The exact nature and effect of these invocations vary from visage to visage, but in all publicly known appearances of this ability, the effects have been tremendous. For example, Tevan Ellis, a Paladin of Melkyr, used an invocation during the Battle of Kevan’s Crossing in the Quelling War.
Witnesses claimed that Tevan was surrounded by a golden aura that temporarily rendered him completely immune to both physical and magical harm. In the aftermath of the battle, Tevan lost consciousness for several days, implying that this power has a tremendous cost on the body.
The Abjurer is an attunement focused on breaking existing spells. The most powerful of their abilities is banishment — the ability to send a summoned creature back to their place of origin and prevent them from returning for some time. In the case of true elementals, this will send them to their home plane and force them to remain there. Creatures summoned by Summoners will be forced back to their spire, and cannot be resummoned until the banishment is broken.
The Arbiter attunement is given to those who perform services to a visage, often completing legendary quests or averting catastrophes. The Arbiter attunement allows a mage to imbue other attuned with a fraction of their power.
It is sometimes speculated that there is a Necromancer attunement, but is unlikely. Raising the dead has been proven to be impossible on numerous occasions.
The last known restricted attunement is the Sovereign. It is believed to be able to control or draw power from other attunements. Some claim that it also allowed for the absorption of spells and enchantments to increase the power of the Sovereign. Once, it was given to the leaders of nations, but humanity has not been blessed with a Sovereign in many centuries.
I frowned as I looked over the passage about the Arbiter attunement again. I hadn’t been expecting much, but it was still disappointing.
The description of the Paladin attunement described a golden aura that granted invulnerability. That was very interesting, since the color gold was usually associated with the Tyrant in Gold, not the goddess.
Maybe I was reading too much into the color. After all, the yellow aura from Citrine attunements also could be described as “gold”. Still, I wanted to learn more about it at some point.
The Sovereign attunement sounded very interesting. I was curious what controlling and drawing power from other attunements entailed — was it like the opposite of my own attunement?
Could it be used to steal an entire attunement permanently? That would be fascinating if it really existed. Also, sort of terrifying.
I picked up the other book that listed restricted attunements and checked through there as well, but that one didn’t even talk about Necromancers. It did have a slightly lengthier section on the Arbiter attunement, though, including one particular tidbit that interested me a great deal.
Warren Constantine, a famous Arbiter in Caelford, was integral in the process of constructing the first generation of artificial attunements. He is listed as a principal contributor in the earliest papers published on new attunement development, until he abruptly disappeared from the public scene in 402 AF.
While Caelford does have a handful of other Arbiters, it is believed that the Arbiter attunement is not actually a necessary part of the process. Instead, modern approaches to crafting artificial attunements rely primarily on Biomancers, a local attunement that allows for manipulation of a subject’s mana. While the details of the process have not been publicly published, it is believed that creating an artificial attunement requires work on the parts of both Biomancers and Enchanters.
It is possible that earlier-generation artificial attunements were performed by Arbiters rather than — or in addition to — Biomancers. This may have been abandoned due to dangers in that process, or due to the comparative scarcity of Arbiters. Unfortunately, the exact details of the process are currently considered military secrets, and thus not yet available for public consummation or discussion.
I had a lot of questions related to that. I definitely needed to do some follow-up research on artificial attunements, as well as the remarkably suspicious disappearance of Warren Constantine.
I devoured the rest of the section on the Arbiter attunement. It was only about ten pages, since sources on how it worked were pretty scarce. Most of it was the same as what Researcher had told me, with a few minor differences, and a few shreds of new information.
The most important part was that it actually described the process of imbuing other people with mana, which was something I hadn’t gotten around to asking. It was exactly what I expected, though. I just needed to channel mana through my right hand and the attunement would do all the rest of the work.
Notably, the writer believed that the purification process was occurring in my body all the time, not just at the time that I sent the mana out. That wasn’t something I could rely on without research, but it meant I might be able to safely transfer mana through my other hand in a desperate situation.
I’ll have to test that in a lab environment before I actually try it on a person.
I was definitely going to try transferring mana through the Arbiter attunement itself soon, though. Probably to Derek or Patrick, since neither of them recently had their mana overcharged by anything else.
Derek was probably the best option to start with, since he had experience working with an elemental who had a similar mana recharging ability, and he was probably powerful enough to shrug it off if I did something terribly wrong.
I didn’t think I’d be able to give Derek any significant long-term benefit. I didn’t have enough mana for that.
In fact, I didn’t even know exactly how much mana I had at that moment.
Thinking on that, I got out my mana watch to check.
I pressed the device to my forehead, and it registered 50/50. I’d gotten a couple points of mana in the aftermath of the visit to the spire, which was great progress by my standards.
My right hand was far more impressive, registering at 82/82. It had measured at 58 right before I’d taken the second fake spire exam, which felt like weeks ago, but it had only been a few days. I’d strained my hand considerably during all the fighting and enchanting in the spire, which was probably part of the reason it had grown so much. Katashi transforming the brand into a fully-functional attunement was probably a big part of it, too.
The minimum for hitting Carnelian was 60 mana, which meant that I’d passed it handily with my hand, but I wasn’t quite there with my Enchanter attunement yet.
Sunstone was six times that, or 360. That…was going to take a while.
I didn’t even want to think about getting the more than two thousand necessary for Citrine.
So, no, I definitely couldn’t give Derek any substantial long-term benefit yet. But if Patrick was at a similar level to my Enchanter attunement with his Elementalist one, and I could give him a two percent increase per week… That was about one extra mana a week, which wasn’t bad at all.
I’d started out only getting about one mana a week in total, then more like two mana per week when I started eating lavris fruit. Now, I was probably getting closer to five a week, depending on how much I exercised.