lintalai in arcadia
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"It should only affect the person who opens it, although it is based on range. Warn them not to crowd around it, please. Hmm, so a glyph that will blind or deafen the target when triggered...targeting a new Prime world will be tricky. Do you know anything about how your little Astral jaunt worked? Your world has never heard of other planes before now, right?"

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"Right, this is the first time as far as I know. I walked into my school and then I was in Arcadia."

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"I'll start by trying to send a mundane object somewhere safe, just to prove that it's possible. Then we can move on to the warded box."

Really, someone should try divination, first, but she's not going to get into the details with a kid who doesn't know the first thing about wizardry. She'll bring it up with other wizards and hope someone studied the boring stuff.

"How did you trigger a portal accidentally, anyway? There are hundreds of planar nerds who would love to have a chance to study your experience and you barely know what happened."

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"I don't know."

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Shrug.

"Alright. I think I know what to focus on, for now. Do you want to watch me work, or do you have other things to do?"

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"I'd like to see!"

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Most of spell development (or at least her particular kind of wizardry) seems to involve reading, writing, re-reading and re-writing. After putting on her glasses and retrieving paper, Yllafina begins to scrawl things down, only really remembering that Lintalai is there if she asks specific questions. Otherwise, she seems to prefer to work relatively uninterrupted, and doesn't have the presence of mind to really explain herself.

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Lintalai takes pictures of what she's writing to see if her everything can translate it.

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The pocket everything recognizes the language as 'Dhoraz', and is perfectly capable of translating the text. Most of the notes seem to state facts about reality. The spell mentions various conditions of Arcadia (the Orb of Day and Night, the Storm Kings, Abellio, Buxenus, Nemausus...) as well as features a locked box might have (e.g. the locking mechanism, the wood used to craft the box), and features of the destination (here the comments are mostly focused on differences between a generic Prime Material world and Arcadia, rather than anything specific to Amenta).

When Yllafina sees her taking pictures, she does ask: "Why are you waving that thing around?"

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"It can translate writing as well as talking! I just have to take a picture of what I want it to translate."

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"That's a neat trick! You're full of surprises, aren't you? You might want to tell wizards that, we spend a lot of time deciphering musty tomes."

Read, read, read. Write, write, write. She isn't currently consulting any old books, but now that it's been pointed out, Lintalai can see what must be quotes from books rather than the wizard's original writing. The mark used to mark quotation is different than the one she's familiar with, and the translation app ignores it, but the diction enclosed by said marks is drastically different from Yllafina's.

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Lintalai doesn't want to interrupt but the next time Yllafina takes a break to drink water or stretch out her hand or anything she says, "Are you quoting from something in these parts?"

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She looks.

"Oh, that? Yes, that's from a book about Arcadian wildlife. It's useful to reference the differences between the things on Arcadia and things that are actually living."

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"What about that part?"

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"That one- if you look here..."

She guides Lintalai through a few other quotes. Yllafina explains that she quotes others when there's a concise description of certain conditions that she doesn't expect to improve upon, like in the case Lintalai pointed out, where she summarizes the lawful good nature of the plane, or elsewhere, when she quotes a description of the plane's physical properties.

"That's why magic on Outer Planes is so much more difficult," she adds, showing Lintalai how detailed even this concise quote about which kinds of magic Arcadia allows people to perform, and under what circumstances. "On the Prime, anything goes. Here, the plane has opinions."

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"How does a plane have opinions?"

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"Well, it's made by belief, but some beliefs are bigger than others. Gods decide the big stuff, on most subjects."

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Lintalai nods and continues photographing sections of the spell as it's worked out.

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Following on from Lintalai's question, she shows her the sections which reference gods...

A mention of Azuth which is fairly practical, describing how he assists petitioners to access magic on Arcadia.

A fairly florid description of how much Yllafina values interplanar travel, which repeatedly asks Celestian for assistance in enabling this spell...

A short, simply stated request that Marthammor Duin protect the box as it travels through the Astral Plane...

..and similar such sections for a few other gods: Isharia, Neselthia, and one which refers to as 'Averter of Evil', according to the translation app.

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"Does it notify the gods every time you cast a spell like this?"

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"Not exactly. If you're someone they're interested in, yes, but otherwise, it's just something they handle as part of their daily work. They rarely check unless you're the type who has a close relationship with them, in which case they field requests. It's a beautiful thing, having the gods on your side, but it only works if you're the type of person who gets along with any of them. I pay lip-service to the ones that are interested in my work, and they help out passively."

She smiles.

"Are you the type not to get along with gods? You'll find sympathetic ears among us wizards. We're not very docile people."

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"I haven't met any gods in person yet, but I don't know how they'll all feel about my project."

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"Gods don't really go around expressing their opinions about things, except through their astral-spellcasters. They're a judgmental bunch, even the ones who don't work as priests- or haven't since dying. You'd think dying would re-arrange someone's priorities..."

Yllafina scrutinizes her notes, trailing off as she seems to find something interesting.

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"Would it? Why?"

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"The world you wake up in is completely different! If I had just appeared back where I died, I would still be an amateur doing party tricks, but instead I'm making good progress. Imagine wanting to do the same things you did when you had to worry about feeding yourself and surviving winter!"

She makes some disgusted faces at something she's spotted and starts scrawling on the parchment, lips pursed.

"What would scientists say about your world if they had to describe it in a few words? I spellcrafted as though the big stuff would remain the same, but that way lies our box, exploded in the void somewhere."

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