tushanshu_logs | catchall, early November

Characters: Raine Sage and OPEN
Date: first week of November mostly, some flex if necessary
Location: various around Keeliai, including her suite (Tu-Gai)
Situation: also various, mostly involving catching people up to the situation as it stands and seeking possibilities for dealing with things under the shell.
Warnings/Rating: violence/gore in Anton's thread; probably all-over discussions of mind control etc.

While the suspicion of someone willingly working with Malicant is something that never quite leaves her mind, for the most part Raine's of the opinion that dispersing information can only help right now. Not via the network, of course, but she spends much of the first week of November seeking out people she knows to catch them up to how bad things are, to make sure the vision Wan and Valdis had gets shared out, and to see if anyone has any helpful input at all. She's done about as much as she can within her own head; now it's time to get outside points of view.

When she's not busy doing that, she can mostly be found in the Earth sector, either at her suite, which she hasn't made a significant effort to hide, or in one of the assorted nearby parks, running through artes over and over in an effort to improve her casting time and focus or simply swinging her staff in the most basic of forms.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The time to doubt Solomon, Raine thought wryly, was rather long past, probably somewhere around the time he'd briefly killed her. This, however, did not bear mentioning right now. "Thank you," she said instead, recognizing the sentiment for what it was, and stepped back, away from the furnace.

It was rather more a dramatic reaction than she'd expected, and that in itself said something about the taint. She watched the furnace door with a little concern, but when the door held and nothing more untoward happened, Raine relaxed again, turning toward the kitchen door. "There was one other thing," she said, and stopped, debating whether she actually wanted to trouble Anton with this as well. She'd taken careful notes, after all, and a damaged key crest wouldn't do anything to her instantly, and she'd gotten along fine so far. If something did happen, she could cope with it then. "Ah... no, never mind. Shall we see how Ryder's handling things?"

"We shall," said Anton, since his hands had stopped shaking now and he ought to be able to handle a mop. More to the point, he would have to; before the bloodstains sank in. He moved toward the lobby again, and glanced over his shoulder. "If it is too personal a subject, there is no need to tell me," he said, "but don't feel the need to withhold in an attempt not to burden me."

And that, improbably, made Raine laugh, just a little, despite the gravity of their current task. That was exactly what she'd been doing. Not a single one of her friends here could let her simply sweep things away, and she appreciated it anew almost every time it happened. "Very well," she said, following him back toward the lobby. With no Lloyd, Anton was the best choice for this, and a backup plan really was wise.

"It's personal now, but in my world it wouldn't have been. I wear a... an item that has the potential to malfunction fatally if damaged. Not instantly -- it would take weeks if not months were it damaged to that point -- but eventually. Enough has gone wrong recently that leaving details with someone who may be able to repair it or improvise a replacement may be prudent. Just in case."

Ryder was still in the lobby, mop in his beak while he tried to wipe it along the sudded floor and failing because he couldn't get an appropriate angle. Anton smiled a bit and went to take the mop from him, and the turtle grunted his indignation but gave up the mop, glaring down at the water on the floorboards.

"What sort of item?" Anton asked, wringing out the mop in the bucket and starting on Ryder's task with the brisk efficiency of practice. "Depending upon the type of item, I may not be able to repair it, but if it runs along sigil-work or forging, I ought to be able to jury-rig something."

"The most pertinent part is somewhat like sigil-work, I think." In the absence of a second mop Raine skirted the majority of the water on the floor and went to Ryder, offering head rubs and a distraction from the annoyance of water where it shouldn't be. "I can show you, in a minute. It's in two parts, a crystal -- called an exsphere -- and the metal in which it's set, the key crest. For the latter, inhibitor ore is refined by dwarven techniques and engraved in specific patterns, at least some of which come from the angelic language. One of my students was well versed in the technique, but it was something of a family secret, and in any case I believe it requires a certain degree of precision."

A pause, as she noted that she'd provided form but not function. If jury-rigging did become necessary, he'd need both. "The function of the key crest is to prevent the exsphere from consuming my mana while allowing the beneficial effects to remain. If it ceases to function, the resulting imbalance will become unpleasant." Mindful of Ryder's presence now, Raine held off specifically mentioning her possible death.

"Enochian?" Anton asked as he worked. Nothing he'd ever read had given Enochian any credence as a magical language--in fact, if he recalled, it had been invented by a sorcerer as a prank on mortals. There were some magical books which mortals claimed used it, but most of those were sigils which had been appropriated and adapted.

Possibly what Raine called the angelic language was simply sigils in another world, however. "If it relies upon a magical language, I ought to be able to help," said Anton, "though unless you have a dictionary for this angelic language, in the event it isn't analogous to sigils, it would be safer for me to create a magical inhibitor from scratch."

He couldn't join together two different magical languages without knowing how to read one of them.

"Enochian?" Raine repeated, curious, but shook her head. "No, it's simply angelic. It's possible it was called something else, before the creation of the Church-- perhaps it was corrupted from the dwarves, actually, given their ties to Cruxis..." She trailed off then, lost in her own thoughts, contemplating the origins of the language.

In a minute or two she dragged her focus back to the conversation she'd been having, resolving to think on it further later. "I could teach angelic ordinarily -- much of the grammatical construction isn't too far removed from the common tongue -- but I'm not convinced it would help, as the key crest is only partially in that language. Either an exact reproduction of the original or something new, from scratch, would be safest, most likely."

"It's what the angelic language is called in my world," Anton explained. "A false language, but still given credence by those who know no better; and some of its letters were taken from sigils, so there is some element of truth in them."

From that description they sounded similar--the premise of Enochian, and the main reason why it was known to be false, was because it copied the English grammatical rules and alphabet too cleanly. English, itself a meandering bastardisation of words and rules, still wasn't a universal language in that respect.

"If you can translate the original text, I will see about a recreation," said Anton. "It will be more work, but if the crest is at all damaged better a recreation than accidentally mistaking a line or letter."

"A surprisingly apt parallel, then." Consistently fascinating, the places and ways in which those turned up. "When and why was it created, do you know?"

A side question, though, and in a moment Raine nodded. "I'll compile everything I can on the topic for you. As I said, it's more than likely the matter will never come up. However, in the absence of an exsphere expert, or another healer who can use Boltzman's artes, it's still a precaution I honestly should have taken a while ago. Thank you."

catchall, early November

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