Private message to Kid

[spitemancer]

Nivata surveyed her makeshift testing equipment, frowning. It was ridiculous, beneath her, and... unfortunately, it was all she had. Repurposed cooking implements bubbled and copper wires sparked. At least she should be able to get some kind of information out of her acquisitions.

Speaking of... It had been immediately obvious that the gifts were not quartz. She found herself reluctantly grateful to her anonymous benefactor, even though his goal was obviously the fruits of her research. Well, it wasn't as if Nivata'd had any other use for the crystalline structures, and it was more than a fair price.

Carefully, she put the first of the pebbles into a coiled copper wire, the ends of which rested in two different solutions. No explosions; that was a good sign. Working gingerly, she held the end of the wire up to one of her own not-entirely-functional-yet crystals, its own monitoring equipment already set up.

A slight rise on one meter; not the one she'd expected. Now for the iron wire; after that, the thaumi-tuning fork...

Some time later, she sends a message.


To my anonymous patron,

I've completed the experiments I proposed. Each sample radiates between 45 and 56 nanothaums; existent, but not enough for anything useful. (To compare: one drop of infused blood has more power than one of these samples.) As far as I can ascertain, the samples are not the byproduct of a bigger spell, nor are they harmful. Resonance is between the green and yellow range; I'd call it 'dark chartreuse' if I felt like being pretentious. I can't pin it down to a specific wavelength with my equipment.

Most notably, they have a very weak life force. That's not necessarily to say that they're alive; any one of my constructs has more life force than all the samples put together. Nonetheless, it's an interesting data point. Further angles of research on that are pending.


-- Nivata

Comments

[justkiding]

To Nivata,

Thank you for holding up your end of the deal, and for the information. Do you think there is any significance to it's resonance being between colors? Furthermore, I admit, I'm not as knowledgeable as others on life force. Does the presence of such a thing imply these crystals are the work of an intelligent being, such as one of your very own constructs.

Feel no need to reply to my pestering, I'm simply glad you were able to find something out about them. As suspected you've proven much more capable than any of my human acquaintances.

[Of course there's more he could provide her if she was willing to continue the partnership. Perhaps even the lab equipment she needs to investigate further?]

aw yeah an hour of research for an example that didn't make it into the post

[spitemancer]

Assuming that Earth's magical spectra is the same as Tyria's, then 'chartreuse' is going to involve "the self's living body" and very possibly "the self's living body interacting with other living bodies." (I'll spare you the technical terms; they're in Old Asuran anyway.)

Which is useful information, but I'm cautious about the analysis. My own spells are still visible on their normal frequencies, but I don't have the data to extrapolate to native Earth magic - assuming this is native Earth magic and assuming it isn't one of the atypical manifestations that you get sometimes.

Only living things have life force by nature, but it can be infused and manipulated just like any other kind of energy. So, the samples could be
1) alive in their own right
2) actively infused with life, like my constructs
3) passively infused with life as an accidental result of a different process entirely

The second possibility can be safely discarded: it's much too weak to be a deliberate creation. The third makes the most sense in context, but is a comparatively rare phenomenon, and usually results in samples with much higher thaumic readings.

Also, don't bother trying to flatter me. If your krewe has made any discoveries of their own, I'm interested. I doubt this will serve my overall projects, but I live on the UCLA campus; it's not acceptable.

[justkiding]

I mean no flattery towards you, rather scorn towards them. Completely useless imbeciles have found nothing at all, of course.

I'm very interested in learning more about your field of study and how you conduct your research. I wonder if you'd be willing to form a more longtime partnership of sorts.

I have more resources than the crystals I sent to you before.

[spitemancer]

I do have previous obligations toward my current krewe, which means that I'll be looking to find a way back to them, but provided that this and my obligation as a student of UCLA aren't prohibitive factors, then yes, I'm interested.

If you have access to a private location and aren't squeamish, I would be more than pleased to introduce you to my real field of study. What you've seen from me thus far is the most basic of investigations.