Final Visit

After my talk with Queen Vanera I decided to head back to the ruins of my house to see if I could salvage anything, once I arrived at my now destroyed house I got a good look at the damage.

The second floor had almost entirely collapsed with only a small amount of the timber frame remaining, the first floor looked ok till I walked inside where I saw the roof had caved in making most of the house pretty much useless.

I slowly made my way through the wrecked house grabbing whatever linens that I could see. I climbed my way into what was once the second floor and tried to see if I could find anything salvageable. The bedding and sheets were pretty much intact, just really dirty after everything collapsed. There were a few pairs of clothes that were not ruined so I grabbed those. On my way out though I saw a notebook that I don't remember having when I picked it up and opened it. It was full of rather creative looking scribbles and a recipe for some form of metal

"Hey Taint, when did I get this?" I asked

"You wrote that last night, don't you remember? You were mumbling about the dream you had the night before, something about a pattern in the void?" Taint responded

"I did? I don't remember that… weird." I muttered

I decided to test the recipes written down here later, as I needed to speak with Dandle Dorf and move into my new lab before I get to any new projects. As I made my way to the lab I saw a few other houses that suffered the same fate, but the owners didn't look all that devastated, I assumed it was because ghast attacks were a rather common thing so they had some backup plan in case something happened.

I also got to see people move the ghast corpses that had landed inside the city, they were wearing some weird full-body suits and were trying to keep their distance from them. Ill look into why they did that when I do my own dissection of one later.

When I made it to the lab I saw some workers scraping a ghast off the domed roof. The ghast they were cleaning up was one I had detonated because there were chunks everywhere. I quickly made my way inside so that they wouldn't see me just in case they knew it was me.

I quickly made my way towards the Wisp section of the lab, passing by Priestess Teala doing a presentation on how to make thaumium. The Wisp's portion of the lab was a little smaller than everything else, probably due to the fact that most of them can fly and they were rather small to begin with.

Showing my badge to the Wisps they showed me to Dandle Dorf's library.

"Arch Mage, you have a visitor." One of the wisps said

"Send her in!" I heard Dandle Dorf say

"Yes sir." The wisp responded

I then entered the library through a door that was a little too small, the room was small, but it made up for it by being really tall, the walls were lined with shelves filled with books. Unlike the previous labs that had arcane crafters and lab equipment this one only had books with a small table in the center.

"It's about time you came to talk with me, I don't have chairs for anyone larger than me so the floor will have to do." Dandle Dorf explained, "I tried replicating the wand you were using, take a look and tell me what you think."

He handed me a wand that was suited for his size and it was a pretty simple iron-capped wooden wand.

"It's a pretty basic wand, I doubt the capacity is very high, it's pretty small in comparison." I explained

"Yea I thought the same thing, Wisps don't need wands to use foci so we never bothered with using them. Yours was made with gold and greatwood, correct?" Dandle Dorf asked

"Yea greatwood provides double the storage of vis compared to regular woods, and gold is more efficient at channeling it." I replied

"That makes sense, but why not use silverwood or thaumium? Those materials should have a higher capacity and channel rate. Also why just a wand, for combat, wouldn't a staff be better it would hold higher amounts and could be used as a weapon just in case? Scepters could also work for crafting specific cases as well, higher storage compared to a wand with a higher discount included." Dandle Dorf explained while pulling out some prototypes he made

"I hadn't thought of it, what I was using was fine for now. Plus a staff wouldn't work for crafting and a scepter wouldn't be able to use foci." I replied

"Hmmm, fair point a wand is a nice starting ground. OH on the topic of foci, I noticed that you only used 3 foci and that they were significantly stronger than the ones we use. What did you do to make your foci so potent, nothing I did to modify a focus could even come close to what you did." Dandle Dorf asked

"I haven't done anything to my foci, it's probably something related to my status. You can modify foci? I didn't know you could do that." I responded

I handed him my frost foci so he could take a closer look.

"Status?" He asked while inspecting the focus. "This is an unmodified focus so you will have to explain what a status is."

"A Status or more commonly known as a Falna is a gift given by the gods. It allows a mortal to gain strength far beyond what should be possible by gathering excelia. One of my skills on my status increases the output of my magic." I explained as simply as I could

"Are we able to gain a Falna?" Dandle Dorf asked

"I don't quite know what is required for Falna to be given, but the main component is Arcanum which is contained in the blood of the gods." I replied

"So if we could replicate this Arcanum we could do the same?" Dandle Dorf asked

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Word Count: 1044

Some inspiration for Stella about wand crafting and foci! Suggestions and power stones are always welcomed!