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]

"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."

[magictechsupport]

"It's fair beautiful, at least these windows. No substitute for art. I probably won't recall these names... I don't think I've heard yours. I'm Terence Mills."

[all_the_thoughts]

"Dagna! Dagna Merow. It's nice to meet you!"

She leads him through the door and turns around and closes it and opens it again. Stairs ensue.

"My workshop is down here, I should put these runestones away, and find you some lyrium... it's not the prettiest part of Skyhold, though, that would be the throne room. Or maybe the smithy. No, the throne room is prettier."

[magictechsupport]

"Worry not, prettiness is only one of several factors influencing where I wish to visit." He hands Dagna a thaumoscope and shows her the basic operation - how to look through it and adjust what it sees. Mana type, frequency filtering, squelch and gain, and half a dozen other things. Of course, interpreting the various lines and colors and shapes it displays is the hard part.

[all_the_thoughts]

Dagna follows along readily with his explanations. When they reach her workshop at the bottom of the stairs, she puts some assorted chunks of lyrium in a leather bag, cautions him not to light them on fire, handle them unprotected, or eat them, and gives him the bag.

[magictechsupport]

"Actually, please hold on." He levitates the Lyrium samples out of the bag and wraps them in what Dagna's shiny new thaumoscope indicates is very... Shieldy... Mostly-clear fabric of some kind? "There we go."

[all_the_thoughts]

"Huh," says Dagna, checking the thaumoscope. "That stuff looks handy."

[magictechsupport]

"It is handy. It's not perfect, I'd go fetch a proper sample container if it was dangerous enough, but you were going to just put it in a bag so this should be good. I bet you're going to end up wanting to buy lots of stuff MTU or our subsidiaries can sell."

[all_the_thoughts]

"Seems likely!" she agrees. "This thaumoscope is going to be a big help already."

[magictechsupport]

"Glad to be of assistance. I'll want to go home and sleep in a few hours, but there's time, and we'll be able to talk through the link crystals, later."

[all_the_thoughts]

"Plenty of time!" beams Dagna. "So, do you want a tour of the castle? A tour of my workshop? Both?"

[magictechsupport]

"Workshop first. New magic systems are always fun."

[all_the_thoughts]

"I agree! Well, here's what I'm working on this week..."

Ancient runestones, which she is analyzing to try to reverse-engineer the manufacturing process in case she can derive any useful techniques. And over here is the equipment she designed and built for refining, purifying, and stabilizing silver lyrium, starting with blood samples from a carrier of the symbiote; the tiny, luminous silver-white crystals produced by the apparatus are approximately ten times as magically powerful as an equivalent mass of ordinary blue lyrium. Don't open that barrel, it's got red lyrium in it, has to be lined with lead to keep the song from leaking out...

[magictechsupport]

He pays close attention. And takes notes. And thaumoscopes at things, explaining how he arrived at this or that insight about Lyrium.

Good, proper investigation about something that he hasn't seen before and doesn't have a deadline about. This is... Fun. Who knew.

If he's right about how the purifying apparatus works it could be greatly improved with some of his potions gear. Which is clean, efficient, and best of all automated. He'll have to fetch it and visit again tomorrow.