It had already been a few days now since the ceremony and Dahlia had taken a large amount of time to more thoroughly study her target *ahem* future family, the Lukreshes. Considering her parents rarely gave her information regarding modern politics, getting accurate information was particularly difficult.
She knew that she had no information on the current archduchess as well, because the name "Valentina" hadn't shown up anywhere. It made her wonder if she was a secret heir or something that was kept hidden until inheretting or something. It wasn't uncommon for Lukresh heirs to inherit their role after multiple centuries after all, so such a hidden child wasn't impossible.
Regardless of her origin though, Valentina now had a thorough writeup in Dahlia's notebook explaining how the Archduchess was going to be coerced into becoming her new grandma. She had gotten so excited that her 'notes' were approaching the size of a novella.
After working tirelessly for multiple days though, Dahlia ran into a problem. She knew so little that her plans could never be detailed. It prevented her 'precise plans' from being very… well, precise.
Having run into a metaphorical wall in her plans, Dahlia had decided to take a step back and focus on something she had been delaying. Walking toward her greenhouse, she hummed a little tune to herself, chasing down the notes arbitrarily and without reason. The maids that overheard her grimaced from her carefree and 'creative' music, but Dahlia didn't care. She was just in a good mood. To hell with the maids!
Finally, she arrived in her little corner of the garden and began to take care of her precious leafy children. She talked to them about nothing in particular, hummed some more, and picked the now ripe fruit from the pretty vines in the green house. The day was good and relaxing.
After taking her time and spending a few hours going through the whole process, she finally got down to business. When she came here she had brought a thick tome with her and at this point she slammed it down on the table and took a seat. Looking across from her, she smirked.
In the chair opposite of her, stacked on top of multiple clay pots, a single potted plant was positioned so its beautiful white flower was at eye level. If it weren't for being an inanimate plant, Dahlia was pretty sure it would be sweating bullets right now.
"Mister Lily, I think it's time we have a more thorough discussion of schema, don't you agree?"
Again, Dahlia couldn't help but smile like an idiot. At that moment, some wind had passed by making the flower bob around. She laughed imagining it nod like a chicken pecking rice.
"Alright. I'll try to keep things simple, but there's a lot of information here regardless of how I try to say it. Let's start by talking about how schema are formed."
She flipped to some very early sections of her massive book, double checking what was written before continuing.
"I mentioned it briefly before, but you can break schema down into three different varieties. Each gathers and shapes mana through different means. Innate schema draw directly from a bloodline and, assuming the bloodline is potent, they are typically known to be the fastest and most powerful types of schema. Their tradeoff is they lack flexibility."
She flipped to a page that highlighted how bloodlines interact with innate schema. Nearly all the magic cast in the diagrams reflected the monstrous origins of each bloodline. Fire breath, lightning body, petrifying gaze, etc, etc.
"Moving on we have channeling schema. These manipulate atmospheric and surrounding energies and usually conduct them through some form of medium. Druids pull their power from the nature around them, soul channelers can use ambient souls, spirit casters can use elemental spirits. You get the idea."
Flipping to another page with a bunch of diagrams, this one showed less structured spells.
"As you can see here, channelling magic typically has less structure than other schema. Those that channel will often shape their spells in more fluid ways. It takes a bit more thought than innate casting, but is still relatively fast. They sacrifice the potency that innate casters have but make up for it in on the spot flexibility and versatility."
Moving on to another section, she let out a little bit of breath she was holding.
"Ok, almost there. The last variety is the constructive schema. This is where highly structured and formulated magic comes from. The caster needs to pre-formulate how a spell should work, determine its variables, and more. For those who are a little slow (like you Mister Lily, no offence) this type of schema should typically be avoided, but for those who can keep up with the complexity needed, then constructive schema have nearly endless potential."
She once again flipped to diagrams showing different methods of using constructive schema, with the most often referenced type using runes or sigils.
"As you can see, when we think of magic circles or items, the symbols we think of originate from constructive schema. It isn't just for stationary things though. Some people can make runes on the fly or find ways to do constructive schema without ever needing something physically written down."
She grins at the flower as it doesn't ask a question.
"What was that? You were wondering why I make a big deal about schema when there are only three types? Oh you sweet summer child."
She rapidly started flipping further into the book and poor Mister Lily just wanted the lecture to end.
"Saying that there are only three varieties is simplifying things so far that it's almost laughable. How schema actually work is that they come in two parts. The first is the 'foundation', while the remainder can be called the 'specifier'."
"The same foundation can often be used all around the continent or might be culturally significant. These have titles like 'runecrafter,' 'shaman', 'sorcerer', etc. Commonly used foundations will have titles like this and it typically defines how a certain caster's magic will behave. For example, sorcerers combine channelling and innate casting to form magic related to their bloodline that has a greater degree of versatility."
She opened the tome at a page that had a gigantic list written in a tiny font. Each had a name, the ratio of schema types used, as well as page references for more detailed information.
"Because these foundations are so important in defining the behaviour of magic used, being able to determine the foundation of an enemy has even won wars in the past. Of course this only applies to predefined foundations."
A smug look formed on her face as the subject came up. Yes, she was very proud in this regard.
"Some clever people, hehe, will develop their own original foundations. These will almost always have an overlap with existing foundations, but being original makes them harder to immediately grasp by an enemy. Additionally, if someone has a specific way of thinking or specific purpose behind their magic, then creating a totally original foundation can be super useful, although very difficult to achieve."
Pulling out a book that had been hidden until then, Dahlia slammed it down on the table. Half of the slam was due to her current excitement, but the rest was just because the book was very heavy. It dwarfed the tome that was already on the table and looked like some incredible grimoire.
Where did the book come from? How was such a big thing hidden? Well, let's just say plants aren't very perceptive and Dahlia has a vivid imagination. It had been there on an adjacent seat the whole time, obviously. Pointing at the monstrous book, she wiggled her eyebrows all while maintaining a little smirk.
"When I say difficult to achieve, this is what I mean. Calling my schema a thesis would be overstating the size of a thesis by a longshot. I made this over the last nine years and completed it only half a year ago. Also take note that this is only part one. It's the foundation we've been talking about."
Shoving the grimoire aside she sighed a little wistfully. Mister Lily definitely wouldn't appreciate the hard work she had put into that.
"Going back to the basics, if we say that a foundation defines how magic is cast, then what exactly could be remaining? The answer is nuance. While the foundation is a one-size-fits-all concept, it isn't very refined. Foundations are a skeleton that will suit any aspect or bloodline, but that's it. They aren't the full body and a skeleton alone isn't going to get you very far."
She tapped her cheek rhythmically while trying to think of a decent analogy. Teaching plants is hard.
"Think of the schema as a piece of art. The foundation is the type of art. Not just a generic type, but a detailed description. Then, the tools, material, etc would be the bloodline and aspect. The schema's specifier is what marries the concept with the materials to form the finished work of art."
She double checked the analogy made sense…
'yeah…it's probably fine…'
"To wrap the magic theory up, I think it's worth explaining that while the specifier does have its own design required, what it actually is is more of a mindset. In the eastern empire they sometimes call it a dao. It's basically the interpretation someone forms that lets them relate their foundation to their aspect and bloodline. People try to simplify it and make as solid of a concept as possible. It's why the Lukresh family's schema is called 'Vampiric Bloodlord.' Because for whatever reason, someone determined that that name best defined the schema's purpose and how it relates to their abilities."
Doing a bit of a stretch, Dahlia let out a tiny yawn while pointing at the currently unopened grimoire.
"Now that the boring explanation is out of the way, we can finally talk about what's important. I have a schema, or rather, I should say I have a foundation. It's good. I love it. No one is going to take it away from me. All that's left is to create a suitable specifier. For some reason I still don't know my bloodline, but that's alright. My schema uses channelling and constructivism. No innate magic in sight. I didn't want to risk designing for an unknown like that."
She dragged the book in front of her and flipped it open. The pages were magically reinforced so they wouldn't smudge or become destroyed, but despite that, they still looked heavily worn. Just looking over her old notes had her face light up like a kid in a candy store.
"My foundation is largely a construction style with a tiny bit of channelling to facilitate it. I always loved how runecrafting and magic circles worked, but they are well known for being slow and near impossible to use in combat. I never really planned to do fighting, but my parents insisted that my schema be versatile enough to do more than just crafting or something like that, so… I improvised and got a bit creative."
With a bit of an apologetic smile, she looked at the suffering plant. It just wanted to be pampered like the rest. Why was it always singled out?
"Mister Lily, I don't expect you to understand what I'm about to say, I'm going to be honest. I'll make it quick though. I used two foundations as the basis for my schema and then modified them heavily to match my needs. The first is my all time favourite foundation, geometric constructivism!"
Looking at the flower… yup. She was right. It sure didn't look impressed.
"Ok, look. It's an ancient foundation from the sultanate and is renown for being the absolute most potent form of constructive schema foundation. It's suuuuuper cool. The issue is it's absurdly complex, every spell requires intensive calculations, and it takes forever to draw the detailed and overly specific sigils derived from all the maths involved. But trust me. It's cool. Math is cool."
She frowned to herself.
'I don't think I sold that very well. Whatever, who cares. You're just a plant, you don't need to think it's cool, humph!'
"Ok, so now you're saying 'Dahlia, what are you, stupid? You just said you weren't allowed to make a schema where it takes forever to make magic circles or whatever.' And yes! You're right! Screw you for theoretically calling me stupid though. So this is where the second foundation comes in, and that is the tattooed witchcraft from the eastern empire!"
Suddenly, she felt a little judged and she furrowed her brow a little.
"Don't go with the whole, 'Tattoo? You?' surprised schtick. Tattoos are cool and I can totally pull them off… maybe. Well either way, I didn't choose this for aesthetics. Tattooed witchcraft embeds sygaldry or runes directly onto a person's body. Because everything needs to be predefined, the schema is usually inflexible and restricted until the tattoos are added to or redone, but the benefits are that you can use the abilities of complex sygaldry on the fly."
Hopefully that silly flower sees where she's going with this. Just thinking about it made her excited every time.
"You get it, right? Absurdly complex geometry predefined via the tattoos. Isn't that cool? I know, you can applaud any time, hehehe."
Holding back a bit of a laugh, she scratched her nose a little embarrassed.
'Man, I'm really excitable and smug today, huh? Oh well! I have a very kind student after all. I'm sure it doesn't mind.'
After a moment of reigning in her chuckles and chortles she then got back to business.
"So now that you've appreciated how cool that is, why don't I tell you now that that is only the first quarter of my big book here."
The moment the topic shifted, there was a dangerous glint in her eyes. A look that comes from someone who just saw the future and it looked oh so satisfying.
"What if I tell you that the rest of the book makes it so I can change and reshape my geometric tattoos on the fly?"