[IC] [Snek] Continuations

[pyrighteous]

Comments

[othellovonryan]

[All y'all are slow ass typers, wow.]

Bootyyyshaker9000: I'm coming over. Shouldn't be more then a few minutes. Drag me out of the snow if its been more than ten.

[pyrighteous]

[ Look!! He’s doing his best.

He puts Flapjack in staff form and then goes to the window to wait and watch. ]

HUNTER: OKAY I AM WATCHING FOR YOU

[othellovonryan]

[Luckily, he's had all day of tea and blankets that his internal temperature is high enough that he can go out into the snow and be a fairly functional turtleperson.]

[Preparation is key to avoid brumating.]

[But turtles also believe in the buddy system for snow days Just In Case.]

[But there is the dark figure dashing across the snow which would honestly probably get cryptid talks if others saw before stopping outside of Mouse and jumping up to his window in one motion, perching easily on the sill.]

[He waves.]

[pyrighteous]

[ Hunter jolts a bit despite having been warned about Donnie coming over. (But he doesn’t waste time in unlocking the window so the turtle can come in.)

It’s warm inside, thanks to Pari’s magic. There’s a wide daybed near the window that doubles as a bay window; one corner has been piled high with a bunch of cardinal plushies, including one six foot tall bird that looms over the rest. There’s a book on the floor next to the bed - an Emperor’s Coven manual? And a couple of blueprints tacked to the wall. Another bed is on the opposite wall, the sheets folded with military precision. Someone put a ton of work into forming the frame, including the little cup that usually holds Flapjack.

There’s also quite a few glyphs drawn all over the walls and floor with chalk. Most have been smudged out - there’s a bowl nearby with water and a washcloth - and a not insignificant number of scorch marks. Also, a fresh pot of tea, still steaming fragrantly.

Hunter locks the window behind Donnie once he’s in. ]

Welcome, I guess. I - know it’s not much, but…

[othellovonryan]

[He slips inside and looks around.]

Its nice. Especially for only a few weeks at most. [It takes a while to personalize a room. Especially when shopping isn't exactly an option.]

[Underground life yo.]

[His eyes are drawn to the blueprints though.]

[pyrighteous]

I - I’ve added a lot lately, to be honest.

[ He dismisses his staff so that Flapjack can resume his perch as king of the cardinal pile.

There are two blueprints on the wall: one for an artificial staff and one for a reconstructed portal door. The staff is an elegant thing, with a dense array of glyphs worked into it; the portal door is… surprisingly simple, at its core: power and a frame. Most of the blueprint is dedicated to figuring out how to make the door work with a minimum of power. ]

[othellovonryan]

That's usually how it goes. Its good to personalize your space.

[He considers the staff for a minute, taking in the glyphs.]

[He looks at the portal and]

[Immediately looks away.]

[Portals are important, but its not what he wants to think about right now.]

[pyrighteous]

[ Hunter watches him with a hint of a smile. ]

Glyphs are pretty cool, huh?

[othellovonryan]

They are a fascinating concept, that a simple drawing can invoke such power.

And its not reliant on your power at all, correct?

[pyrighteous]

[ Hunter shakes his head. ]

Ambient magic. So even humans and powerless … mes can use them.

[ He gestures at his chalk drawings on the floor. ]

I was working on something with them, actually.

[othellovonryan]

Which is the real interesting bit. I've seen glyph objects to achieve certain affects, but getting them to activate was another matter. Usually its Mikey who does it, and he has the most mystic potential.

[He looks over at the chalk drawings and crouches down to take a closer look.]

[pyrighteous]

[ Seems like he’s trying to combine two glyphs in a particular array? Mostly he’s forming circles with proportions of one glyph vs another. ]

How does Mikey usually do it?

[othellovonryan]

He wings it. Enough belief in things working out and self confidence combined with his natural talent.

Mikey making a portal solo the way he did isn't a feat most mystics can achieve. As in most mystics in literally all of history, according to Draxum. But that fits. Mikey's raw potential in things are usually pretty great. The martial, art, why not mystic stuff? Its just something about him.

Wouldn't this confuse the magic? [Gesturing to the partially combined glyphs.]

[pyrighteous]

Oh. Yeah that… won’t help me. I have to do this the hard way.

[ He makes a slight frustrated noise at Donatello pointing it out. ]

Yeah, it is. At least in that configuration it is. But a little confusion is sort of the point? I’m trying to combine light and fire to make something that glows with all the heat of a fire but none of the smoke and burning.

[othellovonryan]

I am curious if maybe he's just enough ambient magic on his own... [It is a thought. The first time his brothers used their mystic weapons, it was in the Hidden City, but it was just Mikey who got the transport down there to work.]

Hmm, this is our of my realm of experience, and magic likes to break rules, and between worlds might be different, but...

I have seen Draxum and a few others wanting to do big magic, and that will require rituals and components. A lot of runic writing. The bigger the spell, the more they have to write. All the parts are important for a desired effect.

It seems like this kind of magic works more akin to coding. Which means you can't just combine pieces together, it confuses the program and either it does nothing, or it just acts wild and erratic as it tries to make sense.

Instead its something where you have to add more lines, create things step by step before it all combines.

Just like the more complex rituals needs more in their circles.

Has just trying to put the images together like this gotten anything that was even a little controlled?

[pyrighteous]

[ Hunter listens to that, still staring down at the glyphs he’s working on. ]

There were definitely some that worked better? Like - some of them just fizzled, and some that blew up.

[ He taps the one he’s working on. ]

I THINK this design is better? It’s basically got a huge light glyph around a bunch of small fire glyphs.

[othellovonryan]

[He nods.] That's more like what I observed. The symbol has to be complete, then its just a question of how much of the symbol you have and how it feeds into others.

Now how you feed something that's this basic into each other, I couldn't guess. Just seems like there needs to be clear...instruction in the components, so the symbols need to be solid.

[pyrighteous]

Instructions…

[ He frowns down at the design, thinking hard. ]

Glyphs don’t recognize words. But they do recognize lines.

[ He gets up to go retrieve the staff blueprint. This has tons of light glyphs… and some odd squiggles in the connections between them at key points. Like an electrical diagram. ]

[othellovonryan]

[He will move closer to look at it.]

....oh.

Actually, yes, this is just like a schematic for machines in a series.

[pyrighteous]

Wait, really? Can you read it then?

[othellovonryan]

Sort of.

I can read the circuit, and make a generalized guess as to the outcome, but obviously I'm not familiar with what all these symbols do.

Also I imagine there is at least some of your will at play unless your staff could only do a set number of spells and wasn't able to do anything different on the fly. Magic and mystic stuff usually needs some kind of will on it from my experience.

Which would really be replacing a circuit of devices that were able to be programmed with a computer, which is essentially an artificial brain. The circuit activates, the artificial brain allows machines to do personalized stuff.

[pyrighteous]

[ Hunter frowns, thinking hard. ]

The staff is a lot more flexible, yeah. There are some set things it can do? Anyone can blink with it, for example. But some of it’s just me. I had a heck of a learning curve…

[ He gestures at the glyph on the floor. ]

Normally a combined glyph only does one specific effect. But there’s still some shaping? Luz says you have to know what you want out of it. So there’s still some amount of will involved.

[othellovonryan]

[He nods, rubbing his chin.] So it could operate like a programmable circuit with specialized machines.

Do you know which line is blinking?

[pyrighteous]

[ Hunter closes his eyes, trying to remember. He adjusts his grip on an invisible staff. Which circuit was it? There’d been that mission where he’d been shot out of the sky; his staff had broken in two right about… ]

There. This one. I remember it because I had so much trouble blinking after my staff broke on a mission.

[ he points down to the symbols displayed on the staff wing. ]

I did manage to fix it? After I blinked into a couple of trees.

[othellovonryan]

As an aside, I would use that line as a reference for your portal when you get further into your understanding of combining glyphs. Chances are high the magics will be related. Also any time manipulation magic.

[He traces along the line.] So this is a reliable circuit without alteration. That would mean if you go along this line from start to finish, it won't touch anything off this line. More then that, that means these glyphs in succession gets that result without interference. Anytime you put these glyphs together in line without any special efforts, it will get a blink. By that same token, if its missing part of this circuit, the blink won't happen. That's a consistency to focus on, because if you can understand why those glyphs get that outcome, you can better understand the values you're working with.

And then you can better figure out how to change it for other affects.

At least if its rules are sensible, I am prefacing this is entirely theoretical.