Ask Luna #178

From: James

Hey, quick question if you’ve got the time:

What areas of magical study are like the rocket science and the quantum physics of the magical world? Like, if a mage walked up to you (in a social setting) and said, “I study _____”, you would say “holy crap you must be smart” and then the mage proceedes to bore you to death talking about their research. Or are there any subjects you had to study as an apprentice you thought were boring and confusing as hell?

Construct creation is the big one.  Just making magic items isn’t too hard, but making ones that actually follow orders and act on their own is crazy complicated.  Apparently you do it by making a sort of duplicate mind/decision tree or something . . . we were supposed to learn the basics of it in the apprentice programme but I couldn’t make head or tail of it.  

From: Jack

Hope everything is going reasonably well. Or as well as it can be with the “Anne Situation”. I had a few out-there questions if you’ve got the time and inclination to answer them.

1. Any idea if Dragons can observe other worlds like the one Richard traveled too? I wonder because it seems like a mage like Richard (with a Diviner Mindset) might want to conceal his plans from other Diviners and creatures with similar abilities by going to a place where he was removed from this world’s flow of time and would (presumably) be invisible to any longer term divination (which I understand is extremely difficult, but it sounds like it isn’t Alex’s forte and he hasn’t had a ton of experience with other Diviners, so his perspective might skew it as being less viable than it actually is). It also would keep him safe from other dark mage rivals and the light council if there were any plans he had to wait on for years until the time was right. Again, a dragon might be a bit outlandish for even someone like Richard to try to go against, but the man is ambitious.

2. Does Alex think Richard values political power or personal power more?

3. Has anyone gone a different way with the “White Rose modifications?” Like, historically, have life and mind mages ever collaborated to turn ordinary humans into souped up footsoldiers? Seems like something that might appeal to dark mages.

4. Do you think Harvesting’s drawbacks(aside from being super evil) are related to the ones you get from using Elsewhere to change your magic type? Also, is it possible harvesting’s ability to create an (insane) mage with two magic types is because it copies the personality of the victim onto the harvester’s mind? It would explain why it drives the user insane but does actually give them access to the victims magic. Rachel’s experience would support that theory. Along the same lines, could Richard use a mind mage to “format” an ordinary person’s mind and use Elsewhere to cause that perception they have of themselves to shape them and make them into mages? Or could an adept be modified to expand their abilities to a mage of the same type (like you talked about in the spectrum analogy), which would presumably be less invasive than trying to change types all together. It also would give Richard a massive pool of disgruntled adepts to turn into soldiers against the light council. Jinn abilities like the Monkey’s paw had could possibly also achieve the same effect.

Anyways, thanks and good luck!

4. Can a focus become an imbued item as it is used over a long time and becomes attuned to the user’s personality and magic?

Okay, it’s obviously been long enough that I need to go over this once more:  when it says ‘Ask Luna’, that does not mean ‘send Luna a letter the size of Apple’s Terms and Conditions where you ask every random thing that pops into your head’.  If you can’t narrow it down to 2 or 3 questions at most, you probably don’t need to know any of the answers THAT badly.  

Second point:  this isn’t a talk show.  Don’t ask me random open-ended questions about people’s motivations or weird obscure bits of magic theory that I have no freaking clue about.   If you want to know about the Arcana Emporium or Anne or Alex or something, then sure!  But how the HELL are you expecting me to know the answer to things like that freaky Harvesting question?  Do you think I’m going to go do an experiment for you to find out?

From: Dominique king

Just asking for myself actually. Any more romantic relationships that have blossomed in your circle of friends? I hope that they will be fruitful if yes.

Actually, at this point, I don’t think I’ve got any close single friends left.  Which either says something about them all pairing up, or says something about how few friends I have. 

Oh, well, there’s Hermes.  He hasn’t had any new romantic relationships.  I think.  I’m not sure he’d tell me if he did.

From: Ian

1. Are Lightning mages more or less the same personality type as Fire mages? Not looking for in depth answer but is there a general trait that makes them different or similar to one another?

2. Have you ever heard of a Dark Mage named Iram? Recent events seemed to have him/her be a threat on the level of Drakh and Vihaela do you know anything about him like his/her magic type or is this too obscure that only real political interested mages would know?

1. They’ve got a few things in common, but not too many.  Lightning mages are supposed to be quicker-thinking and generally smarter.  Fire mages are supposed to be more emotional and aggressive.  That’s just popular opinion though, I’m not sure if it’s actually true.

2. I’ve heard of him, but only very vaguely.  He’s supposed to be powerful but reclusive.  Doesn’t get involved in political arguments and bickering.  He hasn’t gotten involved in Richard’s war either.  Either he and Richard just agreed to stay out of each other’s way, or Richard tried to recruit him and got turned down.

From: Morgan

Hello Luna. I had a couple of questions and I was wondering if you could awnser them.

Elsewhere relies heavily on intuition. So what would happen if someone like Alex used there divination magic their. Would it lead to nothing? Or would it cause some noticeable change?
Have you ever gone to elsewhere or do you think. About going there some day?
Since Elsewhere is at least partially created from ones own, for lack of a better word, “thoughts” what would happen if a mind mage used there power to connect to someone else’s mind before going there! What happens?
Have you asked Alex about how making magic items with multiple magic types work? What would be the type of item created by mixing variams and Alex’s magic?
Richard traveled to another world for god only knows how long?- Because of time dilation. Do you guys have any guess where he whent?
Alex’s mist cloak works from what I can figure, with multiple times of magic?
Have you thought about making a magic item?
Have you guys thought about making a magic item as a group? Ann and Alex’s magic to give information. You and Sonder to give action. Variams magic to actually do the spell. You’d probably be able to create something like the fate weaver except for the fact that it might be even stronger. Or you could create something like a magical binding item that allows two or more people too unite there magic into one

From: Morgan

Hybrid Mages are Mages wich seem to be able to access more than one type of magic because that’s how they were born.

Harvesting has shown to cause damage to the person who does it. What happens if an unborn baby was given magic?
This becomes two questions I suppose.
If the person dosent have magic too begin with what is the effect of giving them magic?
And if they did what happens to them. Is there personality simply altered by it. Do they come out fine and just have two magic types?
Can they combine these?

That’s not a couple of questions!  That’s . . . actually, I tried counting and gave up somewhere around seven or eight, and I wasn’t even halfway through your first email.  So I don’t even know how many it is, except that it’s definitely more than I have the patience to answer.  I’m not a bloody wishing well, stop chucking in every random question you can think of just to see what you’ll get back!