Goodfellow

The roegadyn loosed a guffaw as he followed the miqo'te. "Worry fer yer own arse, girl. I'm nimble 'nuff may jus' be half a cat m'self," he chided good-naturedly. Almost slipping, he righted himself and rambled on, "But damn if ol' Barnies' Reach don't get bigger an' messier all the time."

Through wind and over the rain came a rumbling. Not thunder, but a voice, largish and good-humored with a hint of tested patience. "You Taru's girl? Got a sack a food an' whatnot won't be wantin' to get much wetter."

Lolotaru watched perplexed as Joz's face played out the strange internal struggle. He listened to her prevarications patiently. "Miss Joz, I appreciate your concern, but you needn't concern yourself overmuch with my person or any under my employ. I've lived in dangerous times and places myself," he said, stopping shy of winking. He gave a slight bow and turned to go. As he walked, he began to run through a catalogue of his contacts and retainers and employers in his mind. Now who to send...

The sides of Lolotaru's mouth turned down in unfamiliarity. "Regardless, I will need the building and unit number and a convenient time when you will be home for the delivery. Sometime, say, around six-and-a-half bells?"

Lolo cocked his head to the side and said, "I need you to learn, Miss Joz." He straightened his neck and motioned for her to get up. "And any...prostration...is and will remain unnecessary. Now take the notebook, continue your practice, and return to me when you've made progress or run out of paper." He paused a moment in thought before pulling out another, smaller pad of paper and continuing. "Where do you stay? I'll have a retainer along with some items from the market this evening."

Lolo turned his gaze. He had grown up in relative plenty and while his personal wealth had ebbed and flowed in the years before and since the Calamity, being confronted with the reality that impeded the education of so many discomfited him. Staring forward at the wall, at nothing, he spoke. "Miss Joz, while the comforts of the student are secondary to his or her efforts, yours is hardly a situation conducive to learning. If we are going to determine your aetheric viability, you will need to dedicate yourself wholly to the pursuit. Otherwise, I fear I've nothing to teach you." He paused momentarily before making his proposal, preempting any wet eyes or whimpers of protest which would frighten and discourage his constitution. "If you prove yourself a dedicated and earnest student, I will aid you for a time. It is the natural situation of a master and apprentice, after all, and I can support the both of us modestly without too great an adjustment. A roof over your head and a full belly will keep your mind and senses much sharper than overlong hours of begging and hard labor." His speech thus concluded, he again turned his head toward the girl seated at his side and awaited her reply.

"Mhmm. So how are you supporting yourself now?" he continued.

A thought occurred to Lolo, an idea which would ease the process of the honest student and keep the less honest student under close observation. He did not wish to interrupt her work, but he ventured a question anyway. "Uh...Miss Joz, you--well--you mentioned that you had been a...er... thief. Past tense, yes?"

Lolo watched her at her work and observed her growing frustration. He thought back to his own time teaching himself on the trade routes of rural Thanalan. Long and hot days filled with sand and wind, how he used to study and practice to wile away the time. All his real and measurable improvement had come in his short time with the guild, but he had started teaching himself a long time before and, up to a certain level, his skills felt worn-in and natural. He couldn't even recall the first time he felt the pull of his own aether. His own development had been so hard-earned and gradual that no first successful incidence of Ruin came to mind. Rather he recalled a chain of bolts over time, gradually becoming more fully-formed, quicker, brighter, more powerful. He sat down next to her. She was clearly anxious and he didn't want to add pressure by towering imposingly over her (insofar as a lalafell can tower). "How. . .long does't . . .take. . .usually?" he heard her say. When he had first given her the assignment, a large part of him had wanted her to be intimidated and to scurry off and leave him alone. Sitting there with her in that moment of frustrated impotence, he commiserated and wanted only for her to feel reassured, to not give up on learning. "It depends on the individual. It took me quite a long time, as a matter of fact," he added. "Much longer than if I had had a teacher." He smiled comfortingly.

Lolotaru jumped at Joz's yelp. He whipped around to see a very different girl; a much more honestly startled girl than he had glimpsed up to this point. And he watched as it passed from her face. It was only a moment and it disappeared like a shadow, but he had seen the hint of something else. Defiance? He quickly, and with great uncertainty, continued his lecture. "That was Ruin, the most basic of the arcanist's designs. It is somewhat crass and it's applications are limited compared to the full battery of arcanima, but it has its uses. Namely, for learning how to draw out the aether. Later manifestations require greater finesse; not so with Ruin." He closed the notebook and held it back out to the girl. "I don't want you trying to cast it. Not outside of this room, at least. Not yet." His face was such that would brook no argument. "Take the book again and return to the designs. But don't force them so much, this time. As you trace them over again, follow your instincts, your whims even. If an angle seems more pleasing or natural wider or narrower, then widen or narrow it accordingly. If a particularly straight edge seems constricting, then loosen and curve it. If you possess the necessary aetheric levels, then the aether will manifest itself," he concluded and paused. She seemed truly enraptured in what he was trying to teach her. "Your hair may stand on end, or there may be a slight breeze where there was none, or you may feel warm or particularly energized." He leaned in and placed the outstretched notebook in her hands. They were slick, clammy.

Oh wow, Zhi. These are great! It is startling just how many talented artists we have here in the RPC. Thanks for sharing!

"I mean that you only asked the lines to be straight." He raised the notebook and painstakingly drew a reproduction of the same symbol he had given her. He finished and looked up at her, turning the page toward her to show her. "You see, I reproduced the symbol perfectly, but with only that intention. Now, watch again," he muttered as he turned towards an empty, bruised looking patch of wall across the room. He once again drew the symbol's basic form, tracing the lines just as he saw them, carefully aping the angles exactly. As he finished, he quickly turned the book toward the spot on the wall before him and a small bolt of distorted energy leaped forth, crossing the room and striking the wall before bursting and dissipating. He looked back at Joz. "That time, I held the design in my mind as I traced it with the intention of drawing my own aether out through it. But it was weak and difficult. Unwieldy. Watch once more. This time, I will use the design as a general outline, but allow my own awareness of the internal flow of my aether to direct the subtle differences I will add to the original design. It will be my own, ultimately, based on the skeleton of the one I drew for you, and it will respond to me in a much more efficient and powerful way." He again turned to the wall and put pen to paper. Now, he allowed the tug and pull of the flow of the aether to influence the curves and angles he drew; he added tiny embellishments and personal touches. With a practiced comfort, he completed one final flourish and again pushed the notebook out before him. A bolt of Ruin burst out and flew across the room, smashing powerfully against the wall and leaving a great smoking blackness hissing against the magically reinforced bricks. "You see?"

Lolotaru frowned. He felt like a fool. He had aspirations of teaching one day, perhaps at that very guild, and yet he was failing miserably in anticipating the needs and frustrations of his first student. He had enjoyed tutors and professors throughout his life and, what's more, was a skilled autodidact; he had not had to think about how others might learn. He softened his countenance and responded. "The lines did what you asked of them, yes. The problem is that you asked so little of them. I've done a poor job explaining. Come." He turned and beckoned her after him with his hand, entering the guild and descending the stairs into the room where they had concluded so abruptly their tense first meeting only days before.

"Er...hm..yes," he began. Calm?, he wondered to himself as he allowed the notebook to fall to his side. She was reaching. He continued, "I apologize, Miss Joz. I was unclear. 'Calm' is how you felt. I want to know what you felt while working on the designs." And again he waited.

Lolotaru took the notebook from her outstretched hand and began to skim through its contents as he spoke to her. "Hm...that's too bad. If you don't see him soon, we may have to be more proactive in our search." His eyes traced the lines and designs scrawled across the pages. She had little enough experience, sure enough, and any creative flourishes of her own were sorely lacking, but that was to be expected on the first of such assignments. The students first inclination is to parrot and not innovate, a tendency which left unchecked will lead the neophyte not so far into arcanima at all. Still, his own successes had hardly been immediate or his talents readily apparent. And despite her experience with ink and parchment, she was clearly a careful and accomplished mimic. After the first few tries, he could find hardly any variation in her reproductions of the symbols he had drawn for her. It's a start. He looked up over the edge of the notebook at Joz. "And what did you feel? Tracing these, I mean."

1) The job has only recently been reintroduced into Eorzea, so there's no formal apparatus for forcing a scholar to work for anyone in particular. Your scholar can work for anyone he or she chooses, or no one at all. Also, I may be mistaken but I don't think you just learn scholar magic from the fairy, I think it's tied to the fairies. I think. 2) If anything I think that having Oschon as their patron would make them particularly open to traveling sorts like outsiders and adventurers. But that's conjecture on my part. It just makes sense to me. 3) That is one of the meanings of "adloquium," yes. I think you can play the Galvanize effect however you wish to. The two together make sense from a magical perspective (speaking magic to and thus galvanizing as in steel). 4) Nym was under attack all the time from mainlanders from Aldenard. They may very well have fought the main parties of the War of Magic (the White Mages and Black Mages) as Nym existed in the Fifth Astral Era which led directly into the Sixth Umbral Era. 5) I also believe that the forces of the Floating City are implied to be small, meaning I don't think they were doing much invading. As to how friendly they were, that's anyone's guess. Doctors can be crap people too. I'd say that personality depended more on the individual than the society as a whole. It's implied that their city floated for defensive purposes, so I think they were more protectionist than imperial/colonial as a whole. My 2 gil. Someone with clearer citations or screenshots will probably be of more help.

Crap that looks cool.

The day after meeting Joz, Lolotaru almost didn't return to the Guild. He debated returning to Wineport, laying low in the country. But his curiosity was piqued. He needed to know what was being said about him and he could best control the situation from nearby. Reconciled with the fact that there was no satisfactory course of action to be taken just yet, he went to the Guild. He breathed a small sigh of relief to see that Joz was not there, then entered and lost himself in his notes and books. By the time he left late that evening he was almost disappointed not to have encountered her. It was hardly orthodox, but the ways of the Arcanists' Guild, while official, were newer than those of the thaumaturges and conjurers; writ less in stone, more flexible. If he decided to take an apprentice, he could reconcile it with the system. If it became problematic, there would be paperwork to do; a semi-official recognition sanctioned by the Guild itself. Nothing insurmountable. Nothing to bar the Thaliak-given right to learning and education. He began to look forward to their lessons, frustratingly basic though they may be at the start, and wondered if he wasn't still a fool for it. The following day was much the same. The sharp edges of his feelings eroded somewhat and he spent the whole of it again in his books. And in the book, tracing its sand-yellow pages, his eyes following the dancing script that so entranced him, despite his complete and utter lack of understanding. Nothing calmed him so much as the presence of his book. Nothing so excited his mind with the imagination of possibility. And yet, nothing frustrated him quite so much as its perpetually impenetrable mysteries. He had allowed him to become so distracted, so detached from the events of two days prior that when he saw Joz there, waiting for him just as she had been before, he was shocked and taken aback all over again. Well, at least it wasn't quite so hot today. "Good morning, Miss Joz," he said. And waited.

"Hm...that complicates matters," mused Lolotaru, rubbing his chin. "We need light," he added matter-of-factually. He upturned his hand and wave in towards himself and Ben halted his survey of the perimeter and skipped excitedly back to Lolo's side. Lolo nodded forward with his head and Ben hopped upon the raised edge of the platform before him. Lolotaru pulled notepad from the right pocket of his robe and set to drawing on the paper by the light of the carbuncle. He traced a series of independent lines along with a simple symbol composed of those same lines. "This is a very basic geometry for Ruin, an early arcanist's skill. Examine it, retrace it, modify it in whatever way seems natural, according to how the symbol feels to you." He made to tear off the sheet, but stopped himself, folding it closed and handing her the whole notepad. "We'll see if you've any latent skill for arcanima. Bring it back to me with the name of the hairy-faced sailor and we'll continue from there." He turned to go, Ben following at his heels. "Oh, and Miss Joz," facing her again, "do be careful. Don't draw any unnecessary attention to yourself. Or to me." He turned back and continued into the Wench and back to his room at the Mizzenmast.

Lolo raised an eyebrow. "How much is 'most' of the alphabet, precisely?"

Her apparent earnestness made great strides toward endearing her to him, but he endeavored to remain cautious. He worried about sending her for more information; that would be one more person who knew more than he cared to be known, but if she was who she said she was and wanted what she said that she wanted, then she understood. She was a thief, a criminal, she had done harm and she wished to undo that part of herself, she had said. If that was true, then she would understand, even if she learned more about him. "Yes, try your best. I want to know where he heard whatever it is that he thinks he heard about me. Nasty rumors like that can confuse people, hurt people. But now--" he eyed her swishing tail and the edges of his mouth betrayed the makings of a smile, "--now we talk about you. Have you ever exhibited any magical talent? As I recall, you said you can't read well. How well are you able to read? Can you draw basic shapes?"

I shouldn't go myself. Not yet, at least. Too much overt concern would only lend credence to rumors. "That won't be necessary just now, Miss Joz. Thank you. But you're sure you'd remember his face?"

Lolotaru seemed somehow less relieved than Joz. His aspect as yet unchanged, he spoke. "I want to know who gave you my name." Maybe she was being honest, maybe she really did just want to learn, to improve herself and her lot. And that was respectable, commendable even, if Lolo was of a mind to believe her. But whether she knew a lot or a little, she had heard of him from someone, and he still needed to address the leak.

After a long pause, he responded. "Fine. I'll teach you. On one condition."

Lolotaru could empathize with the desire to make something different of oneself and if Joz was being genuine, he couldn't in good conscience refuse her that opportunity. He took one more step forward. "What do you want to learn?"