Ask Luna #162

From: Yusaine

I have a few questions regarding Ritual magic.

First, what can you tell me about Necromancy? Is it spirit contact or raising the dead? If it is raising Zombies, why would one do that when there are constructs available? Look at Zagash(hope it’s spelled right), he had a horde of shadow-constructs so they seem easy to  produce?

Second, Summoning – Are creatures compelled to obey a mage or does a bargain have to be struck? Is this usually done beforehand or done during the summoning?

What other sort of ritual magic is available and can adepts perform ritual magic? I ask since it seems ritual magic disregards magic type, so perhaps adepts could use it too?

Necromancy’s any magic involving dead things – reanimating them, pulling memories out of them, that kind of stuff. From what I got taught it used to be a lot more popular, but nowadays everyone uses constructs instead since they’re more useful and don’t require a dead body.

Summoned creatures aren’t compelled to do anything – you need a totally different spell for that. Or you can just summon something nasty in the general vicinity of someone you don’t like and hope it works, which happens more than you’d think.

Ritual magic is its own sort of magic (and its own skill, really).

From: Zander

Hi Luna.

Alex mentioned in one of his adventures that he went to Elsewhere for his mage name.

What is it?

Verus.

From: Kurt Von Bosse

Hi Luna, just some questions about two unrelated topics today.

I know that Varium has to be careful about contacting you and especially careful if he wants to contact Alex, but what about you contacting Alex? Is it more difficult now?

The keepers paid you a visit once to ask you about Alex, and I believe they had a mind mage with them. Have they visited you since then?

I would guess that Sal Sarque’s death has made things more hot for Alex and perhaps for you to a lesser degree.

The unrelated question I have is about mages Richard Drakh and Morden. I think it’s interesting that both Richard and Morden like to use the same technique when either one of them is trying to recruit someone. They both ask their intended recruit, “What do you want?” Maybe it’s a common approach, but it seems a bit unusual to me. This is an off the wall idea, but I wonder if Richard and Morden might have been apprenticed to same dark mage when they were much younger and picked up this technique from their master. While this is something that you probably wouldn’t know off the top of your head, I wonder if Richard and Morden’s early history is something that could be easily researched or if either or both mages early lives are a mystery to mage society?

Yes, it’s a lot more difficult now. I basically have to wait for him to come to me. And all the Keepers following me around don’t help. Well, not ‘all the Keepers’, it’s just two, Avenor and Saffron, but they’re both pretty unpleasant, just in different ways.

No clue re: Richard and Morden, I’m afraid.

From: Lisa

Hey Luna what did you think of the new Star Wars trilogy?

And be honest wouldn’t you die for Baby Yoda?

I only saw the first two. They were pretty bad.

I haven’t really seen any of the other new Star Wars stuff. I probably would have back when I was an apprentice, but since I took over the shop I’m a lot busier and I don’t watch much these days.

From: Deborah

Any thoughts on Richard and Elsewhere? After all it was he who introduced Alex to it?

Okay, I do appreciate you keeping it short, but that’s literally the vaguest question I’ve ever had. You’re going to have to nail it down a bit.

From: Alec

Hello Luna I hope you are having a fine day. So we know that divination has techniques such as path walking or precognition, and I was wondering if chance magic had similar ones as well and if you use any of them?

Nope, nothing even remotely like that. You want to know what’s coming with my sort of magic, only way to do it is to make it happen.