3. The Search for Magiq: Cataclysm

[Robert]

I trust Eaves in full control of his own faculties as much as anyone. Yes.

Not to dwell on a dark subject but lets remember our foes excel at using people we trust to try to get at us. When Marty and AlisonB corroborate what Eaves says that will go a long way to assuaging my concerns.

I am all for discussing the affinities and theorizing. Lets just be careful until we know if using then will drain what little we have.

[Nimueh]

So, what’s the plan? Are we sending Eaves a run down of what’s happened? I’m gonna be away from the forums for the most part until at least Monday afternoon my time, so maybe someone else can send something to test this further?

[SabineBean]

I think we should try and figure out what to send and who to send it… Mine didn’t work last time (Perhaps because it was a double message, but also possibly because I’m new) so I think it’d be a good idea for someone who was also on the forum at the same time as Eaves did it, preferably someone who’d talked to him before?

I think we need to basically report what’s happened like Nimueh said, and ask for more details like Tinker said, right?

[Connielass]

You guys… I’m sure it’s unconnected and nothing at all to do with thiis, but… A person in one of my FB groups just posted that she and her daughter have started randomly hearing knocking at doors inside their home when no one’s about.

[Saberlane]

@SabineBean I think Nim’s response went through because it was the first to “complete the circuit” so to speak. Eaves’ message vanished when Nim responded, almost like an open channel was closed. I think we should have a new Mounty officially respond this time to test your theory.

[Rimor]

Well we got a new Mounty in today so at least we know the guide is still letting people through!

[SabineBean]

If nobody else steps up to the plate I’m happy to try sending again, but I’m not the best person to actually put the message together, since, well, I have read through what people have been up to but I didn’t live it (and also I don’t think I read it in chronological order either… Oops). Would anyone be able to give me a hand with that?

[Robert]

i’ll help out @SabineBean. Never leave a Mountie hanging. I’ve tried typing a full response but there’s just too much to put in there. I end up a half hour in and realize I’m 4 pages and only a fifth of the way through. A more streamlined version will have to do.

(Someone please put some basic human greeting and formalities here.)

Professor Robert’s answers to your questions:

What have we been up to since you disappeared? - We already told you some of the Ackerly Green secret society exploits that culminated in our aiding our ghostly friend and finding the Aliquary. Still no idea what to do with it. I’m surprised it didn’t blow up with the half of our remaining artifacts when you asked us to cast something called the ‘Cataclysm’. (Sorry I lost something extremely valuable to me, so that spell better have been worth it.)

The Aliquary details came from the journals of Avis Green, apparently Sullivan’s sister in the Book of the Wild. Through her journal we got to learn some of the details of the great change from that Book’s point of view. Rather depressing stuff honestly with magiq being snuffed out while they couldn’t do much to change it. They attempted to create ‘The Last Figuration’ which the Aliquary may or may not have been part of, to reintroduce magiq into the world. We’re not sure what their plan was or how far along it is.

It’s possible the veil was placed around us to prevent the Last Figuration from being completed, since that spell, and the veil, both seem to center around the Well that the Book of Wild Greens centered on Ackerly Green Publishing. But then again it’s just as possible the Last Figuration is what caused the veil in the first place whether by design or accident.

Have you heard of Avis Green within our Book?

Did you sense something strange when it happened? Our numbers have been positively exploding recently and that’s kept us quite occupied as well. Seems many people are finding their way in just fine, so we didn’t notice anything odd when the veil descended.

Have you done your own research or memory-recall about the affinities? Most of us are unsure what you mean by memory-recall. We haven’t heard the term before. Our best guess is you’re asking if we’ve done our own pondering on the affinities and maybe come across a repressed memory or two. Other then some basic speculation, we have not.

It certainly sounds like a useful activity, but is it safe to be poking the magiqal badger right now with things swirling about the drain like this? By your own words one small misstep and magiq is no more at this point. Aren’t affinities magiq?

We need any details you can find on this veil. We have no idea if it’s present to protect us, or hide us, or imprison us. We don’t know if it’s meant to isolate us so someone can do something to us, or to isolate you all so we can’t interfere. Heck, maybe this is just all an elaborate way for Monarch’s Mountain to give us a ‘time out’ for interfering in their grand design, or it’s about to be ground zero for the Storm 2.0. We just have absolutely no idea what this is.

Edit: If anyone feels I missed a topic or wants more details in there about something I’m happy to add it, or let anyone else edit it. I’m easy.

[SabineBean]

Woah, that really is a long one, thank you! I’ll give it some time to see if anyone has anything to add before I tweak and send, if that’s good?

[Nimueh]

Seem as no one’s said anything, I’d think you’re safe enough to send

[SabineBean]

alrighty then… let’s do this!

[Nimueh]

Welp, looks like it went!

[SabineBean]

It sure did! Here’s hoping we get a response!

[Robert]

Thank you @SabineBean !

[SabineBean]

No problem! Thanks for writing all of that up, it was a gigantic help !! You’re fantastic

[SpiritSeer]

Whoah. You go away for a month and a half and… cataclysms!

I was on a retreat I’d promised to go on in place of my boss who’s a bigger introvert than me, and then had to visit family who are in the middle of nowhere and I had no service.

But I’ve been working on something in all my flipping non-digital free time, something related to this, and hurrying to finish it because I’m super inspired and also… I’ve drawn diagrams.

Also, . I AM AN EMOJI. I die. I die.

[Sellalellen]

Things always happen when we’re not online. That’s just how it works. And yes! You have an emoji! You helped us out quite a bit, and helpful people deserve at least that much
I look forward to seeing how that project turns out. If we can get any closer to understanding the Books, that would be awesome. And diagrams are always a big help flashback to Back to the Future 2 chalkboard with diverging timelines

[grimangel53]

straight up this is the first time i’ve been able to hop into the forums in a bit.

I can take exploration of Grim’s Convergence.I had some thoughts and inklings for it a while ago, and well…given my name it almost seems quite appropriate.

I’m excited to be hearing from eaves and everyone again. If we need someone else to post to eaves, i’m here ready and willing!

[Tinker]

We’re still waiting on a response to our last message to Eaves, I think.

[Ginger]

To also have Eaves’ response here in case it goes poof like the others?
But I think it was more than just coincidence the response was in the Magic Affinities topic.

@Eaves

Hi Bean! First, thank you and Robert (Hi Bob!) and everyone else for further filling us in on everything that’s happened. You’ve all been busy, that’s for sure. And it makes me happy to know that you’ve grown your ranks despite the wall.

Avis Green is new to me. The idea that not only events were changed, but people may have also been erased is hard to get my head around.

And yes, re: memory recall, I just wondered if your exploration of memories and imagination produced any new ideas about the affinities. We’ve been attempting to do the same, without much luck. However, that’s just recently changed. Alison and Port are here. Alison has quite a lot of thoughts on what we could be doing and what we should be doing. And Port, well Port seems happy that her abilities don’t seem to be working. She’s basically a normal (now tween) girl. There was some kind of threat she saw when she could still see into the future, something in the shadows looking for people like her and her friends, which led to her searching for the sanctuary. They don’t know what happened to Aether or where he went. He left them a letter telling them he was safe but couldn’t come to the sanctuary because he had other work to do. That’s all he wrote.

But one of Alison’s ancestors was a “Thorinth,” and she has vague genetic memories about their study of affinities, and of one affinity in particular. Peering Arts. It turns out, according to her ancestor, Peering Arts was at one point believed to be an entire field of study , with one of the linchpins of the field being a spell using something called a peering tome. (Apparently, other guild affinities might also be fields of study/practice.)

Peering Arts center around gaining insight into and additional context from works of literature and other works of art. Basically, what was the artist/author thinking, feeling, or hoping to accomplish/express. Like how Sullivan’s intentions were wrapped up in the spell he cast on Deirdre. Alison says that Peering Arts might have revealed that, or his surroundings, his fears, and thoughts, or maybe even who it was he cast the grounding hex with.

It’s a long shot, but this might be our best bet to find out who cast the spell hiding you, why, and possibly how we can undo it. The problem is that you have to have the physical object to use a peering tome on it because it entails binding a blank book, parchment, canvas, etc. to the work you’re hoping to gain insight into, and asking in the peering tome what you’d like to gather from it.

Anyway, back to Peering Arts. How do we perform this on a spell? Can we perform this on a spell? Especially when we need to bind a blank tome or journal to a physical object to implement it?

A member of the sanctuary who can sense magimystic currents (and helped find you during the cataclysm, go Yuridia) thinks she has a way for you to do it.

She believes a grounding hex was cast to create the spell hiding you. Sometimes, splinters of the six elements become a part of the spell to help support the spell(s) and the caster(s) inside it. Those splinters are forever bound to the spell.

Essentially, you’d need to mashup two spells into one. One of which we already know is dangerous, and one we know next to nothing about, and who knows what will happen with them smashed together, but here goes…

We think you could rework the existing grounding hex wording to gather any possible elemental splinters in the wall spell, and then metaphorically bind peering tomes to those splinters to gain insight into the spell and the caster.

Yuri says she can’t see potential splinters because they don’t exist or they’re on the other side of the wall, or maybe even a part of it. Like mortar in between the bricks. So the best and possibly only chance of this working is from the inside.

Yuridia and Ali broke it down to some general (and highly hypothetical) base steps, but we’re in uncharted territory here, and this is putting you all at terrible risk. We know affinities are workable loopholes through the wall, for now, but in the bigger scheme of things we have no idea how much longer we can use them or any other magiq. Ultimately, this has to be your decision and by your own design.

What might work:

• Alter the existing grounding hex verbiage and intention to call any elemental splinters bound to the spell that hid you. Call them to an object that is representative of each element.
• Physically bind that object to a “peering tome,” like a journal or notebook. It should be blank except for your addition of as much context about the spell as you know. In Peering Arts you would typically have the physical book or art which would have the date, title, author, and the actual work. So you’d need to reference as much as you know about the spell at the beginning of the peering tome. The timeframe the spell was cast, that the Guide to Magiq is now a part of it, etc.
• The peering tome spell itself isn’t actually written, it’s… thought. (Thornmouths.) You hold the bound tome, focusing on your intention to know more about the work it’s bound to, in this case, the splinter used to hide you.
• Wait for something to hopefully happen. Opening the bound tome before the spell has done will break the spell, but Ali’s unsure what will signal the completion of the peering tome.

Yuridia and Ali both seem equal parts frantically excited about coming up with what could be a solution, and scared out of their gourds for you.

I wish I had more ideas or information to share, and they’re still hashing it out to see if they can help, but I have to be honest, it is really hard to open this connection to you. And each time I do could be the last time for all I know. I want to tell you whatever we know or think as soon as possible, even if it’s incomplete. If you have questions or ideas, please send them back, otherwise, let us know if you’ve cast the spell and what you’ve found.

We’re with you. And guide willing, this will work.