Hey, not sure I’m a mountie, maybe hit me up and we can talk about the strangeness?
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Glad to hear you’re safe and sound @Eaves.
I have a question to pose. Maybe we still have some magiq somewhere? Like in the Aliquary?
Our veil seems to be holding, so maybe magiq, once placed in something, can hold, while the magiq that’s available in the world is more like a breeze, it’s around, and it can be utilized, but it doesnt stay there all the time.
So maybe the Aliquary has magiq in it still, like any other artefact we may have from the Book of Kings? Anyone remember where their artifacts are?
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Funny you should mention the Aliquary. @Catherine and I have been talking and I’m working up a post. We’ll follow up in the morning once we’re both in the office.
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So… @Catherine and I have basically been twiddling our thumbs around the offices of Ackerly Green for months. I was supposed to be the custodian of this place, to maintain it, grow it, keep it safe while Deirdre was in Neithernor. But I haven’t really known what to do here without either Book of Briars, the book or the age.
And now, per BC34, magic is gone.
I had a tough time after the Cataclysm, and it took months to get my head right. It took even longer to start writing again. I kept getting my tenses wrong, losing the thread of whatever story I was working on, all sorts of other weird things… My doctors thought I’d had a mild stroke. I guess better that than explain a tsunami of magic energy nearly washed my brain out. :man-shrugging: Also, yes, I’m still trying to write like I did for a living before AGP came into my life, but this past year I’ve mostly been figuring out what to do with this company and what my place is within it. I feel a bit like the knight guarding the grail at the end of The Last Crusade, futzing around and gathering dust while I wait for the hero to show up.
Anyway, the aliquary. An ingot of pure magic left behind when a powerful magimystic died in The Book of The Wild, given to us by Avis Green in case we ever needed it to jumpstart… something.
Like, maybe a new age?
Here’s our harebrained idea: We know free magic is gone. We know we are standing in the ashes of a dead age. We know, according to Yuridia and the Herald, that “the door of the year” is about to open on February 1st.
What if we tried to jumpstart the new age on February 1st, with the aliquary.
A few concerns…
We don’t know what to do or how to do it.
We don’t know if it will work.
We don’t know how to use the power in the aliquary.
We have eleven days.
But, this is the kind of thing the Mounties excel at, time crunches and winging spells and whatnot, and now we have two basecamps.
So… thoughts? 
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should be fine, as long as we’re cautious and set up a barrier or defense against the backlash. I do think we’d be facing the silver almost instantly though, since this is suddenly the last major bit of magiq we have left. Id recommend caution, but im all for it, personally.
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I believe I have a power focusing ritual somewhere, though it would likely need to be adapted for an object instead of people. That could help with the ‘jumpstart’
Also, aren’t there still compartments on that table we haven’t opened?
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If we want this new age to include free magic it seems like our goal isn’t to reintroduce, but to find a way to permanently tie it to our world. To ground the unstable breeze. If we can find some way to bind the tangible and intangible irreversibly? And I’m not saying to recreate an age dominated my magiq, but perhaps have at least a stable amount.
The spell I’m thinking of would have two parts: first to take the magic of the aliquary and spread it thinly across the world, perhaps with mounties acting as different waypoints for it. Second would be to influence growth in that thin layer of magiq. A magical fertilizer to the magical seeds.
Just an idea though, I personally do not know how it would be done.
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“Free” magiq may be gone, but maybe a bit of figuration can help us here? Maybe we can work on a story like before, running with your planting theme, bit of symbolism, and get a group of both 33 and 34 Mounties to recite it on the 1st? Doesn’t give us much time, and of course can include more than a story if people can get stuff done in time, but a thought?
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Would magiqal locations a la Secret Society/distracting the Silver while the 34s were on the move be useful as waypoints?
And I’m assuming we’d want some multiple of six, because 
, for however we tackle this.
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I have a… little experience with this. Just tell me what to do if you need an extra hand.
Ugh. I just threw out all those candles… Should have done my digging before…
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Well we have the Catalcysm .
This was a spell specifically designed to take power from physical, magiqal objects and use to to power a different spell when free magiq isn’t enough. That’s kind of the basis for what we’re doing here, right?
Instead of a Cataclysm where we release the energy in a violent explosion maybe we turn the Aliquary into a universal free power source anyone can tap into? Let’s have a new Book based on the free sharing of magiq instead of fighting over it and hoarding it. Besides it’d piss the Silver off to no end if their hoard meant nothing in the end.
And…if the Guide to Magiq is our gatekeeper, maybe it can also decide who can and cant access the power we make available. The veil becomes the shield for our new power source we make available to everyone. Those of good heart can have what they want or need. Those with malicious intent are our of luck. We might even get that benefit for free.
I can’t find an antonym for Cataclysm I like (14 of the 15 minutes this response took was spent on this one task), but I think I can settle on the term Wellspring for now. If someone has a better name for this, be my guest. 
Edit: And like a fool I now realize I basically stole Helios’ idea of using the Aliquary to disperse the magiq and fertilize the new Book. Consider me just thumbs up’ing his idea.
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I love the idea of calling it the Wellspring, to bring in a new age focused on growth rather than destruction.
The problem with the original spell, from my understanding, was that there was no way to truly release the power outwards, so it always rebounded back in a single violent burst. How do we change the spell to mitigate this and disperse the magiq in many directions instead, while still having it multiply sustainably?
I keep picturing it like a beam of light hitting a reflective surface at just the right angle to be blinding and leave you seeing spots. But instead of the light hitting something reflective and bouncing back, we need it to hit a prism, where the light passes through to be refracted in different colors and directions. And with many prisms in a space, light from different facets can be refracted through other prisms as well, to create almost a cyclical process, as long as some power is returned to the original source of the light in the process.
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So this is me free associating as I type, cause it beats working. 
Feel free to add, modify, or ignore to your hearts content.
The Original Cataclysm
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18 Wrought magiq items were brought together around a central point (AGP).
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The owners of these items pledged what little power they had kept for themselves to be used for the singular purpose of trying to signal outside the Veil.
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Items were vulnerable in this process, and many treasured artifacts were lost . (Nope, still not gonna let that one go.)
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But in the end all 18 items gave up some of their power to enable a single powerful source.
Proposal for its opposite, the Wellspring.
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18 individuals are brought together for the spell. 9 within the veil, 9 outside of it to represent the power being shared with those outside.
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Each person should have a focus. For Adepts (or former Adepts, I suppose) they can be their own focus as they have had a personal connection with Magiq. For the rest of us, some item with absolutely no chance of having been magiqal can be provided.
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For Figuration each person can come up with some story of kindness, generosity or compassion. Fictional or non should be fine as long as it conveys strong emotion in it’s writer.
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Some form of chant, common to all can be invoked by each person to tie their powerful story with their item (or themselves in the case of adepts) Each chant be done by those within the veil focusing on the Aliquary. Those outside the Veil will focus on the Guide.
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Some form of final act will have to be performed at the site of the Aliquary. The idea would be to call on the Aliquary to give out it’s power to those in need or who request of good heart, and take our positive energy as some form of exchange. As our intent is much less violent than previously, this will hoepfully be safe (maybe even restorative) for Saberlane. But we can’t ask you to risk that much. If we must make preparations for someone else to do this, we can cross that bridge later.
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Lastly, after we hope some energy has been sent out into the people and items we seal the spell. Sealing would likely require giving away the artifacts created in this process. Whether by giving it to a good person they know, donating it, or (for the Balimora around us) leaving it in the back of an uber for any random person to find and we just see what happens.*
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Adepts would likely would likely have to make some sort of attempt to use their powers in altrustic ways, especially at the start, to seal their version.
???
- Profit
*And hey, who knows? Maybe items created this day will show up from time to time in the years to come and grow to be parts of their own stories throughout the new Book.
As always add, modify or throw away! My goal was to write this up and stop it rolling around my head and now mission accomplished.
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This sounds like a really good idea! Maybe we can start working out who might be free on the 1st (a week Saturday) for our people, and everyone can chip in to working on the chant. Ofc, if people have other ideas we can still spitball, but I do think we need to at least start working out who’s around for something like this.
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I agree with all of the above. Casting a spell to spread and grow what little magic we have in an altruistic way to bring on the new age sounds like exactly what we need. Kindness breeds kindness, and hopefully magic will breed magic! Do you think for figuration a poem or small song would work as well as a story? I think that rhythm has its own magic to add to the words, though prose can be rhythmical too.
I’ll be around as and when, and for something so important, I’m glad I could come back in time to help! I’ve been busy, but this is important !
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Every Mountaineer a gardener. Every Mountaineer a prism to multiply and spread the power of magic and community around the world… if that doesn’t do it nothing will.
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The prism imagery is beautiful…I’ll be around February 1st. I’m happy to help however I can. Though how does one pick an object with “absolutely no chance of having been magiqal”? The more I think about it, the more that actually seems a little more challenging than it initially seems. How should we choose those objects? What makes an object ideal for holding and distributing magiq?
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I reallllly like the idea of adding music/rhythm. I feel like the configuration would be very important initially before the magiq really takes a hold and grows on its own. Stories/Poems and Rhythm have been interconnected for millennia and passed down for the new ages to hear and play/sing/etc anew.
If we can put a song/rhythm to it, its easier to remember, and teach to others when needed. It’s more pass-down-able. (it also makes it stuck in your head oops)
I’m also around on the 1st if we need a hand
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Looks like I’m available that morning, and should have at least a small break around dinner (though there’s no estimate of when).
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@SabineBean would think a song, poem, painting, interpretive dance or even a really bawdy drinking song would work. The key is the emotion and it’s intensity.
@Louisa “No chance of being magiqal”. Yeah, I have difficulty picturing what that means too. In the end I figured I’d keep that language in because the mental gymnastics required to figure out what it means is half the fun. 
I figure it COULD mean an item of great significance to you, but you’ve never noticed or suspected it of being “more” than just a plain old, mundane item. The thinking was to just make sure we were creating new magiq vs just recharging existing magiq. But you can intrepret it however you like if you feel strongly enough about it.
On the flip side it could also be an entirely new item. Completely devoid of meaning in your life. Maybe it’s a coin you found in your pocket the other day from a perfect mundane transaction. And maybe your Figuration story is about an act of generosity where someone gives their last coin away to a beggar in the middle of a blizzard for them to get shelter with.
What might that coin be after all is said and done and, by some miracle, this actually works? What will you send into the world when you give it away that never existed before? I find that second way kinda neat to think about, myself.
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