Yeah! It can do peak skill at designing summoning rituals targeted at beings of pure Hope!

Another spark blooms, and with it the knowledge of how to tie her existing skills with blue-light symbology into her knowledge of thaumaturgic summoning rituals. She's going to need a circle inlaid with a summoning medium (sapphire would work, but so would blood or blue chalk or a few other things) and an appropriate talisman (an object soaked in or representing hope) at a minimum, but various other trappings (candles, symbols, assistants, chants) can help focus and direct the thing to make it more likely to succeed.

Oooooo. 

Fancy schmancy! 

Fundamentally, a ritual is a ritual, right? She shouldn't need to have this power for actually performing it, even if it'd maybe be a little on the helpful side to have an instinctive sense of what everything is for and all. 

She writes out a procedure for summoning a deminis infinite hope elemental that she could use for something like this, and drafts out the circle design (in quarters, with each section not actually fused together to form a whole circle, for precautionary reasons, and also storage space reasons), then sends that off to zatara. 

Found a bottleneck for one of my light projects - apparently sometimes you need 'infinite' hopes, rather than mortal hopes, for some emotional light projects? I could do something like this [attached]. Might also be possible to work w/ Wonder Woman, given her divinity? Think this is probably the cleaner way to do it, though, and wouldn't want to waste her time or involve her in a kind of ~magic that she's not necessarily well suited to. 

Oh and... she pokes around the intuition a bit for if it has a sense of what makes an appropriate offering for that kind of entity - she gets the sense that's at least sometimes part of the full completion of a summoning procedure? 

Well, ironically, something that she hopes would be sufficient probably would work. That said ... blueberries, bird-bill dayflowers, and artistic depictions of stars are the things that come to mind when she prods the intuition.

Aww! She adds notes to that effect, and goes and prints out a few of her favourite starscapes, and adds one of her own - black tourmaline speckled with little sapphire twinkling stars imbued with the barest traces of blue light, just enough to make them glimmer and shine together, like those artsy nasa photos of nebulas. 

- While she's here, she's might as well keep her crystally powers going! 

The physical structure of the blue lantern should be much the same, regardless of how she goes about it - the symbology intuition has a good sense of how it should look - 'lantern' is a good word for it, something about as tall as her forearm and wide as her outstretched hand, with a delicate surface engraving swirls and sigils on hexagonal panels of sapphire framed in black tourmaline. That's going to take a while to make, though, but that's okay. 

- She's not entirely sure if she's going to use love for it, but there is something oddly appropriate about adding a bit of symmetry to the power system, and it's a reasonably suitable material for this either way. No harm in keeping her options open! Besides, having more to hope for around her hope-y projects isn't exactly a bad thing. 

She writes up a few quick resources for herself (and any interested magicians of her acquaintance) - notes on a proper thaumaturgical system for evoking and containing hope are probably going to be useful to her later, then ditches the power. If there's a threading feature in the league chat app, she's 100% going to try to dump some of this stuff in there! She should probably ask a bit more about if there's other people she should be sharing her magic exploits with who aren't on the league, but that's an another day question. 

Next up is... the earrings! 

She's not the most sure what she wants for the last little power for it - her ideas are so abstract already, and she doesn't want to add too much more to the already kind of overstuffed design. Let's call it... green body enhancement, since she's already got blue body enhancement going and adding a bit of another color can still - fit things in nicely? 

The gift obediently swaps out the powers.

Alright so! 

There's some strategy about it, obviously, and she wants to work with a mental design as much as she can, if she's going to be using green. but she wants to - do it in as much as she's still - thinking about earnestly what she hopes would help? She remembers poking her powers early on, and that seemed like such a big and daunting ask - to have something earnestly and freely given to use to forge a better future - and probably a lot of the impact of that is about it passing through more hands, but she still... wants to give it its' due respect, you know? 

And what she earnestly thinks would help - not just help her (which mostly is going to swing on it being impressive and notably thoughtful), but help the queen - is... something more social? They have an identity as warriors, yes, but realistically they've been curled up in their cozy warded paradise for thousands upon thousands of years, without too much more fighting then festivals and a few small fights relating to the occasional magic using supervillain, or the very very edges of WW2. She doesn't need tools to fight, for all that she's pretty sure they're a sign of prestige and honor and respect and all that in their culture. She sketches the basic idea out in bullet points, then goes and thinks and feels it through. 

So. The most basic part of it is going to be... connections. Hope doesn't connect quite as clingily or aggressively as love, but that's okay. She's not looking to make something about - permanent connections, she's looking to make something that helps with the burden of the Queen, the supreme executive force of a noble queendom full of immortal comrades. She's looking to help her find, help her feel, help those loyal to her reach out to her, when they're feeling hopeful, when they need to reach out to righteous authority, when they need to fight for their commander and fulfill their expectations of themselves and their duties - an expression of hope as a guiding light towards the promised land.  

It's shared hopes, hopes reaching out to her, a sense of prayers to the goddess-queen, the loose but legendary connections of a savior to the saved, the guidance of the hero on high to the soldiers down below. She tries her best not to make it - invasive, but make it about... what their souls present to her, how they reach out, how people come to petition her, and how she can feel out how she can fufill their hopes, in knowing them. It's not a tool of interrogation, it's a tool of - negotiation, even appraisal - to feel out the flow of the fight, to feel where the hopes spike and dim to feel how they fare, to sit in a council room and have a sense of how badly they need, in their hopeful hearts, for their priorities to be addressed and for them to be relieved and for their work to be aided. It's also... that hope reaching back, to uplift and lighten their load. Physically, to reach out and help those who are fighting for the hope she shares with them, to literally make their burdens lighter and their bodies stronger, and also to... touch their souls, and ward them and their wills with the solidarity of a unified dream. 

She's very careful not to give her a mind control artifact, just something that can... reach out and reassure, in a way that only the spirit can see, sometimes, and something that can help make a barrier against some of the more... external tumults of the spirit. There's also... not not a flight system in there? It's a little bit excessive, but she's already reaching out to the world to lighten things and guide forces (albeit in a pretty indirect way) and putting two and two together is simple enough that she feels like she'd be skimping on it if she didn't include it, even if it's probably horribly inefficient to use outside of the most dramatically hopeful scenarios. There's a decent chance she can fly already, too, so having something that can help that ability with a bit more efficiently and quietly is good, too. 

She's a little worried these hopes are too - impersonal? She's not even too sure that it is as much of a shining city on the hill as her monologue made it out to be, there, but - that's part of the point of it, yeah? There's a few simply practical things in here, sure - someone who is purely a shrewd negotiator or a squad leader could make decent use out of it, yeah - but the real value is... in being hopefully harmonious, unified in dreams and purpose, and she likes to think that's the hope they should be shooting for, and what she wants to help out, you know? Plus, it's just cool! She adds in some sparkly light control highlights to make it a bit better as eye-catching jewelry, and just... channels her hope that things will go well and they'll be able to build something, together, something as beautiful as her dream, here, and adds in the rush of green to make it all... tick. 

Once she's done, she flops in bed and curls up with her violet core for a bit - focusing on the feeling of channeling the violet light like she had with the power, feeling the power through her blue-ier senses, and just... basking in hopeful love to help herself recharge, a little? It's probably going to be a long time before she's much of a real lantern without her tools, but that's okay. No point in not starting now!

...She's feeling a bit more than just heart-tired, now. It's pretty late. She's glad that - hope renews itself, especially when she's working with it this... directly? It's still probably not a great idea to lean on it too much, right now, and there's probably some finnicky ultimate limits to dealing with it without doing something more drastic to her brain. Still, she has the skills for some basic body enhancement, and it's not too hard to use a little green light to focus in on herself and give her a little bit of steadying energy. 

After a bit, she goes and grabs some water and checks back in on if there's any new chats to her or news about the whole spaceship kerfuffle. 

Her crafting took long enough that there is actually a new mission report in the League's systems — a crashed Dominator spaceship carrying ancient metahuman prisoners. It seems to have crashed when the main engine was taken out by an ancient Sumerian man with energy-absorption-related powers. He was able to survive in a stasis pod by absorbing ambient heat, but the current theory is that he's too drained to wake up, or insufficiently in control to stop draining anyone who comes near him. Investigations of the ship are ongoing, but the current priority is guarding a set of rescue boats dispatched from the coast of Australia to try and bring the survivor ashore without bringing drainable metahuman powers into things.

There's also a reply from Zatara:

This is an interesting summoning ritual; I don't recognize the style. Did you design it?

I think it should work to summon and contain a hope elemental, in theory, although I've never actually come across anyone who used spells to manipulate elemental hope. It might just fail if there is no such thing as a hope elemental.

One thing seems to be missing, though: if it does summon a hope elemental, how do you actually banish it again? Especially if it breaks out of the circle and you can't just reverse the calling?

That... is a mission report of all time. 

She's glad that she noped out, for all that it was a horribly awkward affair - it's the sort of thing that you really want to only do when you've got everything drilled down. Theoretically there's a bunch she could do without being drainable by the parameters she's seen, but still! She'll have to look into something for this other than flying away - at minimum some sort of hold out that would work in situations like that? But that's super duper a later problem. 

To Zatara: 

Mhm! Or me and the gift, anyways. Don't think there's any reason why there wouldn't be that sort of thing, given some of the things I've read about in this world? The gift was pretty sure it would work. As for dismissing it... 

There's a few things? I'm not sure how much they count as a proper resolution. For one, it's a hope working, so in theory, once the hope is fulfilled (or dashed), the connection should just break? I'm trying to target a relatively weak one, too, so just beating it up with green boxing gloves (or a more esoteric alternative) should be an option, too? 

Oh and... As I understand it, it should still be a thaumaturgical ritual, given the powers that I used as a basis for it. So more general methods should probably work just fine, even if the gift isn't the most inclined to hew to standard stylings. Beyond that... 

It's going to be a while before I have enough skill in enchanting to do anything particularly complicated and esoteric, but I was wondering... Would it be a good idea to try to use spellfixing to capture 'the moment of creation' for the lantern? I'm not sure if I understand how this works correctly, but the most favourable interpretation of things would be that I would be able to add things in as if they were there from the start later on, so long as I preserved that properly, and I imagine that'd be pretty useful? Think I could arrange a proper bottle for it in time for our meetup, if you think it's a good idea. 

Thaaaaaaat was probably too many question marks, but better too many than too few? 

Oh! That's a fascinating idea! Let me see ...

So I haven't tried that myself, but I think that it should work. I found some references in the library. According to De facinoribus incantatorum praestantium et proprietatibus incantationum eorum, Flavius Segundus was known to be able to modify his creations after the fact, famously using this to sneak a poisoned broach past the Emperor's court magician. But the secret of how he did it was closely guarded. He was also known to sell bottled wind to traders making off-season journeys around the Mediterranean. So he may have some unrelated technique, or he may have been a spellfixer.

Either way, I can't see bottling the time as having a negative impact on anything, so it's definitely worth a try.

Okay! 

She pokes the book and her power intuitions - storing thoughts and memories and emotional context around memories isn't exactly the same as storing time, but it might plausibly be related enough to help a bit? She might as well spend a stray power on it too, given that the idea seems novel yet straightforward enough to maybe be scaleable for other projects - and besides, she can always renab the body enhancement stuff later. 

The gift remains happy to swap out small, well-specified powers according to a concrete plan!

Some last messages for the night: 

To the cute superhero woman she has a crush on and is now dating??!!! Joan: 

Hi! Mostly just wanted to say thank you for the date, interrupted though it was. Feels good to get out of my shell a bit more, and you were great. 

Also, do tell if you'd like to work more w/ me on my imbuement projects! Would love to hear your thoughts on my imbuement work - would be interested in say, hearing how my rings compares to yours, what it's missing and how it's different and all that - and would be happy to teach you how to make this stuff yourself or work with you on developing this, if you're interested! 

While she's talking about that... 

Oh and... It looks like Earth's other Green Lantern doesn't use the league communication system? Not sure if he'd be interested in working with me on my training as a lantern or helping with the rest of my work, but if you think he might be I'd appreciate a way to reach out to him about that? Might also want to look into making some sort of emotional spectrum communicator too, so I can get in touch with you a little easier. I don't know if you have any particular comms discipline rules around your rings that might get in the way of that, but it's a thought! 

To Diana: 

Got the poison protection thing ready! Looking into setting up batch production for the basic protection amulets, but got inspired to do yours first, and it shouldn't be changed too much by not having my full set-up quite yet. 
I've been thinking of doing a tour of some of the temples on Themiscyra and giving offerings to some of your gods, but realized I wasn't sure if that's appropriate as a foreigner, or if there's anything I should keep in mind to avoid offense for say, excluding particular gods? Mostly I'm just hoping to pay my respects politely and maybe give them something interesting relating to their domains, but I'm flexible on it, just want to be prepared, you know? 

...And okay she has officially done enough socializing for the night. She updates her schedule with her existing commitments and goes offline. She'll look into doing the anti-sleep thing later, after she does the big dramatic ritual, lantern creation, and moment bottling, but she wants to be conventionally well rested, for that. She'll make sure that the physical form of the lantern is as perfect as she can - make the bottle properly - nabbing one of the glasses from the cupboard and messing around a little with the physical composition should serve well enough - and rest her poor little heart. 

Although... 

She has a decent bit of power capacity left, actually? And she has some pretty different needs for the morning. Probably the deminimis thing to do would be to just grab the magical reserve power, plop that in over the thaumaturgy intuition with the spellfixing, and add something for understanding how blue lanterns work so she has a better sense of what she's aiming for, perhaps? She could rebuild for it more dramatically...

She honestly kind of likes just keeping the four pointer as is? She's a little tempted to see if she could figure out something more for that, but leaving a set of main powers usually fixed seems like it could help with that soul adaptation thing that zatara was mentioning? She might want to see if she can get a power to measure the amount of - soul scaffolding that she's gotten out of it, maybe see if she can like, chart that out and see if she can plot out the pattern of it and then get rid of powers that she's mostly internalized anyways - especially since most of it is knowledge and intuition that shouldn't require anything too crazy to be able to implement in a relatively normal mortal mind rather than a wacky superpower thing - though the gem creation does seem to be somewhat that. She shakes out her head. That's a thought for another day. And not a particularly relevant one - for the moment she's going to need it as is for making everything in time to sleep, though she's going to clear out the rest of her powers so that she has space to wiggle things around a bit. 

So that leaves... a 3 pointer (a 3 cluster, and two two clusters, if she remembers her node geometry correctly), a 2 pter, and 1 pter. 

She's already got most of the blue crafting chain in the 4 pter, so it's going to be a little awkward to make that? 

As for what she wants... 

For the 2 and the 1 she's thinking spellfixing stuff, and the rest for lanterning? The spellfixing loadout should probably be the spellfixing intuition power she's already been using, plus the innate magical reserve power that she's been using, and a specialized skill for catching time in a bottle, but she's a little unsure on the exact ordering. Probably having both skill intuitions bundled together makes more sense, now that she's thinking about it? Yeah, that's what she'll go with once she's configured everything else. 

For the lantern making... 

She's already tried just getting a skill for making lanterns, and unless something has changed that won't work? But information about lanterns isn't unavailable, the gift just doesn't really make... 'incomplete' powers, she thinks? So she'll need to build something up for that out of parts, if she wants to do that. 

As for what to get to try to make something like that... Could she get a power specifically for helping her use other people's - or elementals, if it helps to be more specific here - hopes? A power to understand not necessarily how to make blue lanterns, but to improve her understanding of their operating principles? She's feeling a bit less inspired about this one, but something more general - maybe an intuition for creating blue light power storage and distribution systems? She's got a bunch of ideas for what's she's going to hook up to it and having some insight on that could be nice, as would whatever general buff she can get from getting some general skill in the area. 

Oh good — I enjoyed our date too, and would love to consider another one when the current situation calms down. And yes, Hal has never been great at using the League communications system; I can poke him to check his messages.

There are comm-discipline regulations, but luckily they were written with the assumption that everyone involved would be Green Lanterns, and so I believe they don't apply to any communications between the two of us. That said, if you do contact me by ring, it's entirely possible that my response will just be "busy" because I'm in the middle of something and will have to call you back later. With that understanding in place, I'd be delighted to be able to talk to you FTL instead of just whenever I'm on Earth.

As far as making my own equipment — I sort of doubt it will be possible; the Guardians are very old, and you are, to my knowledge, the only non-Guardian to figure it out. So it seems likely that you're simply special.

But just because something is a difficult long-shot is no reason not to try it. It would be great to be able to create my own reserve equipment and/or have something to barter with advanced species with. I would definitely enjoy learning how from you, even if it proves not to be something I'm capable of.

Paying your respects to the gods in their temples is actually quite polite, as long as you can do it sincerely. If you're worried about messing up, I can go into more detail, but generally as long as you are respectful and bring an offering you will be fine. Not everyone prays to every god; so if you visit the shrines of every olympian bar one they are likely to take offense, but if you only visit a handful they are unlikely to make an issue of it. I do recommend visiting the temples of the five, at least, since they are the goddesses directly responsible for Themiscyra.

Hmm ...

So it definitely can't do a power for directly making lanterns. But powers for manipulating other people's hopes more easily and for understanding the operation of blue lanterns are both definitely possible!

The spellfixing and magic resovoir powers do synergize. It can also do a intuition-for-bottling-intangibles-specifically power that synergizes with the former but not the latter. Does that help? How does she want all of these arranged, if she's going to be breaking down most of the existing sparks and putting them back together?

Gift, you're jumping ahead of things! It's good to know that that configuration should work later, though. 

Right now, she was hoping to clear out everything but the 4 pter, and start making a power for making lanterns. 

Her first thought for that was a power for each of manipulating other's hopes more easily, understanding blue lanterns, and an intuition for blue light power storage and distribution systems, to merge into a second tier power for later up-merging. Does that work? She got a positive reply back for the first two, looks like, but it seems to have missed that last one. 

The last two things are ... sort of the same thing? One is overlapping the other.

It could do a power for manipulating others' hopes, a power for understanding blue light power storage and distribution, and a power for understanding the stabilizing systems that hold and 'decompress' elemental Hope? Those three should all have synergy, as far as it can tell without actually creating the powers. The last two things are almost the component pieces of 'understanding blue lanterns'.

Sure, that works! 

She goes to merge them once they slot in, if she can, then pokes at the next part of this. 

She was thinking an intuition for - working directly with the honden of hope? She’s gotten some impressions from some of her other powers that there’s some interesting things you can do by interfacing with it more directly rather than just manipulating it as a physical and spiritual force coming from the souls of people. And if she’s doing something dimensional… Joan showed off those dimensional pocket thingamajigs from her ring - she can’t see any reason why that would be green locked and it seems like it’d be a handy feature in a lantern, and probably a good point of synergy? 

Hopefully those two should be able to merge with each other and then the lantern understanding bundle? 

The gift takes a moment to figure out how to make 'working with the dimension of Hope' work, but once it does the powers do indeed slot together as Topaz is hoping.

Fun! 

Okay so the last two powers are something that she's a bit less sure of - she's already really got most of the generalist hope toolkit that she'd want, here, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to add. 

Hm.

Could she get a power that helps make blue light equipment more synergistic with the other colors in general work? The gift also seemed to think manipulating immortal hope on its own was something out of scope, but could she get something that helps her understand immortal hope more? Part of the point of making the lantern after all is to have a source of immortal hope she can use for her projects, and understanding what that's important for and how she can optimize around that is a thought. 

A power for understanding immortal hope is definitely possible. A power that helps make blue light equipment more synergistic with other colors ... maybe is or isn't possible depending on exactly what she means. Does she mean intuition for designing blue-light equipment in a way that will work well with other colors? Or does she mean a field or an effect that makes blue-light equipment work well with other colors?

The former!