"Sure, it'll be helpful to find out what we're about to go up against."

"Perfect! It'll also help me run some numbers and see what the room's capable of!"

Thank you, James, for saving her. She needed it. She does not want to get sucked into this nerd vortex, there would be no escape.

"Will it disturb any of your instruments or readings if I sit in a corner and try to catch up on two hundred and fifty years of magical progress and make illusions to myself?"

"Nope! Go ahead."

(And James and Rytlock stand on the fancy tiles in front of the consoles.)

"Excellent. Thank you very much for having me, have fun, I'm sure you will come up with brilliant and unprecedented theories of all kinds."

And then she very politely flees. Fleeee from the nerd vortex it will swallow her whole. She has books to read!

In the meantime: a holographic projection of James and Rytlock in a cubic room appears in the middle of the room. The three of them talk a bit more and then start the simulation.

Okay, so she distinctly remembers James switching weapons mid-battle and switching battle spells with them. She has no idea how this works, or how it would work. She knows more spells than she can comfortably have prepared to use in a combat situation—minor spells and enchantments like the weight lightening enchantment and contraception signet are easy, but spells that are up to breaking through enemy magical defenses are, magically speaking, expensive. Also rather complicated. They're finicky enough to set up that switching between available spells mid-combat sounds... distinctly unwise. Otherwise, she would have swapped her hex breaking spell for something less mean. So how do these people do it? Clearly it has something to do with weaponry, so she'll start there.

The books she acquired are all for beginners, of which she is distinctly not, but it's not like anyone's written a book aimed at people two and a half centuries out of date on magical theory, so she'll stomach the simple explanations that are probably going to feel at least a little bit condescending. She picks up the first book on mesmers and weaponry, and begins to read.

It's a very introductory book, so it covers the very basics. It's also quite deep, though, and goes into the theory.

Mesmer is a profession based around the Denial and Preservation schools of magic with minor traits in Aggression. The mesmer utilises illusion as their main tool, and also has the ability to manipulate space and time to their advantage. As such, it's a midrange profession that switches between melee and ranged combat with practised ease and battlefield control that leaves their opponents wondering where they actually are and what they are actually doing.

To fight, one needs weapons. As a scholar profession, mesmers use their weapons mostly to channel magic. The basic mesmer training includes training in greatswords, staves, scepters, swords, foci, pistols, and torches. Certain spells are attuned to weapons, and it's easier and more efficient to use them with those spells through those weapons. The intrinsic nature of weapons determines which spells stick best, and the end of this book contains a list of the most common spells to be found enchanted in each of the weapons mesmers can use.

The types of magic and their mesmer uses in each weapon type are:

• Greatsword: this two-handed weapon is best at skills that focus on a single foe, but also have side effects on nearby ones, with very high single-hit damage. Cleaving, slashing, spinning, blocking, knocking down, pushing, and bouncing are the sorts of abilities one will find associated with a greatsword. Mesmers use them to shoot energy beams at a target and nearby foes, creating illusionary greatswords that bounce between foes, sending waves of magical energy, and creating localised magical effects around themselves;
• Staff: the staff is a long-range two-handed weapon, best at area of effect magic, support, and crowd control. Cleaving, swiping, creating areas of damage, barriers, armour, and affecting groups of enemies are all things they're good at. Mesmers use staves to create energy projectiles that affect multiple enemies, armour themselves up, create magical storms, and strengthen their allies while debilitating their nearby enemies;
• Scepter: a medium-range one-handed weapon that's good at debilitating effects, typically but not always single-target. Single-target projectiles, bleeding, tormenting, and confusing are things often seen in magic associated with scepters. Mesmers use them to apply torment and confusion at a single target;
• Sword: it's a one-handed weapon, and it balances positioning and damage dealing. Parrying, evasion, blocking, slashing, and single-target slashing are typical abilities associated with swords. Mesmers use the sword to create evasive sorts of illusions, switching locations and using sneak attacks;
• Focus: foci are technically not weapons; they're enchanted objects of various kinds that typically have supportive and defensive magic associated, mostly used by scholar professions. Barriers, defensive bubbles, armour, and boon-stripping (for foes) and granting (for allies) are common spells associated with foci. Mesmers use them to create barriers and protective bubbles;
• Pistol: long-range single-target rapid-use weapons, pistols aren't often used by scholar professions for their lack of strong magical resonance. Mesmers' high enchantment ability makes them an exception, but only as a secondary weapon, which they use to debilitate foes with magical conditions and to create illusions that shoot illusionary bullets;
• Torch: torches cannot be used as a main weapon, because they're not magically resonant enough for spellcasting nor physically sturdy enough for direct combat. They focus on burning foes—either directly in melee or indirectly via burning-related magic—and mesmers use them to generate smoke for their illusions.

Vetareh takes notes in illusion as she skims, picking up important things and where she finds them so she can more easily find them later in case they turn out to be important. There's a lot to compare to what she knows of magical theory.

It's interesting that they say a mesmer needs weapons to fight, because actually, she doesn't. Her scepter certainly helps, without it she'd have a bit less punch to her spells, and she can use it to throw minor magical projectiles at people, but her spells are hers, not tied to a weapon. This sounds like they outsource them to enchanted weapons with spell... patterns on them. That's interesting, and clearly helps with flexibility on the battlefield, but she gets the impression from reading this that everyone's sort of... working from the same seven possible objects to carry around. That's, what—she does some quick illusionary math—ten possible spell load outs? Is that it, really? She double checks, because that just seems tragic—yes, two two-handed weapons, two primary weapons, and four off-hand. Ten.

No wonder everybody's been taken by surprise by her. She is accustomed to there being more than ten possible spell load outs. In fact, she has seventy-seven combat capable spells, not counting the now useless resurrection signet. Four of those are elite spells, of which she can only use one at a time. But the rest? She is entirely free to pick and choose what she does and doesn't want to bring. Just, well, she'd better be sure about those choices she made, because she can't possibly have them all ready to cast, since she doesn't get to switch on the fly. Clearly this system is more flexible, and she expects even when following spell patterns enchanted onto weapons that there's a bit of flexibility in the spells themselves, but. Wow. That's. She understands why they wouldn't want to be caught with the wrong spells for the job and unable to switch, but she can't help but feel that something has been lost, here.

The part about weapons only really being good for specific sorts of things sounds... odd, to her. She's not sure why that would be. It's all just enchanted matter with spells inscribed onto it anyway. It matters that it's well crafted and made from the materials that resonate in the right sort of way and enchanted well, but that's it. The shape is immaterial. There are some allowances for what materials can be arranged into what shapes practically, of course, but there should be a lot more room for creativity. Magic is not naturally this constrained. So what's going on?

... She hates wrapping right back around to echoes every five seconds, but, honestly, it's the only thing that makes sense. Are they finding it easier to copy things that have been done before, all stuck in a magical rut? Or perhaps it's hard enough to enchant weaponry to hold spell patterns that they're forced to follow things that have already been done to get anything powerful enough to use in combat? An artificing book would have a better answer to that one than this basic book on mesmers, she thinks. Not that she thought to buy one of those while she was shopping. She's done artificing before, she made her scepter (not that it's very good, she was midway through a better replacement when she fell into the Mists) and could probably pick up the modern version without too much trouble. Well. Probably some amount of trouble. But it'd be worth it, to not be stuck with the same ten combinations as everyone else.

Still. It would pay to know how the various weapon combinations work, and how they'd interface with her own spell selection. Perhaps she can pick up a couple weapons and see what happens. It'd be very nice to have her usual spell load out and the spell patterns the weapons have, but she suspects that if it were that easy, this book would not say that to fight, one needs weapons. Realistically, the best she can probably hope for is that it only requires her to sacrifice some of her space for spells to use the weapons as they were intended. At worst... well, she'd honestly rather be unique than be just another mesmer with the same ten combinations. She'd be constrained, but she'd be uniquely constrained, and unpredictability and the element of surprise have always been a mesmer's best weapons.

(Meanwhile James and Rytlock seem to be having a lot of fun having their virtual arses kicked by giant holographic lava bugs.)

Aw. That's cute. She's glad they're having fun. And they're probably also learning a lot.

Okay, so, she'd said she'd work to be less squishy, but she doesn't really have any obvious routes to doing that very quickly. Not by getting new magic, anyway. The fastest would be 'Go get some weapons, test them out and see what happens,' and that involves familiarizing herself with a whole new way of using magic. Creating a spell for it is the most obvious option—she did that for her own personalized shatter hex—but that'll take a while, and she doesn't see any clear routes to making herself safe very quickly that way. Her problem is that learning new spells and magic takes time, of which she doesn't really have.

So. How can she use the spells she has available to her currently to be less squishy? She's certainly got a lot of them, there's probably something she can figure out.

A span of time later, she... definitely has something. It's definitely something. Probably a monstrosity against nature that would horribly offend mesmers everywhere, herself included. There is no subtlety to this, this. Whatever this is. She has tossed out all ability to counter enemy casters in favor of A: not dying, and B: killing the other guys first. That's it. That's what this does. No hex removal, no backfire, only one hex. No illusions or subtlety or grace, just. Bash everyone that dares to oppose her with the biggest stick she has. She feels slightly unclean. On the bright side, she expects the boys will be very surprised.

"Do you mind if I try a round?" she asks, after her monstrosity has settled in properly. "I have a... thing I'd like to test out."

(The boys seem to be just finishing up bashing a...

....

...that sure looks like a giant monkey made of blocks.

And it looks to not be exactly an easy fight that's going on there.)

Taimi looks at her. "Oh, sure! Just wait for this one wave to finish."

"Sure, thank you," says Vetareh, slightly distracted by the giant monkey. That. What? What? ... Nevermind, doesn't matter. It's a simulation, they could make whatever they want.

Eventually they finish kicking the monkey's arse and Taimi says, "Hey guys, Vetareh wants to have a go."

"I'll let her play with Rytlock."

Rytlock snorts.

Vetareh snorts too, then: yep, onto the little tile. She will not be needing her scepter, and it wouldn't help at all anyway with what she's doing, so she leaves it where it is.

And then she finds herself in the cubic room. The walls are not transparent like they were from outside the hologram, and she can't see the lab anymore; just the inside of the room.

Rytlock eyes her lack of weapon and gives her another charr facial expression. "Think you can keep up? This isn't a walk in the park with the Commander."

"I have turned myself from a delicate rapier into a battering ram," she informs him, with utmost gravity. Then she shrugs and smiles wryly. "So, I guess we'll see."

Right, this needs a bit of setup. She casts an enchantment on herself called symbolic celerity; it is a mostly useless enchantment, except for how it makes signets more potent the faster they're drawn. This is about to be very relevant. Then, she takes a deep breath, and her stance changes and she channels magic into something called a mantra. Magic can hang onto a number of things, including a tune. With a simple and repetitive tune, the magic can be led through a cycle instead of dissipating early without something to hang onto. Usually it's better to just hang magic on an object, but there are benefits to magic swirling around her in a cycle, instead. It can do more complicated things, or be set up to pull resources from something normal enchantments don't know to watch for, and do something complicated with them. The one she begins humming is called the mantra of signets.

Her form wavers slightly, pulsing with each note change in her repetitive, simple tune. The notes become echoey, unearthly, and a little haunting, with magic hanging onto them and tugging at the sound.

She stands and patiently waits for their enemies to arrive, looking rather like some kind of ghost.

...that's creepy.

"So, how are we doing?" Rytlock asks.

"You still don't have the high score. That belongs to Cami, one of the Fire Islands raiding party leaders. She's super tough, though, sooo..."

"Another Asura in here? I thought you were keeping all this a secret."

"I had to let Cami in on it," Taimi says. "A) she's cool, don't worry. B) someone had to watch our backs while Moto and I got this thing up and running. And C) incoming!"

And that's when a very large crab made of lava shows up.

Vetareh feels sort of contractually obligated to stomp Cami's high score into the ground. It's only right and proper, after all, since she's twisted the definition of 'mesmer' until it could be argued that while she's doing this, she only very nominally counts as one. She feels she should get bragging rights, at the very least.

Spell casters are many things, but one of them is 'a vessel into which magic goes.' They collect and store magical energy from their surroundings, which they can then push out onto the world later to do magic. Most combat magic's done by directly releasing and manipulating magical energy, the limits and abilities of the magic energy type depending on the magical profession of the caster. Spells are patterns that one pushes out into the world, built from differently flavored building blocks.

So what happens if instead of personally gathering and releasing magical energy, a caster were to make a battery outside of themselves? If they were to make, say, an empty void in the shape of a spell, into which magic is directed, that can then be pushed forth onto the world? Why, then you'd get magic that is just magic, with no additional flavoring from the being that held it. Magic in its purest, rawest form. This is what happens when one uses a signet. The drawn symbol is the battery, the shape of the symbol tied to the impression of a spell, and then the whole thing gets shoved at whatever the intended target is. Additional nuance can be added with ordinary magic the caster releases, the unleashed power from the signet gently steered or twisted in just the right way to pull the magic just a little bit in the direction of the profession's strengths.

That is what she is going to be doing today. With an enchantment that strengthens the power of signets by how quickly they're drawn, humming a mantra that shields and heals her every time it can catch the spare energy from a drawn signet. She stands in the center of a swirling hurricane of magical power surrounded by a void of it, sucking in nearby energy and releasing it. Despite the power that implies, she is astonishingly fragile. Instead of physically fragile, she's magically fragile, her entire protections reliant on a hummed tune that could be interrupted, and her entire offensive capabilities reliant on a simple enchantment that someone else could dispel or shatter.

This is either going to go really great, or really badly, and there is approximately no in between.

With her index finger, she draws her first signet, appropriately named the signet of sorrow, and a wave of nearly-raw magical energy slams into the crab.