Vision Change

POV Change!

After moving the furniture into my room I decided to actually start learning how to become a thaumaturge. The first thing was to actually figure out what I found in that tower. I decided to first take everything out and check what I was dealing with.

4x pouches of multicolored dust

1x small jar filled with colored crystals

1x Black leatherbound book with a skull on the front

1x bolt of durable fabric

1x ring with a yellow gem

1x small tattered green journal

1x potted Silverwood tree

1x potted Greatwood tree

1x potted cluster of Shimmerleaf

1x potted cluster of Cinderpearls

1x potted colony of Vishrooms

It was a decent amount of stuff, I put the plants to the side because I knew what they were but not before I watered them. Something felt off about the plants but I'd have to figure that out later.

Next was the books, the black book was filled with unintelligible scribbles and I started to regret trying to read it. My mind felt heavy and cloudy after 'reading' it so I put it to the side and moved on to the green journal. Much to my surprise, it detailed what was so special about those plants they were potted in a special pot with equally special soil.

The pots pulled vis out of the air and injected it into the soil, and the soil was made with the purpose of absorbing that vis and nourishing the plant. This led to the plants having an unnatural growth, they couldn't get any bigger than they currently were but they would grow back lost parts within days.

This would allow me to harvest the plants for resources if I needed to. The journal also had a different language, the notes said it was written in Pechin and would help in trading with the Pech. It also had some diagrams showing what the pech looked like.

The crystals in the jar were also noted:

These crystals have various elemental properties, the red one feels hot but isn't, the blue one feels wet but isn't, the green ones feel heavy but isn't, the yellow ones feel like they would just float away but don't. The white one feels like it can't break, while the black one feels like it's about to break but doesn't.

They can of course be broken but I don't recommend it. The interesting thing to note is that when a crystal of each kind is mixed into water and heated, the crystals congeal together forming one multi-colored crystal.

Sadly because of the taint the names of these will likely be lost to time, but the primal shards were just called shards, depending on the elemental aspect they were, the yellow ones being air shards, the blue water shards, the white being order, and the black being entropy.

The shards formed through alchemy from the mix of other shards were called balance shards.

The book didn't go into too much depth about how the crystals formed but, if alchemy could make something like those balance shards then it could probably be used for much more.

I decided to try this myself luckily I had 15 of all the different elements so I shouldn't be wasting too many. I grabbed one of the small glass beakers and I had, and a candle. I had to go down to get some water but after that, I was ready to go.

I added the water and used the candle to bring the temperature up, I slowly added the crystals watching as they slowly merged into the balance shard. It was an interesting process, it looked as if the crystals were melting, but as soon as I added the last shard they started to merge.

I will admit I don't think I did it correctly. The shard that came out was much smaller than its parts and a thin purple gas rose out of the beaker. I think it was because of the device I used because I did it again with my eyepatch off to see the process and a lot of the colors that swirled around the crystals escaped and morphed into that gas.

The gas itself was chaotic in nature much similar to the taint on my hand. I thought that maybe that was how taint was made, the gas I named flux was likely produced because of my wasteful use of magic.

The 2 balance shards were much smaller than I wanted, but it looked similar to the pouches of multicolored dust I had. I decided to try crushing the shards to make dust but that seemed to not work, but luck would have it as I moved to put the shards away I dropped one and it passed through the candle flame and upon hitting the desk a small piece came off.

This time I held the shard over the flame and tried to turn it to dust, and much to my surprise it quite easily came apart, and I named this powder Salis Mundus. I also noticed that being able to see the flow and feel of the vis would be quite important, but I needed a way that didn't give me a major headache.

My best bet would be some form of lens that I could look through, but designing something like that proved much more difficult, I couldn't order such a lens because others wouldn't know how to make it. My best bets were to either make it myself or modify an existing lens. I didn't know how to make it, nor did I want to spend the time learning how.

So I set about modifying an existing lens, I went out to buy a lens that I could use. I also passed by an alchemy store and found a portable heater that could generate either heat or flames. I passed by a tool store and bought some stuff I could to manipulate the glass without touching it.

I also bought some other tools, ones that were used for jewelry making, and some cutting tools for gems and glass alike. I made it back to my room where I set the burner up and sorted the tools, before bringing the lens out.

My first attempt was to try coating the lens in some of the salis mundus with a dry application, it, unfortunately, didn't work as the mundus stuck to the lens making it impossible to see through. I only had 4 more pouches of mundus left after using the bag I had made from the 2 smaller crystals.

My second attempt also didn't work, I tried heating the glass and then applying the salis mundus, it bonded to the glass but the visibility was poor. The lens was cloudy and the colors on the other side were blurred and merged together.

I did however notice that the base elements tried to separate into 6 different sections, with opposing elements being across from each other. I was also out of lenses to try experimenting with, but with the discovery of the 6 elements, I decided to pay Vish a visit.

"Hey, Vish you here? I have a request."

"Kid, you are already back, not satisfied with my handiwork?"

"Nope, the pieces I bought are great, but I was wondering if you could make me a lens?"

"Of course I can, but is that it?"

"Nope I need them to be hexagonal and you need to mix this powder into the glass mix."

"What's the powder made of?"

"Some magic powder I made, I can guarantee that it won't mess up the glass!"

"Fine, give me 20 minutes."

After getting the lens back from Vish, I looked through it to see that I could see the colors the same way I could with my node eye. I paid Vish and went on my way, on my way back I wondered if I could stack the effect, and after trying it instead of seeing vague colors swirling together I saw distinct colored spheres surrounding objects.

I decided to call these spheres aspects because every item living or non-living had these aspects, the shards had 3 different aspects: there were 3 spheres for the coinciding element, one sphere for the crystalline structure, and one sphere for the magical element.

All objects had different amounts, but similar objects had the exact same amount, while every person had different aspects entirely. Now that I could see aspects, essentia, and vis and follow their flow, I needed a way to manipulate it.

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Total Words: 1416

The first research chapter is finished! Hopefully I explained things in a way so that even if you haven't played thaumcraft, you still understand. Suggestions and power stones are always welcome!