driftfleet | video

Who: Yuan and whoever answers
When: Now.
Broadcast: Fleetwide
Action: The library on the Iskaulit

[The feed comes on to show Yuan in the library, with a scattering of handwritten notes in front of him. He addresses the camera in a calm, businesslike tone:]

So there's something I've been wondering about for a while now, since I started meeting people here, and now seems as good a time as any to start a conversation on the subject: there seem to be a fair number of different kinds of elves in the Fleet. Where I come from, elven blood is the only source of magical abilities, at least for mortals. [He holds up a hand, palm upward, and a crackling ball of lightning appears hovering over it in demonstration. Once he's sure his point has been made, he lets it wink out and continues.]

If anyone's willing, I'd like to hear about the elves of your worlds and their relationship to magic, if there is one. And if you have magic that doesn't derive from elven blood, I'd be curious to hear about how you came by it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ambient? Hell, I wish I could do that. All my spells come from my internal mana.

[Beat.]

Mostly. I'm still fuzzy on how my channeling works.

Your internal reserves must have a different capacity, then; my casting draws mana in from outside and uses my own mana reserves to shape the spell I want to cast. That's why only elves and half-elves can do it: you have to be able to sense the mana you want to use. If I had to cast from my internal mana alone, I'd wind up drained in short order. That's a good way to die of mana exhaustion.

Die? From mana exhaustion? That's... kind of fucked.

[She just seems confused.]

I have 270 max MP. And, yeah, I can see mana and manipulate and aspect my own. I can sort of manipulate external magic, but mostly I can only drain it from enemies or reroute existing mana pathways.

Mana is what gives everything life, so naturally if you exhaust it completely, you die. It takes a lot of determination to cross a certain lower threshold on your own endurance, though - casters know instinctively where to stop to avoid endangering their lives.

I don't really know what that means. [He has 652 max TP, but he is a boss fight, after all.] Can you elaborate on mana pathways?

Yeah, that doesn't happen in my world.

[She could theoretically cast from HP, but that's slightly different.]

Like... Connections? The way mana flows? Like, for example, a lighthouse where the mana is drown up from the ground to light the beacon at the top? The flow of mana from the ground to the beacon is a pathway.

I see. And you could access or re-route it...that'd be dangerous with my world's system, a more fit task for a summoner with the help of a mana spirit than an ordinary mage.

[She shrugs. It's actually a pretty impressive talent, but Nightingale's always comparing herself against absurdly broken people, so she doesn't realize.]

It's not that big a deal... I've done it a few times. I can't make a reroute stay for very long, though.

Even temporarily, without guidance from a mana spirit whose entire purpose is channeling mana, redirecting raw energy like that could easily put someone's life at risk. I wonder if there's some difference between the...what's a good word...volatility, of mana in different worlds.

That must be it... Mana's nothing like that where I'm from. I learned my first spell when I was... I dunno, five or six years old, I think? That would be absurdly dangerous if mana acted like you said.

It's innate to us. We can sense it from a young age, but it takes practice and focus to learn to manipulate it into spells. ...Hmm. I guess without being able to go to our respective worlds and compare directly, we can only speculate. [He sounds a little frustrated by that.]

Yeah... Well, we wouldn't be able to go to my world anyway, so it doesn't particularly matter.

But the elves have nothing to do with magic, really.

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