Delightfully Strange

[magictechsupport]

At the end of the universe,

A man steps into a bar and looks around. "Huh, nobody told me they installed a break room here."

With Slayer Juliet.

With Kappa's Dagna.

With Eclipse!Bell.

Comments

[magictechsupport]

"Minter stores up to a hundred at a time and can produce glowy blue spheres in intervals of ten. A hundred is about the size of-" he makes a circle with his thumb and forefinger, "-down to hundredths that are like half-marbles. I could give you an emergency medevac veil? There will be a lot of awkward questions for both of us if you actually trigger it, but it's in the better-to-have-and-not-need category. I'm giving you all this stuff out of pocket but will want them paid back sooner or later, by the way. Do you also want a VIT minter?"

[cross_and_bow]

"How much does it cost to lease the minters? What's the veil thing do? And I sleep eight hours a night, will it automatically do the spheres thing if it's mana-minting overnight and exceeds capacity? What kind of debt am I incurring here?"

[magictechsupport]

"In order: Ten of their respective currency, with the remaining cost taken as a small percentage out of minting proceeds over time. If you are badly injured in such a way as to be in imminent danger of death, teleports you to a time-frozen space where you will then be worked on by expert healers of the highest caliber. And charged for it. Yes, it'll automatically mint a sphere when full by default. Let's call it six hundred mana all told, eight hundred with the VIT minter."

[cross_and_bow]

"Is it a lease-to-own thing where after I've made enough to cover the cost it's mine free and clear? And yes that absolutely sounds like a have-and-not-need situation. What do I do with spheres besides hide them in my mattress? How do I perform any transactions besides minting stuff?"

[magictechsupport]

"Yes. You could use them to increase your magical power if you had any. I suspect redeeming them won't double your slayerly power even temporarily, unfortunately. You call me and I connect you to a sales interface program and-slash-or officially register you to MTU."

[cross_and_bow]

"And then the sales interface slurps the spheres away, what, via link crystal?"

[magictechsupport]

"The link crystal gives it your location, equipment on our end takes payment and makes deliveries. And I'm about ready to try the first sense-improving method. Ready?" He draws a mostly green wand from the case.

[cross_and_bow]

"Sure."

[magictechsupport]

Energetic wave swish flick flick swoopy motion flick. Pause. Flick swish. Then the ward imager comes out again. "...I am mostly sure that worked but cannot be certain without exposing you to a vampire."

[cross_and_bow]

"Oh, there's some outside my door. I'll go check on them, shall I?"

[magictechsupport]

"I'd give you a LUK but I don't think you need it."

[cross_and_bow]

"I don't especially."

She goes and leans out the door. There are vampires down the street, but they aren't up to much; she just happened to be in the neighborhood with the bite shop.

[magictechsupport]

Yup, there is definitely an extra sense. It's glaringly obvious that that there are some vampires over there-ish. She doesn't get a compass heading and distance or anything, or even a headcount, though.

[cross_and_bow]

"I can detect the presence of vampires. I don't have quantity or distance or anything, but it's not unpleasant."

[magictechsupport]

"Excellent. You'll never need to use filters, it's a waste of time, they told me in college. Well, I'm still proving them wrong."

[cross_and_bow]

Bella giggles and shuts her door. "You can go to college for that stuff?"

[magictechsupport]

"On worlds where magic is well-entrenched, yes. It's a lot like college for other things though - there are a lot of mediocre magic schools that will train you up to be a basic leycaster or vegamancer, and a few great magic schools who can teach proper thaumaturgy."

[cross_and_bow]

"What are those things?"

[magictechsupport]

"Leycaster - think of magic power grids. Vegamancers manage divination systems. Thaumaturgy is a catchall term for high magic, meta-magic, whatever you want to call it. It's sort of like learning electrical engineering as opposed to learning to be an electrician."

[cross_and_bow]

"Why does magic require a power grid? What is a 'divination system'?"

[magictechsupport]

"Some applications need continuous input to keep working. City wards, magic ovens, that kind of thing. Anything that does divinations in a relatively automated way is a divination system. From a crystal ball that shows your front doorstop to the giant meteorological precog circles."

[cross_and_bow]

"Where does the input come from? Various mana all translated into universal format?"

[magictechsupport]

"Not really... Generic mana can be inefficient over long distances. It's actually really complicated and I don't get called in on industrial type stuff much. As to the original source, either people generating mana from their own systems, some worlds have naturally occurring sources of magical power, I think some kinds of dragons produce a near-endless stream of the stuff and get paid handsomely for it."

[cross_and_bow]

"Good for those dragons. Man, I live in some kind of third-world world, don't I."

[magictechsupport]

"Hm, maybe not as much as you'd expect. Technology can make up for a lot of missing magic. You're wearing mechanically woven clothes and understood my reference to electricity, for example."