isleofavalon | Magic Practice

Entry tags:

Magic Practice - Open

🧙 WHO: Thrawn and YOU
⚔️️ WHAT: Thrawn hones his magical abilities
🕒 WHEN: March
🗺️ WHERE: Training ground
⚠️ WARNINGS: TBA

As Thrawn announced on the network, he's looking to see how far he can push his powers of light and possibly technology, and hopefully go past those limits.

Thus, Thrawn can be found at one of the training grounds, dressed for sparring and doing warm-up stretches. Anyone interested in helping him practice, or even getting in some magical practice of your own, is welcome to come by.

On the far right wall are weapons available for use, including staffs, shields and even some swords.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It doesn't take long for Hanabi to arrive, with Enmei perched on her shoulder.

"Good afternoon, Thrawn," she greets politely. "Have you gotten in much practice with your magic, yet?"

"Good afternoon," Thrawn rolls his shoulders, still warming up. "I have not gotten much practice today, no."

He goes over to the weapons rack and grabs a staff, then returns to the center of the practice area. "Say you are on the field of battle, which chaos everywhere. How does one ensure that their magic does not falter so they can survive?" The answer he's looking for is 'don't get distracted'.

Hanabi takes a moment to think about it, taking a short sword from the rack.

"Make a plan and stick to it. Work with a team if you can, so you can help each other survive. Don't use magic for something you can handle with a weapon so you can save your energy."

"An excellent answer." Thrawn summons a few beams of light as another little warm up. "However, one must also know their limits, and not let themselves get into a situation where their magic will fail them. For example, protecting yourself with a wall of fire, only to get distracted and let that wall extinguish."

He lets the light fade away. "I wish to see how long I can keep a spell maintained under duress. And I will be more than willing to return the favor."

"All right," Hanabi agrees with a nod. This is a good way to practice, pushing the limits of their magic against an opponent who will stop whenever they reach those limits.

"Why don't we make it a mock battle?" While Thrawn has the advantage of far more experience and being bigger, both of her magic types are well suited to combat.

"Whoever loses has to treat whoever wins to a muffin."

As serious and mature as she is, she is still an eleven year old girl with a competitive streak and a sweet tooth.

"Very well, then. I agree to those terms." Thrawn isn't much for sweets, so he'll plan on splitting his muffin with her in the event that he wins. While he's well aware that he's got the advantage here, he's not egotistical enough to think that he's already won.

"If I may establish some rules: no breaking anything that we will have to pay for later, and in the event of accidental injury, we stop what we are doing and find a healer."

"Yes, those are fair," Hanabi agrees with a nod. Magic can be destructive if it's not controlled properly, and she has no wish to damage training equipment.

"In the combat exams from home, we consider an opponent defeated if they're down for at least ten seconds, if they give up, or if they're otherwise not able to continue the match. We could use that, unless you have something else in mind for deciding who wins."

"We can use those means to determine a winner." Thrawn holds his staff at his side and takes his place across from her, bowing at the waist. "Now then, if you are ready, we shall begin."

Hanabi bows in turn before readying her sword. She knows Thrawn is strong and strategic. The best option she has for winning is to use her magic to render him unable to fight.

She's been practicing with the elements she was previously weaker at, and as she feigns moving in with her sword, she sends over a stream of water that rapidly hardens into ice aimed at his legs.

One other advantage Thrawn has over Hanabi is that he's seen a sample of her artwork. And thus he knew she was going to feign at first. Right as she lets loose with the magic, Thrawn summons a transparent wall in front of himself, blocking the ice.

He lets the wall fade right as he sidesteps out of her line of fire, taking a swing at her with his staff in an attempt to sweep her legs out from under her.

Hanabi leaps up to dodge the staff, flipping backward and nimbly landing on her feet. She contemplates a magical attack first, but decides against it. After all, they'd just discussed the importance of not overexerting one's energy reserves right before this fight, and she tries to be a good student.

Instead, she's preparing a subtle magic defense as she darts in with her sword.

Thrawn smiles to himself when he sees her play into her strengths, so as not to wear herself out. It feels rather nice to be listened to when the other person isn't obligated to do so. Nonetheless, he wants to see how she reacts to him doing something unexpected.

Bending the light around him, Thrawn turns invisible as he dodges her attack. He wants to see how long he can keep this up, especially when he uses another spell in at the same time. Carefully tiptoeing around her, he summons a false duplicate of himself right behind her, and has it take a swing at her. The duplicate isn't made of hard light, and thus can't hurt her, and he intends to catch her off guard.

Blood magic allows Hanabi to detect the presence of blood. It's not a replacement for sight, but it's informative enough to be useful. It's enough to tell her where Thrawn really is, and that the clone has no blood. However, since she knows he can make solid light constructs, she knows she shouldn't assume it can't hurt her.

Her blade is brought up to intercept the clone's attack on one side, while she kicks out with one leg, aiming a strike at Thrawn's knee.

The clone's staff goes right through her blade, as a regular hologram would. The real Thrawn quickly shifts his staff to block her kick, pivoting out of the way as the clone fades and Thrawn becomes visible again.

This time Thrawn takes a swing at her own weapon, engaging her in a more direct fight.

Although she's perfectly fine with the humans here, Gandra does take note of the other non-humans here. It makes her feel like she stands out a little less. She, Fenton, Della (and Drake while he was here) all stood out, both as non-humans and as a species that was shorter than human sized.

"Hey," she says casually as she approaches. "My name's Gandra and I'm a technomancer, too. I'm not interested in sparring, but maybe we could collaborate and compare notes."

Thrawn's seen more than a few non-humans around, and the girl here rather reminds him of the Rishi people, or a Calibop. But he's quite sure she's not from his galaxy and therefor all the artwork he's seen of both those species will be of no help here.

"That is perfectly fine. Sometimes exchanging information can be just as useful."

"Great. So...first question. Have you ever used technomancy to send someone a spell the way you can send a message?"

Although there's plenty of potential for technomancy, that's one of the aspects of it that strikes her as being the most beneficial to everyone here trying to save the world.

"Only with my own phone so far," Thrawn takes his phone out, holding it so that the screen is facing towards the ceiling. Magic flows from his fingers until there's a holographic projection of a star map emanating from the phone.

Gandra looks at the map appreciatively. Now that's just cool. It's not a star system she's ever looked at through a telescope, but considering that people here are from all different worlds, it's not surprising that she hasn't seen it.

"My other magic type is healing. I've sent a few people healing spells. What I'm curious about is whether it's possible to use technomancy to upload spells from a non-technomancer. I think it'd be a good experiment."

She pulls up an app she programmed on her own phone, guiding people through how to heal, with information on the structure and biology of injuries and illnesses.

"I made this educational app to teach healers."

The star map fades away and Thrawn looks at her phone, examining the app. "If such a thing is possible, then it's worth pursuing." Already, he can think of dozens of ways that would be useful in battle or just adventuring. Healing from a distance is useful enough, but he can just picture doing things like necromancers communing with the dead from a safe distance, or providing light magic shields to field troops.

"I have also wondered if it's at all possible to store a spell within a piece of technology to be used later. For example, holographic maps up being housed within a computer disc." Or artwork. Stars, he misses being able to just pull up holos of artwork.

"I'd gladly work on that with you and I'm pretty sure my boyfriend Fenton would be interested in a project like that, too. He's also a technomancer with elemental as his other magic type."

Three different kinds of primary magic types to work with would be a good baseline for experimenting with spell storage. Technomancers with other primary magic types could be invited to contribute at a later time if this experiment worked.

"Something else I've been wanting to try out is creating something for battle simulations, kind of like those virtual reality games that the people of Lestari had to offer. That's a much larger scale project, though. Fenton and I did create a virtual reality once back home for conducting science experiments, so I'm confident it can be done here."

Thrawn makes a mental note to speak with this Fenton at some point. He's pretty sure he's seen a bird man who goes by that name on the network more than once.

"Battle simulations would do well to help train combatants, and prepare for scenarios like what happened with the dragon and the rock titan last year. Though, such a thing would require resources, such as test data, and experiments with different technology."

"I've spoken to some of the refugee technomages that we were able to save from Lestari about it and I have a book full of notes."

She's at least done a good amount of research and theorizing, using her past experience and consulting local experts. Science is Gandra's passion and it doesn't even feel like work when she's working on a project that she finds truly engaging.

"The problem is mainly with the cost of building the prototype. If Lestari was still around, the parts would be easy to come by. They had a wealth of virtual reality technology for personal entertainment available. It would have been much easier to enhance what was already around."

Thrawn's been there. He knows what it's like to have a vision for a project that could be very useful, only for cost to be an issue. Though in his case, the reason his project had problems with funding was due to the Emperor being more interested in the very costly Death Star project.

"Even with Lestari gone, with enough resources your project may still be doable. It may mean drafting a proposal for funding, as well as relying on volunteers. When you do not have the tools do to what you need, you make it yourself."

"True. It's difficult, not impossible."

Between her, Fenton, the Lestari technomages she's befriended and any technologically savvy Otherworlders, they should have the resources in terms of people to make such a big project happen. It's really just getting the supplies. But consulting with the Lestarian technomages may at least point her in the right direction for what materials are needed to craft this technology.

"I think it's something that would be beneficial enough to get plenty of volunteers, at least."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Magic Practice - Open

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject