The Properties of Magika

As she begins to read Angela finds that contrary to what she expected, the book was fascinating and captures her attention completely.

"Magika is omnipresent and intangible. Only by channeling it through valves called runes can we change this powerful force for our benefit. Runes possess an infinite number of variations though not all are beneficial. Rune combinations which fail to create a beneficial effect are called curse runes and should be avoided at all costs as they can cause pain, disfigurement or even death."

The first paragraph explains a little about what the runic patterns are but the next paragraph is almost like it is teaching a new language.

"Each rune can be broken down into its base components, for example the rune for ice, 'ârct', can be broken down into the runes for water and cold, 'wīsse' and 'frøt'. The more complicated the function of a rune is the more base runes are required, increasing the size and difficulty of drawing."

"In this book there are dozens of runes referenced but that is only a small fraction of the runes discovered and the runes discovered are but a small fraction compared to number of runes that are yet to be discovered."

"Oftentimes the best runes are not the most complex. Runes should be designed in order to get the best result with the least difficulty. This is not to say that complicated runes are not needed but it is not uncommon for an artificer to get lost in them, forgetting the simple solution in front of his eyes. There is usually multiple ways to achieve the same result using different runes but it is up to each artificer to find the path that suits themselves."

This introduction goes on for quite a bit longer and begins to get tedious but eventually Angela reads through it all and moves on to the actual content. The first construction she would have to make is an inscription table. Thankfully for her the table could mostly be constructed using the blueprint function as it was only runes that she had to first create manually.

The table was similar to a writing desk but it had special channels down the sides, supposedly this "facilitates the flow of anima" and makes her rune inscriptions more powerful. It also had a indent with a wooden clasp to hold the runes in place while inscribing. The main difficulty in the making of the table would be the runes which would have to be made out of a metal called galladium, an alternate version of a metal called gallium that can be found on earth.

Galladium is apparently the most commonly used ore in inscribing but is usually only attainable by smelting bauxite, an ore that contains a high concentration of copper. The metal itself is soft with a melting temperature of almost 60 degrees Celsius and a blue colour.

It would seem that she is unable to create an inscription table until she had access to more metals and so she moves on to the next page for now. This page seems to be more promising as it would give her a much better chance of finding demon islands.

The item in question is a sort of compass which detects usage of anima in the surrounding area of about 20km, it ignores anima used by the creator and as such, any nearby uses of anima would almost certainly be caused by island cores.

The runes required were fairly simple; though the difficulty would be much harder without an inscription table or specialised tools. It required the rune for anima (ævig), as well as the rune for search (løk), and could be created out of most materials, though the effectiveness of some materials were much better than others.

After many attempts and a lot of wasted materials (most of which could be reclaimed using the deconstruction menu) Angela finally completes the anima compass and was now partially equipped to begin her search for demon islands.