BECMI Chapter 49 – The Long Years
P+2 to +10 years…
It was indeed a very long time.
I had a great deal I could do, time in research and study that filled up the days, weeks, months, and then years. Every day I exercised, running miles around our impromptu track, doing acrobatics, dancing, weight-training, and sparring with Cirru.
I soon ran out of goldweight to Invest, and so couldn’t improve my Gear past a certain level. It freed up eight hours a day for more training, study, and experimentation, especially with Rune Magic, at least until I made a Sim that could go out and collect more goldweight for me.
Cirru actually did not undertake any dragonsleep for an entire year, throwing herself into her conditioning and growth, looking to make a permanent change and improvement in her abilities. It was far, far easier to improve her humanoid self than her dragon one, but it all carried over when she returned to it. Unlike humans, she had an easy time comparing herself now to herself previous, and the changes all delighted her as she kept improving.
The Federation files I had to go through were immense, and even with magic to speed things along, it was going to take me a very long time to process all the data. On the other hand, it was de facto training of Skill Ranks I was very happy to engage in, increasing my skills with computer languages, programming, high-end physics, material sciences, biology, and engineering across a broad spectrum. I mentally gave the lich who’d had all this information another kick in the arse for being a lazy shit who just couldn’t settle down to work with all of this crap.
Eh, he hadn’t had a 46 Intellect, and likely had a 10 Wisdom or something. He’d lived as a petty, vindictive, egocentric arse who’d thought he was more important and talented than he was, and left a thousand years of proving it repeatedly behind himself.
My ‘active’ area of study was Rune Magic, naturally enough.
The first thing I had to do was increase my proficiency with the stuff. The system in place was much too erratic to use comfortably, with failure chances that were unacceptable for continuous use, especially in combat.
Not having any clear guidance on that, Rep Counts and Mastery off them followed forthwith.
There were five Circles of Runecraft in the Zanzyran system, completely ignoring other Traditions of Rune use out there, like those of the Northmen. That Tradition derived from their Immortals and seemed both inferior and annoyingly hard to learn, by what I’d read.
The First Circle, the Runes of Matter, allowed control and use of inanimate materials. I found this one of the best Circles just because of the potential variety of materials that could be affected, and the massive area involved in them.
For instance, I could now affect matter in a sphere up to twenty-seven feet in radius, my base Caster Level. It was a huge amount of stone, a Stone Shaping on a grand scale, and it could be done three times a day, lasting six seconds per Caster level at a time.
Any inanimate material worked, including various woods, paper, fur, bone, hair, ivory, shell, scales, coral, vellum, and of course the normal stones, glass, crystal, and metal.
Only three a day was a great limit, of course. But the key to that was that all of the Cryptomancer abilities were Spell-Like Abilities, or SLA’s.
SLA’s had their own line of Meta-Feats, very similar to what spells gained, and divided more by abilities.
For instance, the First Circle Abilities were usable three times a day. You could take the Extra Spell-Like Ability Feat, which either doubled the uses/day, or added three more, whichever was less.
This was basically a perfect Chain Mastery of Feats, scaling with the abilities gained, and thus eligible for Training Time to learn.
You could also take Extended Spell-like Ability, which would double the duration of three uses of a Spell-like Ability per day, or Energize them for +50% damage, or Top them off for maximum damage, and the like.
Amusingly, I was already at the damage cap for magic under this System. 20 dice was the highest amount of damage a mortal spell could convey in the manafield here, so Empowering a spell was topped after CL 14, except maybe with Shards, which advanced slower than most spells.
So, what I wanted was Extend, for duration; Top, to max out any damage effects; and Widen Spell-like Ability, to double the area.
Paired Spell-like Ability was not something I was aware of, which didn’t mean it didn’t exist, but more like I didn’t have the pre-reqs for it. Fastcast Spell-like Ability seemed to be its replacement.
All of that was one arm of my studies.
‘Scribing’ a Rune was the hard part, as it involved equal parts Spellcraft, Concentration, and Calligraphy, and if it was permanent, Carving Skills for various substances. Spells that involved Runework, like Symbols and Glyphs, used the same skills, but weren’t nearly as specialized and hard to employ.
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Second Circle stuff was the Runes of Life, nominally usable twice a day, which allowed control of non-sapient creatures... including mindless undead, among other things. That was… useful, in a way, sort of intruding on both Conjuration and Enchantment’s specialties, but more specific and less general use. The only way to match those schools’ abilities was to know a LOT of basically truename Runes, each the equivalent of researching a Tier III spell.
Third Circle Runes, usable once a day, was where the really useful things began, as those Runes involved active control of Energies of all types! Fire, Light, Wind, Waves, Thunder, Acid, Frost, Lightning… Gravity, Force, Magnetism, Pressure, Radiance, Negative, Positive, Vacuum… Nuclear Binding, Quantum, Space, Time… Weal, Woe, Fate, Chance… Arcane, Divine, Primal, Necroic, Vivic… Virtues, Vices, Rules, and Emotions.
My initial training in such things had not taken the potential power all the way up, nor had it dovetailed the fact that Rune Magic was basically the written form of Truename Magic, and the Words of Creation represented the highest form of Truename Magic!
Basic Runes of Energy were equal to a V tier, but the more profound and complex ones rapidly ascended up the Valences of difficulty.
I, of course, was in absolutely the perfect place to study a Rune of Time, which was equal to learning a Valence VIII, and was now my major objective.
Fourth Circle stuff, the Runes of Magic, were extremely versatile, but nominally usable only once a week, which was very limiting and very annoying, especially for purposes of rep counts. They were basically Runes of Spell-Storing, allowing the capture of a spell and then storing it on a surface, to trigger by touch or word or proximity or condition. However, each Rune stored only one specific spell type, meaning it was less flexible than a Glyph individually, and thus required the knowledge of as many Runes as I had spells known in order to employ properly.
Which was a lot of research, and a lot of gold to spend on proper research. Exemplar Surge certainly wasn’t giving such things to me, after all!
I could probably try for Fifth Circle and Grandmaster of Runes status, as there was no such living Grandmaster at this time. The nature of the Runic magic only allowed one such Grandmaster to hold the power and the position.
Fifth Circle Rune Magic allowed learning the Truenames of Sapient beings of all levels and powers, giving the Grandmaster tremendous power over them. However, it was only usable once a month, another extremely annoying restriction, and the research required to gain the power was odious and expensive, with each Rune equal to a Valence IX spell on top of that!
However, this power had a very important restriction on it, namely that no one else could research a Truename Rune that was already known by someone else!
Learning my own Truename Rune would thus prevent anyone from using similar magic against me, and ultimate power over myself meant it could shatter any other such hold on me.
Technically speaking, I didn’t have the resources to call on to gain all the Runes I wanted, but that was what my Sims were for, I just had to keep them supplied with gold and build up a Runelore library.
However, I should be returning to the future basically immediately after I left, so learning new Runes there would have no overlap with what they were working on. I was aware of what they were working on, and they also knew that one of the reasons I was doing this was to gain more research time on Runelore. They were expecting me to return to the future with a wealth of Runelore to build upon, and I intended to do so.
Also, I meant to refine and streamline all this stuff to work better using Power of Ten foundational knowledge, as opposed to a Cryptomancer, which needed gammathauma as a triggering mechanic to wield. It wasn’t even possible to learn this Cryptomancy outside an area under gammathauma radiation, which meant Zanzyr really did have a unique advantage over other nations. None of the Seven Secret Schools, and especially the Eighth and its mastery of the gammathauma Radiation, would have been born outside of Zanzyr, or the nearby Underdark.
Regardless, I had years of work, experimentation to do, a knowledge base to build up, and lots of magic to wield in a rather limited area.
I could Project Image through the door if I kept the Doorward open, and thus survey the local area and even manipulate it all to some extent. Concealing the Inn thus wasn’t that hard. However, the spell’s range was limited, and thus the resources I could gather.
Now, building a Simulacra from the ice harvested from outside the doorway? That was something that wasn’t handicapped by my limitations at all. I could ride the Sim around to anywhere outside and do what I needed to do, or just let the Sim do some of the work for me and report back regularly, which among other things meant continuing Karmic gain on my behalf… and revenue streams and acquisition of knowledge as she roamed first the area, then the world as years went by, touching on many cultures as a mysterious elf passing through.
So, naturally I built more than one, with varying appearances, to increase my reach and ability to gather the resources I needed, and Karmic gain while I did the research. With the Rune of Time, I could even anchor a point in the local time field, ride a Sim all day, and then come back to the moment I’d left, effectively allowing me to double my time, even if I was limited to the power and skills of my Sims.
It was fine. It was what I was here for. Cirruluxul was never alone, as I kept up my regimen with her, cooked dishes with foods and spices from all over the continent, and the years wound past as the world outside us reeled and recovered from the disaster of a fusion explosion and radiation poisoning.
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P+12 years...
The door opened, right through the Arcane Lock at VIII+1 I had on it. I felt it wink out from an anti-magical field, and hurriedly disengaged with Cirruluxul.
We’d been working on swordplay of various kinds and styles, simply because it was considered a noble weapon among many humans, and elves were all expected to know the sword. I was indifferent to the weapon, but the dragon was enthusiastic about it, loving any kind of physical conflict where she might beat me up, and, well, a good elf should know their swordplay.
“We have a visitor!” I warned her, turning to look in the direction of the door.
She looked that way sharply, sweat gleaming off her skin and steaming in the cool air, a mixture of eagerness and wariness on her face. “It came right through your Illusions and the door?” she asked quickly, knowing the level of danger that indicated.
“And I didn’t see it coming on any of the scrying sensors outside.” And it hadn’t triggered any of the RaisedAlarm spells my Sims had placed, either…