Bay 12 Games Forum

Day 5, afternoon. Dusty?
(Turn 19, 3rd of day)

A breeze seems to be blowing clouds of dust in from the south.

That was an actual fireball!  Yay!

Celebrate with some jumping around and cartwheels.

Collect and eat some more pears.  Look around for more kinds of food to gather.  Collect some short straight wooden rods, like a foot in length, and a longer straight branch similar to a quarterstaff, a bit longer than Alice is tall.

While doing this, try to store more heat energy from the sun on my skin, like before.  Can I keep it around in my mana indefinately?

After all this, drag back some more wood for the fire.  Tomorrow will be a busy day.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Alice
Description: Roughly 11 years old, with unusual blue hair.  Not known as a mage, but has demonstrated spontaneous abilities in the past.  Has vague memories of both successes and accidents related to said abilities in the past.
Status: Mildly Chilled
HP: 9/10
Hunger: 8/10
Mana: 2/10
Inventory: A uniform of thin yellow unusually light cloth.  Reasonably sturdy despite that.  Three sealed packages of pure water.  A paper notebook and pencil.  An Axe.  A knife.  A basket.  An empty water package.  A wooden whistle.
Current Location: Near the Shack
Skills: Basic Foraging, Basic Chopping
Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense magic inside herself easily.  Cannot sense someone else's mana, unless it enters her body.
There are three kinds of magic inside me.  The Blob, which sits there and doesn't do much, the Flow, which reacts to physical movement, but is more of an automatic function, and the Sparkles, which seem to go with the flow and have the potential to do things.
Can cut off a bit of the blob and let it disperse within herself.
Talking and moving while trying to shape the blob can assist in the shaping of it.
Can move heat from one object to another, or between parts of an object, quite easily.
Can store heat internally.
Can make temporary physical constructs from mana, at least ones containing energy.  (the fireball)

6
Those are some really impressive cartwheels!

6
There's not too many pears left, now. Things get gathered, and left by your tent. You also stub your toe on a root. Ouch! Lose 1 health. Hunger is full. Locations updated.

2
While wandering, you don't spot any new forageables.

3
Same as before, taking heat from sunlight seems to be beyond you, but taking that heat as it impacts your skin is certainly doable. More importantly, you figure out how to make a kind of loop with your magic, keeping the heat moving in a circle indefinitely. At least until your control slips, and the construct falls apart. At least you manage to recover most of the energy? Lose 1 mana.

4
Dry wood gets gathered, stacked in with the existing piles near the smoking hut and the campfire.

All this physical activity has sure made you hot and sweaty. Your hand doesn't feel nearly as bad as before!

Spoiler: Nathan (click to show/hide)

Name: Nathan
Description: A thin, reedy, middle-aged man. He's easily excitable, and seems almost happy about this magic learning project. He has the impression that he was apprenticed to a harsh master, who held him back and kept him as an apprentice for long enough to frustrate him. He doesn't remember having any particular specialty, and suspects he spent a lot of time traveling to remote areas.
Status: None
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 6/10
Mana: 9/10
Inventory: Wearing plain white robes.
Current Location: The Northwest Forest
Skills: Basic Teaching
   Basic Construction
   Basic Chopping

Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense his own inner mana without meditating.
Can slowly move a small amount of mana from his core.
Can maintain a small loop of mana near his core while moderately distracted, likely until pain.
Can control two loops of mana, one in either hand.
Noticed stable mana control, allowing initiation of spells in seconds instead of minutes.
Can control own mana that is not currently attached by a string.
Is able to spin mana core to replenish mana, but will cause mana madness.
Cannot reclaim finished spell constructions without collapsing them.
Focus is the key to construct strength. Finished spell constructs retain the strength of the focus used to finish them.
Mana exhaustion remains even if mana is recovered.

Discovered physical/body mana. This mana causes minor fluctuations in blob mana.

Spell Concept: Separate - Can slowly break rocks down into coarse gravel, by focusing on the image of breaking things down, and on what is in a rock to separate. Doesn't seem to work on wood.
Spell Concept: Combine - Can join gravel back into pebbles by focusing on the image of combining similar yet diffuse materials. Inefficient mental image. Doesn't seem to work on wood.
Spell Concept: FIRE - With a mental image drawing parallels between a stick and a fire, can inspire mana to motion and heat up a stick until it begins to smolder. Obviously inefficient, as it costs 3 mana.
Spell Concept: Motion/Splitting - Shape mana into a blade and use a mental image of pushing, moving, and splitting. Can cut a finger's width into a branch before losing cohesion.

Proto Spell: Magic Edge - Shape mana into a blade and use a mental image of pushing, moving, and splitting. When mentally anchored in place relative to my fist and physically swung, it is far more efficient than when treating the edge as an independent effect. A blade focus has no apparent effect. It glows, slowly bleeding off energy into waste heat and light.

Spell idea: Mutate Magic Edge into a light spell.
Spell idea: Magic Edge might be affixed to my second mana type, instead of my fist?? Improve control and try to enchant blades for others.

Slowly spin my core again, only aiming to gather 1 mana total this time. Try to notice and catch the wisps instead of absorbing them. I'd like to pool the collected external mana together in a string and practice my Magic Edge spell with it, or uselessly release it if that's too much.

Try not to get carried away and go over 10 mana. I'd rather release it uselessly than go above 10.

4
The only conclusive findings you've come to are that pulling external mana into one's core for later use is entirely possible, and that this exterior mana should definitely not be controlled directly. Not only does trying to directly manipulate it give you piercing headaches and the feeling that snakes are writhing under your skin, but the stuff is also basically impossible to finely shape. Orders of magnitude harder than your personal mana, and the few wisps you manage to grab with your will rapidly dissipate beyond your grasp. Learning to perceive the external mana without directly manipulating it does seem entirely possible, as you draw a few wisps into your core you find yourself beginning to see them just before they enter rather than right at the barrier. Gain 1 mana. Lose 1 hunger.

Eli's cat ears seem to be trying to whisper secrets to you.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Aaron
Description: Vaguely foreign, with red hair and a slightly-taller-than-average stature. He feels rather certain that he specialized in enchantment and fish. And that this was not what he signed up for.
Status: Fine
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 10/10
Mana: 9/10
Inventory:
-Practical cloth-and-leather clothing
-Solidly-built, ornately-carved fishing rod that may also be an arcane focus
-Serrated knife
-Straight knife
-Hatchet
-Flint and steel
-Basket
-0x Bluegills (being dried)
-0x Cooked Bluegill Fillet
-0x Medium Fish
-0x Large Fish
Current Location: Genesis Field
Skills:
-Intermediate Fishing
-Basic Foraging
-Basic Construction
Spells and magical knowledge:
-There is a ball of magical energy in me
-I can make the ball exude tendrils of energy
-Snapping tendrils is a Bad Idea^TM
-Direct mana contact doesn’t really work

Well, I have these mana tendril things, I guess. And I think I saw somebody cutting stuff without directly cutting it. Or, well. You get the point.
Let’s see if I can figure out how to stab stuff with my mana tendrils? I mean, if it can interact with stuff, then it seems like the key would just be to make the tip pointy...
Also, the magic is in my body. Can I... I dunno, use it to reinforce my body? I think I have a rough idea of how muscles work, they’re kind of like tendrils, could I use the magic tendrils as extra muscles?

3
With a good bit of fiddling, you do manage to manipulate a tendril into having a point. It still doesn't seem to interact with the physical world, but you do manage to make it do something, at least. The tip of the tendril shimmers to your eyes when you focus on trying to make it split and apply force.

6
Still too new to things to even be able to confirm if it's possible, you at least grow massively more skilled in manipulating the energy. You also become able to see that body mana that Nathan was talking about, which kinda seems like on some level it already does what you were thinking of? You can't really control it, though. Also, running mana through your body for extended periods of time leaves part of it feeling numb and tingly. Lose 2 mana, 1 hunger.

Spoiler: Danni (click to show/hide)

Name: Danni
Description: A late teen/early twenties catgirl with black hair wearing simple, dark brown linen pants and lighter brown linen shirt. Has vague recollections of grinding grain and feeding animals and livestock but doesn't seem related to magic at all.
Status: None so far
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 10/10
Mana: 10/10
Inventory:
-simple knife
-crochet hook

Current Location:

Skills:

Spells and magical knowledge: none

Is it too late to join in? And how are we doing new adds, make actions for previous days or just drop-in at this moment?

(You're welcome to join. There's no bonus turns for late comers at the moment, just drop-in. Knowledge is relatively easily transferable, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. Like Aaron, here, you'll be able to catch up to what Nathan is able to do fairly quickly.)

You wake up in a dust cloud, which is rather unpleasant as far as waking sensations go. Spitting dust from your mouth, you find yourself in a grassy field near a campfire and a rickety wooden shack of some kind. There are people nearby, fiddling with their hands and muttering under their breath.

---

One more turn, and then the nighttime turn. Unless told otherwise, I'll just skip past nights as I have been doing. If anyone wants to stay awake (beyond basic guard duty, if you want to do that,) they'll get a -1 to all rolls tomorrow but will get the extra turn. Just specify in your next action post.

---

Sorry for the delay in updating, 'twas finals. They have now been finished. Something I'm curious about, do y'all reach each others' turns or should I be including details like Danni appearing in the turn posts for people who are in the area to notice?

Day 5, morning. Bright.
(Turn 17, 1st of day)

The sunrise this morning is brilliant, and things seem to have dried up overnight.

Hypothesis:  I didn't steal greenness, but I did take something from the grass, and it ended up being heat.  It just wasn't enough heat to do anything with, but it was enough to freeze the grass.  And my hand.

Try the freeze thing again, but this time with something a bit hotter.  Take a smouldering stick from the fire and try to absorb the heat from it the same way, by moving some blob bit to my hand and absorbing the heat from it.

If that works fairly well, try to see if I can do the opposite, move a blob bit to my finger and put enough heat into a tiny bit of grass to start it on fire.

Spoiler: Alice (click to show/hide)

Name: Alice
Description: Roughly 11 years old, with unusual blue hair.  Not known as a mage, but has demonstrated spontaneous abilities in the past.  Has vague memories of both successes and accidents related to said abilities in the past.
Status: Weird cold hand.
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 10/10
Mana: 6/10
Inventory: A uniform of thin yellow unusually light cloth.  Reasonably sturdy despite that.  Three sealed packages of pure water.  A paper notebook and pencil.  An Axe.  A knife.  A basket.  An empty water package.  A wooden whistle.
Current Location: Near the Shack
Skills: Basic Foraging, Basic Chopping
Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense magic inside herself easily.  Cannot sense someone else's mana, unless it enters her body.
There are three kinds of magic inside me.  The Blob, which sits there and doesn't do much, the Flow, which reacts to physical movement, but is more of an automatic function, and the Sparkles, which seem to go with the flow and have the potential to do things.
Can cut off a bit of the blob and let it disperse within herself.
Talking and moving while trying to shape the blob can assist in the shaping of it.
Can freeze items.  Can cause damage from freezing items?  Touching them?

4
Yep! After some experimentation, it looks like you've learned to shift heat from one thing to another. It doesn't seem like you can store it, or if you are you're not sure where, but siphoning heat from a flaming branch directly to an unlit one was enough to immediately ignite it. This did also put the stick out, when you metaphorically pulled hard enough on it. The same didn't really work with a finger; presumably you can't pull enough heat from a hand without harming yourself, when trying to ignite something. Lose 1 mana, 1 hunger.

Spoiler: Nathan (click to show/hide)

Name: Nathan
Description: A thin, reedy, middle-aged man. He's easily excitable, and seems almost happy about this magic learning project. He has the impression that he was apprenticed to a harsh master, who held him back and kept him as an apprentice for long enough to frustrate him. He doesn't remember having any particular specialty, and suspects he spent a lot of time traveling to remote areas.
Status: None
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 9/10
Mana: 9/10
Inventory: Wearing plain white robes.
Current Location: The Northwest Forest
Skills: Basic Teaching
   Basic Construction
   Basic Chopping

Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense his own inner mana without meditating.
Can slowly move a small amount of mana from his core.
Can maintain a small loop of mana near his core while moderately distracted, likely until pain.
Can control two loops of mana, one in either hand.
Noticed stable mana control, allowing initiation of spells in seconds instead of minutes.
Can control own mana that is not currently attached by a string.
Noticed it seems to spin when near sleep, possibly related to replenishment.

Discovered physical/body mana. This mana causes minor fluctuations in blob mana.

Spell Concept: Separate - Can slowly break rocks down into coarse gravel, by focusing on the image of breaking things down, and on what is in a rock to separate. Doesn't seem to work on wood.
Spell Concept: Combine - Can join gravel back into pebbles by focusing on the image of combining similar yet diffuse materials. Inefficient mental image. Doesn't seem to work on wood.
Spell Concept: FIRE - With a mental image drawing parallels between a stick and a fire, can inspire mana to motion and heat up a stick until it begins to smolder. Obviously inefficient, as it costs 3 mana.
Spell Concept: Motion/Splitting - Shape mana into a blade and use a mental image of pushing, moving, and splitting. Can cut a finger's width into a branch before losing cohesion.

Proto Spell: Magic Edge - Shape mana into a blade and use a mental image of pushing, moving, and splitting. When mentally anchored in place relative to my fist and physically swung, it is far more efficient than when treating the edge as an independent effect. A blade focus has no apparent effect. It glows, slowly bleeding off energy into waste heat and light.

Spell idea: Mutate Magic Edge into a light spell.
Spell idea: Magic Edge might be affixed to my second mana type, instead of my fist?? Improve control and try to enchant blades for others.

Cast Magic Edge. It seems that its position is anchored in place relative to a metaphysical attachment point after I release the spell. It is also much weaker if I try to use it without releasing it.
Try to release it, then regain control of it, move it, and release it again. If it works, try to figure out how much this weakens the spell or drains extra mana.

Try to teach the Magic Edge spell, but my students are confused so instead I'll have to walk Aaron and Brooke through trying to find and control their mana.

6
You've learned a number of important things, here. Firstly, regaining control of a spell construct that you've cut loose seems not possible, at your current level if nothing else. At least not without drawing another tendril out towards it, which seemingly collapses it down into formless, rapidly dissipating mana anyways.

Secondly, it seems like the strength of the blade while you're still tied to it is directly affected by your current focus. Separated blades retain whatever strength they had at the time they were cut off.

Thirdly, it seems like the reason the blade was stronger when linked to your hand or the edge of a knife was purely due to the aforementioned muscle memory and focus, or at least that is strongly indicated by the observed behavior.

Unfortunately all this casting, dismissing, recasting, and general mana shenanigans seems to have brought the unnerving, cold, shivering, hot and sweaty sensation back to the portions of your body that you were moving mana through. At least you managed to recover most of the spent mana, with your experiments. Lose 2 mana, lose 1 hunger.
 
2
It would seem you need to organize your thoughts before speaking. Nonetheless, you do manage to get the idea across, at least in part, and they seem able to bridge the gap.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Eli
Description: A young lady with blue and yellow eyes, dark skin, and perfectly normal pointy fuzzy ears and tail, like anybody else would have. Vaguely recalls using different sorts of energy to kill large things for the purpose of eating said large things. Definitely is the best and stronger than everyone else.
Status: no
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 10/10
Mana: 10/10
Inventory: Spider-silk dress with horned beast embroidery, Straw hat, Brass earring, Shoulder bag, Bag's worth of shiny rocks, Belt, Pickaxe, Shortsword
Skills: Basic Combat, Basic Cooking, Basic Foraging, Basic Construction
Spells and magical knowledge: Self Energy Pool Awareness
Location: home

Attempt to understand, by way of feeling, my body and the energy stuff in it. Build a training dummy. Practice killing it with a pickaxe. Pay attention to my mana while I do so.

6
It's a surprisingly sturdy little training dummy. Should be able to take quite a beating!Locations updated.

2
Trying to focus on your mana is pretty distracting, so you don't get much training done.

3
You don't make too much progress on trying to understand it better, either, though the speed with which you can access it seems to have increased substantially. Lose 3 hunger.

((Extra attempt using bonus turn))
2
Agh, still so little progress! Lose 1 hunger.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Aaron
Description: Vaguely foreign, with red hair and a slightly-taller-than-average stature. He feels rather certain that he specialized in enchantment and fish. And that this was not what he signed up for.
Status: Fine
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 7/10
Mana: 10/10
Inventory:
-Practical cloth-and-leather clothing
-Solidly-built, ornately-carved fishing rod that may also be an arcane focus
-Serrated knife
-Straight knife
-Hatchet
-Flint and steel
-Basket
-0x Bluegills (being dried)
-0x Cooked Bluegill Fillet
-0x Medium Fish
-0x Large Fish
Current Location: Genesis Field
Skills:
-Intermediate Fishing
-Basic Foraging
-Basic Construction
Spells and magical knowledge: None

If there's stuff out here that might attack us, it'd be best to be prepared. That said, while it feels like the immediate thing to do would be to train physical combat skills, we are supposed to be learning magic, and I think the other people here have actually been doing that. Let's chat with them and see if there's anything we can help with.

Aaron attempts to follow the instructions. Although he probably first needs to figure out how to shape his mana at all.

5
With limited help from Nathan, you manage to get a decent grasp on sensing the ball of energy inside you, and even with drawing a tendril out of it. He warns you against the dangers of losing control, and having a tendril snap back into your core. Lose 2 hunger.

Spoiler: Brooke (click to show/hide)

Name: Brooke Fox
Description: A 20 year old caucasian woman with sea green hair and orange eyes. She wears a green dress that is decorated with floral patterns on it. She was sent to an adoption agency when she was young and never really knew her birth parents. An older woman eventually adopted her and taught her how to live off the land.
Status: Her original hair and eye colors were swapped in a magical accident.
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 10/10
Mana: 10/10
Inventory: 1 wand; 1 grimoire
Current Location: In the grassy field
Skills:
Spells and magical knowledge:

"Oh dear... I suppose I should start testing things out..." says Brooke, looking around at her unfamiliar surroundings.

She looks for some food. Afterwards, she takes a deep breath and tried to focus on the arcane energies around her, and inside of her.

Brooke will join in on learning after the kind invitation.

4
With limited help from Nathan, you manage to begin sensing the ball of energy inside you, pushing it around, kneading it, and shaping it somewhat. If the man is telling the truth, more will come with practice.

---

I actually went to check this one myself but the record is currently 749, I think?
Good to see this is still alive though. What is dead may never die

Day 4, afternoon. Soaking.
(Turn 15, 3rd of day)

The weather seems to have taken a turn for the worse, a properly unpleasant downpour now. At least the dense foliage thoroughly blocks it, and the tents are well crafted.

Spoiler: Nathan (click to show/hide)

Name: Nathan
Description: A thin, reedy, middle-aged man. He's easily excitable, and seems almost happy about this magic learning project. He has the impression that he was apprenticed to a harsh master, who held him back and kept him as an apprentice for long enough to frustrate him. He doesn't remember having any particular specialty, and suspects he spent a lot of time traveling to remote areas.
Status: None
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 6/10
Mana: 6/10
Inventory: Wearing plain white robes.
Current Location: The Northwest Forest
Skills: Basic Teaching
   Basic Construction
   Basic Chopping

Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense his own inner mana without meditating.
Can slowly move a small amount of mana from his core.
Can maintain a small loop of mana near his core while moderately distracted, likely until pain.
Can control two loops of mana, one in either hand.
Noticed stable mana control, allowing initiation of spells in seconds instead of minutes.
Can control own mana that is not currently attached by a string.

Discovered physical/body mana. This mana causes minor fluctuations in blob mana.

Spell Concept: Separate - Can slowly break rocks down into coarse gravel, by focusing on the image of breaking things down, and on what is in a rock to separate. Doesn't seem to work on wood.
Spell Concept: Combine - Can join gravel back into pebbles by focusing on the image of combining similar yet diffuse materials. Inefficient mental image. Doesn't seem to work on wood.
Spell Concept: FIRE - With a mental image drawing parallels between a stick and a fire, can inspire mana to motion and heat up a stick until it begins to smolder. Obviously inefficient, as it costs 3 mana.
Spell Concept: Motion/Splitting - Shape mana into a blade and use a mental image of pushing, moving, and splitting. Can cut a finger's width into a branch before losing cohesion.

Proto Spell: Magic Edge - Shape mana into a blade and use a mental image of pushing, moving, and splitting. When mentally anchored in place relative to my fist and physically swung, it is far more efficient than when treating the edge as an independent effect. A blade focus has no apparent effect. It glows, slowly bleeding off energy into waste heat and light.

Spell idea: Mutate Magic Edge into a light spell.
Spell idea: Magic Edge might be affixed to my second mana type, instead of my fist?? Improve control and try to enchant blades for others.

Spell Concept: Motion/Splitting renamed to Proto Spell: Magic Edge.
I have apparently reached a new mana control milestone, I can now form and control a spell after cutting the mana strings.
If I can figure out how to anchor Magic Edge to a different mana type, I might be able to give enchanted blades out. I'd be willing to teach it, but I don't think anybody else has enough Blob Mana Control.

Eat my fill of the smoked meat that's going bad.
Try to figure out what control I have over the second mana type I found, the more physical one that circulates naturally. I don't expect to get this far this turn, and don't want to rush "CUT IT OFF AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS!" experiments, but I want to work towards the idea of trying to affix a bit of it to an object, and anchoring Magic Edge to that.
Test my abilities to control Blob Mana without strings. How far can it go before I lose control? Can I extend that range by holding mana strings near it? How far can I extend a mana string?

You nom on some meat. Gain 4 hunger, 4 meat bits removed from shed.

3
No matter how your bluster huff and heave, the more physical energy seems to stubbornly resist your will. The same observations as Alice are made, with regards to it being stimulated by physical things such as eating food, or motion.

2
You're able to determine that the range is indeed reduced by being cut off, and that proximity to a strand doesn't affect your control, only whether it is or is not connected. This is all you uncover, before the thundering rain and pounding headache from all your intense concentration distracts you. As a side note, it would seem that losing control over a disconnected blob doesn't result in the intensely uncomfortable ripples you felt across your body and core earlier, how fortunate!

(Going to assume 'outside my body' means 'cut off from the rest of the blob, since I'm not projecting anything with these simulacrums.)

"Okay, that's.. something."

"And screw it, it's not too complex.  It's fire.  Fire is hot.  And it's my head.  I'm not simulating something I don't have, it's just my head."

"I still don't want to do it by shortcuts, though.  It might be easier if I had like something green.. but I don't want to learn to move greenness around, I want to see if I can make it from scratch.  Just do things.  This is maaagic.

Still, that might help me learn to do it from scratch."

Hypothesis:  It's easier to change something if I have an example of something posessing what I'd like to change it to.

Two more tests.  Get some green grass.  Use the water to act as a mirror.  Lets try just the hair, alone, to make it green.  Then, try to simulate the grass, move the blob to touch the grass in my hand, and simulate it taking up the greenness and moving it to my hair.

If this does work, repeat it with some other colour, but try to watch the process.  There's no reason I should need greenness to do that, so I should be able to generate whatever it is I need, not just take it from something else.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Alice
Description: Roughly 11 years old, with unusual blue hair.  Not known as a mage, but has demonstrated spontaneous abilities in the past.  Has vague memories of both successes and accidents related to said abilities in the past.
Status: Headache?
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 7/10
Mana: 4/10
Inventory: A uniform of thin yellow unusually light cloth.  Reasonably sturdy despite that.  Three sealed packages of pure water.  A paper notebook and pencil.  An Axe.  A knife.  A basket.  An empty water package.  A wooden whistle.
Current Location: Near the Shack
Skills: Basic Foraging, Basic Chopping
Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense magic inside herself easily.  Cannot sense someone else's mana, unless it enters her body.
There are three kinds of magic inside me.  The Blob, which sits there and doesn't do much, the Flow, which reacts to physical movement, but is more of an automatic function, and the Sparkles, which seem to go with the flow and have the potential to do things.
Can cut off a bit of the blob and let it disperse within herself.
Talking and moving while trying to shape the blob can assist in the shaping of it.

(Clearly I misinterpreted what you meant, but either way it doesn't affect things.)
6
Focusing intensely on the idea of taking the green from the grass, your palm blurs somewhat. After several moments, it seems like the grass has wilted, gone cold and brittle. Also, the hand holding the grass feels dull as well. Your skin looks vaguely grayish blue, like frostbite, or something. You note the flow is now moving sluggishly through the hand, and suddenly an intense searing pain comes from the area surrounding the gray part. Ow ow ow, yep! Definitely colder than a hand is supposed to be. -3 health, -1 mana, -1 hunger.

2
Yeah, you're not fiddling around more with this concept until you know what the hell you just did to your hand.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Aaron
Description: Vaguely foreign, with red hair and a slightly-taller-than-average stature. He feels rather certain that he specialized in enchantment and fish. And that this was not what he signed up for.
Status: Sprained ankle
HP: 9/10
Hunger: 8/10
Mana: 10/10
Inventory:
-Practical cloth-and-leather clothing
-Solidly-built, ornately-carved fishing rod that may also be an arcane focus
-Serrated knife
-Straight knife
-Hatchet
-Flint and steel
-Basket
-4x Bluegills (being dried)
-0x Cooked Bluegill Fillet
-6x Medium Fish
-1x Large Fish
Current Location: Genesis Field
Skills:
-Intermediate Fishing
-Basic Foraging
-Basic Construction
Spells and magical knowledge: None

Alright, it's been half a day. I'm not sure how long sprained ankles take to fix, but let's at least briefly check it, right? Just, trying to stand briefly can't do that much harm.
Anyway, uh... well, keep fishing. Why not?

3
Your ankle seems to be mostly recovered, though long jumping would be ill advised.

4
Why not? Well presumably eventually the river will run out of fish, or your equipment will all break. Not much reason to not fish, otherwise. You catch a couple more medium fish. You're starting to get quite the collection! Gain 2 medium fish, lose 1 hunger.

Sorry, but I think I’m gonna pull out. I have a lot of another things I’m participating in, and school is taking a lot of free time away. Sorry

No worries! I certainly feel that with school, right now.

---

I love everything being due on Tuesdays, and I love having multiple major group projects in the same semester. Very fun. Looks like Egan is back on bay12, now? I've still got those missed turns banked, though not for much longer. Also trying a new format for the day at the top that might make a bit more sense at a glance.

Still waiting on Knightwing

Quote

The issue here that you're running into is that the heat needs to happen all at once rather than slowly, or it just leaks into the environment

I was hoping to do the same thing I did to break pebbles. It would seem, then, that exact wording, and how we label things, are important.

Ah, apologies. You did have it consistently labeled in your character sheet, I just can't read. I could rewrite that portion of your turn, if you'd like

Day 4, turn 13. Wet.

It seems to be drizzling right now, and everything is getting a little wet.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Nathan
Description: A thin, reedy, middle-aged man. He's easily excitable, and seems almost happy about this magic learning project. He has the impression that he was apprenticed to a harsh master, who held him back and kept him as an apprentice for long enough to frustrate him. He doesn't remember having any particular specialty, and suspects he spent a lot of time traveling to remote areas.
Status: None
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 8/10
Mana: 8/10
Inventory: Wearing plain white robes.
1 axe
Current Location: The Northwest Forest
Skills: Basic Teaching
   Basic Construction
   Basic Chopping

Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense his own inner mana without meditating.
Can slowly move a small amount of mana from his core.
Can maintain a small loop of mana near his core while moderately distracted, likely until pain.
Noticed stable mana control, allowing initiation of spells in seconds instead of minutes.

Spell Concept: Destruction/Entropy/Separation - Can slowly break rocks down into coarse gravel, by focusing on the image of breaking things down, and on what is in a rock to separate.
Spell Concept: Combine/Enthalpy - Can join gravel back into pebbles by focusing on the image of combining similar yet diffuse materials. Inefficient mental image.
Spell Concept: FIRE - With a mental image drawing parallels between a stick and a fire, can inspire mana to motion and heat up a stick until it begins to smolder. Obviously inefficient, as it costs 3 mana.

Return my axe to the tool-shed.

Hypothesis: Mana can affect mana. If ambient mana affects my mana strings, I should be able to form a mana sense.
Experiment: Try to form and hold two mana strings, one per hand. If I can't, then just make one. It's not the core of the experiment, but the differences from two different inputs should make it easier, like pinpointing a sound's source with both ears.
  Meditate and try to sense changes in the strings to sense mana in the environment, or in my peers.

Practice Entropy magic on a large branch. Try to cut it into sections with clean cuts, as though I was cutting firewood from a log. Try a plane or crossed # shape in my mana string, to direct the effect to a cross-section.

Wherein I try to create a new way to sense mana, without ever having tried normally, and without knowing that I have two other states of mana that are probably more useful for a passive sense. This is a good idea, trust me.

The axe goes back in the shed. Lose axe.
5
Forming two strings, one in each hand, goes quite well. After not long at all they've settled into position and are being sustained by your will, lying mostly motionless.

4
Your attempt to look, to sense external mana, does yield results. Just not in the way you expected. The strings keep trembling, and as you narrow your focus on them in an attempt to discern the cause, you notice a second energy flowing through your body. It flows into your arms, up to the fingertips, and back out. As you expand your point of focus from your arms to your entire body, you come to the realization that this energy, though faintly visible to your sight as of yet, is flowing in massive loops throughout your entire body. Through your stomach, your lungs, your head, your fingers. All is connected. This second energy seems more real, less imaginary, and thus harder to sense. It gives off much more of a sense of presence and purpose than your core does.

While your personal mana doesn't seem to interact much with this other energy, it does nonetheless seem likely that this second energy introduces too much agitation to any mana inside your body for you to use it as an external dowsing odd. You retract the spools carefully, shaking chills out of your arms as you prepare for the next experiment.

5
Same as when you tried to join two sticks together, the reverse seems to also not work. As you stubbornly focus your energies on splitting the branch, you accidentally stumble onto a new spell! Instead of rotting or breaking down the wood into crumbly component parts, you've learned how to apply crude force with mana! By focusing your mana into a blade shape and moving it towards the branch while focusing on the idea of pushing, moving, and splitting, (in all the forms that entails,) you manage to cut into the branch roughly a fingers width deep. As you push the blade in further it seems to lose cohesion and turn back into a diffuse mass of energy. Bad image, lack of practice, or some other problem? Lose 1 hunger, 1 mana.

Bah, I'll eat as much as I want.

Anyway.. it seems like I can move magic to the sparkles, but I need some way to tell the sparkles what to do with it.  Mmm!  Back to the beginning again.

What I really want is stuff like throwing fireballs by saying "Fireball" and waving my hands around.  With the flow responding to what I do, even if entirely automatically, and the sparkles reacting to getting fed bits of the blob, even if they don't do anything..  there should be some way of translating things I do with my body into magic, I'm just missing a key element.

Maybe it's not possible?  Maybe you can only think it into happening?  Visualize stuff?

"..I should try to think it into working the way I want."

Hypothesis:  I can think it into doing the stuff I want by visualizing it.  Instead of casting a spell that does something, lets try to cast a spell that makes it work the way I want  Or changes me so that I work the way I want to.

Try to reshape a big blob chunk into a caricature of myself.  Sit down somewhere, and shape the blob into a little me, in the same position I am.

Try to visualize the various aspects of the body as well, and add them into the little blob.  Body heat.  The various magic aspects.  Hair.  Blood vessels.  Nerves.  Try to make it into a little simulacrum, as complete and accurate as I can.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Alice
Description: Roughly 11 years old, with unusual blue hair.  Not known as a mage, but has demonstrated spontaneous abilities in the past.  Has vague memories of both successes and accidents related to said abilities in the past.
Status: Headache?
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 10/10
Mana: 10/10
Inventory: A uniform of thin yellow unusually light cloth.  Reasonably sturdy despite that.  Three sealed packages of pure water.  A paper notebook and pencil.  An Axe.  A knife.  A basket.  An empty water package.  A wooden whistle.
Current Location: Near the Shack
Skills: Basic Foraging, Basic Chopping
Spells and magical knowledge: Can sense magic inside herself easily.  Cannot sense someone else's mana, unless it enters her body.
There are three kinds of magic inside me.  The Blob, which sits there and doesn't do much, the Flow, which reacts to physical movement, but is more of an automatic function, and the Sparkles, which seem to go with the flow and have the potential to do things.
Can cut off a bit of the blob and let it disperse within herself.

1
Trying to mess with this much mana was, apparently, a horrendous idea. You lose control of most of the Blob while it's still inside your body, and even as it disperses it runs rampant, disrupting the flow through sheer mass, sending waves of shock running through your whole body. You topple to the ground, groaning in pain and taking shuddering gasps.

Eventually the numerous pain signals and other senses running rampant through your body settle enough for you to sit up and take a shaky drink of water. This really sucks. Lose 1 hunger, 5 mana.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Aaron
Description: Vaguely foreign, with red hair and a slightly-taller-than-average stature. He feels rather certain that he specialized in enchantment and fish. And that this was not what he signed up for.
Status: Sprained ankle
HP: 10/10
Hunger: 6/10
Mana: 10/10
Inventory:
-Practical cloth-and-leather clothing
-Solidly-built, ornately-carved fishing rod that may also be an arcane focus
-Serrated knife
-Straight knife
-Hatchet
-Flint and steel
-Basket
-4x Bluegills (being dried)
-0x Cooked Bluegill Fillet
-3x Dried? Bluegill Fillet
Current Location: Genesis Field
Skills:
-Basic Fishing
-Basic Foraging
-Basic Construction
Spells and magical knowledge: None

Right, fuck exploring.
Let's have some fishy breakfast of dried bluegill, and go fishing. No strenuous activity, and as little weight on my foot as possible.

((Did you drop the sword and shield you had?))

Some bluegill gets eaten, and you feel a bit better. Lose 3 bluegill fillet. Gain 4 hunger.
3
You manage to catch another 3 decently sized fish, and no fishing related incidents happen this time. You feel like you might be getting a better understanding of where the fish like to hide in this river, and such. Gain 3 medium fish.

Attempt to use magic now that I have? It

Gain permanent status: ___touched. Add ___ energy: ___/___ and ___ satisfaction: ___/___ to your character sheet.
Late in the morning, you wake with a blinder of a headache and furiously thirsty. You find yourself once more in the bare empty chamber, the only sign that something happened being the leaf you're resting on. Even the runic circuit seems to be dormant and dark. Deep inside you, perhaps attached to or even suckling on your core, is a massive, writhing, pulsing sphere of angry red energy. Tendrils extend out from it to every part of your body, like a second set of blood vessels.
4
With a shrug, you get to work testing out your new power. At first nothing happens, but once your step outside of the room at the end of the cave, you see that all is well. You can't help but let out a laugh of delight at how easy it is to use! With hardly any focus and no meditation at all, you seize control of the sword that was laying at your feet and telekinetically lift it to your hand. With a second gesture from your other hand, the raw stone of the cave wall quickly shapes itself into a chair, molded perfectly to your form and surprisingly comfortable. Gain mysterious sword. Lose 2 hunger, 4 mana. Lose _ ___ energy.

---

((Shuffled the smoked meat that started in the shed to be on its own line for clarity))


Every 3 days is most certainly not happening, both to make room for college homework, housemates/social thing, and to allow time for player responses. Not that this takes long to write, maybe 45 minutes, but it is fairly low on the priority list. Apologies for the delay!