[muffled spooky scary skeletons playing in the distance]

[geonomy]

Who: You! Me! Everybody!
Broadcast: idk but we've sure got a pretty broad cast of folks eh, eh
Action: HECK YEAH PLANET MINGLE
When: 10/7 until plot update or recaptcha

It's a deep, deep forest filled to the brim with fungi, mysterious life forms, and pitch black darkness. Explore if you dare and discover all these things and more! Just don't get lost...

Comments

[cloakand_danger]

Not...exactly. [But he's had some trouble lately with the word 'seraph', so:] ...But close enough, I guess.

[He focuses his energy, drawing power from the air as a glowing circle forms beneath his feet - it's so easy here, like being at a seal or near the Tree - but not so much so that it overwhelms his control. Once he has enough, the spell starts wanting to crystallize as it always does, and he guides it into shape:] O wings of power, thy feathers strike true!

[For a moment, an enlarged afterimage of his wings appears superimposed upon them, three times the size of the actual wings themselves.] Angel Feathers! [Glowing pink blades of the same light mana that makes up the wings shoot forth, each one impacting the increasingly-scorched rock in turn. It's over in seconds, the mana buildup fading along with the visual effects of the spell. Yuan surveys his work in satisfaction.]

...Looks like that's working correctly, too. Good.

[arcanepower]

[... Yeah, that's new. He's never seen weaponized pink feathers before. And Yuan's wings aren't disappearing, which usually happens with priests and paladins after a while.

That poor rock.]

That was incredible! I've never seen a holy spell like that. [He jots down some notes in his journal.] Brutal, but effective... I'd say it resembles a paladin's skillset more than a priest's.

It's interesting to note that you use glyphs, too.

[cloakand_danger]

[Yuan regards this patiently, still smirking confidently.]

...Glad to hear you're getting something out of it, but most of that doesn't mean much to me. ...Why don't we start with introductions? I'm Yuan.

[arcanepower]

[He blinks, and then he realizes he forgot to introduce himself. He's a bit of a magic nerd, it happens. Still, it makes his cheeks redden slightly and his ears pin against his hair.]

Ah... I apologize for getting carried away. My name is Belthazar. I am an arcanist-- or rather, I hope to be one-- so I make it a point to study all the magic I come across. [He tucks his journal into his robes.] ... It's a long shot, but perhaps I might discover something that can free us one day.

[cloakand_danger]

[Yuan is distracted momentarily by the movement of Belth's ears - Aselian elves don't do that, presumably because their ears aren't quite as long - but he nods approvingly.]

Certainly a worthwhile pursuit. Arcanist...does that mean you're a caster yourself? [You use a lot of weird words, kid.]

[arcanepower]

[If Belth notices, he doesn't say anything about it.]

Yes! It's-- a bit of a lifetime obsession, if I must be honest. I was practicing my first spells when others were learning their letters.

[With a chubby face like that, it probably wasn't very long ago, but still. He holds out his hands for a second, briefly conjuring a small ball of mana like the one that bothered Yuan after his initial practice.]

[cloakand_danger]

[Yuan isn't about to comment on his age just yet - he's not even really sure exactly how full-blooded elves age on his own world, let alone others. He examines the spell curiously, instead.]

...Interesting. [He holds one hand out and forms a ball of lightning above it.] Do you have an elemental specialization?

[arcanepower]

Arcane, mostly... though training beneath my father has granted me recent insight into fire magic. All mages worth their salt know a bit of frost magic, too.

[Hello, have you met Blood Elf Genis Sage.]

[cloakand_danger]

[That gets a bit of surprise from Yuan.] Fire and ice? That's actually very uncommon in my world - they're opposing elements. Although I'm not familiar with arcane...

[He lets the lightning ball wink out, and elaborates.] ...Where I come from, many casters can use more than one element, but they almost always specialize in one of the eight, usually the one they feel most innately connected to. And learning opposing elements is more difficult than most people are willing to bother with. ...Although...it might be different with full-blooded elves. [He shifts his posture slightly, turning just a little bit sideways as he regards Belth carefully.] ...They don't really tell outsiders anything.

[arcanepower]

Eight elements? I see... well, my first spell was fire but I am still very much a student. Adrasteius has only taught me a little. There are only three schools of magic available to mages-- the rest are the domain of other disciplines.

[That's an odd look. Belthazar squints back, more confused than offended.]

I fail to see how blood has anything to do with it. You are either born with the gift or you are not; mages come from nearly every race.

[cloakand_danger]

[...Different worlds. Yuan's posture relaxes a little now that he's got his answer: at least this kid isn't going to start hurling abuse at him or condescending at him for what he is.]

...That's strange to me, too: the ability to sense and manipulate mana is one specific to elven blood. Half-elves and their descendants inherit magical ability, but humans and dwarves can never learn spellcasting, because they don't have the ability to sense mana in the first place.

[arcanepower]

[He's still not sure what Yuan is, at least until he drops the term half-elves. The implication is certainly there.]

Being able to see mana is a mage skill reserved for those who seek arcane puzzles and leylines, though I can feel it innately because elves are-- [a brief hesitation] -- deeply connected to it. It was the elves who taught humans magic, but it was a matter of harnessing their latent ability.

[He is considering whipping his journal back out and taking more notes, but he resists.]

There are only a handful of half-elves that I know of. There was a sort of... falling out some years ago, so Quel'thalas retreated within its borders and ignored the outside world. There wasn't very much mingling at that point, I imagine.

[cloakand_danger]

[There's just enough similarity in stories there to make Yuan's gaze go distant as he thinks this over.]

On Aselia...this is beyond even my memory, but for thousands of years, humans and elves lived together, and it wasn't uncommon for them to marry. And although humans can't use magic, the elves taught them to build devices that could harness mana instead.

But they began to build too many of them, to build magitech weapons which consumed too much mana at once, and because they couldn't sense mana themselves, they couldn't understand the damage they were doing to the world. The elves tried to warn them to stop - the humans refused. And so the elves left for the forests, sequestering themselves away in hidden villages...and those who had human spouses and half-elven children left them behind.

[He meets Belth's eyes again calmly.] ...Of course, all this happened centuries before I was born, so I'm sure the details have been changed.

[arcanepower]

[As the story goes on, Belth's eyes widen and he looks somewhat troubled. He's the first one to look away, fidgeting with the hems of his sleeves and frowning so deep it may as well be a scowl.]

There is no excuse for parents abandoning their children. [Or siblings, for that matter.]

Regardless of the reason, I am beginning to think solitude is a mistake elves are prone to making. My people are arrogant and do not take slights easily, so when they helped the humans and had their own pleas ignored, it became a matter of pride. Pride that led to a fall... by a human, no less.

The gates are open these days, but the old prejudices remain. And I still get stared down in human territory, or shot at. It is what it is.

[cloakand_danger]

So it is. [He shrugs a little, but there's no trace of the wary diffidence he showed when they began speaking of elves, at least.]

In any case, magic clearly works differently between your world and mine if humans can learn it at all. ...Would you show me a spell of the...what was it, 'arcane' element? I'm curious as to what it would feel like to my mana sense.

[arcanepower]

[Belth has taken all the diffidence for himself, though he visibly brightens when Yuan asks for a spell. This is what he has studied all his life for-- not parlor tricks, but real magic, with incantations and runes and maps of leylines.]

Ah, yes! It's only fair, since you demonstrated for me before.

[He holds out both arms. Small arcane runes burn into the air around them, until purple lightning sparks from his fingertips. He makes an arc, an elegant thing that stretches from one hand to the other, and then he snuffs it out by closing his fists.]

[cloakand_danger]

[It looks like lightning, but it feels...strange. It's definitely magic, but it doesn't even feel the way that non-elemental magic is supposed to. He makes a face.]

...It's like seeing a color that doesn't exist. Very interesting, but I think staring at it too much would give me headaches.

[arcanepower]

You might become accustomed to it. [He tilts his head, and there's a brief flicker of a smile.] Though that tends to be the problem of magic in general. Because arcane magic is so close to raw mana, it can be... addictive to those who use it.

Does-- does your world have that problem?

[cloakand_danger]

[Yuan shakes his head.]

...No, not at all. Although...it's also true that very few people come in contact with raw mana to start with. The Summon Spirits guide and shape the flow of mana throughout the world, with the help of their servants and elemental monsters, converting it into elements as they do so. [If he remembers any of this when he gets home, maybe he'll ask Martel if that system provides some kind of insulation against harm as well as spreading life-giving mana through the world.]

[arcanepower]

[Well... that's probably a good thing.]

You have something converting the mana into elements? But... why? Does your world not have leylines, as Azeroth does?

[cloakand_danger]

[Yuan shakes his head.]

I've never heard of such a thing. What are they?

[arcanepower]

[Wow, no wonder his world has mana problems.]

Leylines are passageways of arcane magic that span the entire world. They flow beneath the surface, sometimes intersecting and creating places of great magical power. The way they're arranged allows magic to be distributed to every part of the land... so if someone tampers with them, it can cause problems for things that need mana to survive. [Like dragons. Though if dragons are the ones doing it, that's a great premise for a war.]

Quel'thalas, my homeland, was built on a nexus of leylines.

[cloakand_danger]

Interesting. ...There are places in the world where mana seems to accumulate. The temples of the Summon Spirits are built in mana-rich places.

[He grimaces.] I've tried asking them whether they go to places where the mana is thick, or if the mana is thick because they go there. From this, I learned that Summon Spirits do not like to give straight answers.

[arcanepower]

What is a Summon Spirit, if I might ask? [And why do they have temples? He's still trying to wrap his head around this weird-ass planet that the half-elf is from, but it is very interesting so far.]

[cloakand_danger]

Well, as I said, they help to guide the flow of mana from the Great Tree, which produces it. The Tree itself also has a Spirit representing it, and there are a few others, but most of them are elemental spirits. There's one for each of the eight elements, except that Light has two - one for the Sun and one representing the moons.

As for what they are...they're conscious beings composed entirely of mana. I can't remember just now if the Elves brought them when they came to settle the world, or if they came into being after it was seeded with mana fragments, but they've been there as long as life itself, doing their part to make our world inhabitable for life.