Time had passed, in the past...

With Mama’s help, Hazé had passed the truly dangerous time, carefully hidden away, doing the uncontrolled pooping and peeing stuff like any other child, resting and taking care to get stronger and healthier.

It meant she had to be very careful and slow with her Casting, until Mama found her a Focus Wand, discarded by a passing Caster picking up some herbs from her.

It was a simple thing, only good for an apprentice at QL 23, so if she tried to send her full strength through it, it would literally blow apart, unable to take a higher Caster Level than Three.

But Mama WAS an apprentice, thirsting for knowledge that she’d been denied all her life due to her handicap. It was fine for her to use, and for Hazé to borrow to show the use of Cantrips and Valence I spells.

After all, she basically just sat (or flew) around all day, so there was no reason whatsoever she couldn’t work on rep counts. She had craploads of Valences, and she really, really needed to Weird a lot of Metamagic down.

Virtually all Metamagic effects that could be applied to spells came with a cost, an infusion of outside energy required to actually do what you wanted to. Increasing damage, duration, range, area, splitting, chaining, bursting... there were many, many Metamagic effects, and the vast majority of them cost a little (or lot of) something extra.

Wizards handled Metas different from Sorcerers. Wizards had to memorize their spells ahead of time, imbue their energy at that time, and so could Cast their Meta’d spells just as fast as they did normal ones.

Sorcerers had to add in the additional power as they went along, effectively requiring them to draw from a higher Valence, and drastically slowing down the speed of the Casting as they reworked the spell on the fly to include the extra effect. It made them more flexible if they weren’t threatened, but most Metas couldn’t be used in combat without some care, as standing in one place tracing glowing patterns in the air for six seconds or more wasn’t very smart in a fight.

What Hazé had to do was get her Rep Counts in, get her Reserves up, her Siegecraft started, and her spells and Metas Weirded.

These things all started with a minimum of five hundred Castings of a Spell or Meta being Cast, if you wanted to open the most basic levels of these things. More Rep Counts were needed if you wanted to raise the potential limit, and more uses of them to get to that limit.

For example, just to Cast now, she had to add the Still and Silent Spell Metas to everything, because she couldn’t do much more than put a tiny hand on the Wand. Naturally, what she wanted to do was Cast without having to spend a Valence III on everything.

Weirding a Meta meant reducing the additional energy required to use it down by exactly one Valence. Basically, you condensed and refined your understanding of the Meta, drawing more energy out of a lower Valence instead of relying on the higher one, folding it down to a smaller size and so conserving your power.

Still and Silent Spell were +1 Metas, so Weirding them would reduce them to +0, and so their Meta’d spells could then be Cast with no extra cost... but only after Casting the Metas five hundred times attached to at least four Valence I spells... and then only for Valence I spells! Every additional Valence... was another separate five hundred Castings at the new Valence!

To make a +2 Meta Practical, she’d have to Cast the Meta one thousand times per Valence. A +3 Meta, two thousand. The powerful +4’s, a colossal four thousand times to make Pair, Admixture, or Fastcast Spell Practical, each Casting requiring a V Slot, naturally her most in-demand, powerful, and least numerous Slots!

Weirding spells worked exactly the same way, but from the opposite side. You learned to Cast the spell with less energy, fitting the structure of the Metas attached to it more easily, and so you infused them with more power. It reduced the total Valence cost of the Metas attached to that spell by 1, to a minimum of +0. This was called an Efficient Spell.

It differed from Weirding Metas in that you had to focus on the spell as you Cast, not the Meta, and tinker with it. So, the Rep Counts between them didn’t stack at all. More time, and higher Valence spells naturally took more Castings to learn how to make them more efficient, just like higher modifier Metas...

Making the spell Efficient to +1 Metas required five hundred Castings with +1’s. To +2’s, a thousand Castings of +2’s. +3’s, two thousand Castings, and +4’s, four thousand.

The benefits of Practical Metamagic and Efficient Spells did stack, but the Rep Counts for both were completely independent, and you couldn’t use the one to reduce the Cost of the other, you HAD to Cast at full Valence to count towards the Rep Counts.

The Tyranny of Rep Counts was alive and well in a magical universe...

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To open a Reserve Spell, the same thing had to be done. Reserves operated off a Spell Center, a spell serving as the nexus and key of the Reserve. It allowed her to Cast basically half-power, limited-range spell effects without limit, scaling by the Valence that empowered them. Easy peezy. Five hundred Castings, open it off a Valence I, right?

No, no. Most Reserves wouldn’t operate without being Centered off at least a Valence II spell. Happily, they ran off Valences Cast of a particular energy or type of spell, rather than per-spell Castings like Weirding did (but the Counts still couldn’t overlap!). That still meant a minimum of 1,500 Valences worth of appropriate Castings for ANY Reserve, and some Reserves only operated out of Valence IV or V... 7,500 and 15,500 total Valences Cast, respectively. You also had to have an appropriate spell of that particular Valence available and in active memory.

Once the Reserve was active, you then had to actually use the Reserve to push its Spell Center to a higher Valence, i.e., learning to focus the energy through the Spell Center. Because Reserves were endlessly usable, this was merely pure drudgery. More Rep Counts.

Going from a I effect to a II took two thousand Reps. To III, four thousand more. Then another eight for IV, and another sixteen thousand to get it working at V.

At six hundred an hour, that was still fifty hours of work, for just ONE Reserve.

There were dozens of Reserves, and they were all desirable, because the secondary effect of every Reserve was +1 to Caster Level of the spells resonating with that Reserve. Fire spells, force spells, lightning spells, Good spells, water, earth, charm, conjuration... there were all sorts of Reserves, and the Caster Level bonuses stacked!

The Tyranny of Rep Counts!

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Siegecraft was the same. Siegecraft allowed you to pick any spell, in theory, and learn how to Cast it without spending a Valence. Such Sieged spells were absolutely identical from Caster to Caster, regardless of who Cast them. They did barely more than minimum damage, were easy to save against and resist, were automatically Dispelled if subjected to such, and had a hard duration cap of ten minutes.

In addition to requiring practicing Casting to gain the right to use the spell, which naturally required more Castings as the Valence increased, it also required a Concentration check to cast the Sieged spell. Failing the Concentration check resulted in mana burn and Intelligence damage... so you needed a massive Concentration check, and a Feat, Steady Focus, so you could take 10 on the check.

Casting a Valence I spell at CL 1 required a minimum Concentration check of 15: 10 per spell level, +5 per Caster Level. Easy enough, if you had Steady Focus and could Take 10 and remove the randomness.

The maximum known Caster Level of a Sieged Spell was Nine. The Concentration Check for that was 45, before Valence level!

And, there was one more requirement. Sieged spells formed their own Shadow Matrix inside your own. So, to Siege a Valence II, you had to have two Valence I spells Sieged underneath it. This pattern was required for every Sieged Spell, to a maximum of sixteen in the level below, all supporting the higher Valence Sieged spells. It meant there was a hard limit on how many upper Sieged Spells your Matrix could support.

So, if you wanted to be able to Blink without limit, and could hit the 55 check (Valence III, Caster Level 5), you needed to cast the base spell 3,500 times as a III, then practice the Siege successfully 3,000 times as you worked out the mechanics of the Sieging, all the while hitting that 55 Concentration check. To do so, you also had to have two Valence II’s successfully Sieged to form a foundation for it.

Oh, oh, and Sieging also had active Valence requirements, operating as it did off the entirety of magic in your Matrix. You had to have enough Valences in memory to match the Concentration Check required, or you suffered -1 to the check for each missing Valence. The magic you had inside you acted like a Reserve, allowing you to cast the minor spells. So, if you didn’t have enough full Valences, no Sieging, much like Reserves required a Spell Center as their core...

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It was all a massive time suck and delay for Casters, but utterly necessary to follow if you wanted any kind of staying power. Valences were powerful and could accomplish things that no non-Caster could emulate... but there were only so many of them, and when a Caster had no Valences, they had very little to fall back on.

But no other Class could put out a Reach Paired Topped Split Energized Purified Burning Ray while under a Fiery Sheath for 72d8+72, or 646 damage to the nose at a thousand yards, either... and then Sudden Fastcast another one, for that boss creature with just way too much Health Qi.

That’s why it was great to play a Caster, always having the right tool for the situation... until you ran out of your power supply for your tools. So, you got Reserves so you always had tools, and didn’t have to spend your big ones unless necessary.

You just had to put in thousands of hours and endless qualifier Valence Castings to get there.

The Tyranny of Rep Counts. “Oh, I should learn this...” became weeks of work. Practice, practice, practice!

She could only dream at this point, looking at that massive negative Karma total, which, after some quick analysis, was exactly what was required to pay for the Levels, Masteries, and Feats she had retained, gained at maximum efficiency.

No Soul Magic, no idea where she could find a +V or higher Meta this side of the gods for a long time. Dawnstopping was the only one she knew of, and the one required Aru’s approval to learn and use.

Doesn’t matter. Start with the basics.

Archwizardry doubled her number of Spell Engrams. Archsorcery doubled the number of her Valence Slots. Archmagery, or Arcane Theurgy, allowed them to interchange... or split them up into lower Valences, or combine them into higher Valences, if she wished.

The base Valence Slots for a Ten Sorcerer totaled 71 Valences. That was doubled to 142 for a full Archsorcerer, and, ignoring bonuses from Stats, that was a lot of Valence I spells a day.

Unfortunately, she had to use a minimum of a III Slot, there was no way around it, as she had to use both Still and Silent to Cast.

She also needed a Focus that could cast a III, which meant QL 25, if she didn’t want to spend a minute per Casting. She certainly could not afford to take mana burn!

Sudden Still-Silent-Paired Fabricate, allowing her to make two Spellcraft checks of work a day, allowed her to refine the Wand and add enough silvered Runes to it to get it to 25 QL with a week of work.

From there, she began casting her Shards, exactly fifty a day. This left all her Spell Engrams intact if need be, whose energy she could draw into her Rune Engrams or Valence Pool if needed.

Adding Merciful to the spell required no Valences, rendered the spell unable to harm anything, and Shards splashed harmlessly off the ceiling as she slowly and methodically worked out the way to compress her Metas down to +0.

Fifty spells a day, thousands of Reps ahead of her. She couldn’t even Weird the base spell at the same time as the Metas, a permissible stacking that wouldn’t help her with Rep Counts, only when it came time to actually Cast... and would simply fold into her Arcane Thesis when she reached the counts for Valence III’s at seven thousand Reps.

Without a better Wand, she couldn’t practice the +III’s or Valence III spells easily, so that might be a future priority. But without it, she patiently continued with her Weirding. After all, she had a lot of foundation to build before that point...