Alright, that works with me.

> > Yeah, he's the same character who's lost his other axe, and we can pretend he never had that armor. > That I cannot do; if there's one thing that I value in this roleplay, it's maintaining a consistency between what has happened, what happens and what will happen. Actions, once performed, have consequences that echo through history and affect the future in small or big ways, and something that has existed at one point can't simply be removed from history. Even if it no longer exists and has somehow been eradicated from existence, it was there. > > I also don't remember whether old Gregory was an elementalist? Although I guess he could have been, even if it wasn't technically part of his description at the time, and just not used it. And yes, it is technically possible to invoke different kinds of elemental magic - any different kinds, really - but it's far from as easy or instinctive as invoking elemental magic native to one's natural affinity. It requires one to to have studied and memorized the _feeling_ of energy attuned to that other element, and then consciously force part of one's own energy to mimick that feeling. The conversion of element is temporary - over just several minutes any amount of converted energy will revert to its natural attunement unless one focused on preventing this the entire time - and the energy will lose some of its potency in the process, similar to when the very same thing happens in arcane or black magic. Plus, it will feel just plain unnatural and weird for a person to use elemental magic that isn't "their own". But yes, it is possible. > > The short answer to the last question would be "yes", although the likelihood of Gregory having such would depend on your definintion of "bomb". If you mean the kind where you light a fuse that triggers an explosion when it reaches its base, those are very rare and currently the penin jealously keeps them to themselves, along with several other inventions and the resource that makes them special... the name of which annoyingly eludes me. It's pretty much something that replaces the yet-undiscovered gunpowder but is much rarer and more potent, and is dust coming from processed liquid fire. Which brings me to the second interpretation of the word "bomb": something that is thrown and explodes on impact. This is a lot more accessible than the penin's bombs, although the production of and trade with them is still rather restricted and mostly illegal. These would be various containers filled with the aforementioned liquid fire, which is an alchemical compound that is extremely volatile and prone to explode with tremendous force when its container is broken. It's basically a more powerful version of nitroglycerin, except liquid fire will only explode when exposed to the atmosphere, making it marginally safer. > Yeah, he was an elementalist back then. I think I would be interested in Gregory knowing something about wind elementalism. I think this would add a bit to his character and would suit his fighting style quite well. He is a man in his mid fourties, so he has had some time to seek out other means of training. As for the bombs: I was basically talking about the alchemical version. Is there a way to make that liquid fire from natural ingredients or does one need to employ a sorcerer?

I can second Gregory being a fire elementalist in the previous iteration ... not only was it mentioned in the CS, he actually used it against the vampire he killed. From Jack's description, I kind of got the impression that while it is possible to learn to use secondary element(s), it would be almost impossible to use those two together - so he'd be able to temporarily switch to using wind, but not really use wind and fire together? I also recall a rather elaborate discussion about gunpowder and how it and its alternatives have been (on Earth) discovered many times throughout history (though people haven't always been certain what to do with them). And that no need to use magic to produce it is a rather strong advantage over flashdust and liquid fire. And how you don't really *need* an explosive that is more potent than gunpowder for handheld guns, anyway - as there already are powerful handguns which are quite idolized by media but actually quite despised by people who do target practice for sports because the damn things will sooner destroy your wrists than add anything to the gun's accuracy ... or even its ability to cause damage to targets. If a gun can take out an elephant, it certainly can take out a lohk (and if you have a weaker gun, don't aim at its forehead; it's face, eyes and throat are probably easier to penetrate). But yeah ... I believe Jack said you cannot produce liquid fire without dedicated magic back then. ((Edit: I also imagine keeping vials of liquid fire on your person for longer durations would be dangerous as all hell, even more so for a physical fighter. Just imagine if he fell or took an impact to the wrong region...)) ((Is it a terrible idea to bring in a wildcard chaos deity? I am still tempted to.))

> Yeah, he was an elementalist back then. Okay, cool; I didn't mean to imply certainty that he _wasn't_ an elementalist back then, simply that I did not recall him being so. But really, there has been a lot of characters in The Prophecy over the years, and since I don't have Shien's ridiculously keen memory I can't remember every detail about all of them. I do believe you if you say such was the case, and since we are lucky enough to have Shien and she supports the claim, all the better. No problem there. > From Jack's description, I kind of got the impression that while it is possible to learn to use secondary element(s), it would be almost impossible to use those two together - so he'd be able to temporarily switch to using wind, but not really use wind and fire together? Correct; while a person using the aforementioned technique to convert energy from one attunement to another would have two kinds of energy-attunement at the same time for as long as this converted energy remained, manifesting both at the same time through elemental magic would indeed be borderline impossible. Elemental magic is instinctual and relies heavily on the mage's will and emotions, to which different elements react differently, so manifesting two elements at once would require that one was able to quite literally split one's very self in two and have each half control a separate element, due to the very method of deployment and control differing so greatly between them. So it would be one element at a time, but grant a capability to more-or-less switch between them. (Just because it occurred to me that it might be relevant to mention: fire magic commonly relies on its wielders passion and enthusiasm to manifest and draw power from, and must be coaxed into obedience lest it run wild; air magic is associated with feelings of joy and/or fear, and must be strictly leashed by the wielder's will and dominated to prevent it from reclaiming its freedom.) > But yeah ... I believe Jack said you cannot produce liquid fire without dedicated magic back then. ((Edit: I also imagine keeping vials of liquid fire on your person for longer durations would be dangerous as all hell, even more so for a physical fighter. Just imagine if he fell or took an impact to the wrong region...)) Strictly speaking I suppose liquid fire _could_ be made without the immediate assistance of a magus, as long as those of the ingredients that need to be so were magically altered in advance. It would mean that one had to find a magic-wielder every time one needed to restock on the ingredients, though... and that one carried around some twenty pounds of delicate and fragile alchemical equipment. And yes, carrying liquid fire around like that would indeed be rather dangerous, especially for extended periods of time; not only would an impact potentially crack the glass and cause it to explode while still on the wielder's person, but atmospheric air might seep past the seal over time (especially one made on the move and with less-than-perfect-quality apparatus) causing it to turn extremely volatile to the point of it detonating at a slight jostle. (It also occurs to me that one would have to acquire new containers with air-tight seals for every new batch one had to make... which are anything but cheap. In fact none of the ingredients would be so, and the apparatus would be very expensive as well. Eh, it's possible, but the more I think about it, the more unlikely it seems.) Flashdust, that's what I called it! I knew you'd remember, Shien. And yeah, over time I've reconsidered many things about the potential future Reniam, the absence or disuse of gunpowder being one of them. But in current time and age gunpowder isn't used in the immediately relevant regions of the world, so flashdust is the only real alternative. As for future Reniam: that will have to wait for the future. As I mentioned even back then, depending on how events play out in this time, there may not even _be_ a future Reniam. > ((Is it a terrible idea to bring in a wildcard chaos deity? I am still tempted to.)) Eeeeeeeeeeeh... Please don't. Really. I was somewhat supporting of the idea when it was just a deity, but "chaos" is literally the _one_ domain that I can't allow a deity to have. For... reasons.

> (Just because it occurred to me that it might be relevant to mention: fire magic commonly relies on its wielders passion and enthusiasm to manifest and draw power from, and must be coaxed into obedience lest it run wild; air magic is associated with feelings of joy and/or fear, and must be strictly leashed by the wielder's will and dominated to prevent it from reclaiming its freedom.) I wonder now how accurate I was when I assigned the elemental affinity of water to Aemoten and earth to Etakar. (Not that either of them was an elementalist ... if anything, Etakar is the one out of the two who is more likely to learn and harness magic.) Water, for one, can be pretty scary - think of fast rivers, floods and even pressure washers. Seriously, the thing I use to wash my car *will* put a hole in your hand if you accidentally put it right in front of the nozzle (as one of my various acquaintances found out with his own). It will also positively tear wood into splinters and can be used to remove grass from between stone plates. > Eeeeeeeeeeeh... Please don't. Really. I was somewhat supporting of the idea when it was just a deity, but "chaos" is literally the one domain that I can't allow a deity to have. For... reasons. ...Reasons? "Chaos" might be a bit of a misnomer, though - wildcard is a more apt descriptor. Oigortrõqk doesn't really want the world to be in a perpetual state of chaos and mayhem (I'd go as far as to say that they'd find it undesirable) ... more so, they simply do whatever currently seems the most interesting - I will say, though, that if I were to bring an iteration of them in, they would be massively downpowered. (As another note, we don't have stability (Legereraon) and change (Allandragian), either. Might need to elaborate what those exactly are, too.)

> I wonder now how accurate I was when I assigned the elemental affinity of water to Aemoten and earth to Etakar. Water magic usually relies on either sense of serenity or rage, actually, and ice magic specifically comes from feelings of dislike and general enmity. Its control must be soft and gentle, so that one steers its course rather than try to force it to bend to one's will. > ...Reasons? "Chaos" might be a bit of a misnomer, though - wildcard is a more apt descriptor. Oigortrõqk doesn't really want the world to be in a perpetual state of chaos and mayhem (I'd go as far as to say that they'd find it undesirable) ... more so, they simply do whatever currently seems the most interesting - I will say, though, that if I were to bring an iteration of them in, they would be massively downpowered. (As another note, we don't have stability (Legereraon) and change (Allandragian), either. Might need to elaborate what those exactly are, too.) Yeah, reasons; let's leave it at that. Although the way you describe it, I'd think that it might be more fitting to call it a trickster deity or something like that. Once again, "chaos" is specifically the only domain I can't allow deities to have. Any others are basically all right.

To the bit about the dangerousness of bombs and their components: Right, that's why I asked about making them, that way Gregory could just brew a couple up before he heads out to battle or before going out on the road. Now that I think about it, if he's a skilled fire elementalist, could he just create a bomb with that? If so, that seems the best path to take. No muss, no fuss.

> Water magic usually relies on either sense of serenity or rage, actually, and ice magic specifically comes from feelings of dislike and general enmity. Its control must be soft and gentle, so that one steers its course rather than try to force it to bend to one's will. Hmm... I see. A somewhat passionate and stubborn person with a(n usually) good self-control would be a match? (What about earth?) > Although the way you describe it, I'd think that it might be more fitting to call it a trickster deity or something like that. Most likely - as you could probably read out from the latter clarification, the "chaos"-part referred to chaotic behaviour, not the desire to specifically generate chaos. Oigortrõqk canonically represented unpredictability and chance (as opposed to the rather lawful stability-balance-change triad). And, well, while the canonical Oigortrõqk technically is nigh incomparably more powerful than the three others combined, then Ceterlaan is ... actually still in a fairly decent shape in spite of it all, and has furthermore seen much worse times as a planet. Never mind that they are actually significantly older than either Nkaa Raakan or Allandragian, only second to Legereraon (who actually predates the world itself) of the still-existent gods. (In the Hektareian context, all deities were the omnipresent power-absolutes of the aspects(s) they represented, so strictly spoken you can't really speak of the *amount* of power a deity possesses - but you can speak of the scope a deity's aspect covers and the laws that associate with said scope, making the deity with the broadest scope and least amount of binding laws objectively the most potent. Nkaa Raakan, for one, had a massive amount or somewhat confusing boundaries, even if the technical scope of balance is "everything", same with Legereraon and Allagrian[somewhat befittingly, the deity of change's name is occasionally subject to change].) (Always the reasons... Always. Must be some manner of terrible things. I do have the gnawing suspicion that this aspect has been reserved for something or someone who is yet to be revealed, though...) @The New Yorker: Control of fire doesn't mean control of explosions in this world, even if these things occasionally come together. Besides, I think it requires constant focus (and drain) to keep up an elemental magic manifestation of some sort...

> @The New Yorker: Control of fire doesn't mean control of explosions in this world, even if these things occasionally come together. That's not really what I was saying.

I was not really certain what you were implying with making bombs with fire elemental magic, hence the specification (there was an incident with a player thinking that since their character can control fire, they can also create violent basketball-sized explosions *inside* other played characters standing some ways from their character with but a thought). - From what I've derived from the description of elemental magic, it wouldn't be possible to permanently alter the qualities of something with it, though ... just heat and burn things. Fire elemental affinity can strengthen other fire-related spells, but he'd still need to know some rather specific and probably complex (most likely arcane) spells to aid alchemical processes with magic.

> Hmm... I see. A somewhat passionate and stubborn person with a(n usually) good self-control would be a match? The part about good self-control is a central part of pretty much any elemental magic, at least if one desire's mastery of it rather than simply the ability to use it. While I think Aemoten could potentially have some difficulty achieving compatibility between his personality and the feeling that feeds water magic, I think he's actually taken a good few steps in the right direction by being capable of separating himself as a person from himself as a warrior. Being able to suppress emotion is even more important to an elementalist than to be able to conjure it; most of the magical accidents that happen, happen because fledging elementalists got too riled up about something or another. To a person with natural affinity for magic, cases of strong emotions of the kind that feeds their native element can cause the magic to manifest on its own. > (What about earth?) Earth magic feeds off confidence, determination and psychological anguish, and must be controlled with the force of a relentless will. Lightning magic relies on excitement and urgency and is guided by the sincere wishes of its wielder, and the two last of the "primal" elements of magic, light and darkness, are associated with despair and pleasure and hope and agony respectively (no, I did not switch hope and despair), but are both controlled by a very focused, "hands on" application of willpower. > To the bit about the dangerousness of bombs and their components: Right, that's why I asked about making them, that way Gregory could just brew a couple up before he heads out to battle or before going out on the road. Now that I think about it, if he's a skilled fire elementalist, could he just create a bomb with that? If so, that seems the best path to take. No muss, no fuss. "Create a bomb with that"? Eh, as Shien said elemental magic requires constant focus to maintain; using it to infuse something with magic isn't entirely possible in that sense. All kinds of elemental magic are capable of causing explosions in one way or another, though, so if you're going down that road I figure he might just as well use his fire magic to cause an explosion on the spot rather than storing the explosion in something before detonating it. Edit: Right, it seems you actually meant to ask about the last thing I mentioned. Yes, one could do that.

I was thinking there could be some technique in creating an explosion with fire, that doesn't seem so far-fetched to me. I'm not really sure what the restrictions are, but I'd imagine fireballs are something elementalists could do. If thats the case, only one step further would be necessary to make an explosion, creating a volatile source of energy within that fireball. That might be out of an elementalists skill-set, which is fair, and that's why I asked.

Hrm... I see. Granted, Aemoten doesn't actually have, shall we say, general magical affinity (the canonical version of him is altogether devoid of anything magical). He did, though (in all iterations) spend a rather significant amount of time amongst mages, and was at one point tested for elemental alignment (only in the Prophecy version, as in the Ceterlaanian version there was nothing to test) - blame Ardjan for that. When you mentioned the link between what a person is like and the elemental alignment, I simply began to wonder to which extent the elements I had assigned to him and Etakar in my mind actually lined up with the qualities people with those affinities typically have. ((Edit: From the fact that it is now gone, I assume the later remark had gone astray.)) (The first thing I personally associate with darkness is actually peacefulness... Calmness. Serenity. Concentration. (And as an extension of the last, probably also productivity...))

Hey guys, just out of curiousity...whose turn is it in the PM? ^_^;;;

Well, I have been waiting under the assumption that you were the next in line to post, and I have a strong suspicion that Shien expects the next post in the collab to be yours, as well (well, it'd be either you or me, since Shien was last). If nothing new comes up, I think it's about time that the collab reached completion and Aemoten's group _finally_ arrived at Zerul City.

I have been waiting for Nessa specifically to post in the collab for quite some time now, indeed. Other than that it, is Ashgan on Jillian's side, Rhae in Zerul and, after some Skype conversations, me again in the other collab. Legion also reworked the éireannach a bit - I assume you'd like some kind of short list or paragraph description concerning the differences?

*picard face palm* Crap, sorry. I didn't really have anything to post in the collab to be fair and was waiting on Jack ^_^;;; Sorry guys. I still honestly don't have too much to add that would make for anything near a pertinent post, it'd be waffle, so if it's all good on your side Jack could we just wrap it up now without me posting again?

Eeh, I am not sure? There kind of are several things I personally see have to be wrapped up a bit... Feels very unfinished, especially on the more personal level. (For the record, though, I believe Thaler and Aemoten would get the white horse, Jaelnec would get Itanale (Aemoten's horse), Olan would be keeping the donkey, and Etakar would be by his own. Someone has to go fetch the raven. Thaler would probably be given some clothes other than *only* the blue coat.) And we probably would need to discuss how we bring everyone together which means more discussing with people on the side, and so forth. (Where would Kaiden and Gregory be brought in, even?) Might also be easier when the people in Zerul and the group met the next morning, not "today" as far as the IC is concerned. I ... don't think anyone of the group feels like negotiating with new people now, and they'd probably be even more tired by the time they reached Zerul.

Well from Thaler's side the only thing there is to post is a lot of internal monologue about how its sweet they buried the yth but how horrible it was that there wouldn't be anything left. More internal strife and self comparison to the dead creature, some internal monologue about the rest of the group and the soldiers and her following along behind like a good little serving wench. Now, I don't mean this in a bad way, but I've had enough IRL drama, grief, strife and issues since September and every time I think I'm finally getting somewhere near okay something comes up that throws me right back into the middle of it. So I don't really FEEL like writing how shitty and crap Thaler feels right now because I honestly feel shit enough as it is myself. If you really REALLY need her input then take control of her, I give you my permission to do so.

Erh... As I've mentioned in the past, I am rather uncomfortable controlling other people's creations (unless they have literally been possessed by a character of mine or similar, in which case they'd logically be mine to commandeer as I see fit, the player agreeing with the possession as such beforehand, naturally). I guess I could just mostly ignore Thaler's lack of participation for the time being ... I guess. For the most part I'd like to resolve this unfortunate situation to at least some degree rather than, well, drag it out as it is even _further_ (mind, I haven't exactly liked the Rilon-arc ever since it surfaced myself ... least of all just when things seemed to have turned slightly for the better, for once). - This is also why I don't mind writing anguished grimdark in solo much, but generally prefer it to not be very prevalent in RPs - in solo I'll probably just sit down for an hour or two and the part will be done and over with for good, whereas in RP it can just drag on in a rather unpleasant manner. Nothing will change unless we ourselves change it, no? (If I were to suggest something, then perhaps focusing more on the action/actual dialogue rather than the internal monologue?) **Edit:** Oh, hey, someone found a way how to make single line breaks with this silly thing until we get a more functional editor: > EDIT: with a bit of googling, it turns out that you can use single line breaks by adding two spaces to the end of the line, then moving to the new line. > Example: New line! **Edit#2 @Ashgan:** I am technically working today, but on one of my breaks I decided to run up some of the posts into the Compendium Archives - is this an adequate enough summary of Jillian's adventures before the continuation of the RP on the new forum: [Link.](http://theprophecy.nefaerious.com/forumarchieve.php?name=Jillian%27s%20Trails&page=1) ((Are you good with me reformatting your paragraphs a bit? Looks a bit better if everything follows the same visual style.))