Preface:
These excerpts have been taken from the personal journal of Mage Andrea Lipswick to document her discovery of the methodology to enclose thunder in a bottle.
Ms. Lipswick wasn’t an academic and her journal wasn’t held standard to magical research norms, which means some parts of it will encapsulate her life as a self-taught, young adventurer and alchemist with a lot of anecdotal information irrelevant to the realization of her discovery.
However, it felt important to keep the excerpts whole in order to better understand what kind of person and environment was responsible for the discovery of our century in matters of magical alchemy, weapons development and in artificieering.
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Day 286 – City of Schuber
Today’s a good day! When we went to the city, I was glad to see a shop that could sell me the components I searched for my next Idea.
Nothing too fancy, a glass bottle, a metal rod and a glass cork.
I also went to a Library to learn the spells I need to call on thunder and lightning. Sadly it comes with rain and can turn into a tempest if I’m not careful.
There was also a spell of minor lighting you can launch without preparation and shoot out from your fingers or a wand, though it doesn’t do much but tickle or give you a startle. I tried it on Felix, and the poor guy jumped up in surprise with the cutest squeak I heard in a while! The others couldn’t stop laughing.
Still, it took a lot out of me to do this, and I see why no one uses this in a fight, it's terribly inefficient.
I just need to find a good place to start tinkering with this stuff. I don’t want to set the Inn on fire or something.
I did test the spell on the metal rod positioned inside the glass jar, and the lightning was indeed sucked right into the rod, only to dissipate inside the jar after an instant of it dancing inside the glass. That was pretty!
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Day 297 – 6 days North of Schubert
Yes! We arrived in the plains today, nothing around us for miles but an old road and tall grass.
Nothing much of note besides that, the journey was boring. Nothing much to do but to walk the road to our destination. We’ve been hired to do pest control near a farm. It's nothing too grand, but it’ll pay enough to last us a while.
Now, I have to say* I had underestimated the strength of that spell. I still can’t cast it fast and more than twice in a row still puts me on my ass panting, but I noticed that poor Felix got a burn mark on his … cheek last time I tried to prank him.
Maybe with more practice it’ll sort of be usable in combat? Still, it's really tiring to cast, so I’m pretty sure I won’t use it often, maybe never.
I’ve been modifying the glass cork to hold the metal rod inside the jar while being closed. It only took some heating of the rod and some wax to do it.
Still no luck with my attempts to catch my spell inside the jar. It stays longer inside the glass, bouncing around before it fades to nothing. I guess something is eating it up inside.
*She probably used a Smart Quill™ to write her entries down. If not, it is globally accepted that she did not, in fact, talk to her journal.
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Day 300 – Verdoyant complex
We arrived near the farm. It’s a big one, apparently that’s called a “complex”. It looks like a small village, but everyone is employed by the landlord to work the fields or some such.
They showed us where they found their pests and we got to see a dead specimen. They are kind of weird rats* the size of a large dog, wearing cloth and apparently it’s been caught walking on two legs?
They kind of look like of eastern kobolds, but half the size and way cuter.
Felix and the others went out to try and map the place, to find a burrow or something while I went around asking questions to the staff.
I figured out why this spell takes too much for so little results! I broke down the incantation and found a lot of redundancies in its formulation, mostly so the spell doesn’t bounce back on the caster. I’m going to try and draft something a little simpler. The spell shouldn’t be more potent, but faster to cast and probably more efficient. I just hope I won't zap myself when I try it out.
Crossing fingers!
*Nothing of the sort has ever been documented, it is believed to be misidentified by her group and the complex staff. Bipedal, intelligent rats simply don’t exist**.
**As the year 1247 of the new calendar Ratkin has been identified and classified as a minor race, pending decision to qualify them as “nuisible” as of 851, MS. Lipswick would never have heard of them***.
*** AS of 1337, Ratkin has been fully integrated into society, and it is common knowledge that they have a nation underground and the attempts at extermination have been severely punished.
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Day 302
(This part of the journal was a mess of ink and crossed over words. Below are what the scribe could put together.)
I zapped myself yesterday. Hurts. It tastes weird.
I’ll try to recover and work this out when I stop seeing sounds.
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Day 305
We found where the cute mouses came from. It was a hole in the ground in a clearing far into the forest.
We will stay around hidden for now and do surveillance, then we will collapse the tunnel.
I tried my revised spell on a deer while we walked, the poor thing was cooked pretty bad once I stopped. Well, it saved us some time to eat, but still, it smells weird.
I tried again my spell on my container. This time it lasted longer, but it still went out like a candle.
I need to find a way so the lightning doesn’t escape (or isn’t “used up”) the glass jar once it's inside…
I got an idea, I tried the spell to keep meat from rotting on the jar before casting the lightning spell again! (I’ve learned it from someone who called it “words of pickling”)
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Results: the lightning looked ... Sluggish? And instead of disappearing after an instant, it stayed in here for almost a full minute! I think I have something figured out here …
Maybe I’ll need to learn Stasis, but I never tried such a spell before. I’ll need to find a book or someone to teach me. I hope I'll be able to cast it soon…
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Day 306
We almost lost Rickert today. Turns out the cute mice pests are a bit vicious when you try to collapse their tunnels.
Our brave small artificer has been attacked while he placed the explosives made with the complex’ manure and fertilizer, and he got stabbed twice in his thigh. He would’ve bled out if Felix and Olivia ran back to me and Sigrid. We were waiting outside because she panicked trying to enter the burrow.
Good thing she isn’t too squeamish when it comes to blood and injuries. I even Helped ! I used the same magic as yesterday to slow our dwarf’s hemorrhage*.
We had to go inside of the tunnel to try and set the charges again, “balls out” as Felix said.
Thankfully placing the rest was easy as they were pre marked by Rickert.
We ran like hell and I threw a small fire spell on the fuse. It made the biggest of BOOMS!
I can’t work on my project tonight, they are inviting us to eat before we leave tomorrow.
*DO NOT TRY THIS - this is a really bad idea, dont pickle your teammates.
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Day 320 - City of Serval
Finally ! We got back to the city! I immediately went to the Library in the hope to find a spellbook to copy that STASIS spell in my own grimoire. That was way cheaper than buying it*.
Sadly this one is more complex than anything I know and it’ll take time to get it right. I don't want to freeze myself or anyone important.
The incantation is a whole paragraph long, this is insane, if it wasn't for my little project, i wouldn’t even consider giving it more than a glance. No one will use this to fight, I’ll tell you.
I made progress with the lightning spell ! I'm pretty sure I found the most efficient way to cast it without it singing my eyebrows (contrary to Olivia’s belief, no, it's not the latest fashion for mages, it's more like the calluses for fighters: an unfortunate after effect of practice).
Now its mana requirements are almost at the firebolt level, which makes it around a Journeyman Spell.** Nothing too fancy, but I noticed it was way more potent than any other spell of that level.
I currently can cast it five times in a row before ending up winded, and only needing a couple minutes rest.
I added it to my grimoire today, I called it “Crackling Shot”***
*Magic libraries used to authorize mages and adventurers to copy pages of their books for a fee. When our prestigious academy became a reference in our empire and beyond, we devised our Standard Leveled Scroll System (SLSS for short) that rendered it Moot.
** Reminder of the old spell classification used before our academy’s rise of power : Innate / Beginner / Journeyman / Intermediate / Advanced / High magic / Divine magic.
Most mages of the time will never learn more than a couple spells higher than Journeyman in their careers, unless they were court or war mages.
*** This single spell vulgarized the uses of Lightning type spells for every mage worth their salt. If you want to know more about it please read : Lightning magic without going blind III edition.
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Day 345
My party decided to leave on a low level mission: berry picking.
I decided to stay in our Inn, and try to imbue my jar with this stasis spell before “lighting it up” with my Crackling Shot.
Good news: it worked, anything put inside will just stop moving.
Bad news : The lightning stops just outside of the jar, and crackles around it before vanishing. Maybe I should fill the jar with something to suck up the lightning inside …
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Day 350
I did it ! It took a while to figure out what kind of medium would be best to lure the lightning inside.
The answer, after a lot of tries, and almost three different fires in the inn ?
Blue slime gel and salt ! It was that easy ! Combined together, and coating the rod (Note: make a hollow rod to make it less gross in the future) with it links the upper and lower part of it and the lightning is sucked right into the jar. The salt then reacts with the electrised slime and shrinks back inside the glass container and seals it in, drying up where air makes contact.
My party still isn’t back from berry picking, I hope they are okay..
(The rest of the page is scorched and badly burnt, as is the rest of the journal.)
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Day 351 (Journal N°2)
I learned a very valuable lesson yesterday.
You shouldn't, under any circumstances, drop the bottle of lightning near anything important!
Not only the spell released its energy all around the impact zone, it went overcharge and flash burned everything flammable.
Bad news, my previous journal is in tatters. luckily the spell i use to preserve the already written pages took the brunt of it, but the unwritten ones turned into a pile of ashes.
I bought a new journal and commissioned a few more jars and rods to try and fix all of it.
Today, my Teammates came back, apparently they got lost after they were attacked by a very aggressive boar that sent them right into the forest.
They were less than happy to learn that most of their clothes burned up in that incident.
Except Ricker, who was overjoyed to see another way to make things go “Boom”.
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Day 459
We’ve been attacked on the road to Cuni Sanctii. lizardmens and kobolds working together, just as we pitched the tent.
Felix, Olivia and Rickert went a little overboard, thinking it was an ambush.
I used a jar on one that tried to jump on me. The result was very messy.
After some searching, we heard a lizardman’s (female ?) voice calling from the trees. Olivia took care of it with an arrow before I could try and translate.
We followed the noise, and we reached a camp, Olivia’s target lying down next to the fireplace.
I’m not sure, but I feel that we were too close for comfort and they were trying to make us flee… poor bastards, it would have worked if we were greener. Instead they jumped head first into combat maniacs.
Inside the tents, we found a big white egg, probably one of theirs. We decided to keep it and try to find somewhere it can be safe and taken care of.
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Day 462 - Imperial city of Cuni Sanctii
After some time to stabilize and perfect my “Bottled lightning” (Brand name pending) and making sure no one already discovered it(for the patent), i went to the Mage’s Conclave* to present it to the magical and alchemical community.
They were all very excited, and I've been hearing very good things for the future (I’ve heard of making a noble out of me ? it possibly can’t be that easy, right ?).
They rewarded my discovery with a load of gold (so much that poor felix fainted when he saw the letter or mark and I explained how many zeroes there were on it) and a permanent monthly stip-end to continue doing research relative to the bottled lightning’s applications.
No one wanted to take the egg, Felix and I are thinking about taking care of it where we are going to settle down.
*Prior to the Academy's rise to power, mages were arranged in small circles, only represented by small numbers during meetings called Conclaves.
Of course, it left a lot of mages unsatisfied, and it was the source of lots of tensions and créations of rival “Conclaves” in every regions that felt slighted, triggering wars until WE made it clear the Academy was the very obvious good choice**.
**See “Lost cities: The Alastair Incident” or “Formation of the great glowing Crater” or even “Academia: Rise to supremacy”
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Postface:
I hope it will help our dear students and readers understand how pioneers of magic made their discoveries and how, despite how inefficient their methods were, helped create the magic society of today.
There is a lot more to say about Ms. “Mother of lightning” Lipswick and her son, Alaster “White Drake” Lipswick that you can find in other works and biographies.
You’ll find in the annex a bibliography and magic stamp to validate your read to your teacher if you were tasked to.