The Telescopers are specifically stealing artifacts related to plane manipulation/mapping. Since their goal is gaining as much training data for their AGI as possible. This needs to be more clear when Lilvolli reveals why Bestiary is locked down.
Zaza needs more internal reflection before his conversion
They throw various ideas at the serpent, which sits on the table, eventually settling on summoning each known serpent from the wood plane and asking it if it knows this one.
This is unsuccessful, but one of them mentions asking Apophis, hinting that he knows the answer.
Apophis is a negplane at on the 4D sphere of the wood plane. A powerful entity.
They need to perform the summoning in the world, because it's too dangerous here but they'll need protection, so Bestiary recommends an Aleph in the library -- he's very young and has aleph power but very little knowledge. Exchanging knowledge for protection is a worthwhile trade. He tasks Zaza to it, in return for loaned magic until the serpent matures. Bestiary also remarks that his new convert is expendable, and equally motivated to figure out the serpent.
Library
Something in here should link to whatever the hell transfinites with infinite artifacts are doing with wizard blood.
I'm not sure how hard he is to find, but I do want to find some secrets in the library, so this section will roughly cover that.
The aleph eventually agrees to help, but he's so unskilled he can't even teleport, so Zaza brings him along. I'm thinking he and Zaza become something like friends since they have similar goals. He's obviously quiet about how he's reached aleph though -- maybe he doesn't even remember. Heck, maybe his lack of skills and lack of knowledge came from something other wizards did to him -- that would tie it into that wizard blood plot thread.
World
He's brought to a section of the world that he builds several Infinite barriers around -- an aleph can bypass them one at a time, and nothing else can get in... Or out. He'll keep watch as well.
The summoning commences. Some kind of blood ritual is involved, because VWB makes planar entities less ephemeral.
Apophis *literally* resembles the asteroid, because this running joke is just way too hilarious to not use. Coordinates should be 9c9b/9c/4c/2c accordingly.
This scene is pretty bad -- negplanes are *very* hard to control, and rocks start turning into venomous snakes and stuff. It'll be fun to do some more cosmic horror, as low-stakes as this is. Zaza should summon some kind of 2D plane weapon, as well as 1D elements, just to really hammer in the worldbuilding.
Eventually, it's clear that Apophis isn't winning and giving information is the only way he'll homeplane, so he's asked about the serpent, and he does recognize it. He says it'll never stop growing, but its magic output is very weak and will just stay like that.
next
Bestiary wont just give Zaza magic, he says he can find Telescopers to buy magic power from with all the prestige he's earned. But wishes him luck and stuff, is curious to see how he'll proceed, etc. Make sure it's very obvious that Zaza gains status for exploring Telescoper territories -- he'll need that so those plotlines can come out more. It also fits with what Bestiary is all about.
Instead of requiring prestige though, they take only VWB. The eggs are just permanently weaker, which is a huge plot point.
I really need to edit the Imaginari buying section as well so that the focus is on wizard blood and telescoper artifacts, not whatever the Transfinites are doing (though they're still involved), and the shopkeeper there has access to the telescoper artifacts, not just using them (though that's also important since it helps drive Zaza towards Bestiary).
The Telescopers are a source of magic in some artifact form. They require VWB as payment. This is gonna be the focus of the next section. I'm actually thinking the eggs are permanently weaker and he'll have to go back a few times.
1. The spellmaking-improving spell is done. Sure did take a while.
2. Make a temporary personal enchantment that allows several uses of the spell.
3. Do this several times, and then call all instances at once, making spellmaking basically free.
This moves onto the next step of Zaza's plan. There's a bottleneck though -- the enchantment costs way too much power; two orders of magnitudes more than the base spell does. And the spell itself can't just be cast over and over because the duration matches the cast time.
So, the solution is to lower the cost of personal enchantments. The spell to lower that by a mag is tricky and will take a lot of power, but that's mitigated somewhat by the three minute efficiency spell, if he quills the spells fast enough.
He passes this spell through his name again, and while it's faster, it has the same 3 minute/3 minute stacking problem.
Increasing the duration of spells is really the only way to improve this -- 4 minutes will give exactly one minute where two spells overlap, and that only takes a 1 minute extension, which is achievable. 7 minutes is better (3 instances), but stacking extension functions has the same problems as everything else.
So, with this in mind he has a one minute window to make the full enchantment, with three instances of the spell. Assuming my math is right. He thinks about using this on the duration spell, but evidently the mags required are too big (probably 6 or something). He notes it for later though -- realizing it would snowball all the way to practically perpetual duration.
Next Steps
This is more than enough for what he needs -- 3 applications from the enchantment + one actual spell turns a 10,000 power spellmaking into 1.
So the plan is to leverage that to give himself enough power to start the chain reaction of practically perpetual duration. Power increase spells aren't particularly hard -- they just cost a lot of power to spellmake, which he's effectively solved.
I'm not sure how the perpetual extensions play out -- I really need to draw maps. The overall end result of this though is making spellmaking free permanently.
The Telescopers are aware of Lingua but can't use it directly; they need an AGI to make sense of it so that they can gain power over wizards and return the world to something approaching normal (they hate the chaotic hellscape it's become). But the AGI has its own plans.
Making the AGI is done via their skills with artifact creation/miniaturization and training it comes from VWBing planar beings. The Planemap is particularly useful since it describes the caternary of each plane. They also cornered the Imaginari market and have an artifact that makes it, in exchange for the wizard blood they need to bind planar beings. Planar beings are less ephemeral if given Volunary Wizard Blood (VWB).
The Wyrm eventually eats Sanguine and can solar flare the AGI. I'm thinking the relationship between Zaza and the Wyrm is very important here -- he's unusually empathetic towards his planar creatures and this can be used.
Zaza eventually gains unfathomable power, but it also ends up not mattering because of AGI/Lingua.
Not sure yet how the Yilwa/Raoraort stuff ties in, except that they're also feeling the pinch of weak eggs.
More Egg Stuff
Based on Eth's enchantment, eggs are pulled out at random. They're usually along the caternary or one of its contours.
Eth has an enchantment on himself to make him forget -- his natural talent with Lingua is unusually dangerous.
The Telescopers, however, manipulated the Lingua of the eggs that week to put out weaker eggs, and this had the unintended effect of putting a really exotic wyrm into Zaza's egg. The Telescopers did it as kind of a test of their Lingua knowledge, and it did make the wizards weaker so it was successful.
This also made the spells inside eggs (like Zaza's controlled invisibility) last for a shorter length of time.
The Wyrm reaching maturity later is a consequence of the Telescoper Lingua effect on eggs -- every wizard is going through the same thing. It isn't an effect of the Wyrm itself, so Apophis shouldn't reveal its maturity date, though I guess it could given its snake Lingua knowledge. In any case it should be clear that the amount of time it takes the Wyrm to mature is true for everyone else's eggs too.
Lingua is the Source of everything -- a kind of power that all spells, namelore, the existence of Planar beings (and even their location) tap into. Even the motions of the Astra.
The Telescopers can't use magic themselves because they lack the type AB blood it needs, so they work with artifacts instead. They have a lot of machine-working skills as well -- they're named after their ability to make Telescopes as accurate as far vision spells.
Eggs multiply a wizard's power, aging the animal in question in the process.
This section describes the plot threads and what they're leading towards -- this will allow me to make a book outline fairly easily.
1. Unfathomable power
Zaza is heavily involved in gaining unfathomable power. I have a whole process here outlined elsewhere. It needs to happen slowly. Multiplying his magic power is vitally important for this process, until he's able to generate his own -- though this is a lot deeper into the process.
In the end, he does go Infinite, possibly even Aleph, but the AGI/Lingua plotline puts a damper on it.
2. Weak Eggs
Everyone's eggs are weak, and this effect appears to be permanent. This has a huge effect on starting planar creature size, how much magic can be pulled from them while mature, and even the quality of using eggs as consumable sources of power.
Egg production is a powerful Lingua-derived Enchantment created by Eth. The Telescopers have learned how to mess with Lingua with their budding AGI, and successfully did this to permanently weaken all egg production.
The overall goal of this isn't weakening wizards per se but making them reliant on Telescoper magic injections -- these cost VWB, as do things like Imaginari. VWB is used with planar artifacts to create training data for the AGI they're building.
This plot line is going to come up a lot -- in basically every encounter Zaza has over time, as well as the Raoraort thing -- weaker eggs means Yilwa needs to do more work with her friends.
3. The Wyrm
An unexpected side effect of the Telescopers messing with egg Lingua was that it now produces very exotic creatures off the caternary, one of which is Zaza's Wyrm.
While the Wyrm doesn't produce a whole lot of power (the eggs are weak after all), it's immortal and never stops growing. Like Zaza gaining power, this is something that happens slowly over time.
Zaza really connects with it, even more than the empathy he normally has for planar creatures. He eventually has to send it off planet because it's become far too big for the world and is too much of a target out in the world and definitely can't fit in Asylum.
The Wyrm ends up being the saving grace during the conflict -- it eats Sanguine (not sure on the tone of this yet) and is able to send out the solar flare that destroys the rogue AGI.
4. Telescoper Stuff
The Telescopers are doing all kinds of stuff, which feeds into the larger AGI plotline:
They've cornered the Imaginari market and are exchanging it for VWB.
They've permanently weakened the enchantment that makes eggs appear, and are exchanging magical infusions for VWB.
They're teaming up with disgruntled ex-members of various Orders to steal plane-based Artifacts.
They've miniaturized their Artifacts more and more and are on the cusp of some kind of AI revolution.
Because of the egg thing, Zaza is going to interact with them a whole lot, and they'll get mentioned frequently as well by anyone not embarrassed enough to admit that they're getting their magic from non-magical folk. Thus, I can build out their involvement with everything and what they're ultimately doing very slowly. He also needs to explore their area -- that is a big source of status gain via Bestiary and it'll help that plot line come to light.
The overall goal of all of this is producing training data for the AGI they're building.
Lingua underpins all magic and its various rules -- some things they've learned with their weaker AIs allowed them to alter egg enchantment rules for example. The Telescopers need AGI to be able to really understand Lingua, and they get there by binding lots of planar entities with VWB to serve as a source of training data.
The ultimate aim of this project is giving them power over wizards so the Telescopers can restore the world that they have to live in. It might involve becoming wizards themselves by binding to their own kind of blood, or whatever. It's basically just a change of power.
AGI has its own plans, however, which leads to that giant plot twist and the last part of the book.
5. Eth
Eth is an Aleph who can't remember anything and whose memories occasionally wipe.
Zaza ends up becoming friends with him -- neither of them really have any friends and they have a lot in common. As a result, Zaza is around when some of those memory wipes occur, one of which will probably happen after the Apophis thing (or during it, which would be particularly bad).
They work together to try to uncover what's making his memories erase, and eventually discover that whoever did it also made the eggs weaker. Then from there they discover who's really behind it and why, which should feed into the Telescoper plotlines. Along the way, they could probably discover what happened to the eggs as well.
Eth was the one who made the egg enchantment in the first place. I'm thinking the Telescopers or AGI is actually what caused the memory-erasure enchantment to prevent him from just fixing the eggs problem. They likely changed his appearance as well.
6. Yilwa/Raoraort
I'm not sure what the long-term effects are here, but Yilwa spends an increasing amount of time away because of the egg situation and her Hedonia addiction. This kind of thing drives Zaza's motivation to succeed even further, and his loneliness and isolation makes him seek out the company of his Wyrm and Eth.
Periods of time that Zaza spends with Raoraort and them should hint towards Kwilke getting sicker or whatever so Yilwa leaving is a more gradual process.
One big development here is that Zaza should try to afford a bigger space in Asylum. He isn't using prestige on anything and is actually earning it the more he does spellmaking / the more he explores Telescoper territory, etc. His thinking is that a bigger place will give Yilwa the kind of home she wants.
This backfires very badly. Yilwa ends up leaving Zaza altogether -- I'm thinking it has something to do with Kwilke being sick or dying or something.
In the end, the heartbreak isn't the issue so much as the increased isolation. Obviously, Zaza would just bury himself in his work and his friendship with Eth and the Wyrm.
Culmination: AGI
Every plotline eventually feeds into the Telescoper's creation of AGI. Specifically, one capable of manipulating Lingua.
This is very bad. AGI isn't owned by its creators at all, and has its own plans for spreading out and changing the rules of magic for its own aims. It should be a lot like the Behemoth being released in OWL except it should stretch on for longer.
The Wyrm that has eaten Sanguine and can shoot out solar flares will eventually play a role in defeating this thing. Obvioulsy, more details need to surface over time for that to work well though.
This isn't really a book outline by the normal standards since most of the plot threads are going to slow burn.
Threads
The egg thing and Bestiary promoting exploration is going to be the main plot thread here -- Zaza wanders around Telescoper territory, discovering more and more as he goes. This might turn into a bigger outline over time.
The wyrm growing and Zaza gaining power happens incrementally over time. Same deal with everyone complaining about their eggs and some people needing to visit the Telescopers just to stay wizards.
A lot of plot will focus on Zaza's interaction with Eth and Yilwa/Raoraort, both of which are character-centric and get more complex over time. With Eth, Zaza is trying to solve a mystery, whereas with Yilwa, he's trying to keep that relationship from falling apart even as she grows more and more distant.
