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It is a lovely Saturday morning. Feathered children are watching cartoons; furred adults are eating brunch; scaled teenagers - one scaled teenager in particular, actually - is arguing with the proprietor of a magic shop.
"How did these items get made if there's no way to learn magic? Are the magicians homeschooling their children and not writing any books? How did you learn?"
"Half this stuff is antiques," says the shopkeep. "Look, asking me a dozen times isn't gonna make the answer more to your liking. I don't have Hogwarts in the basement, deal with it."
"But where do you get the stuff that isn't antique - who made the Avalon itself? - isn't anybody panicking about the medallion supply? -"
"Kid, nobody knows how to make medallions."
"But some people apparently know how to make luck charms and protection amulets!"
"I'm not going to give out my suppliers' personal information. I wouldn't do it even if you weren't annoying."
"There have to be books -"
"Does this look like a library to you?"
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maybeso
maybeso
"Maybe. There were some rune meanings that seemed like they could have been gesturing in that direction. What language are you planning to cast in?"
asteptotheright
"Probably English. My native language is actually Polish and I'm not as fluent in any other languages as I am in those two."
maybeso
"Oh, lucky you, I'm going to have to make do with high school French. If my grandma had lived longer she might have taught me Japanese, but no dice."
maybeso
"Yeah. It should be okay, though, my impression hasn't been that fluency per se is terribly important and if we're doing it right we won't need to invent incantations on the spot, just say them without stuttering. Oh, for the spreadsheet, I couldn't type ninety eight percent of the runes I got through so they're all page number in the dictionary and letter - first one is 6-A since there's the front matter in pages one through five, and on from there."
asteptotheright
"Fixing that seems like a worthwhile project at some point. Even if it turns out printed runes don't work, if you printed a sheet with runes printed on it in grey, tracing over them would probably be easier than drawing them from scratch."
maybeso
"Or a stencil," May agrees. "But if copies do work I'm just even more disappointed in the pathetic existing magical community."
maybeso
"Even if we have to write every one out by hand we can still eventually make custom objects and carry around cases of scrolls. I'm excited."
asteptotheright
"My sister and her...friend...weren't interested in learning a dictionary full of runes and an extremely complicated percentile system, but I imagine they'd be willing to scribe scrolls for a commission."
maybeso
"Should be easy enough for people to do without knowing all the underlying principles. I'd want to check them over, of course."
asteptotheright
"Of course. Stencils or greysheets or what have you should render mistakes rare, but given the warnings..." he grimaces at the book.
asteptotheright
...
"I wonder if it's possible to coax the system into rendering that irrelevant," he remarks thoughtfully. "Given the fearmongering literature that exists on immortality, you wouldn't necessarily expect everyone to try or anyone who succeeded to publicize it."
"I wonder if it's possible to coax the system into rendering that irrelevant," he remarks thoughtfully. "Given the fearmongering literature that exists on immortality, you wouldn't necessarily expect everyone to try or anyone who succeeded to publicize it."
asteptotheright
"Exactly. I mean, I wasn't exactly bored before, there's all kinds of things in the world to occupy one's time with if you know what you're doing, but this--" He breaks off, grinning. "Reading about magic can't compare to having it at your fingertips."
maybeso
"I for one intend to start a magic school and use its students as cheap scribing labor."
asteptotheright
"...That's a great idea. I mean, starting a magic school is obvious, it needs to be done, but that's also a good solution to the labor bottleneck."
maybeso
May grins, and opens the textbook.
It can matter what you scribe your inscriptions on and with. Not, usually, because the material changes the spell, but because it can throw off your runes if you carve them in jello or drizzle them in mustard. They need to have straight lines and good curves. Standard rune construction involves a compass and straightedge; it is permissible to use a protractor; final designs should all be in a single material to allow the magic to ignore compass markings and stray pencil smudges; you should be sure your pen does not drip or jitter, and that it won't tear the paper (this can have unpredictable and therefore sometimes fatal results). If drawing on the ground it is advisable to use larger runes so that small irregularities make up a smaller fraction of each symbol.
It can matter what you scribe your inscriptions on and with. Not, usually, because the material changes the spell, but because it can throw off your runes if you carve them in jello or drizzle them in mustard. They need to have straight lines and good curves. Standard rune construction involves a compass and straightedge; it is permissible to use a protractor; final designs should all be in a single material to allow the magic to ignore compass markings and stray pencil smudges; you should be sure your pen does not drip or jitter, and that it won't tear the paper (this can have unpredictable and therefore sometimes fatal results). If drawing on the ground it is advisable to use larger runes so that small irregularities make up a smaller fraction of each symbol.