"Alright so..." 

She hums quietly. 

"I was thinking about using the lights for a form of memory backup or identification, based on the design of the soul - I believe I mentioned that to both of you? - and after a while of sitting on it, it occurred to me that, since souls are, from one perspective, made out of the intertwining connections of the lights that you could do more than just restore a broken part of a soul. In principle, if you had the pattern down in enough detail, and a precise enough ability to manipulate the lights, than you could just... recreate the network and 'plug everything in' and you could get a working soul out of it. And since each of the lights has its own planar realm that keeps a perfect record of the networks and instances of the associated feeling... in principle, you wouldn't even need to set up anything in advance or have an intact brain or body to work with. It'd be harder without making some preparations, sure, but it would be possible to quest to or maybe even just... reach out to those planes, copy over the record, and then put it all together into a new body, who should be at the very least on a emotional and psychological level completely identical." 

She pauses for a moment. 

"In principle, you could even totally bypass the afterlife system - you could something like this even if someone's soul had been eaten by a demon, say. You wouldn't even need to do it on a thaumically active world - the entire process could be done through pure lightwork. Hooking up a free floating soul to a matching body shouldn't be too hard, however you do it, and assuming that the supervisory divine power doesn't contest it, it would be pretty easy to call back the original soul, if that's important to you, as long as you're doing it on a thaumically active world. The... process as I envisioned it has a few limitations - as I imagined it, it would require the being in life having a relatively normal connection to all seven lights and for you to have someone on hand who can call upon all seven lights for the purpose, but you might be able to cheat that a little with the white light? I'm not entirely sure. I'd... be surprised if it wasn't much harder to revive someone unwilling, too, since throughout the whole process you're doing something really finnicky with what are basically large chunks of their soul. And probably some forms of spiritual transcendence or power would make it harder to make it work - especially if you're not calling the soul back, you might get significantly degraded magical performance, though you might be able to patch that with work elsewhere in the process. But even without anything enabled by sophisticated white light manipulation... It should be possible for me to work to resurrect pretty much anyone, and it should also be possible for me to teach others to do the same, thaumaturgically or through lightwork." 

She... is not going to mention that they could just bargain with Death, since that'd probably scan too much like asking them to deal with the devil. There's a few other possibilities she's had in mind, too, but they would require different specialties and she doubts any of them would get better results or be easier with what they have on hand. Maybe if they had a dream mystic, psychometrist or a pair of order and chaos mages, it would be worth trying something in that direction, but no. Though she is still thinking of asking Hades about all this - she's sure she can make it worth his time to entertain her, at least. The dry approach is... alright? It feels like - they just need to listen, here, and doing something more emotional would - probably call for more call and response than they're comfortable with? It's hard to tell, though. And she hasn't actually thought through the practicalities enough for her to do arbitrary people, but that's fine, it'll take a while to get everything set up to even try something basic...

Zatara nods along through her explanation, something inside him unknotting now that this is a practical magical problem that he can discuss in the abstract.

"I do think that having a matching body is more important than you're thinking — I agree that it should be possible to, ah, bind and assemble the spirit without one. But it's delicate work, and having a body present as the different aspects are summoned and assembled will help hold everything in place, making it more tractable. Obviously someone's original body, if it were available, would be the best focus. But if they died, presumably their original body is no longer capable of holding their spirit for one reason or another. So, practically, I think it might be best to design a ritual around a body made from clay in their image. There's a book ..."

".ereh revo taolF"

Zatanna grabs the book — A Studie of the Mysterie of Gölems, or, Mene of Clay — and begins paging through it in search of diagrams.

"I was more thinking a clone or something like that? Or maybe a body like Red Tornado - his frame seems to be able to hold a humanoid soul just fine, and it seems like the elemental powers might be nice, if you're willing to accept some oddities. I think you could probably 'heal' a body in place to the template of the original using the lights without too much fuss, so you wouldn't necessarily need to have a particularly elaborate vessel, as long it could hold a spirit properly. The - standard shape I've been using for things like that would be a crystal matrix of some kind, but if there's adequate prior art, we can just go with that." 

She furrows her brow a little in thought. 

"Oh and... I suppose one problem with doing this the - fully synthetic way would be that the existing custodian of the soul would keep the most perfect voodoo doll for them you could ever ask for - you'd probably want to do everything off earth, at least, if you wanted to resurrect someone from hell, just for that." 

"Ah, that's a good point — resurrecting people out of Hell is not technically any different than resurrecting them out of the Silver City, but it has the predictable side-effect that your operation will be attacked by demons. And if they maintain an ongoing connection to Hell, they may very well act as a conduit for infernal magics even afterward ..."

Zatara stares off into space in thought for a moment.

"Actually, what we might need is a baptism. Ritually acknowledging that they have been born again, and that their previous sins and attachments are wiped away."

"Mhm! That's how I'd do it if I was doing it the magic way, at least. I'm not sure how much that would help with the sympathy problem, though - fundamentally the whole point of the exercise is to get as close a model as possible, so there's only so much you can do there, even if the connection is notionally severed? Though... I think hell tends not to leave souls in a terribly intact condition, so that might be me worrying overly much?"

She half-wants to tilt her head up in thought but there's so much just - instinct to outflow all of the pent up thought so she's just trucking along, here! 

"In principle, you could just do everything off of thaumically active worlds, but it's not like we have a great abundance of options there. I could... probably make some sort of FTL colony ship with lightwork techniques and terraform and/or colonize somewhere without a thaumosphere thick enough to support demons, but that would be quite the project! Probably best to keep away from things like that for now, though, and stick with getting people who wouldn't have that sort of attack risk."

She pauses briefly to catch her breath, if nothing else. 

"Probably the optimal target would be... what, someone with a reasonably cooperative divine power or no one who would stick their nose in in a situation without that, who we can get the genetics for, who has people who would we could invite into the project who still have attachments to them through all the lights - people who knew them in life and who are still really emotionally invested in them, who doesn't rely on any sort of complicated alien or metahuman biology to have a comfortable experience, and someone who would have insight into the process after going through it, and who could be just generally helpful to have around? Ideally, if we're getting a magician, it should be okay if they lose a little bit of power through the process, so preferably they'd have experience working with less or more indirect power."

Sindella... might be a good one, by those lights? Certainly it's what they're thinking of and what they'd be the most invested in. It'd be a bit more complicated to do her than the simplest possible one, but the return could be goood... Though she also really doesn't know much about the list of dead superheroes, so it's hard to say? Certainly, it's possible that there's other people who would fit just as well into the role she has in mind, but... She has her heart set there a little too, for some reason? It's just... what a good hopebringer would do, you know? 

"I suppose there's an argument for doing someone as ordinary as possible, or just prototyping this on a shade or something - having that preexisting medium and some measure of preexisting emotions would make it simpler in some ways, but it might be more awkward logistically, and it might not generalize as well as I'd like..." 

"We might need separate setups for people who ended up in different afterlives," Zatara muses. "Or at least we should test that to see whether it makes a difference. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to wait for the local hospital to have a, a heart-attack victim or similar, who was not quite treated in time."

That seems less ... immediate, perhaps, than starting with Sindella.

"In fact—"

The more he abstracts things, the more he can consider all this to be a magical engineering exercise, and focus away from the uncomfortable parts. So he's happy to spend quite a while hashing out details and things to try, offering suggestions and refinements. Zatanna doesn't have as much experience to offer, but she still has some insights, and, once they start getting seriously into the design, takes notes.

The clay idea seems good for now - it seems like the most uncomplicated way to do it, and it's not like they can't try other ideas later. 

(She'll see about maybe ducking out to grab some of the sparks from her lantern creation complex - there was one about understanding planar realms that might be helpful here...)

The finalized soul calling part isn't too hard, either - Zatara had looked into necromancy enough that he had something they could adapt, even if it wasn't from the most... wholesome place. Her thought is that they could maybe use a series of gems for each of the individual color patterns and then use the golem body to mediate them all? 

She doesn't - necessarily object to the idea of using a rando, the problem is just that the colors often like specificity and intensity. This isn't necessarily that power intensive, to just remake a normal human soul, but it'll mean that they'll probably be relying more on using the white light to smooth away little problems, without being able to bind as closely to the particularity of the emotions and the traces it left on the world. Still, she was able to do that ritual without anything too too specific? But... the intimacy of it being something that she could and has felt is maybe important, in a way. 

They fuss a while working out the diagram and full design of the space they want, and keep it relatively simple for how much is involved. Really, the biggest question is what they want to do for calling on the colors. With a recently dead body it's... probably reasonably doable to get a psychometric trace and then backtrace that up to the hondens, and invoke it from there, store it up, and then remingle as they go? She's a little worried about connection strength, but again, that's less important for a recently dead non-magic user with a body on hand as a secondary connection, if they can... arrange all that? 

Obviously would want to get at least an approving family, ideally someone with an advance directive that supports this kind of thing and/or someone who has donated their body to science or what have you. 

She actually kind of likes the symbolism of doing it for a trans person and then transing them more? But that would probably be hard to find, and there's no reason why she couldn't just do work on that later with living people first, so she's not going to bring that up. She might look a little thoughtful and/or bluer about the idea as it occurs, though.

In the end, Zatara agrees to handle procuring ritual ingredients and working with the local hospital to find someone on whom the procedure can be ethically tried. As a member of the Justice League, he will likely have more success with that than either of the girls, although he warns that even in the best case the IRB is going to want several days to review their proposal.

That makes sense! She'll reiterate her recommendation to share that this is happening with Batman, because operationalizing candidates later and dealing with any information control they may or may not want to do will be tricky and probably in his wheelhouse. 

Before she just leaves him to it... she has a (mostly unrelated) question. 

"Incidentally, do you know what happened to Doctor Fate and his equipment after his retirement? As I understand it, your bloodline lets you emulate a lot of talents and affinities, and I was wondering if either you or Zatanna could make use of it..."

Actually, thinking about it, there's probably other magician's stuff that they could use, but this is the one that came to mind first? Besides, he's one of the more powerful wizards who might still be around somewhere for all she knows, and she's just a little curious for herself. 

"Oh, Uncle Kent still lives in the Tower of Fate in Salem," Zatanna offers. "Most of his stuff relies heavily on order magic, though, which isn't one of the things that the family talent helps with. Sometimes dad does send malevolent spirits to be imprisoned there, and stuff."

"Indeed. The Tower of Fate is a very interesting arcane fortification, but I would not wish the mantle of Dr. Fate on anybody."

A blink. 

"What's the catch, then?" 

Zatara is silent for a moment, considering. But it is not explicitly secret.

"Dr. Fate is an ancient Lord of Order who bound his soul into a golden helmet," Zatara explains. "When someone wears it, he is able to possess them and bring his considerable power to bear. He is frequently a force for good in the world, and the most recent bearer of the mantle — Kent Nelson, his identity isn't secret — worked with Dr. Fate for decades, defending against supernatural threats. But ... the bearer of the helmet cannot remove it without Dr. Fate's consent, and Dr. Fate controls how much they are able to see and feel while the helmet is worn. Toward the end, when Kent was becoming weary of the fight, Dr. Fate took to just leaving him in a featureless black void, sometimes for days at a time."

"The fact that Dr. Fate is the helmet and not the wearer is ... not well known. I would ask that you keep it secret, to protect Dr. Fate's ability to act as a superhero when he is needed. But I would also ask you never to put his helmet on unless there is the direst need."

She nods along accommodatingly to the ask for discretion, even if she isn't sure she can put it helpfully in words. 

"Oh, poor thing..." 

She blushes a little self-consciously. 

"That... does seem like quite the problem. I suppose it depends a bit on what you can get him to agree to and what he actually needs in a host... What's the current situation for - Doctor Fate? Is he just sitting in the tower idle or...?" 

She trails her fingers a little nervously through her hair. 

There's other possibilities than getting him a host, of course. It... probably wouldn't be impossible to just like, set up a power siphon or something, if that would be helpful, and it's possible to do magic more indirectly, as long as you have the shape in mind and the right tools. She has a sneaking suspicion that there's not really the order magic user population around here to be able to start terribly effectually on something like that, though... 

She glances down at her white light imbued sunstone thoughtfully, reaching out what little arcane senses she has to get a feel for it now that it's settled down. How does it feel? Has it changed since it settled down? How manipulable does it feel, what does it respond to, what does her power think it could most readily be used for? 

The light has settled peacefully into its container, content to remain there. Poking at it makes it come alive, in a way — it is stable, but not so stable that a gentle push can't set it off in whatever direction she wishes. It seems eager to do things; anything.

She could use it to heal the sick, or to encourage growth, or to make something faded whole again, or any number of other constructive uses.

"I understand that Kent has tied him into the tower's wards in such a way that he can still monitor the shift of energies between Earth and the Dream, and raise an alarm should some grave emergency threaten. The tower's bound enchantments also allow him to keep an eye out for worthy bearers. But he has no current wearer, no, and therefore little ability to do things. Kent tells me that Dr. Fate is not human, and that he has gone through such periods of relative torpor between bearers before."

She nods along. 

"Might want to look into something there - it's possible I could make him an artificial vessel or with recording some of his knowledge... I'll have to think on it, especially since the way you describe him makes him seem like... not the best colleague." 

She furrows her brow, and shakes her head a little, before leaning back to ponder a little. 

"Probably best to leave it be, even if I have a lot of silly ideas. Like... for one, I wonder if Captain Marvel's wizard would be able to give someone your talents, the powers of Doctor Fate or Wonder Woman's gifts more indirectly - if he can make it work with Solomon and demigods and gods and titans, it must work across a decently broad range of potential empowerment sources? I imagine it probably drains the source, at least while it's active, but... I do think that it could be useful, for uptime maintenance reasons, if nothing else." 

Zatara hums thoughtfully.

"I hadn't thought about asking The Wizard. He's fairly reclusive, but I know Captain Marvel has spoken with him before. I'll certainly put the question to him."

"I realize we're all wizards, and that 'mundane' solutions may be too obvious, but ... maybe we could try the resurrection thing on Dr. Fate? It wouldn't require IRB approval, it would show how the process affects magic users, and it would let us side-step the soul-calling step, since we already know where his soul is. And it would give him an independent body and get a powerful superhero back in action."

She hums. It... would be relatively simple to work with in some ways, but... 

"It... depends? I'm not sure how amenable he is to working with the league in a way that would be... productive and amiable, I'm not sure what his emotional composition looks like, and I'm not sure how much - being bound to the helmet is important for his ability to function as a superhero, even if I can just" she gestures her hand out sweepingly. "Magic him up a body that would work as a host based on the structure of his soul, and it would of course require his cooperation... It's probably worth asking after, at least. And of course, if he has past hosts that died while comfortable with service as Doctor Fate, then that could be another solution to the problem, in the medium term..." 

"Oh, that's a good point! I can go ask uncle Kent about all this while dad is bothering the hospital," Zatanna volunteers.

"On my end... honestly, I could probably use some rest? Or maybe just time to prepare a little something for the atlanteans to look over when I go visit - I doubt emotional light magic is a particularly well-developed field of study there. And there's a mission with the team I could check back in on... I wouldn't mind visiting him, but since the questions might end up being a little... intrusive, it might be best for it to just be familiar faces." 

Zatanna nods agreeably.

"Alright! I'll text you when I have something."

She briefly considers inviting Topaz out to Central Park ... but she looks like she needs the 'quiet time' sort of rest, and not the 'hanging out in the park' sort of rest.

She's... a little tired, sure. It's not that talking would definitely not help, it's just that... she doesn't have anyone who's already - figured out her pace enough for it to feel quite right, just yet? Certainly, she feels like she's talked enough about magic networking possibilities that it feels tiresome to do much more of that.

She'll make her way back to base and settles in, after capturing a little tangled ball of her emotions and just... fondness for being home, even if it's a new one. 

She'll write up a bit more on emotional light stuff to pass the time - it's interesting, and less inclined to mind control than you might think! But it's still not exactly the safest field. She has the vague idea of what you'd need to make a proper spell for something in the general area of her flight auras - that seems like it might be something that would be of an especial interest to them, given how adapted they are to living on the bottom of the ocean rather than up here. 

When dusk comes, she'll catch the last fading light of dusk, and the first light of the rising moon, and the feeling of the grass beneath her bare feet - she... has a feeling that the gods will like it, and there's nothing wrong with an earnest effort, she thinks?

And... she'll take a look at her messages, see if there's any news on the stakeout and reach out a thread of uncertain hope out in thoughts of Joan - she's... far from sure she'll be able to hear her little ask for if she can hear her and how she's doing, and perhaps when she should expect her to be back, but there's likely little harm in trying, with just what she has.