A young woman, maybe fifteen or sixteen, dressed in somewhat low-tech-looking clothes and sporting more than a few bruises walks into a bar. It's empty right now, except for her. After staring at the exploding stars for a while, then briefly quizzing the bar, she has a nice, tall fruit smoothie for her free drink and solicits a book suggestion. She probably shouldn't stay here too long, but she can't pass up the opportunity to take a break from the rather intense schedule of Witch Wings training.
She has been moderately distracted by the magical goings-on, but they're not really copyable.
"Right... It's totally random, not passed on in families. About one in five hundred girls, but not in boys. First signs when you're ten to twelve. It's mostly intuitive, when we're using it, learning, practicing, doesn't help much... Specials can be just about anything. Magic items of any kind are extremely rare, in my world, legendary even. Trying to think if I'm forgetting things."
"...Flying! How do I explain flying? We can fly, but only on tools. Brooms are the classic choice, but they're actually really hard to balance on. They make special not-brooms that are faster, more stable, that kind of thing. But the flight comes from the witch, not the broom or not-broom. That's all I can think of, I think."
Flora casts, bringing her wand around Gren and then herself. What does she see?
It has a sort of simple elegance to it. A sharp line of power branching out and blossoming. The magic originates in her body, seated somewhere deep inside and strongly interconnected with the concept of life, though exactly what the connections are is not clear. The magic's core structure is clear and strong, shining starkly as if in defiance of the laws of physics. Flight, shields, strength, light and blasts - these things are brutally simple, hardcoded in a way. The edges, however, are - shifting. A confusing blur of nodes and connections and colors that change even as she looks at them. After a few moments part of the periphery becomes a miniature version of the core, with a miniature version of the core, with a miniature version of the core, repeated until it's too indistinct to tell. That part is probably Gren copying the analysis, from context.
How fascinating! She stares a bit more, what's in the confusing blur? What are the connections?
The confusing blur has- A cleaning spell. Electricity. Enhanced sight. Something with light. Elementalism. Telekinesis. Healing. Invisibility? Strange sensing powers. Something to do with crystals. Bits of this and that and everything. They feel things-Gren-has-copied.
The connections remain thickly overlaid on each other, but there are strong overtones of - children, motherhood, fertility, a cycle like a brilliantly blooming flower that will inevitably wither when its time is done.
Fascinating! "Your magic is connected to fertility in some way. I wonder if a fertility spell would help an aging witch? Do you want to get someone to try?"
"That's... Kinda strange. I'd get someone but I don't think I can. Bar took over the inside door of my room."
A napkin interrupts, To clarify, I do not control the movements of the door. My apologies for the inconvenience. As I said earlier, it will usually be the same time in your world when you leave as it was when you entered.
"I could take some of these potions and try them. Witches can already transfer mana, er, magic fuel to each other, it just takes gold tools and is kinda inefficient. Too bad there's apparently no way to know how often you'll find Milliways."
"What if we could make it more efficient? Can I analyze that?"
(Amy has done four healing potions, seven runic cutting hexes, and a mirror pair that she is now thinking of making into a network.)
"Sure. I need to borrow something gold, silver, or gemstoned."
Bar will provide if Flora and Amy can't.
"I wouldn't like to try anything transfigured before I know a bit about it, but I can buy something for you." She provides however much money is needed to Bar. Unless it is a very high number.
Bar indicates, 1 galleon for an inert gold ingot. I will happily reverse the trade when you are done with it.
Gren pushes a little mana into it.
Something about the fact that it is gold is giving it ability-to-hold-magic. Some of the magic just disappears when it goes in. It seems like various other stones and metals could work, or modifying the can-hold-magicness of the gold.
Can she change or imitate the can-hold-magicness with her magic, pray tell?
It would be tricky. A shortcut may be available: The gold's can-hold-magic is not 'dense' enough to 'fill' the gold. Increasing the magical property is already there would be easier than trying to change how it works or imitate it on something else, and such a procedure could help it store more before leaking, and would increase its efficiency as well.
"Hmm. I could increase the amount of can-hold-magicness in this gold, apparently. Hmmm. Now that I know what it looks like, let me try transfiguring gold, if I can do that I would rather get my Galleon back."
"It's your money, certainly. I'm wondering what kind of technology you have, not just magic. The stuff in my world is not very good, if Bar's books are anything to go by."
She takes a napkin and transfigures it into a chunk of gold. "We have computers and cars? But our tech won't work if we're going to get you a lot of magic stuff, so you're better off either doing that later and somehow getting someone to take the magic stuff away or just taking textbooks. I can suggest a few, but not that many." Finished. Analysis stare. Does this gold have can-hold-magicness, pray tell?
It has... Almost zero can-has-magicness. Not exactly zero, but nowhere near enough to be useful.
"Tech that the whole world can use probably does more good overall than a few thousand magic items, if you even make that many."
"Transfigured gold almost doesn't work at all. I will work on a spell to increase this gold's magic- no, mana holding ability, if we can get it in rune form then it'll be useful. Oh, wait, I've been operating under the underlying assumption that your world has ley lines. Does it? If so, we do actually need to call in someone who can go get either books about tech and science, or book recommendations."
Amy is at the other end of the bar, making more stuff, mostly re-useable (specifically in a world that has ley lines).
"We could use the traditional complex ritual or we could just leave an uncharged self-charging magical object out there for a while, and see if it works afterwards? Away from the door, but leaving it open would do, I think."