New world. New magic. Same goal.

[copycast]

Temple wakes up on a grassy hill. His body, he notes, is currently human and all of his equipment is human-sized. No big problems there, he looks around and tries to identify the closest signs of civilization and feels around for the closest signs of magic.

Comments

[copycast]

Temple is quite willing to demonstrate his "new magic". The initial offer is great and he mostly asks clarifying questions, but he also wants to know what is going to happen with his current crop of students.

[witchwatcher]

She's not sure yet. It may or may not be possible to have them officially assigned to the job 'learn Temple's magic'. Dragon and Gren are less likely to receive this treatment.

[copycast]

Temple inquires his students on their preferences. He proposes dividing his time between London and here while his students still learn. Also, he points out that Gren might hold the key to fixing Witchcraft's problems with age.

[witchwatcher]

All his students want to continue learning, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

He has a good point about Grendyne, but that's a "might" and she's too valuable as a combatant to take her off Neuroi fights completely.

If it's really that much of an inconvenience, they could try moving the school closer. There's a large fishing and mining town fifty miles from here, less than an hour's trip by Witch courier. Maybe even to that little village near the base. That would have the drawback of not being as close to large numbers of people, though.

[copycast]

Temple concedes to the "might" and Grendyne's combatant value (his magic whines).

London is much more convenient and Temple will want to move there eventually. He sucks it up and decides to cut down most of his free time so he can spend half of his time between the two places, at least for the first months.

[witchwatcher]

The deal they eventually work out has Gren and Daruna aka Dragon on combat standby - she doesn't go on regularly scheduled patrols or even most combat missions, but is always ready for Neuroi that manage to slip past the scout patrols, or who prove especially dangerous. His other students, and any more who he wants to recruit from this base, can have their duties trimmed back to make time for him. And a teleporter is available will take him, supplies, and other passengers back and forth from london a few times a week so he doesn't have to.

[copycast]

This deal is acceptable.

Temple doesn't have any prospective students from this base, but will accept applications. He is going to stop the individually-targeted divination and instead will combine different magics with mundane interviews. Which should screen out the worst. Input from the UDF is welcome. Using this method, Temple believes he can train up to one hundred spell-casters in six months. Half of those should be kept out of combat writing scrolls and spell-books to keep a steady production. The other half can receive combat training as needed.

[witchwatcher]

At first, most people who apply are affiliated with the UDF somehow. He has forty six applicants when Gren is mildly injured in a difficult battle.

She reports that the healing spell combined with Increase Mana probably saved Telescope's life. Oh, and she has Lesser Increase Mana now. It boosts her mana capacity by a flat amount that works out to about 5% of what she has now, but would nearly double the power available to a fifty year old Witch.

[copycast]

Temple vetoes only three applicants, but advises one to apply again next year after he working out some of his personal problems.

After the difficult battle, Temple offers to cast a spell on Gren that will inform him if she is deadly injured and guide teleports to her location. Which is not a easy spell and Temple can only offer it to a single person.

Temple is delighted when Gren acquires the new spell. And tutors her on writing magical scrolls. A task that requires a lot of practice and concentration, even with the lesser spell to make it easier. He also advises on how to create the Greater Increase Mana, which is a lot more intuitive now that she has two spells to compare to each other.