Magic for Mages, week six

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

After the last few weeks of constructs, power flow, and other technical arcana, it was time to move on to an application. There was a lunar eclipse coming up next week that Professor Freeman intended to make use of.

On the board, he drew a double-circle of characters and lines. Anyone who'd been paying attention in class would quickly be able to identify the base structure of the spell, how power would flow through it, and so on. It was a divination spell - scrying - rather than the illusions that the class had been working with, so unless someone had been doing some extra reading on the side, there would be a few components that they were unfamiliar with.

[Susan Daunt]

(Oh for Pete's sake... Here comes the first follow up post days later, lol)

As was becoming a tradition, Susan slid into class first with a tromp of her boots, the rustle of brightly-colored cloth, and a friendly grin fit to split her face in two. "Good morning, Mr. Freeman!" she chimed as she settled into her seat, eyes taking in the diagram on the board.

The Daunt scion fell silent, trying make sense of the unfamilar construct so she could sound somewhat competant when called upon.

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less wandered in shortly after Susan did and slumped down in his usual seat. Having stayed up all night trying to research European magic and how to use it with his pack's wild magic, he was exhausted and barely able to even copy down the diagram in his notebook. This probably would have been less annoying had he made any headway in his research, but unfortunately he had found precisely nothing useful.

"Hello, Professor," said the young werewolf as he stared uncomprehendingly at the diagram. He could tell that some bits were familiar, but was unable to tell what. If something exciting didn't happen soon, he would probably fall asleep at his desk.

[Shihab]

Shihab sauntered up to the door, and stopped in the frame before entering-- seeing the spell on the board, he quickly looked over to see who was there already. With an exaggerated sigh of relief, as the likelihood of imminent explosions had been significantly lessened, he looked back at the board, studying it closely. After a moment, he nodded and went to sit down, taking out his notes for the class and frowning, flipping through them.

"'Sup, dudes," he said, nodding to Susan and Less. To Professor Freeman, he addressed a more polite question: "We haven't covered the nature of this, have we? It looks almost like a reversal of that thing we did th-- er, not last week. Before. But at the same time... not."

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"This is divination," Professor Freeman said. "Specifically, a specialized, lightweight scrying spell. Since you all seem to be ahead of the game, can anyone identify the power sources?"

((There's three of them. The first is fire - the spell will reside in and show images in a fire. The second is the ocean - a natural opposite to the fire and good power drain. The third, which has never come up in class before, is a lunar eclipse. Along with providing much of the power to the spell, it sets the entire environment up to make the spell possible - without it, you'd need an entirely different and much more complicated spell to do the same thing.))

[Susan Daunt]

Susan's hand shot up. "Fire, Water, and," she began, pausing as she pondered what in the heck that last one was from her cramming the last few nights while practising the mage light spell, "...Void?"

That couldn't be right. Void energy was right in there on the list of magics prone to going terribly destructive on a wrong word like Lunar and Hell magic. Still, Mr. Freeman should know what he was doing... Her lip quirked in confused misgiving, confusing a key rune in her haste to answer first.

[Shihab]

Shihab frowned, squinting at the board. He flipped through his notebook, looking for a reference-- having only bothered to take this class and Supernatural Powers And How To Use Them, he'd had plenty of time to study and absorb information, useful and otherwise.

"Ocean and..." he paused. "You'd need something with a lot of energy, fire might do, the ocean is definitely the second..." He shook his head. "Something with a lot of energy," he mused, half to himself. "Otherwise the whole thing is useless. Fire and Sun? No, that wouldn't work. Fire and Ocean and... not Void, that doesn't make sense-- something powerful, but light, not destruction."

He glared, tapping a pen impatiently on the desk. "It doesn't... make sense. What power source is there with that amount of power, minus the destruction-- that somehow works in the same cycle as Ocean?"

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"It's a very rare one," Professor Freeman said, "not often seen. The third power source is the time aspect of a lunar eclipse. This is eclipse magic - and as we have a lunar eclipse coming up next week, it seems to me to be a good opportunity for something more powerful than usual."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less slumped down and mumbled something unintelligible into his notebook. Those who understood werespeak might notice that he was subconsciously signaling general apology and a query as to whether he was allowed to sleep there, but those who didn't would only see that he was twitching oddly. He peered up at the teacher and blinked a few times. "Eclipses fluctuate power a lot. They tend to mess up communication spells. Good for trapping power in focus stones."

[Verin Vetis Malphus]

"Sorry I'm late. " Verin said, not really sorry at all. He looked more ill than usual. There was some dark magic lingering about him, and the shadows flickered and grew slightly as he entered. It turns out some hyper-dimensional beings really don't like it when you start leeching off their power without permission. He coughed before continuing. "So, what are we doing today?"

[Shihab]

Shihab laughed and grinned over at Less. "Go for it, dude! We'll wake you up if anything interesting happens, like an epic busybodying International Do-Gooders Coalition take on an uppity dem--

"Hello there, Verin!" He gave the half-demon a cheerful wave and lit a halo over his head (literally!), just for the effect.

[Susan Daunt]

Susan gave Shihab a Look and then ignored him to scribble down what had been said with corrections to her hasty notes. Okay. This was serious. No one in her family got time off when an eclipse was around the corner.

"What are we going to be doing with all that power, Mr. Freeman?" she asked.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"We're going to be looking into the past, Miss Daunt," Professor Freeman said. "Before the eclipse on Monday, I expect all of you to pick an entirely mundane event in the past to watch. Anti-scrying spells are usually harmless, but there are some variants out there with teeth - and this spell has only a very few of the usual precautions against such defenses. Pick your events carefully - the more people who watched or otherwise experienced it, the easier it will be to watch. Also, given the dynamic nature of our power sources, events that changed history will be in the spell's affinity group."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

"Does it have to be one from our lifetime?" Less asked as he picked his head up from where he had it slumped across his notebook. Also, were there even any completely mundane events that somehow managed to change history? If there was a limit on how far back it could go, he supposed that a basic pack hunt would do. Maybe that one where they had recruited some townsfolk to assist them. If there wasn't a limit, then he wanted to see the fight between the Red and the Blue God. Sure, that was hardly mundane, but since gods didn't need scrying spells they wouldn't use anti-scrying spells.

[Verin Vetis Malphus]

"Shihab." Verin acknowledged his presence. Right now was not a time to rise to the bait. Looking at, the sigil, he was once again lost. They were like a... an aid of some kind for those who didn't use magic in its rawest form. "Mundane events... i don't know any of those. But wait, with a little alteration I could..." Verin coughed as he thought. Looking at it, it could be converted into a ritual of some kind. "... Yes, it's not that different. If I do that, I could create an interdimensional portal..." Such a thing would probably not be very safe, but of course Demons really didn't have any OSHA regulations when it came to the use of magic. He didn't have any hope that it would take him home, because a modified scrying spell wouldn't be designed to permanently transport anything. But it was always worth messing with dimensional boundaries.

[Shihab]

After giving Susan and Verin both a cheerful grin, Shihab thought for a moment and began writing in his notebook, checking back and forth with the near-novella he'd accumulated between this class and various studies in the library.

"What are we going to need for the spell, Professor? Date, time, and location, I assume-- how specific will we have to be?"

[Susan Daunt]

The Daunt scion had taken the warning about mundane events and anti-scrying spells very seriously, imediately crossing off about a half-dozen events off her mental checklist. If someone could have figured out what the hell happened at the conclusion of the Montreal Crisis, they would have already... Hmmm, that could work. The whole point of that ritual was to be noticed and she could call home to ask about any safeguards that were in place at the time...

She smiled and tapped her pen on her notebook, waiting for an answer to Shihab's question.

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"Date, time, and location need to be specific enough that you know precisely what event you're watching. For instance, the moon landing - you don't need to know the precise coordinates, just July 20, '69, and Mare Tranquillitatis - and, of course, that you're looking for the first moon landing. There are ways to give more precise coordinates and thus not need a target event, but for this spell, your knowledge of the event and an idea of where and when it happened distinct enough to separate it from other events is all you need."

"And no, Less, the event can be however far in the past you feel comfortable with looking for - more than a couple centuries will start to make it difficult, but theoretically speaking, you could look back as far as there are events that are reachable targets."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

The place wouldn't be a problem, since everyone knew that the fight happened in the center of the ice sheet. He didn't know the exact time, though. Estimates ranged from ten thousand to a million years back, and even if he could narrow it down to within a hundred years or so, there was the question of how he would get enough power for the spell. If a couple of centuries was difficult, then a million years would be next to impossible. He would have to contact his pack for assistance. Mother of Alpha could probably work out a modification to East Tundra's own scrying spells so that they could add strength to this odd-smelling European scrying.

He should probably think about this when he wasn't tired. "What about if you have a range? Say ten thousand to twenty thousand years back? Would you have to focus on the event more to compensate?"

[Herbert "Herbie" Skik]

Herbie raised his hand from the back of the class, where he'd been sitting silently.

"How can we find out if sumthin's wardid ageinst scryin'? I knoo sumthin' I'd like ta see, but I'm not soor about it. Prolly isn't, but I don' wanna end up wid magic blastin' in me fees."

(( Sorry, was absent for a while. Back now. ))

[Prof. Michael Freeman]

"As long as the event is the only one of its kind that could have happened in that range, it'll find it," Professor Freeman told Less. "That's one of the interesting points of this family of spells - they're event-driven, rather than time-driven."

"As for detecting warding... There's only so much that can be done. Avoiding supernatural events will help a lot, but if you're really concerned, I can give it a preemptive look and make sure there's nothing in the way."

[Herbert "Herbie" Skik]

"Dat's troo, I s'pose. It's nothin' soopernechrel 'bout it, I theenk. I guess it'll be fine."

He shrugged, and copied the spell layout to a piece of notepaper, and started changing characters to match the date and place he wanted to look at. It was trickier than he'd thought, from the knowledge he'd done up from the books so far.