Ask Luna #83

From: Justin

Hello Luna!

I was wondering if Wish magic, or any magic for that matter, can bring back or contact the dead?

Thank you!

Don’t think so. There are plenty of stories about some magic type or other bringing back the dead, but usually what it ends up being is some sort of construct made to look like the dead person. The stories never seem to go away though, maybe because people want to believe them.

From: Hrok

Hi Luna its me again,

I was wondering what you could tell us about Richards magic type. The description of it reminded me of how the Monkey Paws power was described when deflecting bullets, ie. as black threads. Did Richard get his hands on a weaker jinn at some point or is the description of it just coincidence?

I hadn’t thought of that connection, but it does make sense. I don’t know much more about it than you though. Richard doesn’t exactly give interviews, and as far as I know no-one’s picked a fight with him and survived, so there aren’t many eyewitness accounts. So we can make guesses, but it doesn’t really achieve very much.

From: Adam

Hi Luna,

I have enjoyed reading about your adventures with Alex and the others. The most recent installment raised some questions about “universal magic”. Could you answer the following for me:

1) Could Alex, Anne or yourself learn the sorts of untyped magical spells Richard uses? Speculation about his magic type seems to indicate you could…

2) What else can untyped magic achieve?

I’ll sign off with my own speculation as to Richards magic type – While his fighting style clearly reminds Alex of a Diviner could he be a time mage? Lots of time to react, aim and prep his spells, seriously rapid movement at critical moments could all be a function of time magic.

Thanks,

Adam

. . . And the time mage thing’s a possibility too. This is what tends to happen when we discuss Richard, we just keep saying ‘maybe’. Alex couldn’t actually detect any time auras any of the times he ran into Richard, but that doesn’t prove anything, he could just have some way to shroud himself.

As for whether we could use the untyped spells Richard does – short answer is no, because as far as I know, doing that kind of stuff with untyped magic isn’t supposed to be possible. Untyped spells are ‘gateway’ ones which are very general and universal, usually magic that works on other magic. So magesight, focus item use, construct creation, that sort of thing. It’s not supposed to be any use for combat at all, so god only knows how Richard can make it work that way. But that’s the problem with mages. There are so many weird niche uses for magic that no-one knows about, because the few mages who find out about them keep them secret to get an advantage over everyone else.

From: Randy

Dear Luna, was the monkey’s paw destroyed along with Alex’s shop.

Thanks!

Nope. It was in his safe room and Alex picked it up the next day, along with everything else in there. Though honestly, I’m not sure it would have been harmed even if it hadn’t been. I think burning that thing wouldn’t do much except annoy it.