Engineered Magic

Ellen

When Grandmother came down for breakfast, Ellen was waiting for her at her table. Ellen looked for Grandmother the evening before. She ended up having a long conversation with Companion about the different items his people crafted. He told her selkie did a lot with clay. He thought glass crafting might be a branch of that, but he wasn’t certain. He called rock, clay and glass crafting higher tier crafts. Distracted Ellen completely missed whether Grandmother came in or not.

“Good morning,” Grandmother greeted Ellen. She took her seat. A server brought over Grandmother's morning tea. Ellen was already sipping Grappler juice, so she waved the server away.

“I was hoping you would look something over and give me your opinion,” Ellen responded after returning Grandmother’s greeting. “As a novice crafter I think your viewpoint would be especially useful.”

“Sure,” Grandmother said. “I need to go check on Alex. I promised him I’d help with the shop interface, but I am free after that.”

“I showed him yesterday,” Ellen said. “I learned how to use the interface in my father’s shop.” She explained. She dithered a little, realized she was dithering and pulled a structure notebook out of the collection bag she left sitting on the floor next to her chair. “Here,” she said, thrusting it at Grandmother, “I brought it with me.”

Grandmother set down her tea and took the book from Ellen with real interest. The cover of the notebook was blank. Grandmother opened the cover to the first page. There she found a drawing of a needle and thread. Below the drawing were the words: Tailoring, Book One, Spinning.

The next page was filled with text. It was a brief description of types of materials that could be turned into thread, along with sketches of the icons that were used in the inventory system for those items. The next page was the uses for thread. It could be used to make fabric but it could also make cord and rope. It could be sold to leatherworkers where it was used to join leather together. There were other uses listed.

Magic started on the third page. It described the use of starting and ending symbols. It described the length of time it took to learn a new spell and gave hints on how to speed that up. A nonsensical ribbon, the symbol used for the number was meaningless, was drawn on the edge of the fourth page. The start section of zeros was located. Directions were given to read it up or with a leftward turn. How to interpret the timing was described. A second ribbon running across the bottom of the page gave a section for each symbol, starting with zero and running through six.

Next was the casting specifics for crafting. What the start and end symbols typically were including the fact that when using a tool they were often omitted. There were ways to increase the speed of leaning a spell that were unique to crafting. It gave recommendations on whether to discard the material on a failure or just retry. Most of the page was dedicated to how to tap out the commands, but there was a note that audio control was possible but was not included in this instruction.

The pages that followed were the steps to make thread from the fiber sources given. A page of description was followed by a page that showed a drawing of the tool used, with its name underneath and the spell ribbon, or ribbons used on the tool and the name of the spell. Ellen made most of these names up. Naming spells wasn’t a big thing among crafters. By naming it, she could refer to it on other pages.

The final page was a drawing of a spool with thread wrapped around it. Underneath it gave the amount of thread a crafter at different tiers could expect to get from a unit of fiber of each type. The remainder of the book was left blank.

Ellen waited anxiously as Grandmother looked it over. When she asked Sarah about the copy spell, Sarah wanted to see what Ellen was working on. Sarah was so excited she set aside the world map and started on her own book on casting light. When Sarah went to write her ribbon she ran into their first problem. Ribbons were written with zeros as spacers among the spell symbols, but light was cast with zero.

“Do you remember the inscription at the entrance?” Ellen asked her sister. Sarah was only eight when they stopped to look at it, Ellen wasn’t certain Sarah would recall it. “It used a blank area to describe a zero symbol.”

“I remember,” Sarah responded. “I suppose I could do something similar. Blanks don’t seem like a good way to describe how other symbols appear.”

“What if we used made up symbols for the ‘how to read a ribbon’ page? Then we could reuse that page in every book. On the page with the light spell you could spell out how the blanks are zero,” Ellen suggested. From there they worked out that they would use structure numbers in the ribbons. They picked the Latin font since it was the script used in children’s interfaces.

Together they put together a page they thought would work for both crafting and wizardry. They decided to include the blank as zero on the page. They reviewed the page with thought to warrior and utility spells. Ellen told Sarah Grandmother’s idea of adding spells to the back of a wizard book. Sarah loved that idea and suggested they put all the actual spell encodings on their own pages so they could be added after purchase. That way they could let the customer browse through the book without giving away the knowledge for free.

“This is very good,” Grandmother said. A huge weight lifted off of Ellen and she released a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. “I have a couple suggestions,” the old woman added. All of Ellen’s stress came back.

“I’d love to hear them,” she forced herself to say.

“This image,” Grandmother said, pointing to the needle and thread on the title page, “I have seen it associated with tailoring before, but as far as I know there is no structure needle. Everyone hand carves them out of boar ivory.” She turned to the last page that held the image of a spool filled with thread. “I think you should replace it with this image. If you want something more generic to represent all tailoring, set the spool on a piece of cloth with a couple pins in it with a sewing machine behind or something. That way everything in the image can be found in the structure.” Ellen thought about that. Her family used the image of a threaded needle to mark their shop for at least three generations, but Grandmother was right, there was no structure needle. This book was a factual book about how to use crafting tools in the structure. Would the image make people think they needed to find a needle before they could be a tailor? She got a sudden flash of quests into the wild looking for the mythical item.

“Ok,” Ellen said slowly, “I can see how that might lead people astray.”

“Put the image on the front of the book also,” Grandmother said, closing the book and tapping the blank cover, “Along with the title and your name on the bottom as the person who wrote it. Put the title and your name on the spine too.” She pointed to the edge of the notebook. “That way when they are stored on a shelf next to others, people can tell which one they want without looking at all of them.” Grandmother held the book on edge, her hands on either side representing other books. She turned its spine facing Ellen to illustrate her point.

“Is that how they made books on Earth?” Ellen asked.

“Yes,” Grandmother replied. “Almost all the knowledge on the Speedwell was stored in the computers, but there is a set of physical books in the computer core that gives instructions on how to bring the core online. Someone realized that if the computer was down the crew couldn’t use the knowledge in it to bring it back up.” Grandmother thought for a moment about those books. “They have a table of contents,” Grandmother commented. “I think that might be a good thing for you to have too. It would go here, on a page after the title page. It would give a list of the sections of the book and what page they are on.”

“What do you mean by sections of the book?” Ellen asked. Grandmother leafed through the book, giving titles Ellen should add to the top of each section. These included background, magic, spell encodings, crafting skills, the individual steps, and yields.

“Number the pages in the corner,” Grandmother said pointing to the top or bottom of the free edge of the pages. “So someone can go straight to step two if that is the only part they don’t remember clearly.” Ellen could see how that would be very useful for a complex crafting project.

“Also leave the first page blank,” Grandmother commented. “I know that sounds odd, but all the books on the Speedwell have it blank. I was told they did that because the first page wears out fast, but on one of them was a handwritten note wishing all who traveled on the Speedwell a safe passage. A blank page would be a nice place to add a note if the book is a gift.”

“Anything else?” Ellen asked.

“No, not really,” Grandmother said. She leafed through the book again. “I love how you put all the spell codes onto separate pages so you can add them at the point of sale. You can make another book that includes all the tailoring spells and keep it in the back. Since you named them all, you can put an index on the master spell book to make it easy to find the right page. You can just leave the name of the spell on these books until then and erase it before you make the copy. If someone did get their hands on the master book, it won’t really help them much to just have the individual codings. They’d still need to buy this book to make full use of them.”

Ellen hadn’t thought of half of that, but she nodded her head along with Grandmother’s observations. She made notes in her head to put together a master spell book.

“Oh,” Grandmother said as she set the book down open to the title page, “you should add a date. That way if you figure out a better method for anything and want to rewrite it, people will be able to tell if they have the old or new copy.”

“The date?” Ellen said questioningly. There wasn’t much time tracking in the structure. Seasonal changes were very mild. This was why they couldn’t figure out how long Companion’s ‘lives’ represented.

“Personally I would use the Earth year, as defined by the Speedwell, you could also go by years since landing, or both. If you anticipate more frequent updates add in the month or season.” Grandmother’s breakfast was sitting on the table next to them. Ellen didn’t notice when it was delivered, she was so focused on Grandmother’s opinion. “Both might be best. The Earth day and year length don’t actually match what we have on this planet. It is close, but there is drift.”

Grandmother picked utensils and started eating. After two or three bites, she gave Ellen a quizzical look. “Did you want something else?”

“Oh, yes,” Ellen said. She picked up the crafting book and returned it to her bag. She pulled out the other book stored there. “Sarah put this one together,” she told Grandmother. “I told her your idea of adding spells at the back. We were thinking about selling it with just these two to start.” Ellen felt a little odd about handing the second book to Grandmother now that she was obviously interrupting her meal.

Grandmother pushed the plate away with alacrity and took the second book from Ellen. The outside of the book was blank. The first page showed a very close copy of the six fingered fist on the light training inscription at the entrance to the structure. Below the drawing were the words: Wizardry, Book One, Thrown Spells.

The background on this page was a detailed description of how magic did not come from the caster but rather from the technology in the structure. Grandmother gave them this lecture many times. It also gave a few details of the types of things that a wizard's magic could do. It mentioned throwing fireballs, creating shields, cloaking a hunter’s presence, fearing an animal and healing the injured.

The casting magic and reading spell ribbons sections were identical to the crafting book. The next section gave the start symbol and end symbol for thrown spells. There was a page describing how to throw a light ball to turn a light panel on. The next page was the simple spell ribbon for that spell. It was labeled light. The last two pages described pulling a light ball out of a light panel to turn it off. The description included a note to reverse the end symbol to pull the light out. The last page with writing on it was the same light spell ribbon as the first ribbon page. The difference in these two spells was all in the end symbol.

Grandmother paused for a long moment on that last page, like she was thinking about it. She rubbed the corner of the page between her fingers. Ellen braced herself for the comments. Grandmother seemed to come to some conclusion and released the page.

“So I have all the same recommendations of cover, sections and indexes. I love how you have identical sections in both books. I think that will really drive home the point that it is all the same magic. Sarah’s description of where magic comes from may be over most people’s heads, but don’t change it. I would take out the part about magic healing people,” Grandmother added.

“Did you not want us to sell the healing spells then?” Ellen asked quietly.

“No, no, that’s not it,” Grandmother responded, setting the book on the table. “I want you to sell them, but there isn’t a tier zero healing spell and it seems like this is an introductory book. I would add in there an indication that you are describing tier zero spells. Actually the single ribbon only works through tier three. At tier four you need two ribbons to describe both hands. You might want to add something about it on your ‘how to read a ribbon’ page, I didn’t think of that before.” Grandmother said.

“The rest of that list of spells are tier zero. I was thinking maybe you would want to add the descriptions of all the tier zero thrown spells in the book, leaving blank pages for spell ribbons, but then I decided against it. After all, we have no idea if we know all the tier zero thrown spells. The ones we know are so simple people may be able to figure it out from the description alone. No, I think you just need a list on the wall someplace, or a book with a list of the names that your customers can page through and find out what is available,” Grandmother said all this in between bites of food. Ellen thought she should be writing this down.

“I would make another book for tier one spells. There you can describe how there are prerequisites for many of the spells, but that heal is an exception and has no prerequisite. You can also describe the increase in complexity. This book is called ‘thrown spells’, are you planning on making one for non-thrown spells, like shield and don’t notice me?”

“Yes,” Ellen agreed, “although we couldn’t agree on if we should split it again into spells that act on you and spells that act on the world.”

“That would be a good distinction at tier one, but there aren’t really enough spells, that we know, at tier zero to support two books. I would make one book and sell it with muffle. Muffle is surprisingly useful for hunters. The start, end symbol section for that book will have to be a lot longer, giving all the different end symbols. You can state on each spell which end symbol to use, like that note on pulling a light ball.” Grandmother was close to the end of her meal. “Do you have any other books?” she asked.

“I have tanning leather, smelting iron and joining wood scraps,” Ellen explained. “I am working on a utility spell book. Sarah was just starting on a warrior book, but she volunteered to help Alex with his inventory collection this morning. We’re hoping she can pick up more notebooks.”

“That sounds like you are making excellent progress,” Grandmother observed. “Have you rented a shop?” Sarah looked at Grandmother’s expectant face and had an epiphany. Grandmother helped Alex because he made the commitment of renting the shop. Until Ellen did the same, Grandmother would offer advice, but she wouldn’t commit resources of her own.

“No,” Ellen admitted. “I forgot to do that before Sarah and Alex headed out. I want to share the ownership with Sarah, so we will get one when they get back.”

“Excellent,” Grandmother replied. “Come and find me when you have one rented. I would love to see the inside. I have a theory that shop spaces are all oddly shaped in order to hide that there is missing space the structure uses for other things.”

Ellen agreed to do that. She picked up the thrown magic book and tucked it away in her bag. She left the inn shortly afterward and looked at all the available shops left in the square. There was a spot adjacent to Alex’s farther away from the back door. Ellen decided to pay for it as soon as Alex and Sarah got back, just as she told Grandmother. She went back up to her apartment, where she wrote down all the changes Grandmother suggested, before starting to implement them.