Harlan Halliday (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ghostlocked) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
hadriel2018-12-04 07:38 pm
ghostlocked) wrote in hadriel2018-12-04 07:38 pm
Entry tags:
♫ video
[Behold, a unicorn: Harlan making a public post that isn't text. What he's got in mind is more of a show don't tell thing, so it's necessary, although it's pretty clear he's not comfortable with this video thing. He's sitting on his couch with his phone propped up on the coffee table, and he's got a glass of water in his hands.]
Hey, good news, I have a spell that'll help everyone out while we're stuck here without gods. It's one of the first spells they teach you when you're a kid where I'm from. I'm thinking most of you should be able to pick it up pretty quick. It's called Prestidigitation.
[A beginner spell with like the most tongue-twistery name in the entire spell dictionary. He holds up the glass.]
It's your basic catch-all spell and you can do a ton of shit with it, but mainly, you're gonna be able to change the temperature of shit. Small shit, though. Your workable area is about a square foot, give or take, and it doesn't work on anything alive. Look.
[The water in the glass starts to boil. It doesn't look like he's done much to it—this spell is second nature to him anymore, so he doesn't need to put much effort into casting it. He sets the glass down on the table.]
Right, so... Go get your own thing of water, I guess? I don't fucking know. This is so much easier in person. Okay, uh, so magic is just another type of energy, like heat or electricity. The difference is that magic is malleable. You can control it. With a spell like this, it's all about visualization. You want hot water, so you're sort of willing the water to heat up by channeling the magic into it. It's not gonna work on the first try, but keep at it. It takes focus and confidence. If you're having trouble, scale it back, or try freezing the water instead of heating it.
[He belatedly realizes he's supposed to be demoing this, so he gestures to the glass and, ta da, there's a soft tinkling sound as the steam dissipates and the water freezes.]
Prestidigitation can clean stuff in a similar way too. If you're going insane because our showers are out of commission, this spell is gonna change your fucking life. Let's see, uh, you'll be able to start a fire, flavor your coffee, conjure hand-sized illusions... It all works on the same principle, though. Picture what you want to do and will the magic into doing it for you.
[He snaps his fingers and now there's a flame in his palm and he feels infinitely goofy for putting on a magic show on his couch. Hopefully it's helpful stuff, though.]
If you have questions, let me know. If you want to learn other shit, I'll link my spell list and we'll talk. Cool. Later.
[And he's shutting off the feed. Thank you for coming to his TED Talk. As promised, he does attach his spell list for anyone interested in further magical pursuits.]
Hey, good news, I have a spell that'll help everyone out while we're stuck here without gods. It's one of the first spells they teach you when you're a kid where I'm from. I'm thinking most of you should be able to pick it up pretty quick. It's called Prestidigitation.
[A beginner spell with like the most tongue-twistery name in the entire spell dictionary. He holds up the glass.]
It's your basic catch-all spell and you can do a ton of shit with it, but mainly, you're gonna be able to change the temperature of shit. Small shit, though. Your workable area is about a square foot, give or take, and it doesn't work on anything alive. Look.
[The water in the glass starts to boil. It doesn't look like he's done much to it—this spell is second nature to him anymore, so he doesn't need to put much effort into casting it. He sets the glass down on the table.]
Right, so... Go get your own thing of water, I guess? I don't fucking know. This is so much easier in person. Okay, uh, so magic is just another type of energy, like heat or electricity. The difference is that magic is malleable. You can control it. With a spell like this, it's all about visualization. You want hot water, so you're sort of willing the water to heat up by channeling the magic into it. It's not gonna work on the first try, but keep at it. It takes focus and confidence. If you're having trouble, scale it back, or try freezing the water instead of heating it.
[He belatedly realizes he's supposed to be demoing this, so he gestures to the glass and, ta da, there's a soft tinkling sound as the steam dissipates and the water freezes.]
Prestidigitation can clean stuff in a similar way too. If you're going insane because our showers are out of commission, this spell is gonna change your fucking life. Let's see, uh, you'll be able to start a fire, flavor your coffee, conjure hand-sized illusions... It all works on the same principle, though. Picture what you want to do and will the magic into doing it for you.
[He snaps his fingers and now there's a flame in his palm and he feels infinitely goofy for putting on a magic show on his couch. Hopefully it's helpful stuff, though.]
If you have questions, let me know. If you want to learn other shit, I'll link my spell list and we'll talk. Cool. Later.
[And he's shutting off the feed. Thank you for coming to his TED Talk. As promised, he does attach his spell list for anyone interested in further magical pursuits.]
no subject
Hm. Probably because people aren't naturally magical. Anyone can learn, but it's like the difference between a tattoo and a birthmark, I guess. The kind of magic that gets passed down through bloodlines starts out with some big event, like... God, I don't know. A powerful magical creature might gift it to you, or maybe you were exposed to the magic equivalent of radiation. Rare shit that doesn't happen to the average person. I don't know where it started in my family history.
[He doesn't much care, if he's being honest. It doesn't matter as far as he's concerned.]
Uh... Man, these are some big questions. There's a lot of differences between wizards and sorcerers, though I don't know if they'll make sense without knowing the ins and outs of magic in my world. The main thing is that wizards cast spells, right? They learn those individually, so they can refer back to spellbooks and shit if they need to cast something they haven't cast in a while. I can't do that. I've tried, but even after moonlighting as a wizard, spell instructions are next to useless for me. My magic is more like... It's not made up of individual spells. I treat it like it's spells because that's just how magic gets talked about, but in reality it's bending, I don't know, a general pool of magic into doing what I want it to do. Conforming to spells is easiest since those are known ways of using magic, but I'm not bound by those rules, not really.
[In other words: It's complicated.]
The short version is that being a wizard gives you a larger arsenal, but being a sorcerer gives you more flexibility with the spells you do know.
[Which he personally thinks is more valuable than a spellbook the size of Texas, but whatever.]
Nah, schools of magic are just categories. You can learn magic in high school and college and shit, but that's not usually what people mean when they talk about magic schools.
no subject
What's radiation?
[Truth be told they had more in common than Kelson or Harlan knew. Kelson's magic, whether or not he's actually using it, is a lot like radiation. The more time you spend around him, the more the possibility your own genetic structure changes to allow for magic.]
So something happens in your family to allow for such a thing. Like having blue eyes?
[Kelson tried to understand what Harlan was telling him about the difference between wizards and sorcerers but he wasn't sure he was quite getting it in the entirety.]
I'm not sure I understand completely what you're telling me but you're a sorcerer then?
[And then Harlan lost him.]
High school? College? What kind of magic categories are you talking about? Like healing versus telekinesis or illusions?
no subject
[Swing and a miss, whoops.]
Sort of. I don't think some big event determines eye color, but you've got the right idea.
[He pauses for a moment to come up with other analogies that might hit closer to what sorcerer bloodlines are actually like, but he comes up empty. There's nothing quite like it that this guy would be familiar with, really. The blue eyes thing is gonna have to do.]
Yeah, I'm a sorcerer, and uh. High school and college are just types of school. Education. It doesn't matter.
[Going down the rabbit hole of explaining the American education system is not a good use of their time.]
The categories are enchantment, illusion, transmutation, conjuration, evocation, uh... Three more. Necromancy, and, oh, divination... Shit, one more. I always fucking—Abjuration, it's abjuration. I can never remember the stupid one. Illusions would fall under illusion, obviously, and healing doesn't have its own school. It's just part of evocation, which is magic that's all about manipulating elements. Telekinesis... That's a spell, but I don't know it, and I can't remember which school it falls under. Prestidigitation is a transmutation spell, though. Transmutation is like, uh, turning shit into other shit.
no subject
Abjuration? What kind of magic is that?
[Kelson was pretty sure Harlan's definition of abjuration was completely different than Kelson's. The other ones, enchantment, illusion, conjury, necromancy, those he understood.]
And transmutation? Actually transforming one thing into another thing? Not just like enchanting or enspelling an object? and evocation? How does that differ from conjury?
[Telekinesis was a spell where Harlan was from? Interesting. Kelson never had thought of it or magic like that as a spell. Spells were like summoning fire or ritual work, enchantments or duels. Not...unlocking doors or fetching plates.]
no subject
[Useful stuff, but he still thinks it's stupid. It's good to know a couple of abjuration spells, sure, but people who specialize in that? Boring.]
Uh, alright, let me just run down the list here. My specialties are illusion—and it sounds like you already know what that is—and enchantment. Enchantment in my world means mind control. For the record, yeah, I'm aware of how it sounds when I tell you I specialize in mind control magic. I don't cast those spells lightly.
[It's the scariest school of magic, in his opinion. That's part of the reason he's chosen it as his expertise.]
Conjuration is straight up conjuring stuff out of the blue. With an illusion spell, you could drum up an illusory, I don't know, let's say a table. An illusory table is gonna look like a table, but you won't be able to put shit on it. It's not real. With conjuration, you can actually conjure a real table that will function like a table.
[Actually, this table analogy is pretty good. He's gonna roll with it.]
Most evocation spells are combat spells, so you could blow up the table. Set it on fire. Then abjuration would be like casting a ward on the table to make it fireproof. Transmutation is turning the table into other shit, like a chair or a bookshelf or something, and, yeah, it's actually transforming things into other things. Prestidigitation is a transmutation spell because you're manipulating what's already there instead of creating new shit. Then, uh, divination... If someone fucking stole your table, you could cast a divination spell to figure out which asshole ran off with it. Enchantment will get said asshole to give your table back without a fight. And, uh... Necromancy doesn't really apply to the table thing... I guess if you kill the guy who stole your table, you could puppet his body into replacing your table. Or, uh, buying you a new one. I don't know.
[That kind of got away from him.]
Make sense?
no subject
Enchantment abilities are common where I am from as well, we simply do not call it that. Mind control, rapport, telepathy are all simply under telepathic functions. I wonder how many of our abilities are different and how many are similar, just called something different?
Operative magic is conjuring flame or lightning or light. Illusion is wondering if the flame is actually real. I've never actually turned something into something else though. Unless you count strict conjury, like summoning up creatures or other magics.
[Kelson tried not to twitch at the mention of necromancy, but it was hard when someone murdered your father, shape changed his dead body and bound his soul to it out of pure malicious intent.]
no subject
It sounds like our versions of magic do function pretty similarly, yeah. It's the terms that are throwing me. How much of this stuff can you do?
no subject
[Kelson sighed]
Although I suppose theoretical learning would be useful at least for necromancy. So I know what to look for.
no subject
[Those sound pretty harmless, especially water magic.]
For what it's worth, necromancy in my world doesn't necessarily mean raising the dead and shit. Necromancy spells can heal shit, too. It's more like the school of spells that affects the body.
no subject
[Sorry, did Kelson sound awfully dubious about that? ]
I suppose I'm not unwilling to learn water magic or transmutation, but I don't know anything about them. Transmutation is more likely to scare my subjects, they're not very comfortable with magic to begin with, and being able to turn a candlestick into a sword is liable to cause a panic. Rumors will probably start that I can turn people who displease me into chests or some ridiculous nonesense.
I've spent my entire reign trying to avoid scaring my people or cause some kind of religious war. It hasn't actually worked but I continue trying.
Water magic, I suppose I thought it might be more difficult? I tend to work very strongly with fire magic. Wouldn't they counteract each other?
no subject
[He shrugs. Clearly he has opinions on these things.]
Weird that they'd be scared of transmutation magic specifically, too. Does it not work on people? Some do where I'm from, but most shit that's gonna alter people falls under illusion.
[He... thinks. He's not an expert on the schools, really. All he can speak to is his own experience.]
In my world, no. Fire and water would both fall under elemental magic, which is evocation. Shit, I have a spell that can cast as whatever element I want. I don't know how your brand of magic would work with fire and water, though.
Sorry! RL is hell
I understand that magic isn't inherently good or evil, it's the individual wielding it, but necromancy seems.....primed toward evil. As for mind control, I see no harm as long as the intention is benign.
[Of course, there was always that question as to what Kelson believed was 'benign']
As for fear of magic, it's not just transformation. It's everything. My people are simply scared of magic. They were even scared of healing magic. The amount of innocent people who have been slaughtered as a result of that fear over the last two hundred years is immeasurable. I'm not saying they don't have every right to be fearful, such magic was used to keep a dictatorship in power and regular humans were punished and killed as a result.
And...I think it might work on people, but I'm unsure how closely linked it is with necromancy. Such an illusion was placed on my father....after death.