-Good Morning 16-

One page of each Report appears, Tal tears each out

Dear Spellbook,

Operation Minions went off without issue, so far the reports have come back the same. They are not yet all complete, it's only around four in the afternoon, but I have been watching as the updates come in. So far it's all a match. I realize now watching this, I will have to actually read through them today since the heading on the top of the page made everything written in a slightly different way. Tomorrow we should be back to identical copies. I’m in the library now. I came to try to do some research but Will drain really dampens a love of learning.

Let's start outside Levar's today, I performed everything up till then was the same as the prior today.

Outside Levar's shop, I drank the potions I had bought and tried to summon a Light. It worked the first try, with no pain, and a brilliant white glowing orb appeared in my hand. Finally, it was time to resume my plans. The first thing I had to do was complete my benchmarking. Well, second. The first thing I needed was to get some lukewarm revenge against a pubescent child who technically didn't do anything to me but in fact, tried to murder me.

I found Twiggy and his friends once again in the alley gloating over their goat caper. Without even speaking I cast Updraft on them, but this time I cast it in reverse, the air blowing down atop them. To be completely honest, this was a risk. I wasn't 100% sure I could do this before the attempt. When I summon a Gale, part of the shaping of the Font's energy requires me to direct the wind I summon. When I was shaping the opening in the Font of Air for Updraft, I reversed it using that same technique. The casting seemed to fight the change at first, but suddenly it gave way and my awareness was back in the world. Just in time to see Twiggy and his pimple-faced thugs, surprised by the sudden wind, lose their balance and fall to the ground.

I took a moment to admire and evaluate my handiwork. Had they been warriors prepared for battle, I don't think this spell variant would prove powerful enough to knock them over alone. It worked on these children because they were leaning against a wall and the sudden wind knocked them off balance. While useful to know I could modify a spell in this way, this specific variant probably has limited combat applications. In hindsight, I believe a sudden burst of wind from the side would be very effective.

I stood there, maintaining the spell, contemplating how I should handle this. I hadn't really prepared for this, aside from fantasies of causing them physical harm, but I wasn't actually planning on making those a reality. I wanted to though. Badly.

As I watched them squirm an idea came to me. Casting a second spell while maintaining a first is an ability currently beyond me. I am however able to cast cantrips while doing so and I have a new one I need to test out.

I reached out to the Font of Thought and, following new instincts, tapped into its power. As before when calling to Daulf, I had to picture someone in my mind and the message I wished to send to them. In my first desperate casting, I hadn’t been in the correct mental state to evaluate the actual effect of the spell. Now, casting it while not dying, I could see the spell did not in fact send a message in words, but the intent behind the message. Daulf must have felt my need for aid when I sent him my plea. To Twiggy I sent the very simple command “Obey!” I sent this same message to each miscreant and then allowed the buffeting winds to relent.

The boys stood timidly, unsure if the wind would resume. Before they could get oriented and possibly regain their courage I approached them and gave them my unusual instructions, which they complied to with more timidity and meekness than I usually get from them.

On the way to my other child soldiers, I stopped by the bakery in which I had seen the possible lead on Bearskin. I'd been meaning to come by this way, but it's not exactly like I'm going to miss an opportunity to ask, and the baker wasn't going anywhere. Unfortunately.

"Good morning Master Wizard, what can my humble bakery do for someone as august as you?" The baker greeted me as I entered. I had decided to carry you openly for the foreseeable future. Crowds parting as I pass is terrible for keeping a low profile but great when you have places to be. Two weeks of lying low have me pretty confident there is no one else aware of these resets in Crossroads. The parting was a perk, but carrying you makes people react to me in the strangest of ways. This baker had clearly dealt with Tower wizards before and had a suitably servile greeting prepared for the occasion.

In response to his greeting, I said, "Good morning to you too, no need for the formality. I'd like six sweet rolls, chocolate glazed if you have it, and some information."

He relaxed visibly and replied with a laugh, "Chocolate I have, but I'd have to send the boy out for information. I think I'm fresh out."

I gave him a light chuckle to humor him, we all can't be as gifted in comedy as myself, "I am looking for a boy who has been in here about a month, I uh, I mean a week back, picking up an order of bread. He looked to be an urchin but he was paying for food."

"Oh, that was Lial. Good lad, tragic the way he lost both his parents in that fire years back. He's a good lad, I give him the day-old bread whenever he comes by, but the last couple weeks I'd seen him going all over town with coin to spend, buying food and other odds and ends I'd never expect an orphan boy to be affording. Must of found himself work in one of the households but he never told me nothing about it. Now that you mention it, he hasn't been around since that day. Why do you ask? That'll be an even copper by the by." He said handing me a bag of pastries.

I tossed him a silver, because why not, and answered, "I'd recently come into some coin and I was looking to help out some of the local urchins, the refugees seem to be taken care of but the local kids seem left out. Do you know where I could maybe find him?"

"Oh that's mighty kind of you. I should probably do more to help myself. Last I heard Liall did some work at the Sleeping Owlbear Inn when they'd have him. If you see him send him by. With all these refugees drumming up business I could probably 'ford to hire him for a spell." I remembered the name from my first day in town. This was the inn without any “occasioncies.”

I thanked him and left. I'll need to look for Liall eventually but it could wait. Heading to the other minions I ate the three chocolate sweet rolls I had bought for myself. They were delicious, crispy outsides with light fluffy centers, covered is a chocolate glaze that melted from the warmth of my mouth. I'm only writing this here so I can experience it again through your enhancement recall. It's fun to use that for non-awful experiences every now and then. For the last two weeks, my meals have been the same. The Parlor has a great variety of meals and offers new choices daily. Daily. So when I'm out, I try to mix it up.

I gave the other three rolls to my non-miscreant child soldiers along with their instructions and found an alley to finally finish my benchmarking in. The last two spells I had to test were Updraft and Arcane Armor. You already heard about Updraft so I won't detail it again here, but I was able to cast it six more times in the alley. I practiced rotating the direction each time, knocking myself over once in the process. I think that will prove very useful.

Arcane Armor was last. I hate testing this spell. Arcane Armor does nothing when cast, but when something is about to touch me, it draws upon the Font of Force to push it away and saps my Will as it does so. The reason I hate testing it is because to do so I need to find something to hit me. My mother used to oblige with her "standardized beater," which was a club she carried with her for the purpose. She would hit me with the club until she felt the barrier weaken, but sometimes it would give out completely mid swing and I'd get clubbed in the side, head, ankle... honestly I can't think of a place she hadn't hit me with that club over the years.

The last time we did this she was able to hit me twenty times. I needed a new method to test this. Luckily for me, the alley I'd chosen had a very sturdy looking stone wall. I put my back against the wall opposite the stone one, activated Arcane Armor, closed my eyes, and sprinted head first into the wall.

And I hit the wall, with my face. Very, very hard.

I had forgotten to take the clarity potion. I had had enough Will to cast the armor but not enough for it to do anything.

Drinking the potion, I sat on the ground for a while to recover my wits, for which the potion helped significantly, and then retried.

This time, when inches away from the wall, the armor activated and slowed my impact until my head lightly tapped the stone. I could feel my Will lessen as it happened. If I tried, I could use the Will more judiciously and conserve it at the cost of taking more of the blow, but for benchmarking it's best to leave it alone to absorb all the force it can. I repeated this seven more times and could tell by the last that any more would fail. Not wanting to further damage my face, I ended the test there.

I wasn't going that fast, not being able to pick up much speed, or wanting to, over the six-foot distance, but the added mass made this a less granular test than my mother's clubbings.

With that I can finally write up my benchmark for later comparison. I'll add that to the end of today. This will be the last day I use all my Will in the morning, so I planned to spend it in the library doing some research. I could have started my canvas of the surrounding areas for leads but I am not willing to put myself in situations of potential danger when I cannot protect myself. Not when I have so many safer alternatives for the day. I'm not saying I wouldn't risk my life, I have now on multiple occasions, I am just not exactly starved for options or short on time so I can afford to be cautious.

So here I am at the library. I was going to do some research but once I sat down I did not feel like getting up again. I think I may have a concussion. The Will drain isn't exactly putting me in the mood for research either.

Sitting here thinking about my experience over the last few todays got me considering the differences between the magic of sorcerers and wizards so I will just write about that instead. Writing in you seems to ease the pain. I would expect it to be the opposite.

Wizardry and sorcery share a lot, they are like two different roads to the same location, one of those roads is simply much much superior to the other in every way. Alright, that's not strictly true. Both can create Firebolts that are indistinguishable from each other, but they arrive there by two very different routes. I don't know any spell using both methods but I feel I am in the unique position to speculate on this. I expect there likely exists some Stormcaller treatise on the topic.

Each person views the arcane realm differently. I think I touched on this before. The first step of learning magic, after building a vault, which in itself is not really magic, is to learn to view this other realm. Each wizard must build in their mind an image of it. My mother’s vision of the Arcane Realm manifested in her mind as an ocean floor pocketed with caves. In my mind’s eye, all the magical forces, fire, gravity, light, time, etc. each exists as a building in an infinite city. These buildings lack doors and windows. The roads of my city are windy, meandering paths full of dead ends and pitfalls. Each Font of power is represented as a building but not all the buildings here are Fonts. Some radiate feelings ranging from menace to tranquility, but most are ephemeral objects difficult to perceive and impossible to interact with.

As a sorcerer, when I attempt to access a Font I am familiar with, I do not need to navigate to it, I appear next to it when I enter the city. To harness the power, I use my Will as an implement to open a hole in the building. I visualize it as if I am poking it with a finger and releasing the power. As I grow in mastery over that magical force, I become able to create larger holes more easily, channeling more power. As I become more familiar with the force, I can mold the shape of the hole to better suit my needs. When I want to call upon the power of the wind, I can poke a hole with my finger and create a short gust of wind capable of knocking over a bottle. By sticking my fist into the Font, I can create a more powerful gust or alter the shape of the hole to do something more precise. I can create a strong Gale powerful enough to sail a ship in, or a focused Updraft to save me from a fall. As I've told you, I can change the orientation or other aspects to better match the situation. A Wizard with Updraft would never be able to cast it in any orientation but up, or with any varying intensity without having an entirely different construct stored in their mind.

Interestingly, as a sorcerer I had no concept of the Arcane Realm as a place, but as I built my vault and learned to visualize the Arcane Realm, my perception while casting sorcery changed to align with my growing wizardry.

Jumps in power come in times of stress and need after extensive use of the power, much like gaining access for the first time. When accessing a new level of power, a sorcerer's instincts direct them to the form they need in that moment. I suspect I could experiment with the shape of the hole to alter the effect, but doing so is as likely to kill me as it is to produce a useful effect. I took a risk on orienting Updraft. I don't know how to explain it other than I just sort of knew it would work. So much of sorcery is intuition, and one of the things you learn early on is to trust your gut. When casting Firebolt for the first time, I was suddenly able to expand the hole I used to produce a flame in my hand And draw more power. In that same moment, I instinctively knew the shape the hole needed to be to project the fire away from myself at great speeds.

By contrast, when a wizard calls upon a Font, they must first decide how they want the power to manifest in the world and plan the size and shape of the hole they wish to open to achieve that. Then they must build in their mind a construct of Will capable of cutting that exact hole. With this tool in their mental hands, they must now navigate from the city “gate” to the Font they need, but they cannot take any path they wish. The paths of this city are populated with forces and entities beyond mortal understanding, and the wrong path will result in the construct being destroyed. A wizard who arrives at the Font without a construct in mind cannot access the power. It's also rumored a wrong turn can drive you mad, but that might just be Tower propaganda.

It seems like a long process but most spells, and all the ones I know, can be cast in a few seconds or less. Time does not exist in the Arcane Realm, so perception there is very different. Well, that's not completely true, time does exist there, but it exists in its Font and nowhere else.

The development of spellforms allowed wizards to record the construct design and path for a desired effect. Using a spellform a wizard can learn a spell they have the capacity for in a matter of days. Before that spells were discovered through dangerous trial and error and passed on using the tedious method my mother used for me over years.

A wizard who casts Firebolt will always cast a Firebolt of the same strength, no matter how many times they cast it. To vary the strength, they would need to develop a new spell. A sorcerer on the other hand can draw upon any level of power they are capable of controlling, summoning Firebolt from the size of a coin to the size of a horse. The downside is that to harness that much power a sorcerer must have years, if not decades of experience with fire to hope to perform such a feat. Any wizard could learn that same task in a day if they could comprehend the complexities of the spellform.

This metaphor is a great simplification. Trust me when I say words on paper and some doodles alone cannot convey the knowledge required to cast a spell. What I described as a journey takes place in but a moment. You envision all the steps in your mind, and then will them into action. A spellform is more than just ink on a page, it is somehow imbued with Will that contains this knowledge in a way I do not know how to replicate, or even absorb.

Enough theory, I owe you a benchmark.

The other spells I know but didn't directly test are Ghost Light, Minor Telekinesis, and Gale. From prior testing, I can estimate the number of times I could cast each of these from the tests I performed. Wizards spells retain their relative Will requirements no matter your ability, Arcane Armor and Minor Telekinesis use the same Font, as do Updraft and Gale. So a benchmark of one will inform the other

-Benchmark-

Lightning Bolt - 8

Ghost Light - 10

Knit - 4

Firebolt - 9.5

Blink - 3.9

Updraft - 7

Gale - 7

Arcane Armor - 8 wall runs

Minor Telekinesis - ...

I could have benchmarked using Minor Telekinesis to calculate my Arcane Armor benchmark and avoided running into a wall. Why did my mother not do this? Why did I never question this before? In the past, I could cast Minor telekinesis once per four swings of my mother’s club. I will need to test this tomorrow since I don't know the self-inflicted-wall-head-butt to child-abuse-clubbing ratio. Psychologically I’d say it's a 5:1 ratio, but we'll have to determine what the force conversion is.

Jarreth is giving me some intense looks and seems to have something in his throat. It's pretty late, I think I have overstayed my welcome. I will head back to the Parlor and maybe do some recreational reading. I bet Simon can find me a book I am allowed to borrow.