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something greater than yourself
an isolated hivemindling in Eretsu
Permalink Mark Unread

Selivu has gotten to the point in a hivemind's life where they're always doing many things at once. Right now, one of the things they're doing is sending a small expedition caving out in the frontier. They're well-equipped and taking it slow - bodies are in short supply out here, so it's more important than ever to be careful. They're descending a slope, and lamplight reveals this section of the cave ends in a shallow pond. A body steps into the water to take a closer look -

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- and disappears, psychic connenction rapidly fraying.
The greater part of Selivu is panicking a little, and is trying to shove as many psychic resources over the connection as possible.  The separated instance - now considered Seliun, as an individual - is panicking a lot.

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They're in a pine forest, much like any other. It's not at this moment snowing, but there's snow on the ground, melting slightly in the crisp, clear sun of a late morning. Nobody seems to be around, nor are there any obvious signs of human habitation.

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This is not where they were! At all! The cave was located in a desert!

At the moment their leading theory is some sort of strange natural magic phenomenon caused her to be teleported somewhere far away. Why here, they're not sure.

They'll take a moment to calm down and get oriented. It's strange and limiting to be in only one body. They have more like ten bodies worth of psychic energy, and they have some psychic weaponry, so they're not entirely unprepared, at least.

Time to follow procedure and get some scouts. Are there any animals in sight? Anything that could be a den? They also do a coarse psychic scan for minds in case there's something here they can't see.

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There are a smattering of small birds and mammals in the forest, as you would expect, but the strangest thing in her senses is a bird's mind that seems noticeably too smart, even for the raven it most closely resembles. If the minds of the animals or mundane people are like air to move through, then the mind of this bird is like water, or perhaps some form of insubstantial fluff; it's not hard per se, to touch it or change it, but there is any resistance in a way there there normally isn't. The bird is not at a human level of intelligence, but it's expressing cautious curiosity about the strange appearance, ready to flee at the first signs that the stranger has noticed it or will take hostile action. It is readying some ranged attack capability of an unclear nature, without further investigation. 

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Strange. Possibly further evidence for unknown magical phenomena.

They'll try to slowly increase their distance from the anomalous bird. While doing that, they'll spend a few minutes trying to add some of the more normal animals to a subnetwork under their control, then review the animals' memories and instincts for any information on the anomalous bird. They're probably not in any real danger, but provoking the bird in order to gain information directly isn't worth the risk.

They'll also send some animals out in all directions to see if there's any points of interest nearby.

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The unknown bird feels smugness as it watches Seliun leave. The slowly growing cloud of enthralled lemmings and small birds she has following her remember those birds as a threat - the glint of metal and death from afar are a recurring understanding, but concerningly, their memories contain many other threats. Great lizards, larger than horses. Fire or ice wielded as a weapon by giant wolves. Numerous impossible things, especially for a collection of animals limited to a few hundred square meters of forest.

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…disturbing. They would write it off as being some sort of hallucinogenic effect, but the details seem to be consistent among individuals. It could be a psychic effect changing the animals’ perception, but that’s almost as dangerous as if the effects were real. With that in mind, they’ll keep their mind guarded and try to keep the animals spread out to avoid attracting undue attention. 

At the same time, they definitely need to know more about the anomalous bird. They’ll try to brute-force takeover its mind. If it doesn’t work, they’ll try to crush it’s mind. Failing that, they’ll throw some birds at it from the opposite direction and gain some distance. If it works, they’ll see if the anomaly’s greater intelligence sheds any light on the situation.

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The corvid's mind is easily defeated - reaching out and grabbing an object underwater is not that much harder than grabbing an object sitting in air, after all. Its last thoughts as a free being are of warning its family of some unknown threat. 

In the depths of it's mind, it's own nature is somewhat clearer. It is one of a species, it thinks, an inventory of loves and hates and suspicions of dozens or hundreds of others of it's kind (it has met more members of it's species than it has the capacity to keep track of productively), perhaps lacking in depth or sophistication compared to that of a human mind, but no less intensely felt for it. They are corvids, a little on the large side, with beaks and feathers of metal, the beak shining polished-steel, and the feathers mostly black but for a few red highlight-feathers - the metal feathers are razor-sharp, which both deters predations, and enables them to be thrown as a weapon, allowing the birds to attack from afar and be a threat to many of the dangers of the forest which are limited in their effective range - nearly as deeply-felt as the list of loves and hates is the mental inventory of forest threats which are not so limited in their abilities, which is disturbing long, ranging from a giant white-haired apelike figure who threw rocks to a giant lizard, only out during the warm summer months, which could spit globs of acid with remarkable accuracy, and several species of plant that will throw spines or spit seeds if provoked to do so.

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It’s more intelligent than they suspected. Unfortunate - they try to avoid subverting intelligent creatures. They will consider erasing themselves from it's memory and letting it go later, but in the meantime, they can use it.

The biology here is very strange! The abilities represented seem like they would require a lot of energy. They wonder how the bird is able to grow metal feathers. The ranged abilities in particular are interesting, they would think that ranged attacks typically require intelligence.

Do any of the networked animals remember seeing humans, or have a sense of where humans might live? Failing that, any caves or other structures? It would be nice to have protections from the elements.

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Apes often use tools, so it's not alltogether surprising that one has figured out "throwing rocks at birds". Most of the other forms of ranged attack seem to be innate, and thus presumably come with suitable instincts - the anomalous bird certainly does, for its feather throwing.  

None of the animals here have ever seen a human, though the anomalous bird is aware that it's one of the younger and less worldly member of the flock - a young male consigned to guarding the edge of their territory due to lack of success in internal conflicts. Perhaps one of the older corvids would have seen a human; it lacks the language to ask them.

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Finding and subverting more of the corvids could be a potential path to finding humans and defending themself, but it would be risky, not to mention unethical.

It’s seeming unlikely that humans come through this area often, which it seems likely to be deep wilderness. They’ll operate under the assumption that they won’t be interacting with humans in the immediate future. They’re on their own.

They’ll start looking for a place to make camp, gathering sticks and any dry-looking grasses or mosses along the way for fuel for a fire. The birds can help a little, they’re probably used to carrying small sticks for nests.

Once it gets late, they’ll find north from the stars.

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Unfortunately, the melting snow makes finding dry firewood difficult. Not impossible, though; not everything is directly on the ground, and the birds are well-aware of every shelter and hidey-hole free of snow in the vicinity. With a bit of time, they can retrieve sufficient tinder to set fire to larger bits of wood. 

Eventually, night falls. The stars are not the correct stars. 

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It is known that the stars in the sky are the suns of other planets, incredibly far away. It is also known that the stars appear to move over time; the ancient Egyptians’ star maps look subtly different than modern ones. However, the stars of tonight are not supposed to be completely different from the stars of last.

It is too soon and too strange to start making hypotheses. It is clear there is high magic at work.

They hope the rest of themself is safe.

They will sharpen some sticks, then kill, roast, and eat whatever they have controlled that looks plumpest. They’ll also fill their flask with snow and place it near the fire to melt.

They will sit by the fire and meditate until morning. They do not need sleep. If they get cold they’ll use some lemmings for warmth. The birds, or whatever has the best night vision, can keep watch.

They’ll relax their control over most of the animals and let them follow their instincts. Keeping them on too tight a leash can cause erratic behavior. The corvid will stay subverted, though.

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Dinner will be a rangy snow-hare, then. It's decent food, considering the lack of salt, etc, but rather lean.

Allowed to follow their instincts, but not to flee the scene, the animals will curl up and sleep, and take watch. 

In the night, howling is heard, but no wolves make themselves known at the campsite. Eventually, after a long and unpleasant night, dawn comes, and with it just a little bit more warmth. At least the weather is still clear. 

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They stretch, drink some water, and kick the fire out. Today they’ll go exploring, looking for a better source of water and some variety in food sources. This area looks like it should have berries. They’ll also want to gather some resources for more permanent shelter, but they’ll wait to pick stuff up until they’re coming back.

They pick a direction and start walking. Some birds will fly in other directions to cover more ground. They’ll leave a lemming near camp to help them stay oriented.

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The birds are aware of various creeks in the region, and of thier current state of frozen-ness (mostly very, though some have thawed a little). They also collectively are very aware of the many trees and bushes that would produce berries were it not so early in spring that even the blossom has not yet had time to come out. There might be some hardy bulbs and tubers worth digging, if they can distinguish what's good for various animals to eat from what's good for people to it. 

Regarding shelter, the animals know of a variety of caves, sinkholes, vents, and other points of entry into the ground. Most regard them with a deepseated instinctive apprehension, though the anomalous corvid also thinks of them as relaxing in some sense, like being near them satisifes a mild but significant craving.  

How far can Seliun get from the lemming while still remaining in contact with it?

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They’ll dig up some tubers and bulbs as they find them to try later.

Seliun has their own newfound apprehension for caves, too.

There must be some source of energy common to these underground structures that the corvid and some of the other strange animals are able to harvest. Probably best to not use them for shelter unless they can verify they’re not currently inhabited by a predator.

Their range increases significantly the more minds they have anywhere in their network, even if they’re not particularly powerful minds. They’re guessing they’d maintain a strong connection until they got around 25 kilometers away. Proprioception across bodies fails to be useful as a method of location-sensing after a few kilometers though.

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Travel proceeds as such, Seliun's caution keeping them away from many of the threats and anomalies of the forest for some time, as they wander through the thawing pines. 

Eventually, they stumble into sensing radius of one of those predators - a pair of great drakes, each about the size of a horse, thier back legs clawed and thier front limbs great membranous limbs. They sit together, either side of a dead moose, which they devour ravenously. They're obviously meant to fly, despite being much too large to do so, under a normal understanding of the biophysics of flight. 

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Wow! Those are some weird looking lizards! They’ll do a slow, light scan of their minds to try to get a sense of their intelligence without disturbing them too much. If they killed that moose themselves, they’ll make excellent weapons. Maybe even mounts.

Now that they know they’re far from home, they’re going to have to be less squeamish about using somewhat intelligent animals as thralls, but they’d like to know what they’re going to do before they do it.

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Fortunately, these drakes are dumb as bricks. If the mind of a human is like air to move through,  and the corvid is like water, then the mind of these drakes is like a sugar syrup; the resistance is high enough to be annoying, to slow access to the mind, but ultimately not a true barrier. 

And once they do have access, Seliun finds very little. They're not really stupid, ultimately, they have plenty of raw processing power, but they have one-dimensional, raptorial minds - like an owl or an eagle, all thier cognitive effort is spent searching the world for signs of food or danger. These two are a mated pair and love each other dearly, but they wouldn't consider any other drake anything but a threat. There's really not much they don't class as a threat or a meal, really. They're not really capable of planning, and their main emotions are the aching hunger of something that just woke up from hibernation and joy at having a good meal together. 

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The resistance is unexpected. Before Selivu was created, some of the individuals involved in their creation were already weak psychics, and faced similar levels of resistance when trying to use psychic abilities on humans. That’s how far back they have to look in their memories to have a point of comparison. 

The resistance in combination with the low intelligence is even more unexpected. Intelligence and innate psychic ability do not increase in lockstep, but there is a correlation, generally. 

Unexpected developments aside, they’ll control the drakes and add them to their own subnetwork, separate from the other animals. It’s mostly for organizational purposes, it’ll make it easier to make the drakes do one thing and the rest to do another. 

They’ll root deeper through their memories a little for anything of note, then continue walking. The drakes can have their fill of their meal, however long that might take. They don’t want to have to worry about feeding them. They’ll want to investigate their flying abilities, but that can wait.

They’ll also cycle out their crowd of forest critters for new ones and read their memories. It very well could be that the other ones had only never seen humans because they only inhabit a tiny section of the forest.

Permalink Mark Unread

The drakes finish eating pretty quickly, they're gluttons at heart. Seliun can presumably benefit from adding the (mundane, here) corvids that are attracted by the carrion, and who are lurking on the edge of the forest until the predators are done. 

The drakes are by far and away the widest-ranging creatures here, having on occasion flown dozens or hundreds of kilometres, and joy of joys, they're aware of a location that has a perpetual plume of smoke coming from what looks awfully like a chimney of some kind, deep in the forest. It's about 50 kilometres away, about 150 degrees off from their current direction of travel, quite outside the normal travel range of any of the smaller critters. 

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They’ll add the birds, the drakes are hungry.

The chimney is… interesting. Promising. Weird.

They’ll head in that direction, drakes leading. They could send the drakes ahead and check it out that way, but they suspect a human body is best for whatever they’ll encounter there. Besides, the human body is best for conducting psychic abilities. They’ll plan on walking for about 5 hours today, weather permitting.

Ideally they would keep some record of the approximate area they appeared before abandoning it. They’ll have the lemming left at camp dig a large shallow circle in the dirt to help identify the site later, then release control over it. 

 

 

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Travel is uneventful, for the first few days. The weather stays cold, but clear, no storms running through, which is fortunate. Not much wants to pick a fight with the drakes, and they can easily be fed mind-controlled deer or moose as such animals are found. 

On the third day of walking, Seliun stumbles upon a clearing, a little valley, through which runs a stream, just barely melted enough to flow, still with bits of ice and frost along it's edges. The ground is covered in a layer of bright green - plants not unlike bluebells, the first small herbs they've really seen in this world still slowly waking from winter, and every plant has a spray of flowers. Within each flower is a point of light, bright and rich and glowing blue or white or gold, suspended there by no clear means. There are a few bees about, but it's still the relatively cool morning and presumably more will arrive with the warmth of noon (or what passes for it in this cold climate). 

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They’re quite pretty. They’ll - poke one of the lights with a stick to see if it’s safe, then put their hand near one. Are they warm?

It’s too bad plants don’t have minds, they would like to know what’s going on here. It seems like - natural magic, a low and simple magic. It would seem that magic is common in this place, as opposed to being a rare oddity almost everywhere back home.

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The lights are, perhaps, very very slightly warm, but it's hard to tell. They seem entirely harmless, no more or less than light. A bee will buzz with annoyance, when the stick gets too close to it.

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Interesting. They’ll give the clearing another once-over in case they missed anything, they continue on their journey.

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There is a spring, burbling up from the deep, which is what feeds the stream, and perhaps provides more esoteric forms of power for the plants as well, from somewhere deep below, but no. This field is rather heterogenous in it's makeup - the flowers vary in colour, but they're clearly all of the same kind. 

After a few more days, they grow near to the place they are trying to reach, and start to see it in the memories of the animals they take control over, particularly the little birds which flit everywhere without a care, full of a kilogram of ego in fifty grams of bird. The home appears to be an old-fashioned log cabin, of the sort which has been seen throughout history, with a sod roof that's currently still covered in snow, and dirt and firewood piled up on every side but the front for insulation. It's inhabited by an old woman who appears to live alone, tending to a small garden and hunting game, and more importantly, doing magic. Her cauldron often emits strange scents and colours and all of the animals know not to go near the pit where she dumps it's contents, out the back, carefully isolated from the outhouse and the compost piles. Animals have seen her cut down trees with a gesture and then telekinetically drag away the logs, or conjure fire to drive off wolves, or on one particularly dramatic occasion, put down a blizzard with an hour's entreaty to some outside force. She is clearly quite old, and quite powerful, but she lives alone, far from any other humans. 

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Humanity! Of a sort. They’ll try to make a good first impression. Hermits have a reputation for being crotchety, and being an immensely powerful hermit probably doesn’t make you less crotchety. It’s good to know the magic of this place can be harnessed. They’d like information from this women, and if that information included how to learn to do what she knows how to do, all the better.

When they eventually get within visual range of her territory, they’ll change formation such that most of the animals are hang back, the human body leads, the drakes and corvid follow at a distance. They don’t want to appear too threatening. They’re not sure what the best approach would be, so they’ll wait near the edge of what the animals here think of as her territory, and see how long it takes to be acknowledged.

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There is a raven, with a mind which is entirely closed off (perhaps the barrier is not strong, but how do you determine the strength of a strange barrier without pushing on it?) watching them, after a while. It will wait, and see what she does. 

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Hm. They’ll - smile and wave? They’re unsure what the best way to communicate is in this situation. They might not have a common language.

“Hello there. I am very lost and am seeking information”, they say, first in German, then Latin, then Polish, then Macedonian, fifteen more languages after that, pausing each time to see how the raven acknowledges it. They’ll also try to have the corvid signal friendliness and needing-something to the raven, maybe corvids have compatible body language.

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On the Polish, the raven cocks its head, and flies off. A few minutes later, the old woman comes stalking out of the woods, leaning heavily on her cane. 

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"You know, I've never heard an accent like that before in my life. Where the world are you from, girl?" Her own accent is similarly strange, but it's comprehensible Polish. 

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(They really weren’t expecting that one to work, of all languages. They’re pretty sure they’re not in Poland… but only pretty sure.)

“I think I am from somewhere very far away. Where I come from, the stars are in a different pattern, and there are no birds that throw metal or flowers that produce light. This place has much more magic than I knew existed. What is the name of this place?”

 

 

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"This little place of mine has no particular name, but I suspect you're asking on a grander scale than that. We are in the land of no nation, but the nearest nation is Eldemar. The continent is Altazia, and the planet is Eretsu. Those names are common everywhere the Ikosans went, and they were like bloody rats. Unless you're from Hsan?" 

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They considered themself to be from and of themselves, sovereign from any nation. But that’s a complicated conversation and they don’t want to start out this conversation with “I’m a hivemind”, that usually requires a gentle approach.

“I’m originally from the nation of Prussia, in the continent of Europe, on the planet Earth”, they say. It’s arguably completely true, part of them is originally from Prussia. “I was caving with a crew in the Americas, another continent, when I suddenly found myself in the wilderness near here. I have… a natural gift with animals, and I’m used to surviving in nature, so I’ve fared well so far. I’ve never heard of any of those places.”

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"A natural gift, eh? I know what the minds of those drakes can be like, your family must be quite something. Why don't you come in, and we can have a nice civilized chat by the fire." 

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Ah, maybe psionics are a known thing here. The family comment implies it may be more of a heritable ability here than a learned skill.

They’re a little bit suspicious of the woman’s hospitality, but maybe it’s the culture here.

“I would appreciate that, thank you.”

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The they will return to the wooden hut. Naturally, all of the animals need to be left outside; it's a small enough building for a person, let alone a drake. Inside, there is a bed, a bookshelf with a sparse selection of books and the rest of the space filled with potion-bottles in a myriad of shapes and colours. The rafters are strung with herbs and animal-parts of all sorts, and in one corner there's a box overflowing with strange minerals. The warded crow (the witch herself is similarly warded, a clear surface standing between her mind and everything else) from before sits on a perch besides a little reading-desk, and there is a hearth, made of stone that appears to have been fused together into one mass suitable to contain a fire, with a great cauldron sitting in it, which is currently half-full of stew. The witch sits on a rocking-chair by the fire, and invites Seliun to sit on the less-comfortable desk chair. She sets a teapot to boil on the fire. 

"So. I'm Esme Napurzy. What's your name, then, girl?" 

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Family names are a thing here. They’ll use one, then. “Seliun Selivu.” They look around. “You have a nice home”, they smile.

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"Thank you. All the work of my own hands. So, what can you tell me about this situation you find yourself in?"

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“Not much more than what I already said, really. I don’t understand how I got here, I’ve never heard of magic moving people to new locations, let alone to what sounds to be another world.”

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"Dimensionalism is an obscure and difficult branch of Ikosan spellcraft, with few specialists and fewer masters. Teleportation, the use of magical to move instantly from one place to another, is one of it's most famous techniques. Moving to another world is beyond what any documented master of the art can do, but not so far beyond plausibility that people do not make up rumours." 

All of the magical terminology is loanwords, from a language which is most definitely not Polish. Probably, it's related to whatever influences produce that accent of hers. 

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"Ikosan spellcraft... can you explain who the Ikosans were? And just, how magic works? Understanding magic seems important to understanding how to navigate this world."

"Also, what language are you speaking? To me this is a language called Polish from the nation of Poland. It seems extremely odd that we would have a language nearly in common. I suppose it's possible one of our worlds got the language from the other, somehow..."

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"To my understanding, the Khusky in this region have spoken this language since time immemorial. The magic that brought you here can't have been that random, since the universe is mostly empty space, so it's not entirely surprising that whatever did it put you somewhere you can speak the language." 

"The Ikosans were a bloody great empire who conquered everywhere there's humans except Hsan, and who invented magic so bloody useful that even I use it, in blatant defiance of my foremothers and whatever virtue is left in these old bones." She clearly does not like the Ikosans. "The current Great Alliance thinks of themselves as the heirs to the Ikosans, and that's not too much of a lie, by the standards of the empire, but it's us Khusky who've lived on this land for all of history and they should fuck right off. That's why I'm out here in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, is that I don't want to deal with them."

"There are a number of ways to do magic. The three which I use are potion-making, where you combine various magical reagents in a cauldron to produce a potion which can do all sorts of useful things, the right and proper spellcasting of the witches, which I will admit I mostly know for old time's sake, and the Ikosan system of spellcasting, which has eaten every other magic system worth using, and involves using gestures and words to narrow the possibility-space of a spell down to a narrow aspect of possibility space while channelling mana, to allow even very complex spells to be cast without requiring you to embed their nature into your very soul. There are also bloodline magics, like your mind-magic trick, but I don't happen to have one of those. I'm sure the lizards and the dragons and the humans in Hsan all have their own ways to do magic, but I don't know the first thing about them." 

Permalink Mark Unread

They nod attentively. They noticed that the details of "the right and proper spellcasting of witches" were skipped over entirely, but that was probably on purpose on her part. They won't pry. Also, that sounded like confirmation of psionics being a heritable ability here. She also seemed to imply that "the lizards" and "the dragons" are intelligent enough creatures to have their own systems of magic, which is... hard to think about.

The witch doesn't know that they already know some of her capabilities, so...

"What are the things that magic can do? And, how long does it take to learn Ikosan spellcasting? Are there any reasons I *shouldn't* learn magic, if I am able?"

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"Ikosan spellcasting can do damn near anything, if you have the right training and spells. The easiest things are light, heat, and force, and there are some mages who spend their entire lives doing those. Some also move onto controlling and protecting more esoteric energies and forces. Negation magic, or metamagic more broadly, is considered an essential skill for any mage, or otherwise you could be faced with your own spells running riot."

"Beyond that, there are numerous interesting fields of magic - animation, conjuration, divination, alteration, warding, transformation, dimensionalism, each deep enough to permit a lifetime of study. And that's disregarding all the magical forms of crafting, spell formulas and potions and such." 

"... and then there's mind magic, soul magic, blood magic. All very illegal, of course," She says with the tone of one who has been doing illegal things for her entire life and doesn't plan to stop now.

"Some things are beyond the power of any mage, and others the domain of the damned dead gods alone, like power over time or raising the dead. But magic is pretty damn versatile." 

"Training a mage, to the basic levels of skill expected of any mage, takes five to ten years, if it's possible at all. That's mostly spent teaching memorisation skills, meditation, introspection, and the other mundane skills and magical theories, as well as the basic magical skills every mage should have, like assimilation of external mana and a few basic spells and shaping skills. Most mages have to study thier specialisation for another five years after that to be considered capable at thier master's profession." 

"You shouldn't be asking why you should become a mage, but rather who is going to teach you. Mages are important people, you know, we don't all have time to take in foundlings, even foundlings with such impressive bloodlines." She ponders for a moment, on that. 

Permalink Mark Unread

This is a lot of information to take in. Part of their mind is whirling with the possibilities. What if any of their bodies could create even small amounts of light, heat, and force? They'd be incredibly capable.

Five to ten years is longer than they hoped, but hopefully already having considerable mental skills accelerates that.

"I'd think my natural talents could serve as payment for services somehow, perhaps indirectly, but if 'mind magic' is illegal I can see how that might not work. I wouldn't presume that anyone would do it for free."

"...dead gods? Where I come from, we only have... myths and stories of gods, and they're supposed to be awfully hard to kill. Is that a word that didn't translate well, maybe?"

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"The gods made the world, and had a great deal of opinions, and then they all fucked off and nobody has heard from them in a thousand years, not even the church or angels." 

"Magic training isn't available for money. It's available for status, or connections, or other things which convince people to share their hard-won secrets with you specifically. Mages are too busy getting rich using magic to need to get rich teaching." 

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Absentee gods-or-godlike things, religion and apparently angels still present, got it. They make a note to look into angels later. Esme seems like she maybe doesn’t love this topic.

They nod. The time and knowledge of a mage is too valuable to be worth mere money - they had a similar attitude in the early days of their cult, only inducting people with compatible mindsets, only sharing secrets with those who would eventually join the mind. As of recent decades they haven’t needed to share secrets at all, but that might change now.

“Being from another world hopefully provides me with some information others might be willing to trade for, if trading secrets is a common practice here.”

They don’t want to outright say they’d teach psionics, because they may need to keep that information close to their chest. The occult rituals they know likely won’t work here, either. But that still leaves the sciences, and all the improvements to life they can bring. 

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"It certainly makes you interesting, I'll grant you that. Someone like you seems unlikely to vanish into the depths of history without a mention. Or maybe people like you arrive and fade into history without mention all the time. I'd be fascinated to see what you end up doing, but probably all the interesting bits will be long after I'm gone." 

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They show concern. “Do you expect to be gone soon? Are you in poor health? That may be something knowledge from my world could help with, if you’d like.” They pause, considering what to reveal. “My… bloodline, as you put it, is more versatile than it may appear. It could help solve that problem, but it comes with costs.”

They’ll pivot to a more direct approach - they’ve been dancing around the point. “I would be willing to share more details of my magic and my world, if you would be willing to teach me magic in exchange. I don’t expect I’ll need instruction in memorisation, meditation, or introspection.”

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"I'm old and frail, it's only a matter of time. I've made my peace with it, no chasing after immortality potions for me." 

"Hmm. Not like I've got anything better to do with my time. Fair warning, if you're a bad apprentice I'll turf you out on your arse, and there will be chores." 

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They nod and smile. "I can handle chores."

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There are many chores! Her first month consists nearly entirely of chores.  Chopping wood and carrying water while Esme uses magic to make her a crude bed from fallen lumber. (Before it's done, she must sleep on the floor in a pile of furs, and Esme doesn't rush), but also cooking - Esme insists that she learn to cook in the massive cauldron over her open fire, critically pointing out every burnt patch or undercooked morsel and 'suggesting' recipes demanding ever finer temperature control. They also have lessons on Ikosan, both teaching her the language, as well as an unflattering presentation of thier history. (They conquered half the world, ruined it in some magical cataclysm, and then fled to the other half to conquer that too, turning the sisterhood of witches against itself and killing nearly everyone who objected to thier dominion, and then turning on themselves and breaking into the current collection of states in the so-called grand alliance, along the way committing a carefully memorised list of the little and not so little evils of conquest.) She is also asked to memorise endless strings of nonsense, though Esme will give up after a few hours of that when Seliun's memory proves largely perfect, as she will when Seliun's meditation skills prove sufficiently unflappable. There's no equivalent tests for visualisation skill and introspective ability, but Esme assumes they're on par, and if they aren't, then Seliun will simply find the next steps largely impossible.  

Eventually, Esme will acknowledge that Seliun is ready go learn magic. This process will begin by aiding her with potion-making - there are two potions that will greatly aid her later steps, so she should learn to make them herself first. 

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Seliun finds Esme to be a pretty reasonable teacher, in line with her expectations. The sleeping situation would have been worse if they could feel sore about it. They're privately satisfied when their mental skills are found to be sufficient. Their introspection is of course excellent, and their visualization is adequate.

Potion-making is tedious, and they're not entirely used to doing detail work like this in this body, but the cooking practice did help with that, as intended.

For their part of the deal, Seliun starts by figuring out what information they have that will be most useful to Esme. Chemistry becomes the first priority, as the potential to improve potion-making seems clear. There is mild success - usefully translating some elements and compounds is difficult, and potion-making is so influenced by magic that not every concept is useful. Additionally, a fair amount of their information is already known by Esme in one form or another. However, some of their information is both new and compatible, and noticeably increases yield, decreases brewing time required, or provides new potential alternate reagents for a few potions. They also share a few recipes for gunpowder, and some informational novelties like optics and how to make daguerreotypes, in case Esme can find some use for them.

They will also demonstrate and explain, with some mental barriers relaxed, the nature of their control over animals. The first essential part is that their mind is stored outside their brain, in a psychic construct that has been improved, optimized, and empowered over time. This gives them much greater psychic ability than a normal human, and allows them to operate other psychic constructs, such as one that forces a connection with a lesser mind, then envelops it within itself.

They don't go as far as to fully reveal their status as a hivemind, but it is clear that their mind works differently from normal minds.

 

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The problem with incorporating chemistry knowledge into potion-making as a field is that potion-making is sort of infrastructurally limited as an art - Esme doesn't have any chemical feedstocks on her, any pure elements or refined magical substances, no beakers or eye-droppers or sophisticated measuring instruments. She has a big cauldron, a fire, a bunch of herbs and rocks of various sorts, and her gut instincts. There are people out there in the world (Alchemists, she calls them, like it's a dirty word) who do have those things, and who would benefit more from the knowledge of chemistry, but Esme's potion-making skills are all about making the limitations of her current setup work at all, before they're about anything else. Gunpowder sounds like a cheap substitute for a fireball (or with a gun, a magic missile) to Esme, but she acknowledges that sometimes a cheap substitute is a very very useful thing. 

Making a magical copy of your brain to enable your soul to do thinking without the meat is supposed to be a powerful and secret art known only by a few necromancers seeking immortality (even if it is strictly speaking mind magic and not necromancy), Esme will relate. That said, she's never heard of someone doing it purely for the sake of it, but she supposes it's possible. She's never heard of that leading to people modifying their mind - as far as she knows, liches (Those necromancers who have achieved immortality by transferring their soul and cognition out of their body) are cognitively as they were in life (that is to say, terrifyingly capable, intelligent and amoral archmagi, now with lifetimes of experience on you). 

It's pretty clear Esme can tell that Seliun isn't giving her all the answers about her mind magic, and that she has a pretty good guess as to what the truth is, after a while, but she seems content to let sleeping dogs lie. She hasn't let down her mind-shield since they first met, though, and neither has her raven, on it's comings and goings, often bringing mail (which Seliun is forbidden to read) with it.