Ask Luna #110

From: Robert L. Mandell

Luna what is the backstory of Talis?

Adept with a really bad reputation. Depending on who you asked, he was either a shady ex-Dark adept or a paid assassin, maybe both. For whatever reason he seemed to hang around London without the Keepers going after him. Alex said he had an arrangement with the Council, which would have explained a lot. Don’t know much about where he came from, and never really wanted to find out. Guy was bad news.

From: James Cage

There are many human and non-human agents at work in your life. Do you have a list that you can share? It would make it easier for me to follow. Thanks!

What am I, your secretary?

From: Gill Wurney

Hi Luna, I was wondering, what does it look like to watch Alex fight from your perspective? he describes a lot of his fighting uses divination, does it look strange to watch a fighter with no missteps or mistakes?

It’s one of those things that looks different depending on how much you know. Back in the early days, I didn’t really notice. Alex just seemed like a good fighter, and that was that. After I’d known him for a bit I started to notice that he never seemed to get hit with things – whenever an attack came in, no matter how fast it was, he never seemed to be there when it landed.

It was only after I took up duelling seriously that I started to realise just how good he was. It’s not obvious because he doesn’t do anything showy or flashy, and half the time all he’s doing is getting out of the way. But if you stop afterwards and think about it, you realise that every time, he’s doing the most efficient thing possible to reduce the threat as quickly as possible. A few times we’ve been in fights together and I’ve been hurt and he hasn’t, and when I go back over it in my head, I realise what I could have done differently. Except he doesn’t need to think it over afterwards, he gets it right the first time.

From: Henrik-DK

Hello Luna,
just enjoyed following your latest adventures (Marked).

I have a quick question related to Alex and his abilities especially related to path-walking and weapons.

Could he not use path-walking to find out when someone would be out in the open, and use his muscle sync to successfully fire a high powered rifle from far away (2+km) to eliminate an enemy? With a shroud no one would even know it was him.

would be an easier way to remove some of those high lv. threats.

It’d work on the low-level ones, not so much on the high-level ones. You have to remember that the really dangerous mages are used to the idea that there are people out there that want to kill them. So they spend a lot of time thinking about how to stop that from happening. So not only are they going to have a defence against a handgun or a rifle, that’s probably the first thing they’re going to have a defence against.

As an example – one of the standard ways to set up a kinetic shield is to put an outer layer around it as a ‘tripwire’. If something breaks through, the shield automatically reinforces with a more powerful layer under the breach. Shoot someone like that with a rifle, and the bullet’s going to bounce off before they even notice they’re being attacked. And that’s assuming they’re going to be standing around where anywhere in line of sight in the first place. You’re not going to find them walking down Oxford Street.

From: Adam

Luna,
Why does everyone think Richard is a Mage? He is (in)famous for using imbued items and not explaining how he is doing things.
More to the point would the wielder of multiple imbued items who hid them be viewed as a mage?
On an unrelated note when is Alex going to admit to himself he is one of the better combat mages in the UK? I bet if you made a list of the people who Alex -wouldn’t- go up against with a reasonable chance of winning (if prepared) it would be surprisingly short…

Everyone assumes Richard’s a mage because he acts like a mage, he presents himself as a mage, and he’s recognised as a mage. I guess in theory you could do what he does with imbued items, but guess what – most imbued item owners ARE mages.

Alex is very good at what he does, but he’s not as strong as you seem to think. In terms of skill, yeah, he’s right up there at the top, but when you’re up against a battle-mage who can shrug off bullets and blast through a concrete wall, skill only gets you so far.

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