Artificial Nocturne [Closed]

[Scoria]

"I'm just as neeped up as they say."

Bam. Scoria kicked the door in front of him down, having spent a minute or so trying to open it the regular way. It wasn't locked, it was simply so old and in disrepair that opening the darn thing was impossible without breaking it. It was jammed and needed a fair bit of force to properly deal with. So Scoria did what Scorias do, which was namely, break the door down and enter the dusty warehouse. Letting out a short cough from the sudden rise of dust, the player blinked and waved the dust out from in front of his face, assessing his new area. Because the door had been jammed, no one actually used the spot, which meant that it was somewhat unofficially Scoria's to claim. Perfect. That was just what he needed, anyway, seeing as he had a need for a proper workspace for his crafting skill. It wasn't as though he had any great urge to increase his ability to fight, despite his personality, so he reached towards the nearest stable surface (a cabinet, as it turned out) and ran his arm across the top, shoving all the dust and other miscellaneous miscellanea off. They clattered to the ground, leaving Scoria a stable working space.

The player did need to actively do something with his crafting skill eventually, as it seemed like it would likely work well with his roleplay class. If he could draw up contracts and also convince the People of the Land to do things for him, he'd be pretty set. And he wouldn't even need to crush their windpipes. The player headed outside momentarily, searching for some materials for what he needed to do. From what he understood of the Scribe class, there were a few basic recipes that would probably be used in a lot of higher level recipes, so he'd need to learn how to make those and then start researching and creating new things. What kind of idiot starts by researching things immediately without even getting a hand on his or her crafting skill anyway? Under that idea, Scoria decided the first thing to do was figure out how to make a quill pen.

It actually wasn't all that difficult a task, all things considered, as all he really needed to do was fetch some materials. He just shuffled right along and grabbed some from the vendors and headed back to his workspace, knife in hand. First thing to do was deal with the hollow, which he basically did by first cutting a small notch in the quill pen and then dunking that sucker into some water to soak. After a painfully annoying amount of time, he took the now soaked pen and moved to one of the alchemist furnaces, pushed some alchemist out of the way, and dunked the sucker in there to properly heat and treat. After that, he rotated the feather around a bunch, found how it would probably be held, and then made a few more cuts with a knife he jacked off of some poor innocent. 'Borrowing' another player's ink, he took the ink and quill and made a test by writing all over someone's untreated paper. Yeah, that worked.

[Scoria]

"Help, I'm alive."

Scoria stood around for a while, staring at the wall as he tried to burn a hole through it with his eyes. He clearly wasn't successful, not in the least, but there were bills to pay and mouths to feed, ain't nothing in this world for free. With the basic tool of the scribe now in his hands, Scoria glanced through the list of other objects he could make. The Grimoire was completely out of the question. It required magic ink, parchment paper, and a quill pen, of which Scoria only had the last. For the same reason, the map of the kingdom was out because Scoria was lacking in parchment paper. His choices naturally fell between the so-called "Magic Ink" and the "Parchment Paper". Both of these were basic objects in the creation of scribe items, but a glance at the method for creating Magic Ink left Scoria a little hesitant. After all, one of the materials was one not easily accessible to scribes. The Mana Fragment was an object created and used by Alchemists and there was no way in hell Scoria was buying up materials that weren't Scribe materials before he was decent at this. Besides, these Mana Fragments apparently melted at the touch, which meant some level of care was going to be required to use the object itself.

The choice was obvious, then. Scoria was making Parchment Paper first. Much like the Quill Pen, Scoria didn't find the idea of making the object particularly difficult, but also believed that being a Scribe meant that the creation process would be vaguely easier because he was a Scribe. It wasn't too much of a stretch, really, seeing as the idea of assisted crafting seemed to be prevalent in many games beyond just Elder Tale. Huffing and heading outside his little workspace once more to jack some idiots materials (it wasn't his fault they left perfectly good pieces of paper lying around), Scoria grabbed some paper that looked decent and collected some water for the soaking process. This sure was slow the first time around. Pulling out a small weight of sorts, Scoria placed the three pieces of paper on top of each other pinned them with the weight, letting them soak and meld for a while. Once that was done, he dumped the water and smoothed out the paper carefully so as to avoid bumps and air pockets before finally hanging up the newly forged piece of paper to dry. It had the parchment appearance, which the Scribe took to mean he had done it right. Good.

[Scoria]

"Hard to be soft, tough to be tender."

Scoria blinked, eyes focusing on the dim light that filtered in through the window. Had he zoned out? That was a little rare for him. The villain in question glanced up at the parchment paper that was hanging on the line, slowly drying and crackling under the heat of the sun. Not too bad. It wasn't as bad as Scoria was guessing his first attempt would be, all things considered, and he was somewhat pleased with the results. That approval didn't mirror itself on his face, however, the hard glare of the adult turning towards the door. Closed. No one had come to bother him while he had zoned out, it seemed, but he had wasted a little too much time relaxing. At the moment, he didn't really feel like summong his familiar, but he did need to do something. More crafting was the way to go, he supposed. There was a soft crackling sound that accompanied his thoughts now, the paper having started to really dry up and begin to crackle. He didn't want the parchment to be brittle, but the edges were bound to crinkle a bit. Whatever that was about, however, he was focusing on the last of the basic Scribe crafts. The so-called 'Magic Ink'. Scoria personally didn't exactly understand what was so magical about it, but he imagined that it was a catalyst or ingredient to better, stronger items. According to what he learned and heard about the whole thing, the Magic Ink apparently exploded when it was read. That was pretty interesting.

He was reminded briefly of that one spell from the tabletop roleplays he knew about, 'Explosive Runes'. The spell basically set up a set of words that, upon being read aloud, would explode. That would be a rather fun thing to develop in this world, wouldn't it? Scoria's eyes burned as they glanced over the materials, about as close as they could get to twinkling considering who they were attached to. Before he got to making any magic ink, however, it was probably important to figure out how to use and manipulate a Mana Fragment, seeing as it was an essential part of the process to use the Mana Fragment. Stepping outside his workshop once more, the player trudged along the roads and slipped next to a few Alchemists, looking around. They were unnerved, admittedly, but Scoria looked around nonetheless, his hawk-like gaze settling on a new crafter accidentally laying his hand on a Mana Fragment. The small fragment melted immediately on contact with his fingers, dissolving before being absorbed into the body of the crafter. Was Scoria going to need gloves or something? Or perhaps some sort of container? The Scribe glanced at his tools, then to the empty flask that ink would normally be stored in. It seemed like it only dissolved in contact with the body, so perhaps using gloves or some sort of container would work. Crouching down, Scoria looked around for a moment before quickly swiping a mana fragment, bottling it and heading back to his workshop. Now he was just going to have to figure out how to use this thing without it melting and in the process create the 'Magic Ink'.

[Scoria]

"My regrets are few."

Scoria glanced down at the bottles of ink he had grabbed, glaring down at them as though they would somehow magically become the thing he needed them to become. Scoria knew that wasn't going to actually work, but he did have two bottles of old ink and a flask with a mana fragment trapped inside sitting there on his desk. He wasn't sure how exactly he was going to make this mythical ink do what it was supposed to do, but he knew he'd manage it somehow. Figuring the best thing to do was experiment, Scoria placed the ink aside and focused on the mana fragment, pushing some mana into the flask as he stared at the fragment. The fragment itself began to glow slightly, as if reacting to the mana floating about, but it seemed like it wasn't going to do anything unless Scoria was an alchemist. That was reasonable, he supposed, if the game limited the production of mana fragments to alchemists alone. Somewhat reasonable, but a little annoying. Still, it seemed like he could openly manipulate the fragment itself, provided he didn't tamper with its fundamental nature or attempt to replicate it.

Thinking about it to himself, Scoria pulled out a small pan and dumped the ink into it, uncorking the stopper on the flask and dumping the crystal inside as well. The small gem was coated in the inky substance, but it wasn't completely submerged so Scoria still knew where it was. Focusing on it and the ink, the player carefully pushed his mana into the ink and from there into the fragment, taking careful not of how the fragment wobbled and wibbled and suddenly melted. Scoria scowled, imagining that it somehow melted and was wasted, but careful inspection of the ink revealed that the normally somewhat goopy substance had become something a bit more clear and smooth, as well as humming slightly as he continued to push mana into the pan. It seemed, somehow, Scoria had succeeded. Pulling out his quill and dipping it into the mixture, Scoria scribbled on some parchment and whispered the words he wrote. It glowed. Excellent.

[Scoria]

"The cover's not quite like the book."

Scoria was back to staring at walls. Well, that wasn't exactly fair. He was staring at the horizon, glaring at the various individuals who passed through the streets and taking a good look at the architecture and scenery. It occurred to him that at this point in time, he didn't exactly have a good idea as to how all the scribe tools worked. Opening his interface smoothly and sharply, the player glanced at his map, noting the empty patches and blank spaces, even inside the city of London itself. The important thing here, so to speak, was to properly determine what was what and what the point of this map was at all. A bit of careful reading and looking and staring determined that the point of the map was to share data between players. Apparently a map could be picked up by anyone thanks to one of the societies that had quickly formed, but Scoria felt that there wasn't any need to explicitly rely on anyone. He could make this map by himself and it'd be better in quality than those lame maps that were just handed out for free. Stupid peons.

But really, he just needed a map. If it was of high quality, maybe it'd be easier to fill in sections or more area could be covered? Whatever the truth might have been, he was a little bit tired of having no map data for most of London and having absolutely no way to tell what was where. He wasn't going to explore everything personally, he knew that much. He'd probably just pull some map data off of someone. With a short sigh, Scoria turned to his piece of parchment paper and nodded to himself. Fine enough. Staring sharply at the parchment and remembering what he had read, he figured the first thing to do was to draw a compass in the corner. Remembering what he read about cardinal directions and whatnot, the player drew a rather ornate looking compass rose, highlighting each of the 4 cardinal directions and drawing rather elaborate designs and frills in. If anyone asked, however, he'd say he just tapped his quill to the parchment and it did the thing. Whatever the truth might have been, the rose seemed to glow briefly and then set itself into the parchment itself. Not... not bad. That seemed like a sign he was doing something right.

[Scoria]

"They won't even miss you at all."

Scoria's eyes fell on the parchment that was in front of him, unsure as to what the next reasonable course of action was. To begin with, he did not actually know the proper layout for this new London, nor did he have any interest in making baseless assumptions on the layout of the city. If this was a map though, the next reasonable thing to do was to create a title for this map. Maps needed titles, after all. No one reasonably pulled out a map of an area and just knew what the map depicted, after all. With careful script, Scoria carved in the words, "Unfounded Kingdom" and underneath, in a smaller font size, "London Area". The pen moved surprisingly smoothly and cleanly across the parchment and Scoria's handwriting had never been particularly terrible, so the title looked much like it had been printed out rather than written by hand. The end result was a simple title next to a cardinal rose, but as Scoria muttered the words aloud, the map glowed once more. He had expected just the words to shimmer, a property of the magic ink he was currently using, but the entire map glowed slightly and the words seemed to set themselves into the map. Further proof that he was at least doing something right.

It was unfortunately quite tough to figure out exactly how one was supposed to proceed with most events, considering the nature of the lists of craftable materials did not provide any means of creating the objects, only listing the materials required and the end result. One could theoretically attempt to work backwards, as though working a math problem, but unlike the more tangible crafting types, crafts such as Alchemy and Scribe work were a bit more esoteric and arcane in nature. There was a magical aspect to their nature and, as a result, the ease in understanding how to create such objects was unfortunately limited. Scoria briefly considered that perhaps having the Scholar roleplay subclass would have been more beneficial, but he saw no need to switch anymore. After all, on a whim, he had gently pressed his quill down on the edge of the paper and, just as whimsically, muttered a small phrase that translated to "release". In that moment, the map filled up quickly, ink bleeding through the paper and traveling through the sheet like blood through veins, revealing all the areas Scoria had traveled so far. He supposed that meant the map was, in fact, complete. Success.

[Scoria]

"Heads will roll, on the floor."

Scoria's eyes flicked from the door to the wall, then back to the door, jumping back and forth much like a metronome. To the casual observer, it might have seemed like the player was having some sort of problem, but Scoria was thinking rather hard, his eyes jumping across unseen paths and lines of thought. Scoria had completed work on quite a few different products so far, ranging from the basic ink quill to the rather intricate and detailed Unfounded Kingdom Map. All of this was well and good, but he was sensing an immediate problem in terms of the advancement of his Scribe abilities and the basic nature of scribes. The [Unfounded Kingdom Map - London Area] object was spread out on a table by his side, staring up at him blankly as though it had no blame to be had in this particular development. The truth couldn't be any further. It was because of this simple-looking map that Scoria was in such a bind right now. Scoria had realized it a few minutes after he had finished the map, but wasn't there a bit of a problem with this mapping method...? He knew, just as well as any other Adventurer, that the world wasn't as large as London and the surrounding areas. To say that there were only these areas to be discovered and explored was, of course, wrong. In fact, there was simply no question about it at all. More areas would show up and be revealed, without exception.

So where was the problem? The problem was, of course, within this unreasonable document that was laid out before him. Scoria certainly appreciated that the map updated itself as Scoria traveled further throughout London and its surrounding areas, but the most basic problem with this was that it was static. To put it another way, the map was like one of those toys for children, where the picture was revealed when it was scratched at. Not unlike a scratch-away lottery in that sense, the map was inherently set in a static state the moment it was created. It could update and be revealed, but should something drastic change, could the map handle that change to its basic nature? How did the map data of the world function in response to that kind of change? Scoria did not know and he did not have any intention of destroying a building or enacting a large scale change just to find out. The other problem with the map was that it was statically set to just the London area. As he had mentioned before, it was unthinkable to believe that the world was so small that only London could be found. Even if Gaia was a fourth of the size as Earth, that was still an insane distance to cover. Across North America, for instance, was still a distance of around a thousand miles. By car in the old world, that would take over ten hours in the best case. The number of maps that could be created for all the possible areas in Gaia was, as such, massive. Perhaps even uncountable.

Was the basic Adventurer really expected to carry all those maps in his inventory? That was ridiculous. Foolishness beyond compare. And, to put it simply, Scoria would not stand for it. It was... unacceptable.

So what was the solution? As it turned out, both the problem and the solution had the same source. That lovely problem object, the Unfounded Kingdom Map. The object was, in a sense, dynamic. The entire problem had originally been that the map was largely static, but it was only static because that was the inherent nature of the object to begin with. The ink might have been magical and flowed freely across the map to reveal new areas, but the paper itself was static. In fact, that was the entire issue. The 'Magic Ink' object that was used to create the map in the first place allowed for a dynamic scope level that accepted an 'updating map' that changed with the map data received, but the idea of the map itself changing dimensions or becoming something other than a map was inconceivable. To put it another way, it was like water in a bowl. You can add in more and more, but it was only ever going to become a bowl. So what Scoria needed to do, before creating any sort of compiling archive for the grand number of maps that would surely arrive, was to create a dynamic paper. The dynamic paper would, quite simply, have the capacity for a change in form and content, as opposed to the change in amount and data that was afforded by magic ink. It was altogether a little confusing and convoluted, but perhaps it was time to get to work and stop thinking. The only major question was how he was going to go about creating this so-called 'Magic Paper'.

Before, he had gotten by by simply working backwards and attempting what he could following a description that was given to him. It was a simple enough crafting process, although being a scribe job, it was a little convoluted by nature. Still, perhaps he could simply twist around how Magic Ink was created. He had gone ahead and created the so-called specifications for this object in the world, so now it was the same as any other craft. Except that there wasn't some guaranteed chance of success. With a small frown, Scoria stepped outside once more to steal materials from other people who weren't watching their stuff closely. It wasn't his fault they weren't paying attention, they just... weren't paying attention. And then the stuff belonged to him. Woops. He might have dropped a few gold pieces where the objects used to be. Stepping quickly back inside his warehouse, Scoria set out the parchment paper he had created a while ago as well as the magic ink, thinking carefully to himself as to how he was going to do this. The Parchment Paper was a strong set of fibers created by the melding of Old Paper, so if he was going to add more paper around this... Scoria got to work immediately. Pouring out the Magic Ink and using the old remains in the pan from when he had first created the objects, the player dipped the parchment back in the water, undoing the fibers as he worked. Slowly and somewhat carefully, he let the ink bleed into the fibers of the paper, attaching whatever magic they had. Dropping another mana fragment into the bucket to seal the deal, Scoria briefly enjoyed a small moment of watching the paper glow as it turned pitch black. Lovely, really.

With that done, the only thing left was to attempt to meld this into paper itself. While a pitch black document was certainly unique and interesting, it wasn't exactly useful in terms of contracts and information. Letting the newly formed parchment inside soak in water, Scoria pulled out two more sheets of old paper and melded those fibers together, stringing them across the top and bottom like cover sheets to a document. The end result was basically a piece of parchment that was a few shades darker in color than one might expect of Parchment Paper, but the inside layer was soaked with magic ink and solid parchment. The whole object was a fair bit more durable than one would expect, having gained a bit more thickness to it, but its special quality had yet to be tested. Without the ink to write with, Scoria drew across the piece of paper, as if writing with invisible ink. His hands bled magic as he worked and within a few seconds, what he had written glowed and appeared. "Cry Harder, Friends". With a small smirk, he placed his fingers down on the parchment and dragged, watching with slight glee as the message slid off the paper and disappeared. The messages were now mobile.

[Scoria]

"Terrified of what's inside."

The Possession Contract. The Magician's Reloader. Glowing Graffiti. Floating Ink. A poem that makes people's heads explode. Scoria wasn't sure exactly where these ideas were coming from, but he scratched them all down on the corner of a certain piece of parchment for later. He'd tackle those later, one at a time, but he had to choose one to start with. The last one was a little bit too much for him right now, he imagined, and the idea of inflicting some sort of mental debuff or any sort of damage to any innocent who read his writing was quite the headache. If the guards showed up, that would be quite the pain, and beyond that, he wasn't indiscriminate in the people he ticked off. He had a method to his madness, after all, and that madness had other designs and plans for him yet. For now, it was going to focus on the Magician's Reloader. For the simple reason that he had this strange idea in the back of his head that it might become important remarkably soon. How telling. Scoria squinted at the heavens momentarily, as if attempting to give the gods above some sort of mental "I'm giving you the bird" response, but then turned back to his work. Enough tomfoolery.

The issue here was that Scoria had no idea where to even start. Again. This seemed like it was going to become a recurring problem. The issue this time was that, unlike his attempt with the basis for a dynamic piece of paper (cups into bowls or something dumb like that), this was kind of different. Scribes were apparently all about making contracts and documents and stuff like that, but Scoria had yet to even see any documents (except maybe the map he had made and the grimoires he was lugging around). He was pretty sure as far as 'contracts' went, none had really shown their faces in the market so far, so maybe it was time to get crackalacking. Copying stuff was hella boring and kind of lame anyway, and he wasn't really interested in being a cartographer, so making documents and holding people hostage was now the way to go. Definitely. He wasn't a villain at all, what were people even saying. With a stern frown, the player glanced down at the paper in front of him and attempted to figure out how to make this work.

Before getting started on the project itself, the basic step was to set specifications. He had decided the general idea of what he wanted, now he had to define and narrow the idea down to an achievable concept. The Magician's Reloader was basically a contract between weapon and ammo, set to some sort of trigger. Therefore, he would need to link the two objects together and provide some sort of sustained energy source in order to maintain the link. The issue was treading on the realm of magical technology, but magitech so far seemed like it was "creating objects that had special effects intrinsically", rather than "enhancing and enchanting objects to give them special effects" like he was attempting to do with scribe contracts. There was a cost to pay and he wasn't creating anything new, simply modifying and improving what already existed. So to speak. Any contract that provided any sort of effect would have to have some sort of cost associated with it, to satisfy that basic principle of 'exchange'. It certainly didn't need to be equivalent, but there wasn't any way the game was going to let them get away with that sort of thing. Definitely. There needed to be some sort of associated cost.

Well, he'd worry about the cost later. The problem now was actually officiating the contract and establishing a rule set to be followed. Contracts probably functioned in a simple method similar to that of basic programming structures, so Scoria based his attempts off of that basic ideal, creating a template to establish the guidelines for this contract. Now, he'd just need to find someone to test it on. That was to say, time to find a sucker. And steal his stuff. Scoria left the workshop once more on an adventure (adventure is out there!), heading out of the workshop and picking up some shrimp on his way around town. He legitimately picked up a midget and carried him back to the workshop despite the kid's protests, mentioning something about actually helping him and ignoring the squealing. If he had duct tape, he'd have put it over the brat's mouth. Instead, he just tossed the kid in a corner and jacked his weapon before starting work. Yeah.

Gesturing for the ammunition as well and glaring at the brat, Scoria obtained the three materials he needed. Ammunition, weaponry, and the contract itself. The player used a longbow, which was reasonable enough. The basic mechanism for that was the draw back and the fire and normally one would simply notch the arrow before pulling the bowstring back. That was the reload mechanism. Setting the bow down, Scoria drew with his magic super magical ink across the bow, carefully around the edges of the wood. Alchemists had a great love for spell circles, he knew, but those circles were not the creation of alchemists themselves. That kind of thing was something he could do as well and it would achieve the same function. Simply put, he treated the contract itself like a specific object with a certain 'ID' and the bow was going to link to that contract via ID. The quiver as well. Because. Essentially, he was attaching pointers to objects via hijinks and declaring what each attached object was going to do via contract. His handiwork was altogether shitty, really, and he wasn't expecting much out of it, but he waved the paper in the brat's face and forced him to sign as well. Officiating with a clean signature on the bottom line, Scoria commanded bratkid the brat to pick up the bow as if he was holding an arrow about to notch. One, two, three, four... five. Around five seconds was a pretty crappy reload time, but he supposed it'd be useful for the more obnoxious reloader mechanisms. Like harpoons imbedded inside walking canes. Yeah.

As for the downside, it was a small decrease in total MP. Ripping up the contract would return the MP but destroy the enchantment. There was probably some better way to do this other than a permadrop though. Maybe some sort of temporary blindness.

[Scoria]

"I'd rather burn than fall."

Grimoires. Huh. Scoria wasn't exactly fond of the idea of making grimories for brats who didn't know better, but it seemed like an opportunity to make money had come a calling and, frankly, he needed some grimoires himself. For later. Hijinks. And stuff. Simultaneously. No more questions. So what was all this about making grimoires then? Grimoires were basically books of magic that allowed one to fire small magic bolts out of the book without much concern and worry and without the appropriate spell. It was basically a miniature version of the 'Pulse Bullet' that Enchanters had, he thought, and that was the most basic grimoires. He wasn't exactly certain on what higher leveled grimoires could do, but at the very least this was a way of getting some actual damage out at range as a mage or healer class. Definitely something to consider. Well, it wasn't even like he could actually do any real grimoire shenanigans if he wasn't a scribe.

Speaking of which, he needed to get actual crafting done rather than screwing around ineffectually here in his workshop. Some sucker had requested his services (ballsy and unexpected), and now he needed to go do a thing. The basics of grimoires were, predictably, the super magic magical writings that were found inside and, lacking proper resources or knowledge, Scoria figured copying his own grimoire to start wasn't a terrible first guess. The whole thing wasn't terribly difficult, frankly, but the recipe threw him for a slight loop. It was a surprisingly small item list, but considering how large Parchment Papers were, the player figured he could use one piece of paper in order to create several pages. The ink was obviously to imbue magically magical properties into the book and the ink quill was for the same purpose. Now that he had figured out the purpose for each of his items in turn, it was going to be a feat if he managed to actually make this thing into a weapon.

[338]

[Scoria]

"It's just the turn of a card."

Scoria was more or less standing around at this point, somewhat disconcerted with the idea of creating a grimoire. He certainly had all the required materials in front of him and at this point, he did in fact have the capacity and skill to create the weapon, but he was having doubts. Foolish, weak doubts. The kind that were likely to have him lift some poor sucker up off his feet and smash him into the nearest wall. He honestly didn't know the first place to start with the grimoire. Things like maps were one thing, because they were system assisted, and maybe even things like those contracts to an extent, but he couldn't just copy pages out of his grimoire into this other grimoire and expect it to work. That was foolishness. Not only would it create a low leveled grimoire, it probably wouldn't even work. Well, if he was going to do this, the first thing to do was create the binding. Which was normally the last thing you did on a book. Right. Okay. He wasn't doing that first, clearly.

He supposed the first thing he was doing was ripping apart his grimoire into little pieces and trying to find the magical components of it. He'd just stitch it back together later. Probably. At any rate, the basic idea behind this grimoire seemed to be binding the entire book into what appeared to be a resonant structure. The pages themselves would form a sort of chamber to collect the magic and output the bolt, much like a musical instrument or the like. Quite reasonable, really. So he'd just need to link the entire page set together somehow. Taking the pages of parchment out in front of him, he applied the same basic 'ID' structure he had used on the Magician's Paper and the Magician's Reloader previously, binding the entire set of pages to one ID as he worked. If he did that and combined them into one 'class', he'd be able to much more easily manipulate the entire structure. Tossing a bit of mana into the few pages he flipped through, he noted the entire set glowed nicely. Huzzah!

[369]

[Scoria]

"Don't resolve to bloom there, you're not a flower of hell."

And while that was all well and good, Scoria was naturally pissed off. He had mostly managed this nonsense on accident and he'd be damned if he let the entire situation resolve into one meaningless 'accident'. But apparently accidents were how he was going to play this off, because the next thing he knew, he was producing a small burst of magic that resulted in a small orb of energy appearing and then fizzling out. Scowling at his accidental progress, the scribe wrote down some of the basic magic scripts and phrases, as one might expect to find in a Grimoire, and continued to write what was essentially gobbledy-gook straight into the book for several pages. It was ineffectual and it was dumb and Scoria was quite frankly pissed that it was actually working. He was starting to have the sneaking suspicion that basic grimoires were essentially a collection of magic phrases to convert mana that weren't synced up at all, resulting in a weak, low-range, low-power magic bullet.

Fine. Whatever. Screw it. SCREW IT. Scoria scowled at the unbounded book and huffed, ripping off a nearby cover from a book and slapping the damn thing on the unfinished grimoire. He dusted off the cover for the book and scrawled what he could on the top, drawing a stupid bunny on the spine and noting grimly what the title was. Watership Down. Hopefully the person who got this appreciated what that meant. Binding the book properly together (what did that even mean, really?) and adding in some glue for good measure just in case, Scoria applied the final touches and tested it. A small bolt flew out against the wall, followed by the book itself, a durability test. Okay, that all worked. Great. Fine. WHY HAD IT ALL WORKED BY ACCIDENT. Stupid grimoires. Stupid customer. Stupid scribe skill.

[319]

[Scoria]

"Are you scared of the dark."

There were certainly more than enough ideas for Scoria to go and make do for now, but he had settled on one in particular. A new one, actually. He had come across several ideas while he rested, from a usage of scribe to power up and enhance shikigami and paper seal weapons to create projectiles to creating 'elemental grimoires'. There had been an idea to use the hard-to-find Sigilmakers in order to seal off an elemental spell and alter its power usage into a weapon to aid in the spellsword style, and even permanently switching enchantments between weapons (once again, with the Sigilmaker). He had come across an idea to allow for two reforge effects on a weapon as well, the 'Double Scarlet' of his thoughts. His thoughts today were none of that. He wasn't even going to improve on his map and create a universal map or even create a compass that allowed you to find anyone who held the other end. No, today was about creating the first, most basic 'magitech' style of weapon. It wasn't like he was intentionally treading on the domain of Alchemists, but it was almost too easy. Besides, the function was totally different. Well, it'd make more sense once he got started.

The important components were, of course, the weapon affected, the source of magic, and the binding contract. He'd certainly need the magician's reloader for this. With a short cackle and bit of creative nonsense, Scoria quickly got to work. The idea was fairly simple in theory, all things considered. How did the Magician's Reloader function? It took a weapon that had ammunition and functioned by automatically reloading the weapon when the user made a 'reloading' motion. It was most useful for weapons that were hard to reload or took a lot of time, because the one thing it did do was ensure a perfect reload position. Which was nice and all, but the basic idea was that it 'reloaded ammunition'. It provided ammunition to a weapon where there wasn't any. Simple enough, right? Right. It had actually been pretty obnoxious when Scoria had originally drafted up the research in question, but it hadn't been too terrible after that. What were the other components?

Simple enough. The weapon affected by the Magician's Reloader. These two together made the essential components for the proper use of the Magic Reloader. Both were required for proper function of the contract, naturally. The weapon itself and the magic contract together created the full mechanism that was the Magician's Reloader. The thing about the reloader was that it was fine tuned for each and every weapon it was applied to, which made it a relatively unique enchantment of the contract type. Unique in the sense that one contract, once the template was filled out, mostly applied to just one type or class of weapon. Especially when ammunition was different, the contract specified what ammunition would be a reasonable projectile to be 'reloaded' into the weapon. After all, one did not reload a watermelon into a longbow, nor did they place shotgun shells in a slingshot. These were simply not done, so it was the union of both the reloader and the weapon itself that created the properly functioning device.

Well, that was all well and good, but he had mostly been talking about the mechanics of what already existed. It was important to specify how they worked, however, because their inner workings were crucial to the changes and adjustments he was going to make. The Magician's Reloader, being a magic contract, could theoretically be used to supply any ammunition to the weapon if they so wanted. And the contract was linked to the weapons by means of spell circles and 'id' identifiers that were grafted onto each object in turn. He had mentioned before that, if you wanted, you could theoretically reload a watermelon into a longbow. No one did that sort of thing, but that didn't mean it wasn't impossible. It simply meant it was 'unreasonable'. Anyone who knew Scoria knew he was unreasonable, however, and doing unreasonable things was exactly how he functioned. The unreasonable thing he was doing now was altering the function of a grimoire.

The source of magic in this equation. The magic contract, the 'Magician's Reloader' functioned by -overwriting- the way certain things functioned. Who was to say that he could not overwrite the way Magician's Reloader functioned? It was no different from crossing out pencil and writing in pen, then whiting it out and writing over it again with something else. Scoria was that kind of cheat. By doing that, he'd turn the contract itself into a source of magic and combine contract and grimoire into one proper functioning device, which would then alter the way another weapon functioned. Fairly simple. What did the most basic grimoire do? It produced an bolt of magic without element or strong form or range. So what would mixing it in with Magician's Reloader do? Exactly as one expected, produce ammunition through magic.

The overwritten contract would replace the basic ammunition of the weapon with a piece of ammunition functionally equivalent, except made of mana. The same strength, the same properties, the only difference being that the ammunition was not physically permanent but rather a construct of mana. He was working on a lot of theory at this point, so the trick was to actually test it. By having the Magician's Reloader created already, much of the legwork was done beforehand. He simply had to link up a grimoire to the contract and, from there, adjust the parameters to apply to a weapon. Much like the Magician's Reloader it was based off of, the yet unnamed weapon augment was not useful in and of itself. It needed to be linked to a weapon. Reloading into something that didn't exist simply wasn't going to work, after all, but in its most basic form, it was unlinked and a simple template. Once again, he picked some poor kid up off the street and threw him into his shop for the purposes of testing.

The person in question had a ranged weapon (or Scoria wouldn't have picked him), which the Druid promptly jacked and got to work on. The basic process was simply setting up a connector 'id' link between the weapon and the magic contract, fueled by the scribe power of contracts and the magician's power of the grimoire. With that idea in mind, Scoria moved through his template to specify the 'ammunition details' and the 'weapon classifications' until the template was completely and fully filled out, leaving just two places to sign at the bottom. One for the contract holder, the person Scoria had picked up off the street, and one for a witness, Scoria in this case. Forcing the chump to sign like the loan shark Scoria was, he tossed the longbow at the player and gave him rather simple instructions. Act like you just fired an arrow, pulled out a new one, and are loading it in.

The result was just as expected. A bit of mana sparked to life, spreading back from the player's fingertips backwards until it became a cracking arrow of mana, sitting there glowing. It truly was a mana construct, a dimly lit object that pulsated. The player let the arrow spring to life, shooting across the way into the ground, where it immediately fizzled. Was that intentional or...? Ordering the kid to fire again, Scoria noted the bowman should attempt to keep the arrow from dissipating this time. The arrow flew true and landed a fair distance away, much further than the '2 meter range' of the grimoire, and the arrow did not fizzle. That said, the player complained that it did slowly drain on his mana reserves, so that was something. It seemed obvious from there that larger ammunition would cost more mana. Still, it seemed like the upgraded version of the Magician's Reloader was up and active. Sort of. Now he just had to name it...

Lunar Illusion was nice enough. Sort of. It was pretty shouneny though and kind of cheesy to boot.

[1364]

[Scoria]

"Nothing but failure follows me."

Scoria's eyes glared up at the sun. It was lazily beginning to make its way down through the sky to signal the end of the day once more, but he wasn't quite done with the day just yet. Not by a long shot, actually. The thing he wanted to research now, to investigate now, was the prospect of a better map. He recalled before that he had spent quite some time troubled by the prospect of a map that wouldn't work as the work expanded, which led to his creation of magical paper in the first place. It was certainly a useful invention, although not entirely patented and released to the world just yet, but he had better plans and ideas thus far. To be more specific, he hadn't ever actually addressed the problem he had set out to deal with. That problem, to be specific, was the need for a larger map to account for the larger composition of the world. To that end, what he was going to do now was going to utilize the larger dynamic map in order to create what he would later describe as a functional map for the entirety of Elder Tale.

A noble, if not self-centered goal. The task ahead of him was fairly simple now, seeing as he had gone and jacked the materials he needed. He had himself the Magician's Paper he had researched in the first place, but the other things he needed were the Unfounded Kingdom Map - London Area, and a prototype of the Unfounded Kingdom Map - Sarum Area. He had nicked it from Sarum earlier after his adventurers there, leaving him with quite a bit of new information. The Scribe pulled out his paper and frowned. While this was all certainly well and good, the main question that came to him now was how he was going to get the map to react to the other maps he had. First things first, however. Laying out the Magician's Paper on his work table, the player pressed his quill into a well of water, letting the substance soak into the implement before he scratched out a simple header. With the flourish that came from pure arrogance, Scoria wrote the following. "Half-Gaia Map" In retrospect, that was pretty freaking arrogant, but that was what his goal was, so that was what he wrote.

It honestly wasn't enough for him to just write something like 'Unfounded Kingdom Map' either, without some qualifier at the end. That was all fine and well right up until the edges of 'Britain' were reached. After all, while they might not have been able to leave the area, the Half Gaia project meant that the world, even at 1/4ths its original size, was much larger than just Britain or even Europe. There was a whole world out there and even if it was completely inaccessible to this server and all they ever found was an endless expanse of water, it was still a good thing to have. So he created the basic header for the map, then went so far as to create a compass and focus hard on it, as if trying to align it to the magnetic motion of the world itself. If he remembered correctly, the inaccessible minimap had a natural compass, so why couldn't this map have one either? When he drew the compass rose on this time, he drew it on much more carefully and neatly, creating what looked like an actual compass in the corner. It was encased in a circle, and thanks to the dynamic nature of the paper itself and the mana he was writing with that caused the 'Magician's Paper' to react. He had mentioned it before, that he wasn't writing with Ink or Magic Ink, but rather with water. The truth was that this paper reacted to mana, so the water was really just to help him concentrate and see where his work had flowed previously until he was ready to 'apply' it to the material.

Letting his mana flow through the material and connecting it in that way to his own interface like the London Map before, he closed his eyes momentarily as the compass reoriented itself. Excellent. Just what he needed. Now then, while that was all fine and good, pressing his quill to the map didn't suddenly transfer his minimap data onto the map like it did for all the other maps. In other words, the player had some other link up tasks to complete. Since this was meant to be a cohesive object that would adapt to new developments, it would be 'functionally retarded' to have it set up for only the current two areas. He wanted it to be useful for dungeons too, but now that Scoria was thinking about all of this, it came to him. He didn't have to link it to the maps, he'd just link it directly to the minimap, then enable the regular maps as a 'binder' for the universal map to the minimap. If he did this right, it'd link up to his minimap and automatically update as he moved in sync with his minimap. The plan wasn't terribly unreasonable, he just had to bypass the paper and 'push your quill down' requirement. Thinking back to how he had created 'contracts' like the Magician's Reloader and Lunar Illusion, it didn't seem a massive stretch to essentially link the contract that was this map directly to the player. What was his ID?

Scoria. Right. That was the thing that identified him to this world. There might have been an underlying 'ID' related to his name, but the game would accept IGNs as identifiers because they were unique. With the stillness that always seemed to come from trying to sync up with things he couldn't see and could only feel, like IDs, and when he used contracts, Scoria patiently waited. He felt it out, tried to grab onto it, and with care, signed the contract with water and the magic that was exclusive to Scribes. The ability to create a contract. When he looked back up at the map, his entire minimap data had been transferred over, but only in the 'London' area. He didn't have a true map of Sarum yet, so because he couldn't link it to the universal map, the data wouldn't appear. Still, he took hold of the magic map and moved somewhere he hadn't visited before, noting that the compass reoriented itself as he moved and the moment he got in range, the map filled itself up. If he went to dungeons, he got the feeling there'd be space far off to one side, perhaps, where he could see different iterations of a dungeon if it shifted. If it didn't, even better. Dungeon maps were quite important, after all. Done and done.

[1147]

[Scoria]

"Follow me, I'm a superhero.
It's time to change the world."

Screw that serious stuff for a while. A certain midget had somehow given Scoria an idea for a rather nasty little trick and Scoria thought it was amusing enough that he was going to deliver. Twice over. The first thing he was going to do was make the basic material with which he wished to write, or rather, vandalize. Anyone who thought he was a good guy who made things for the good of all was off their rocker, completely. Superhero? SUPERHERO? WHAT A JOKE. Scoria didn't laugh or grin maniacally as one might expect, he just sat at his desk, staring straight up at the ceiling. Perhaps someone else might have had that kind of reaction, but he wasn't that type. As if he could be that type. An unnatural scowl was plastered on his face as he thought back to the neighborhood kids. Those idiots. No, what he wanted to do was create something that he could light up the world with, something he could harass people with, that sort of creation that would certainly piss people off. And that midget had given him just the idea he needed.

Graffiti spray paint. Glowing, to be specific. The idea was fairly simple, but the execution might prove to be a bit more difficult. It was simply Magic Ink that was altered for the purposes of being able to be sprayed or painted wherever and it would be more or less transparent, like a lacquer. The kind you put on porcelain and such, that sort of thing. It'd be something you could paint with, write with, dump wherever you wanted and it wouldn't appear to be glowing at all. Until the sun went down. It was true what they said, "In the dark of the night, evil will find you". With this, it was no joke to say that Scoria would certainly be able to find someone trying to 'hide'. Well, the lacquer would also need to be able to activated with some mana, to the point where it'd be visibly glowing even in daytime. It was a little like those moon rock knockoffs that Scoria had seen some kids with when he was a kid. They were pretty stupid, but when you put them directly under a light and then pulled them away, they glowed enough so that you could see their glow even with the lights on.

So that was what he was making, pretty much. The first thing to do was prepare the material itself. It was obviously going to be made out of magic ink, or else how would it react to mana and the like? Scoria pulled out his mixing pan that he had created his first magic ink in and stepped outside to jack some of those 'mana crystals' alchemists always seemed to have. Yeah, he needed one of those. For reasons. Instead of taking just one, however, he jacked three and brought them back with him to the workshop, dumping them all in the pan along with some Magic Ink. Originally, he had to pour some magic into the pan of regular ink and mana crystals to get them to at least moderately attempt to fuse. This time, he did much the same thing, carefully and cautiously keeping his hands away from the fragments themselves as he worked. The mana crystals seemed to swim within the mixture, spreading out like honey inside a cup of milk. The previously solid fragments slipped around in the pan, but if he was going to have this react to light... Being careful with the pan, Scoria stepped outside of his rather dark study and took a hike to the top of the building, working in the somewhat fading light of the sky. If he was going to do this, he needed to have as much light on the object as possible.

The idea here was that he'd have it inherit the magical properties inherent in the sun and become somewhat light attuned. He wasn't sure if it'd work or he'd just somehow condition the mixture to be reactive to light, but he did what he could until the mixture was once more smooth, the inky darkness seeming to fizzle away. Scoria kept the mana flowing as the sun fell straight on the ink, noting as the ink became more and more see-through, almost like he was adding water to the mixture and diluting the mixture. It was basically the reverse process of adding food coloring to water, or perhaps in the other direction, like watching ice cubes melt into your soft drink. Diluted, but in this case, also different in terms of its properties. He kept at it like that for the next ten minutes, stirring gently and continuing to apply magic in a steady amount, straining his concentration as he worked. Every time he stirred the wrong way or changed his flow of magic, the mixture in the pan suddenly darkened. It was almost like he was carefully trying to coax a chemistry solution beyond its critical states, like when someone wanted to make rock candy. Well, whatever the situation might have been, twenty full minutes of solid focus later, the mixture was completely clear. Setting it down and staring down at it, Scoria sighed as he noted it didn't seem to glow.

Yeah, it was clear, and that was one part of it, but the thing didn't glow, so what good was it anyway? Well, it'd be useful for later stuff, perhaps (maybe some sort of invisible ink like that homemade stuff made out of lemons?), so the villainous scribe took it down with him off the building. He didn't even notice its soft glow until he was completely off the roof and back in his workshop. It actually did glow... ? Closing the door behind him and boarding up some of the windows, Scoria watched and waited as the night began, the mixture slowly dimming. Seemed like it didn't last forever, but a better 'priming' procedure could help fix that. Now the part he wanted to try. He had let it sit this long, the thing to do now was to try and push some mana into it. Would it return to darkness and become unstable, or would it do something else? His luck, it seemed, was fairly good in this game. When he poured some mana in, the whole pot came to life, glowing fairly brightly. It surprised him at first, but he realized that after it reached a certain point, the very structure of the mixture itself had changed, somewhat like an irreversible reaction.

The last thing he had to do was to try and mix this mixture with other writing types. It was probably easy to make it glow because Magic Ink originally glowed to begin with. He was taking a small sample now into another basin and pulling some old ink out from a drawer, dumping it in. Swishing it around, Scoria was pleasantly surprised to see that the old ink didn't dilute the sample, but rather assumed its transparent properties. Dipping a quill into it, he wrote on a nearby piece of leather lying around. Tapping it later and flowing some mana in, Scoria nodded as it reproduced the desired effect. It seemed it could be mixed for whatever purpose. Painting things, spray painting the town, or even writing regular... letters.

Oh. He had made invisible ink. Well then. The Scribe blinked. It certainly wasn't perfect, but if you weren't looking for it, it might be interesting to send messages with. Pretty good.

[1276]

[Scoria]

"Your smiling face that you show everyone,
Whether it's me or anyone, you're equally gentle. Agh!
I'm not overreacting! I'm not being dramatic!"

Scoria's eyes were once more on the ceiling as he thought back to days past, his thoughts flitting past him one by one. In this world, anything could happen. In this world, it wasn't unreasonable to think that someone would hunt you down. In fact, hadn't he been shoved around just a few days ago? This was no good. Scoria couldn't accept it. As far as he was concerned, he wasn't about to be cheated and pushed around like that here. With a small huff and a light grunt of exertion, Scoria hopped off his chair and went to his stack of materials, pulling out some paper and drawing out his plan for his next 'researched' object. It seemed like other people were picking up the pace anyway, so maybe he'd better get a move on and do the Scribe things he wanted to do before someone started mucking with his plans. If they got in his way too much, he'd just ignore them straight up and start researching clearly obsolete objects for the purpose of his plans. Screw anyone who thought they could just undercut him.

Well, that was all well and good, but it was unrelated to thing he was planning out now. What he was doing this time was creating a tracker of sorts. He really wasn't interested in ending up in a situation where someone was kidnapped and he had to go deal with it. That would be the pits. Scoria's eyes moved among the materials until he found some magic paper, a grimoire, and a few playing cards. The idea this time was fairly simple. For anyone who had watched Pirates of the Caribbean, it was almost tragically unoriginal. Well, he was sure to put his own spin on it by the time he was done, but when people consumed enough media, everything was close enough to something else that it could be considered 'similar' and 'unoriginal'. Explaining things to those who didn't get it often ended up like that. The flow of the conversation went from 'I invented this' to an explanation, and when they didn't get it and you said something like, 'It's like so and so', they responded with something as cruel as, 'So you copied it from there, huh?' or something to that effect. Rude.

He was getting sidetracked though. This was like that magic compass. It would essentially be a tracer that someone held onto, but he wasn't interested in creating a tool that could easily be used to stalk someone either. That kind of thing pissed Scoria off as well and he wasn't about to be implicit in aiding efforts like that by creating this. This was for the purpose of keeping track of people in danger, not enforcing your own justice and stalking people. To that end, when Scoria looked through his tome and glanced through the spell circles he had already created for the purpose of his research, he realized what he could do. Hadn't his 'Invisible Ink' had a glowing property set by a trigger? He'd just make that trigger different yet again. Pulling out a playing card from a pack, he drew a quick spell circle on it, the practice that got him as far as he had coming in handy now. His speed was quick and in a few moments, he managed to craft the spell circle as well as assign it a unique ID. Anyone who understood his Lunar Illusion and Magician's Reloader contracts immediately understood what that meant. There was some link up that was going to happen. Naturally, whatever paper he put the contract enchantment on wasn't going to be consumed, it was going to be enhanced. Simple.

Well, when all was said and done, he was doing more theory while he was crafting silly spell circles, so Scoria flicked the card through the shack until it embedded itself in the far wall, sticking out of the wood. Jeez, just how cheap was this place actually? Scoria was having trouble believing this was real. Grumbling and rubbing his head, Scoria moved to a simple piece of paper and quickly crafted a similar spell circle on it. The thing about his addition of the ID meant the card had a certain mana wavelength, and the like the AM frequency receivers in your radio, this could ignore all frequencies outside a certain band. It'd point just where you wanted, which in this case, was the card stuck in the wall. Adding the spell circle onto the map, Scoria made some last minute checks through the basic structure of a spell circle via his grimoire and how IDs functioned via his previous research until he was satisfied. In no time at all, the piece of paper had become a rather interesting compass. Thinking of the specific ID he had crafted, Scoria went ahead and pulled on that specific wavelength while watching the paper in his hands. A small glowing arrow appeared on the paper, constructed of mana as it pointed towards the card. It was 'thick' in appearance, almost three-dimensional, as it pointed at an angle at the card. As Scoria moved the map around and walked towards the card, the arrow changed thickness and orientation to match, making it a 360 degree compass. Good. The main thing he wanted to check was the card, however. The whole thing was glowing slightly, enough to be noticeable, and had the word 'Tracking' across the top. Good. Anyone who had this wasn't about to be tricked so easily.

Which was all fine, but this kind of functionality wasn't enough for Scoria. He just wasn't satisfied, so he did what anyone would do. He cheated harder. Scoria pulled out his oh-so-important 'Half-Gaia Map', taking it because of what it was made out of. The Magic Paper. That stuff was more useful than one would immediately understand, for sure, and he wasn't about to let that functionality go to waste on just one function. How lame would that be? Crafting a new spell circle with new alterations, Scoria carefully placed the seal across the back and watched it sink into the border, vanishing cleanly. Also good. He didn't need his spell circles actively disrupting the other functions either. That would be pretty lame. Once again, he focused on the position of the card and wavelength, sending his magic spiraling through the magician's object. In no time at all, the map reacted, showing... that arrow again. He had tweaked it though, so why wasn't it working?

Taking a moment, Scoria turned the map around so he was actually looking at the map itself, coughing a bit and hoping no one saw his little blunder. That had been stupid of him. Taking a moment to regain his composure, he looked back down at the map and nodded as he saw the object 'pinging' on the map. The downside here was that the 2-d map only showed the horizontal position of the card. He suspected if he was a floor up, he'd be unable to find it. That's where the arrow came in, he supposed. Throwing more of his tracer cards around, Scoria noted there didn't seem to be a limit on how many cards the map could track, but the arrows got too cluttered if you tried to overlay several on top of each other. So that was that then.

[1253]

[Scoria]

"Roses are red.
Blood is red.
You are dead."

Scoria really shouldn't have been researching as dangerous a thing as he was researching now, but there was something egging him on. A supernatural force that some might recognize as that Dimension Witch, and if Scoria had learned one thing, it was that one did not piss off the Dimension Witch. Not unless you want to spend the next 2,667,382,677 iterations of a two-night massacre failing over and over and over again. Well, it wasn't like this particular person could do that, but still, Scoria figured it was about time to deal with this anyway. After all, with such a great and wonderful poem as what had just appeared in his head a few moments ago, how could he possibly refuse? Yes, this time, he was creating that infamous 'Explosive Runes'. The trick here was manipulating the creation method such that the Scribe would create something that was 'one use', no matter how large or small the message was, and be able to be used by people who weren't scribes. It'd be a pretty stupid trick if only Scribes could use it, especially since only Scribes could make it and would know of it in the first place.

Well, before he did any of that, it was probably a good idea to get some explosions going. He considered investigating those Unstable Mana Cores he was starting to hear about, but in the absence of an Alchemist to make them for him, he didn't want to have to rely on them too heavily. If it was a Scribe craft, it'd use Scribe materials. For sure! That might have just been his stubbornness showing though. Still, how was he going to apply this explosion property to ink? The player sat in his chair and stared up at the ceiling once more, thinking carefully. Last time, he had used the sun's power in order to influence his ink. Maybe he could do the same this time? Even if he did that though, it wasn't like it would automatically do anything. He'd have to use a campfire if he wanted to attach a 'fire attribute' to the ink, but just heating up the mixture wouldn't do anything. He'd have to apply mana and dunk in some magical mana fragments, as well as follow a very specific process. And because he'd be using a fire of some sort, he didn't want to keep his hands close.

Scoria began pacing slowly, head pounding as he tried to think of a good way to deal with this. The Scribe had used the sun last time, but... He was just repeating the same thoughts in his head over and over. What was the process? The process, the process. The process had been using magic to create some sort of synchro between the magic ink and the sun, adding in a light attribute of some kind. Wait, if he was synchronizing magic to the magic ink, couldn't he just use Magic Ink for the process itself? That would work out well. He pulled out one of those pans once more, flipping it upside down and grabbing some Magic Ink to scrawl a spell circle to the bottom. He couldn't put it inside the pan itself, or it'd just be washed away by the other ink he was going to use, but he had to be careful not to heat the pan to the point that his spell circle evaporated and nothing happened. Still, he was fairly decent at spell circles at this point, especially after spending as much time as he did with those contracts, so the process was not terribly difficult.

The result was just a regular pan with a spell circle on the bottom, but whatever. Scoria's eyes narrowed as he poured a second portion of Magic Ink into the pan, as well as the rest of the Magic Ink from earlier, watching the heavy amount swish around. Add in another mana fragment for good luck, was it? He hopped out of the workshop and moved over to the nearest campfire. He didn't know why, but these guys in the crafting area of the market seemed to like setting up campfires. Maybe it was good for the creation of things for Alchemists or other crafting types? Whatever the case was, Scoria headed over and 'borrowed' a campfire, keeping his pan in place with some very careful balancing. Like the last time he had created special ink, he carefully mixed his mana into the ink, hoping to get this done before the ink evaporated out of the pan and he was left with powdery globs of useless materia. Still, it looked like once more the gods were smiling upon him, because the player in question noted that the Magic Ink, previously known to glow and warble and basically be the Magic Ink it was, was shrinking. The pan didn't get any lighter, but the ink itself seemed to be getting more dense, and less reactive. Scoria didn't know at first glance whether that meant the ink wasn't going to react, or whether it was priming itself. After all, there were often times when things had to arm themselves before firing explosively.

Taking his mixture back to his lab and pouring it into a vial, Scoria finally figured out how he was going to manage this. The dense material was liquid still, but Scoria had other plans. Still, he had to test to make sure it worked first. Carefully, he dipped his quill into the ink and wrote on the floor outside his workshop, 'boom'. Repeating the phrase out loud from a distance of about 10 meters, Scoria noted nothing happened. A dud, huh? Moving within 3 meters, Scoria mumbled the phrase again as he stared at the ground, then leapt back immediately as the ground exploded into fire and smoke in front of him. A range limit was inherent to this object, it seemed. Still, for those out there who didn't have quills like he did, he had to do a bit better than this. He took the ink and wrapped it up inside a roll of parchment, plugging both ends, then hung it outside his window to bake in the sun. When he retrieved it a few hours later, the ink had become like chalk, although he had to carefully peel off the covering. Writing and testing the response of the chalk-substance, Scoria found out quickly exactly the same results were experienced. You just didn't need a quill to use the item. Excellent.

[1095]

[Scoria]

"In the short time we have to play out our lives,
We get swept off our feet by the calm."

Scoria wanted an Erhu. He wanted one like crazy, and not only because he had a certain fondness for various instruments, but also because there was a severe lack of music around him lately. The adventurer wasn't in his workshop this time, although he had taken a great number of his materials with him. What he was up to this time was something a bit different, having found himself a hill in the nearby area, sitting outside Londenium and whistling quietly. Normally, his adventures outside town came with the spawning of a familiar, but he was alone this time, humming quietly as he thought about the thing he was making this time. He wanted instruments to play, but it felt like no one knew how to make one. He kept looking at the lists over and over, but no one bothered to research instruments at all and it was a little frustrating.

So Scoria hummed quietly, checking that no one was watching. His song came out surprisingly soft, and when he finished one, he moved onto another, switching between them every so often. Life really did pass people by when they weren't paying attention, huh? The scribe pulled out his empty parchment papers and set up on the hill, legs swinging gently in the breeze. He looked a lot less like the violent and intimidating Ice Bitch when he was up here on the hill, his glare completely gone and his lips slowly murmuring quiet lullabies and songs. Scoria was... The scribe let out a soft sigh as he let his quill glide across the paper, slowly carving five basic lines into the parchment. He continued slowly, carving five more lines a few spaces down, creating two full sets of five lines.

It was the basic music staff. This kind of thing was really only needed if your instrument had a truly wide range that it regularly played in. The piano and organ were instruments like that, but many instruments such as the guitar, violin, flute, saxophone, and even vocals only needed one staff. Unless you wanted the conductor's edition or were sharing, he supposed. The scribe continued to draw those lines all the way down the page, creating set after set of staff lines, filling the page with the very basics for music. This wasn't anything that needed research. Anyone who had ever played an instrument, anyone who even understood the basics of music theory could do this much. And Scoria knew the basics of music theory more than he would care to admit. His hands carefully came up to the left side of each set and drew in the treble and bass clef, his quill curling neatly at each curve of the symbols. The rest... the rest was up to the composer, wasn't it?

Not exactly. Scoria's hands moved up to the edges, writing in a space for the name of the song itself, as well as setting up spots for the other important points. Those points were universal between all music, points such as a place in the template for the instrument that was going to be used, one for the tempo, one for the name of the composer. These were all exceptionally simple things to consider, but they were integral to creating a scroll that anyone could read. That was it. The 'score scroll' template was complete, and as he finished it up, he felt the magic flow out of his fingers into the paper, flooding through the staff and the empty notes. Scoria's chief complaint was that except for the bards, there was so little appreciation for music. Music was one of the great points of life, and to remove it, to ignore it so blatantly was depressing for the scribe. He loved music, loved it more than simple words could express.

Scoria rolled up the object and tied a small string around it, pocketing the basic template for now. There was something he wanted out of all of this, something he wanted after he had confirmed that just because he wasn't a bard didn't make him incompetent in terms of music. He wanted to spread music as much as he could, and to that end, he was going to make these score scrolls something anyone could use freely. A lot of Scribe parchments and documents functioned with some sort of imbedded code or function, like the maps that would automatically update. While that sort of thing was very simple for the user and client side, it was painful for those who wanted to edit on the server side. Still, it was proof that edits could be made, that the very source for the magic could be altered to a Scribe's whims. That was exactly what he was doing, and the first thing he was going to do was to allow for a very simple recording method.

Just touch and the notes would flow. Once the template was set up, it would be the exactly same as mapping your map data to a map. The only difference was that instead of adding topographical data to a map, the thing that was being added instead was musical notes to the map that was the score scroll. The function wasn't terribly difficult to accomplish, he simply had to make sure that the song was strongly impressed in his head, that he himself actually knew the notes. For that reason, not being able to play the song itself and only imitating it wouldn't be enough to create the scroll. Either the notes or the ability to play was required. Beyond that, if someone composed something they didn't want people stealing, then the scroll could be blanked out and used even when blank, he supposed. That might be an interesting feature.

Of course, the most important feature would be that the scroll guided the musician to the next notes, telling them internally what to play and what position to take. It was much like the 'auto-attack' adventurer skill or some system-assisted commands, except that it only guided the player. If they did not have sufficient technical skill to play, then they'd make mistakes until they got better. This helped, but it didn't automatically allow someone to master an instrument. Everything took practice and Scoria wasn't offering a cheat code, he was offering sheet music. And that was the only thing he was offering. Of course, if anyone approached him asking for a template, he'd be happy to make something for them. He remembered Ange's kid wanted to learn music, and this would be helpful for her too. He had instruments he wanted to learn as well, and that damn monopoly of the useless bards that didn't do anything had gone on long enough.

[1144]

[Scoria]

"Here in the world of ours that's slowly falling all around us
We're trying to move on, but it's the best we can do."

Scoria's steps were heavy as he moved, stepping back inside the workshop. That reprieve had been nice, quiet, and a little refreshing, but it left him a little drained. He wasn't used to having his emotions clearly out on display, nor was he particularly used to having that kind of quiet peace. Being sad was tiring. The glare on his face didn't waver, even though the exhaustion was apparent on his face. That was what happened when you made work your escape from your thoughts, when you had nowhere to sit down and calmly relax. That sort of space didn't seem to exist for Scoria anymore, almost as though it never had, so he was back in his workshop researching his next thing. It was a little problematic being him, but he didn't really mind it so much for now. The player was just tired, tired of researching, tired of going on quests, tired of all of that. He wanted to sleep, but no matter how much he slept, he knew it wouldn't help.

His problems were a little deeper than that. So he got to work on the next little design plan he had, aiming to improve the maps even further. Much like the Magician's Paper he had created quite some time (or was that 'attempted to create'?), he knew that this wasn't going to be an immediate jump straight into the final product. After all, at the end of the day, the 'half Gaia map' had turned out to be something that required the preceding material. In the exact same way, Scoria was going to end up creating an intermediate step that would be usable for different future things as well as create his end result. Research trees, was it? Well, the point here was that he was going to upgrade his 'Magician's Paper' in a different direction this time. Taking out another copy of said paper and putting it on his desk, the player pulled out his quill once more for the creation of some spell circles.

Well, no, that wasn't what he wanted this time. He was skipping a few steps. When he had created the 'Magician's Paper' that became a staple for much of his future work, he hadn't used magic and spells to do it. He had created an altogether new material that was the basis for his work. He had changed the way a basic item was made in order to produce a stronger and more unique object. He stepped to the side and started the basic process for making Magician's Paper, but altered the process in a very distinct way. The way Magician's Paper was made was by soaking a piece of Parchment Paper in Magic Ink, then binding that to more old paper to create a finished product. And how was Parchment made, by unbinding fibers and recombining them, right? So what Scoria did was undo some of the fibers for the paper, then soak the 'central' layer that was already coated in Magic Ink with his newest invention. Invisible Ink. This created a double-coated central layer that, although pitch as ink before, now looked like a lacquered piece of parchment.

That was the basic idea behind it, resulting in a somewhat lighter piece of paper as compared to the Magician's Paper. By taking a Magician's Paper and mixing in 'Invisible Ink', Scoria was messing with fire while at the same time, aiming to create something rather strange. After all, Invisible Ink itself was created by altering the properties of Magic Ink, so there was a fair bit of 'double-dipping' occurring. The result was something just a wee bit strange. Magic Ink had the property of glowing when read, whereas Magician's Paper had the property of glowing when mana was poured into it. Invisible Ink had the same property as Magician's Paper, but as ink and also in the dark, but by mixing it with the paper... Well, best thing to do was test. Scoria put his hand on the newly crafted item and poured a little bit of mana into it. What happened next had Scoria clutching his eyes, blinded for the next few moments.

Too much. Too much mana. It was way too much mana, really. Standing up and covering his eyes in preparation, the player poured a smaller amount of mana into it this time. Peeking past his hand to investigate what he had managed, he was pleasantly surprised to see that the 'glow' had taken an almost solid form, forming a softly glowing yellowish pillar that rose about six inches off the paper. Nice. Putting his hand through it, Scoria noted it felt cool to the touch, much like his own mana felt, and determined that this was more of a mana construct than anything. It wasn't solid and couldn't do anything... except screw with people. As if to check just what he could do, he tried to focus on just having the top layer remain. After a few tries, he noted the block turned into a flat plane, floating above the paper. Then... as if deciding on the next thing to do, he tried to construct a tesseract. Not the magical object that can wreak havoc, the 8-cell 4-cube object that mathematicians enjoy. That was... complicated, but within the scope of the construction. Then, how about a Menger Sponge? Scoria created the first subset, then the second, then watched the entire thing fizzle. Okay then. Making it bigger this time, Scoria repeated the process, but it fizzled at the same point. It wasn't an issue of resolution, but instead... complexity? Could this only process a certain number of points at once?

That meant that early on, mana constructions by this would be exceedingly simple, getting more complex as time went on. Maybe to eventually modeling humanoids. Well, that was that for now.

[1000]

[Scoria]

"I wonder why this hurts so much.
Even though I decided on this painful choice."

Scoria's eyes glanced upwards to the sky, taking a moment to breathe and gather his thoughts before he dove straight back into his work. This time was something else entirely, something different and new and special. Well, not exactly. He was simply extending the things he had gone ahead and created earlier, knowing that even if those old research products didn't bear the fruit he wanted, he could at the very least use their results in order to create the final product he was aiming for. Scoria was a crafty individual and, from the very start, he had a few end goals in mind. Finally, after researching perhaps more than any other individual, he had finally reached that first goal. Well, he was about to reach it. The druid was talking in circles now.

Groaning under his breath, the player squinted at the papers laid out before him and slowly got to work in doing the things he wanted to do. He was going to combine his prototyped Half-Gaia Map together with the Heart's Compass prototype and then finally combine all of that with his newly created 'Crystal Dreams' item, then bind the whole thing together with a scribe's spell circle seal enchantment type thing. Very technical and fancy, he knew. Scoria's first task was clearly to upgrade his Half-Gaia map (into a Full-Gaia map?) with the Crystal Dreams item. The player knew that if the item had originally been created with Crystal Dreams, this step could have been skipped entirely, but it hadn't, so he had to take this extra step. The magician slowly wove the threads of the object apart, taking the 'Magician's Paper' core and replacing it with the newly created Crystal Dreams object, then sealing the whole thing together once more.

The thing to do now, as he was researching, was test the effects of his adjustment on the function of the object in question. All of the Magic Paper qualities remained, naturally, and the Half-Gaia Map functioned exactly as it had before, but there were a few other problems. Problems? No, more like points of concern to check on. Scoria did the basic maintenance tests, scrolling the map about and investigating certain areas, checking to make sure map data would still apply, and so on. The tests were all successful, as Crystal Dreams was a Magician's Paper (IS-A coding relationships), and he, as the creator of the object, had intentionally kept as much functionality as possible. No problems there. Now the difficult part came, where he added in the enchantment.

Here was the problem, as best as Scoria could explain it. What he was hoping to create was essentially a three-dimensional map. In order to do that, the thing that was going to project the map needed to be able to record in three dimensions. Now, three dimensions was theoretically possible with Magician's Paper, but the thing was that maps did not do that normally. So he was going to have to go and add that functionality in himself. The result would be the ability to create schematics that could be projected in three dimensions and, as a result, have a map work in three dimensions. All he had to do was change the very way the basic interface and information-collecting systems worked. Loooooovely. This was always such a great experience.

Huffing to himself, Scoria set himself down on his table after setting up his objectives and goals and got to work. The most basic way to do this was to force the minimap data collection functions to collect more than one floor's worth of data. Essentially, he'd be overloading the collection functions and rerouting them so that the minimap would automatically contain more data. And the only way to store the data that the minimap didn't have space for would be to reroute it into the map he was creating. He was basically going to create a dependence cycle so the three-dimensional data wouldn't screw with the basic minimap, but at the same time allow for creating, recording, and projecting three layers of information instead of just two. And, with his practice in screwing around, that was essentially exactly what he did. The result was somewhat boring looking, for sure, but it was an enchantment designed to link up with the player. Well, the map would independently contain the information anyway, so... Probably a good idea to have backups, at any rate. Scoria reasoned this could probably be used for blueprints of construction buildings and in order to project diagrams and the like as well, but didn't really care enough to make a point of it.

Well, there was only so much research one could do, but Scoria wasn't exactly done. Like everything else he made, this needed a bit of testing with its limits. The player, after linking up his 'Full Gaia Map' to his own interface, stepped outside and headed straight for the roof. Slipping up there with the casual movements that came from endless practice, Scoria sat down on the edge and swung his legs over the side before booting up the map. Feh. It felt more and more like a computer, the way he was describing it. At any rate, the map went up and he let the basic structure of the area appear. At first, it was just the 2-dimensional map that he was used to projected upwards, but he slid it up slightly and watched with interest as walls and the basic structure of his warehouse below formed. Obviously nothing else was seen, because maps weren't that precise, but this was still a lot better than before. He just had to apply Heart's Compass and see if the three-dimensional capabilities extended to the radar as well. They did. Skipping that part because it's more boring words and are you even actually reading and paying that much attention here? And just like that, Scoria was done. As done as he could be, anyway.

[1009]