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

[all_the_thoughts]

"Yes!" she says, beaming. "Lyrium is alive! It took us ages to figure that out, and it explained so much once we finally got it!"

[magictechsupport]

Terence is not immune to a pretty face that is happy and excited, and even less immune to one attached to someone who finds magic interesting and has half a clue what they're talking about.

He starts listing off what he can tell or guess about Lyrium, comparing it to other magics he knows and trying to see how well his outside investigation stacks up to her knowledge.

[all_the_thoughts]

Dagna doesn't directly say so, but it becomes obvious from the way she talks that she is the leading theoretical magic researcher on her continent, possibly in her entire world.

Lyrium is a crystalline substance found primarily as veins laced through miscellaneous other types of rock underground. It is normally blue, and used for a wide range of magical applications, frequently but not exclusively as a power source for mages. Silver lyrium, which is the variant in Dagna's blood, was discovered only in the last year, as a result of some bizarre circumstances that she doesn't elaborate on immediately. That and red lyrium were the keys to discovering that lyrium is alive; red lyrium is a parasitic variant, of which Dagna didn't bring any with her today because it's only studied under strictly controlled circumstances. Dwarves, of which Dagna is one, have a special relationship with the blue standard variant, which is also the variant most strongly linked to the Fade, although the Fade is a whole different story and she hasn't been able to study it nearly as well - "humans go there when they dream, but dwarves don't. Dream, that is."

[magictechsupport]

He has some information about how dreams, magic, alternate realms, and divinations interact in the magic systems he's familiar with, but hedges that, "One never quite knows with new magic."

Scans show that Lyrium is a strong potential power source. "Based on my estimates a solid chunk of blue Lyrium would output something almost 3 MNA per hour per kilogram. It will probably fetch an excellent price if our research department approves it, four or five thousand MTU per kilo."

[all_the_thoughts]

"Those numbers sound impressive, should I be impressed? What can you buy for four or five thousand MTU?"

[magictechsupport]

"Stop me if I name something you don't understand. Very fancy phone-book-calculator type things and a contract to keep them working for two years for, oh, sixty people of your choice. Emergency medical evacuation artifacts and one year's promise to keep them working and have the best healers in a dozen worlds on standby at the other end, for ten people. Three or four floating platforms that can lift a dozen people and fly fairly quickly, or one slower one that can lift a small house. A great quantity of luck or mental and physical boosts, though those are strictly temporary. With more Lyrium you'd be in the market for divine intervention."

[all_the_thoughts]

"Those sound pretty impressive to me! Assuming I'm not permanently stranded in this weird magic bar, which I probably should've started worrying about before now, I wonder if I should try to get your mana-buying people in touch with someone from Orzammar who could sell them some lyrium..."

[magictechsupport]

"I can sell you a link crystal no problem, it should be able to contact me even from a universe previously unknown to us, and I'll arrange a visit assuming the scriers don't come back complaining that your world is irretrievably dangerous."

[all_the_thoughts]

"...My world can be dangerous. How dangerous is too dangerous? We fixed the hole in the sky, but on the other hand, someone did manage to put it there in the first place..."

[magictechsupport]

"I don't know much about the risk levels, sorry. What were the hole in the sky's effects?"

[all_the_thoughts]

"Rifts to the Fade opened up all over the place and started spitting demons everywhere, and turned some spirits sort of inside-out so they became demons too," she says. "It was a big mess. But we got it all cleaned up eventually. Oh, that reminds me! I have a simple way to test if I'm still in contact with the rest of my world!" Blink. "Yep, looks like Prince Stalas is okay, and I can still tell, which means that my silver lyrium and his silver lyrium can still talk to each other. That's one of the less well-studied applications of silver lyrium, is that any two people who have it can check up on each other, as quick as a thought. But it's not very precise as a communication tool, not nearly as good as one of your link crystal phones."

[magictechsupport]

"That does sound fairly nasty. We'll have to see what the vegamancers make of it, I suppose."

[all_the_thoughts]

"Vegamancers?"

[magictechsupport]

"Magic-users who specialize in making things that do divination. Which is finding things out and-slash-or predicting the future."

[all_the_thoughts]

"Predicting the future? I didn't even know you could do that!" says Dagna. "And here I thought I might run out of new things to learn about magic eventually. Silly me."

[magictechsupport]

"Divination is far from perfectly reliable, I'll warn you. Magic is indeed fascinatingly complicated, isn't it?"

[all_the_thoughts]

"It's the best! How hard is it to learn how to use all your magic-sensing tools? I probably can't be spared for an entire apprenticeship or even a three-year course of study right now, there's too much to do, but I really want to see if they can help me figure out the nature of the Fade."

[magictechsupport]

"That may be a problem. For all my education... I spent eleven years in various schools, and another fifteen working, which is not all that different as a learning experience. I could try to go over the basics and give you a basic 'scope in exchange for a few chunks of Lyrium?"

[all_the_thoughts]

"I don't have any raw lyrium on hand but it should be easy enough to find some back at Skyhold... that sounds like a good deal to me!"

[magictechsupport]

"Assuming the door even lets you out..." He walks over and opens it to reveal a bland hallway, walls painted blue and lights in the ceiling. "Fairly sure it reacts to who's opening it."

[all_the_thoughts]

Dagna pockets her runestones and follows him to the door. "Huh. So if I open it..."

A stone hallway, lit by torches and stained-glass windows.

"Skyhold!"

[magictechsupport]

He points a device out the door. "Not inherently hostile, good. I'd enjoy a tour if you don't mind. Just let me drop a return beacon in my world first."

[all_the_thoughts]

"Sure!"

[magictechsupport]

Door close. Door open. He pokes at something that looks a bit like a smith's tool and sets it down just outside the magic bar. Door close again.

[all_the_thoughts]

Door open.

"So this is Skyhold! It's a fortress in the Frostback Mountains, and I live and work here, along with a bunch of other people! We're the ones who fixed the hole in the sky. Well, mostly Katrin did that. But I helped."