Magic Talk with Yuan, pt 3

[cloakand_danger]

Who: Yuan and anyone
Broadcast: Video
Action: The library
When: Now

[As usual for these broadcasts, Yuan is sitting with papers in front of him, some of them covered in notes.]

The last time I asked the fleet about magic, I wound up discussing elements and the underlying structure of spellcraft with some of you. I'd like to broaden that query to the rest of the audience, if I may: In your world, what are the elements of magic, or how are different spells classified?

Where I come from, there are eight elements of magic, in four opposing pairs: Fire and Ice, Earth and Wind, Lightning and Water, and Light and Darkness. Almost all spells draw on one of these elements, aside from healing magic which can but doesn't need to be elementally-aligned. How does it work where you come from?

Comments

[hollystrike]

Magic that works and magic that doesn't.

[I am extremely helpful.]

[cloakand_danger]

[You are so helpful, Katie. That's a thing. ...But he can work with that, actually.]

Are there a lot of people who try to cast spells that don't work? Where I come from, that's very unusual, mostly the province of experimental scholars testing the edges of possibility. Unless it's a matter of the target being badly chosen - like trying to cast a healing spell to mend armor, or a fireball at a water elemental.

[hollystrike]

It depends on your perspective. I'm sure people without a lick of magic try to pretend to it all the time and don't get very far. But ineffective targets are a thing, I'm sure. So are people just being far too skeptical for the magic's own good.

I myself have never had a problem.

[cloakand_danger]

Huh. Why would humans try to pretend they had magic? ...That is, if people knew or even thought they had the ability, surely that could only make their lives harder.

[hollystrike]

Have you never seen a child pretend to magic powers? You shouldn't knock them. Most of them are closer than they realise, of course.

text;

[stealy]

you can do magic? show me

Video

[cloakand_danger]

[On the video feed, Yuan smirks and turns one hand palm-up. A ball of lightning about the size of a grapefruit appears hovering over it.]

Is that enough demonstration?

text;

[stealy]

what else can you do? do you read minds?

[ because that's cool - unfair to fight against, but cool - but if he reads minds - that's less cool. she's already run into one guy who does it and she hates it. ]

Video

[cloakand_danger]

Certainly not. [He looks a little alarmed at the thought.] I can do...well, pretty much that, only a lot bigger, and with light mana as well as lightning. Can spellcasters read minds where you come from? That isn't something magic can do on my world.

[And thank goodness, or he'd have had a much harder time running a rebellion.]

text;

[stealy]

good I hate that

[ spellcasters aren't so much a thing as a fraud in her world - but people who seem like they can read her creep her out enough to not try to figure them out. ]