auroraexpress | (no subject)

[Will grab the legs and lift up the deer.] Fair.

So how big of a net does that broadband cover? Can you draw from the other side of the planet? Reach farther back than the Ice Age?

Ten to twelve-thousand years is my upper limit, and that really needs a quality specimen and my familiars' support. I haven't tested my limits with distance to that extreme a degree, since the cost of the flight to a closer summoning location would be worth the reduction in risk. Even being a few hundred miles out of their original range can add a lot of difficulty, and that really stacks when it's something extinct... Like I can summon a common pigeon with really no effort at all. There's more time spent drawing the circle than there is on the calling. But a teratorn takes hours and hours.

[without breaking a beat as she starts on disemboweling the deer]

Edited 2019-09-26 04:09 (UTC)

[Nodding, just holding the deer steady for her as he watches her work.] That makes sense. The location thing. What's a teratorn?

[piling the organs into a bin to the side and shooing away her suddenly VERY interested familiars. they may be skeletons but instincts want those snacks.]

No, greedy butts, you'll make a mess. Later— Teratornithidae is a family of extinct vulture relatives. Rocs are bigger, but for non-magical animals, they were some of the biggest flighted birds around. If not the biggest! I've been working with one for a locomotion study, since there's still some work to be done on figuring out how exactly they got airborne and how agile they were on the ground.

[Chuckling.] I'm sure there'll be plenty of leftovers. Might even get fancy cooked meat.

Oooh, giant bird. That does sound cool. Maybe I could help? I'm pretty good at math and trajectory stuff.

Unfortunately, I have neither the loaned teratorn skeleton, the notes, the cameras, nor the motion-tracking computer programs with me. I do a lot of work where I summon something so it can participate in someone else's study.

Ah. That's a shame. Well, I guess if we ever run into big birds, might be a thing to keep in mind.

So you need to put parts of your soul in the summons though?

No? If your soul is getting involved in a standard summoning, you've messed up badly.

Ooooh, so it's just familiars that need it and summoning is different?

Generally, yes! My familiars are a somewhat confusing case since they are necromantic summons, but they serve a very different role than other creatures I summon, skeleton or otherwise.

So familiars aren't usually skeletons?

You do get some, since dead creatures technically have a magic flow after you've gone and raised them up, but most familiars are going to be live magical animals, like one of my friends has a white dog for hers. Monsters, or magical beasts, like unicorns and griffons also work. Mine qualify both for being dragons and for being dead.

Is there a reason they're so rare? Like it seems like it'd be a lot harder to kill a skeleton familiar than an alive one. Which seems like it'd be real traumatic?

[both of the dragons swing their heads up to glare at Dusk, spiky hackles raised and bristling. eliza's smile wavers.]

Um, it would be, but that's not really a factor we need to consider. There's protections for familiars.

....no offense? Is that offensive?

[What is that wavering smile?] There are?

It's... gauche?

...which part? Because I think I said something bad and it's hard to say which.

The last two parts.

....so dead and killing familiars? Bringing up alive versus dead?

[Isolde leans over Eliza's shoulder and hisses]

Discussing familiars on the merits of how easy they are to kill or not, especially paired with the question of how traumatic that would be... That's really, really tactless.