[Toherro’s] Imbuement practice

[Amber Brightwing]

OOCConsider the posts to be spread out over the evenings of the month where she has enough Vis left over in the evening.

The Month of Immanis in The Season of Winter
Era I of the Celestine Mandate, Era XV Post Fractum in the Age of the Darkening

Amber looked at the silver ring in the palm of her hand. How long ago had it been she had bought these things? Too long. It was about time she’d actually start creating something useful with them. She had practiced a few times on random objects in the days before, imbuing and activating spells of various levels. Now she’d be trying somewhat more extensive imbuing however. She placed it carefully into the middle of the chalk circle she had drawn on the floor earlier and stepped back, seating herself right outside the white circle. First for some regular of-the-shelf imbuing for practical purposes before moving on to the really interesting stuff.

A little bit of Meditation time later she was back into the familiar state of Clara and the searching could begin. She’d need to find a hole in the ring’s structure large enough for one of her spells to fit in. Nine of her spells actually as she’d be starting of with a simple Apprentice spell and try to use the ring for it’s maximum capacity. Several candlemarks of staring and judging past before she finally was certain she had found the weaves that would suit her needs.

Before continuing she activated the Circle of Arcana. It had been drawn clockwise, so it would protect her in the event she made an error and prevent the whole thing from blowing up in her face. Next she created enough Mana for three Apprentice spells. Conjuration was added to summon forth Acid and Abjuration to provide guidance in the flight. Finally everything was cut into three equal parts though Alteration, creating three separate Guided Acid Spheres. The whole process had been done painstakingly slow compared to her regular casting, but then she had done her utmost best not to leave any rough edges in her spell casting. They needed to be flawless and compressed as good as possible if she wanted to get them all in the ring. Each time a spell was placed in the ring it would be covered with a small leftover of unshaped Mana so that it would stay dormant until activated.

Once that was done she went straight back into Clara again and repeated the process, adding another three Guided Acid Spheres and after that yet another three. Once she was done, the ring would hold nine Apprentice level spells in total, not only enough to use up all her Vis for the day, but also the maximum she should be able to get into a single object at this point.

The next day she’d start the whole process anew with a different ring. This time however she’d be storing her Shadow Walk spell. A fairly new, Journeyman level spell of hers, but she had been using it quite a lot these last few weeks, so it shouldn’t give no more trouble then her older spells. This time, only three spells would be placed in the ring of course.

Stuff made:
Fae sized silver ring with 9 Guided Acid Spheres (Apprentice level spells)
Fae sized silver ring with 3 Shadow Walk spells (Journeyman level spells)

[Amber Brightwing]

Even though not an easy task, there was nothing truly new about the previous imbuing. There was more hidden potential to the technique tough. It was said that activation of the stored spells could be done by voice commands or simple gestures instead of using the Apprentice technique. This was something she wished to further look into and not just to give her even more easy access to her creations, but primarily because she wanted to know how these things worked, purely for the sake of the knowledge.

First she would work on somewhat more simple things though. From what she had read, easily breakable materials such as glass or ceramic could be imbued with a single spell. Breaking the object should release the spell in a fairly safe and controlled way. For this purpose she had let one of the lowlier students bring a bunch of object for her to play with. Another Circle of Arcana was drawn on the floor, but this time it had been drawn counter-clockwise so she could safely sit inside while testing the various objects. The room was a practice one, which could be seen by the various marks where Acid had corroded the surface of the stone that were walls and floor. By her side, outside of the circle, stood a Spirit Minion to help her with the more menial side of things and to give her a means of acting outside the Circle of Arcana without having to leave it.

She started with studying various large shards of glass. Most were eventually put aside as they didn’t appear to be useable, but eventually she found a handful that would be able to hold a spell, which was all that was needed for testing purposes. Her Circle of Arcana was activated and a first shard was imbued with Convoke Shadows, a perfectly harmless low level spell ideal for such a testing. When she let the shard fall it shattered on the floor. The layer of unshaped Mana keeping the spell dormant was torn and it came into existence. Shadows were drawn towards her Spirit Minion and removed him from sight. At least from the regular sight as it still stood out to her Fae senses who could pick up things of Arcane nature without a problem.

There was satisfaction at the result, but she wanted to see there was more that could be done with it. Mores specifically, if it could put spells under the caster’s control. Quickly going back to Clara she started imbuing a new spell into a second shard. Wanting to do something different then just using Summon Undead she instead chose to make a variant version of Guided Acid Sphere. In place of using Abjuration to guide it to the nearest source of life she’d now use Divination. It would link the missile with the nearest mind and let it pick a direction in which the searing ball would be launched. She pondered for a moment to add Abjuration as well so she could try and make something that could be manoeuvred around at will, but dismissed the idea as the shard might not be able to hold an Journeyman level spell.

She let her minion drop the second shard and directed the ball of acid away from her towards the wall. As the glass shard shattered the spell manifested right there on the floor however and as it shot forward it scraped against the stone. Instead of splattering against the wall as suspected it simply turned into a trail of sizzling acid on the floor. It seemed move away from her as expected however, so not a complete failure. A quick retry, now with an upwardly aimed spell confirmed this.

[Amber Brightwing]

Breaking stuff was a start, but no more then that. While any given object could only be enchanted and the true ‘waste’ of resources was minimal it was simply too crude for her likings. She wanted to find more elegant ways of activating these imbuements.

For starters she wanted to see if she could make pressure plates. As soon as she got to Clara she started studying the stone tile that lay in front of her. This time no Circle of Arcana was drawn, but instead encased herself in a Spirit Minion for protection. She didn’t plan on working with anything beyond initiate level spells so it should suffice.

After some time of studying she found the opening she was looking for and not much later an Acid Sphere was Imbued into the stone tile. Before she continued with anything else she first went back to Clara again. She took position right in front of the tile to have a good view at the happenings. She proceeded with having her spirit minion pick up an old chair that they had no longer needed and held it up above the target. She let it go and watched as it crashed into her tile, carefully studying how the weaves of the stone reacted to it and, more importantly, how the imbued spell held up.

The encapsulated spell trembled as its housing got hit, but nothing notably happened. The chair was dropped a second and a third time. The fourth time there was a loud crack as one of the chair’s legs broke off, but still without any different result otherwise. She thought she saw the spell vibrate more then the first time, but it was hard to tell if it was really so or just wishful thinking.

After a few more fruitless attempts, the Mana keeping the Acid Sphere in place suddenly ruptured. Tiny chunks of stone and drops of Acid flew around as the middle of the tile exploded. She could see the spots of her Spirit Minion darken if they managed to hit it. The brunt of the Acid Sphere collided with the chair however, eating up half the sitting area and a part of the back.

Satisfied with the result she went on to the next tile right away. This time a different spell was inserted. She was using Conjuration for a bit of a modified version of Spirit Shield, something slightly more aggressive. Once inserted into the weaves of the object she now made the layer of unshaped Mana more flimsy then before however so that it would break easier. A bit too flimsy as it turned out, because as soon as she released the spell it activated right away. Several thin, sharp blades shot out of the stone, straight upwards.

A third stone was brought into play and the same spell was imbued in it. The layer of unshaped Mana was still made thinner then it should be, but thicker then the previous one and when it was released the spell stayed inside this time. She ordered her Spirit Minion to pick up the remnants of the chair and tossed it towards the tile. As soon as it hit, blades flew out and tore the wood to bits. The ground was now covered with pieces of broken stone and chunks of wood in various sizes.

[Amber Brightwing]

Over the next few days the Fae tried perfecting the pressure plate technique further, experimenting with several degrees of pressures ranging from mere touching to pushing, standing on it and people having to stomp on the plate. She saw more potential hidden though.

This time the target would simply be the doorknob. The spell wouldn’t be encapsulated lightly this time as she didn’t intent it to be activated by simply applying force. Instead the unshaped Mana was carefully woven around the spell as normal. Instead of locking it away inside the object she went beyond those boundaries however. The unshaped Mana was extended to include the small part of the door where the knob was attached to it. She wanted to capture the spell inside the doorknob, but merge part of its wrapper with another object.

When fifteen minutes later a student tried to open the door, the turning of the knob relative to the door ruptured the wrapper of unshaped Mana and set free the spell. The students hand flew back as a jolt of pain shot through it. Amber had used a modified version of Venom for her test. Nothing truly harmful, but simply a short lash of concentrated pain that would disappear almost as soon as it came into existence.

She grinned at the result. In many ways it was just a more elaborate version of breaking glass objects, but it had as advantage that more sturdy objects could be used to carry spells. With a case full of glass balls with Acid Cloud in them and a decent ambush you could probably take out a small army, but you really didn’t want to trip when carrying them around.

To further try out the possibilities she ordered a bunch of simple blocks or balls made of sturdy wood with a hole drilled in it and a wooden pen pressed in the hole. It was something that wouldn’t break easily, yet anyone could remove the pin when applying some pressure. The first series of experiments was much like the one with the doorknob. A spell would come into action as soon as the pin was pulled out of the wood.

This wasn’t useful to store more offensive spells however. You didn’t want those things to go off in you hands after all. Therefore she continued with trying to bring the pressure plate idea and the doorknob idea together. She wanted to create an object that while the pin was still in it would be no different from a regular imbued object. Once the pin was pulled however she wanted it to be volatile and have it go off with the any rough handling – such as the object flying against something or falling on the floor after being thrown. For this she would only merge the outer part of the surrounding unshaped Mana with the pin. It took her several more days of trying and testing, but eventually she managed to get it so that the objects acted as she wanted them to.

[Kalinda]

Approved!

1 XP in Necromancy for Amber!

The following items were successfully created:

Fae sized silver ring with 9 Guided Acid Spheres (Apprentice level spells)
Fae sized silver ring with 3 Shadow Walk spells (Journeyman level spells)