Deskyl and DZ in Azerosa
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It's mostly nonfiction - books on magic and books of laws, biographies of historical figures, a surprising amount of maps and schematics - but only mostly.  There are books for entertainment purposes, even if they're not the main reason this room exists.  People would get terribly bored, otherwise, and the Duchess knows better than to invite inevitable chaos.

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She gives a brief tour of expected points of interest - magic, maps, she points out a codex of the laws of Villarosa - and points out the fiction 'wing' mostly as an afterthought.

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Sith are traditionally not so much above the law as on a different plane of existence entirely, but if Alicia seriously thinks she can singlehandedly overpower an entire compound of them that may not hold true here. It's up to Deskyl how to approach the situation, of course, but DZ will start with the law codex to cover the cases where she has questions about it.

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Villarosan common law is reasonably normal, it seems - thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal - notable in that it covers theft of one's body from someone who is apparently assumed to be alive enough to want it back - thou shalt not pervert the mechanisms of choice - bribery, blackmail, mind control, election interference, false advertising - thou shalt not corrupt or contaminate the harvest, thou shalt not germinate demons without a permit...

There's more stuff that binds nobles, but Deskyl isn't one.

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She's likely to want to know anyway, so that she can play the part or conspicuously decline to, and so that she can recognize when others are doing so. DZ reads on.

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It's mostly anti-corruption law, and certain titles with Responsibilities Attached that the crown issues directly, e.g. the Duchy of Thorn.

Which is completely irrelevant to being foreign nobles or Not being foreign nobles.

There's a brief mention of appropriate forms of address?  It's in the section of the book prefaced with someone spending a page saying "the law cannot command respect, nor should it".

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Books written for people contain all kinds of things that are relevant to people and not to droids, obviously. Addressing people correctly is certainly relevant to her, if it's a short section and not just a passing mention.

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Barons - the smallest unit of administration, and frankly often a sinecure given their limited rights and responsibilities, should none be delegated from the Count or - don't have any fancy titles, though many barons are knights.

Counts are 'their Lordship'; a Marquis is a special case of a Count and takes the same title.

A Duke is 'their Grace'; the reigning monarch is the only one referred to as 'their Royal Highness', but their direct lineage, their chosen heir (should they choose one outside their lineage, which is a thing they can do), and their consort(s) are 'their Highness' as well.

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That seems simple enough.

With that taken care of: Magic.

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Magic.  Yes.  There are definitely lots of books about magic that the author is not frantically scrambling to make up as they go.

...They're often surprisingly short books, all things considered.  This is because each book is generally one unique spell, with a large block of pontificating about the meaning of its instructions afterwards.  The more daring authors even include instructions for a couple variants on the original spell's theme.

Some poor cursed helpful soul has compiled a dictionary of spell components, listing definitions by author.  There are quite a few copies of this one.

And that's just the section on arcane magic.  There are, depending on how you count the various flavors of elementalism, between eight and twenty-two kinds of magic.  The section on chaos magic is more of a 'why you shouldn't do chaos magic' polemic, though - it's full of 'case studies', and doesn't discuss casting anything whatsoever.

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Conveniently for her, DZ is here to read the entire magic section and not to form opinions on the quality of the local academic tradition. She does pay particular attention to anything about order, spirit, and light, though.

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(If anything, the section on chaos is a bit too pointed to be a matter of the quality of academic traditions.)

There are a few things that stand out:

  1. Spells across the same wizard's development history do not always have consistent meanings for less-frequent symbols.
  2. The one introductory text to the Light that is not published by a religious order - the only one with the Villarosan Royal Academy's publishing mark - is quite insistent that it is not faith in the Light (which most faiths evidently disagree with them upon) or correct performance of ritual (most agree that ritual is only useful as a focusing aid) but conviction in one's self that allows one to 'stare into the Sun and snuff it out' - or rather, the author notes, 'tear oneself free from the siren song of unity with everything - for it is true that those who surrender themselves to the Light become one with everything, but they do so by abandoning themselves.'. The Knights of the Order of the Sunset, the official paladin order of Villarosa, which it should be noted is only named thus by complete and utter coincidence because it was named that long before Deskyl arrived here, spend the back half of their book on what are essentially grounding exercises for the benefit of the spotter they heavily recommend be present at all times when practicing with the Light.
  3. Everything has a spirit. It's a function of reality. Not everything has a coherent spirit, one that has - putting it loosely, boundaries - and indeed having a coherent spirit is considered an indisputable sign of sapience. The questions of whether that means that the planet has a spirit, or that elementals, which arise from fluctuations of energy causing both a sufficient convolution of the natural binding energies and a sufficient density of power to maintain that convolution, are meaningfully spirits 'of' their source medium, are, according to the relevant texts, matters of open debate.
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She comes away from her reading confident that Deskyl will be fine working with Light magic once she's recovered enough to do complicated mental tasks, and agnostic on the question of whether the local definition of sapience is relevant to her or just fails to capture the details of a situation the people of this world have never seen before. Even if it's the former, sapience and personhood aren't necessarily the same thing.

She'll pick out a book of poetry to read, last, and then head back to Deskyl.

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There is a message from Alicia waiting on the comm -

I should have at least one of your chargers done by tomorrow, DZ - do you want me to bring it over when it's done, or I could leave it with - probably the kitchen staff, because I'm guessing you're going to get at least one meal for Deskyl sometime tomorrow - or would you prefer to just come get it yourself?

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The kitchen staff probably prefer not to be given unrelated tasks, but

Either of receiving it here or picking it up from you is fine. Master Deskyl would prefer the magic lessons take place here if I'm going to be casting anything, even if she's not awake for them, if that affects your decision.

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It's not as outside their remit as it might seem at first glance, but yeah, she didn't really want to do that one either.

I'll bring it down and we can have a lesson then, perhaps?

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Yes ma'am, whenever it's convenient to your schedule.

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Alright.  See you tomorrow, then.  I need to get some sleep.

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And so evening passes, and morning follows.

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The problem of ferromagnetism does not elude her conjurations like she had expected - once she remembers that it's in the alignment of the microcrystals, like she vaguely suspected, she can pin that down in her conjurations.  She might have to run the conjuration like a 3D printer, this way, rather than the normal sort of - infilling-outfilling of Void/Light interactions - but it'll certainly work.  And if she's printing stuff anyway, she can assemble the parts in place...

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No performing permanent conjurations in your room, Alicia.  You know they fail explosively.

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...Argh, fine, if she must.

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...It's probably better she use one of the basement ritual setups, anyway, if that's an option.  Not having to hold everything in place herself seems kind of necessary when there's this much of it, and even if she can build a framework from scratch, she doesn't really want to.

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...As much as she should be, but isn't, surprised that Alicia knows those exist, she doesn't do permanent conjurations down there.  Underground is the worst place to have unexpected explosions.

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...Though if the complaint would be ameliorated by not doing it alone, she has a bit of time free right now.  Or perhaps Alicia would like to get to know the magecraft tutor she's made available?

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