Jack was once again sitting underneath the large pine he had selected to be the main upright for his shack, reading. Mama was disappointed in him for not being able to secure more of that delicious food from the innkeeper, and was giving him a bit of the cold shoulder.
He was bittersweet about it-- It was good that he wasn't reinforcing her association if human places of habitation with delicious high quality foods, but on the other, it felt like he had failed in some duty, somehow. He wanted to make it right, but was very tired from all the work he had done that day. The nap had helped, but his shoulders still hurt from using the hatchet, and his head still felt fuzzy from trying magic (perhaps a little too hard.)
He thumbed through the first book again, re-reading several of the chapters he had glossed as silly foolishness earlier in the afternoon. The chapters on using plants to enhance magical potential of practitioners caught his eye, and he slipped a leaf into the book to hold the page, then thumbed through the third book.
The third book was pretty much dedicated to ways to abuse the natural life forces of plants for the benefit of the practitioner. He did not much care for that one, (Taking anything you did not explicitly need was ethically insulting to him-- Especially if you were doing it oblivious to the consequences of such actions), but thoughts occurred to him. Perhaps he could combine the information of both books together into something not discussed in any of the books thus far--
He scratched in his beard, and returned to the first book, studying it more carefully. Some of the diagrams suggested that placement of plants, and how well established they were, could be used to help direct and control ambient energies, sort of like how rocks in a flowing stream can create eddies and rapids behind them.
He decided that if he was going to try something like this, he would need to read some of the next book in the series-- specifically the section on manipulating root growth. To do what he wanted to try, he would have to transplant living adult plants to specific spots, and help them get re-established, before making the real attempt at this project. The author was pretty straight forward in terms of concept and expected technique-- though they did tend to wander a bit in their delivery (frequently referencing other, previously mentioned chapters on things like stem and leaf growth, but this as probably just one of the caveats of reading out of order. To compensate, Jack had to spot-read and flip back and forth between chapters to fully grasp this one, and it was a bit annoying.) He read, then re-read, then re-read again to be sure he had it right, before returning to the marked section in th first book, which had a small botanical guide about plant species and families, and some of their properties and habits, and taking a quick look around the shack to see what he had available, before returning to his spot at the foot of the tree.
There were a few of the plants in the list, but it was hardly an exhaustive one. The author had not fully explored Every plant's properties-- Book 1 in the series would have been a massive tome of bailed paper had that been the case-- but it did give a useful section in its appendix on how to evaluate unknown plants for their potentials and habits, and some rules of thumb about how certain communities of plants tended to naturally cooperate or compete with each other, and how those affected these relationships in terms of magical enhancement or impediment.
He picked up a stick from the ground, pushed the fallen needles aside to get to the bare earth beneath, then began scratching out possible planting arrangements, and then considering the implications they would have based on what he had read, sometimes scratching out ideas with his foot and scratching new ones in their place, sometimes moving positions, or considering different kinds of plant in that spot, before settling on something he thought might work, and work with what was locally available.
Placing leaves in each of the sections of the books as bookmarks, he carefully closed them, re-examined the now rather arcane looking hen-scratch diagram he had drawn in the dirt again, then began the laborious process of measuring out and marking the places he would move plants to.
His intention was to make a small "garden" of sorts-- Not that people would recognize it as any kind of useful garden considering what was going to be planted-- mostly plants that had no immediate use to humans; Wild weeds and the like. Yet, By simply being placed where they were being placed, they would alter and modify how ambient mana flowed through the area, creating small currents. The concept was again, analogous to rocks carefully placed into a flowing stream, to create a mighty vortex current, using the wakes the rocks left as the water flowed past them. In this case though, some plants circulated mana more aggressively than others, and that difference could be used to "create" the flow of the stream, and their placement, along with others that further deflected or altered that flow in other ways, could further refine and direct that flow. It would be small and subtle-- large differences needed more force to sustain, so this effect would be very subtle and probably unnoticeable to anyone that was not extremely sensitive to such changes, but would not be ultimately harmful to any of the plants moved or placed.
The ultimate goal of the arrangement, which was spread out at strange angles and seemingly foolish placements around the computed epicenter, was to direct a very weak but continuous flow inward toward a central position. He had elected to use the huge, tall pine he was had been sitting under as this focus, and to "reverse-apply" the information contained in book 3 of the set, such that instead of tapping the tree for its own energy, the flow would gently go into the tree, and fill it up-- This should, he felt, allow it to be tapped in the manner the book had prescribed, without any of the potential harm a raw and forceful tapping would cause for the poor thing, as energy would slowly pour back into it to replace what was taken. The force of the redirected ambient mana would be sufficiently low that it would not actually hurt the tree if too much was provided-- it would just get pushed "upwards", and then spill over the top like an invisible fountain's spray and disperse outside the planting, then get recirculated again.
This was some pretty advanced stuff, and he was not sure he would get it right-- but he had gone over the material many many many times as he had been scratching out potential configurations in the dirt. He felt there was a reasonable chance this could work as intended, and-- if it didnt, the low-level gradients involved would not be any more harmful than a random planting would. If nothing else, the experience would be educational, so he set about his work, marking angles, placements, digging holes, and then transplanting plants from various donor locations under and around the forest edge's canopy.
Jack attempts to combine lessons in books 1,2, 3, and 4 to create a small area around his shack that will naturally concentrate native mana levels into a low-level aura centered on the tree his house is leaning on. Uses "plant-growth" and "root manipulation" (as best he is able to do at this time) to help get the plants established. If he runs out of "steam", he will use mundane methods to help re-establish the plants after transplant, such as watering them in and giving them mulch.
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Topic: Mystville [Game Thread] (Read 113725 times)