#Mundane Kaya Sona | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

foone · 1 year

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A good teleport should be barely noticeable. One moment, there's no one there, and the next moment, there is. No flashes of light, no sound, you could literally blink and miss it. You often don't even see them at first, because the human eye is watching for movement, and a well-done teleport has no movement, just an instant change of nothing becoming something. It's a subtle art, the kind practiced endlessly by magicians, and that goes doubly for anyone trained as a war wizard. You want to turn the tides of a battle with arcane powers, or slip an assault team in behind enemy lines, to decapitate (sometimes literally) the opposing force? You have to be discreet. You have to perfectly balance the spell so that your strike force can slip in unnoticed, with a bit of magical help, and teleportation is one of the trickiest kinds of magic to make unnoticeable. The universe doesn't like it when nothing becomes something, and vice versa. It tends to notice, and people around tend to notice as well. So there's really an art to a good teleportation spell, and you sometimes see the grand masters of the field give demonstrations before crowds of less experienced magicians, often to roaring applause.

This was not one of those teleportation spells. This was a C-, barely passing, "SEE ME AFTER CLASS" written on your homework type of teleportation. The kind you do when you don't have time to prepare, when you don't give a damn who notices your arrival, because the one thing that's of highest importance is that you Stop Being Here and start Being Somewhere Else. This teleportation spell would give anyone magically sensitive headaches for days, and you would have trouble missing the bright flash and deafening noise that accompanies a body's-worth of air having to get out of the way in an instant. If you could hear the fabric of space, it rang like a bell hit with a sledgehammer when that teleport happened. Light-years away there was probably some little green men confused at why their new gravity-wave-detector appears to have told them a black hole merger just happened on the surface of a habitable planet.

And through that cacophony of light and sound and gravity, there stepped a man. He was silent for only a moment, and then screamed in terror, almost equaling the sound that had come shortly before. He ran, his rationality giving out, managing to function only at the instinctive reaction of an animal that is on fire and needs to move, now.

Because it's one thing to know, intellectually, that there are planets out there where the evaporated water from lakes and oceans collects in the lower atmosphere, and somehow condenses into visible structures of suspended water droplets, which then sometimes comes crashing down to the ground. That makes sense, in the way that you can read about sex or skydiving but it can in no way compare to experiencing the real thing (and hopefully not at the same time). There's a huge difference between knowing that there are planets with precipitation, and being in the middle of a rainstorm, because your emergency teleport dropped you on the outskirts of Seattle in the middle of the wet season.

Rudapedi Yonfer is being rained on for the first time in his life, and the master magician is terrified in much the way you would be if you opened the door to your bathroom one morning and there was a cheetah sitting in your bathtub.

#my writing #mundane kaya sona

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foone · 1 year

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So I was thinking about my novel and I realized something I hadn't before: my story involves a woman who hates a guy, but the guy is nice to her (to an almost annoying extent, actualy) both because that's the kind of guy he is, and because he needs to work with her in a professional context. And over the story she comes to not hate him, but gets along and they become friends.

And then I remembered heterosexuals exist. Yeah, I need to make it very clear this isn't a slow-burn romance story. She's a sapphic-ace and he's gay, and I think I'm gonna need to make that clear earlier on so that I don't end up leading on a bunch of readers who see this as the start of a love story. That's not my intention and I don't want to deal with the implications of writing a story that could be read as "be nice to a woman that hates you and eventually she'll give in!". Nope.

Also, speaking of things I need to be careful about, there's a jokey scene where the wizard from another world is complaining about how annoying it is to be stuck on a mana-less world like earth. He can't concentrate on anything for long, he's forgetful, he randomly switches between impulsive hyperactivity and near catatonic tiredness, and he can't keep still.

She points out that it sounds like he has ADHD. "what's that?"

She describes the symptoms, and he's like "oh, yes. That sounds exactly like it. You recognize this condition too? On my world we call that 'a mana deficit'".

And I need to be careful because the point isn't to make fun of people with ADHD or to imply that the scientific explanation for ADHD is wrong or anything like that. I have ADHD, for fuck's sake. My point is merely that maybe instead of Adderall, my ADHD could be treated by giving me arcane powers and instead of drinking a lot of coffee, I could just cast fireballs!

#Mundane Kaya Sona

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ecoamerica · 23 days

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foone · 1 year

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"here" he says, handing me a book. "Count the pages"

"okay?" you quickly flip through the book full of sigils and inscrutable geometric illustrations. "seventy-two pages. What's the point of this?"

He writes that down on a little notepad, next to your name. You see the page is full of other names. "watch", he says, and closes the book before opening it and counting out loud the pages as he flips through them. "fifty-six"

He hands the book back to you, and you flip through it again yourself, then again. You count seventy-two pages both times. "is this some kind of trick?"

"if it is, it's not one I've been able to figure out yet. Everyone who looks through this book seems to count a different number of pages. The most I've seen was one hundred and twenty-four, the least was nineteen."

"very interesting", you say, turning the book over to examine the binding. There doesn't seem to be anything special about it, no obvious place to hide a trick mechanism.

"and that's just for starters: the actual pages seem to change between readers". He takes the book, closes it, and then quickly flicks through it until he finds a specific diagram, a series of concentric circles labeled around some sort of whale-like shape. "close the book and find this page" he says as he hands it over.

You look at the page closely, then do as he says. Before too long, you're looking at the back of the book, that diagram nowhere to be seen. "I can't find it! What is this book?"

He shrugs. "it seems everyone gets a different set of pages. That's one of the many reasons we're very much looking forward to you being able to read this language."

#mundane kaya sona

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foone · 1 year

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I laughed at my own story during electrolysis and I feel the need to explain it because it's not actually going to end up in the book, it doesn't fit.

So in the current chapter I was plotting, an FBI agent, a linguist, and a wizard are escaping an FBI facility that's under attack by a military force from the wizard's homeworld. I was thinking that it'd be a good character moment to show the wizard hesitating before leaving the building, because it's raining outside. This would let me explain that on the world he's from, it doesn't rain. They don't even have clouds. So naturally he's a bit hesitant to run out into this totally-weird weather phenomenon.

But I realized it doesn't work. He'd been on earth for a while prior to this, spending some amount of time on the run, and only some of it was when he had a house to stay in. So naturally he'd have gotten used to rain by now.

But then I laughed because I'd already established that the place he arrived on earth was near... Seattle.

One of the rainiest cities in the country.

And now I'm just laughing at the image of this proud wizard guy (long beard, robes, staff with glowing crystal on the end) warping into a rainstorm and just screaming. Running right out of frame, arms above his head. The scream fades away. Then comes back, as he runs back into frame headed left now.

Wizards in the rain are like cats who slipped and fell in a full bathtub. Just trying to get out of there as fast as possible, utterly ruining any elegant air they may have been putting on.

A wizard hiding under a bed, trying to wring out their robes. Looking miserable.

#mundane kaya sona

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foone · 4 months

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So the way crossing between worlds works in Mundane Kaya Sona is that theres fundamentally one type of transport: magic can be used to make a jump between two worlds.

(under readmore cause long. This is world building info rather than a story, but I wanted to write it down for my own reference at least)

The difference is where it's done from. There are points where the magic flux between worlds is thinner. Teleporting is far easier at these points, but they're linked to the connected worlds. So from a given point on world A, you can only travel to world B, but traveling there is much easier (allowing for less talented wizards to make the jump, with less mana needed) and the amount of people or cargo you can take with you is greatly increased.

While not at one of these nodes, you can still jump between worlds, but it's far more difficult: the amount of skill needed is far higher (or you'll end up Nowhere), the mana cost is immense, and and the amount of mass you can bring with you is tiny. At most you can bring another person, maybe two, and you can't bring more than you can carry.

You might think you could go by yourself and take two people's worth of cargo, but it doesn't work that way. The innate magical ability of humans means it's easier to bring them along than some unthinking metal or stone.

The upside, however, is that you aren't limited to the flux links: you can go from any world to any other world, with some limited control of where you end up (usually enough to not land in the middle of an ocean, but not enough to chose what house you appear in). You can't jump to somewhere else on the same planet, but with enough time and mana you could jump out to another world, then jump back in to elsewhere on the planet.

Each world has some number of flux points, which are rooted in the underground mana infusing the bedrock. They stay roughly stable over long periods of time, but do drift with the continents on planets with active plate tectonics, and a large enough earthquake will shift their positions as the flux density of the planet changes.

The number of flux points a world has is inversely corrolated to the amount of surface mana available: a saturated world like Kaya Sona will only have one or two, while a dead planet like Earth could easily have 20-30, all linking to different worlds.

It's been theorized that there could be super-saturated worlds with no subsurface mana: such a world would have a magical barrier so strong that it would have no flux points. This mathematical possibility can't be proven however, as the strength of the barrier would also make it impossible to port into, so these worlds (if they exist) can't be visited.

Inversely it's possible that a world could go beyond dead into negative mana, much like was achieved in The Desolation in Southern Monnon after the Wizard Wars. A world with a negative mana field would be filled with flux points, hundreds or even thousands of them. Although this sounds useful at first (it'd be the ultimate hub world for interplanetary travel), it's less than useless. With a negative mana field it'd be impossible to port back off the planet, making all those flux points useless. But porting at a flux point to another world's flux point requires mana at the source, and not the destination: this means a port route that leads to a negative mana world is effectively one way. You can go there, but you can't get back.

This (along with other natural and human-made hazards) makes exploring the network of port routed inherently dangerous. You could end up somewhere you can't return from. The Kaya Sona Academy explores these routes using pairs of wizards: the first jumps them both down a port route, and the second can jump them back out if the destination is dangerous. Moonstone is used to shield some mana in the even of a local negative mana field, but there's only so much that can be done if the destination world is aggressively negative.

This is one of the main reasons the Academy trains so many wizards: aside from the ever-present need for war wizards, a frightening number of newly trained wizards go on one of their exploration duties and simply never return. It's not known (or really even knowable) how many of them ended up stranded on a world without mana, rather than dying too fast to have their companion port then back out.

There is at least a little safety built into the system: a flux point destination that's not "clear" will be difficult to port to, and wizards exploring unknown port routes are taught to be able to notice that difficulty and abort the jump before they end up appearing inside solid rock or deep under the ocean. But this safety doesn't extend to things like forest fires, hostile inhabitants of the destination world, or mana fields so negative that you can't port back.

So, this all results in the following situation:

Highly trained wizards can port between known worlds with some amount of precision, bringing along themselves and one or two others. This is used by the empire to communicate between the Capitol and invasion fleets across the many worlds, as well as to slip small attack groups into key positions. A common strategy for the empire is to assassinate the leaders and generals of a target nation before the main army arrives. By the time the main force arrives, their forces will be in disarray and unable to mount much of a defense.

As for the army, they're limited by the flux network. A well-supplied army will be able to send hundreds of troops through a flux point an hour, but they need to travel across the worlds in mundane ways. This limits the speed that the empire can expand, as they need to build supply routes on previously conquered worlds before they can move on to connected worlds.

So, the slowness of the main army combined with the incredible speed of high-magic movement behooves the empire to act in subtler ways: along with the targeted assassinations and surgical strikes, they often incite existing factions against each other, supplying existing rebellions with intel, magical supplies, and promises of support when the army arrives.

It's not an uncommon story for a newly contacted world to undergo years of clandestine meddling by Empire agents, culminating in a civil war that devastates all sides, only for the winning side to enjoy mere weeks of triumph before the Empire's army arrives and they realize all the promises of future support mean nothing when they're outnumbered a dozen to one by a newly arrived interplanetary army. If they're smart they welcome the invaders in hopes of securing some sort of viceroy/governor position. If not, well... The assassins of the Empire can appear anywhere without warning, and they're very good at their jobs.

Once a world is conquered, the local flux points are mapped, their destinations are explored, and the supply lines are built out. The Emperor devices where to move to next, and the Empire of a Thousand Worlds expands ever onward.

Kaya Sona te Kaya. Kaya Sona te met allumis - the slogan of the Kalic Empire. "Kaya Sona* is great. Kaya Sona will be forever"

* Kaya Sona is the name of the world, the Capitol city, and in synecdoche, the empire itself.

#Mundane Kaya Sona #My writing

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foone · 9 months

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Mundane Kaya Sona timeline and links

(I'm just trying to organize what I've written so far and what I still need to write, but hey, links if you want to read)

Prologue: The Wizard arrives on earth. Rudapedi emergency-teleports in and finds himself in a rainstorm in Seattle, and panics because he's from a dry world. When exactly this takes place isn't exactly clear: it's months or years before The Crash.

The Crash (not written): A truck crashes somewhere in middle-america. The FBI gets involved when it's discovered to be carrying stolen US nuclear weapons, encased in carved white stone "coffins" marked in an unknown language.

Meeting the Wizard (not written): The FBI finds evidence of The Wizard though a language match in pictures taken by a former roommate. The wizard has moved out already, and when they track him down to a cabin in the woods, he escapes. They get his books.

Recruiting the Linguist: The FBI agent recruits the linguist to figure out the language in the books. She's reluctant but agrees. Lots of books are dropped off.

Magic Books? The number pages in the books changes based on who is reading them. I'm not certain if this is going to be included. I like it as a concept but I'm not certain it fits the story, but I already wrote it so I might end up stuffing it somewhere, and it seems to make sense here.

Presentation for the FBI (not written): The linguist meets back up with the FBI (weeks/months later?) and gives an update on her progress: There's two scripts at use in the books. One's for titles and special circumstances and she doesn't really have enough info to decode it, the other she's figured out. The books talk a lot about magic and an "Empire of Kaya Sona" that controls a lot of different places.

Post presentation off-record (not written): The FBI agent reveals The Crash to The Linguist, and follows up: they caught The Wizard. She thinks she can talk to him with how much she knows of the language so far. They set up a meeting.

Meeting the Wizard (partial snippet written: definitely needs more): She is able to talk to the wizard using a tablet and her language model. She is able to get him to translate the coffin markings: "Sword of Heaven", which is the epithet of the prince (and a pun: it's a nuke!). Possibly more info revealed here (such as why the Wizard is depowered), before...

9. The FBI attacked. The interrogation room is attacked by agents from the Kalic Empire. The power is cut and a magician and two crossbowmen are clearing the building. With some help from the wizard and linguist, the FBI agent disables them enough to re-power the wizard to takes them out.

10. Magical language snippet (written but not published?): The wizard used magic to let them communicate without the tablet, and the linguist realized that he's not speaking english, she's speaking Kalic. Not sure if this goes in, if I clean it up and publish, or if it gets rewritten into another chapter?

11. The escape: They're driving away in the rain, and the wizard is explaining why the coffins were transported by truck instead of magically (inter-world teleports go to fixed locations on the planet). He rants about healthcare and is still mad at the rain. One note here: I've written it as Jay driving, but as of the end of chapter 9 he probably has a concussion. Either he got better Really Fast or I should probably rewrite this so the linguist is driving?

And that's all that's really plotted at the moment. Some bits to fill in, and then I need to figure out what happens after this.

Somewhere around "chapters" (using this term very loosely) 8-11, the Kalic Empire also attacks the place where the coffins are being stored and gets them back, but I'm not really sure if that's going to be shown or just mentioned.

Other bits where I've written about this story:

Not a love story, and mana deficit is ADHD

Inspiration and questions

A question about the no-rain thing

Inspiration for the Prologue

An earlier chapter list with some differences

A long ago twitter thread that talks a little bit about the fundamental conflict between no-mana planets like Earth and magical planets like Kaya Sona, why Earth hasn't been invaded by a Magical Empire before, and how that peace is coming to an end.

Which reminds me of another thing I need to figure out: There's some events on Kaya Sona (the home world of the Kalic Empire) which explain why the wizard had to flee to Earth. That definitely needs to be explained, but I'm not sure yet if it'll be a flashback or if I'll just have The Wizard explain it. I might want to make this story entirely earth-based, rather than jumping back and forth between the mundane setting and the machinations of the royal court of a Magic Empire. It seems more fun to just have the magical empire in another dimension just be a big Outside Context Problem for modern-day earth.

Finally, NAMES:

The FBI Agent is named Jay (and his lastname is something like Jenkins/Johnson). The Wizard is Rudapedi Yonfer. The Linguist I don't think I've named yet in anything written, but I think her name is Sarah? And the Kalic Empire is ruled by House Nor. The current ruling empire is Typec Nor, the usurping prince is written as "Nemis" on my oldest story guidelines but I'll probably change that (IT'S JUST NEMESIS WITH A COUPLE LETTERS MISSING), and I can't remember the deposed prince's name. I gotta dig up some paper documents from like 1996 to figure that out... but I don't think he's going to be involved in this story much. He's been banished to some other world where he's fighting a guerilla war against somebody not very important to this story.

Random-note: This is unconnected to my 101 magical pistols setting. That one is really more for a bunch of short-stories and doesn't have an overarching narrative, plus their magic works differently. They're much more into magical items (mainly pistols, obviously) and don't have the whole rain/mana thing going on.

#mundane kaya sona #my writing

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foone · 1 year

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The rain was coming down in sheets, and it was clearly irritating Rudapedi, putting him on edge... Or keeping him on edge, I guess. It had been only minutes since someone tried to kill us, after all.

"why would they need to transport the stolen weapons across the country, if their final destination is another planet? Couldn't they just warp them out like they warped in?" asks Jay from the driver's seat.

Rudapedi answers with the tone of a college professor who knows they already taught this. "no. When you're going between planets, you have to make use of existing rifts, and they're in fixed locations on the planet's surface. Generally you'd just do a local teleport between them, but I imagine the moonstone caskets made that too difficult to manage, so they resorted to just driving them across the surface manually. Your world sure makes that easy, after all. You know half your entry in the compendium is about these 'automobiles' you're got?"

Rudapedi turns to the car window and all the raindrops pouring down it, looking out with an expression somehow mixing boredom and unease. "And you keep assuming they were stolen. I don't know the details but I would bet that wasn't how they were acquired. The Kalic Empire has deep pockets, Jay. They don't need to steal. I imagine they found whoever is in charge of these weapons and offered them more gold than they could ever spend, or a permanent vacation trip off-world away from the troubles of this rainy planet, to an endless beach where the sun never sets... Or maybe they offered health? I'm sure there's at least one upper commander in your military who is dying slowly of something you can't cure, or has a spouse or child in a similar situation."

Rudapedi is sitting up now, gesturing with a lot of jabbing pointing motions, most in Jay's direction. "I've been here long enough to learn about your medical techniques. Don't get me wrong, they're amazing. Brain surgery? Those... Magnet-things that can see inside people? And your drugs would shame any potion-maker back home. You truly are masters of this craft, far beyond anything in the empire or any unaligned world I've ever heard of.

But you know why we don't have those kinds of abilities? We've never needed them."

Jay doesn't let the bearded wizard's vaguely accusatory tone get to him. "No, I don't suppose you would. If you can just wave a wand and fix someone's broken leg, why invent the splint and the X-ray machine?"

Rudapedi, for his part, is back to looking out the window, with the expression of a cat that begged to be let out only to find it has snowed for the first time in its little life and the backyard it wanted to play in has been covered in a thick blanket of white fluffy nonsense.

The continual beating of rain against the top of the car has turned into sharp "pings" as hail bounces off. "what the hell is that? Why is it BOUNCING?" Rudapedi asks, and you can feel the fuzz on "hell", like the translation spell is underlining it with a red squiggle of inaccuracy in your mind.

"That's hail", you respond. "sometimes when it's cold enough the rain freezes into little balls of ice while they're falling. This is pretty small, all things considered. When they get bigger, they can cause a lot of damage."

Rudapedi's managing to combine his expressions into one only describable as "rapt disgust". He says nothing in reply, only muttering something under his breath that even untranslated you can tell is an oath that's vaguely blasphemous. You wonder how it can go untranslated. Is the spell skipping out on speech that's too quiet or does it filter swears?

The hail continues, only getting louder. With the conversation clearly over (and it would be difficult to talk over the hail without shouting, anyway) you pull on your headset and start reciting words to your tablet, not letting this magical gift of vocabulary go to waste.

#my writing #mundane kaya sona

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foone · 1 year

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Jay peered around the doorframe over the corpse of the security guard. In the dim light of the still-illuminated exit signs, he spotted the attackers. Three figures, two carrying what looked like over-complicated crossbows, and a third hanging a few steps back, holding a dimly glowing rod and wearing some kind of tank on their back. A flamethrower? Maybe.

They're methodically checking all the offices along the hallway, ignoring the open door. Clearly they're worried about a surprise popping up behind them from one of the doors.

He leans back into the office. The wizard is rapidly writing something on the tablet, as the translator tries to keep up. Jay walks over and asks the translator what's going on, seeing the wizard's gestures towards the door.

"I'm not 100% sure but he says they will be sending squads with a magician, who has a... tank? Jar? And that you need to break the tank, and he'll take care of the rest."

Jay resists rolling his eyes. "That easy, huh? I saw when the guard fired at them, they're bullet-proof!" he says, checking how many rounds are in the guard's gun, more to reassure himself than anything else. The actual number is not very useful to know, if they can't actually hurt these invaders.

The translator writes out some words on the tablet, and the wizard slaps his head and quickly writes out a response. "this is not the best time for a chat, any chance you can hurry it along?" he mumbles, nervously checking the doorway again.

"I'm trying, I'm trying! Okay he says they have a shield which slows down fast moving things. So if you're close enough, it'll still work."

"Great. How close?"

"I have no idea. I don't understand their units yet."

"oh lovely! See if you can figure that out. I'm not optimistic about our chances either way... There are three of them, and two have weapons. Even if I can rush one, that leaves the other to put a hole in me, and then you."

"I'm working on it! Let me... Wait. Wait wait. It doesn't rain on their planet, remember?" she puts down the tablet and starts digging through her purse. "yeah?" "are all these sprinklers connected?" "what? I think so. Why?"

She climbs on the table, which wobles worryingly. Reaching up to the sprinkler, she lifts a scruffy lighter pulled from her purse.

"Tell me when. This should give you the opening you need!"

He stares at her, once again not sure exactly how much she's mad versus brilliant. "that's... That might work. Okay, get ready!" he says, kneeling by the door. There's only a few doors left before the attackers get to them. He thinks of mentioning that if this doesn't work, she's likely to be the first shot they take, standing on the table like that, but thinks better of it. It's the best chance of getting they have to get out of here without an impromptu piercing from those crossbow goons, and it would just worry her.

"See if you can get him to hide in the corner. I don't want them to get a lucky shot and take him out before we have a chance to fight back."

"oh good point. Can you hand... Oh right" she leans down to grab the tablet, but this turns out to be the last straw for this flimsy government-grade interview table. The table, tablet, and her all come crashing down with a terrible noise. A loud noise, which unfortunately prompts a response from down the hall.

Jay starts repeatedly swearing under his breath and takes aim at the doorway. So much for the plan. No no no, this isn't going to work. They're expecting this. They're checking each door carefully. I need them off balance. Oh well, time to do something foolishly heroic.

He steps against the far wall, near where the translator is being helped up by the wizard. He breathes deep, once, and runs for the doorway, hopping over the security guard's corpse as he goes.

As he enters the hallway all the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, and the air feels electric. He turns to run at the intruders, who are only a single door down the hallway and have their crossbows already raised. Oh shit he thinks as he goes into a dive, barely thinking about why he does that. He doesn't hear the firing so much as the wall behind him splintering, and the clattering noise as one of the bolts hits the floor and bounces along it, failing to embed itself in the tiled floor.

Raising his gun, he fires at the worst target. The unarmed woman (he can now tell) wearing the tank of blueish-green liquid). The other two are already reloading or going for their backup weapon, so he should be taking advantage of this moment of confusion to take them out. That's what his training told him, and he could almost hear his old instructor screaming in his head. Too bad, he puts his faith in the wizard, and hopes he's not about to die from a mistranslation.

His shot misses her, handily. The tank worn on her back shatters like a wine glass, and there's a moment of pain as it diffuses into the room. He tastes metal and mint and his ears ring.

The woman is stepping back and raising her staff. The crossbow solders have shaken it off much faster than him, and one pulls out something that looks like nearly the exact midpoint between a hunting knife and a short sword.

Jay tries to will his muscle to move and roll towards shooting him, but his arms are feeling like he sleep on them, the pins and needles tingle going from his fingers to his shoulders. This is not good.

And then there's an alarm in the distance. A moment of pause, and grey-ish black water sprays down on all of them. The sprinklers!

The intruders act like they've been teargassed. You don't appreciate how long people born on earth have had to get used to the fact that it rains, and for people who've never even seen a cloud, getting rained on is a new and frightening experience, even if it's a poor imitation of a rainstorm being provided by barely up to code fire suppression systems.

He manages to raise the gun enough to shoot the man nearest him, and his screaming turns into a choke, then silence. Jay has no illusions about being able to get turned around to take out the other guy, and who knows what the woman is capable of? But maybe this will even the odds a little. He gets about halfway to pointing at the other soldier when he's hit by a truck.

Or at least it feels like it. He's thrown down the hallway by the force of the impact, confused by the lack of anything visible hitting him. He loses his grip on the gun, and hitting the far wall at the end of the hallway definitely doesn't do anything for the tingling in his upper body. He raises his head enough to see down the hallway, where the woman is holding up that staff, which is now glowing an angry read. Oh right. They have wizards.

The blue haze of the spilled liquid from her tank is still floating around the floor like someone dumped dye in a smoke machine, but as he tries to force himself to get up and grab the gun, he notices it's all flowing in the open door of the interrogation room. He idly wonders if the AC is still running (how could the AC be running? They cut the power! Also, why am I thinking about this? I may have a concussion...) as the soldier and wizard (are female wizards witches? Sorceresses? Do they have a different term at all?) walk towards him slowly, the soldier finishing loading his crossbow.

He fires. Jay closes his eyes instinctively.

There's nothing. No pain, no impact sound of a miss, just a ptwang of firing and then silence. He opens his eyes. The bolt is stopped in mid air, by the open door. The wizard-lady shouts something, and Jay doesn't need the translator's help to know that that's a swear, and not a very nice one.

The wizard they were interrogating walks... Floats? Jay isn't sure how much is magic and how much is the concussion. He... moves into the hallway, and the witch-enchantress raises her staff while rapidly saying a lot of words, and the solder goes for his knife-sword.

His floating wizard friend raises his hand and...

Shit. Did I black out?

A moment had passed. The wizard is still standing there. The solder and magical girl (a sailor moon theme song begins playing in Jay's head, unbidden. Yep, definitely a concussion) are not. There's no sign of them. Not even a scorchmark on the wall or a bloodstain on the floor.

That's a little worrying. Okay, a lot worrying. Note to self, don't get on this guy's bad side. Also, minor update from your still functioning senses: he's standing over you now. Maybe see if you can react to that?

Jay tries to get up, and the wizard puts out a hand. "Here, let me help"

As Jay is pulled to his feet, he realizes why that sounds weird. "Now I know I have a concussion, because since when do you speak English?"

"since about 2 minutes ago. Come on, we need need to get out of here. They wouldn't just send one squad, and they will quickly notice that that we stopped one of them."

Jay tries to walk and it turns into a limp and nearly collapsing into the wall. "we? I'm pretty sure that was mainly you."

"nonsense. I couldn't have done a thing until you took out the matra tank". That word sizzles in Jay's head, like it's a wire that's improperly grounded. I guess that's what happens when the magic can translate something?

The translator reappears at the doorway, nervously looking up and down for any further attackers. "Are you alright?" she asks Jay.

"I'll survive, but we need to get out of here. Can you help steady me? If we can get to the stairs I can drive us out of here, but I'm still a little off balance from whatever that-" he pauses, his brain having run out of female-magic-user synonyms, "thaumaturgist!" (where did that come from?) "... Uh, from whatever she did to me, or from hitting the wall after she did the thing she did to me. I may be slightly loopy, as you can probably tell."

"Sure. Rudapedi, can you hold him up on that side?" "of course. Let's go. "

So his name is Rudapedi? It's a good thing these magic users don't speak Latin, or that might mean something like... Stinky feet? Wait, I don't think "rude" means stinky... I can't remember much of my Latin classes. Pecavi? Why is the world spinning so much, and what does Latin have to do with it?

Everything is going black. His last words before the warm velvety embrace of unconsciousness are "puella est in cena."

#mundane kaya sona #my writing

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foone · 1 year

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The funniest thing about writing a novel based on a scenario you come up with at like, 8 years of age, is wondering why no one considered something worth asking Baby!Foone about.

"Hey Foone, this character is like, your self-insert right? Or the character you most identify with, at least?

Ummm... Why are they an elderly man with Brain Problems, on the run from the government because of attempted regicide?"

The second funniest thing is realizing that your "self-insert" character isn't the same gender as you anymore cause you went and transed between starting this story and now.

#Mundane Kaya Sona #No I'm not going to trans the wizard #He can stay a man #I have a different character I can self insert into now

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foone · 1 year

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so while I was getting zapped yesterday I was thinking about my novel and realized that two elements in the next chapter were kinda similar to the matrix, and was like 'ugh, I'm gonna have to rewrite that"

my sibling in self, no you don't. in fact, you can't.

you haven't even written it once! you can't rewrite it until you write it! YOU FOOL

#mundane kaya sona

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foone · 1 year

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Some days you get out of bed and feel like it should be dark, and raining, like the sky was falling, like it was never going to stop. But sadly you live in northern California and the weather is nice and sunny, so the outside never matches how you feel inside. And you were feeling bad enough before an FBI agent knocks on your door... It's all downhill from here.

You open the door and don't even attempt a smile. It's Captain... Jenkins? Johnson? You've dealt with him before, wherever his name is. He's young for an agent, and all smiles as usual. It's almost enough to make you vomit.

"Laura! It's good to see you again. May I come in? I may have a job for you, if you're interested."

He holds up a briefcase, still closed, like he expects you to figure that out from the anonymous box.

"I'm not sure I want you to come in right now, captain. And you could have called, or emailed? It's not the 50s anymore, despite what your agency might seem to think." you manage to grumble at him, shying away from the painful sunlight beaming in your door uninvited.

"I did!", he says, somehow managing to smile wider. "No response. And this is urgent, so I thought it was worth a flight down to check in on you in person."

He flew in just to talk to me? Why? This must really be urgent, but why me?

"uhh, give me a moment". You close the door in his face, and move some of the more obvious paraphernalia out of sight. He may have said it's "alright", but he's still a damn FBI agent.

You unlock the door and he comes in and sits down on your couch, before you can say "sit anywhere". He pulls a paper out of his briefcase and shoves it your direction.

"what's this?" "an NDA. This job is potentially a matter of national security, so before I can discuss any details I need you to agree not to speak of this outside this room."

You glance at the page. This is a lot of legal nonsense, but it looks like how you expect. A long list of things you can't do with this information and an even longer list of all the bad shit that will happen if you break the rules.

"I'm not sure I should sign this. Maybe I should call my lawyer..."

He turns, and hands me a pen. "Laura, I understand your hesitation, but this is a standard form, and we're really in a hurry. I had to go through a lot to get my superiors to agree to let you in on this, instead of someone with clearance. I promise there's nothing untoward in here, and if you can take on this job we can offer you five times your standard rate."

This all stinks. This stinks bad. But you sign anyway. You overcharged them last time you worked for them, and if they're going to pay five times that... This might be worth it, even if you have to pay a lawyer to get out of this mess. You sign.

"Great!" he says, and opens his briefcase to show you a pile of documents, and a large hardback book. "So we've got a language that we need to understand yesterday, but as far as we can tell it doesn't seem to match or even resemble anything we've seen before."

You pick up one of the photos. It's a black and white image of a large stone block sitting on its side, in the back of some kind of truck. The symbols carved into the side are all curves, intricate glyphs, looking something like a combination of Hanzi and Devanagari, but with a circular theme not common to either script.

"what is this? Some kind of obelisk?"

"No, it seems to be a container, and we're very worried about what's inside it. That's why we needed your help. We're out of leads for everything else about this case, so this language is our last clue."

"what's inside it?"

"I can't tell you that. But I can confirm it's of serious national security importance."

You study his face. He'd make a good poker player, with that endless smile. A bomb? Biological weapons? Stolen documents? Elvis? An alien? What could be so important that they'd fly him down here and drag you out of your depression just to try to decode it?

He reaches down and picks up the book, opening it to a random page and turning it toward you. "The good news is that we have a lot of examples of this language. This isn't the only book we have on hand, it's just the only one I brought. If you take on this job, I can deliver you all the source texts you could ever need."

You page through the book. This looks handwritten, like calligraphy. "Are you sure this isn't some code? Or a prank? Like someone trying to make a hoax Voynich Manuscript."

He shakes his head. "We can't be sure of course, but we did statistical analysis. There's not enough entropy to be a code, and too much to be a hoax. This is a real language, just not one we've ever seen before. And none of the other experts we've asked have either."

Maybe this really did fall out of the sky. If you get halfway through this and find out it's about little green men from Mars, are they really going to let you just move on to your next job? Or are they going to lock you up in Area 51?

"you say you've got more examples of this script, and I'm your last hope?"

He nods, making a affirmative noise.

"Eighttimes my usual rate and you've got a deal. It'll take a lot to set up book scanning for this." you say, in the hopes he'll balk and leave you alone.

"Great! We've got a deal. I'll have the boys bring the books in." he stands, and walks to the door. "Thanks very much for taking this on. You're our best hope to understand all this."

He steps out, and a minute later there's a knock at the door. You open it, and there's another man in a suit pushing a cart, piled high with hardback books. Behind him, another cart is being loaded from a van.

What have you gotten yourself into?

#my creations #Mundane Kaya sona story #mundane kaya sona #I started writing this to fit in one quote and then I didn't manage to do it!

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