kinds of elf | Glowfic Constellation

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Generated: Jul 17, 2021 5:35 AM

Post last updated: Oct 09, 2013 5:47 PM

kinds of elf

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

It's a quiet hour at Milliways; the colliding galaxies outside the observation window swirl slowly as a soft, sad song plays through the bar from nowhere. A waitrat is sweeping under the tables, and although a few patrons are sitting in a corner carrying a quiet conversation, there's only one person at the bar: an anxious-looking elf wearing bright red and gold armor. There's a sheathed sword strapped to her belt, and a shield propped up against the bottom of her stool.

"A bottle of Lagrave Stout, please," she says tentatively. The bottle appears in front of her, and she startles back. Then she takes it, sips, and looks impressed.

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

This door was supposed to lead to the hall closet with the cleaning supplies, but Bella doesn't see any good way to mop up spilled soup from the kitchen floor. "Extraplanar studies students," she mutters, stomping into the bar in her nice useful boots. If she takes notes on this place she can probably get extra credit somewhere for it. She goes up to the bar, and notes the lack of bartender, and notes the presence of a new drink in that... person's... hand over there. "Where'd the bartender go?" she asks said person. "Is there one?"

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

Tinuben tenses when she hears the human's voice, but forces herself to relax rather than going for her sword. Attacking enemy races has a singularly bad track record in this place. The human seems neutral enough for now, anyway.

"I was told that the bar itself is the bartender. I requested a drink while sitting here, and the drink appeared." Pause. "I was also told that the first drink is free, which was very good to hear. You, however, seem unsurprised by this place."

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"I wasn't expecting the place," says Bella. "It's just the sort of thing that one might imagine will happen occasionally around wizarding students, interplanar transit. At least it's not on fire in here." She glances out the window. "Indoors, at any rate." She peers back at the bar, at the drink, and then touches her fingers to her temple, and receives a cherry milkshake with a straw. She sips it.

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

Egh. A wizard. A human wizard.

Tinuben has had a long time to practice not being jealous of magic-users; she practices some more.

She takes a drink from her stout. "While I cannot reasonably describe the wizards from my homeland as "restrained", much of what I see here is beyond the abilities of an archmage. You must be from a land far from mine."

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"I - what? I'm not a wizard. I'm a subtle artist. But far, yeah, I should say so, I'm not even sure what race you are."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"I'm a blood elf," Tinuben says shortly. She's willing to give the gory history lesson - nothing better to do - but not unprompted.

"I've never heard of a subtle artist before. Is your mental speech elemental magic? Holy?"

The human could be some kind of specialized priest - they do have a few psychic abilities - but Tinuben's starting to guess that "subtle artistry" is a class unto itself, and she wants to learn more from the reference points she has. (After all, the schools of magic are universal, right? ...Right?)

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"I haven't heard of that kind of elf," says Bella, giving her another look. "I guess you do look sort of elvish. Technically subtle artistry isn't magic at all; certainly it isn't elemental or divine - or arcane, if you were about to ask."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"I would be exceedingly surprised to meet an arcanist who balked at being called a wizard."

Tinuben smiles a little.

"Although here, perhaps it would be best to expect surprises. Either you are wrong about it not being magic, or your subtle artistry defies everything I have learned about the universe in one hundred years."

She's shocked, but not too shocked to consider the possibility seriously. When she stepped through that damn door, her fighting abilities fell from her like water. It was impossible - it should have been impossible.

'Everything I know is wrong' is, for the first time in her life, pulling even with 'Humans are wrong about everything' as a theory.

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"Well, magic detection spells don't register it. I don't know all the thaumobabble about the details, but subtle artistry is classified as its own thing."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

Tinuben shrugs. "I'll take your word for that."

"Blood elves are descended from the high elves, who were exiled from Kalimdor to the Eastern Kingdoms and founded Quel'Thalas there. The first great arcanists. We taught arcane magic to the humans." She deliberately mentions the major continents, to see if the human recognizes them.

Sort of elvish. Either this human comes from some alternate timeline with strange-looking elves, or she thinks of night elves as default elves. Annoying.

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"Yeah, you must be from another plane altogether," Bella concludes.

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

None of the alternate planes Tinuben knows of are hospitable to mortals, but she suspects that she and the human might not mean the same thing when they say 'plane'.

"You can speak with your mind. Perhaps if you asked the bar, it would tell you."

Tinuben finishes her beer and sets the empty bottle back on the bar, where it promptly vanishes. She opens a pouch on her belt, pulling out a silver coin, and lays that on the bar too. "May I have one of what she is drinking, and a buttered slice of bread?"

The coin disappears; the named items appear, and a few copper pieces clatter onto the bar after them. "Thank you."

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"The bar is a she," says Bella absently, touching her temple again. After a moment she drops her hand. "Apparently it's even more distance than planes. I don't have another word handy for it, but the difference between where I came from and where you came from is another step up, like going from my school into Enwich versus going from my school to some energy plane."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"Enwich is a country?"

Tinuben tilts her head. She has little reason to trust that this person isn't lying about what the bar says, but it's easiest for now to act as though it's true.

"What is your name?"

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"Enwich is a city. I'm Bella. You?"

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"Tinuben Dawnsinger. Will you please ask the bar how I can get back home, and how to find this place again? I came in through one of the doors, but it vanished behind me."

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"Yeah, sure..."

Bella thinks at the bar for a bit.

And then she says, "The bar doesn't control the door or have a direct line of communication to whatever does. She doesn't know if or when it'll let you out again."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"Thank you."

This time she doesn't know if she believes the Bar or not, but again, it would not be helpful to complain of this.

She eats her bread, looking pensive, and then sips the milkshake.

"...This is perhaps the sweetest thing I have ever tasted, and I am from a culture famed for its excessive decadence. What is it?"

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"Cherry milkshake. Fruit and milk and cream and sugar, pretty much."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"My goodness."

She sips again, cautiously, and takes a moment afterwards to compose herself.

"I am curious about your - world. What else can the subtle arts do, besides speak to inanimate minds? Why are you near students of wizardry, if you are not a wizard? What is your country like?"

Tinuben is not a No Questions Elf.

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

This continuity of this Bella has never met a No Questions Elf!

"We have a variety of powers with the mind - I'm learning to use mine for therapy. Some of us can set things on fire - I can't do that - and some of us have telekinesis - I can do that a little bit. My school teaches all kinds of subjects; arcana and subtle arts probably make up less than a quarter of the class offerings. My country is a large well-developed mostly-human Imperium and it's unwise to express a significant fraction of possible opinions about it."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"Can some subtle artists throw fireballs, or encourage fire to burn hotter?"

Tinuben has worked hard to not be curious about magic - thinking about magic makes it much harder to not use it. But this isn't magic, it's subtle arts. And if it isn't addictive or fel-powered, it sounds like the most interesting thing she's heard of this century.

"And is it unsafe to express such opinions even here? I know of no power in my world that takes such extensive interest in what mortals say."

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"Fireballs maybe, but I haven't met anybody who can, it'd require really advanced pyrokinesis... heating it up, probably. I don't know if it's unsafe to express opinions here, but I managed to get here, so so could anyone who cared what I had to say, potentially. Mortals are the principal product in the Imperium, so insofar as it cares who's saying what about politics, it has to care about the mortal set."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"It seems like your government puts fewer resources into the study of the subtle arts than it does into spying on its citizens. That's... a surprising set of priorities."

Silvermoon City is the most totalitarian government Azeroth has seen, and it limits itself to ostentatiously arresting vocal dissenters. A society rich enough to silence citizens who are currently in a separate plane... should, Tinuben thinks, be able to teach its students more about subtle artistry than "some subtle artists can probably heat up fire." Maybe there's some obscure economic effect in play.

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"Oh, plenty of people study the subtle arts, too, just different ones for the most part - and you can only study things like that so much. Anyway, I don't know I'm being listened to, I just don't have a good reason to chance it."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"You can only study things like that so much? Why?"

You can say a number of bad things for Tinuben's universe, but it is, when you get down to the brass tacks, consistent.

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"Trying to hold the universe still and interrogate it about its underthings never goes very well for the would-be interrogators. Best case scenario, their results don't hold. That sort of thing only works in fantasy."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

Tinuben's upbringing tells her, A superstitious human. What more did you expect?

Her judgement isn't so sure, though. Bella seems bright. When she talks about fantasy, she doesn't act like she's rationalizing a lack of knowledge. So Tinuben just says, "To clarify: where I come from, an individual who casts the same spell at the same thing will always get the same range of results, until they gain skill."

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"You can usually do that at home," says Bella slowly. "If you don't get cocky. I can expect my boots to go on working, and my subtle arts to do the same general range of things on the same subjects, and people who sell magical products are confident enough in them to make guarantees and pay off the people who are disappointed. But around some things - gods or dragons or fey mostly - all bets are off, and if you try to analyze the patterns of the world - force them into awkward little corner cases, try them under a few sets of conditions and think you know what there is to know about what makes them juke this way or that - then, well, the universe doesn't like being stared at, it might squish you, or at best it'll quit behaving the way you expect when it gets bored of it."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"I see." Tinuben decides emphatically not to visit Bella's world.

"In my home, there are fundamental rules of reality that can be known and used creatively - though few people bother, due to lack of rigor or imagination. The closest thing we have ever had to a universal power were the Old Gods, and they were defeated by the Titans a long time ago."

Tinuben has had extensive issues with Azeroth and its lack of optimization: her chief complaint has been rulers who call on the most powerful heroes to serve as city guards, leaving under-geared adventurers like herself to fight threats the guards could easily defeat. But that was an issue of terrible leadership, not a law of physics against improvement. She's making slow progress convincing Lor'Themar Theron that Silvermoon doesn't need thirty guards at the gates at all times.

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"So you live in a science fantasy world," snorts Bella. "That must be nice."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"We don't use that advantage very effectively. If everyone knew that the alternative was being at the whim of universal forces beyond comprehension, I expect we would be far more appreciative."

She sips her drink some more.

"For example, we do not have cherry milkshakes." Tinuben is going to correct this when she gets back home.

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

Bella laughs. "Well, I may have to constantly check my hubristic ambitions and stifle my curiosity so I don't wind up cursed, entrapped, dead, or otherwise inconvenienced, but yeah, at least we have cherry milkshakes."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"I would offer to let you through the door to Azeroth, when it appears, but 'Trapped in another plane, killed by overeager elvish guards, or eaten by Scourge' probably doesn't appeal either."

"If you are comfortable answering - how would you exercise your hubristic ambitions on Azeroth, if you lived there?"

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"I have parents and friends and three years of school to go, yeah, not that keen to be trapped in another plane where I might be eaten regardless of the friendliness of the fabric of reality... I don't know much about the place besides the fact that it doesn't smite people for experimenting on it, so I don't know what I'd do, exactly. Find out where I could apply leverage. Improve - things. Whatever things were around that I could reach."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

"The people on Azeroth who want to improve things tend to become adventurers, and fight threats to the cities with which they are allied. And, occasionally, threats to the world. Most of our problems have so far been solved by young people with altruistic or mercantile attentions, a poor grasp of their own mortality, and the ability to kill dangerous creatures."

"Goblin and gnome engineers probably have the easiest technology to leverage, but neither species has interest in building safe, reliable machines - they seek innovation rather than optimization. Humans or elves could probably do much better."

Tinuben hadn't actually thought of taking up engineering before; the framework she had worked within was 'fight enemies with addictive magic, or fight enemies with nifty swords.' Bombs were at least as nifty as swords, and safer if built correctly.

"Relatedly, my weapons don't work correctly here. I'd be interested to know whether they work in yours, but that's the sort of test that would 'at best fail', yes?"

Isabella Mariel Swan Ψ

subtly_artistic

Alicorn

"I'm not a warrior," snorts Bella. "Machines, maybe. As for taking one of your weapons home with me to test - yeah, not something I'd want to try."

Tinuben

sun_guided

XiBeta

Tinuben nods, and finishes her drink.

"May good luck go with you," she says to Bella after a pause, then goes into the bar's library.