?? 2AC
"Runefather?"
"Yes Owl?"
"Is there a structure to magic ranks? Something more than just Tier followed by a number and maybe low through high?"
"What, you would prefer foundation establishment, core creation and something about nascent souls?"
"You read those stories too, Teacher?"
"I used to. Some were quite good. And to answer your question. Maybe."
"....."
The small oval face with his namesakes unfortunately oversized eyes ensconced in distinct epicanthic folds stared at him with disappointment. His mouth, even without the excuse of genetic predisposition, was likewise pursed in dissatisfaction. Timothy couldn't help himself, he laughed.
"Alright, alright. But 'maybe' really is the answer. Because it's up to you, it's up to your classmates, it's up to me. It's up to every pathfinder. We each chart our own Path. If one, or many, of us choose to frame our Paths in this way, then the answer is yes. If no one does, then the answer is no."
He thought about that for a minute, and Timothy took advantage of the silence to polish off a few more spoonfuls of a deep brown with swirls of yellow soup.
"Then can we make it a yes right now? How would you describe our Tiers in those terms?"
Timothy leaned back and nodded. That was indeed one way to avoid the ambiguity. "A different way of looking at things is always valuable so sure. I'll play along. But this is your idea, you have to take the lead. So where are we going to start?”
“Umm, starting with the drills you ran us through when we got here? Transformation battles? No, first when we worked on controlling the volume on our intent?”
“Is that a question or a statement? Either way, what about before that? Are you going to ignore your self-awakening?”
“Umm...” His young voice trailed off.
Timothy, not unkindly interrupted him. “Think out loud. It doesn't have to be polished, or rather you can polish it later if you care to. Right now, it'll help if you verbalize what you're thinking.”
“Ah? Alright. Ummm. So,” He fumbled around a bit. “-a norm is a baseline human from one of the stories, right? We need a body-building arc for the first step. Build up your body and spirit until you finally break through?”
Timothy nodded, but with acceptance, not approval. “The stories trend that way, yes. But they seem to prefer swinging sharp pointy objects instead of casting spells. I’d point out the phrase is mind over matter, not muscles.”
"We did run laps! " The boy protested. "Not just for muscles, but by persevering through the exhaustion and pain you build up your mind."
"Yes, yes you did and yes, yes it does. But that's not the only exercise, and my that’s a poor word for it, that you practiced. There was moving a piece of lint around on a smooth stone, willing a feather to fall in a given direction, and many many other purely mental tasks. I'm not discounting a little exercise, nor the impact discipline can have on willpower. But the point was willpower, not muscle, yes?"
The boy, looking at him with narrowed eyes, but reluctantly nodded before voicing a different complaint. “It wasn't a process.” He muttered. “No set of steps that would get me there. No way to tell if I was doing it right. Just banging my blind head against a wall until I flew through an open window.”
Timothy lost it, laughing until he had to wipe a few tears from his eyes. “Ahh, I needed that. Accurate if somewhat less than dignified. And yes, if you were wondering, it was frustrating and awkward for me too. But that isn't that far off from your wuxia stories. Oh, they have several steps to throw in, but if you consider the entire process a bottleneck it fits pretty well.”
“True. I guess it doesn't matter.” The boy reluctantly nodded.
“If I had a better method you’d know about it by now. I don’t.”
He looked a bit mulish but didn’t argue. “Moving on then, that’s the first stage. What do you want to call it?”
“I think you would object to body cultivation.”
“I would, but this is your creation. Call it what you want.”
He looked tempted, but at last shook his head. “No, I want your help, that means I must value your opinions. Will Building then. It has the same feeling even if it’s more mental.”
“Works for me. Now sum it up in a paragraph or less. It will help you to solidify the idea.”
He froze, biting his lower lip. “Umm, the use of mind games” he paused, then with a furtive glance, “-and exercise to build up mental strength, then using that strength to push against the walls of our perception till we break through.”
Timothy let the small shot sail past. He wasn’t that petty. “That’s very good Owl. Clear, catchy and concise.” A practical response from a practical boy. Despite the fantastical feel to the conversation.
“And after that?” Timothy prodded him.
"Umm.” He hesitated, working through it. “Pathfinders do it this way, but guardians -”
Timothy broke in gently. "Let's ignore guardians for a minute. There will always be exceptions and variations, but if you want to get anywhere it's best to restrict your scope for the first pass. You can go back and fill in the extras later. "
"Ok, so. Ummm, Stabilization?”
"A question instead of a statement again. You need to work on that. Have some confidence in yourself.”
“Stabilization!” He spoke with forced certainty. Rather poorly forced but Timothy let it go.
“A good name, but what does it mean.”
Owl sat up straight, considering how recent some of these lessons had been, he had little trouble offering the cliff notes. “When we first make contact with mana, with the Field the connection is spotty. The mental muscles to control it haven’t been developed yet. If we don't build them up, then we won’t be able to control anything, and worse we can end up hurting someone. Ourselves or others." Owl stopped, looking away for a minute considerably paler than he had been.
Timothy reached out and patted his shoulder. It was a good reminder that this was neither a game nor a story and most definitely not bloodless. Timothy glanced away before the moisture in his own eyes sparked worse in the child.
Dwelling on those unpleasant facts wouldn't help either of them, so he prodded Owl again. "What's next.”
Rousing himself, if with some effort, Owl replied. “So that’s the step where we learn to cast spells, but nothing is permanent or specific yet. Just the generic basics.”
“True enough.” Timothy encouraged.
“So then we move into Foundation Building. Recognizing that order is a useful story while chaos is a pointless mess.” nearly a quote from class, but true as far as Timothy could tell. “It’s time to build our own narrative. A self-defining series of mental constructs that work together. Hold onto those concepts and the processed mana inside of them, embody it, until it becomes subconscious.”
“Chants, physical imagery and repetitive motions can be really helpful to keeping the constructs consistent, but it's optional right?”
Timothy waved his hand back and forth. “Depends on how ambitious your construct is. Those are just tools, as are symbolic, legendary or historical tie-ins. A smart craftsman uses the correct tools for the job. Sure a master carver might be able to chew a block of wood into a pretty shape, but wouldn’t it be easier, and prettier, if he had a good knife?”
“Oh…” Owl stopped, looking down as his fingers traced imaginary shapes in the air. “I hadn’t thought of it that way…”
Timothy smiled. “That might be on me. It’s hard to ride the line on the pink elephant. There isn’t a right way here. Sometimes you want to cast a spell with no chant, no consumables and certainly no extra time. An hour-long ritual with chanting, backup dancers and an elaborate costume bedecked in appropriate symbology might be 100 times more powerful, but it won’t help you if lose your head in the first five seconds.”
“A hundred times?” he muttered, eyes widening dramatically, then narrowing to a slit. “Couldn’t you just cast the instant spell a hundred times in less time?”
Timothy sighed. “It’s complex, but mostly no. Well-designed rituals work. Chants work. Ussing symbols or dancing works. It takes longer, but if done well there is a net gain in both mana efficiency and power. But we're getting sidetracked. It is technically optional, but strongly advised to use some props.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Ah, right. So. Hmm. So a foundation built, but the benefits involved depend on the choices made. All aura constructs offer some protection and passive mana regeneration, or should I change to call it qi?”
Timothy shook his head. “You could, but frankly it would just confuse things when your classmates and teachers don't follow suit. Let's stick with mana for now.”
“Alright, ummm. Let's see. How much protection and regen you get is dependent on focus and quality. Regen depends on a complimentary environment. But quality focuses more on how consistent and detailed the story you embody is."
"The space you have to store mana starts small and grows with your construct. But the complexity of what you store is something you have control over. It takes a strong will to force more meaning into the same amount of mana, but it makes for more powerful spells. Both active spells and the passive defenses.”
“Careful!” Timothy raised a single digit, shaking it back and forth like a reverse pendulum. “Everybody likes the bonus power and better armor, but don’t forget the drawbacks.”
A bit sheepishly Owl rubbed the back of his head and half nodded, half bowed. “It takes longer to force a more complex image on mana, and more willpower to force the transformation. Especially if you need to build up from an unrelated base mana. It’s also easier to make mistakes. Or worse, internal contradictions.”
“Which causes what?” Timothy drew a few circles with his index finger.
“Confusion and a loss of power from mistakes. But contradictions? Death, right?”
“Mostly. There are a few survivors around, but there are a lot more who didn’t and even the survivors suffered pretty significant damage. You also forgot something. What about flexibility?”
"Ah, right. Sor-.” he stopped himself in time, ducking his head meekly before Timothy’s glare. He leaned back in his chair, avoiding Timothy’s gaze for a few moments. Then began speaking again. “Ah, our narratives are jealous things. Trying to cast outside of that narrative is time-consuming and expensive. The same density of meaning that makes it more powerful also makes it harder to convert into nonaligned mana types.”
Almost stubbornly he met Timothy’s eyes. “But if they do align, they are fast and way stronger! Like a fire adept with a volcano as his image, he can throw up a lava-aspected flame thrower quickly, cheaply and with high power!”
"I never disagreed with that Owl. I just want you to be aware of the tradeoffs." He responded gently.
Owl's darker complexion normally hid it pretty well, so the red tide that covered his features must have been almost painful.
Rushing on, Owl quickly tried to change the subject. "But what's next? Will Building, The Awakening, Stabilize, Build your Foundation. Most of the books would put core formation next. How does that line up with what we will learn?”
"Well first, this set of steps is your creation and it is fairly small in scope. I know,” Timothy held up a hand to stop Owl’s half-formed protest. “That’s because I asked you to keep it simple. It’s not a problem, we just have to take a moment and acknowledge what we ignored to get here. Ignoring Guardians, who will be pretty similar once you deal with the differences in awakening, you haven’t included Soul or Body progression yet. We are talking just about Aura right now. Now that is the most common way and a good place to start, but remember not everyone else will fit into your narrative.”
Getting an affirmative Timothy continued. “Then let’s take a step back and talk about what a Tier is. We can say Tier 1 loosely corresponds to stabilization for humans. Once you can cast a spell if you have a chance of killing a low tier 1 beast. Gain full control over your intent and you can probably kill a high tier 1… from behind a Holds defenses at least.”
“And that’s the issue here. Skillful use of the spells you have along with the perception required not to get ambushed are going to have as much to do with your success out in the wild as your ‘cultivation’. Tiers are an artificial measure of danger. If you can kill a Tier 1 danger, then you are considered Tier 1.”
“Now, there's a fairly large and obvious power spike when beasts hit tier two which is why we call it that. The same for the thankfully rare Tier 3s. That may feel like a cultivation level for beasts, and it sort of is, but there is more to it. It’s not just because they pack in more mana and increased size. They generally do get both of those, but it’s the intelligence they gain that really makes them dangerous. What was once simple instinct becomes capable of planning and even subtlety. It's not how big the stick is, but the cleverness with which you use it.”
He waited for a nod from Owl before continuing. "Humans don't have natural size on our side. Nor an instinctive racial magic skill. What we do have is innately opened intelligence. Or at least most of us do...” He paused for the spat of shocked and slightly offended laughter.
"We look for advantages and play the angles. Some better than others of course, but we all have some experience with it. And that is also, in part, the measure of our strength. The complexity of thought leads to the complexity of spells and the cleverness to use them well. That makes a crystal ball that measures your stored mana or even the discipline and complexity you hold it with less useful than you would think."
Owl nodded rapidly while rolling it over in his head. He could get a rough feel for that already. His mana sight was clear enough to read his fellow students if not most of his teachers. At least if they were projecting it outward as they did in spell practice or sparing. Clarity, complexity and reliability were metrics and goals they had all had drummed into them. A good indication of how far along someone was, but it didn’t really dictate who won in the sparing ring.
The affinity of their mana was a good hint as to the types of spells they would cast. But that didn't say anything about how polished or clever those spells were. There might be a tie in between the effort they put into their shields and the effort they put into their spells, but even there all he could see was how much mana was included, not how well it was leveraged.
For that matter, what if someone spent all their effort on polishing spells and left their aural construct underdeveloped? Like his favorite stories, they could play the pig to eat the tiger.
Then he shook his head. It was a terrible idea. An undeveloped aura meant underdeveloped mana storage and regen. How were they going to polish their spells with practice without a stable mana source? No, unless they had a way to disguise the mana levels, that would do way more harm than good.
Not that there weren’t other ways to turn a fight around. He’d seen several seemingly mismatched duels that went sideways fast. Leaving the favored party sore and hurting. Hannah was barely stabilized when she destroyed Boxer. And him with an already manifest aural construct. He’d been showing off too much and given her a look at all his spells before the fight. And she’d had counters ready.
Brains and planning trumped mana.
So far at least. But the best of the auric constructs was getting to a point where beginner spells couldn’t do much to them. Too much-entrenched meaning and thick layers of mana. A peak Foundation Establishment cultivator, Owl mused, might trump the lower levels simply by having a solid defense that they couldn’t get through.
Maybe. Then again, with what Teacher said about chanting and all that, maybe it was just the quick spells they could ignore.
Owl, considered for a time, then let it go. There were too many variables. "Ok. Tiers are measures of combat potential, not the level of their cultivation. But that still doesn't answer my question. If a Stabilization level mage is mostly Tier 1, and Foundation Builder is mostly Tier 2?" Timothy shrugged and gestured for him to continue. "Then what will Tier 3 look like?"
"That's a very good question, Owl. And unfortunately, the reason I didn't answer it is that none of us really know yet. Every Path is a nearsighted man pushing his way through thick underbrush. Watching for pitfalls and snakes at every step. It's slow and nerve-racking. But if you run out of patience and try to rush ahead, well we'll have another name on the Obelisk. A lesson on what not to do for future students.”
“But hey, if and when you find an answer, I very much hope you will share!”