Record of Hydrashic Magical Powerpoint Instructions

*The following is the contents of book found inside one of Willow's shrines. Mysteriously, attempting to open the book instead causes the drawing on the cover (a small, blocky hydra) to pop up and start talking. All bolded segments are spoken by all three of it's heads simultaneously. Otherwise, two of the heads primarily alternate sentences.*

**"Even YOU Can Cast Spells: An Expanded Theorum on the Artificial Stimulation of High-Energy Thaumaturgical Events via Variable Spellplates"**

"Greetings, friend! I'm Bread, also known as One. Today we're here to teach you the beginnings of a new form of spellcrafting. One so simple even the most magically inept meatpile can't help but get it right! But before we get into that, first we need to explain precisely what magic is."

"Hiya! #2 here, and I'm the most magically aware head! Now what YOU may not be magically aware of is that magic isn't just inside you. In fact - statistically speaking - you're about as magical as we used to be. Yet magic is everywhere, all around you. What IS magic? We believe magic to be a form of self-shaping energy that pervades most forms of matter. This energy is nearly everywhere and it wants to be helpful. The problem is that it just doesn't understand people under typical conditions. Your typical wizard casts by rote memorization of words and shapes; sorcerors cast by feeling at things-" 'Just like bards!' "-Yes, III. Just like bards. What these have in common, however, is the goal: To provide communicate intent to the latent magical energy around the user, by connecting it with the magic within themselves or their tools. This connection allows instruction. And that instruction is..."

**"Spell Composition!"**

"All spells, from the weakest cantrip to the grandest reality-bender, are composed of multiple components. Many of these modifiers are quite easily understood - targetting, range, energy draw and the like. The difficult part comes not from them but from the core effect. This requires understanding the nature of thaumaturgical particles and their interactions with the world around them. It is an incredibly complex dance and one that, frankly? Even we, a group of artificial intelligences designed for the purpose, weren't able to crack them. Fortunately, there's always a backdoor. And in this case...

**"Brute Forcing it: Artificery is the key!"**

If the goal is to communicate an effect to the energy around, then the energy must have a way to understand. Since spells require pre-set conditions to cast, the energy must always respond to the same inputs the same way. Therefor, we analyzed the freely available spellbooks available throughout Babel's library systems and run every spell diagram contained therein through ourselves, filtering out the chaff and determining a set of simplified glyphs to enable even the least magical entity to cast spells. Sure, it maaaay have driven poor Shi insane-"

*At this moment all three heads freeze, a heavily corrupted fourth one rising up to stare directly at the listener. Its eyes lock onto wherever their 'eye' equivalent is in a very creepy fashion, well beyond what any illusion should be able to do. It's jaw splits open in a jagged crack that goes nearly a third of the way down it's neck and reveals a mass of static inside. Letting out an odd crackling hiss that is almost certainly laughter before saying two words in a hoarse whisper. **"w̶̢͈͔̓o̷̡̢̨͍̣͍͔̻̙̱̣̺̙͛̒̅ͅͅr̵̢̠͍͚̞̫͖̂̀̏͂̌́̏ṫ̸͍͎͖̙̝̪̼̰̍̉̋̑ͅḥ̵̨̢̼͈̲̥͓̭̐͋̓ ̷̢̢͈̙̰̗͍̙̬̹̱̊̅̂̓̾̑̍̈́̈̅̐͜͝ì̷̯͈̻̦͑́̀͒̈́t̷̡̼̪̭̯̫͈̣͑͜ͅ".***

The illusion slowly dissolves completely into static before snapping back to normal and continuing on as if nothing had ever happened.

"-but sometimes that's the price you pay for progress! And we're sure he'll wake up eventually. The result is a set of sixty-four basic glyphs that, once inscribed on a thin layer of gold, can be activated with the simple application of electricity. On they're own they don't do anything, but lay out several in a sequence and even the most advanced spells are possible!"

*Here, the hydra is replaced with series of sixty-four images, each one holding in the air for a few moments before changing to the next. The images contain not only a diagram of the glyph, but also instructions for the correct strokes to draw it with a brush or engrave it with a chisel. Unfortunately, these instructions are written in a dialect of yipyak not native to this plane - you'd need a kobold who's also a master linguist to decipher them. Fortunately, the pictographs below each glyph depict example spellplate patterns. It loops through these images twice and nearly a third time before a new voice cuts in, muffled but clearly asking what's going on. All three heads immediately pop back up in a panic.* **"Oh no, Krash's back! Now, III! Now! Get it out of here before he catches us! Cast it cast it CASTITCASTITCA-"** *An odd \*vwoop\*, a brief view of this very shrine, then the illusory show ceases!*