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--- campaign:carve:2023-03-25 [2023/05/06 19:29] – pinkgothic
+++ campaign:carve:2023-03-25 [2023/08/29 20:06] (current) – pinkgothic
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 Leila watched the emotions permeate a little on his face. The forced smile that seemed faded, the lowered gaze. She felt her own spoonful of guilt at having caused him some distress, as that hadn't been her intention at all. When he broke the silence before it had become awkward, with this offering to chat, she smiled and nodded. "Sure thing. I should get back to work, maybe just restart section 5 altogether, after clearing it with the boss." She spoke of whomever was heading up the botany projects altogether, since she would need clearance to adress her problem in such a definitive way.
-<!--
+**pinkgothic**:
+With a light nod and friendly gesture, Mateo concurred, going back to wiping particles off the broad leaves, leaving Leila to clear the section five situation with her boss.
+It proved to be an easy clearance; Leila's boss trusted her to do the right thing, giving a blanket permission. It was less easy to actually decide whether to do it. The other botanists were unsure, and it would probably take a few days for them to collectively decide whether to repot everything in the section, even as they prepared for the logistics of the possibility.
+When the shift ended, Mateo wasn't where she'd left him. It was unsurprising and inconvenient - they should probably have thought about deciding //where// to meet up, but there were a few standard Schelling points. The mess hall was the first and she found him there despite the bustle.
+After grabbing their food trays, they wandered back into greenhouse, parked themselves in section nine, a more expansive area that felt almost like a park were it not as crowded as it was, and ate mashed potatoes, vegetables and a creamy sauce in remarkable solitude. Usually there were about one to three pairs of people here; today it was just them.
+"Did you manage to get clearance from your boss?" Mateo asked, recalling the earlier conversation, carefully avoiding to blunder right into politics with someone who might not want that conversation.
+**Nymphetamine**:
+Thankfully, there wasn't a lot of rigamarole to getting the clearance she needed to redo the soil in section five. Her boss signed off on it as soon as she asked for it, and that was the end of that. Her colleagues were not too sure about the necessity of it, so they debated and talked amongst themselves until their shift was over. At that point, she was ready to wash her hands of section five altogether, and set about looking for Mateo. When he was no where to be found in the greenhouse, she ended up in the mess hall to acquire some food for the evening? and eventually located the object of her search. Joining him back in the greenhouse, she dug in with gusto into her food, though politely swallowed before she was to reply to Mateo at all. Looking at him, she offered him a small smile and nodded. "Yeah, there wasn't even that much of a fuss about it. Just the normal, 'If you think it's necessary, Leila' and that was it." To which she was grateful, all things considered, because she hadn't wanted to get into a lengthy discussion about it. The unexplored topics with Mateo were the ones she was interested in, specifically sorcery, but the young man seemed somewhat reluctant to discuss it, and she wasn't sure how to bring it up without discomfitting him.
 **pinkgothic**:
+"So, how does that work? You just get a verbal confirmation?" he asked, mildly surprised. "Or some signed authorisation?" Maybe it wasn't too surprising that he'd be curious, given what he'd alluded to with sorcery. It sounded like they couldn't do much without getting a literal sign-off first.
 **Nymphetamine**:
--->
+"Verbal confirmation, this time, anyway. I suppose that if there were anything more, such as redistributing the plants to other sections, or what have you, we might have needed something written. Boss was okay with just starting over, so we could see if there were any breaches in the containment." Leila shrugged at this, not sure what his interests in such things were, but curious nonetheless. "It's not so bad. We at least have the autonomy to do what's needed most of the time."
+**pinkgothic**:
+Mateo's eyebrows crept up and stayed there for many seconds, but he didn't verbally comment until after they had dropped back down and he'd had a few more bites of his food. "I suppose there's less concern about consequences," he mused. "If I want to do spellcasting right, Sandrine needs to sign a little permit slip.
+"Sometimes they're blanket permits, like certain alchemical spells that we need to use every other month, but most things aren't. Sandrine's allowed us to play with low-tier spells on our own time as long as nothing happens, but everything else goes through checks and balances." The difference sounded like an interesting intellectual exercise for him, not like a grievance.
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"'As long as nothing happens'?" She repeated the phrase given the way that he had put it. It sounded like a good deal of autonomy, to a certain extent, though where that delineation was, Leila wasn't sure. Still, it was interesting, and she was glad that he had brought up the subject of sorcery first. "What constitutes as a low-tier spell?" she wondered aloud. She had no basis or frame of reference for spells and sorcery itself, so she was very curious about what he meant.
+**pinkgothic**:
+"Any spell that uses only three runes or less," Mateo commented. "It's roughly correlated to how hard it hits, the number of runes, I mean. There are some exceptions, but as a rule, the more runes, the more you have the potential for massive consequences. I don't know the runes for it, but there's a high-tier spell you can use to make all calcium in a two-mile radius just disappear." A pause. "Not that anyone's likely to use that one, it'll kill the caster just the same as anyone else in the two-mile radius. That's a historic one, so in theory the rune combo's sitting in a museum somewhere."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+Leila blinked in surprise, deliberate for a moment. "That's uh... that sure is a helluva spell. Why would someone want to use that?" she could only wonder some more about sorcery and how it worked. It certainly seemed strange to her. "That seems rather unpractical if it kills the caster as well..." Trailing off for a moment, she considered what that would be like. Would bones just snap and break? Two miles was a massive amount of distance when it was talking about removing a key element to life. "Is there no way to protect the caster in that case?"
+**pinkgothic**:
+"Ah," Mateo said, seeming rather more awake now that the subject was sorcery than he had been earlier. "So, one thing you need to understand is that the caster is not in any way privileged with sorcery. They provide the raw materials, but from the mechanics of what happens - to the degree we understand it at all - you're just part of physical reality like everything else.
+"To be exempt, you'd have to remove yourself from physical reality somehow. I'm not willing to rule it out - sorcery lets you do various other things that ought to be impossible, after all - but it seems like a high bar to clear. My guess is back in ur-sorcery times some poor schmuck tried the combo, it worked, and his legacy is now a cautionary tale to us all." He sounded amused.
+**Nymphetamine**:
+She pondered on that in silence, really chewing on the subject as she ate. That seemed so terrible, to be a part of the results of a terrible spell like that. "A cautionary tale for everyone, it would seem." Leila was a polite companion, eating with her mouth closed, not trying to ask any questions while she was still munching down. As she swallowed, she considered what else he said. "Imagine the destruction of someone who //could// remove themselves from reality to cast a terrible spell like that... they'd be nigh unstoppable."
+**pinkgothic**:
+Mateo shrugged mildly, although he was smiling. "The sorcery itself is still potentially deadly. The more runes you need to cast, the more likely you are to bleed to death casting it. Being able to //study// high-tier spells would be great, and I'd love access to that knowledge, but I wouldn't want to cast them myself, unless my life depended on it."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+Leila considered what he was saying about higher level spells being dangerous, if only for the need to carve more runes into one's flesh. Frowning at that, she just looked at him, perhaps not only a little bit surprised, but confused as to how anyone could research these more powerful spells and sorceries if one would bleed out in the attempt? "Erm... So how does that work? Do people just accidentally stumble into more dangerous spells? Do they all die if they research such things?" she wondered.
+**pinkgothic**:
+Mateo seemed to consider the question for a moment, taking the opportunity to eat a few forks full of food. He was about half done with his plate when he tapped his lower lip with his fork, his gaze off to the side, nowhere in particular, and said: "Have you ever heard of protein folding? It's a similar class of ploblem."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+His question was met with a blank stare, the obviousness of her lack of knowledge on the topic so clear in her face. "I mean, let's say that I haven't, and you explain?" she asked with some cheek, making a little playful tease out of it with a smile. In truth, Leila had heard of it as a thing, but she didn't know the particulars, or how exactly it was an analogy for the sorcery that Mateo also practiced. Looking back down at her plate, she speared a few more vegetables on the end of her fork and ate with healthy appetite, hoping that he'd be able to illuminate her on the subject at hand.
+**pinkgothic**:
+Mateo nodded mildly, giving no impression that he thought it was something she had to know. He finished chewing on another forkfull of food, then gestured randomly with the utensil as he spoke: "So, I'm obviously not a biologist either, but basically, proteins are fairly complex molecules, with lots of atoms chained together.
+"But how they behave is in large part a factor of their ultimate shape - how they 'fold' in three dimensional space, which parts are on the 'inside' and which are on the 'outside'." Each time he was imagining quotes around his words, the empty fork would bob in the air a little.
+"It's easy to dream up another //unfolded// protein, but that shape? That's a real mystery. There are rules, of course, but with a molecule that large, it becomes hard to figure out how it will fold. And if you want a specific shape, it's remarkably hard to find the right molecular combination to do it."
+The fork tapped against his lip again, a pensive gesture.
+"To be clear about it, 'remarkably hard' here means that if you check a combination for every nanosecond, you'll be busy long past the heat death of the universe. So you need heuristics, predictive artificial intelligence, cross-referencing and a lot of patience to solve protein folding problems."
+His fork and attention dropped down to his plate, poking at more vegetables, but concluding: "Spells are a bit like that. There are rules, and we understand some of those rules. You can get places with just theory, but it's a long slog."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+She was an avid listener as he explained the problem with protein folding, and how that compared to discovering spells with rules that they only sorta knew. The analogy, to her layman's thinking, was a good one, and one that illustrated the problem about higher level spells, in general. You could carve runes into your arms for days and never get to a combination that actually worked, suffering blood loss and eventually dying. She shook her head, a wry expression surfacing to her lips at this. "I see. That does make things difficult if you only know part of the rules that govern sorcery... Are other sorcerers discovering new rules at this juncture, or is everyone still running off an old textbook?"
+**pinkgothic**:
+"In a sense, we're running off a //very// old textbook," Mateo chuckled. "What with the original practitioners in Mesoamerica having left us a bunch of notes. That said, they seemed more interested in recording actual spells, rather than the underlying rules." He shrugged one shoulder. "Might have been gatekeeping. Maybe they had the rules all figured out, but only passed them on by word of mouth, until-- well, until one day they didn't."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"Weird that we're only just now rediscovering such skills," she'd remark with some candidness. But perhaps not so weird. So many oral traditions had been lost over the years simply because everyone assumed there would always be someone to pass things down on... until, as he said, they weren't. "So how long has there been a modern study of sorcery?"
+**pinkgothic**:
+"We've been rediscovering it for the past hundred and fifty odd years, I don't find that too weird. Unless with 'we' you mean the nations you or I are coming from, in which case, yes, we collectively had to strong-arm Tamoanchan into giving us access to the technology in the early 1990s and we've only been able to collaborate since then, but that's... also nearly half a century ago now," Mateo reasoned. It was meant as a minor objection to her first comment, but doubled as a partial answer to her second. He smiled an apology, then appended: "Computer-assisted spell-finding is about thirty years in, I think?"
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"Oh." One hundred fifty years was an awfully long time for people to rediscovering things, but she supposed, as he said, that Tamoanchan had not given them the technology for a while. That seemed to make a certain amount of sense to her, though, also not. "And how is that going?" she asked after computer-assisted spell-finding. Her curiosity was a strong, palpable thing, and it was only then that she seemed to realized she had kinda been interrogating Mateo this entire time. Scratching her cheek for a moment, a sort of bashfulness surfacing on her face as she murmured an apology. "Sorry, sorry... I'm guessing you hadn't planned your meal to be talking about all this stuff to an overly inquisitive colleague." If she could even call herself such, given that they didn't even really work in the same field.
+**pinkgothic**:
+"I mean, I've eaten about two thirds of my meal so far, I think that's what we came here for, right?" he said with the tone of a shy amusement. "So I'm on track, I think. Just promise me you'll tell me if I bore you, okay? I know some people just ask questions to be polite and--" He pressed his lips together. "Yeah, that wasn't clever to say, Mateo," he chided himself openly. "Forget I said that." A pause. "Please."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"That's fair, that's fair," she said with a faint grin, amused despite herself. Of course, she was probably a little nervous to appear //too// eager to learn about sorcery and the like, but this seemed to be an in for a change. Looking back at her own food, she listened to him as he asked her to tell him if he was boring. "What? Oh, no, you're fine! It's all very interesting to someone on the outside, or at least this someone." Said of herself, of course. "I'm the one peppering you with questions and the like..." So Leila was taking responsibility for the trajectory of their conversation so far.
+**pinkgothic**:
+"Oh, can you salt me with questions a little, too? This meal could use a couple more spices," he said. In disregard for the comment, he put another fork of food into his mouth.
+**Nymphetamine**:
+It was a bland look that she gave him before bursting into a soft chuckle, shaking her head as she did so. "That was //horrible//," she told him, though it was well meaning. A tease from a new, hopeful friend. Getting past that would be hard, because it was such a bad, cheesy joke, but it seemed like he was relaxing well enough in her company, and she was glad for that. "Moving on." Deliberately said, a mock stern look thrown his way. "I guess I'm just curious about sorcery in general. It's so... interesting to someone who knows next to nothing about it. So I guess I'm apologizing for asking so many questions about it." A rueful smile touched her lips at this.
+**pinkgothic**:
+He made a so-so gesture with his head, ambiguous in meaning as he took another significant chunk out of what remained on his plate. A minute later, he finally divulged: "You can ask as many as you want, but at some point, I technically need to stop answering. It's a legal issue, to be clear, not a preference. Like, uh, like you can ask a nuclear physicist all kinds of questions about the principles, yeah? But they're not going to tell you how to build a nuke, even if they know how and they trust you, because they're not allowed to share."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"Oh, I know. I mean, I guess that would be the case, all the things considered..." she said amiably, not the least bit offended that there were secrets that he had to keep. It made sense, even if she might want to chafe against it.
+**pinkgothic**:
+Mateo finished his plate, ending with the fork propped against his lower lip again, his eyes somewhere near the top of the greenhouse. Then, looking back down to Leila, he said: "Honestly, though, it's not like they'd give you a Pen or any Tincture, so I haven't the foggiest what they think you'd //do// with the knowledge. Makes more sense back on Earth, where people can run off and... cobble that sort of thing together without anyone noticing, but this is Mars."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+"A pen? Is there a specific tool that has to be used?" It was clear that she wasn't very well versed or educated on the process or the tools that a sorcerer might used. Despite her curiosity. This was really the first time that she was given the opportunity to interrogate a sorcerer, and she was rather pleased that Mateo seemed so easy going about it. Maybe that was just because she had been taking care of his cat so far. "Yeah, I guess being on Mars does put quite a damper on being able to improvise tools and what have you." A little rueful at that, but she was smiling as she stabbed her fork into her salad.
+**pinkgothic**:
+The question did something indecipherable to Mateo's face - it was quite impossible to tell if he disapproved, approved emphatically, was confused, was deep in thought, or anything else. After a few awkward seconds of maintaining the look, he set his plate down silently, then tilted back a little and fished through his right jacket pocket. Then he pulled something that looked like an ivory, marbled fountain pen from it, demonstratively holding it out for her to see and plucking off an elegant cap.
+The tip was a lot less elegant. It looked like a tiny, barbed hook.
+**Nymphetamine**:
+Mateo's unreadable expression was not something that she was able to figure out what was going on. She thought she had misstepped, maybe asked too much of him, and began to stammer out an apology, her fork settled to the table. "I'm sorry! I shouldn't have asked..." she began to say as he finally withdrew a lovely slender piece much like a pen. Leila knew better than to reach out for her and watched instead as he pulled the cap free to show her what lurked beneath. The ugly little barbed hook was more than enough to pierce and rend flesh, to literally carve the runes out of teh sorcerer's arms. "Oh." The vowel was spoken a little akin to shock, but now she fully understood what he had meant by 'Pen'. "I see... that is... that sure is something..."
+**pinkgothic**:
+He kept the pen in its presentation mode for a few more drawn out seconds, then clicked the cap back on, letting it slip back into his pocket. "It's like having your own private cat claw," he joked, although there was something else in his voice as well, a subtle irritation - from the conversation so far, it seemed unlikely it was at her, though. "The scratches are remarkably similar, too."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+There were so many questions that were running through her head about the pen. Whether or not the materials had to be of certain components, if there was something special about the tip other than its ability to scratch out runes in his arm. He made a little joke about it, and she forced an accompanying laugh, nto sure if this was really a laughing matter at all. "That's what I've always wanted. Cat claws!" she joked, though it was obvious that she was trying to ease back on the humour in this conversation, at least for the moment. "How did you get chosen to be a sorcerer, anyway? Is there some special quality about you?" the questions came a little more timidly than earlier, given the way his annoyanced seemed to have blossomed.
+**pinkgothic**:
+"No," he said, simply, shrugging mildly across a smile. "I literally won the lottery. As in, not the money lottery, and I guess it was more of a //raffle//, if we're taking our metaphors seriously, but Euryalia made a push to get kids interested in sorcery when I was in school, caught my interest, and I was stubborn enough to see the tough studies through to the end." He bobbed his head from side to side a little. "Not that I needed most of them. They make you study medicine, because that makes most people be less eager about carving up their own limbs to cast spells, mostly." Then he laughed, briefly. "I guess my special quality is that that didn't work on me, nor the other then-adults that ended up in the raffle pool. And then I won the raffle." Another light shrug. "But, really, anyone can do it. It's why they gatekeep it so hard."
+**Nymphetamine**:
+Listening with avid interest as he explained that it was a lottery, a raffle, she just nodded. It seemed that he had indeed won the raffle, and had gotten through all of the roadblocks that had been put up to discourage him. "Sounds like you had the perserverence, or just sheer stubbornness to become a sorcerer," she said with a laugh, not exactly a mirthful sound, but one that was friendly, at least, making a joke out of his hard work. Which didn't seem wise. Suddenly conflicted, Leila shook her head again and tried to apologize. "Sorry, not trying to make light of anything, just... it sounds as though they did everything they could to make it difficult. With the intention of weeding out those that didn't have the gumption to stay."
+**pinkgothic**:
+He nodded good-naturedly. "Yeah, that's pretty much how the process works - in any country, really."