Hello, journal! We just got back from... um... Emberbed? I think Terras named it Emberbed. Embersomething. The ugly planet with all the lava. I'm very, very disappointed about how that turned out. The planet blew up! That's not a good thing, no matter how many dead Burning Legion it leaves behind. Blown up planet. And our fel reaver is gone too! All that work... and it was so cool, too! We gave it a name and everything! But that doesn't matter now, we're home. I went to see Uncle Spensaar and talk to him about some of my, er, misgivings about how things are going. I'm tired of hiding behind everybody and just throwing big purple lasers or fireballs or whatever at the thing we're fighting. I want to do something interesting, something less... less useless, but I don't know what. I mean, I've got my chronomancy. That's always interesting. And I've got all that teleportation magic Martul made me learn, and everyone really seemed to appreciate that because it meant we didn't have to try to carry around those giant fel reaver parts with us all over the stupid planet. But still! During a fight, all I do is stand around behind everybody and shoot. And shoot. And shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and UGHHHHHHH. I want to do something else. I just don't know what! I mean, it's not like I'm a huge vindicator with an unsmashable face and Light lasers like Uncle Spens or a sword-wielding super-warrior like Terras. I sort of picked a job where you're supposed to hide behind all the people wearing metal. But I don't like it. Maybe I should have been a rangari. Being rangari seems like it would have been fun. But noooo, I had to do what Mother and Father wanted and become an arcanist. Bleh. I'll have to try to figure something out. I think I'll go to the library tomorrow and have a look around. Maybe I'll find something interesting. Asami's Journal Entry 1679 Hello, journal! I went to Scryer Library today and did some looking into stuff. It took a long time and I looked and I looked and I looked and I found out that apparently, back on the homeworld a long long long long LONG time ago (well, naturally, but... REALLY long, like before Velen), there used to be a sect of arcanists who fought on the front lines of conflicts as warriors. Or monks. Or... something, the book wasn't very clear on that, but the important thing is it had a picture of one of the... er... arcanist-warrior-monks. Arcawarmonk? Warcanist? Anyway. They seemed to be using some sort of... construct. Weapons made of pure arcane energy, extruded from a gauntlet focus! I think. I mean, that's what it looked like, anyway. Unfortunately, the book didn't exactly have instructions on how that whole thing was supposed to work in any practical sense... and the more I read about it the more I really, really hope I didn't just find the remains of a really detailed old work of fiction about magic space warriors fighting evil. That would be very awkward. In any event, making the 'blade' is the easy part. It's going to be making it actually able to cut something while holding together under battle conditions that will be difficult... and I'm still not sure it's worth the trouble... I'm going to have to give it more thought, I suppose. Asami's Journal Entry 1680 Today was awesome! I met a very nice sin'dorei lady in Scryer Library and it turned out she actually used to BE a 'battle mage'! It was like... it was like fate or something! I was looking for books on that sort of thing, like... mages who fight, and shielding and stuff, and she had one of the books I wanted and was reading it! I got kind of nervous but I went up and talked to her anyway, and she said it was okay if I sat down and we spent a looooooooooong time talking about what it is to be a mage and about attitudes and about what specifically I would need to work on. I hadn't really thought about needing to develop patience and the ability to think quickly... combat will be very different up close rather than at a distance. I can't let myself get nervous as much anymore and I'm sure developing the proper instincts will be important as well... and I'll have to meet up with Uncle Spens and brush up on my hand-to-hand. I used to be very good at it during the resistance against the orcs... hopefully it's not something you forget. Having to retrain would be awful! My new friend also gave me some good advice and ideas for how to work on the blades. Power conservation, that sort of thing. She said she's going to bring me her notes tomorrow and maybe even some ideas for things to use as an energy focus! I can't wait to get started... I'm going to work on plans tonight and then really get working after I talk to her again. Bye, journal! Asami's Journal Entry 1681 [The entire page is taken up by a cartoon of an armored draenei girl, presumably supposed to be Asami, with twin glowing blades extending from her gauntlets. One is being used to punch a pit lord in the face as it screams in pain. Asami is clearly very ambitious.] Asami's Journal Entry 1682 Hello journal! I started studying the focus that Miss Pyrar brought me today! I traded her a bunch of history books for it, including my copy of the one about the warrior-arcanists or warcanists or whatever. She seemed very happy! I think I can easily use this for my own purposes. Easily being a relative term, of course... I'll need to retune it to my own personal harmonics so it doesn't blow up or something when I run arcane energy through it, but this should work very nicely! I'm excited. Are you excited? Of course you're not excited, you're an inanimate object. Light, with the rambling again. Anyway, that should be the easy part. Once I figure out the spell, I can just etch the runes into a set of gauntlets and use them as a power focus of my own. I need to pick a color, too! I'm thinking purple. I like purple. Is purple overdone? Probably. Don't care! Too excited! Tomorrow's the big day, I think! Wish me luck! Which you still can't do because you're an inanimate object. Ridiculous. I need to stop now. Goodbye, journal! Asami's Journal Entry 1683 I reverse-engineered Miss Pyrar's spell focus and etched the runes on my gauntlet and everything seemed to be going great and I was about to power the spell because it seemed like everything was just perfect and then I suddenly remembered what she said about being patient and needing to combine thinking quickly with being smart and I decided at the last second to power the spell from a nice safe distance behind a wall and it turns out she was completely right and it was a good thing I did that because the gauntlet kind of, um, well, it powered up nicely and the charge indicators worked and everything and I got excited because it was working! And I started to move out from behind the thing I was hiding behind and that was when I thought I smelled something, like Uncle Spens always talks about the smell of 'burnt magic' from when he'd try to cast spells when he was a kid and his arcanist trainers would make him do stuff? And I thought he was crazy, like, how could magic possibly smell like anything much less like burning but I definitely smelled it and then the gauntlet blew up and there was shrapnel everywhere and I hit my head and I'm kind of having trouble concentrating and I don't feel very good at all i think im going to go lay d [The entry ends abruptly.] Asami's Journal Entry 1684 Hello, journal! I spent a few days with Uncle Spens and Aunt Soli getting scolded for blowing up my glove in their barn and then went back to work as soon as my head stopped spinning. I'm making good progress finally and he knows how to cook a lot better than I do so I'm eating better. He's not a big fan of this whole thing but he insisted on me spending at least some of my time brushing up on my hand-to-hand and swordfighting so we've been doing that too and he says he's satisfied that I might not die! That means he thinks I'm going to be okay - if he didn't think I was he would have been a lot angrier and he certainly wouldn't have been joking. The second batch of gauntlets I set up yesterday didn't work at all, but that's actually a good thing – the power flow was good, I just didn't set the enchantment properly. Anything that doesn't involve arcane feedback and things blowing up in my face is a positive at this point. Thinking positive is important! Tomorrow I'm going to try a new approach and see if that works. If this is my last entry I guess you'll know what happened. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ One Day Later Asami flipped the protective goggles Spensaar had given her down and eyed her own creation suspiciously. The newest pair of gauntlets sat atop her uncle's workbench, freshly enchanted and fully prepared, the violet circles of her runecraftings floating in the air over the metal-lined gloves. The freckled arcanist took a long breath, ducked down behind the cover she'd set up, and sent the tendril of arcane energy that would power the pair of weapons. There was a brief flare of violet light, then... nothing. The young draenei gave it a full sixty-second count this time, with no intention of getting blown up, or worse, suffering another scolding by her uncle and his mate for endangering herself. When there was no sign of an explosion, she slowly peeked over the stone barrier, expecting to see another pair of darkened power indicators, the sign of a failed experiment. Instead, the strips she'd carefully engraved into the silver glowed with draenethyst light. Steady. Stable. Asami gave it another sixty seconds, squinting down at her new weapons distrustfully from the relative safety of cover. When they still didn't explode, she cautiously approached, chewing her lower lip and thinking hard. “Are you really safe, or just waiting so you can blow off my hands?”