shellphones | [open]

Type: Video
Sender ID: hasapoint (Lashan)
To: Public
Subject: waterproofing charms
Warnings: none!

[FIRST: You get a very close shot of Lashan's eye as she squints at her shellphone. We have here that double-doozy of a medieval and an old person and while she's pretty sharp, these devices are not intuitive to her.]

'S it working? The bead's glowing.

[aka 'the light's on'. The video pulls back a bit but like, it's still pretty close and the angle is unflattering. This whole thing feels completely unnatural to her and the lines between her brows are deepened in a frown.]

I'm Sister Lashan. I'm a lay sister, not a nun. I've made some charms for waterproofing. They're not well-tested though. If you help me with that I'll give you one. Want to know their tolerances and if I have to tweak anything before I start selling them. I'm on Elrut.

[yeah this has made her feel ridiculous and stilted. She prods at the phone with a finger.]

...How do I- [she found out how to end message! this was Not guaranteed.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This magic doesn't last forever, either. It can break or be overwhelmed, and most of it will start wearing off with my death. Which won't be just yet, I'm not that old.

Hm. Anyone can if they have a source of power, but actually having the Gift for it makes it a lot easier. [the 'source of power' is usually killing/hurting other people or making deals with entities from other planes, after all.] But it takes long study to get anywhere. At least, back home. I suppose 'magic' would mean different things to different people here.

Of course not! Age is a number but the only thing that determines a forgemaster's life is if the fire still burns in 'em, right?

I was born without the ability to use magic. I was tested and everything but...it didn't work out. If I hadn't been adopted when I did, I was bound for the military. Lucky for me my Old Man saw potential in me and taught me to swing a hammer.

I've considered getting one of those magic tattoos here but...it feels like cheating, you know?

It's a little more complicated than that but, sure. Experience makes up for certain other deficiencies.

[he's a healthy-looking kid, he'd be less familiar with the point when the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Hardy though Lashan is, she feels her flesh weakening, year by inexorable year.

What Darin said suggests several things about his place of origin and worldview. Lashan nods.] I was born with middling aptitude for magic that increased as I got older, but I was a meathead who just wanted to fight, as a kid. Came to metallurgy late. We don't have it, in my homeland. There just aren't enough trees and they're pretty well all sacred besides.

To have it come so easily after so long without? I could see that. So people can just add stuff on? Is there a limit?

[Darin laughs. He wound up being pretty much that. A big, loud guy quick to fight those who gave him enough reason to.]

It's really fascinating to me how different people's worlds are when it comes to magic. In my world, either you've got elemental mana affinity or you don't. If you've got good affinity, you're guaranteed to go to school. Have a good, easy life.

Guys like me don't really get those opportunities.

Kinda why I might be a bit biased on those tattoos. Not sure if you can add things on and I'm not sure I want to? It's complicated. I prefer doing things the hard way.

Elemental, huh... It's a bit complicated where I'm from. There's places where someone with a Gift gets taken aside to be schooled, but nobles get a very different quality of education than lower classes. Unfortunately not everyone with a Gift gets what you might call a formal training, and partial knowledge is more dangerous than none.

[For everyone involved. Magic gives people an option that may lead to prosperity but it's far from a given. Usually if someone's gathering Gifted orphans they're an institution of some kind, she thinks.]

Yeah, I get it. If there's a lot of options it's hard to know where to start, and if you do well enough as you are... well, there's nothing wrong with that anyway.

Exactly! The way I see it, if I had magic, I probably wouldn't be the smith I am now. And I busted my ass for too long to think about ever being anyone different than who I am!

My people have a saying [how to phrase it for someone who won't know the Twins] - Healer's art, Warrior's art, Crafter's art, the art of the mage, a social life. Pick two to master, three to dabble. There's not time to accrue mastery in all of them.

[it's a little more complicated than that but for sure, building and then maintaining skills in any of those consumes a lot of time.]

...I like that. Spread yourself too thin and you're a master of nothing, right?

Makes sense to me. I focus on my craft before anything else.

It's not a bad thing to pick up something that's out of your usual range, but the human brain can only handle so much at a time, yeah. What that range is can shift, too. Did for me.

So how long have you been here?

Shifted for you? How so?

[Darin has to stop and think about that for a second.]

About...half a year? I think?

It's got to do with the fact that I'm about seventy, kid. Ever see an old fighter who's not making any effort to learn to do anything else? At best they coast on their savings, or on someone's support, or they teach. Me, I was just about gutted on a random battlefield and started thinking about getting out of the merc business sooner rather than later.

[she sounds almost fond about it.]

Huh. I would've thought longer.

Oh come on, you barely look a day over fifty!

...Wait, you were a merc?

Psh. I feel sorry for the fifty-year-olds in your life!

I was, and for a good while. That wasn't what my poor fathers trained me to be, but it turns out being a fighter is broadly applicable. Why?

No reason...I just...I guess it's kinda funny. My dad...my biological father. He was a mercenary. Traveled the world and got into all kinds of trouble the way I hear it.

A lot of people looked up to him.

[The thought of jokingly claiming she could be his father crosses her mind, but Lashan's pretty good at tempering that sort of impulse. Time and place!]

And you among them, eh? [Not unkind:] You miss him.

Mercs are rough, for the most part. The job's rough, terrible sometimes. It's not the kind of career you want to take up to see if there's good in humanity. But I've met good ones, too.

Well...yeah. I didn't get the chance to spend a lot of time with him. I lost him when I was little so...everything I have of him now is just...stories.

It's easy to look up to someone when all you have are the legends people spin about him, you know?

I had to do some merc work before I came here. It's...well, the stories made it sound a hell of a lot easier than it was.

I know. Memory goes like that in time, regardless. I lost a lot of people when I'd just been made an adult, and everything I haven't made into some kind of a story, even if it's not one I told anyone else, is pretty faded now. I had to get a number of years between me and them before I could see them as flawed people at all.

[Her twin included, maybe most of all.]

Join any companies? Things can be easier if you're part of one and it's any good, but you lose a lot of freedom too, and a bad company's an absolute nightmare.

Ah no...it was kind of an impromptu thing. I was on the road and needed money for supplies. Getting involved with a company like that would have been a bit troublesome...

[Considering that he was wanted and had a massive bounty on his head at the time...]

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