RP:Reforging the Library - Starting From Scratch

Xalious Village

Linn was currently making his way through the town square in his usual armor and gear, passing through some of the various shops around the village for supplies, though it seemed he wasn’t carrying any more than he entered in each one as he left. The past couple weeks had been surprisingly… dull. Save for the fires north of Larket. Even then when he skirted his way through the wreckage it seemed there wasn’t much for him to find. It was almost unusual, this lull in crazy activity as of late. Perhaps a good rest and some time to build was needed though.

Pilar's search in Gualon had turned up nothing, and so she had come to Xalious, hoping that if she couldn't find Ago, she could find a mage who might know a thing or two and be able to help Larewen. As she walked through the streets of the village, her head down. She was feeling lost, emotionally if not physically, and scared. A bit battle was looming on he horizon, and one of the people she would trust to have her back was out of commission. She was hardly paying attention to her surroundings, and so it would come as no surprise to a casual observer to see her walk right into Linn. "I-I'm sorry, I..." Recognition dawned on her face as he turned. "Linn!" It had been awhile since she'd seen her friend. A friendly face was just what she needed.

Linn was at least paying enough attention to see Pilar before she walked into him, calling out as he approached (and still almost walking into her, thinking she’d stop as well) “Pilar!” It –was- a long time since he had seen her. It made him realize just how –empty- the past few weeks had been for him. “How has it been going? I’ve been stuck waiting around on a few people for a while now.” A shrug, “In the meantime I’ve been working a bit on some of my own projects.” With a sideways glance he remembered the one that he had wanted to start so long ago with the illusionist, only for it to get put on the backburner by… waaaaay too much going on.

Pilar managed a small smile. "It's been... fine." Oh, she confronted an ex-friend, watched two other friends break up, found out her benefactor was comatose, trained a bit in hand-to-hand, lost an alliance, and gave a gift to her crush. Busy busy. "Oh? That's good. Heh, is one of them that ring you wanted us to work on?" She was psychic! Or had magical post-reading powers. Shhh. "How are Taly and Bachias doing?"

Linn could pretty much call recent events ‘fine’ as well. When Pilar brought the ring up he lightly chuckled, was she psychic? Or lucky? Or just good at guessing? Who knew….. “Well, not really. It’s been ready to go for a while. That said I would like to get it started now. Waiting on some of these other things to get going is killing me…” figuratively anyway. When she asked about Taly and Bach he released a small sigh. “Taly’s been having a hard time. She finally found Lanara, except Lanara thinks she’s someone else right now. It… didn’t go well. Ever since she just hasn’t been who she usually is.” Dun dun DUN… “We also let her babysit Bachias before that happened and now he’s back to being rough. That should go away sometime soon but… yeah he’s not going with Lana anymore."

Pilar cocked her head and frowned. Lana thought she was someone else? "That does sound bad. I hope everything works out." Part of her wanted to end the conversation right there, and get back to what she was working on, but at the same time, she'd missed Linn, and she wanted to help him. "Well... I'm not doing anything right now." Lies. "What can we do?"

Linn glanced sideways with a nod. “Yeah. Hopefully it clears up once we manage to find her again and remind her who she really is.” Enough of that, when the topic of getting something else done he breathed a sigh, relaxing again. “Well, we can start working on something that’s been coming for a long time now.” He thumbed the spiraled ring with a smile. “I’ve got the ring display all backed up so we can work on it now. With some luck we’ll get it making proper images without some crazy roundabouts that I have to do.” They won’t. Because there are much bigger plans in place by the player. But remember kids, none of the characters know that!

Pilar nodded. "Okay." She looked around and saw that a cute little cafe had some tables and chairs out in front of it. "Let's go sit down." She would lead Linn over to a table where they would sit down. "So, what do you need me to do?" She vaguely remembered how they had enchanted her boots, but this was a lot more intricate and complex. Surely it would take more than just a couple of illusions from her to make it fully functional.

Linn followed Pilar over to the café and once they had found a spot to sit down he’d take the ring off to set it on the table, looking at it for quite some time as Pilar asked him what he needed her to do. “Well, first we need to take a look at what we’re working with.” Really, he had very little clue how all the magic was going to connect together. But he was sure they could figure it out. Plans were too mutable to really make in advance for this. With a tap on the ring it unspooled, spitting the diamonds out into the usual ring before letting them fall to the table with a light tapping. The connections were faint, mere traces to make the design workable. With a great sigh he put his hand over the loop of wires in the middle of the table, picking apart the enchantment on that section of the ring until nothing remained before he spoke again. “So…” his hand traced the loop of diamonds on the table, “These store all of the information to display. The most we need to do with them is figure out how to make them control the illusions that your magic will make. That will take some kind of mechanism…” His hand went forward again to put the ring between a couple of his fingers as his mind seemed to drift away in thought, or focus on a new enchantment. Briefly his attention lapsed back into the present world “I’d say put an illusion into the space above the ring. Start from there by reading the magic.”

Pilar held her hand out a few inches from the ring and concentrated. An illusion, she could manage that. In the past, her illusions would take time to form, like a sculpture or a painting. Even now, more complex or bigger illusions still needed that time. But this was going to be small, simple. Something she'd done plenty of times, something she'd done to earn her apprenticeship. She was going to make a naga. A white light shone above the ring briefly before a little naga with long white hair, blue eyes, and white scales popped into existence, floating in mid-air. Pilar blushed. Her attempt at a generic naga had somehow given way to an image of Reginae, her teacher... and crush.

Linn , fortunately for Pilar, was too distracted by figuring out what he was trying to do to see her blush. Regardless his head subconsciously tilted ever so slightly in curiosity. He’d seen a couple nagas before, but this wasn’t one of them. His fingers began idly flicking between the metal circle on the table and up to the illusion, the manipulations coming from such the motions possibly distorting the image if it wasn’t tightly held. A thoughtful “Hmmm…” as he continued trying to pick apart the consistencies from the inconsistencies in the magic. “You think you might be able to figure out what’s going on in the ring itself? I don’t know if it’s something like you’ve tried to do before but just like… reach in and feel what’s going on?” It was hard to explain, but it was the closest to how he knew it. With most of the enchantment empty Pilar wouldn’t encounter any mind-boggling complexities, but if she managed to focus on it enough she would begin to realize the faint connections that came in from the diamonds, mirror-like constructs to channel any one input (or output) to (from) the forming display, and a simple replication of the image she had created within it.

Pilar had been practicing keeping her illusions up even when something could disturb them, and for once, her illusion didn't waver. At least, not until Linn asked her to try and feel the magic in the ring. She had never tried to 'feel' magic before, at least not in the way he was describing. "I... I don't know. I'll... I'll try." She turned her concentration to the ring itself, and her illusion started to disappear. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to keep the illusion up or not, so she redoubled her efforts. pouring much of her magic into the illusion, trying to make it self-sustaining. She had never managed it before, but she hoped she could manage it this time. Warily, she pulled some of her concentration away from the illusion. It flickered, but held. She then focused on the ring. She could, indeed, feel the connections within the diamonds, like little sparks. There was also a familiar magic there, a magic not unlike her own, used to create the facsimile of Reginae.

Linn typically did his work one piece at a time, achieving any larger effects by use of symmetry and mirroring and arraying effects. For now without exploiting those mirrors, he seemed to have a local presence that flickered through the ring as if he was walking through the enchantment himself. The probing disturbance flit through the structure for a little bit, searching for signs of Pilar’s presence before moving to the twinned images up above in the air and below in the ring. “You’ve got it… the image works on its own… good.” His meat body (His mind was really somewhere else.) spoke before a short pause came. “You can let it go I think. Need to make it within the ring and size it up from there.” His magic began twisting around in the display, forming the loops and constructs that he typically used to sustain other effects. Between creating his previous ring and making another set meant to accept Pilar’s magic (or at least its presence), all that was left was being able to reproduce it. “Try working with that I’ve put in place now. It should hold the illusion for you.” ‘Should,’ damning word it is, wouldn’t be perfect. If she got the illusion to the point to set it free for the ring to maintain, it would quickly lose its color and appearance, reducing to a wispy ghost of what it was as the magic creating it didn’t reproduce itself correctly.

Pilar felt a headache coming on, as she had never split her focus successfully before, and it was putting a strain on her. No sooner had Linn said she could let it go than she did so, leaning on the table and holding her head. She watched as her beloved illusion distorted into a mere shadow of its former self and frowned. Needless to say, she somehow came to the conclusion that this was a failure on her part. "I'm sorry..." she murmured, voice slightly pained.

Linn furrowed his brows as he continued working, setting in motion all of the constructs he needed to keep the load from getting to his head as well. With a great sigh he gave a couple bleary blinks as his eyes opened again to find the wispy shadow of a naga in the air above the ring. “It’s fine. We have the basics working so we can take a small break.” With the bigger picture now his foot idly tapped in thought. “It’s holding its shape.” He lightly stated the obvious before continuing. “It looks like it just lost most of its detail in the replication.” By now a few other mages that happened to be in the café had turned to curiously watch the work unfold, though their looks didn’t exactly imply that such a thing was out of place. With the guild so close small projects undoubtedly found their way into some of the more relaxing settings. “Feel free to get a drink. This can wait a bit. I can already tell that this isn’t taking so much to maintain.” Sometimes the instability of his own magic proved to be quite a boon, letting his own devices passively feed on it without having to devote much of his attention to them. “Looks nice so far though, thanks again for all of your help with this.”

Pilar smiled lightly at him through the pain. "Of course. It's why we're friends in the first place." She remembered the day he first approached her, how scared she was. She was glad he'd convinced her to help him. Pilar didn't bother ordering from the menu, instead pulling a bottle of blood from her bag and taking a swig. Some of the mages and other patrons nearby made faces when they realized what she was, and a couple moved to other tables. Pilar noticed, and put the blood away sheepishly. She should have known better than to be so brazen.

Linn decided to just take the canteen of water from his pack to drink for now. It wasn’t like he was going to order anything probably so it was at least somewhat respectful to stay to his own supplies. When the others expressed their distaste on the whole subject of vampirism he passively shrugged. There were worse things in the world to worry about right now. Putting his hand back over the ring he looked up into the image and back down into the metal loops. “Well, when you’re ready we can go back into this thing. We just have to make sure that what’s going into the ring is what’s going out. The mirrors should take care of the rest.” It was a lot of ‘should’s. Then again uncharted territory was always a lot of ‘should’s. Letting his focus slip back into the constructs he was making he sighed again with a slight chuckle. “Going to need you to reform that illusion again in this thing. No need to do it twice though. It should do that for us.”

Pilar rubbed her temples, trying to numb the pain. Once the headache had subsided some, she conjured another illusion of Reginae for Linn to work with. She tried to get a feel for what was going on within the ring, but this was not her area of expertise.

Linn nodded as the illusion came back to life within the ring, probing rather deeply into its form to learn at least what made it up so that it could be properly replicated. Numerous times he’d order Pilar to release it for several results. Sometimes it would fade to the ghost that it did the first times, other it would spiral out of control into some unrecognizable form until he cut the process altogether. Replication, often as he worked with it, was still a tricky business. Especially replicating magics he hadn’t worked much with before no matter how good he may have been at the process itself. After quite a few attempts (and perhaps prods for Pilar to get a feel for the process herself) the image held once released, bringing the enchanter to stop for a few moments in some kind of surprise. “Looks like we got it” he stated whimsically as a grin grew on his face. “Now we just run it to where it’s stored…” The entire spell seemed to reroute itself through the series of mirrors and channels to one of the diamonds as it vanished from the display. “And try to run it back…” However when the image came back, it was utterly unrecognizable as the naga that went in, becoming a mass of that same wispy shadow that retained only the vague size and shape of the initial illusion. “Ummm.” He stammered, trying to think over the implications of just –where- things went wrong.

Pilar was glad to do whatever Linn needed of her to get this thing working. When it seemed like they'd cracked it, she was almost as giddy as he was. And when it failed, she felt the disappointment almost as strongly. She wished she could have helped Linn pinpoint the exact step where they'd goofed up, but she still barely had a handle on this whole 'enchanting' thing.

Linn returned his focus to looking at the mess of an image that the ring projected up above itself with a sigh, tapping his finger on the table with a very disappointed look before lightly shaking his head. “Knew it couldn’t be that easy.” He stated with a weak chuckle. “We have to remake the whole thing.” Was the follow-up explanation he had for what went wrong. “The display works fine. It took your magic, sustained it, and put it up in the air. The current way it stores the information just can’t handle it.” Another sigh as he scratched his head. “I think we need to come back to this later. Backing up all the information stored in the ring is going to be a bit much. We’ll need a fresh one and work from there. I’ll get that together.” Weakly he shrugged. “Thanks again for all of your help with this though. You actually got it pretty far along with what I was looking to do. Maybe later we can come back to this?” With that the diamonds collapsed back into the mithril wires before they twisted back around into the ring’s typical form. A statement that they were done for the day.

Pilar reached across the table and put her hand on his. "We'll get it figured out, don't worry." Still, remaking the whole thing was a bit rough. "Whatever you need from me, just ask. I'm glad to help."

Linn nodded. “Yep. Luckily it’s not all lost. This is why we make backups right?” He broke with a light chuckle, “Yeah, once I get this ready again we can see what we can do. I need to think a bit on everything this is going to need to work. At the end of this I’d say you’ll have done half of the work.” Pretty much half in his mind. It was after all a joint project at this point. “Well, I suppose I should be going back to my camp if I’m not doing much else now. Thanks again for the help.” He’d get up and leave with Pilar but once they made it to the mountains he’d part ways to head back to the camp he set up for Talyara and himself.