Jumbled ideas and concepts

Reuploading this because I finally bothered to scan it, so better quality.

Werewoof! One of Rhiz and Wes’s coworkers. It’s a rottweiler lmao. At least, I hope they look like one. I’ll try and draw their human face later. And name them.

Umbrae.

It makes perfect sense for Litch Slush, I think. I mean, it's not always Umbrae. Sometimes it really is just hallucinations. But it's also not unusual for them to show up when someone's dealing with this shit. They can probably tell it's going to happen, and might drop in to, uh, "enhance" the experience. By which I mean, make it more terrifying, because strife is what they live on.

Lmao nah. Since magic isn't like, a junky filler thing, the body can actually make use of it in its entirety, which means it gets completely absorbed by the body during digestion. So no additional or abnormal waste from it.

Raw magic is a common addition to drinks and foods. The first page of Litch Slush actually shows Rhiz serving and ice cream shake with a shot of magic running through it. It makes for a good pick-me-up. Healthier than other alternatives, like energy drinks or coffee.

My penwork isn't terribly impressive, but here we are.

It's a Dryad! A blueberry Dryad. I was thinking about Dryads with flowering/fruiting bodies. Like, would it hurt to pick the fruit off them? I want to say that, for things with thinner stems, the pain would probably be akin to plucking hairs.

That being said, just because it might not hurt much, doesn't mean it's cool to just pick Dryad fruit just because. You gotta ask permission for that shit first, but the kind of answer you get will vary, of course. Even fruit that have fallen off the body of the Dryad shouldn't be assumed to be up for grabs, if the Dryad is still nearby.

So, what about the taste, compared to regular, human-grown fruit? Dryad fruit are magic-infused, naturally, seeing as they grow from a magical being. The flavors are generally said to be more intense than those of normal fruit. Almost artificially so, to some people, while others find the Dryad fruit flavors to be richer and fuller than their non-magical counterparts. It's definitely subjective.

Dryad fruit can make for some pretty potent spell and potion ingredients, of course. They're full of raw magical energy. If the fruit is consumed as-is, said raw magic is like...well, a buff, tbh. People generally experience increased energy, decreased stress and pain, heightened alertness, better endurance; just overall improved physical performance. The magnitude of the effects generally seem to correlate to how long the fruit has been attached to the Dryad before consumption, though they're also not anything too crazy. You're not going to suddenly go from being a couch potato to running five miles without breaking a sweat, but you'll probably be able to get up a few flights of stairs at a moderate pace without having to catch your breath.. It's also entirely possible to push your body too far while having The Fruit Buff (TM) because in the end, it's still the same body you've always had.

"Send noots"

Advice animals, but like, with unicorns

Remixing unpronounceable Arkhen murmurings to dubstep

That viral video YOU came up with: "YouTube video of people at like, a trashy college party in the woods where they're all throwing beer cans and shit, and then some asshat gets totally wasted by an angry Dryad."

"Thanks Satan," but in a context similar to "Thanks, Obama."

Self-hex challenges

"You've heard of [ELDRITCH SCREECHING], now get ready for [HAUNTING ARCANE GIBBERING]"

Guess I'll die

So, I've mentioned hexes a bunch, because that's Rhiz's major, so it comes up a lot. But what constitutes a hex in Litch Slush? It isn't just a general term for magic.

Hexes are a type of magic with negative effects. This is why they're used for punishments; hexes hurt, hinder, and horrify. I've listed many examples of hexes in previous posts, but here's some more nasty spell effects:

Persistent pain with no physical source

Excessive itching and hives without an allergy trigger of any kind

Unpleasant hallucinations [visual, audio, smell]

Can't turn left

Suddenly terrified of innocuous objects

Vomiting live beetles

People always call you a wildly incorrect name

Paralysis/immobilization

Hexes can range from annoying and slightly inconvenient to outright torturous and inhumane. Some of the milder stuff is pretty standard pranking material [can't turn left for a few minutes, mild itching]. But the more severe and prolonged the hex, well...there's laws about that kind of thing.

After a certain magnitude, these things can lead to real physical and emotional damage, and then you're in deep shit. There's a huge difference between mild itchiness on the level of a few mosquito bites, and itching so intense that the victim starts gouging their flesh from scratching so hard and it interferes with their ability to function. Hexing your buddy so their occasionally catch a whiff of an unpleasant farty smell is worlds apart from hexing someone to constantly smell something so unimaginably foul that they can't focus on anything else and it makes them physically ill. The latter in both cases is punishable by law.

Charms are the opposite end of the spectrum; these are spells with positive effects. I haven't really talked about it yet, but healing spells and things like that definitely fall into this category. Further examples include:

Soothing minor and major pains [and it's not addictive, unlike some painkillers]

Easing anxiety

Combating allergies

Healing wounds and broken bones

Energy boost

Helping people get to sleep

From making daily living a bit easier to outright saving lives, charms are a good influence. They've got a lot of use in various medical fields, obviously. God knows I wish I had magic to make my anxiety shut off. Many charms can also be used to directly counteract or cancel out hexes.

As such, those who study hexes must also study charms. Rhiz and Val are well-versed in both. Though they're not required to study the more medical charms; Hex majors really only need to take specific Charm courses that directly relate to their main field of study.

Of course, even if charms seem inherently good, they can still be misused. You can't just go around using healing charms without learning how to properly apply them. Those who've studied healing charms can seamlessly close wounds and repair broken limbs in such a way that you'd think they were never broken at all. A less-learned person can try to use healing charms with some limited success, but they can leave behind thick, ugly scars, or mend bones incorrectly. The thing about the bones is especially problematic; they have to go to a professional and have the bone re-broken and properly healed. Whoever "fixed" it in the first place can easily get stuck paying for that bill, should the injured choose to go after them for it.

Neutral Magic [colloquially known as "Noots" or "Newts" to anyone under like, 35] is basically everything else that doesn't fit into the first two categories, with one other major difference: it's applied to objects, not people, and has no intent of directly affecting people. Neutral magic can be used for the following purposes:

Banishing dust and grime

Helping plants grow, or making plants wither

Mending broken objects, or breaking objects

Moving objects

While these are certainly things that can hurt or help people, that's more of a side-effect; the main focus is to manipulate an object. One of the few exceptions to the "not used on people" rule is forcibly moving people. This can be used for good [to shove someone away from danger] or ill [to push people into harm's way].

Noots can also be linked to hexes or charms. A sequence, if you will. Like, if X happens, the noot picks up on it, and triggers a hex or charm in turn. Remember what I said about the rooms at the JuxtaPosition? There's a noot that senses distress, fear, panic, etc. When it senses those things, then it triggers a binding hex [to immobilize the source of the problem], and a noot that forcibly moves the attacker away from the victim. Or the Exclusion proximity noots, that sense when the Excluded and the Protected are too close to each other, and activate a blindness hex on the Excluded.

Of course, there's bound to be places where the lines are sort of blurred. Hexes can be used in a way that's beneficial [using a paralysis hex in self-defense] and charms can be applied with sinister intent [soothing someone to sleep to do awful things to them]. Magic is never so straightforward, right.

So that's the quick'n'dirty on magic in Litch Slush. A whole other beast from Termythian magicks.

Public Indecency charges are still a thing on the Earth side of the portal. He can't just be going around with his dangly bits swaying in the breeze unless he wants to get arrested and hexed.

Yes, shadows can be arrested. It sounds silly, but that's why cops carry hex caps, which I mentioned in passing on my post about Valysta. Little pods, about the size of a marble that contain hexes frozen in time, ready to be released. There's a few different types to help with apprehending difficult subjects. This includes binding hexes, which are good in many situations, but they're also the only way to catch an Umbrae. It makes it so the Umbrae can't just flee into the shadows and forces them to keep a three-dimensional, physical form so they can be dealt with. In addition to immobilizing them, of course.

Anyways. Decency? Yeah, that.

Arcanae is a lot more lenient about people running around with their junk out because occasionally demons literally burst into existence fully-formed and naked in the middle of the street, so it's not really weird to them. As long as you're not using your genitalia to ACTIVELY MENACE people, the Arkhen don't tend to care. If, however, you and your BELLIGERENT GENITALS are making a scene, you will also be arrested and hexed.

Most of them still wear clothes anyways though, so it's not like Arcanae is a giant nudist colony.

Finished up that picture of Shuss. This is his preferred [“decent”] form. Like Norah, everything about the fully-formed parts of his look is intentional.

Like all Umbrae, Shuss tends towards mischeviousness. He likes to cause [ultimately harmless] trouble and minor strifes. Lives for it, really. I mentioned he’s one of Azhrune’s coworkers? He’s also an incubus. He lives off that as much as he does chaos, and he frequents the same JuxtaPosition that Azhrune does.

Valysta, one of Rhiz's classmates from his Advanced Hex Application class. She was actually in one of the few pages I managed to draw.

A southern girl from the Arkhen side of the portal ["lots of dimensions have a south!"]. Often mistaken for Japanese because "You're a red oni, aren't you?" Her interests include baking, nail art, and EXTREME SPORTS. She loves shit like skydiving and rock-climbing. She lives in the AotD dorms when school's on, but lives with her parents in Arcanae the rest of the year. She actually wants to be a cop, and a large variety of Hexing courses are required before she can do that; hexes are more at home on a demon officer's hip than a firearm is.