Lillene Enjoy!
Serenity heard the door click as he stepped into the store. He’d been back to talk to Klari a few times, but this time was special. He had something he wanted to show her and see if she knew anything about it.
It wasn’t long before Klari emerged from the back. “Serenity? I wasn’t expecting you today. I thought you’d finished the project. Did you start a new one?”
Serenity shook his head. “Same project. It is done, but I decided to put it in my … what did you call it, material enhancing storage?”
Klari blinked, then nodded. “I don’t usually think about material enhancement after the item is complete, but you did say that was how you found out about yours. How did it turn out?”
“It works as far as I can test it without an actual target.” It actually worked extremely well on the fake-but-close targets Serenity could easily get without offending his hosts by actually raising undead. There was almost as little loss as when Serenity managed a spell himself with his level of skill and exceedingly high Affinity and Concept. It even seemed to have some of the benefits of an Aspect, bypassing some amount of Resistance, though it was definitely not as good in that sense as something Serenity could cast. On the other hand, it was far faster to use and would work well for someone without Serenity’s advantages. In short, it might just be the best runescript Serenity had ever seen turned into metal.
It worked well enough that Serenity had made a few extras for his own use. He didn’t get the huge payments from Berinath’s dryads for the enhanced metra he’d gotten for the original, but that was fine. He had a lot of enhanced metra.
“I’m here for a slightly different reason, I want to know how easy it will be to reproduce for others. I also thought you’d like to see what it became before I hand it over to Elder Omprek.” Serenity mostly wanted to see the expression on Klari’s face. She had a most expressive level of shock sometimes.
It would also be nice to know if there was something special about the materials he’d ended up with. They seemed different from simple metra.
Klari ushered Serenity into the back then hastily cleared off a table. As she watched eagerly, he reached into his Rift and pulled out a pair of sigils and a small Death-infused puppet that would play the part of an undead. Creating the puppet itself was beyond his skills for now, even though he’d supplied the magic; it moved on its own, though only slowly and without direction.
The puppet looked more or less like a fat worm. The original model was all too human in appearance and while it didn’t bother Serenity, it bothered everyone else. He’d settled on a worm as something that could move effectively randomly without inducing nausea. It seemed to work for the few people who’d seen it. Rissa, for example, thought the worm was gross, but it didn’t strike her as simply wrong.
Klari didn’t seem to have a negative reaction to the worm at all. She watched it avidly as he set it on the primary rune. Its movements suddenly stilled. Almost immediately, the reception rune started to glow. It was soft at first, but quickly ramped up to being unmistakable. Serenity hoped that would be true even in high light conditions, but that wasn’t usually a problem on Berinath. The Forest shaded things enough that you only had that much light outside the Domes.
Serenity was glad to see that the reception rune was still working. It had been exceptionally tricky. Transmitting and receiving a signal was simple enough, but setting it up so that it wouldn’t be easily fooled was more difficult and getting that semi-secured system to be robust even at a distance was truly a pain. Other spells and enchantments created interference when they were between the two runes even if they weren’t designed to send signals.
Once that was done, Serenity realized it wasn’t helpful and redesigned the entire system to work with multiple freeze runes and multiple receivers that would all point in the direction of any runes that were triggered. The first version worked well until Serenity tried triggering more than one rune at a time.
The latest version seemed to have all of the issues straightened out. He definitely hoped they were, because the enhanced metra runes that he’d given extra time in the Origin were nearly impossible to damage. He’d tried; he could do it, but only with some very expensive spells that took quite a bit of time and mana and required him to know exactly what he was working with.
“That’s how it’s supposed to work?” Klari tapped the reception rune. “It’s supposed to darken in places? It’s pointing at the other rune?”
Serenity looked at the arrow and grinned. He’d hoped that would be clear enough. It didn’t give three dimensional directions, but it could manage two and that was enough as long as the rune could be moved around. While he’d only pulled out one of each for the demo, he’d managed to get examples as small as an inch in diameter and as large as a foot for the reception rune; that should give a nice set of options for something easy to see and something easy to carry. “Yeah. The small rune is so that you can know when the big one’s active and find it if there are a lot of the big runes around. I set it up so it can work with a lot of each and they’re not tied to a particular one.”
He was only going to give one detection/transmitter/freezing rune and two reception runes to the dryads, one in each size. That would give them options while still making them do most of the work. He was just making the examples they’d copy.
“You think there will be a lot? What does it do other than glow?”
Serenity guessed he must never have explained that to Klari. She wasn’t a runemaster to read what he’d made; really, even a runemaster would need time. “The reception rune just glows when the main rune is active; it indicates the nearest main rune. There’s also an indication of how many active runes it’s seeing, but I decided not to have it point at the others; it was too confusing.”
Klari nodded. She seemed to be following so far; better, she was patient enough for him to explain the whole thing before she asked more questions.
Serenity tapped the rune with the worm on it. “This is the main rune; it activates when an undead being touches it and freezes them in place. It won’t last forever; right now, I’m feeding it with my mana. I expect the final ones to use monster cores like the one the reception rune is using; they slide in to this indent. I’ve tested that as well.”
“Undead? Why would we need that?” Klari sounded puzzled. “Undead aren’t allowed on Berinath. There’s a check at the portal entrance. At all of them.”
“The check isn’t perfect.” That was true in both directions, as it turned out. Serenity had continued to think about it since the “test.” He’d come up with some ways to fool it; most of them were silly and probably wouldn’t work, but a couple of them would. For himself, all he’d need to do would be to wear living armor; the armor’s Life Affinity would be read by the dryads’ setup and he’d pass.
For an actual undead, it would be a little harder, but there were similar solutions. Of course, that assumed that the undead wasn’t Life-attuned to begin with; unliving like the Hollow Ones would pass right through the dryads’ setup. They wouldn’t bypass Serenity’s.
“That’s reassuring,” Klari muttered. “It’s supposed to be really good.”
“There used to be a backup,” Serenity assured her. “Unfortunately, it hasn’t been replaced in decades, maybe centuries, and it needs it. Since I could design a new one, your Elders had me do that. I expect you’ll see a lot of these runes in the future.”
Serenity watched Klari and tried to figure out what she thought of the explanation. Aide threw up an overlay to help; it mostly aligned with what Serenity thought he saw. She seemed to accept the explanation and felt reassured, even though he really hadn’t explained much. That was good enough; he wasn’t here to help the Elders convince their people, after all.
No, he was here to get Klari’s opinion on the runes’ materials. Serenity removed the worm puppet from the main rune. The worm started wiggling again, so he tossed it through his Rift so he wouldn’t need to worry about it more.
“I wanted to show you what the rune did before you got a good look at the materials. What do you think? I know it works better, but did the materials change?” Serenity was fairly confident they had; it wasn’t quite the same color as the enhanced metra he still had. That could have been from working the metal to get it into the right shape, since the change was very slight, but Serenity didn’t think it was.
Klari tapped the rune. “Hmm. Could just be metra. Are you certain it won’t activate unexpectedly?”
Serenity nodded. “As long as it’s intact, it can only activate if an undead touches it. Nothing else will, not even running Death-attuned mana through it.”
He’d tested. They were necessary tests; his first version had activated far too easily. Fixing those issues made it far harder to test, since the test puppet had to very closely approximate being undead, but it was worth it.
He half hoped Elder Omprek would find something undead to test the rune on; Serenity wanted to see it in action against more than a puppet. It was possible he’d still missed something. It wouldn’t truly be tested until it was used against the real thing.
He also half hoped that no undead would show up on Berianth soon. Not only did he not want to temporarily freeze a sapient person just to test a rune, he didn’t want to have to deal with the fallout if they didn’t want to live again. He’d told the dryads they couldn’t force it; he’d stand by that if he needed to. He simply didn’t really want to.
Of course, he’d also promised to teach the dryads how to revive the undead without the use of an Echa rune. He’d already started writing a booklet that explained the proper ritual, including a few variations, and he wanted to finish that obligation by delivering the booklet rather than by actually performing the ritual.
With his luck, Serenity fully expected that an undead who wanted to live again would show up right before he was ready to leave. Serenity was certain Tyche would find that hilarious.
Klari nodded and started testing the metal. She tried to scrape it with other tools, pounded on it with a large sledgehammer, ran her own mana through it in a controlled fashion, and dripped liquids on it that Serenity didn’t recognize; many of them were acrid, but that was all he knew. She also tried to melt it using an array of tools Serenity hadn’t seen before.
“It’s almost metra,” Klari reported when she finished. She had a huge grin on her face; it seemed that she approved. “The mana conductivity is the same as the enhanced metra. The material is far more stable and resistant to everything, however. With this level of improvement, I’m fairly confident that you could have used a cerreth and tholia setup; it looks like your storage place extended the usable temperatures for the entire item. I don’t suppose you have any idea how I could pick up a similar Skill? This is huge.”
Serenity shrugged. He really didn’t know; it was a Species skill for a Species he wasn’t about to talk about. He only had one idea that might help. “It’s related to a generic creation Skill; basically, it holds stuff in the same place the stuff I can use to make things comes from. I’m not sure that helps?”
Klari’s brow wrinkled for a moment, then a smile spread across her face. “It might. If nothing else, it gives me something to try. It’s influenced by what the thing is intended to be, obviously; that’s probably going to be vital to creating a storage space that won’t make complex things break after they’ve been enhanced. In that case … hmm. Yeah. Thanks for the idea; I have a couple things I can try.”
Serenity nodded. “If you figure it out, let me know? I know some people who’d probably like to have an idea how to make their own space.”
Klari nodded. “Sounds like a fair trade. Now, about the metal on the reception rune; it’s similar but not quite as sturdy…”
Lillene
Y’know, I wonder exactly what that “worm puppet” is going to turn into. It’s just a fake undead; will it get better at being a fake and test subject, or will it be something else?
Lillene Enjoy!
Serenity heard the door click as he stepped into the store. He’d been back to talk to Klari a few times, but this time was special. He had something he wanted to show her and see if she knew anything about it.
It wasn’t long before Klari emerged from the back. “Serenity? I wasn’t expecting you today. I thought you’d finished the project. Did you start a new one?”
Serenity shook his head. “Same project. It is done, but I decided to put it in my … what did you call it, material enhancing storage?”
Klari blinked, then nodded. “I don’t usually think about material enhancement after the item is complete, but you did say that was how you found out about yours. How did it turn out?”
“It works as far as I can test it without an actual target.” It actually worked extremely well on the fake-but-close targets Serenity could easily get without offending his hosts by actually raising undead. There was almost as little loss as when Serenity managed a spell himself with his level of skill and exceedingly high Affinity and Concept. It even seemed to have some of the benefits of an Aspect, bypassing some amount of Resistance, though it was definitely not as good in that sense as something Serenity could cast. On the other hand, it was far faster to use and would work well for someone without Serenity’s advantages. In short, it might just be the best runescript Serenity had ever seen turned into metal.
It worked well enough that Serenity had made a few extras for his own use. He didn’t get the huge payments from Berinath’s dryads for the enhanced metra he’d gotten for the original, but that was fine. He had a lot of enhanced metra.
“I’m here for a slightly different reason, I want to know how easy it will be to reproduce for others. I also thought you’d like to see what it became before I hand it over to Elder Omprek.” Serenity mostly wanted to see the expression on Klari’s face. She had a most expressive level of shock sometimes.
It would also be nice to know if there was something special about the materials he’d ended up with. They seemed different from simple metra.
Klari ushered Serenity into the back then hastily cleared off a table. As she watched eagerly, he reached into his Rift and pulled out a pair of sigils and a small Death-infused puppet that would play the part of an undead. Creating the puppet itself was beyond his skills for now, even though he’d supplied the magic; it moved on its own, though only slowly and without direction.
The puppet looked more or less like a fat worm. The original model was all too human in appearance and while it didn’t bother Serenity, it bothered everyone else. He’d settled on a worm as something that could move effectively randomly without inducing nausea. It seemed to work for the few people who’d seen it. Rissa, for example, thought the worm was gross, but it didn’t strike her as simply wrong.
Klari didn’t seem to have a negative reaction to the worm at all. She watched it avidly as he set it on the primary rune. Its movements suddenly stilled. Almost immediately, the reception rune started to glow. It was soft at first, but quickly ramped up to being unmistakable. Serenity hoped that would be true even in high light conditions, but that wasn’t usually a problem on Berinath. The Forest shaded things enough that you only had that much light outside the Domes.
Serenity was glad to see that the reception rune was still working. It had been exceptionally tricky. Transmitting and receiving a signal was simple enough, but setting it up so that it wouldn’t be easily fooled was more difficult and getting that semi-secured system to be robust even at a distance was truly a pain. Other spells and enchantments created interference when they were between the two runes even if they weren’t designed to send signals.
Once that was done, Serenity realized it wasn’t helpful and redesigned the entire system to work with multiple freeze runes and multiple receivers that would all point in the direction of any runes that were triggered. The first version worked well until Serenity tried triggering more than one rune at a time.
The latest version seemed to have all of the issues straightened out. He definitely hoped they were, because the enhanced metra runes that he’d given extra time in the Origin were nearly impossible to damage. He’d tried; he could do it, but only with some very expensive spells that took quite a bit of time and mana and required him to know exactly what he was working with.
“That’s how it’s supposed to work?” Klari tapped the reception rune. “It’s supposed to darken in places? It’s pointing at the other rune?”
Serenity looked at the arrow and grinned. He’d hoped that would be clear enough. It didn’t give three dimensional directions, but it could manage two and that was enough as long as the rune could be moved around. While he’d only pulled out one of each for the demo, he’d managed to get examples as small as an inch in diameter and as large as a foot for the reception rune; that should give a nice set of options for something easy to see and something easy to carry. “Yeah. The small rune is so that you can know when the big one’s active and find it if there are a lot of the big runes around. I set it up so it can work with a lot of each and they’re not tied to a particular one.”
He was only going to give one detection/transmitter/freezing rune and two reception runes to the dryads, one in each size. That would give them options while still making them do most of the work. He was just making the examples they’d copy.
“You think there will be a lot? What does it do other than glow?”
Serenity guessed he must never have explained that to Klari. She wasn’t a runemaster to read what he’d made; really, even a runemaster would need time. “The reception rune just glows when the main rune is active; it indicates the nearest main rune. There’s also an indication of how many active runes it’s seeing, but I decided not to have it point at the others; it was too confusing.”
Klari nodded. She seemed to be following so far; better, she was patient enough for him to explain the whole thing before she asked more questions.
Serenity tapped the rune with the worm on it. “This is the main rune; it activates when an undead being touches it and freezes them in place. It won’t last forever; right now, I’m feeding it with my mana. I expect the final ones to use monster cores like the one the reception rune is using; they slide in to this indent. I’ve tested that as well.”
“Undead? Why would we need that?” Klari sounded puzzled. “Undead aren’t allowed on Berinath. There’s a check at the portal entrance. At all of them.”
“The check isn’t perfect.” That was true in both directions, as it turned out. Serenity had continued to think about it since the “test.” He’d come up with some ways to fool it; most of them were silly and probably wouldn’t work, but a couple of them would. For himself, all he’d need to do would be to wear living armor; the armor’s Life Affinity would be read by the dryads’ setup and he’d pass.
For an actual undead, it would be a little harder, but there were similar solutions. Of course, that assumed that the undead wasn’t Life-attuned to begin with; unliving like the Hollow Ones would pass right through the dryads’ setup. They wouldn’t bypass Serenity’s.
“That’s reassuring,” Klari muttered. “It’s supposed to be really good.”
“There used to be a backup,” Serenity assured her. “Unfortunately, it hasn’t been replaced in decades, maybe centuries, and it needs it. Since I could design a new one, your Elders had me do that. I expect you’ll see a lot of these runes in the future.”
Serenity watched Klari and tried to figure out what she thought of the explanation. Aide threw up an overlay to help; it mostly aligned with what Serenity thought he saw. She seemed to accept the explanation and felt reassured, even though he really hadn’t explained much. That was good enough; he wasn’t here to help the Elders convince their people, after all.
No, he was here to get Klari’s opinion on the runes’ materials. Serenity removed the worm puppet from the main rune. The worm started wiggling again, so he tossed it through his Rift so he wouldn’t need to worry about it more.
“I wanted to show you what the rune did before you got a good look at the materials. What do you think? I know it works better, but did the materials change?” Serenity was fairly confident they had; it wasn’t quite the same color as the enhanced metra he still had. That could have been from working the metal to get it into the right shape, since the change was very slight, but Serenity didn’t think it was.
Klari tapped the rune. “Hmm. Could just be metra. Are you certain it won’t activate unexpectedly?”
Serenity nodded. “As long as it’s intact, it can only activate if an undead touches it. Nothing else will, not even running Death-attuned mana through it.”
He’d tested. They were necessary tests; his first version had activated far too easily. Fixing those issues made it far harder to test, since the test puppet had to very closely approximate being undead, but it was worth it.
He half hoped Elder Omprek would find something undead to test the rune on; Serenity wanted to see it in action against more than a puppet. It was possible he’d still missed something. It wouldn’t truly be tested until it was used against the real thing.
He also half hoped that no undead would show up on Berianth soon. Not only did he not want to temporarily freeze a sapient person just to test a rune, he didn’t want to have to deal with the fallout if they didn’t want to live again. He’d told the dryads they couldn’t force it; he’d stand by that if he needed to. He simply didn’t really want to.
Of course, he’d also promised to teach the dryads how to revive the undead without the use of an Echa rune. He’d already started writing a booklet that explained the proper ritual, including a few variations, and he wanted to finish that obligation by delivering the booklet rather than by actually performing the ritual.
With his luck, Serenity fully expected that an undead who wanted to live again would show up right before he was ready to leave. Serenity was certain Tyche would find that hilarious.
Klari nodded and started testing the metal. She tried to scrape it with other tools, pounded on it with a large sledgehammer, ran her own mana through it in a controlled fashion, and dripped liquids on it that Serenity didn’t recognize; many of them were acrid, but that was all he knew. She also tried to melt it using an array of tools Serenity hadn’t seen before.
“It’s almost metra,” Klari reported when she finished. She had a huge grin on her face; it seemed that she approved. “The mana conductivity is the same as the enhanced metra. The material is far more stable and resistant to everything, however. With this level of improvement, I’m fairly confident that you could have used a cerreth and tholia setup; it looks like your storage place extended the usable temperatures for the entire item. I don’t suppose you have any idea how I could pick up a similar Skill? This is huge.”
Serenity shrugged. He really didn’t know; it was a Species skill for a Species he wasn’t about to talk about. He only had one idea that might help. “It’s related to a generic creation Skill; basically, it holds stuff in the same place the stuff I can use to make things comes from. I’m not sure that helps?”
Klari’s brow wrinkled for a moment, then a smile spread across her face. “It might. If nothing else, it gives me something to try. It’s influenced by what the thing is intended to be, obviously; that’s probably going to be vital to creating a storage space that won’t make complex things break after they’ve been enhanced. In that case … hmm. Yeah. Thanks for the idea; I have a couple things I can try.”
Serenity nodded. “If you figure it out, let me know? I know some people who’d probably like to have an idea how to make their own space.”
Klari nodded. “Sounds like a fair trade. Now, about the metal on the reception rune; it’s similar but not quite as sturdy…”
Lillene
Y’know, I wonder exactly what that “worm puppet” is going to turn into. It’s just a fake undead; will it get better at being a fake and test subject, or will it be something else?
