blood sweat tear [sunnydale] | Glowfic Constellation

kingsidecastle

"Well, tell me more about orders and we'll see."

imeanforever

"When there's a combination of people including at least one fairy and at least one party whose name is known to the other or who has, without already having vassalized the other, eaten food the other has a claim on, and the claim stuck which it may or may not do according to various factors, then there is a master and a vassal. Mutual vassalization is possible.

"Orders which are delivered by a master to their vassal and are possible to carry out, are; exact wording matters but so does the vassal's sincere interpretation of the sentence; most recent orders take precedence regardless of source and ordering someone to ignore an order does not work but going deaf does; orders may be enforced or not as a toggle, which can't be directly observed but I don't have to watch my mouth around the vampires lest I accidentally utter an imperative; forgetting a name ends a mastery based thereupon and it seems likely that an unused food claim can wear off but a used one is permanent.

"If you forget an order which does not require cognitive work of any kind to complete you obey it anyway but if you would need to know what it was to obey it you will be stuck in a loop trying to remember; orders may compel attention to or thought on subjects but cannot except by displacement forbid thoughts about other subjects nor affect emotions, memories, etcetera; and, smallest mercy, someone who is under more than the most trivial of orders cannot have their underlying personality learned well enough to supplement that gap with mental sorcery."

kingsidecastle

"And orders have to be delivered verbally? Not through writing or sign language or, I don't know, telepathy...?"

imeanforever

"Telepathy would probably work. Writing only works if you are watching the master write it out; a written note you read any later than as it's written won't work. Sign language presumably works."

Sherlock Holmes

eversomuchfun

"Is it possible to construct a ward that prevents someone from ever hearing or seeing an enforced order...? Or even just introduces a delay?"

kingsidecastle

"Good question. I can't think of any reason it wouldn't work in principle... would a delay fulfill the purpose, do you know?"

imeanforever

"Probably. I don't know if it would apply to spoken orders or not."

kingsidecastle

"That seems like the sort of thing that could potentially be tested."

imeanforever

Nod.

kingsidecastle

"But unless you want to test all of these things tonight, I think I'd like some time to go home and plan spells," she says. "Hmm... can you show me what mapping harmonics looks like?"

imeanforever

"Like this," says Promise, making a grid of lights, "over and over again through the entire space I want to map. With smaller spacing, if it's a particularly tangly area." She blinks at her grid of lights. "...The harmonics are less drunk here than in the other mortal-world place I mapped. I wonder how much that varies."

kingsidecastle

"What qualifies harmonics as 'drunk'...?"

imeanforever

"There are... not overwhelmingly regular patterns in Fairyland harmonics, but there are sorts of things they do, and the other place I mapped they were doing sorts of things that they do not do, instead. This looks -" She makes another grid. "Almost normal for Fairyland."

kingsidecastle

"Hmm. I did just do a spell focused pretty heavily on a resident of Fairyland," says Castle. "How far does the normalcy extend?"

imeanforever

Promise makes more grids, fluttering around the room.

Sherlock Holmes

eversomuchfun

"I am deeply curious about what information these little lights are actually giving you," says Tea.

imeanforever

"I'm trying to make them all the same starting from the assumption that the harmonics are flat, which they never are, and I'm underpowering the spell enough that they don't just turn up in the exact intensity I have in mind the way they would if I were using them for illumination. So when the harmonics are light-friendly, they're bright and steady, and when they're not, the positions of the lights that are dim or wobbly or both and how much of each they are tells me what the harmonics are relative to the bright steady ones that best approximate the level of my 'flat' assumption."

Sherlock Holmes

eversomuchfun

"...hmm," he says. "And what patterns are you detecting so far? I almost think I'm seeing something that corresponds to the exact shape and position of your imaginary metaphorical tree, but I'm not familiar enough with the medium to know if I'm picking up on a real pattern or just seeing faces in the figurative clouds."

imeanforever

"I don't have a map of my tree. I - learned to make maps after I left it and I haven't made one since going back. But I can see if there's something in the space which looks like a coherent pattern of its own."

Grid grid grid. She's not pausing to write down everything, so it goes faster.

The edges of the room are drunk in a normal local fashion; the space around the spell diagram on the floor has had its drunkenness incompletely reordered into somewhat distorted geometric patterns reflecting the spell layout; and where her imaginary tree stood, a coherent and very Fairyland-like pattern overlays the fading remnants of baseline intoxication and spell-geometry.

imeanforever