fandomhigh | Entries tagged with magical theory

"My apologies for last week," Gale said as class began for the week. "I had important matters to attend to and was unable to pull myself away from them."

He found an interesting book and forgot what day it was.

"But today we will break into one of the schools of magic: evocation. Evocation is the summoning and control over the very elements themselves. Be it fire, ice, lightning, or even acid. Which is usually a very damage heavy school where your spells are meant to attack your opponents and prevent them from even being able to return the favor through the force you have deployed."

If they don't do super great at the dex saves in some cases.

"However!" Gale added, pointing a finger in the air. "This may not seems like the greatest of ideas should you be with a group who might very well be in the thick of things."

Like proper fighters and barbarians would.

"But you would be wrong. As a tool of this particular school allows you to sculpt your spells and create pockets of safety for them. I shall demonstrate with the assistance of my dear friend Tara here."

Had Tara been there the whole time? Yes. She'd been having a very nice nap before her name was said, yawning and stretching out both paws and wings. "A fireball, Mr. Dekarios?"

"A fireball," Gale replied cheerfully, taking a careful step away from the students for his tressym to just yeet that fireball at him with a booming arde. Only to reveal a very much safe Gale in the middle of a still smoldering circle. "Ah, now I will just wait for this to go out and we can practice with some dummies."

tellmehowstuffworks

"Today we will watch a 'film,'" Yennefer said, and you could almost see the quotation marks around the word, unfamiliar even after quite some time in this world, "about magic and the consequences of magic both misused and misplaced. Screwing over your descendants in your own shortsightedness, forbidden magic, what happens when you don't consider all the angles before using magic to accomplish something, it is all addressed in this film. Enjoy."

tellmehowstuffworks

Everyone would have a rock and a flower in front of them this week. "We talked about this previously," Yennefer reminded them, in case they had forgotten, and because she had found puzzling it out for herself to be extremely annoying. Unfortunately, that was rather Tissaia's teaching style. "In the magical tradition I was taught, a basic exercise is to use the energy of the flower to lift the rock." Yennefer demonstrated, picking up her own flower, which withered in her hand as the pebble on the desk rose to float in the air. "This teaches the student how to use energy from outside sources rather than draining her own innate power, and carries a deeper, if admittedly depressing, philosophical lesson: sometimes, the best thing a flower can do for us is die.

"Now. I want each of you, if you can, to lift the rock. Whether you use the flower or not is up to you. Whether you agree with the thing about the flower or not is also up to you, but I would be interested to hear your thoughts."

tellmehowstuffworks

"I previously touched on the concept of exchange, that is, you have to give something to get something. This is intrinsic to my magical background, where we are taught to avoid using our own energy as, obviously, that could kill you. Instead we prefer to take energy from things like plants." Yennefer held up a flower, which wilted in her hand as a pebble on the desk before her rose to levitate in the air. "Some of us, of course, have larger stores of internal power than others, and thus are able to do more magic without damaging ourselves or, say, killing a nearby forest. Does your magical tradition have something similar? What are the rules of that exchange? If there are none, then what is stopping you from becoming a god?" She let the rock fall back to the desktop. "Discuss."

tellmehowstuffworks

Yennefer swanned into today's class a fashionable five minutes late, which would have been more tolerable had she shown up last week at all. "Apologies for my absence last week," she said, not sounding particularly apologetic. "I had a minor...situation to attend to. I do hope you got my email." They all knew how to check email, right?

Honestly, she wasn't sure the email had sent. She wasn't so much with the whole technology thing, and also she'd been trying to keep her working from exploding and taking the apartment building with it at the time. Attempt number 357 to restore her fertility: a resounding failure.

"Well. This is Magical Theory & Practice, and I am Yennefer of Vengerburg. Since you are in my workshop, I assume you either have magic or want to learn about magic, but I have learned that not everyone's magic works the same as it does in my world, so we will begin with introductions, and each of you will please tell me what you understand of how magic works for you. For example, in my world magic is a matter of controlling and directing chaos. It is also a matter of exchange. That is, the energy for magic must come from somewhere, whether that be a plant, an animal, or the mage's own innate store of energy. My own teacher believed in teaching this lesson the hard way, and allowed one of my fellow students to wither her own arm to levitate a stone. It did get the point across, but please don't do that on my watch. I'm not much of a healer. Now you," she said, pointing to someone at random.

tellmehowstuffworks

Upon entering the classroom, the students would find...kittens. Kittens everywhere! At least five of them, but perhaps as many as a dozen. It was really impossible to tell, because the kittens were in a state of high excitement, scampering around everywhere and determined to pounce upon feet.

Yennefer was seated calmly behind her desk, sipping from a cup that may or may not have contained wine. "Close the door quickly," she said. "We want to keep the chaos contained. That is what this is, an object lesson in chaos." She had considered making them catch lightning in a bottle, but apparently that would require waivers and all sorts of paperwork she didn't want to consider. "It is up to you to determine how you choose to interact with chaos, and with these kittens. Just bear in mind that I do have to return them to the animal shelter after class. You may attempt to control and contain the chaos, or allow it free rein to control you--and if you don't think it can, you've spent little time around cats." She gestured toward the floor. "Please spend your workshop time interacting with chaos."

tellmehowstuffworks

"Being new to teaching, I asked around and learned that it was traditional in this reality to show an educational film," Yennefer informed the class. "This isn't an option where I come from, so I hope my selection is as on-topic as it seemed from the description."

After some fumbling with the unfamiliar equipment, Yennefer managed to hit 'play' and the movie started.

tellmehowstuffworks

Yennefer swanned into the classroom three minutes after class was due to start and said, "Now, this is the point where I should teach you how to read minds. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to teach you how to read minds. I just figured it out. My teacher just lined us up in pairs and told us we couldn't leave until we told her our partner's biggest fear, so eventually I did. Although not before trying just making something up," she admitted. "Turns out she wasn't afraid of snakes." She shrugged. "Remember, cheat when you can, but only if you can get away with it." A great lesson from a teacher, right?

"Instead, let's talk theory. Why might you want to read someone's mind, and why might it be a bad idea to do so? Discuss."

tellmehowstuffworks

The flower and the rock were back on the students' desks this week. "There is a second part to last week's lesson," Yennefer told the students, "this one with more of a moral or philosophical component than a truly magical one, but an important lesson nonetheless. Each of you came up with a solution in line with how magic works for you, but only one of you did what I expected you to do in order to lift the rock." She picked up the flower on her lectern and held it up where the class could see it. "You see, I was taught that sometimes, the best thing a flower can do for us is die." The flower withered away to a dried husk, and the rock rose to hover near her shoulder.

"Discuss."

tellmehowstuffworks

Today's workshop was being held in a classroom. There was a hot Renaissance Faire goth standing at the front of the classroom when the students arrived, and when they sat down they would notice that each of them had a flower and a rock sitting on their desk. "Good afternoon," Yennefer said to her students. "I am Yennefer of Vengerberg, and this is..." She glanced at her notes, and then looked again. "Magical Theory and Practice. Bit of a joke in the class description, I see." Or was it? "Well, we might get to that. We'll see how it goes. For now, I will tell you that while I am new to instruction, I am a sorceress trained in the school of Aretuza, and have been an advisor to the king of Aedirn for thirty years." Yep, she was older than she looked.

"Being as we all come from different realities here, I expect we also come from different magical traditions, and that sticking too closely to what I was taught might be completely useless to you, but I believe that in broad strokes much of that information continues to be true, based on the fact that I have been able to do magic since I got here, so I will teach you starting from that foundation. First, I would like to know what I am working with. Everyone will please tell me their name, so I can check them off this list, and what their experience level is with magic, and a little of how they know it to work, and then we're going to do a little exercise. Any questions so far? No? Good."

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