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It is not quite morning, the quietest time in the bar, when the door opens and two short, slight figures walk in. One gives an overall brownish impression, the other is somehow purple, and they both carry only a few small and light bags that should not give the impression of laden-ness that the have about them
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"Oh yes we did!" he declares, happily. Despite yesterday's dissent, he basically had a week's holiday, and that has done him good.
Also, stacks of books are happiness.
"Gil's got a new wand, I got shushed by a librarian and arm-wrestled a drunken warrior, we ate lots of interesting things and bought lots of books, as you can see. Here, this one is for you!"
He hands her a tome inscribed "The Origin Of Magic", the publishing company is noted as 'Flourish & Blott's'.
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"This is amazing!" she says. "From Gil's universe, yes? Thank you!
"What other books did you get?" she slides off her chair to sit in front of the table, not knowing what to look at first.
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"Of course I would! This is fantastic. Voodoo exists on other worlds as well, does it? I thought it was just a type of witchcraft."
She's not helping very much, right now, because she's dismantling half the stacks to look at books underneath, sometimes making small squeaky noises. Honestly, she's like a child in a sweetshop.
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"Voodoo exists on your world as well?" he asks aloud. "Funny. It's a tradition in New Orleans, but people approach it as if it weren't genuine, with a bit of a smile, and in order to be pleasantly scared. Strange that even many peope in worlds that do have magic think that it's not real."
He pulls another book from his bag. Although the bag is small, the book turns out to be folio size, and very heavy. It says "Dictionary of Ancient Runes".
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She grins at the dictionary. "That looks very useful. The rune books I found were a bit outdated, according to Lochiel."
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"This was only compiled last year - that is, a bit less than a year before we were vanquished," Asar-Suti says. "It's an enormously useful book but really should have its own little desk to consult it on; it's really cumbersome."
He opens the back section to show something to Esk.
"Here - it's got this handy cross-reference section with a wonderful system so you can look up what a rune you see somewhere actually means and does - no other rune dictionary ever had that."
Asar-Suti pulls out another tome, just as large, inscribed 'Dictionary of Current Runes'.
"No idea why they thought they had to sort them by time, though," he adds with a shrug.
No book is perfect.
[[OOC: mun must home herself now; next reply in roughly 90 minutes.]
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"Of course, it must help if you know the order they're supposed to be in. I never understood runes very much, but I've been trying to get my head around them." She grins at the other book. "We teach Recent Runes at the university. I'm not sure what the relevence of outdated ones are, except maybe for historical purposes."
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"Here - that's a rune for conjuring a certain kind of nightmare for a specific enemy; very precise command. Sometimes, runes fall into disuse, but you like to refer back to them in case you need something that does exactly that. In our more current use, I would combine four or five different runes for the thing that this one old rune would do - do you know anybody you'd like to dream about being picked off a stone cliff by a flying monster and thrown into a bottomless abyss?"
His grin clearly tells Esk that he is joking.
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"Although I met someone just before you left who looked as if he wouldn't mind that happening to me. Silly man with his prejudices against witches.
"I'll pick up a Recent Runes book for you from the Library - you know I've moved back home, right?"
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Asar-Suti then looks at her with some worry. "Prejudices against witches - why would anybody have that? Against certain magical traditions, perhaps - but all witches? And what do they say about wizards and sorcerers?"
He unpacks a few more books from his bags.
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"The thing was, he was a wizard. So, I don't know. I'm used to animosity, but he thought I was going to duel with him or something." She shrugs. "I've not seen him since, and I was in a strange mood that day because the baby was due, so."
She picks up another book and leafs through it.
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"Oh, that one's from Gil's world, about different kinds of wands - I wanted to see what the whole focusing-rod thing is all about, but it's a bit too much about specific wands, and not really about the basics why you've got to have one. What was that prejudiced wizard called?"
Perhaps one could, after all, try whether the nightmare rune still works? - Nah, not really.
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"Different kinds of wands - you mean the woods, and the... oh, the cores as well?" she says. "It seems somewhat similar to staffs, although we have runes on ours to help with the magic."
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Asar-Suti looks over at Esk's staff. "Runes on a staff - interesting idea. That way, you'd fix the magic to the staff or wand..."
The cross-eyed look Asar-Suti is giving the nothingness above the fireplace seems to indicate he just had an idea.
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