How about a group project!

A Practical Discussion (PGTS)
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I absolutely freaking love e this series

And really really like the idea of the tokens and stuff. I’ve even made a sample that blueninja said he posted somewhere. I can get a picture of it later.

But I didn’t really like the sky kraken I cobbled together, and the student picture was meh…

So, do we have any clever artist who can actually draw a black and white, or grayscale sky kraken?

And maybe someone who can cobble together a simple face modification program.

The staff tokens are much the same, just metal and rectangular right?

And trust me, I have an idea of how the spell array in the inside works, well…

I need a list of shapes and their uses, hex, Oct, triangle and stuff to be sure I’m using the right one, but yeah, I’m pretty sure I have the array part figured out.

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I have notes on this!

Triangle - Useful for the transmutation of pure energy.

Tetragram - Useful for transmogrification associated with stability and the past
Square - ??? Unclear, my guess is resistance to transmutation or physical change.

Pentagram - Transmogrification, associated with control over physical matter, opposition
Pentagon - Transmutation, very versatile, sort of a catch-all if you don’t have a better form to use. Can be used for both matter and energy.

Hexagram - Transmogrification associated with wisdom, intelligence, transfer of aid, spiritual balance, guidance, mental or emotional aid, divining(?), they are used in some healing spells
Hexagon - Transmutation, uses in some healing spells

Heptagram - Useful in curses and seals, Siobhan’s glyph-creation ritual used one (a seal in a different sense?)
Heptagon - ???

Octagram - Useful for transmogrification associated with balance, balance between creation and destruction, justice.
Octagon - balanced transmutation, could be used in a miniature ecosystem spell with little loss

Nonagram - ???
Nonagon - Used in space-bending arrays

The grimoire pages also show us wagon-wheel style variants for each number, and arc-based variants, but I don’t think we have any good examples of these in the text, so I overlook them for now, but they might have uses specific to alchemy/artifice/warding

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I don’t have a lot of faith in my Sky Kraken sketching abilities, so I would also be interested to see if anyone can make one!

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Azalea tiptoes in

So I have some notes. In fact I have a lot of notes, but these are specific to this conversation and something I can share without giving any plot-relevant spoilers. A lot of times I can’t contribute to conversations because I know too much.

I have edited this to remove some minor spoilers, but these are basically the exact notes I made while developing the magic system years ago. They’re a little convoluted but I don’t need them to look pretty to work.

The numerological symbols are based on Greek, not Latin.
Triangle
Tetragram/Tetragon (Square)
Penta-
Hex-
Hept-
Oct
Ennea-
Dec-

“Gons” are best at transmutation, and “Grams” best at transmogrification.

  1. Freedom, nothingness
  2. Stasis, Truth, the Present (Good for stasis, scrying the present, finding the truth)
  3. Balance, Harmony, Flexibility, Separation (Good for division/separation spells, yes/no triggers and alarms, harmony between opposing forces like fire & ice without mixing.)
  4. Balanced/Equivalent Exchange, Change/Flow/Movement (Best for Energy) (Good for many low-powered transmutation and transmogrification spells. Very common.
  5. Stability, Foundation, Strength, Authority (building on stable foundation, scrying the past, physical control, power, strength, suppressing authority.)
  6. Man, 4 elements + magic, Change, Balanced Change, more complex than #3 (Best for Energy + Matter) (Most versatile PolyG, Healing, many higher powered transmutation and transmogrification spells)
  7. Balance of Heaven & Hearth, Guidance, Wisdom & Intelligence (mental and emotional aid (or destruction), pathfinding, golem servants & messengers, astral projection, calling for aid, transferring aid, good luck.
  8. Spirit, The Seeker, Subconscious Intuition, Mystery (Scrying the future, speaking with spirits & the dead, receiving unguided divination results, dream walking, amnestics—amnesia creation, Memetic effects)
  9. Balance of Creation & Destruction (Transmogrification: Karma, Cause & Effect, Justice.) (Transmutation: Storage/Future Preparedness—Storing what? strength, speed, heat? Potential energy? Multiple spells in an artifact?) (Good for creation ecosystem spells with little loss. Revenge to the wronged, Good luck after hardship, punishment for crimes. Forced empathy. Willing empathy. Willing self-sacrifice.
  10. Space, Dimensions, Planes Beyond, Reaching/Traveling (Teleportation, summoning, accessing the elemental planes, spacial warping.) (Different types of nonagrams have subtly different effects.)
  12. Time.
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You would not believe how helpful this is for my fanfiction (or maybe you would if you’ve read it). I’ve been mostly leaving out details like this (and will probably continue to do so) but there’s couple of places where I was completely unable to describe, or accurately describe, the spell array because I’m so bad at figuring out the mechanics.

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And the gestura would naturally draw these on a sphere. Which means that they would quite naturally tend towards the Platonic Solids. This fits well with the Greek theme, and gives them powerful symbolism using the numbers 4, 6, 8, 12, and 20. Involving respectively triangles, squares, triangles, pentagons, and triangles. The corresponding Greek ideas for those shapes are fire, earth, water, the heavens, and air.

I don’t think we have a good description of the dance that Siobhan is mastering. But now I’m thinking about a dodecahedron made out of pentagons. Balance on a corner, and 3 of the 12 sides are almost directly on the ground, leaving 9 heavens to point in different directions. Each of the heavens represents a different combination out of, Man, 4 elements + magic, Change, Balanced Change. And if any of those are pointed at the current position of the Sun or Moon, well, there could be some complex potential here…

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They are naturally drawn on a circle that becomes the face of a spear sliced exactly in half, like you could make a sphere from the center point of a circle.

Trying to make it ON a sphere itself would cause problems

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I’ve sen some pretty amazing martial arts and gymnastics, but I’ve got to wonder of you can draw a dodecahedron in three dimensional space with gestures and no way to know if your connecting the lines properly.

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Actually, there is a way to know

They actually describe it in the series during the sleeping spell, she has to draw glyphs using like sage, it leaves a smoke trail that you can see the path.

There are some types of dances where understanding that they are making a shape is super important