The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

... Senior Wizard Jacob (really he was an Advisory, but he'd been temporarily bumped to Senior due to an incident in trans-Jovian space drawing away a bunch of the local Seniors) was taking a somewhat frantic phone call from the local Area Senior.

"No, ma'am, I have been keeping an eye on things... yes, ma'am, I know about her."

He flicked a hand at the toaster, and it obediently started up as a couple of slices of bread hopped in. "Well, because she's on Ordeal, just about. I may be new at this, but I know we're not supposed to interfere... no, obviously the Oath overrides that, but only in really severe cases..."

Glancing at the clock, Jacob grimaced and pointed at the toaster. Covering the phone with his other hand, he muttered in the Speech, "Faster, please," then turned his attention back to the call.

"I get that it looks, er, extreme, but is anything really inanimate, when you get down to it? And we all do some pretty ridiculous stuff on our Ordeals, right? ... no, ma'am, I'm sure. Absolutely."

The toaster popped, and with a mutter Jacob opened a tiny claudication to grab the toast with. "Ow, hot... okay, ma'am, I'll keep an eye on her, and I'll pass her details onto the local Advisory... really? Well, it takes all sorts. Sorry, I really do have to go..."

Hanging up, Jacob sighed, then summoned his Manual from the next room. "All right, Siobhan," he murmured, flicking to the expanded contacts list for his temporary region. "Let's see what you get up to next..."

~

Because I will never pass up an opportunity to comment in-character. ^_^

(Can you give an approx year for this, by the way? I want to know just how precocious Advisory Jacob is here - and possibly what the Seniors are off doing!)

hS

Out of curiosity, how obvious is it why the spell failed? I'm wondering how well that is coming across.

And yes, building a giant engine is so very me. I would do this, and then it wouldn't work, and then I'd be... Right where Julia is now, actually. Good luck to her!

Also:

1) You're still doing a good job with the descriptions.

2) Building a giant rocket engine is so you.

- Tomash

Since this post somehow reminded me of them, I'd like to recommend these three fics, especially if you want something that's rather powerful emotionally.

- Tomash

Thanks for the praise! It's... The story kinda has me, at this point? I'm just writing as fast as I can, trying to keep up. I didn't know what my Ordeal would be either, until hS's mention of the Aberfan Disaster started the gears turning.

I dunno, I bet you'd do better than you think! Julia/I walked into her Ordeal not knowing how to write her own name in any depth and having never actually stopped to listen to anything- these seem like much bigger problems than loving the world around you.

I've heard of that author. He's the brother of MrTyeDye, one of the 2 best Loud House fanfic writers ever (the other being Weavillain).

Julia, who still thought she was a boy, who still thought her name was James, who still was trying to ignore the growing wrongness of those assumptions, spent the entire rest of the day working on her spelling.

Along with the big spell, whose final draft spread across fifteen feet of relatively smooth rock, she'd worked smaller spells too- adding to her vision, seeing air pressures, temperatures, velocities. She could see the high-altitude winds, now, with eyes that weren't the blue ones she'd been born with.

But the big spell was done, and checked, and double-checked. Inside its huge outer circle were two overlapping ones- one of which described the rock she wanted to vanish, one of which described the rock she wanted to freeze. In their overlap was the hardest part of the spell to write, the cold mathematics that described a volume for boiling, and then the throat where the first, most important shockwave would form, where the escaping gas would step from subsonic to supersonic.

Julia had seen a Saturn V main engine, stared at the largest rocket engine man had ever made. Its throat had been two feet across, plus change. The one she was building was a hundred feet across, and seemed like it might not be big enough for a magma chamber measured in cubic miles.

But her day was up, her math was worked, and she started reading the spell as the sun descended to balance on the horizon.

The Speech was flowing more easily, now- she wasn’t learning it as much as remembering, curling text turning into syllables and Speech as her eyes passed across it. She pivoted in place, from her name-circle in the spell, reading.

This is a request for a temporo-spatial intervention of Knesset-Brown classifications twelve and thirteen, divided along a surface to be described…

A major working took a lot longer to say than the minor ones Julia had done before. It felt like the whole world was listening, as it had when she’d read the Oath. It felt like the whole world was waiting, ready to do the utterly impossible, to protect Life with nothing more than her designs and requests.

And then it was done and the world stopped for an instant, contemplating. For just an instant, Julia felt utterly foolish- she barely knew where she was, beyond what was necessary to work the spell, trying to bend an entire volcano to her will to protect a forest and this was somehow an extension of the great battle of Life versus Entropy?

The mountain rumbled underfoot. The rumbling got louder and Julia was pretty sure she saw something happen at the tip of the mountain and then there was an enormous boom as the eruption started.

Ash poured out of the top of the mountain into a looming cloud, growing thicker and broader and taller until it blotted out half the sky. The rumbling had become a full-throated roar, unbelievably loud- the sound poured over Julia like standing under a waterfall, she could see the trees pulsing in time with the shockwaves.

Please work, please work, please work, Julia thought, watching the cloud stretch taller and taller- it didn’t look right, the flow was too slow, the engine was coughing, spluttering…

And then a shockwave roared down the mountain, so strong it lifted dust from the ground into a low gray fog. It washed over Julia, blasted into the trees like a hurricane- and the cloud of ash turned into a column, roaring skyward so quickly it drew what had come before with it into a pillar stretching into the blue-black of the zenith.

The flow was supersonic. The flow was supersonic and perfect and pressure waves formed inside the column, shock diamonds a thousand feet high in ash-choked air. The spell written around Julia glowed bright as daylight, bright as an arc lamp, and the engine ran perfectly as it hurled thousand-degree ash twenty, thirty, forty thousand feet in the air.

The eruption drew air like a bonfire, howling up the mountain with all the ferocity that the shockwave had come down it moments before. Julia had braced for this, spelled against this, and she could still feel the great draw of the roaring volcano.

And then something flared at her feet. The smooth roar of the volcano became an angry scream, chunks of stone ripping out of the throat of the volcano as the spell flickered, the lines burned, frost spread across Julia’s hands like hungry claws-

In a soundless crack that overwhelmed even the volcano itself, Julia’s spell failed. The shock threw her out of the circle entirely, and she stared up through the furthest branches of the little maple tree as the rising ash cloud slowed, slowed more, and then the tons of ash she’d suspended in empty air began to drag it down, down, down onto the still-erupting peak.

Six hours later, Julia had a plan that felt workable.

She’d built tools that let her peer into the mountain and see the pressures and forces and faults there, and walked around the mountain, a high, perilous path, to take the problem in from all the angles.

It was a fairly classic volcanic problem. The magma chamber, far below and under immense pressure, was pushing upwards out old faults towards where there once had been a crater at the top of the mountain.

If it erupted, if the plug of stone that had filled the crater cracked and let the blast through, debris from the plug was where the landslides would come from. The magma itself was fizzing and bubbling so very furiously it wouldn’t leaving lava on the surface, just blast itself into ash.

The one saving grace of the thing was that it wasn’t Saint Helens. The Washingtonian volcano had carried weaknesses along its north flank, and the pressure from beneath had been enough to move half the mountain sideways. That wasn’t the case here- the bulk of the mountain was solid, the only escape pressure was finding was straight out the top, through the fragmenting rock of the plug.

Julia’s plan was to persuade the plug to vanish for a bit.

Reduced to that much simplicity it sounded absurd- not just triggering a volcanic eruption to prevent the damages from a volcanic eruption but that one person could have any effect on the entirety of a mountain.

But Julia wasn’t just going to uncork the volcano and let it blow wherever it wished. The other half of her spell was going to freeze the rock around the vanished plug in time, rendering it as invulnerable as she could. The volcano was going to erupt in a manner of her choosing, and she’d chosen carefully.

The magma was the key. The gas contained inside the magma was the key- if the pressure holding it in place vanished, it would flash into gas with incredible force.

Julia knew a few ways to convert high-pressure gas into high-velocity gas. High enough velocity to lift the ash cloud into the stratosphere, where its heat could dissipate and the winds could spread it over a huge area, falling as a gentle rain of fertile dust rather than a choking black cloud.

And that was all there was to deal with, in an eruption of this type- the blast itself would go straight up, the rocks that would rain down and make a mess out of the forest would be missing the show entirely, and the heat and ash would disappear into the upper atmosphere, which dealt with this sort of thing every time a volcano erupted.

All Julia needed to do was turn a mountain into a rocket engine of cataclysmic proportions, bell aimed towards the sky.

It had the audacious simplicity of a workable plan, and she flipped through her Manual looking for how on earth to express the curves of a rocket nozzle in the Speech.

---

Assorted Annotations from the Author

And from here this is going to go quickly. We're into the Ordeal proper now, and the words are happening quickly- this was the original inspiration for the piece.

"Let's begin at the beginning. What does magic do?"

Purple shrugged, which is a difficult thing to do when you only have wings. "Anything you want it to and more besides. It's everything around you, the echo of the Scream that created the world-"

"Sorry to interrupt," Siobhan said quietly, "but that wasn't really what I asked. You're telling me what it can do for me, not what it does. I want to know what magic is for before I start making glowing T-shirts that wipe out the universe or something."

"Right. Well. This is... sort of the most important thing about magic, and your Echo - Manual, sorry - should have covered it before you took your Oath, but... Skree. Magic is how you fight It. Magic is the only thing that puts a dent in the plans of the Swooping End. It wants death, coming for everything that ever lived or will ever live, and - are you snacking?"

Siobhan shoved the remains of the custard cream under her pillow. "I stress eat. Sorry. Don't hit me!"

"Why would I - How would I - you know what? I'm not pecking that berry. Anyway, magic. The Speech basically tells the universe to get its skree-aaah together and stop mucking about with all death and that. It, on the leeward wing, is perfectly okay with the universe going through a tremendous Goth phase. That's why wizards can stop It's plans, and that's why It hates wizards. And It'll try to kill you. A lot."

Siobhan went very still for a moment, and then reached back for her custard cream again.

"I'm in," she said.

"Good," said Purple. "So let's start with how you form your name."

"Yeah, that probably needs work." Siobhan glanced at her suitcase, which had a faint glow coming through the gaps in the zip.

"Names have power, Siobhan, and power makes things change. You can bend the universe to your will, so you have to be really, really anal about it. This is not a field where 'That'll do' will do. So, leaf through your Manual and find a spell, and this time write it out as exactly as you can."

"Okay... I'll have a look."

Siobhan picked up the manual and thought about what kind of spell she wanted. She was going to make it work, so it had to be something she wanted to work perfectly - something she really cared about.

The book flopped open on an ivory carving from 16th century Benin. She knew.

She dredged up a mechanical pencil from the recesses of a drawer, cracked her knuckles, and began to draw. Purple alighted on her shoulder and looked on, giving pointers about grammar and how to integrate her capital-N Name into the working.

"Ojibwe," Siobhan said after a while.

"Same to you with knobs on."

"No, there's a book. Irving Hallowell. He wrote about the history of Ojibwe culture, and part of it involves ideas of animism as a part of daily life." Siobhan turned her head to look at Purple. "For them, personhood is something you grow into through respectful interactions with other persons, like bears and rocks and stuff. It's something you have to work for, just like magic-"

And the spell caught.

Purple hadn't even seen where the spell finished, Siobhan's hand had been moving so fast. The spiralling patterns of the Speech burnt with power, so bright that the paper underneath it scorched. The wheel of words turned and spun as it disappeared, and the light exploded out, shredding the paper into a black blizzard as the lump at the eye of the storm remained inviolate.

"Skree, chick, what did you just do?"

Siobhan's eyes just shone.

"I've had a friend since I was two," she said as the light faded, "but he couldn't speak or move or even breathe. He was the first person to know who I was. He was my first friend, my first dance, my first kiss. I want him. I want him to have a chance at life, the same as I did."

The light died away, and the small stuffed wombat sat motionless in the eye of a magical storm.

Then he sat up, yawned, scratched his haunch, and looked around with witchlights in his one glass eye.

"Hello, Wombat," Siobhan said. "Welcome home."

But in the sense of 'you can't just copy a diagram and have it do some magic', I was right. ;)

For completeness: Nita is working spells just by thinking them as early as Deep Wizardry - she knows her Manual-summoning spell by heart and is able to invoke it with just six syllables of shorthand. But she still has to know what the words mean, and to enact them directly.

hS

This right here? This is the PPC. You guys are awesome. ^_^

I wish I could join in, but I have no clue what my Ordeal might be. Like, thinking back to myself in middle school, I really super wanted the world to be bigger than I thought it was, and I wanted to be part of something fantastic like being a wizard, and I sort of thought I might be able to save the world if I could just find the right people to do it with me. And if I had taken the Oath and gone on an Ordeal, I'd probably have failed hard due to overweaningness, if that's a thing, without the requisite resolve. So... not too much of a story there. {= (

~Neshomeh

I'm liking the descriptions of the wood and the bad future, and there was something really funny about "Where do you see yourself in five years?"

- Tomash

There's definitely non-spoken versions of the Speech, even among humans on Earth. For example, there's a scene in Games Wizards Play with a sign-language version of the Speech because why wouldn't deaf wizards be a thing?

But if you meant "spoken" in a very broad sense, then you've got a point.

- Tomash

It took Julia three hours to cross the forest. The trees were old and tall, rejoicing in the light without blotting it out and leaving the ground darkened. There weren’t trails here, there weren’t stumps, there weren’t any signs of logging- for all Julia knew, she was the first human to walk this grove.

Sometimes she just had to stop to take it all in- the long, spreading limbs were perfectly proportioned, each tree a sculpture rather than the bristly confusion of the firs she was used to. The grove was quiet, still, only the faint stirring of branches by breeze far above. It didn’t seem to be a place particularly in need of animals, or people.

At the bottom of the grove was a stream, so perfectly clear it was almost invisible over the speckled rocks that made its bed. Julia crossed at a wide spot, a shallow spot, an inch of rushing water wetting the sides of her boots and nothing more.

And then she was climbing, the land slowly steepening as she approached the immense bulk of the volcano. The great trees became lessened, reduced by the altitude, until they were a size Julia was more familiar with- slim trunks, twisted branches, and then she pushed her way through the last two and realized she was there.

Above the treeline stood a single maple, perhaps twenty feet tall, and above it loomed the sharp peak of the volcano. It was not reduced by the climb up its flank, as some mountains were- the peak was closer and taller and more threatening than it had been from a distance.

It reminded Julia of Mount Saint Helens, the beautiful mountain that had blown up seven years before her birth. That- she stopped to think about it. Had that been an Ordeal too? It seemed possible- a mountain of beauty twisted into horror, hurling itself sideways into ruin. If that had been an Ordeal it had been a failure.

Julia put down her backpack on a convenient rock and sat, digging out her Manual.

“I don’t suppose you have a chapter on applied vulcanology?” she asked, thumbing through the index.

The book didn’t answer. Julia hadn’t expected it to.

The first problem, she knew, was the question of time. Saint Helens had steamed and smoked for months before the final blast, as the plaque at the visitor’s center had explained. The mountain she was standing on now could be the same- months or minutes from erupting, and her none the wiser.

The future was a topic that had seen multiple chapters of the Manual dedicated to it. Seeing it was a complicated affair, confounded by chance and choice and a dozen other things that tended to make it an indistinct and unclear mess. Many of those factors didn’t apply here, fortunately, and Julia flipped to the relevant pages to try to work out how to ask for what she needed.

After an hour’s scribbling, five more yellow pages of graph paper covered in writing, she had something that seemed workable. If nobody did anything, the spell asked, what did her convenient sitting rock’s near future look like? What would it see?

“Where do you see yourself in five years?” Julia asked the stone, and then snickered and started to read the spell.

The magic took effect slowly, a thickening of the air, a quieting of the breeze as she finished reading. It almost felt like a dream- snow was falling, fat gray flakes- but it wasn’t snow. It was ash, and as Julia turned to look away from the mountain she beheld horror.

Through the haze of falling ash, the forest was a ruin. Landslides had poured down the mountain, felling the great trees like toothpicks, and fires roared where the land hadn’t reached. Ash smothered the stream bed, blackened the sky- even in the silence, in the stillness of the dream, lightning reached down from the ash cloud into the forest to spark another fire, miles away.

This is tomorrow, she knew, in the way knowledge just sometimes appeared with a dream. This is tomorrow if you do nothing, young witch.

And then the vision was gone and Julia was gasping for breath, collapsing to sit on the stone once more, red trees and blue sky blurring as tears filled her eyes.

The rainy side of Washington gets two kinds of rain, both of which have the annoying habit of coming at one sideways on a regular basis- either heavy winter rains driven on storm winds (which also make a sport out of snapping umbrellas) or light spring rains whose small drops drift enough that even the gentler spring winds are enough to send at one from any and sometimes all directions.

An umbrella-spell would be such a wonderful thing. I can't count the number of times I've gotten to work with soaked legs, even with an umbrella trying to shield me from the worst of it.

(To say nothing of the days where the weather-man has been wrong and I went out the door on a sunny morning that turned into a rainy afternoon...)

I debated for a while before writing- did I really want to retell the trans narrative again? But it wouldn't be my story without it, not in a universe where names are so very important.

And yeah, chronologically speaking, this would be 2014, a twenty-seven year old witch on Ordeal. That was another debate- younger wizards carry more power, how big do I want to go with mine? And then I re-read the first book and remembered that Nina and Kit did that very spoilers thing, and decided that a stratovolcano wasn't that big of a deal.

(Apologies, by the way, if you're also planning on using mountain symbolism in yours. I figured there aren't any active stratovolcanoes in Wales? So it's probably not going to be too close.)

Also, I take it Lise isn't from the rainy part of Washington? Otherwise you'd think she'd have figured out how to store an umbrella in a claudication. =P

I'll try to be more explicit. What I was trying to get across with my post is that I felt that it would be redundant to make me a PG, considering all the existing ones, including the two new ones, are guaranteed to be better than me. I only would have been willing to accept the nomination if there was a need to balance out the workload for the existing PGs. Considering Huinesoron pointed out that we haven't had any permission requests yet this year, I don't feel that is the case.

So unless someone can present an argument to me that shows we are in major need of one more warm body to serve as PG, I am indeed declining the hat.

—doctorlit hates wearing hats in real life, too

I feel like being a wizard must be really stressful at times, with literally everything around you being able to speak to you if you listen right. You've managed to poke an aspect of that that I don't remember the books addressing - yes, bugs are people too!

I'm enjoying this!

hS

I like the fact that you're still integrating her personal conflicts with the story; it's good! But I also adore the trees. ^_^ I mean, elf, right?

And congratulations on being the first PPCer (of five, so far) to get round to their Ordeal! Even though, uh, chronologically you're probably the last? :D

hS

In proper Welsh fashion, the weather turned quickly. Jacob barely had time to get changed again before the patter of rain drowned out the splashing of waves. The long trek back to the car was carried out at a jog, towels draped over heads for what little protection they provided, and the entire family breathed a sigh of relief when they finally shut the doors and turned on the heater.

Perfect weather, in other words, for climbing a mountain.

The Panorama Walk ran for about four miles, sloping gently up from the seafront town of Aberdyfi into the mountains behind. On a clear day, it treated walkers to a series of stunning views across the Dyfi estuary, truly earning its name.

On a rainy day, it was a damp trudge up a road that turned into a track, dodging puddles and rogue sheep alike, for the sake of a single moment of delight at the end.

Jacob and his family made good time along the straight road that made up the bulk of the hike, and were just approaching the final climb when Jacob heard a distinct pop. In his pocket, his Manual seemed to vibrate softly, as if humming to itself. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a dark-haired figure, just as she ducked down behind a gorse bush.

"Oh!" Jacob's family drew to a halt at his exclamation, and he hurriedly lifted the map, pretending to be engrossed. "I just… uh…" He scanned the contour lines, looking for any excuse to break away from the group. "... noticed that there's meant to be a footpath going over the ridge," he said, tapping at the waterproofed paper and hoping they didn't look too closely. "There's a cairn at the top, too."

His mother looked at him, then up at the sodden hillside. "Does it say how muddy it is?" she asked in a level voice.

"I'm sure it's… well, maybe a bit." He had to play this carefully. "Maybe I could have a look? If it's no good I'll catch you up."

"Why not?" His father took a step back towards him. "I'll come with you."

"Er." Jacob's mind raced. "I thought your boots were leaking. I think the footpath crosses a stream, so…"

"All right," his mother said, "you can go and explore. But don't get too far behind, you understand?"

"Absolutely. Thanks. See you in a bit." He made a show of poring over the map, until they rounded a curve in the track; then he hurried back to where Lise was waiting.

"Sorry about that," he said, slightly out of breath. "I didn't want to- why aren't you wet?"

The American girl scowled at him from under her bedraggled hair. "I am."

"Yes, no, but… why aren't you more wet?" Jacob rounded the gorse bush, and looked up sharply as the rain stopped splatting on his hood. "Do you have…?"

"A magic umbrella?" Lise supplied. "Yup. The book says it's a waste of energy, but I say that if it didn't want me to use energy, it should have told me the weather before it let me jump here in just a sweater." She plucked at the damp fabric of her jumper, then sighed and trudged over to the path. "I assume we're following your family?"

"Yes, there's a… thing to see, just ahead." Jacob caught up to her and matched her pace, not coincidentally keeping himself under the rain-deflecting spell. "It seems like you've really got the hang of this wizardry business," he said. "I've not had a chance to read more since we talked - just a few minutes in the car - but it looks really complex."

"It's not too bad," Lise replied. "The Manual's stuffed with information, provided you know what to look for."

Jacob smirked. "But not a weather report?"

"Actually, there is one." The girl flicked a finger against the book where it stuck out from her pocket. "It said it was sunny."

"Never trust the weather-man in Wales," Jacob said reflexively. "So does it get quicker? I spent ages working out my name on the beach."

"Yeah, there's a… take a look." She pulled her Manual out and flicked through to a page marked with a swirling spell diagram. "It stores any spells you've used recently, and you can pull bits out of them to put into new ones. This is the umbrella spell - I can pass you the workings if you like."

"That's be helpful," Jacob said, leaning over to get a better look, "especially in Wales." He frowned at the complex patterns of her name, taking in the meaning. "Huh, you're younger than you look."

"Wha-? Hey!" Lise slammed the book shut and scowled at him. "No peeking! How would you like it if I pried into your name?"

Jacob thought back over what he'd had to include on the beach. "That would be… fine? I don't think I had to put any secrets in there."

"Yeah, well… maybe I did, so don't." Lise lengthened her stride, stomping off ahead of him.

Jacob shook his head in amusement, then squawked as the rain started hitting his face again. "Hey!"

"Serves you right." Lise took a few more steps, then slowed. "Er… Jacob?"

"Yes?" He hurried to get back under the spell.

Lise pointed down the hillside, towards what would be a glorious view were it not for the weather. "Weren't there, um… more fields that way a minute ago?"

"Oh, that happens." Jacob watched the thickening mist with a resigned expression. "It's a Welsh thing - the clouds like to come down to mountaintop level sometimes."

Lise eyed him dubiously. "That fast? I could make out the river until just now, and now…" She pointed at a sheep, grazing peacefully, as it vanished into the fog.

"Okay, yes, this is a bit fast," Jacob allowed, watching the path ahead of them disappear. "But it's just… the wind, or something. What else could it be?"

Lise turned towards him, her outline blurring as the mist enveloped her. "Oh, I dunno," she said, rolling her eyes. "Maybe magic?"

---

Author's Miscellaneous Notes:

-Names, changed, etc.
-The geography, however, has not been. I have this walk memorised, both in sunlight and in rain.
-I'm pretty sure my family would've let me go up and try a footpath like that. And that I'd probably have tried to.
-With this chapter, we've finally found one word of our title - 'Mountain'. ^_^

hS

But specifically, she's rocking whatever accent they have in Washington State (which means, incidentally, that I'm very glad of your late Oath-taking - if you'd done it 'on time', you'd possibly have made a lie of one of the lines in Chapter 4).

hS

Your spell-work is gorgeous- the concept of a spell in a single, unbroken line is brilliant and novel and fits with the series so very well.

I'm also deeply amused by the concept of a thick American accent. I know we have them, but that's not how we think about it... Although I do have to ask, which American accent? There are several, many of which are thick in comparison to each other.