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Ranara and her little daughter Azabel move to Urtho's Tower when the latter can say six words ("up", "mama", "milk", "no", "now", and "please") and hasn't started to walk yet. Ranara sets up to teach little children to read, ones who don't have evident Gifts yet - Ranara herself has Mindspeech, is all, with about a classroom's worth of range. Azabel sits in on classes, worn on her mother's back or later plopped in a corner with toys or, when she's only four, plopped in a corner with a book, younger than the other kids in the class. When Azabel has in fact sat through her mother's curriculum she is turned somewhat loose, to walk very carefully up and down and around the Tower, exploring.
smol bell in urtho's tower
anticipating_night
:I'm not counting on that, I don't actually need her help with anything! I just don't see a particular reason to expect her to be hostile:
small-and-alone
:...I think for me, I assume that the default is people - or not-people, like gods - being hostile...:
anticipating_night
:I mean, you don't have to trust it but it seems like you might spend a lot of energy on worrying you can't turn into planning?:
small-and-alone
:...I think there might be a skill of - worrying about things only in productive ways? And not bothering when it doesn't help with planning? I'm trying to work on that right now:
small-and-alone
:I think so! ...Anyway I guess my plan is still to research other temples we can visit, and then we can divide that up? And - maybe we can research the spirit world on our own, in case we can figure out how to go there without Summerhawk's help?:
anticipating_night
:It might be dangerous, since the Moonpaths needed inventing for safety reasons...:
small-and-alone
:It would probably be dangerous. I'd want to wait and see if any of the other temples also go there and are willing to show us. But if they're not, well, it still seems important to understand? Especially if that's where all the spirits of dead people are, and they...still exist...:
anticipating_night
:...yeah: It seems very hard to calculate the value of taking an unknown risk (unescorted spirit jaunts) in pursuit of an unknown amount of information (regarding dead people in their millions) in order to pursue an unknown feasibility of goal (having them not be dead, somehow) but it's at least worth not dismissing out of hand.
small-and-alone
:And I read through the whole book Summerhawk lent us, so we know something about what to look out for. I bet there's more in Urtho's library, too, now that I know what keywords to dig around for. We'd want to be smart about it, obviously - take our time preparing, maybe make special protective artifacts for it if we can figure out what we need to be protected against...:
small-and-alone
:Sounds good: Ma'ar glances over at her. :I'm - glad we can both work on this together:
small-and-alone
Nod.
They've reached the main courtyard outside the entrance to the Tower, and Ma'ar stops. "- I'd better go help Aala with her homework. I can go to the library tomorrow. Want to pick a time when we can talk about this again...?"
small-and-alone
"- Tomorrow? I've got combat practice in the afternoon, could you do just before dinner, or maybe after it?"
small-and-alone
"I'll see what I can find in the library before then." And Ma'ar nods to her and dashes off into the Tower.
anticipating_night
After dinner the next day she goes to the library; if she doesn't spot Ma'ar immediately she'll start skimming the stacks looking for spirit world stuff.
Ma'ar is not immediately apparent. Neither are books about the spirit world; there doesn't seem to be a category for it, so she needs to guess at which related categories to check, and the first book she finds, under 'Theoretical Magic: Extraplanar', is...very theoretical and clearly written by someone who had not, personally, ever visited the spirit world.
small-and-alone
Ma'ar shows up shortly later. :Sorry I'm late! Finding anything? I spent candlemarks looking last night but maybe you'll have found something I missed...:
small-and-alone
:Ooh, I should've looked under extraplanar theory, that's smart. Even if it's not useful by itself, maybe we can combine different books to get a picture:
Ma'ar joins her, slinging down his bookbag and reaching into it. :I found this book in the practical section on extraplanar work. It's mostly about the elemental planes, and summonings, but it has actual instructions on projecting your mind to other planes in general. And on safety. It sounds like the spirit world is actually safer than, say, the elemental plane of Fire, so probably the precautions they suggest would be enough?: