nexus_sages | (no subject)

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James T. Kirk absolutely loves marketplaces.

It's not necessarily because he's looking for anything, per se, although he does often keep an eye out for interesting books to add to his collection, or maybe a bottle of some kind of exotic alcohol, or some kind of pointless alien gizmo with which to annoy Spock with its purposeless existence. No, he just loves the sheer diversity each bazaar brings to the table.

No two markets have ever been alike, in his experience. Sure, it's not quite as exciting and mysterious as exploring deep space, but it's something of a microcosm of the same, all sorts of goods and cultures thrown into close quarters, and one never knows what one might find just down the street.

His shipboard gold uniform may stand out a bit in the crowd as he meanders along, a faint smile on his face as he leans in to examine someone's wares on display, just enjoying being out and about in the fresh air.

[OOC: Retconning Jim eating bacon in this thread. Hadn't fully considered some of the elements in his backstory at the time.]

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"It can be," Jim answers, carefully thinking over how he wants to answer this. "We have a kind of technology that preserves food for a hell of a long time, but reconstituted anything never tastes the same as the fresh stuff. Still, it's way better than hardtack and salt beef or whatever, so I guess I can't complain." His grin this time isn't quite as sunny as the previous ones, though it'd take someone with lots of experience in interpreting human facial expressions to tell.

"Anyone can complain," Shade-Seeker counters. "Nothing is improved until someone looks about themselves and finds a fault. The key is to complain constructively, yes?"

"Y'know, that's a great way of looking at it." The real smile's back now, and he leans back a little in his chair, fairly relaxed. "I know a few people who should take that lesson to heart."

Shade-Seeker leans back as well, a hint of a smirk (maybe?) tugging at his lips. "Perhaps you should tell them--in the spirit of it."

Jim chuckles, just imagining how that would go. "Heh, Bones would love that. Complaining isn't so much his hobby as it is his favorite sport."

"Does he leave it at complaints?" Shade-Seeker asks wryly, "or does he move on to improvement once he's made them?" He can infer, at least, that Bones is a friend of Jim's, and probably not a necromancer or animate skeleton of some kind.

"Depends on what he's bitching about. There's not much he can do about the fact that we're 'flying around in the vacuum of space in a goddamn over-sized tin can,'" he says with a chuckle, briefly imitating his good friend's thicker Georgian accent. "But if he's complaining about how me or some other member of the crew's gotten ourselves hurt, there's no one I'd rather have patching me up."

"'Not much he can do'?" Shade-Seeker echoes skeptically. "If he worries for the soundness of your vessel, why not heed him? Why not set him the task of anticipating those things which might befall, and preparing for them? Preventing what can be prevented, and mitigating as much as possible what cannot? Why not let him set his mind at ease? I have yet to see a thing so safe that it could not be made safer still."

"Oh, we've done that already. There's shielding and force-fields, not to mention the hull plating. Do people have phobias, where you're from? Irrational fears that aren't really based in reality?"

"We do," Shade-Seeker answers, pausing as the waiter delivers their drinks; his soup has a fair bit in common with chili--it smells nicely spicy, for fans of hot foods, and eye-wateringly pungent to those with a milder palate. The akh looks like a foam-topped cappuccino, and smells like a fresh-baked cinnamon roll. "But in my experience, even an irrational fear may be addressed rationally. While idle, your friend can only sit and fret--but give him this task, and he will have peace of mind. What should happen if your shielding, your force-fields, your hull plates, all fail? What is the next line between the crew and death?"

The robed shoulders rise in a shrug. "The ship becomes more safe, and your friend gains, if not lasting peace of mind, then at least the reprieve of an engaging task, and the knowledge that he has done all he is able. In dark times, such small comforts can be worth much, I find."

Jim's muffin isn't quite as fragrant, but it's got bacon in it, so as far as he's concerned, it tastes fantastic. And he is quite curious about Shade-Seeker's chosen meal, because boy howdy does that smell spicy. Good God.

He sips at his mocha while he considers how to answer. "I don't disagree with anything you've said," he decides at last. "Your argument's a sound one. And even though I'm the captain, Starfleet isn't military or a dictatorship or anything, so he's more than welcome to suggest additional safety measures for the ship. But that's where the constructional part of the complaining comes in, doesn't it? He tends to get too obsessed with the 'what ifs' to think about the 'what could be' part."

Shade-Seeker tucks into his soup with every sign of enjoyment, seemingly untroubled by the heat. He's one of those chili people, apparently.

"Which is why I suggest you give him the task," he advises, gesturing for emphasis with his cup. "He is free to suggest, of course, but he is grappling with irrationality--he needs a point of stability on which to focus, that he may bring the rest of his cosmos into order."

"Might not be that easy, but I guess there's no harm in trying." Jim's fairly skeptical that Bones will be able to come up with anything helpful, but what the hell. "He's done all right coping so far. I think it helps when he's got people to fix."

He might just do things like put a basic set of medical supplies in every room, under every (explosive) console, and at every hallway intersection, and set up basic first-aid training for everyone in the crew, but that's still at least a few cases a year of someone not dying because medical help or supplies were far away when the ship got shot.

Shade-Seeker listens to Jim's description of his friend with a triumphant smile. "There, you see? You prove my point: when he has a task on which to focus, he is better--when he has no task, he complains, because that is a task toward which his fear drives him. Give him the next step, and he will seize on it with tenacity, I am certain."

"Oh no, he still complains even when he's healing people," Jim says with a grin. "But he's a hell of a lot happier about it."

The captain takes a bite out of his muffin, enjoying that fresh-baked taste that synthesized food just doesn't get. "Speaking of which, mind if I ask how that healing spell thing works?"

"Feh," comes the dismissal of that argument, "you know full well that his complaints while working are a different creature from his complaints while idle. I know this, and have not even met your friend."

Mmm, that soup is tasty. And the akh tastes about as much like a cinnamon roll as it smells. The foam even kind of tastes like white roll icing. "You might," he answers, "and I shall take it that you just did. I might, in turn, ask how detailed an explanation you would like, and whether in the specific mechanics of the one spell, or in the overarching philosophy of that branch of magical study."

He starts to say something like 'there's more than one kind of healing spell?' but stops himself before he actually verbalizes it, because duh, of course there is. "I guess more of a general sort of thing. Are there limits to how much magic can do to fix somebody up?"

"There are. Spells of healing are, with few exceptions, drawn from the Restoration school of thought--the root ideogram translates literally as 'return to the previous state.'" Uh-oh, Jim, you've gotten an academic going on a subject he knows and likes. This could take a while.

"That, in itself, suggests some limitations. Restoration cannot allay congenital conditions. Further, there exists a threshold mortal magic cannot surpass; Restoration cannot return the dead to life, although there are spells within its purview which return the undead to their properly restful state."

Never fear, for Jim is actually quite interested in the subject. He doesn't have any kind of medical background besides the field first aid training required for all Starfleet officers, but he has perhaps too much firsthand experience on the other end of the problem.

His mocha has mostly cooled enough to drink, so he sips at it in between bites of muffin, listening attentively. "Is there any kind of time limit involved in how soon the magic has to be applied for it to work? Like if someone has a scar from an older injury, would it fix that?"

"An old injury that has healed is also beyond the reach of recuperative magics," Shade-Seeker admits. "The body has established a new base-state from which it departs and to which it seeks to return--such a time limit is not precise, I grant, but that is in part because injury and recuperation tend to vary so much between individuals. But that was a very good question."

That makes sense, and jives pretty well with how dermal regenerators work, so Jim easily accepts that and nods. "What about severity? You said it can't bring back the dead, but there's one hell of a sliding scale between a papercut and death."

"If the patient is not dead, then recovery is a question of magnitude--a potent mage may cast a great spell, to heal grievous wounds all at once, or an apprentice might cast simple cantrip after cantrip, but with sufficient time and magicka, that apprentice could restore the same patient just as fully as the greater mage." He pauses for another mouthful of soup before taking a slight tangent. "Of course, there are other maladies than injury, and many of these require particular spells to set right, which demand a certain threshold of aptitude. So while potent mage and apprentice might both in their own time heal a patient badly wounded, the apprentice would be harder-set to tend a victim of poison or fever."

He nods a little as he listens, sipping at his drink. This whole magic thing still sounds kinda crazy to him, but at least it seems to follow consistent rules that make sense.

There is, however, a term that Shade-Seeker used that catches his attention. "Is magicka another word for magic, or does that mean something else?"

"Magicka refers to the specific, quantifiable amount of magical energy a mage has in reserve. Just as one might exert themselves physically to the limit of their stamina, so too might they exert themselves magically to the limit of their magicka, and with similar remedy."

"A power bank, basically." That's something relatively easy for him to get his head around. A ship's power can be regenerated, but isn't unlimited, especially if you're using it faster than the dilithium crystals can generate it. "You mentioned earlier that everyone in Mundus can use it to a degree." He's still not clear is Mundus is the word for the whole world in which Tamriel exists, or if it's their term for the universe, or something like that, but it hardly matters at the moment. "Do people have a fixed amount of magicka, or is it something you can build up, like working out to bulk up muscle?"