Regular Adept #18
- Posts:
- 693
- Group:
- Jupiter Clan
- Member
- #264
- Joined:
- April 29, 2015
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Some of you might already have read this one from the Golden Sun Mixer's fanfic competition, since it was my entry there. For the others, well, it's here now. Somewhat late but whatever.
Running Behind the Scenes The woman looked panicked. They had spent days preparing everything. They were ready. And yet, she couldn’t help herself from being afraid something might go wrong. If anything at all went wrong, the failure would fall on them and tarnish their reputation. They couldn’t risk leaving anything partly done.
“Calm down, dear. Everything will be fine. We still have some time left to get everything in place.” The words had come from a man working on some mechanical contraption not too far from her. He was her husband: a Mercury adept with cyan hair, traces of grey visible in a few corners, proof of his age. He was a blacksmith and mineral-worker, and his body showed signs of his trade, his muscles being well defined by the hard work required to work with metal and stone, but his hands were not rough thanks to the precision work he often had to deal with when detailing the final products. It was common for the couple to host an event and invite the entire family, children and grand-children, to celebrate the coming of a new year, but it was the first time they made something so big. They had obtained permission from the town to use the square and invite family, friends, and anyone from town to join in on the celebration.
The afternoon was coming to an end and the sky was slowly getting darker. The earlier arrivals were already there, talking and having fun before the event began, but the main crowd had still yet to arrive. The woman was placing tables, chairs and stalls to be ready when the merchants and participants would arrive; moving rapidly and putting lots of effort into making sure everything looked great. Meanwhile, the stonesmith was still in the back, slowly setting up his things while waiting for his helpers to arrive, which should be happening shortly. His wife could have done the job perfectly in any other situation, she would often help him in the workshop for both heavy and precision work, after all, but this time it wouldn’t have worked out. It wasn’t that her skills were lacking, far from it, there was just too much to do, and taking care of that would mean not having time to do something else just as important. Not to mention, he needed other Mercury adepts for this, and more than one at that, even if the woman had been one, it still wouldn’t have been enough.
“We’re here.” The old adept stopped what he was doing and turned towards the three volunteers standing right behind him. They had all come together since they knew each other. “Good.” replied the stonesmith. “You already know the gist of it, but here are the details for tonight: I managed to get my hands on a stash of very interesting stones and decided to make the best out of them by using them for this. Each of you will be standing next to one of these.” He said, gesturing towards the construct he had been working on. It wasn’t particularly big or complex, but it had a very distinctive feature: a large crystal, purple and brown in color, standing on top of it in what looked like a bowl.
“Getting these things to react how I wanted took quite the amount work, but it’ll be worth it and the three of you lucky adepts will have the chance to experience it firsthand. What you’ll have to do is simple, when I give the signal, I’ll need each of you to use your psynergy around the stone until the bowl is filled enough for only the tip to stick out, the mineral will do the rest.” With that, he showed them what the signal would be and sent the three of them to their positions. There wasn’t very long left before it was time for them to power the crystals.
After a short time, his wife walked up to him. “It seems to have mostly filled up out there, when do you think you can be ready?” She asked. “Whenever you want, we’re ready to go right now.” The man replied. The woman nodded. “Let’s start, then.”
The stonesmith gave the signal, and all four adepts focused their psynergy around their respective crystal. Ice melted, water was absorbed and steam condensed until the bowls were all filled to the same point. “Let there be light!” claimed the man, right before the reaction. The four stones, having absorbed enough energy, unleashed large beams of light in all colors of the rainbow, filling the sky and lighting up a large banner that said “HAPPY NEW YEAR!”
The couple were holding each other, watching everyone staring in awe at the display. Whenever an event like that happened, there was someone behind it working themselves off. But watching everyone’s reaction was enough for the two of them. All the effort that went into making this happen had been worth it just for this moment. They were smiling, as everyone else was, and that was only the first part, there was much more to come.
Craftable material: Emardot Emardot is a type of stone created through strong impacts of lunar fundament energy(Venus must always be present). For example, a large thunderstorm may form very small gems of it if an unusually large lightning bolt strikes a plant directly next to pebbles, or acid rain absorbed by a plant may cause tiny crystals of it to form around its roots. Larger deposits may appear in very alchemically active regions. Even extremely powerful adepts cannot create emardot without help from a psynergy machine, and synthesized emardot has weaker properties and a less appealing appearance than naturally formed emardot. Thanks to the unusual formation method of emardot, it can be found nearly anywhere in the world, but it is usually in such small amounts that pebble hunting it is a complete waste of time, as not only each pebble would have little to no properties due to their size, their appearance is so random and in small amounts that it makes it very inefficient. It is not unusual for commoners to own some thanks to stumbling upon a pebble of it randomly, however. Its appearance is a translucent mix of brownish-yellow and purple. Artificial emardot has less purple in it and a more brownish shade.
When found in nature, emardot draws and absorbs energy at a slow rate. When a storm passes over a region with a deposit, chances of lightning striking near or on the deposit are high thanks to the attractive property of the mineral, which is how those deposits end up becoming larger. This means that over-mining a deposit will reduce its attraction enough that it will no longer draw enough energy to itself and no longer grow larger, ruining the deposit nearly permanently. When the mineral becomes saturated in energy, it overloads and releases it in random directions, before starting the attraction and absorption process all over again. In an interesting duality towards how emardot is created, the released energy is, in fact, not of the lunar affinity’s form but of the solar one. The energy is released from the crystal in the form of concentrated beams of light and lasers.
Although raw emardot has fairly weak properties, there are many ways to process it to enhance them. Although it has the appearance of a gem when found, it is possible to melt and refine emardot into something similar to metal. Note, however, that refining into metal is not a necessary process to enhance the gem’s properties. The numerous methods of processing the mineral allow enhancing any of its properties, or even a combination of them to a certain degree, allowing skilled mineral-workers and smiths to be creative with the results they want. Dump #2
You know how people sometimes make "before/after" comparisons to show how much they progressed over a period of time? I'm kind of weird on that. I don't really get "practice makes perfect". For me, it's just finding new stuff and trying them out. If I find nothing new, I won't get any better no matter how much I practice, but if I do, it'll be visible instantly with no practice. Case in point: these 2 images. They're actually separated by basically nothing. The only thing I've drawn between those 2 was my valentine's day avatar, which isn't the same kind of art style at all. So, yeah those two are separated by only one thing, me finally figuring out how to use the gradient tool, which unlocked a lot of possibilities.
Before: armored version Delfes
After: remember that blacksmith in Running Behind the Scenes?
Edited by Delfes, Feb 25 2017, 04:06 PM.
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