trans_9 | Explosions! (Of sound. We hope.) [closed]

Nehaalista told herself for the millionth time that she was on a wild goose chase as she wandered around the temple looking for the damned stone platform. But if they were able to do something... even a little something...

She shook her head to clear it of all the nagging little thoughts that were enough to make her barbels curl up in annoyance and stared at the platform. Nehaalista was used to portals; it was how, once you cajoled and begged and paid off a mage in her new home, one would find themselves from Stormwind to Shattrath in the blink of an eye. But, Nehaalista understood that magic.

Not this. She gave the platform a long, serious look.

Since he'd finished the flooring, Stephen figured that he'd let himself grab a breath of fresher air. Not that the air was particularly fresher in the City than in Stacy's halls, but...he told himself it was. And stepped into the teleport circle in Aibghalien's lab.

Only to appear above the teleport circle in front of Nehaa, about three feet up.

He did manage to land on his feet (with a minimum of swearing), before giving the Draenei paladin a sheepish grin.

"Think there are still a few kinks to be worked out, but he's working on them."

Nehaalista raised her eyebrows so far they wrinkled the sigil on her forehead. [That did not look particularly safe,] she signed after a moment's gawking.

"I didn't break anything," Stephen insisted. "Anything I can walk away from is fine." He wouldn't tell her that he'd had a couple of experiments that almost didn't work that way.

"Besides, Aibghalien assures me that the only reasons they're having hiccups is because of location. That is, on Stacy. I have no reason to doubt him, and there's enough evidence I can find that backs his theories up." He'd probably have the same problem if he were using the Correspondence Point. That assumed he could, though.

Nehaalista watched Stephen's explanation fly over her head ~~like the good meatshield she was~~ and nodded slightly. [Mages make everything complicated.] She sighed silently as she approached the platform.

"Well...sometimes. We can." Admitting that was like pulling teeth, but he did admit it. "I try not to be too bad about it."

Then again, she hadn't ever been to his lab for more than a few minutes.

"It should be all right." Stephen is, on the other hand, intelligent enough not to tempt fate by asking what the worst that could happen was.

Nehaalista flashed a smile at him, [If it is not, I am going to thoroughly blame you.] She wasn't so fatalistic as to ask how exactly she could be killed because of a "technical" mishap.

So, the paladin made a plea to the Light that she wouldn't end up in the air or in a wall, or with a pair of cement slippers, and stepped up on the platform.

No worries: THAT teleport circled functioned entirely properly.

The wizard's lab was growing slightly more cozy, inasmuch as half of it was functionally refloored, and in that half several armchairs sat around a fireplace that clearly had been added as an afterthought, but since it didn't appear to be burning wood or generating smoke, could probably be forgive the lack of a chimney. Around it: Shelves full of books. Books and book and books. Enough books to make ~~the Well-Read achievement look like Reader's Digest~~ the Kirin Tor cry.

On the border of the diving line, not far from where she had ended up, the elf stood, giving instructions to apparently nothing regarding the placement of the flooring.

As he'd promised, it should have been a completely conventional teleport.

Instead, and oh so unfortunately, he ended up a few feet above and behind the Draenei Vindicator. So he managed to fall, land on his feet, sort of, and then completely lose his balance and stumble into her.

Stephen was already blurting out apologies as he righted himself, ears and cheeks scarlet.

Nehaalista's tail gave him a few panicked lashings, as she turned to help him. [All right? All right?] she sighed with one hand and tried to smooth her curls into place again around her shoulders.

"That was not the teleportation circle's fault," Aibghalien said wryly as he moved over to offer them any help putting themselves to rights that they might need.

It was probably better that he didn't say anything. Stephen just rubbed his hand over his face and went to go take a seat in one of the armchairs.

"I think I'll stay out of trouble if I sit over here," he said.

Nehaalista thinned her lips at the both of them and she smoothed a hand over her pantlegs and fixed her curls. She signed something quickly, a bit too quickly, but it her annoyance with their landing carried through loud and clear.

Or at least she hoped it did.

"I apologize for the vagaries of the teleportation circles," Aibghalien said diplomatically, adding to that a respectful bow. "They are in and of themselves experiments, as the ship apparently introduces variances into teleportation processes. I regret the inconvenience you've undergone in getting here, and I hope to have it corrected or at least compensated for in the future."

At least he seemed to be going to an effort to smooth that all over?

"I didn't do anything," he muttered to himself. Nehaa still could have told him no. Not that she had.

Stephen watched the flooring apparently decide to install himself. And part of him was impressed, truth be told. Though he didn't particularly have anything more to say for the moment.

In Nehaalista's mind, if something was unstable, at best, why bother to do it in the first place (which was why she never quite understood the Goblin mindset of cutting corners and blowing themselves to bits).

At least the mage was apologetic. [I see.] No, she didn't but that was beside the point. [Then shall we get started?]

Simply, because one couldn't make a thing stable without study, of course.

Was she... speaking with her hands? Intriguing, and completely incomprehensible. Aibghalien quickly muttered a few words to cast a spell, then bowed again, taking a wild guess at what had been said.

"I haven't had a chance to introduce myself properly, although I did enjoy your capture-the-flag game a great detail. Aibghalien, at your service.

"Would you care to be seated?" He gestured at one of the comfy-looking chairs. "I'd like to ask you a few questions, if I may, so I can establish what might be the likeliest possibilities."

See, he wasn't going to just start slinging spells willy-nilly.

Nehaalista shook her head. [The chairs look too small and uncomfortable. I'll stand.] There was only so much she could do to keep herself in a seat as it was, and all the furniture around here was just so... small. What if she broke it? [Thank you, anyway.]

Well, the spell had worked; he understood that perfectly, and he sort of wished he hadn't. He glanced away, biting his lip as he reviewed the entire conversation to figure out exactly where he'd given offense just short of mortal to the woman. He couldn't THINK of anything, but then, he reluctantly acknowledged, given the differences in culture it might have been anything.

Nevertheless, he'd done it, and now he had to just simply try to make up for it.

Visibly deflated, he turned his eyes back to her. Less enthusiastically, he began. "I saw on the list you sent me that attempts had been made with telepathy, which were unsuccessful. With your permission I would like to make an attempt. I don't believe it will work, but on the one hand, I expect my magic is not like those familiar to you, and thus it might; on the other hand, the personal experience might help me as we go on."

[You're welcome to,] Nehaalista nodded briefly. [I'll try my best from my side.]

The wizard nodded, then without delay spoke a few words of power, accompanied with a few gestures. Simple enough; it took that little to establish a telepathic bond (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/telepathicBond.htm) between himself, the Vindicator, and Stephen (who had the dubious distinction of being the control group).

Well, then, he broadcast. I don't sense any difficulty with transmitting, are you receiving? The question had been intended for both of them.

Stephen blinked for a moment. Mostly because he hadn't realized he would be a part of the tests. At all.

"Uh," he said. "I can hear you."

Brilliantly unintelligent, for the Scientist.

She could hear him, but when she tried to think back there was nothing. It was the mental equivalent of running face-first into granite wall. She signed and sighed.

[I can hear you, but I cannot answer back.]

All right, that is not "unexpected," he said as he cut the spell off. "I couldn't distinguish any inherent resistance to or alteration of my spell, and there is clearly nothing inherently defective about your ability to output language." By now he's beginning to mumble rapidly. "That rules out a difficulty in formulation. Given the lack of applicable natural effects as evinced by the nonpatterned inconsistency I would learn towards a magical cause, but no overt patterns of alteration or transmutation are present. This either means that such an effect, if extent, is shielded beyond my ability to detect it, which I do not believe possible, or is nonpresent; we will therefore assume the latter, since the former is less likely and the net result is primarily identical. Thuswise, the effect is either inherent or divine intervention." Aibghalien paused in his mad-scientist-style rant, looking horrified.

"I actually have no readily available means to determine what precisely is going on here!"

After a moment of horror, though, he thunked his temple with the heel of his hand. "Sorry. That's not the issue, is it. Well, I haven't an easy answer to directly enable your voice, mentally or otherwise, but -- would it suffice to give you a voice, indirectly?"

~~Nehaalista was crit by Wall of Text for 20,000 damage.~~

Nehaalista tried to parse through all of his ~~magibabble~~ speculation as best as she could, but at the end, she figured what he meant. He couldn't give her exactly what she wanted (her voice), but did have a substitute. Nehaalista looked thoughtfully at her hands and replied, [What do you propose?]

~~Nehaa needs to work on her gear if she's crittable in tank spec.~~

"Well, starting at the basic, I know a spell which can be set to speak a preprogrammed phrase or phrases on its cast," Aibghalien said -- speculatively, because he's running the spellcraft through his head at startling speeds even as he speaks. "My first proposed modification to this spell is to modify the variance to accept continuing input from you. This may not work, given the limitations on your ability to communicate, but I feel it's worth the effort. If it doesn't, we'll proceed from there."

~~PLANTSUITS ARE HARDLY USEFUL TANKING GEAR SRRY2SAY~~

[Well, it can't hurt to try.] Nehaalista agreed with a little nod. What did she have to lose, after all?

~~Update your version and get it baked into talented-RF, woman!~~

"Then, if you will allow me just one moment to make the necessary adjustments to the spell," he said with a slight bow. Rising, he quickly moved to chalkboard, seized a piece of chalk, then began to write as several books rocketed off their shelves to surround him, open. A moment later he added an illusion of green text in a foreign language to the mess. It's actually a fairly impressive display of multitasking, all things considered.

"You're going to have to help me figure out how to do something like that in my lab," Stephen said, eyes wide behind the goggles.

He wasn't so certain he needed flying books, but text for formulae and flying parts and tools? That was something he could get behind, not to mention use.

Nehaalista looked a little taken aback at the amount of magic going into Aibghalien's work, and worried her lower lip for a moment. The embarrassingly familiar sense of Maybe this time clawed up her chest and she glanced at Stephen.

[You're sure you want this much stuff flying about?]

"Well, I doubt I'd have this much going on." Not that he was certain of that, mind. That really depended on the project.

"I do like the textual application, though mine may end up more formulaic--I could definitely use it for chemical strings, molecular bonding, that sort of thing. Theory before application. It might save a few explosions, though my lab is prepared to deal with that."

"Aaand there." He gestured at the various symbology and formulas on the board and in the air, then at a book which floated off yet another shelf. The words, phrases, and symbols shot off their respective surfaces in long streaks of light to thud into the spellbook, leaving air and chalkboard blank.

"That wasn't too bad," he said, unintentionally understating to an extreme degree. Creating, scribing, and memorizing a spell, even of that level, was a task that for a lesser wizard ought to be measured in days, not minutes. "I actually modified it to a broad-spectrum input and --" He checked himself with a self-deprecating smile.

"Never mind. At your convenience, my lady."

Nehaalista again questioned what she'd gotten herself into, took a deep breath and nodded. She was ready, for whatever Aibgahalien thought up.

At least she wasn't drinking anything vile. This time.

Indeed not. As the wizard pronounced a few words and made a few arcane gestures, the only real effect was a mild tingle that couldn't come anywhere near unpleasant.

He surveyed her for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "All right... it should be receptive now. The first test is to try to mentally 'speak', and if it detects your words it will repeat them. This part, I do not expect to work, but it's worth a try in case it does."

Nehaalista started thinking of the the last person she'd spoken to on Azeroth. Nokosi was a lot of things, but he could certainly talk.

He said that Fontaine was throwing him under the vegetable wagon, so to speak. I can't remember over what, exactly.

But even as she thought this, there was no sound, no nothing. She looked at Aibghalien and shrugged.

He made a dismissive gesture. "I figured as much, that would have been too easy. Sign something? If that doesn't work..." he muttered.

[If it doesn't work,] there was a bit of lag as she signed rapidly, but then there was a... voice, "then it's fine."

A flat, sort of ugly voice, but it was there. Nehaalista closed her hands into fists in surprise, totally out of her element with what to do.

If anyone had asked what Stephen had expected...that probably wasn't it. His brows arched.

"Well...that's progress, at least. Explosion-free progress. Right? It needs some adjustment stil?"

Trust an Etherite to always look on the bright side.

"It's certainly far from what I expect of myself," Aibghalien said, self-disparagingly, "but the best I can do without a lot of experimentation I don't think would be welcome." He'd enjoy the theory of it, but he suspected the Vindicator would probably murder him about an hour in.

"It's very clunky, and I apologize, but that casting isn't the permanent one, merely the test one. If that's acceptable, I'll make some adjustments to get it as close to the voice you'd have under normal circumstances, and then permanency it?"

No mention of the fact that he'd be literally spending some of his own soul to do so. It didn't bother him, why should he let anyone else feel bad -- or misunderstand?

"I think I would like it on a ring, if you're able," Nehaalista signed and made face at the voice. Oh, boy, did she just not like that tone. "I should be able to get used to it in time."

But she at least wanted the option to turn it off. "Thank you."

"I can do a torch or necklace," Aibghalien said. "Rings are complicated to make on the best of days. But if it's having the ability to turn it on and off you want, I can also just build the spell to start or stop translating in response to a specific gesture. Whichever you'd prefer."

He began casting again -- still listening, of course, but splitting his attention between whatever he was doing and her response.

"A torch would be a bit..." Nehaalista paused. "Unwieldy. But a necklace would be good, or a ring, I can make both of those quite easily."

Honestly, he'd meant 'torc'. Translator error. ~~That certainly didn't hint at things to come did it.~~

"If you have a design you prefer, by all means, I can enchant it readily. I'll make the proper preparations and have a demonstration voice ready for you as soon as you get one to me."

"Wonderful. I'll have it to you as soon as possible." Nehaalista nodded. If she were quick about it, it wouldn't take more than a few days, and she had wanted to do something with the last of that gold... What a perfect opportunity.

He bowed, nettled that he'd had to resort to such a clunky technique, but pleased that he'd managed to accomplish something at least. "I'll be ready when you are."

Explosions! (Of sound. We hope.) [closed]

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Up to you how to handle the timeskip involved. :)