Fooling Myself is a Full Time Job [Closed]

[Scoria]

The gasping breath from a certain druid broke the silence like a pin needle against a metal floor. It echoed and rebounded, teasing him and taunting him as it went. Scoria grumbled under his breath and tidied up, hand rubbing his forehead as if to clear away the dream he had just experienced. Nightmares again, huh? How... convenient. With a quiet 'feh' under his breath, the scribe packed his things for the day and headed out. Not even 3 AM yet and he was already up, but some things just had to be done, and quite frankly, that dream had given him more than enough reason to put an end to the scribe work for now. He had advanced quickly, and in doing so, had perhaps prompted some others to make similar, yet different advances. Irresponsible, perhaps. Unreasonable, perhaps. Scoria had an idea building in his head of people taking advantage of others, people tricking others into unfair contracts, loan sharks... He was having no more in the advancement of that. Some might consider it running away from his responsibility, but his responsibility was not towards the betterment of society or whatever. He had goals and plans and he wasn't about to waste time creating a Clarity Quill that would prevent unlawful or duress arrangements. Not like he didn't have a whole host of ideas on how to advance scribing already, but for now...

Scoria pulled into St. Pancras and found himself the nearest merchant vendor. Why these guys were still awake at this godforsaken hour, he would never understand, but perhaps that was the downside of being a Lander. Sometimes, you just had to be up. Scoria didn't exactly understand that and quite often, he didn't take into account whether someone was Lander or Adventurer, but the looming threat of the guards made it impossible to pretend there wasn't a strict difference between the treatment of Landers and treatment of Adventurers. Worse still, Scoria's subclass made that difference even more pronounced, seeing as he could essentially twist Landers around his thumb at times. Simply because he had a subclass. Because they were system constructed. That notion frustrated him. Still, he purchased the object he needed and walked over to the nearest furnace, remembering clearly all the Alchemists he had thieved from before. Perhaps this time, someone would be gutsy enough to steal from him? Unlikely. Subclass Change: Alchemist. Scoria felt the change somewhat profoundly, having a sense of his proficiency in grimoires leaving, all his skills just floating out and being locked away, replaced with a marginal knowledge of how magic functioned. It felt strangely like engineering and, in considering such a thing, Scoria found himself with a hand over the nearest dry oven. A moment or two later, a small shard of magic seemed to float out of the oven and onto the ground at his feet. Mana fragment, huh? Not bad.

[Scoria]

The mana fragment alone was an interesting feat, to say the least, but for Scoria, it wasn't nearly enough. It wasn't even close to being enough to satisfy the former scribe. As he had done when he had first become a scribe, he decided that he was going to try and make every currently researched item on the list at least once. That way, he'd be able to mass produce them later for better effect and he wouldn't have to worry if anyone ever needed his alchemist skills. Well, it wasn't so much a big deal unless you considered the possibility that Scoria actually had people that requested things of him. He did not. He did not at all whatsoever because frankly why in the world would anyone go to Scoria for alchemist work, especially when he hadn't revealed that he was a scribe to anyone except for perhaps Oxford and Nisha? That was marginally beside the point, however, as Scoria's first act of business was to tackle what appeared to be the easiest objects on the list. The stable and unstable mana fragments. Surprisingly, they were some of the most recently researched objects, which led Scoria to briefly consider the possibility that some of the more prominent alchemists were in fact incredibly dumb and altogether too focused on complicated nonsense. The complex junk comes later, everyone knew that.

It seemed like for this particular venture, however, there was no need to manipulate the ovens that could be found around the station, and in fact it was far more convenient to simply engage in some basic shenanigans elsewhere. His old scribe workshop would suffice, although it might get a little cluttered. With a huff, he strolled back into his so-called 'lab' and sat himself down, pulling out one of the flasks that he would normally drop ink in and instead depositing the mana fragment he had made earlier. Almost as if he could feel the mana floating about in his body now, Scoria turned his palm face down over the flask and concentrated on the image of another fragment, eyes closed. The clink of something against the glass flask told him that he had succeeded, although the ease at which he had done so was almost frustrating in its nature. So this was the power of Alchemists, huh? How... arrogant. Scoria huffed under his breath and wondered why it simply could not be done unless you were an Alchemist before turning his attention down on the fantastical and wonderful little shards that were hanging out in the flask. He squinted, his eyes trying to decipher the mysteries of the little objects, until he considered the possibility that they functioned similarly to the spell circles and seals he had created as a Scribe. That iconic 'alchemist's spell circle' had been adopted by him earlier for his own ends, but perhaps it would also serve its purpose here.

Spinning the flask slightly until the shards rolled onto opposite sides of the flask, Scoria made contact with each through the glass and focused, attempting to pour mana into each fragment. The task was relatively simple and wouldn't produce much result immediately, but his intention was not to have an immediate and perfect success. Instead, he simply let the mana flow into each, saturating the flask slightly. That wasn't what he wanted. He took a moment to push his fingers together normally and send mana through them, then put his fingers back on the flask and made a circuit instead, using the two mana fragments as a bit of a conduit. The mana flowed evenly through each instead of building up and, in doing so, began to roll together slightly at one end as if attracted. It made sense, as nature wanted the path of least resistance, and who better to comply to nature's rules than a druid? As the fragments came together, Scoria's fingertips followed about the flask, knowing internally that he had somehow managed to sync up the fragments. His control over mana itself was limited in scope as a beginner Alchemist, but it might be possible at some point to simply do this on the fly some day. Which honestly wouldn't be that bad at all. Whatever his thoughts and ideas might have been, however, when the fragments came together, they began to meld and shift until forming a slightly larger and somehow more 'solid' looking fragment. One Stabilized Fragment completed, he supposed.

[Scoria]

As Scoria tossed the stable mana fragment up and down in his hands, the druid tried to consider how much of a beating this thing could take. The original mana fragments would dissipate immediately on contact with his hands, but this thing seemed to only lose the most marginal of power reserves as he handled it with almost careless abandon. This thing was simultaneously strange and useless, yet somehow managed to also have the capacity to turn into something far greater. Scoria was naturally interested. His eyes gleamed in the low light as the moon floated above his workshop, but while he did want to start researching as soon as possible, he also understood intuitively that the best thing to do as far as alchemy was concerned was to get the basics down first. It was obvious to him how the world worked, and if your skill level was not high enough, things would simply blow up in your face. In the case of alchemy, that might end up being a literal statement. Cringing slightly, he huffed and turned to his next task. His next task being the creation of an unstable fragment, the natural opposite to the stable fragment he was playing around with now. Pulling out his scribing flasks as a means of containing his alchemy creations for now, Scoria dropped the fragment back into one vial and corked it before moving onto his next little project.

As before, the druid felt the flow of mana through his body in a way that was more pronounced than ever before. It was frustrating in a sense, a frustration that he could not quite get over as the energy seemed to swell and fall like the ebb of the tides. Frustrating. Seriously and totally frustrating, but what was he going to do. It wasn't like he would magically have this capacity later on if he switched back to being a Scribe, so he had to work with what he had. And what he had was the plopping of two mana fragments into a vial. As a scribe, he had gone and acquired quite a number of mana fragments before so as to not easily run out, so while his production speed on his own was rather low for now, he had the reserves to back up his research without having to go out and get more. The fragments plunked quietly into the vial before the flask was corked, leaving Scoria to resume his investigation. His investigation being the random and altogether willy nilly discharge of mana into the flask through both fragments. Like the stabilized fragment before, Scoria used each fragment as a conduit to a bigger circuit. This time, however, he was not creating a proper circuit. Instead, he was feeding both ends mana and creating a build up of 'charge' (mana in this case) in the circuit junction that was the flask. Worse, because his mana was naturally in phase with itself, sending it at itself from two ends was basically creating complete interference of a sort. Mana did not function like electricity exactly, however, and the result was a rattling, vibrating din as the fragments began to shake and clatter before beginning to bounce and crack against the sides of the vial. Finally, the rattling died down and a singular fragment remained, but this one seemed almost angry and unsettled in nature, volatile. An unstable fragment, so to speak. That was that, he supposed. One more down. Woop.

[Scoria]

Now that was perfectly lovely and everything, but Scoria still wasn't exactly satisfied with what he had figured out thus far. The things he did know, however, told him quite a lot. Things like mana acting somewhat like electricity in the sense that it appeared to have a phase. It was almost natural to assume that it had an amplitude, as pushing more mana into something was a 'natural' action. Some spells cost more, some cost less, that sort of thing. Fairly straightforward. The idea of mana saturating in an area and building up or pushing together in odd phases meant that it had some properties that were not immediately obvious, and those would probably require additional investigation of a sort in order to figure out. Investigation that Scoria did not have all the time in the world for at the moment, as he had to get working on the next object on the list. The moon was still high above, he noted to himself, and it was almost certain that he hadn't spent that much time on this at all. Perhaps it was a little like a programming language. Learn one and the other comes much easier. Ironic that the infamous two crafting classes, scribe and alchemist, would have such a close connection. Ironic and amusing, considering everyone else had such a great problem with them.

At any rate, he moved the unstable fragment aside into a corner for now and pulled out the stable fragment once more. It just sat there placidly, like a boring old rock, and Scoria himself was somewhat confused as to how this could possibly become anything like a firearm fragment of any kind. Wouldn't it have made much more sense to use an unstable fragment? But then again, it needed to be stable until it hit the target and not blow up upon firing, so that might have been the right choice. Scoria pushed the fragment around the flask in his hands and fed it mana, just like he had for the unstable fragment. The stable fragment vibrated slightly and rolled around, almost like a magnet attracted to his fingertips, but its rather inert nature meant that just attacking it with mana wasn't about to do much. At best, it would do nothing. At worst, it would dissolve and break its own bonds, leaving Scoria with absolutely nothing. The problem with alchemy, Scoria was starting to realize, was that the materials were inherently volatile. It was far too easy to lose them and screwing up didn't mean you got to try again with the same materials, you would have to fetch new ones. Probably best to reread the description for this firearm fragment before he proceeded any further.

[Scoria]

He really should have actually taken the time to read the manual before deciding he could just go ahead and make something based on the name itself. Wasn't he the one who made really weird names for his scribe items? Pfft. Well, whatever the case might have been, Scoria was now taking a solid look at the description itself. While it was certainly no manual on how to make the object, none of the recipes were. They weren't blueprints so much as they were guidelines and Scoria was never one to follow quietly in the tracks either. The end result was fairly straightforward as far as straightforward things went. The idea was to create a larger and more collected fragment that could be armed and fired repeatedly. It was nothing especially special from a short-view approach, but Scoria often did not take the short-view approach. By the simple act of creating something that could collect inputted mana and then release it in a burst was a wonder in and of itself. And now, now he wanted one as well. His eyes gleamed quietly as he glanced at the recipe once more, noting that it required one stable fragment and two regular fragments. Four total for something like this, huh? Not bad. Not bad at all. Still, that possibility of backfire was worrying.

Then again, he didn't really want to be promoting the creation of guns anyway. It'd tear down people like Caerbannog unless it was balanced, because who could survive a bullet to the head? He would not permit the advancement of technology to the point that it would make the classes themselves obsolete. That would simply be much too unreasonable, but before he got into thinking about the logistics of the advancement of alchemy, he moved back to thinking about this fragment. After all, he had hopped out of being a scribe for that same reason of responsibility on his shoulders. With a quiet huff under his breath, he glanced around for two more shards and let them fall into the flask cleanly, the soft tinkling of shards as they fell into the flask somewhat musical in their nature. Now what was he supposed to do? Let's see here, if the point was to reinforce the strength of the fragment, then perhaps it could work like a backflow pipe of sorts? All he had to do was... his fingers pressed up against the edges of the flask as he let his mana begin to flow through the circuit. Hopefully nothing blew up on him.

[Scoria]

The idea here was to first determine the flow of the stable mana fragment. It had been created by way of synchronizing the flow of two mana fragments together, resulting in a larger and more stable fragment where all the flow was in phase. If one were to think about it in terms of metals and magnets, it was like a ferromagnetic substance. No, it was a uniformly directed field. Ferromagnetic wasn't exactly the correct word, but the idea was that by pushing mana through, he had been able to align the flow all in one direction. The result of that was the little fragment that sat in front of him now, but if this was to store up power and then release it somehow, the extra two mana fragments would have to constitute that flow. Still, finding out the flow of the original was a task that had him simply throwing mana into the flask in one direction and twisting its orientation about until the inner fragment aligned, much like a needle that pointed towards magnetic north. Magnetic north was conveniently created by Scoria himself, which allowed him to completely reverse the flow in the opposite direction with his fingers, keeping hard contact with the two regular fragments.

In doing so, the stable fragment was not allowed to move because there was no tangential force component of any kind, while the mana fragments themselves tried to meld together over the stable fragment. The result was that the fragments began to squish into the stable object and spread over its surface like an almost gel-like property, floating up and across and around the fragment until they met at the vertical diameter of the larger fragment. The sphere looked like a larger sphere now, with an indent on two sides, and Scoria noted to himself that the outer coating had a flow in one direction and the inner core had a flow in the other direction. Pulling the fragment out of its case and twirling it around in his hands, Scoria noted it was a bit like a dielectric before passing some mana into the core like normal. It should have come out the other end, but instead, the outer core pushed it back until it built up enough to surpass a certain 'breakdown voltage'. He wasn't sure what the analogy was, but the pressure had increased to the point where there was no choice but to fire, and fire it did. A small little burst of energy flew forward in his workshop. Not bad. Not bad at all. Unstable Firearm Mana Fragment (albeit minor) had been successfully crafted.

[Scoria]

Now then, what else could he possibly investigate this time? The obvious choices were Magic Accessory, Mana-Powered Lamp, and Mana-Powered Flashlight, but not even a single one of those seemed particularly interesting to him. After all, he didn't have any great interest in making some sort of accessory to boost his ability to get wrecked, nor did he have any intention to be going spelunking or exploring dark caves any time soon. Except, perhaps... the highlands. Yes, if he was going to explore the highlands, then he wasn't going to be fooled into going into a dark cave without a flashlight. That was basics 101 of exploring dark places. Even pokemon taught you to have flash before you went exploring, because otherwise you were going to end up crying. A lot. So with that idea in mind, he figured a mana-powered lamp would be his first craft in the group of three. The confusion here arose from dealing in things that weren't mana fragments, but the more he looked at them, the more and more it looked like the work of an electrician. He was going to have to go out and buy actual alchemist gear, wasn't he?

With a quiet huff under his breath, the druid headed out underneath the moon and stars and went to find himself a vendor. He had figured this out early when he was making items in his scribing profession. The quality of the original materials really did make a difference and, despite this being a game, just because two objects were of the same level did not mean they were equally useful as a material. So he walked through the streets until he found someone who hosted the wares he needed. His eyes gleamed in the darkness as he looked at the crafting materials, raising an eyebrow when the Lander who ran the store coughed and looked confused. "You... You're a scribe, aren't you? We've seen you around..." Oh good, he had a reputation. Of course he had a reputation. Scoria leveled his regular glare on the Lander and shook his head from side to side, muttering under his breath. "Not anymore." Not anymore indeed. His eyes browsed over the materials as he picked them up in his hands, inspecting each in turn. What was he going to do with these... More than crafting any mana-powered anything, he was figuring out how to make the most basic of circuits. This would be useful in making both the lamp and flashlight later.

[Scoria]

And that was probably a good thing because if someone thought he was going to magically figure out how to make magic-based circuits in a few posts, they were pretty wrong. He was no genius, don't be confused. He was just stubborn as anything and a solid cheater. His eyes gleamed in the dark as he pulled up an old lamp in his hands, noting that it seemed to be both rusty and dirty. Pouring a bit of mana into it, he watched as it glowed slightly for a moment before fizzling in his hands. Crap, he had broken it. Fishing out some coins, Scoria paid for the old lamp he had purchased with a bowed head of apology, shining the surface with his shirt so he could see inside. This was fairly boring, all things considered, the same as any regular lamp. It just didn't accept electricity and instead opted to work based on mana instead. That was weird though, because how did that work? He knew that in all honesty, lightbulbs were basically resistive pieces of wire that would light up as a side effect of passing current through, while the main purpose was to simply heat up. That was how lightbulbs generally worked, but then how did this function. Did it... resist mana? That was an interesting concept he'd have to explore later, but he needed more materials.

The materials in question were an old filament and an old diode. That was... okay, so basically it was electrical engineering with mana instead of electricity. Scoria clutched his forehead and growled under his breath, his glare shooting up a few magnitudes. He really should have checked before doing this, but this was what it was. Very well. He'd need to do a few experiments in regards to how mana moved through wires and the like, but for now, he'd try to pick the wires that were least frayed. He understood this much. A bigger width meant that the current would low more easily with less losses and resistance, while a longer wire increased resistance as well. So the old filaments he'd be picking up were the ones that were least frayed and least about to snap, because any point along the width where the wires simply thinned out without density somehow increasing meant they'd be poor mana conductors. Fine. The diode... he couldn't investigate that. It was a base material and while he knew that normally such a thing was constructed instead of 'found', if the rules of the world were that such a diode could only be found because it was ancient technology, so be it. He was counting this towards the flashlight instead of the lamp though, especially considering that an increase in power would certainly need the help of a diode.

[Scoria]

Well anyway there was a more important thing to pay attention to here. He had actually stepped out for another reason than to gather materials. He had certainly wanted alchemy materials, but he wanted alchemy gear. What he was specifically talking about was a solid set of gloves that would allow him to handle mana fragments with relative impunity. He wanted to be able to manipulate these mana fragments without having to worry in the slightest about accidentally destroying his own work. His eyes glanced around here and there, but it looked like there wasn't anything like that, which kind of sucked. He'd have to go ask someone to make him some gloves or make some himself, probably out of paper. Ha, who would have thought a former scribe would end up turning paper into a fabric so he could manipulate alchemy materials. Way too many crafting classes involved in that. Scoria's eyes peered at the counter again as if to look for anything else that seemed especially interesting, but there wasn't anything that caught his eye so he gave the Lander a glaring nod of satisfaction and paid him what he was due. He seemed surprised (why were they always surprised?), but Scoria had better things to do than figure out why all the Landers believed he was just going to rob them. I mean really.

Well, be that as it may, Scoria was soon back inside his workshop with a new 'old lamp' in his hands. That was a little oxymoronic, he admitted to himself, but the interest in making this lamp work was of more importance. His hands brushed over the surface of the bulb, turning it around in his hands. This was almost exactly analogous to regular lightbulbs from the real world, so then... how did energy get delivered to this? Was it a casing of some sort? Scoria's eyes trailed over to the old lamp itself as he began to pry the casing apart slightly before sighing and returning to testing with the bulb, quiet bits of mana leaking into the bulb in one direction. One direction seemed to light the bulb dimly, so he did what any good jerkass did and sent the mana in in the other direction, reversing the flow. Somewhat unsurprisingly, considering his knowledge of lightbulbs and the complete lack of buffers in such crappy technology, the bulb glowed dimly yet again. Okay, that was fine and all, but that didn't mean he knew how to make a circuit. He did, at least, know how to feed the mana into the object in the first place, and that was something. Not a lot, but it was something. Scoria grumbled under his breath and rubbed his forehead. Damn, he needed a light source in here... Oh wait.

[Scoria]

Again, he wasn't exactly going in order here. It was one thing to stick to a specific schedule when creating objects, but a 'mana-powered flashlight' and a 'mana-powered lamp' were so close in function and form that Scoria questioned how they were separate items at all. Well, maybe the trick of creating the circuitry itself was more difficult than people had originally envisioned. No big deal, really. Now then, his hands moved towards creating a proper circuit. He was going to apparently have to use both a diode and a filament in the creation of this, but Scoria wondered briefly why he would need to do something like that at all. Hadn't he just gone and proved that the old bulb would work whichever way the mana was fed to it? The only thing he could imagine going wrong was... Scoria squinted as he reached for an old bulb from the old lamps he had acquired and then casually set up a mirror behind his desk. Sitting down underneath his workspace until he found himself at an angle where he could see both underneath and over the table, Scoria raised the bulb up above the table and back slightly and then fed it mana from both sides. Feeding from just one side was simple, he had seen the results a moment ago. The wire inside the bulb itself would burn out almost instantly and then you'd have a useless lamp on your hands.

With his newfound practice in manipulating the mana inherent in his own body, Scoria let his fingers send mana in different directions. The mana began to saturate the inside of the bulb slowly like some sort of water balloon being filled up and while the bulb itself flickered rapidly, it didn't glow properly at all. The two sources of mana were in competition and as a result, the inconsistent flow of mana through the inner filament meant no light. No light, right up until the mana began to grow so strong inside the bulb that it had no choice but to take its quickest and least resistive route, which was straight through the filament and around the glass in whatever direction it could manage. The filament sparked with magicial electric before the entire thing exploded in his hands, letting out a strong burst of light. Okay, so that was why. He, as a mage and a newfound alchemist, had an inherent ability to manipulate his mana to only flow one way. Besides, he had been building these things the entire night, so it wasn't a problem for him, but if someone wasn't careful, they'd throw mana at this thing willy nilly and... well, the end result was somewhat apparent. It'd explode right in their faces. That'd be no good. Well, mark one down for mana-powered flashlight, he guessed. He was getting close to the end though.

[Scoria]

Yohoho, he was reaching the climax of this particular adventure. Well, to call it an adventure was not one hundred percent accurate, but he was at least at the place where he could create something like an old lamp. Er... that was incorrect. Create a Mana-Powered Lamp. Yes. His eyes almost glowed in the dim light as he tinkered on his desk, having shoved the shards of broken glass off his desk and into a receptacle for later. He was admittedly a little annoyed that there wasn't any good way to be soldering filaments together, but his hands continued to do what they could as he tied and merged what he could into one long circuit. There was a singular place where one could attach a mana shard or battery of some kind, but... well, it was really bad. Scoria had cushioned it with a bunch of junk from the old lamps he had salvaged and bought off the vendors, but it didn't really seem that efficient at all. Well, it was a basic item so he couldn't really be expecting that much. All he had to do was create an indent so nothing would accidentally poke in there, but it could still be reached if you didn't happen to have a thousand mana fragments just sitting around.

Basic circuit, complete. Now that that was all done and finished, he had to go and attach this to one of those old bulbs and then create a final casing and a means of holding the lamp itself. The circuit simply attached into one of the older casings and 'power sources' for the old lamps he had salvaged, where he threw in a bulb. One he hadn't exploded or fried already, of course. A few minutes of tinkering had that solidly in place before he threw a glass-like cover around it and secured it in place and then finally put the top on. The last thing to do was to somehow create something to hold this with, so it could be secured to a belt and such, but he didn't think he'd have that much luck. Instead, he simply went ahead and used some old fibers from his scribe days to create a faux rope of sorts. If it started raining, there might be trouble, but he had reinforced it at some point with some strange material of some kind and the result was a rather tough fiber that he could simply use as a holder. Done and done. One Mana-Powered Lamp complete. To test, he simply poked his finger into the socket (something that normally would get you completely electrocuted) and watched as the bulb flickered into life before providing dim light to the rather dank room. Woooo. Okay, now for the flashlight.

[Scoria]

Huh? A new thing had been added to the Alchemy list? Scoria squinted in the darkness, peering through the interface to try and find out what it was. Lunar Illusion? What kind of dork named their invention Lunar... Oh wait, he had. He was surprised to see it on the Alchemy list, but looking over its description explained why. Although the idea of contracts were solid, the linker was an alchemy seal so it was predominantly Alchemy. Scoria nodded to himself as he ripped a bulb out of an old lamp, setting up a new circuit for the flashlight he was attempting to make. Just from its description, it seemed more useful, although it was possible the appeal of stronger light sources was blinding him from the truth of the mp cost. Well, he'd see. The thing that jumped out at him was the change for more filaments and diodes and less bulbs, almost as though the importance was placed on supplying a higher voltage (mana wattage, perhaps?) to the lightbulb.

It was natural to place one diode at the edge of the circuit just before the "battery space", so no ignorant dork sent his mana the wrong way and fried the whole thing. One piece of filament into the bulb itself, just as before, but the catch here was using the extra diode and filament instead of scavenging two more lamps. If he wanted to make a flashlight, then perhaps the thing to do was attempt to sum multiple sources together in an attempt to create a higher wattage. It was rudimentary and almost sacrilegious in construction, but putting two batteries in series seemed to do the trick, divided by an extra diode and filament to simultaneously connect and guard the flow of mana. Hopefully no idiot decided to try and overload the circuits backwards. The diodes could take a beating, but they weren't perfect. He rolled everything together and out as much in place as he could before finally casing the circuit and sending some mana through. It certainly cost more, but the sharp beam of light told him he had succeeded here as well. Good. Being unable to make flashlights despite being able to make lamps would have been really lame. Like... Super lame.

[Scoria]

Scoria coughed under his breath and stretched his hands up above him. Alright, so he had done quite a bit in the Alchemy department so far and had even researched things, but he also needed to get cracking on that strange thing known as a 'Magic Accessory'. Maybe it should actually be made of rabbit legs. Yeah, that sounded accurate. Time to hunt down rabbits. Scoria shuffled over to his work table and sat himself down in front of the table, disregarding that noise entirely. Screw thaaaaat. The magic accessory was the last of the Alchemist items that Scoria needed to figure out how to make and if he was going to make it, well then... He needed to reread the description. The Magic Accessory item took up what appeared to be 3 mana fragments, 1 old diode, and 2 old filaments. Okay, that made... sense... sort of. Scoria laid out the parts in front of him and reread the description one more time. This thing was actually magitech, huh? It took in mana and produced a magical effect. That didn't sound very 'technological' to him, but he'd have to settle. So the important point before he started was to figure out what went where.

The obvious thing was that all three mana fragments went in the center. That made the most sense to him, it'd be necessary to form a core. He didn't want to use them to reinforce anything and the whole structure needed an actual 'load', and so that load would have to be the trio of mana fragments. He let the pieces clatter onto the desk in front of him, floating down into place. Then from there, the natural result was to attach a wire to either side of the pieces and to the diode as well, the last piece. Thinking about it logically, the diode had to have two filaments attached to it, so there could only be one more object in this 'mana accessory' circuit. The three mana fragments didn't necessarily have to go to the center, but there had to be at least one in the center (or there'd only be one filament). Whether or not the other two fragments stayed in the middle or whether they coated the diode or the filaments to create a stronger connection or circuit, Scoria would have to investigate later and separately. For now, this would do. This had to do. Very well then. The general layout was set (and could be altered later if Scoria was bored enough).

Druid

[Scoria]

Scoria stretched his hands out above him and cracked his knuckles briefly. Alright. Basic layout figured out. He'd try it without using any of the mana fragments to coat the other wires first. He imagined that'd make it some sort of intermediate item and that probably wouldn't work out so great. In that case, the only thing to do was just to try this. With trembling fingers and careful movements of his gloved fingers, the Alchemist pulled the filaments into the diode and coated it with some mana, trying to fuse the two items together in the same way he had for the flashlight. It was weird, really, seeing as the whole system seemed to always be lacking all the proper materials, but that was what it meant to intuitively craft, he supposed. With a small roll of his eyes, he firmly secured the diode and filaments together, creating the basic circuit for this accessory. It had a proper stop gap to force power one way, but without any load, it was just an open wire not transmitting any energy.

Well, it'd be nice to just stick wires into the fragments, but the crystalline crafting materials weren't so easily manipulated. Frowning slightly, Scoria placed the two wire ends near the edges of the crystals before taking one fragment and softly pushing it over and around the other two fragments, creating a coating that encased the other two fragments. It was like holding water inside a container made of ice, really. The inner fragments were viscous, but the outside was a solid shell. Nodding quietly, he let out a quiet harumph and melded the edges of the fragment over the edges of the filament, creating a black box out of the center fragments and allowing him to manipulate the inner fragments to create a load that suited him. That would serve as the load and produce the 'magical effects' that this item was apparently supposed to be useful for. Scoria couldn't help but squint at how that accessory wouldn't disappear on flesh contact, but the way things worked was very weird. With a quiet sigh and a shrug of his shoulders, he ceased pushing mana through the fragments and lifted his hands up for a small break. Only the actual manipulation of the inner load left.

Druid

[Scoria]

Alright, now that was all fine and dandy, but there were other things to be aware of and other things to take care of. Namely, Scoria was going to decide what this accessory did. At all. Well, he certainly wasn't going to use it. One glance at his accessory list told him that much. He had not one, not two, not three, but all four of his accessory slots already filled to the brim and used up. So this accessory was going to have to be something that did, in fact, have a use for any Adventurer. Another way of looking at it was that it was going to have to do something to a skill everyone had, seeing as these accessories tended to fly in that direction. As such, it was going to have to be a basic 'free skill' that it affected, like Call of Home. Call of Home was a good skill to reduce the cooldown on anyway. Scoria kept that in mind and got to work on this super junk accessory in order to learn how to make accessories.

Which was clearly going to be by cheating and doing it the Scribe way. Scoria placed his hands over the triple fragment core and fed his mana through the filaments so it curled up inside the fragmented shell, pushing and pulling the two fragments and making his best effort to keep them from 'syncing up' and molding into one of the stable or unstable fragments (or melding into a larger fragment). Instead, Scoria focused on making one of the fragments like a small pipeline inside the sphere, feeding mana through a circuit and flooding the center with something that was almost like one of his spell seals, only in miniature form. The other half was just the same thing, only in reverse, taking all that mana and using it to create a second layer seal that formed the circuit and spell seal before pulling everything out into the filament and feeding it out of the core load. Once he was satisfied, he cemented the structure of the system with a burst of mana and pulled the accessory up, scoffing lightly. Call of Home cast time -.1 seconds, huh? Whatever. Good enough.

Druid