Benedict Jacka

From: Kevin

So awhile back you mentioned that seeing your curse was hazy because you struggled with mage vision and couldn’t analyze spells like Alex does. Another time you said that you could now activate focus items but that you did it differently from Alex.

My question is do you think Chance magic in general relies less on mage vision and more on “feeling out”/sensing instead of the more visual effects other mages use?

And to clarify you activate focus items and gate stones by using your curse and that is how you do it differently from Alex?

I activate everything using my curse.  My curse is my magic, that’s how I do stuff.  When all you’ve got is a hammer, you get really creative solving problems with a hammer.  As for visual effects, that’s very personal depending on the mage, I think. 

From: Kevin

Hey Luna I just wanted to say sorry if I frustrated you about my questions about Deleo and her jinn and various other things. I have a disability that makes it difficult to understand things that aren’t clearly spelled out to me and it takes me awhile to process it like everyone else seems to.

But I took your advice that you said in a previous question about keeping you mind open, assume you don’t know everything, and learning the big things by picking up the smaller things.

Like with Deleo pulling off things other powerful mages could not do, the most obvious one was her surviving a blast from Anne that took out Sal Sarque presumably one of the toughest Fire mages in the country.

And putting things together from previous events a likely reason why Morden let himself be imprisoned for so long, was because he knew the Light Council would take forever to decide on his fate and by that time Richard would get Anne to bust him out which would cause the Light Council look incompetent and further weakened.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I took you advice to heart and hopefully am on the right track to understanding things so you don’t have to keep going over things again and again. But to put all of this in a question do you think with my two examples I am on the right path? Sorry in advance if I am off the mark but if I am not thank you for your input it really helps not just with you and Alex’s adventures but in real life as well.

P.S. Is there a chance magic skill that only you can do and other chance mages could not? Just wanted to ask something new that I don’t think anyone else hasn’t asked yet.

You’re more on the mark, yeah. 

One of the things that’s been frustrating me this year is the number of people asking me stuff that’s just completely impossible to answer.  “Why did Morden/Richard do X two years ago when I think they should have done Y because Z?”  Now stop and think about it for a second – how am I POSSIBLY supposed to know the answer to that?  They’re asking for someone’s internal thoughts/reasoning (which I don’t know), about something that happened years ago (which would make it even harder to find out), and then comparing it to their idea of how this person is supposed to act (which is probably wrong). 

I suppose what’s going on is that people have their own idea of how things are “supposed” to work, and they get confused when it doesn’t happen, and then they write in to ask me.  But the problem is that a lot of the time their idea about how things are supposed to work assumes stuff that’s not true. 

Like, take Morden.  I’ve lost count of how many questions I’ve had about “why did/didn’t Morden do this?”  And usually the implication is that Morden was supposed to do something else instead because that’d be better for gaining more power and taking over the country.  But here’s the thing – I’m pretty sure at this point that Morden doesn’t WANT to take over the country.  Maybe Richard does, but Morden doesn’t.  He’s not just after power, he’s got his own weird set of principles that might not make sense to most people, but he genuinely believes in them.  So it makes him really hard for most people to predict, because they don’t understand where he’s coming from. 

This is what I was getting at with the “don’t assume you know everything” thing – you’re never going to be able to predict how someone like that will act, because you don’t understand them.  The most you can do is keep watching and keep learning.

From: Celia

Hi, Luna! Thanks for taking over the shop from Alex. He seems like a nice chap. Do you ever worry he might end up like Richard, though? Both diviners, it seems, both like their cool toys, both not that reluctant to kill. Alex may be one monkey’s paw away from being just. like. Richard.

You’re not the first person to ask, but my answer’s always the same.  I’ve known Alex for a long time, and he trusts me, and I trust him.  He’s done a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t, but even at his worst, I always feel like I can understand where he’s coming from.  So no, I don’t think he’ll end up like Richard.  I’ve got faith in him, even if we end up going different ways. 

From: bibliosopher

Hi Luna,

I’ve really enjoyed your answers to these questions over the years. I was wondering if it’s possible for a chance mage to accomplish something like divination by using her power in conjunction with a tool like Tarot cards? She could cause the cards to fall out so that they are lucky/useful for her? thanks,

Bibliosopher

Completely possible, yeah.  Wouldn’t work for me, though.  I’ve spent too long learning to use my magic differently.  Sometimes I wonder if I might have copied some things from Alex subconsciously – he doesn’t like tarot cards/fortune telling, so at some level I don’t think it’s useful either.  He never directly taught me the way Chalice did, but I feel like I picked up a lot of his ways of thinking. 

From: Kevin

Do you think diviners may have an affinity to bond with imbued items and/or using Elsewhere? The only reason I ask is because I think divination is one of the few magic types that doesn’t directly affect the physical world, and Alex and Richard seem to be the top wielders of imbued items/otherworldy powers. Maybe diviners can access the spirit world better because of their mindset?

Or another possibility is you know how fire magic is terrible at defense yet Landis as far as we know has the best defensive magic in Great Britain? Do you that the best mages are ones who take their magic types weakness, fire’s lack of defense, diviners lack of directly affecting the world and through skill/determination/sacrifice are able to drastically improve their strength?

Sorry if that last part is completely obvious but I guess it’s kinda of like lifting a thousand pounds with your bare hands, simple but almost impossible to do because as far we know no other fire mage comes close to Landis’s defensive skill, and all the other diviners seem to be information gatherers.

But in any event do you think both parts of my question has some truth to them or am I just overreaching?

I don’t think Alex is good with imbued items and in Elsewhere because he’s a diviner, I think he’s good at those things because he’s Alex. As in, it’s because of the person he is, not because of the powers he has. Though he has those powers because of the person he is, so . . . maybe very indirectly? But as far as I understand it, he got those particular skills just by practising a lot and being willing to do some pretty weird and dangerous stuff that most mages wouldn’t touch.

And I don’t actually know if Landis has a special talent for defence. It’s more like he’s just really quick and practised and efficient, so he can block attacks that would get through against anyone else.

So I think it’s more that, if you want to keep on getting better, you eventually have to address the stuff you’re bad at and either focus on that until you’re good at it, or find a way to make it not matter.

From: Michael

Why don’t guys have a stash of IV glucose solutions on hand?

Anna can pretty much heal anything, maybe not cancer the way she described her life magic to work (although if she could manipulate the bahviour of NK white cells even that isn’t off the table), but anything trauma related if she gets to it fast enough you will live.

The only problem being that she needs energy for the healing to take place. For that she usually uses the energy of the body she is healing, and her own. The energy we are talking here about appears to be organic in nature – since people she helped heal are always thirsty and hungry, signs of intense metabolic processes.

A 5% glucose solution is, besides the 0,7% NaCl solution the most common used IV drip you can get and it solves both problems – it safely hydrates the body while providing energy. You can get it without a prescription in any pharmacy, and putting in an IV can be learned in 20 minutes.

It is the easiest solution to the most basic problem they meet when dealing with heavy injuries, especially when they consider Anne. So why not?

Honest answer? I don’t know. I don’t really know anything about glucose solutions or how the body processes energy, so it never occurred to me to ask.

If I had to guess, it might be because there’s something about glucose solutions that doesn’t help very much for some life-mage reason I wouldn’t know about. But it might also be because that’s just not how Anne learned how to do it. It’s actually a really common thing with mages. They learn some specific way to do a spell, and then they stick with it. So maybe when Anne was learning to heal she didn’t have glucose solutions around, so she developed her own ways to recover her energy and the patient’s energy with just regular food, because that was what she had and that was what she had to make work.

Or maybe not. It’s not like I can really ask her these days.

From: jamescagney22

So I am just following off the question asked by Geli in 166, about Richard not keeping Alex close despite putting all that effort into training him. Now Geli has a good point about Alex being a backup/legacy in case Richard fails with his power grab but I think now that we know Richard is a diviner it could be something related to their magic type.

I get the feeling that Richard has a lot of respect for Alex in the sense that he is very capable with his magic/getting results and thus he doesn’t feel the need to micromanage like he seems to with Deleo. So as long as Alex is working towards his ends he does not have to be on his side per se… until events in Burned and Fallen forced Drakh’s hand. Plus as a fellow diviner perhaps he figures that giving Alex a freer hand will get a better result then if he tried to use more forceful measures… which backfired on him in tremendously in Fallen.

So my questions are

A. Are diviners typically loners/work best with their magic when they are left alone? I know this might seem obvious but Alex and to an extent Richard are well rather social/politically active that is is hard to see that.

B. Do you think diviners have a different view of time then everyone else has? By that I mean do you think seeing the future makes the short and long term future more fluid in the mind of a diviner? Hence Richard waiting for Alex a few years to join him would be no different then it would be yesterday? I hope I am phrasing this right.

Yeah, the way Alex explained it was that from Richard’s point of view, he’d won against Alex every time before, so when Alex showed up for what was the twentieth time or whatever, Richard just let things play out because he was confident that he’d win again.

Oh, right, the questions.

For A, yes, definitely. Alex is more of an introvert than pretty much anyone I know. Back when I first knew him, I think I was basically the only person he talked to besides Arachne. Even when he got into politics, he was never that comfortable with the social side of things, and after a work day, he’d want to go off on his own to recharge.

For B, no. I mean, they do see the future differently in their weird diviner way, but Alex gets bored and gets tired of waiting just the same as everyone else. I think Richard being willing to wait so long is because he’s just really patient.

From: Allison

Hey Luna I was watching Avatar the Last Airbender the other day and I was curious if some Elemental Mages had some overlap. Specifically…

1. Have you heard of any Fire Mages who could also use Lightning?

2. Do Water Mages have any healing abilities whether it is only on themselves or if they could also heal other people.

3. Can Earth Mages also manipulate metal or other materials like plastic, rubber etc…

Sorry if these are off base just thought it would be interesting if there was some connection!

Heh. Yeah, I remember when that came out. I think I’d have really liked it as a kid.

1. No, fire mages don’t get to be lightningbenders. You’d think there’d be some overlap, but there isn’t much of one, beyond the usual edge cases. I think it’s because they do such similar things.

2. Water magic can’t heal, but it’s sort of healing-adjacent, if you know what I mean. When you do get elemental-life hybrids, it always seems to be water that’s the element they can use.

3. For metal, sometimes. Metal mages are their own type, but earth and stone and metal mages are all in the same sub-family and they overlap a lot. I’ve never heard of them having any kind of connection with rubber, though.

From: Kevin

1. Have you or Alex ever talked to Hermes with the dreamstone? Do you understand him like you would a human or is and have you learned anything different about him?

2. Has Vari adjusted his fighting style/magic since he got his mage name? I heard he changed his sword and he also started using regular fire instead of heat blasts, is he changing his style after learning from Landis or is he just expanding his move-set so to speak.

1. Alex has. He understands him pretty well, though they seem to get on more of an emotional level. I don’t think Hermes really ‘talks’ in the way that we do.

2. Nope. The name’s just a name as far as he’s concerned. He doesn’t treat it as anywhere near as much of a big deal as most Light or Dark mages do. Don’t know whether it’s Alex’s influence or Landis’s.

From: Chuck

Hey, Luna!
I’m sorry if someone asked this already – I wasn’t able to check through all the archives, so if they did, apologies! Have you and Alex ever discussed whether Deleo’s mask could be an imbued object, and if so, what it does? It seems to have some sort of effect on her mind beyond what a simple mask would do. I realize there’s probably no way to be sure… Also, if it is, do you think that Arachne might have made it for her or Richard, and why?

Thanks,
Chuck

Really really unlikely. Imbued items are pretty much the opposite of subtle – they radiate so much power that even sensitives can spot them from the other side of a room (not in an ‘oh, that’s a magic item’ way, more of a ‘what the hell is that?’ way). Mages can spot them through a brick wall. And Alex’s magesight is better than most – there is no way he could look straight at an imbued item for that long and not figure out what it was.

You do get the occasional imbued item that has some capability to hide or shield itself, but they’re not all that common. And it’s hard to imagine Deleo doing that good a job of keeping it secret. So I’m pretty sure that Deleo changing her personality when she puts on a mask has got nothing to do with the mask and everything to do with her.

From: Kevin

Hey Luna I noticed that Alex seems to in terms of magic have a lot of traits in common with time magic since he seemed get along with Sonder and the auxiliary mage Abeyance well enough. And it kinda of seemed like space magic overlaps with time magic in terms of them being analytical/book smart for lack of a better word.

So my question is have you noticed personality traits that diviners, time, and space mages have in common and what traits makes them noticeable different from each other. Not looking for an in depth analysis just obvious stuff.

They tend to be ‘smart guy/girl’ types – intelligent, analytical, read a lot, that kind of thing. The kind who’d be in the chess club rather than the sports team. Beyond that, it probably varies too much to pin down.

From: Nate

You once mentioned that you’d find a Alex/Vari slash fic funny well…
https://archiveofourown.org/works/19283494
What do you think Alex/Vari’s reaction would be upon reading this?

Oh god my eyes.

Okay, I’ve changed my mind about it being funny. It feels REALLY wrong reading this stuff about people you actually know.

From: Kevin

So apparently the theory that Richard made Alex specialize in short term/combat divination to control and strengthen him is more like encourage an existing skillset. Now at first I couldn’t see how being good at avoiding danger could be a specific type of divination that could be useful for multiple things but then it struck me and here is my question.

Is Alex really good at codebreaking/investigating compared to other diviners? I remember that Alex could break into those Death magic bracelets and discover that nearly unbreakable Chinese scroll that he gave to Richard and he seems to be able to codebreak really fast in general. That type of divination seems to be at the other end of the spectrum from the long term stuff if that makes sense.

As far as I can tell, most diviners don’t do that kind of stuff at all. They specialise in staying really far away from problems so that trouble doesn’t find them. It’s path-walking that they go in for, because that’s what lets them keep everything at arm’s length.

General rule, if it’s a kind of divination that works up close (so opening a safe, dodging a bullet, climbing a wall), Alex is probably better at it, just because he spends a lot more time on that kind of stuff than most mages do.

From: Lisa

Do you think it’s possible that Richard and Morden might not be as close of allies as we think they are? I only ask because of two reason.

1. Remember when Morden asked Alex to work for him? I get the feeling that Richard at the time and to this day still views Alex as his apprentice/Chosen and thus only he is allowed to have dealings with him since apparently Dark Mages are territorial about that sort of thing. Now sure if Alex is a Dark Mage that works out but having another rival mage do it? That could cause major problems, a moot point since Alex didn’t take up the offer but regardless making an offer to another mage’s apprentice seems to be really stepping on their toes.

2. Another thing is that before the raid on the Vault Morden was handling the Light Council, and Richard the Dark Mages, and as far as we know after Morden broke out he has been training adepts, which seems like something a subordinate would do. Now Richard getting the Jinn might have smoothed this over, and Morden could be on the Light Council after the war was won but without it?

Do you think this might cause a power struggle between them now that they don’t have their trump card and that they are now two big fish in a small pond so to speak?

We didn’t have any definite ideas one way or the other before, but a couple of things that have happened lately have been making me think that the answer’s yes. It’s not as blatant as a civil war breaking out, or anything like that, but the more you look at the two, the more they seem to have different priorities. Everything Richard does is all aimed at getting more powerful – sometimes it’s hard to tell how, at least straight away, but if you look back on it, it’s easy to say ‘oh, right, it’s so that he could do that thing to build up his power base even more’.

Morden’s way more complicated. He obviously knows what he’s doing, but he’ll sometimes do stuff where it’s really, really hard to see how it’s benefiting him. It feels like he’s playing some weird long game which isn’t just about himself, if you know what I mean.

Maybe things really would have turned out differently if Alex had said yes to working for him. Not necessarily better though.

From: Rick

Hello Luna I was curious before the war what did Vari do with the Order of the Shield? I think he mentioned that he and Landis were after some mage criminals so did they do similar war to the regular keepers are they kinda of like a SWAT team that only go in really dangerous situations?

Pretty much. The idea is that the Order of the Shield are supposed to be more military, and the Order of the Star are supposed to be more police. So anything that’s obviously going to end in combat gets assigned to the Order of the Shield. Oh, and magical creatures are their department as well, though there aren’t many of those these days.

In practice things are a bit different. The Order of the Star will hang onto cases that are high-profile or political or seen as important for whatever reason, even if it’s something the Order of the Shield should really be doing. Also, the directors at the Order of the Star don’t like handing off difficult stuff, because they think it makes them seem weak. So the lower-rank Keepers from the Order of the Star end up super overworked because their bosses want to look good, while Vari and Landis actually have (or used to have) a fair bit of free time.

(In case you haven’t guessed, this is something Vari likes to complain about.)

From: Richard

Hey Luna so I noticed all of the elemental magic seem to have their own strength and weakness’s. However there are three that I cannot seem to find a drawback in.

Do you know what Ice mages weakness’s are? They seem to have the offensive ability of fire mages but with better defenses do they have some flaw that I am overlooking?

And do Death and Force Mages have an obvious weakness as well? I only put them together because they seem to be designed for combat, so is the only way to take them down is by skill or is there something I am overlooking?

Ice magic’s main drawback is that it’s slow. Attacks are a little slower, direct spells take a little longer. You can dodge an ice spell if you’re fast – dodging a fire spell is a lot harder.

Force mages, their issue is that their magic only works really well in straight lines. Other mages can make bubble-type effects, force mages have to make weird geometric shapes that tend to have chinks in the armour somewhere.

Death magic’s weakness . . . when it comes to combat, they don’t have any. They’re fast, strong, and tough, all at once. The problem they have is that their magic doesn’t really do anything EXCEPT combat. If it’s not hurting or killing someone, or directly helping them to hurt or kill someone, they suck at it. Great in a fight, not so useful for the 99% of your life where you’re doing something else.