The endless waste

[aestrix]

Once, this planet teemed with life. It doesn't do that, anymore. The ground is dry and cracked and occasionally broken up by charred remains of trees. There are no birds, no bugs, no living plants - nothing but an empty, endless waste.

With one exception.

But the world is so very big, and the exception so very small. If someone showed up away from it, they could be quite forgiven for thinking this world is completely dead.




with Sable (Kappa)

with Aisilian (Link)

with Grendyne (Rockeye)

with Temple (Curiousdiscoverer)

Comments

[light_another_life]

"Since I'm the one pulling the essence, I can sort of - choose what to pull, and what to allow to get lost. And this is a very, very old ritual that has been tailored down many, many times to make it as easy as possible on the one doing it; everything that would have needed the fancier chalk has been carefully replaced with something that doesn't and works just as well."

[witchwatcher]

She spends however long Saevetei will tolerate asking questions and confirming her understanding of the ritual. The details are all fuzzy and she gets several outright wrong, but hey, she's new at this.

[light_another_life]

Saevetei is pretty tolerant of answering questions. Many are answered. Specifics are explained.

Apparently all of the chalk can pull from other chalk, gold's just notable because it's lossless. She explains some more details of exactly what she's doing for the ritual, and upon running out of jargon that will make sense to Grendyne, she somewhat wryly offers to let Grendyne try just draining a single item through chalk just to get a feel for how it works, not to do anything at all.

Then she recalls that Grendyne probably needs a demonstration first. Would she like one? The ritual is ready, anyway.

[witchwatcher]

"I might or might not be able to do it without a demonstration, but you're ready, so may as well go ahead."

[light_another_life]

"All right then."

She sets down a bowl of what looks to be water on the golden chalk, and - definitely does something. It starts as reaching out and pulling on all of the assorted items, and then she keeps pulling, down and down and down the chalk...

It requires some micromanagement, but not as much as one might expect. Once she starts the pull something like momentum helps keep whatever it is going, and she adjusts based on various factors that Grendyne's not quite privy to. And soon enough it's all pulled into the gold chalk, still moving even when it's all in the same place, and she carefully combines them in an inscrutable order and then shoves that into the what-looks-to-be-water.

The what-looks-to-be-water turns milky white and sort of shimmery.

"Done," pronounces Saevetei. "Though I expect you'll get more out of it if you do it yourself."

[witchwatcher]

"Probably, yes. Have I told you that your ridiculously wide variety of magic is fascinating and interesting yet? I have, haven't I? Though a lot of what you've been doing seems to work with objects, and Witches are very much focused on immediate effects. I'd like to try pulling essence, if you don't mind."

[light_another_life]

"Thank you," she says, amused. "I like it. I'll get something to let you pull essence, yeah. We have the ridiculously wide variety of magic from - well, lots of people all over the world taking it in vastly different directions. And then we got good at fast transportation, and started combining them, and now it's a bit of a mess."

She draws out a simple line of chalk, long and straight, and picks a flower to leave at the end of it.

"There you are. I can offer instruction if it'll help, but you do the - copy thing, so."

[witchwatcher]

She smirks a bit at 'copy thing'. "Here I go."

...She manages that incredibly simple application of ritual chalk with aplomb. "Yeah, that'll be tricky when I have to juggle a couple dozen streams of it. It'll be something to practice in between the other stuff."

[light_another_life]

"It gets easier," she assures. "But yeah."

[witchwatcher]

"How does one make new essence weaves?"

[light_another_life]

"Mm. Well, first you need to know the - not exactly composition, but it's the closest word I have - composition of the thing. Which is easy with things like ordinary wood or iron or even steel, but hard for things like, say, attunement stones. And then you use - also not a word for this, this feels very inadequate - prototype threads for making the weave itself. The threads can theoretically make literally everything, but in practice they're sometimes highly unpredictable and are always very fiddly, and you can't tell if what you've made works until it's had anywhere from an hour or two to several days to settle.

"Making the weave's template form a specific shape is harder than just a blob of material, but in practice it tends to be easier than some of the more difficult materials, because the difficult materials get very very difficult, and if you just want whatever you're making to be in, say, the shape of a bed, there is nothing stopping you from using a material that is fairly easy to copy with prototype threads."

[witchwatcher]

"And there's probably libraries of compositions, and established procedures and standard tools for figuring them out, correct?"

[light_another_life]

"Yep! Though I don't know how to explain the procedures or tools easily, but I could try if you wanted me to."

[witchwatcher]

"Semi-incomprehensible rambling is interesting. Don't worry about confusing me, I'll ask the occasional question if you're too far out of what I've learned so far. Though perhaps while we're finishing the materials for more poppets?"

[light_another_life]

"Yeah, I can draw the ritual and talk, I have the directions already written out." She motions at her book. She retrieves a broom that looks to be for just this purpose, and sweeps the old chalk off the dais for a blank slate.

And then she explains as she draws! It is highly technical and involves lots of specialized equipment and looking for more than just the essence that makes up the object; she mentions something about carbon and the structure of it making the difference between diamonds and graphite, by way of example. She actually rattles off how to make copper from memory alone, mentioning that it's a good starter weave to make to get a feel for how the concept works. She rattles off material weaves that she's invented; apparently the attunement stone is one of them, traditionally there is another procedure for making one, but she found this so annoying and objectionable she figured out how to do it with an essence weave instead.

The ritual she's drawing is much more complicated than the last. There are lots of colors of chalk involved, and several times she trails off mid-sentence to check something, or mutter to herself about something and then erase a bit of chalk and redraw it.

[witchwatcher]

Gren listens attentively. She comments that she knew that about carbon, actually, her world is familiar enough with chemistry that the basics of it got thrown into her (admittedly relatively limited) formal schooling. Otherwise, she listens attentively. She praises the clever invention - shortcuts are everyone's friend. As long as they don't backfire.

[light_another_life]

Essence weaves apparently do not backfire very much! They are very safe to make because no essence is actually being manipulated when one is making a weave. Using them can backfire, if one doesn't check their work before using it, or if one doesn't follow the weave's instructions.

And then, because Gren is interested, she explains how essence weaves can be used to make plants that will grow a substance that can be easily refined into whatever material the weave is made of. This is quite terrible for getting the shape of an object correct, but for materials... You can grow infinite amounts, with space and water and sunlight.

[witchwatcher]

Infinite food, infinite iron, infinite gold and silver and gemstones to store mana in. There's lots of possibility here. She's paying attention and taking notes, even if she's not likely to be able to do any of this herself for a long while.