WHO DARES TREAD UPON THE MANTLE OF SAFETY, LOYALTY AND JUSTICE!? BY THE JUDICATOR'S MIGHT, I WILL SMITE THEM DOWN BY PASSING A FAIR AND JURIED SENTENCE FROM WHICH THEY WILL LIKELY SUFFER FIVE TO TEN YEARS IMPRISONMENT!
>>41298022 >Climbing up on the gigantic man's armored shoulder, Janet sat down with practiced ease to speak more easily to her ancient ally.
I saw a greedy merchant ban a well-meaning boy from ever going back to the marketplace for standing up to injustice. He rallied the other merchants to his cause and got them to agree never to let the youth come shop in their districts again!
>>41298025 HOW DISGRACEFULLY FILTHY! Beyond the sheer audacity of it all, how does he intend to achieve a sustainable economy by discouraging customers from the nearby stands?
INCOMPETENCE LEADS TO DISGRACE, AND I SHALL BE THE ONE TO TEACH THIS MAN OF THE LIGHT!
>Thud-thud-thud-thud-SCRRREEECH >As his armoured self skidded to a halt, horrendously tearing up the carpet and scratching into the floorboards with his iron heels, Drummond halted directly in front of the double-doors and slowed down for a moment, using one of his giant, burly hands to very gently, very carefully twist the doorknob and slowly open each door individually, the other busy holding his large gavel, before ducking and carefully stepping through the entryway.
That was close, Rem might've docked my wage again. Now, TO ARMS!
>And thus the pair charged forth into the town, busting through alleys and tearing washing from the lines with his completely cosmetic over-the-top armour decorations.
>>41298016 You took care of - you know what, I don't wanna know.
>Folding his arms and staring at her with a mixture of curiosity and disbelief, Max could only imagine just what she'd done to 'resolve' the problem. Hell, there was an even bigger question than that to be asked in the first place.
Actually, scratch that, I really wanna know, but at the same time I'm pretty sure I'll be shocked by the method, so I'm gonna move onto the question that really matters here... why would you do that for me?
>Janet wasn't really making any sense, but then she never did. At least the general answer of 'it would've been mean to leave it like that' felt understandable, but before now the concept of Janet had always been just plain 'mean'.
But I mean, all I've been doing is assaulting you on a near weekly basis and that was something you didn't even pay attention to until now. You could've just considered it the consequences of my actions and walked away.
Or maybe that's just how I ended up feeling about it...
>>41299665 >Staring at Max with a blank expression, Janet wondered at what Max was telling her. This kid was able to make up all kinds of crazy machines and modifications to come and fight her but he couldn't grasp the most basic of inter-personal dynamics?
You aren't too bright, are you?
>If he misunderstood her using magic against him as being anything but a respectful response to his desire to defeat her then he nothing more than the biggest dunderbolt. Not to mention that a man who couldn't even understand Priap was a sad sight to see.
>>41304026 >He wasn't too bright? What was that about? According to a lot of people he'd heard from, he was a pretty bright kid growing up! What was her reason for saying that, then? What did she know that he didn't? If there was something he was missing from her perspective, he wanted to know what it was because, as far as Max knew, he had no idea how to determine what it was.
...
>But an explanation never came, Janet preferring to simply let it hang on that blanket statement like it was the most obvious thing in the world. It only helped to frustrate him, being eager for answers yet simultaneously being both given them and not. Pouting with a slightly red face, Max started to feel like he's just been called stupid with little other reason than to point it out.
What, then? I'm clearly missing something, but I just can't see what it is. Are you talking about owing me something? Because I don't think you owed me anything at all. Don't you give out those weird tickets for that anyway?
>>41304960 >Staring at the red-faced teenager on the verge of throwing a very serious temper tantrum, Janet sighed and shrugged her small frame at the boy. For the most part, the red-headed mage found it to be an infuriating task to try to discuss the most basic and obvious life concepts. The people of this world couldn't see or feel what should have been as instinctive to them as the breath in their lungs or the beat of their hearts, and as such, found that experiences outside their world to be incomprehensible.
The balance had to be rectified or else the tallied up magical backlash might have ripped into me at a really inconvenient moment.
>For a moment Janet let that statement hang in the air, her unimpressed gaze expression staring into Max's own with no expectations that he would be able to grasp any of what she was about to tell him. Nobody else was able to before him after all.
Priap has to be accounted for or spells can't be performed with any amount of consistent results. I give those tokens to remind the people who have helped me to ask for my help in return not for people to know when they've helped me. If I didn't get people to cash in then the balance would go too far into the positive and my own Cnila would end up compensating for the difference of my Lit.
>With that having been said, Janet stared at Max for a spark, a single smidgen of understanding or recognition in his eyes. Anything to show that maybe this time, this one time, what she said didn't sound like utter nonsense to whomever she was speaking with.
>Once again, he was completely lost. She was explaining things, but wasn't going into what those terms were. Some of it became a little clearer, such as the idea that there was a 'magical backlash' to worry about, but where? What trigger? If this was following the logical path that Max was trying to assign to the idea, was she really saying that the mere actions of those around her would cause some kind of magical repercussions? Mages could use magic as they liked, couldn't they? What was all this about Priap, Cnila, Lit?
Okay, you want to know how you sound right now?
In order for magitek to work, the Keystone needs to be properly applied to the Source in order for energy to flow, without a Keystone the tech becomes unstable and causes an SMS which has the potential of frying components that are essential to the needs of the user. A Source can be a Keystone in DTS technology but most are switching to, or currently use, IDTS as this allows for the safer and more reliable application of energy to output.
Did you get most of that? No?
Look, I get that whatever you're talking about is important, but please, for the love of the Concepts, could you at least explain it to me without assuming I should already know what you're talking about? Because I've never heard of any of that before.
>>41305634 >Alright so maybe he hadn't blown a fuse and called her insane for trying to tell him what he should be able to feel and make sense of on his own. So far so good for her but how far would Janet's luck be able to hold out if she tried telling him everything there was to see and know about her own perspective of the world?
I get that you couldn't afford me explaining everything to you at once but I'll at least try to give you this basic summary of some of those ideas of the old magic.
>Stretching out her arms, Janet sighed and looked at the boy right in front of her.
Everything we do, you and me talking, hurting eachother, loving eachother, wanting the other to please of annoy one another has consequence to our beings. Those consequences affect the way we interact with the world and ourselves and, as a consequence to that, interferes directly with our interactions with magic. Those interactions are called Priap or the balance. The balance of yourself and the world to use the world magic to affect yourself and others.
>>41305637 >Max was a little taken aback when she used them directly for reference, particularly given how intimate the whole thing was being made to sound. It was hard to hide a light blush at some of the supposed insinuations he was hearing, but at the same time he was concentrating far too much on what she was trying to tell him.
So what you're describing... it sounds like some kind of cosmic balance? Like that universal retribution concept. The idea that doing good begets good and doing bad begets bad. And that somehow affects magic...?
I mean, I get what you're saying, but how is that tied at all to magic? There's nothing about any of that in the academy sources back in Olstone or Kantarus. Isn't magic supposed to be tied to... ideas? Not actions, but perception?
>That was about as advanced as the study of magical power had gone to in Alaestus, as far as he knew. Various experiments and studies were successful in tying particular forms of magic to ideas, and utilising that knowledge had also produced results of its own. Yet none of what he'd read or been taught ever mentioned anything Janet was talking about. If anything, she was starting to sound like some kind of strange spiritualist.
>Staring at him with an irritated expression for quite some time Janet sighed and shook her head at the boy's interpretations of her words. Rather than try to actually listen to what she was saying he, and everyone she had ever tried to explain the workings of the world, tried to interpret it into something that could fit nicely into his view of things even if it contradicted what he had learned before. Aerth had made it a point to tell her that humanity had a tendency to discard everything it couldn't wrap up in its rationality but it was still very frustrating to Janet.
For one thing, I never went to school so I wouldn't know what crap they learn over there.
For another, that's not what I said at all and I'd thank you not to warp my words into something else.
I never said that good things bring good or bad things bring bad or anything like that. Good things are just good and bad things are bad but they don't actually interact with any other action in any specific way other than simple causality would allow for.
What I AM saying is that Priap had to be taken into careful consideration when working spells of any significant nature or it takes the residual balance out of your being directly.
You have to be not too good and not too bad, you have to accept yourself and accept everyone else around you without necessarily helping others out of their own situation.
Be as neutral as you can be and the magic will come easily, that's what Aerth always told me.
>>41306594 >Unfortunately for Janet, when someone had absolutely nothing to base their knowledge on regarding a subject the only thing to do was apply it to what they already knew. For Max, who had never experienced anything of 'The World' in his life, just like most other humans, the only magic he knew was the one where people carelessly flung lightning at each other and tore at the very fabric of reality.
>So to say it was all intrinsically tied to people's actions, their behaviour, interactions between people and the like, was very strange to imagine. The only thing he could really attribute to it was the idea of 'control over oneself', but that still didn't quite grasp the full idea Janet was trying to convey. She might not have gone to school, but it wasn't as though she was coming up with all this out of thin air - there was a confidence in her voice that betrayed no doubt.
Sorry, sorry, it's just really hard to wrap my head around it. From what I can tell, you're saying that as long as you stay neutral, your magic won't induce any stress on your body like it normally does to people? The idea that this 'Priap' is the reason behind magic causing fatigue?
... and who's Aerth? Someone at the guild?
>Maybe they could explain it a little better to him if he could find them, given that they apparently taught Janet how it all worked. Max didn't think himself a poor student, but this was all quite beyond him.