Interesting that she can get the lightstone to respond somewhat consistently, even if it's only a slight response. She's trying for the mana crystal, though - if the obvious kind of power source doesn't work, maybe a poem more abstractly about power will?

Out of the night that covers me,
      Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
      I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
      Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
      How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
      I am the captain of my soul.

[source]

That doesn't move the lightstone at all. It's maybe a little like it's pushing at something - but something very orthogonal to either sort of magic.

Allegra will let her get on with it for a little while longer, then ask, "Anything interesting?"

"The lightstone lit up a bit again when I thought about more lines about sunlight, ma'am - not very brightly, I'm not sure you'd be able to see the difference in it - and the last poem I tried seemed to be doing something unrelated to the mana crystal or the lightstone, I don't know what."

"What was the poem about? Maybe put down the mana crystal and recite it out loud, if you don't have a power source you're unlikely to have anything too problematic happen."

"Yes ma'am." She does so, putting much more emotion into it than her usual demeanor would suggest she's capable of.

Allegra seems noticeably impressed, or possibly perturbed, and takes a moment to collect herself.

"So, uh, one of the other kinds of magic - although most people wouldn't call it that - is... aura-making. We call it different things depending on what the aura is on, anointing for people, consecration for places, hallowing for items.

Generally you get into the right state of mind for it through a plant derived substance, liao, that is refined from vinum, a kind of vine sap. I'm not sure if that would work on you at all if you don't eat food; it can be applied to the skin or inhaled as well, but those don't seem to work quite normally with you either. It's possible that putting the _target_ in the state of mind might work, though.

This is a religious ceremony, to be clear. But it's not - totally necessary for the creation of auras. Sufficiently deeply felt emotion, expressed strongly enough, can cause - spontaneous auras. Those are also know as - miracles.

You're not really near generating a spontaneous aura with that poem, but it is definitely aligned in the right direction; if it was possible to dose you with liao and have you do that, I'm pretty sure what you'd get is a Courage aura."

"It's not possible to drug droids, ma'am, but it's possible to cause similar effects in other ways; I would want to discuss it with Master Deskyl first, of course. Can you tell me more about the religious implications, please?"

Allegra seems quite animated about this topic, although also a bit self-deprecating in places.

"So. Our religion is fundamentally based around reincarnation. When a human dies here, our soul goes on to the Labyrinth - a place adjacent to normal reality - and attempts to find its way back to the real world and be reborn.

There's a whole other thing for orcs, but I'm not going into that right now because it's complicated, and... political, and not really as settled as the rest of it.

The - basic human tendencies - that help you navigate the Labyrinth are what we call the Virtues. Courage, Wisdom, Prosperity, Pride, Vigilance, it's traditional for me to now forget the ones I haven't done, Loyalty, did I say Wisdom already..." she counts on her fingers for a moment, "oh yeah, Ambition.

There are also False Virtues - things like Fear, Hatred, Vengeance - which _work_ like virtues - they produce auras and so on - but don't help you navigate the Labyrinth.

If you get good enough at understanding the Labyrinth, eventually you transcend the cycle, possibly get assumed bodily into the Labyrinth rather than having to die the normal way, and pass beyond it. That is explicitly something that people who have not got that far can't understand, so it's a bit short on details, but there are a bunch of Signs to look for which basically boil down to 'being super Virtuous and spreading the True Virtues'.

Someone who is recognised to have a few of those signs is an Exemplar, someone who had all of them and we don't expect back is a Paragon.

Priests - that's basically anyone with a bit of training, I can do it - can use liao to make virtue auras. Paragons don't need the liao - they can deliberately induce the requisite mental state. People in extreme situations sometimes spontaneously generate auras too - not always in a good way, the Druj love torturing people until they put up fear and despair auras for them.

We haven't encountered non-humans who can successfully use liao, it makes orcs throw up, and they don't seem to spontaneously generate auras either - although there are one or two that are claimed to be orc-generated, so that might just be political nonsense.

If you can repeatably generate auras at all, you're ahead of any other non-human we've encountered, and if you can do it without liao then everyone is liable to get _really_ excitable and argue a lot over whether you could be a Paragon, whether you 'cheated' somehow, and whether you can replicate that 'cheating' so everyone can ascend faster..."

"Yes ma'am. The method I have in mind won't work for humans, it requires capabilities you don't have, and it's more like taking liao than like willing myself into the right mental state."

"I suspect the Synod will still argue about it for seasons. I'm not sure I can _describe_ the mental state, but maybe Deskyl can sense it?

In any case - if you want to channel magic rather than virtue, you need to look more at the fundamental building blocks of the _universe_ than of _people_. That's what the standard metaphors are designed to describe, but they're all very different, so it's likely your own system will work well enough - if it has the right kind of concept. The three basic operations of magic are detection, opening, and bonding; we don't have a portal to open on hand, and I'd rather keep my magic item attached to me, which is why we're looking at detection first. Bonding can also bond people together as well as people and items, but we only know how to do that through the nation bond - which involves being sworn to the Empire and the egregore - so that is unlikely to be relevant for a while.

I usually do magical detection with the Spider and the Web; things are watched by a hidden eye, things are connected. If I was trying to put that into poetic form - it would be about embodying the principle that things are watched, that the universe has observers, and those observers are fundamentally connected to what they watch?"

"Yes ma'am."

"So far, all of the poems that have worked for me are ones that are particularly personally meaningful, is that typical?"

"Hmm. To some extent - but a lot more so with hearth magic and virtue than with mana based magic.

What you're aiming for with mana based magic is more along the lines of... convincing the universe that you know what you're talking about. And that the thing you're trying to do is - aligned with fundamental principles of magic, or some practitioners would say, underlying reality."

"Yes ma'am, that should help, thank you."

She knows less Sith poetry about Force use, but definitely some; she picks the mana crystal back up and starts going through the collection, starting with the ones about sensory powers and how they call on the connection to the Force that all biological creatures, and to a lesser extent all objects, share.

No immediate results - pretty much the same total lack of effect as you'd expect from a droid trying to use the Force.

It takes her a while to conclude that it's more likely that she's taking the wrong tack than that she just hasn't found the right poem yet.

"I may need some time to think about what sorts of poems I should try next, ma'am - am I right that it's important that it be a poem with themes that I'd reasonably have an observer's role in?"

"I mean, that is probably a reasonable component of the approach?

Breaking it down a bit further - the usual components of a spell are calling upon a power source, either your own internal power or a mana crystal; aligning that with a fundamental truth about the nature of the universe, which can be a musical key, or a constellation, or a paragon, or... some kind of dramaturgical thing, I never did really get the hang of dramaturgy, which is possibly why I'm struggling to devise poemancy? And then directing that at the result you are after, in this case 'what's interesting about this object'.

The calling on a power source is generally done implicitly by calming the mind or holding the crystal, although some people do reference it explicitly in wording as well. Some early magical exercises are just for getting in touch with the feeling of your internal mana reserves, but I've kind of skipped over those as we're not sure you actually _have_ internal mana reserves..."

"My battery is a kind of power source, ma'am, perhaps I need to call on that? But if there's a chance that this will use any of the electricity it's storing I should wait until there's a way to recharge me."

"Hmm, yes, it might well do that. Hopefully at least some news tomorrow, although it'll probably be 'they went on to Sarvos for the wire'."

"Yes ma'am." That's that for that, then.

Deskyl stays in her tent for the rest of the day, but comes out after dinner to spend a few minutes stretching before the sun starts to set.

Interested teenagers gradually congregate as word gets round, although only a couple make it in the first few minutes. 

Deskyl slows down her routine a bit to let them see, and then has DZ ask if any of them can recommend a good spot to watch the sunset.

There isn't really a convenient hilltop; DZ collects directions to several good climbing trees and 'it's pretty cool from the warehouse roof if you can get up there'.

She relays her thanks and sets out for the nearest recommended tree.

It's a lovely sprawling tree right on the treeline, nice even spread of thick branches, oak-shape leaves, about twenty metres tall and the same across at the widest spread of branches. It has a considerable quantity of scuff marks from previous tree users. A small entourage of teenagers is following her.