milliways_bar | (no subject)

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fairy fixit

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A patron of Milliways which might be easily mistaken for a giant flying insect buzzes down into the bar from the rooms for rent upstairs. She is a humanish looking woman flying toward bar with wings that look vaguely like the forewings of a moth. She left her hat in her room upstairs, so the moth-like and plumose antennae spouting out of her long blonde hair are visible today. She also left her work gloves upstairs too, but still has her work boots and most of her work outfit on just because they are too comfortable to bother changing out.

She also has her crafting toolbox instead of the one she usually carries around, and when she alights on the bar, she has to set it down to order some food and drink but then convince Bar that no, she doesn't want to at at the bar, she wants to eat at a table. Why does talking to a sentient piece of wood require both hands? Does gesturing that way even help?

It is probably just habit.

Food ordered, Fairy Fixit picks her toolbox back up and buzzes back into the air to find a free table to start crafting.

[ooc: Catch Fairy Fixit either at the bar or after she settles down at a table. Your choice!]

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She's like a tiny, flying gnome! Only even smaller. Khadgar hasn't seen anything like her before.

"Is Lady Bar being difficult?" he asks curiously. He hasn't had to argue with the construct himself.

"Not really, it is just a misunderstanding," Fixit answers. "Well, it's a logistics problems too; most of the wait rats aren't tall enough to put food on most tables, and I can't just reach down to help out, but I am not about to sit at a tiny table and become a tripping hazard."

She curtseys and greets, "I am Fairy Fixit, teleportation network engineer for the Abyssal Services Department, Zanaris Division."

"Well met, Lady Fixit," the mage replies with a slight bow. "I am Khadgar, archmage on the Council of Six of the Kirin Tor of Dalaran." Since they're being formal.

"I assume you need the table for the work space?" Hm. An interesting problem.

"An archmage? Might that mean you have mastered some particularly interesting form of magic?" she asks.

"Anyhow, yes, I planned to take advantage of the temporal properties of this place to steal some time for my hobby," she says, lightly nudging her toolbox with her foot.

"I hesitate to say 'mastered', there's always more to learn, but yes I consider myself to be quite the accomplished mage. My talent with portals is rather renowned." He is trying not to be too proud of this.

"Oh, yes, the temporal convergence here is most useful! This is not a long term solution, but could I perhaps carry your food for you?"

"Oh, we work in similar fields, then! You are right, there's always something new to learn, especially when it comes to teleportation and portals. Especially if you have access to a place like this!" She found a fellow teleportation nerd, oh joy!

"I was going to remind Bar that I am capable of flying the plates up to the table myself although it would be bothersome, but it be silly of me to refuse your offer," Fixit answers. A basket of skewered crickets and diced friut appears on the counter along with a tumbler full of May wine.

He gives her a curious look.

"Is blinking not a known technique on your world? It would be faster than flying."

He gathers up the food easily, amused at the small size of the crickets.

"Blinking?" She blinks her large eyes rapidly and repeatedly, in confusion. She picks up her toolbox and buzzes her way into the air. "Surely you don't mean closing and opening my eyelids. It is faster than flying, but it doesn't achieve the same goal at all, does it?"

Deciding that a higher vantage point would be a better place to spy a free table from, she flies a bit higher then pauses to hover and feel, for a moment, the air currents brushing through her antennae. The obvious direction to go in would be up, but she takes off in a direction that causes her to wink out of reality.

She reappears up near the rafters and points out an empty table. "Aha, found one!" She disappears and reappears near Khadgar. "I found a table that is clear," she declares, taking the lead toward the table, but using the familiar 3 dimensions this time.

He laughs. "That was blinking! It's a term for short range teleportation."

He follows along behind her, setting her food down when they reach the table.

"Though that didn't quite feel like the arcane magic I'm used to." The magic of Order. Interesting.

She's confused at first, but then she says,"Oh! That is just fancy flying, but... blinking is apt; it does look like the universe is blinking whenever I've observed other people do it."

She puts down her toolbox and comments, "Well, it is more than fancy flying, you have to be magically sensitive to find a shortcut between here and there; it is much much harder for longer distances, though."

"Oh shoot, I forgot a straw for my wine," she says after trying to take a drink. "There was a human boy who came here who could blink, but he had to have a running start. He also said he used Psi energy to do it. I don't know exactly what kind of magic that was, though. What is arcane magic?"

She waves over a waitrat and asks for a bendy straw. Luckily, the waitrat was carrying a bunch and Fairy Fixit only has to fly down to retrieve one. She puts a straw into the wine and takes a sip, unconcerned about how silly it looks.

"Ah, blinking as I know it is moving the air from a place you can see to where you're currently standing. As a side effect, you take the air's place, effectively teleporting yourself. It works with water as well, but trying to blink into or through something solid usually ends...poorly." Her method sounds completely different. Fascinating!

"Arcane magic is utilizing the ambient energy of the world, gathering it and ordering it in your mind until you can release it as a spell to fit your needs. Ley lines are pure arcane energy; can you feel the ones here?"

He'll be amazed if she can't. It feels like every ley line in existence is ends at Milliways.

"Swapping places with a parcel of air. That's an interesting concept. Arcane magic almost sounds like the Anima from which all other magic on my world derivanima rich, but I think that, when I blink, that is what I try to avoid bumping into."

She picks up a skewer. "Are you saying you have direct access to anima? I mean, arcane magic?"

He nods.

"I believe so. Or at least as well as any other mage on my world."

He tilts his head thoughtfully.

"The mortal ones anyway."

[ooc: huh, the bit I wrote about ley lines disappeared. that must of been confusing. sorry!]

"Humans have trouble accessing the anima directly, where I am from. They usually can only use it after its been... well, separated and refined into types of elemental or catalytic magic and then stored in runestone. They do fine with gathering the energy, but not so well when it comes to organizing it into something useful," she notes, as an explanation at her amazement that Khadgar's claim about arcane magic. "You are human, right? You look like you are the right height for it."

Ech. Immortals. To avoid talking talking about them she starts nibbling one of the skewered fruit chunks.

[OOC: I just figured it was a strange typo! No big deal!]

"I am. That's interesting. Humans on my world aren't very good at all at working with the elements."

He considers.

"Perhaps we've descended from different varieties of Titan constructs. Dwarves are excellent shaman, for instance, and they evolved from Earthen. Perhaps your human constructs were more like those?"

"Descended from Titan constructs?" she's puzzled. "I don't know that humans descended from anything, but then again, humans aren't native to Gielinor so I have no idea how they were ... created? Or how their species came to be. Not that we fairies are native to Zanaris either."

She adds, "Gielinor is the planet with all the anima that drowns out the ley lines and Zanaris is the moon that orbits it. We fairies have been living on Zanaris longer than humans and dwarves and gnomes have been living on Gielinor."

"Oh, I thought fairy was your name! We only have fairy dragons on Azeroth, nothing like you."

Fairy dragons are...unnerving. Very cute. Very deadly.

"Humans, dwarves, and gnomes are all descended from different Titan constructs. None of us are native to Azeroth but we've been on the planet so long that we may as well be. The Titans ordered Azeroth millennia ago."

Fairy dragons are similarly interesting on her world (well, worlds)

She dreads asking, but, "Titans ordered... They are gods, aren't they?"

The disgust in her voice when she says god is hard to ignore.

Khadgar is puzzled by her reaction.

"I suppose you could put them in that category, yes. Is that bad?"

'God' means something different on his world.

"Well," she begins, then pauses, "It is bad that any one person has that much power. Sure, they can accomplish great things, but they can't accomplish great things all the time."

She opens up the toolbox and pulls out a long dagger-like shark tooth and some carving tools. At least, it looks like a shark tooth.

"A mistake for them is a catastrophe for us mere mortals, so yes gods are bad. Being created by a god or being a descendant of one of their creations isn't bad, though."

She starts thinking about what to carve into the tooth.

He considers her words, watching her work.

"From what I've seen, the things that cause catastrophes on Azeroth are just as devastating to the gods. Several of the wild gods gave their lives when the Burning Legion invaded, for example. And while we've never met one of the Titans, we've saved their Keepers several times. We've all fought to save Azeroth."

He thinks a moment longer then amends, "Well, not the Old Gods, of course."

"What are they willing to do to save Azeroth? And what do they think is worth saving? What are they saving it from? Immorality and disorder? The stifling prison of civilization?" She nods her head and stops asking rhetorical questions.

"I am sorry. It's an unpleasant topic," she says. She almost wants to ask about the Old Gods, since she only recently learned of Gielinor's own Elder Gods, but the Elders are even worse than the young gods, as far as she knows.

Well, at least she has an idea on which to work. She picks up a grease pencil to start sketching it out and tries to switch topics. "So, portals. Portals are interesting. How do you set them up on you world?"

Edited 2018-01-22 03:18 (UTC)

He frowns. She's not entirely wrong. The Titans, before they left Azeroth, left a reorigination device to scour the planet clean of all organic matter should the Old God infestation ever progress too far. When Yogg-Saron's prison failed the Keepers had helped them reach Algalon in time to stop him from setting the device off. Algalon had been shocked by their tenacity and deemed them worthy of continuing to defend Azeroth.

And he'd seemed horrified by how many times he'd done it on other worlds without ever considering the lives there.

Since then the Keepers and Azeroth's denizens have worked together well. But Azeroth had fought to get there, to be recognized. It is something he will need to give some thought to.

He lets out a huff of air as they switch gears, composing himself to answer her question. "Person sized portals need to be maintained on either end by mages. They're set up to allow travel along the ley lines. They can be made larger and permanent with physical anchors, though that has a side effect of linking the locations even if the anchors are then destroyed." From the look on his face this has been a problem in the past.

"The portals I have dealt with are usually the type that are physically anchored. They are usually mostly maintainence free because of this, but there is a slow natural decay that is faster for non-anchored portals. The only portal that has to be maintained is the Z.M.I. portal to the runecrafting rifts, but that's partially because it is a half-portal. It's mostly because the Z.M.I. insist on doing things on their own and are paranoid about government regulation," she says with a shrug.

"The half-portal thing is because we do not use ley lines, I suppose. We route teleportations through the Abyss, hence the name 'Abyssal Services Department'. That Z.M.I. portal I mentioned is a half-portal because it leads to the Abyss but doesn't lead out. Very dangerous but those mages are stubborn."

"The Z.M.I. are a people? And what is the Abyss?"

She nods her head in the affirmative. "The Zamorakian Magical Institute is a group of mages who follows the Zamorakian philosophy. It makes them fiercely independent and the discoveries they make very interesting, but they refuse to ask for help and they are so irresponsible about persuing dangerous research. The poor mage they have maintaining the portal is just an apprentice who was unlucky enough to failed a teleportation spell and ripped a hole in reality into the Abyss instead." She shakes her head in disapproval. "They were purposely putting their apprentices through marathon teleportation drills in hope that a spell would fail in an interesting way."

"The Abyss is a space in between realms that is very suitable for long range teleportation between realms and within realms. It's not the space I use while blinking though. The Abyss is surprisingly habitable but the things that inhabit it aren't very friendly."

Khadgar looks a little horrified.

"By the Light, they were killing their apprentices? Or does your magic not result in catastrophic failures?"

He's really hoping so.

"Killing? Not unless putting them in mild mortal danger counts," she comments. "Catastrophic failures only happen with combat magic, really. Well, I suppose a poorly anchored portal could close on your neck. Portals aren't used often on my world, personal and group teleportation spells are the most common, followed by teleportation network travel. The worst that can happen is you end up in the wrong place."

She puts away the grease pencil and takes out an etching tool.

"Though now I am wondering how many apprentices got eaten by abyssal parasites. The Z.M.I. did prove that there is something worse than teleporting to the wrong place, I suppose. Tearing a hole in reality could have been catastrophic. Up until then, such a possibility was only theoretical."

Edited 2018-01-24 06:50 (UTC)

He only looks mildly reassured.

"Arcane magic, improperly cast, is more likely to explode with minor errors." It's a very precise school. "When you know enough to gather the energy but not enough to release it properly, the energy tries to bridge the gap. The more spectacular the failure, the closer you are...but you may not survive to learn from it. To actively encourage such errors..." He shakes his head, disgusted.

"Holes in reality on Azeroth usually just lead to the Twisting Nether. It's a volatile realm, and the home plane of demons, but not inherently destructive." Just dangerous.

"Perhaps it is less dangerous than I am making it sound. Hardly anyone but those from species or cultures with vast magical experience manipulates anima directly, gathering, organizing, and releasing energy like you described arcane magic. Mages and their students are probably saved from unintentional magical explosions due to the fact that most on Gielinor use runestones to store magical energy in reliably known amounts and of known type. The acts of gathering energy and releasing energy happen at different times and might be accomplished by different people entirely. There are people who make their entire living from runecrafting and selling charged runestones to magic users," she explains.

"The types of magic energy gathered into runestones are derivative of anima too, so that probably adds more safety. Order Magic is usually a major component of teleportation and portal spells, Nature Magic is used in alchemy and plant manipulation, and Chaos Magic is a component of low-level curses and antiteleportation spells," she adds.

She thinks about what he said about the Twisting Nether while etching her design into the tooth. "It's curious, there are theories that the abyssal parasites are actually devolved Cthonian demons. Not that there are many examples of Cthonians still living and the apparent physiological differences are so wide that it baffles me how anyone can say, 'this is a cthonian demon, that is not a cthonian demon.'"

Edited 2018-01-25 01:48 (UTC)

He looks thoughtful. "It sounds similar to enchanting things for others to use. I can see how that would be a great deal safer as that provides much more control over everything." It doesn't sound like a bad system at all. "I still can't condone the Z.M.I.'s conduct, however."

"Anima is able to fuel Order, Chaos, and nature magic?" He looks surprised. "Each of those is powered differently on Azeroth. It sounds like your demons may be different as well."

She shrugs, "The one consistent thing about cthonian demons is that they cannibalize each other and devour other lifeforms to gain power and intelligence. They supposedly had a very sophisticated society and a magically enforced legal code to prevent themselves from eating themselves to extinction. Maybe the ones in the abyss got that way because of a lack of food." Maybe the demons of the Twisting Nether are comparable?

Maybe not.

"Order, Chaos, and Nature magic aren't so much types of magic as they are types of magical energy. It seems I was wrong to equate Anima manipulation to Arcane magic; I am trying too hard to think up analogues," she says with a nervous apologetic chuckle.

"The magical energy that is used by magics other than Arcane can't be derived from ..." she struggles a bit, trying to find the right phrase, but then decides clumsy wording is acceptable, "the energy Arcane magic uses, right?"

"I don't think demons consume each other for power. Almost all the demonic races serve in the Burning Legion; I've only ever known them to corrupt and consume mortals." He studied them thoroughly under Medivh but he's no warlock.

"Correct, that sounds more like what I'm familiar with. Arcane magic is ordered and drawn from arcane energy, which permeates and pools the world over." There's a reason for this but it hasn't been discovered yet. "Fel magic is chaotic, destructive, powerful, and addictive. It is the magic demons use most and is powered by drawing the life out of other things. Using fel magic extensively can twist the user and drain the very earth around them of life. Nature magic is the magic of life used extensively by druids. I'm not as familiar with it but I've seen them grow incredible things."

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