Grayson Wright
May 23, 2021 6:28 PM
In your own words.... (Advanced) by Grayson Wright
“So,” said Professor Wright, looking around the room of Advanced students from behind his spectacles, “how many of you have ever wondered why we usually cast our spells in a version of Latin?”He had a strong suspicion it was going to be all of them, or at least more of them than not, even considering the ones who were wizard-born and therefore had been hearing spells cast that way since before birth. Even if he was wrong, though, there was at least one he was sure of – that being the Head Girl. Diligent as Katerina was, and clever as Tatiana had been, the Vorontsov girls had both suffered from time to time because of the fact that there were sounds in Latin and English which simply didn’t exist in Russian, which could make the precision needed for good charms work…difficult…for them to achieve.
He did not think he was wrong about the others probably wondering before, too, though. What, after all, was so special about Latin, anyway? It was just one more language among many, both living and dead. Historically, it had come to prominence much later than several other languages. So why was so much of their schooling based around fragments of Latin?
“The commonly accepted answers are elaborated on in your textbook, on page 304 – “ he gave them a moment to flip around if they wished – “but the general consensus is that Latin became the dominant language for spell construction within the magical tradition we’re part of because of historical and practical factors. Latin was the language of international communication and scholarship for centuries in much of Europe – where our illustrious founders were from – which made it practical once sending young witches and wizards to schools became fashionable, and Latin is a language that works reasonably well for condensing a sentence into a word or two, which is one of the things that makes the style of magic you’ve mostly studied for the past five or six years very practical for day-to-day use – that, and the way we use wands and gestures to magnify and direct the forces we’re manipulating without the need for particularly complex rituals or time investments. However, there’s most likely nothing inherently more powerful about Latin than about English, or any other language, as you’ll see as we work through this unit.
“It’s going to be a mostly theoretical unit,” he admitted up-front. “While we’ll look at texts of spells from other traditions, trying out strange spells without being too confident of our pronunciation or procedure – or what some words even mean precisely – is…rarely a good idea. And there are several charms we’ll be looking at where you’d use common English, but they’re mostly things of far too serious a character for trying in class. However, today, at least, you will need your wands.”
The overly-cautious, fussy, conflict-and-drama-averse parts of his personality were not entirely pleased about that, as it could result in things getting a bit…explodey…for his taste even with the Advanced class, but there was nothing for it. They had to be given a certain level of trust, permission to experiment and maybe even blow things up; it was the only way they learned. He’d heard a joke at a conference once about how professors didn’t really teach anyone anything, but public embarrassments and the occasional burn scar could work wonders on student memories, and while he wouldn’t go that far, there was something to the idea that a lot of people needed experience as a supplement to far more sensible (to his mind) ways of obtaining information… He thought he could at least trust Advanced students to exercise such basic common sense as containing anything that looked liable to explode, or at least to call his attention to the problem before it became catastrophic. So that was something.
“You’ll each use one of these – “ he held up a small trinket box to demonstrate – “for your work. They’ve been magically sealed. You’ve all mastered how to work around second-tier sealing spells by now, so the wand movements should be familiar enough – try to open them in whatever language you please, so long as you’re fluent in it. Commands tend to work best, but try what you like, only note your results – not just success or failure, but your own level of confidence, how you felt as you spoke, and so forth – for each combination. You may read a bit in your textbooks if you feel theory will help, or not – either way, it will probably be difficult for all of you, so don’t be discouraged if you struggle to get results. Clear as mud? Excellent. Begin.”
OOC: Welcome back, trust you all know the rules by now, etc, etc. I actually have canons I can use to defend the theory put forth in this lesson if anyone wants them, but otherwise, have fun, tag me or catch me in Chatzy or tell someone to poke me off-site if you need anything, etc. Plus, Tatiana and Katerina are also my characters, so I can talk about them.
Subthreads: My last time (except not). by Evelyn Stones with Ness McLeod
Khorosho. by Katerina Vorontsov with Allegra Brockert
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Grayson Wright
In your own words.... (Advanced)
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Evelyn Stones
June 03, 2021 5:29 PM
My last time (except not). by Evelyn Stones
There had been a day where a teacher telling them all that they'd need their wands in class would have filled Evelyn with dread. This particular teacher, standing at the front of the room like he would have been entirely more comfortable at a desk, was the primary reason that was no longer the case, and why Evelyn's hand gripped her wand now as a comfortable, familiar thing. The fact that she'd even made it to this class filled her with pride, a feeling she'd been trying to develop in reasonable ways. She didn't want to be vain and snotty, but she did want to take pride in herself and her work. It was something that Ness, Heinrich, Gary, Valentine, and especially Professor Wright had all worked to instill in her: she was where she was because her own two metaphorical feet brought her there and other people only helped. She was the one who had done it so far, and she was the one who was going to be going on.Going on soon meant leaving Sonora, leaving what she knew, leaving the only things that had become familiar to her when everything she'd known had been ripped out from underneath her feet . . . she'd learned then that she could fly when she thought she'd fall and she hoped that would be the case as she graduated and went on to college and life with Heinrich and Ness and CJ and, well, herself. She'd have to live with herself for the rest of her life, silly as that sounded, and taking pride in the familiarity of her wand in her hand was the first step in a path she had never thought she had access to before. She remembered telling Malikhi at their first feast that she would probably be best off marrying a muggle and doing a muggle job and just giving up on the whole magic thing after graduation, and now here she was, with a sealed box and only a vague understanding of an advanced bit of magical theory to get it open.
She considered the project in front of her, wondering how one was supposed to talk to a box. It was a trinket rather than a cardboard box or a wooden crate, and that seemed important somehow. Like it was a baby box. People used certain voices to talk to baby people, why not to talk to baby boxes? Although she wasn't sure that tone or intonation was precisely the point of this lesson, so maybe it was baby talk/baby-box talk that was the key thing for her to think about. How did one get more baby-box talky than open up?
She waved her wand upwards, trying to imbue a general sense of opening as she gave that a try, finding no success. She was only fluent in English, so she wasn't about to try another language, although German did briefly come to mind. She didn't know the German word for opening up a box anyway. She tried variations on please open, open, be opened, and a few more with some choice words under her breath to show the box who was boss but none of them worked at all. She wondered what her childhood self would think of her now.
"Open sesame," she tried, poking her wand at the trinket with a jabbing motion instead of anything more meaningful. Those were, after all, the magic opening words. She had a distinct memory of being a small child, spending time with her mom and practicing made up magic words since neither of them could do the sorts of things her dad could do. When they went to stores with automatic sliding doors, she and her mom would shout open sesame and burst into fits of giggles when they managed to time it well enough that the doors seemed to open on command rather than on motion detection.
To her surprise, the seal broke and the box opened. She stared open-mouthed at it, her success surprising her almost more than the method she'd used to get there. Did it count as cheating if she'd used magic words? She held up the open box, not sure if she was trying to share with her classmate or with the professor that she'd managed to do it.
OOC: This is open to either Gray or a classmate responding. :)
22
Evelyn Stones
My last time (except not).
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Ness McLeod
June 12, 2021 8:14 PM
Same by Ness McLeod
Ness raised a tentative half-hand when asked about wondering why spells were usually in Latin-ish. Ness had wondered that and so, like a dutiful Aladren, had gone and looked it up, and didn't wonder it any more. The question was past tense, but still - why risk looking like you hadn't cracked a book?Therefore, Ness already knew the summary that Professor Wright gave - that Latin was the go to largely because of tradition, though it was well suited to this type of magic. Though the cause and effect were harder to determine there - had this style of magic become popular because it worked well with the language being used? How much had language and magical style influenced each other? There were very few solid answers on that, especially once you took into account the fact that belief coloured historical accounts, but that belief was also key to getting magic to work properly. It was all very knotty. According to what he was saying and the summary pages which Ness had already read, magic should be possible using other languages, but it would be difficult for a number of reasons.
Partly, there was Ness' own will-power and self-belief, normally fairly strong forces, but it was a big ask to override years of habit. Spells were a thing that were crafted. The words were chosen with reasons, and some theories even went so far as to say that the words became more powerful over time – the more significance you imbued something with, the more influence it had. That part was sort of undeniable, but whether more power leeched into the words over time from the reverence of repeated usage, or whether it simply fed into people’s belief in ‘the right words’ was unclear.
The fact that non-verbal spells existed, along with spells in other cultures and languages, were proof that a single word was not the be all and end all, not the one and only means to the end. Though very often the means of learning non-verbal spells was initially to focus on the word, just keeping it inside your head rather than saying it out loud. The word didn’t disappear from the spell, therefore, it just became internalized.
Maybe it was a bit like chemistry? Ness tried to recall the sketchy details of chemical reactions that were half there from casual reading. Like, you could introduce things that broke other things apart and bonded with them in new ways, but you still had to account for all parts of the equation. Maybe this was like that. The new words would bond with a wand motion, and the old words would fizzle away like gas into the atmosphere, until you were left with a new spell. It was good for visualising, even if it turned out not to be accurate. And visualising was probably going to be important, as t the question for today was not so much whether spells were possible with different words, as whether Ness was capable of that particular feat.
As Ness stared at the small wooden box, trying to think how to instruct it, English felt very plain. Ness definitely did not have any other languages to a fluent degree. The D&D languages were interesting to dip into, but Ness had never managed to make a serious study of them. Languagey-wordy characters had more been Kir’s thing anyway.
“Open.” Ness decided to start with the obvious, at least as a baseline, following the wand movements Professor Wright had suggested, and trying to use the same kind of commanding tone that worked on brooms for ‘up.’ There wasn’t much evidence that the box was listening. Ness repeated the process a few times, knowing – underneath mounting frustration and doubt – that sometimes new spells took a few tries, though it had been a while since Ness had had to suffer that particular defeat. The trouble was, ‘open’ just didn’t feel very magical. Brooms were probably primed to respond to ‘up’ whereas these things were designed to be as stubborn as possible.
Ness considered variants. Unlock. Desist. Lid up, monkeyfudger.
There was an ‘open sesame’ beside Ness, and Evenlyn’s lid popped open.
“Yield to me!” Ness commanded the box, in the most dramatic D&D voice it was possible to use in class, taking advantage of the camoflague of some simultaneous yelling going on, plus an ability to not really mind being weird. Though Ness did mind doing something attention drawing right before failing. Perhaps that, or Evelyn’s success, was the catalyst that the reaction needed. The lid popped open.
“Snapsies,” Ness grinned, holding up the open box next to Evelyn’s.
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Ness McLeod
Same
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Evelyn Stones
June 15, 2021 7:55 PM
Our last time. . . . *has feels* by Evelyn Stones
Evelyn grinned at Ness. There was no doubt in Evelyn's mind that she wouldn't be here if not for her best friend and the fact that they were 'here' together was one of the Pecari's favorite things. Of course, with graduation looming, there was still the question of whether they'd be 'there' together after all this but Evelyn liked to think so. They definitely both wanted to, and that was encouraging."Cheers," she replied, lightly bumping her box into Ness'. "What worked for you? I tried to be bossy and I tried to be parental and commanding but neither really worked. I had to think of what words made me feel powerful and magical when I was a kid and that did it. I don't know if I'd be able to seal it back up again that way. I liked your DM voice" she added with another grin.
Evelyn paused, looking at her box and thinking about her own small success here for a moment. This was the sort of thing she wanted to do after they left Sonora and the idea of actually getting to was getting both more exciting and more intimidating as it became real. If all went well, she was going to meet kids who would also need to tap into a hard childhood to make their magic cooperate. That was a bananas thought; the thing she'd been trying to avoid doing at the start of her Sonora career was the only thing that worked and now she was going to make a career out of it. She may even work with students from Sonora.
"Does it ever just hit you that we're going to be using this stuff for real soon? Out in the world?" Evelyn was old enough that she'd been able to use magic away from school for over a year now, but she rarely did, both to avoid feeling like she was somehow showing off and because it was still just odd that she could. She certainly hadn't used anything like this before, or even considered doing so. What would life look like as a fully fledged magic user? She felt like she'd need to start going to some of the conferences that Professor Wright talked about if she was going to keep up on everything that was possible, although spellcasting pathologists were probably hosting their own conferences she could go to. "And in college . . . that's almost more terrifying than the world," she laughed.
22
Evelyn Stones
Our last time. . . . *has feels*
1422
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