manipulating the whimsical energy of fire you are so accustomed with and would see being manipulated as the priest performs this feat. No, they say they receive energy from their deity which they introduce in the world. Mindcrafters use their personal energy, so they claim, for crying out loud, as if we are walking barrels of the stuff. I believe they all do the same thing, in the end. They label it differently, and their systems of labels each have their own weaknesses and strengths, just as different mathematical models have their particular strengths and weaknesses. Joint weavings have been attempted by magick-users of different traditions, their manipulations influencing eachother. The fault lines you claim to have perceived, may then be but little variations within each label, for the forms a wave can assume are uncountable and so would be the number of words needed to describe each of them individually.

But even if I am correct in this assumption, we are not closer to insight. How come the energy surrounding flames behaves in a particular way? Perhaps the flames themselves consist of energy. Perhaps everything does. Maybe all we powerful mages see with our oh so magnifiscently developed sixth sense is a pool that is but a little less murky that that seen by the courageous military commanders we just spoke about. Maybe superior to this sixth sense awaits a seventh, an eight, a ninth...

Some have devoted their lives to gain greater understanding in this issue, none of which I have known in person, and all of which have gone mad or have disappeared. I do not admire them, and I do not think such devotion is the trademark of a true Master. In my opinion, the Master is the one who is able to do that what no other can do in the same conditions.
I believe the murkiness of the pool is undepletable, and all you can hope to achieve is a little more clarity in the water, as this can probably be beneficial for your weavings and make you closer to a Master. To see the things as they are however, void of the qualities we impose on reality by means of our perceptual modalities, requires devinity, I think, and is as such a rediculous cause. We are not a formless ocean floor, but a particularily shaped river bank, and all the understanding that will ever flow through us will inevitably be shaped by our own form.

Now, all this reveries aside, the practical issue at hand. Would it be useful to understand the true nature of these things a little better? Would it allow us to transform the properties of energy from one form into an other, whether this form be quantitative or qualitative? Of course this can be done! Alchemists have been doing it since alchemy was invented! From physical to magical, from fire to water, and so on and so forth. In weavings, it is unconventional, and I know of nobody who has done so with success. Can it be done without investing external energy? I think not. The experiences you describe may be understood as follows: perhaps what you call your will is nothing more than a quantity of energy at your personal disposal, very much comparable to what mindcrafters employ. Investment of this energy could theoretically, alter the qualities of the present energy, hence changing the effects you would expect from energy with such a label.

The advantage of development of such techniques would of course be that forms of energy could be used in locations where they are scarce. However, I believe a more useful approach to be able to do this, would be to investigate ways in which energy can be stored, put in an easily accessible container as it were, and be transported to another place where it would be immediately accessible. Runecraft is the closest try so far, if I am not mistaken. But this perhaps not a topic that interests you.

Then again, the greatest minds have been stubborn minds. Perhaps you have found a glitch in traditional theory. Maybe there are ways to alter the type of energy without investing other energy. Maybe the typology of energy is a constraint, that limits our power and would be best rid of, in the same way that a Dark Knight cannot hurl fire balls because he cannot rid himself of his limited perception of the physical world. I cannot say that this goal of yours is impossible nor that the pursuit of such skills is without interest. Should you seek to persue it, I would advise you to consult the practioners of these other disciplines I have mentioned.

[Tristam]

Archived without skilling due to player disappearance.