Heaven and Hell in One’s Head
It went without saying that each school in the College brought its own unique professorial style, but there were certain standardized lessons in the core curricula.
The School of Daybreak, twisted by their values of reason and efficiency, were skilled in practicing magic that affected base reality. Naturally, they were aware that magic could twist the fundamental laws of the world.
All the same, it was accepted among them that a deep knowledge of the body would lead to a deeper understanding of the workings of magic, and so their students were expected to attend the dissection of animals, or even people, at least once. They weren’t as intense as the School of Setting Sun, whose motto was “glory lies buried in the depths of the unrevealed,” but there were still one or two mandatory lessons dedicated to the subject—to learn about living organisms’ fundamental makeup and what made them tick. After all, an in-depth knowledge allowed you not only to fix things but also to break them.
Nanna Baldur Snorrison breathed out a puff of smoke as she cast her mind back to the past. These idle reflections were thanks to the unexpected encounter with that miniature portrait. That, or her potent downer wasn’t hitting right.
Originally, Nanna had only wanted to create a cure for hereditary color blindness.
It had been a proof of concept, the first step in Nanna’s dream to magically reproduce the blessings of methuselah life, free from many of the typical mortal ills. In the beginning, all she’d wanted was to cure one of the few Collegiate friends she’d made of his illness.
Color was an indispensable part of making one’s way around the world, from identifying signs to checking how a potion is coming along. The retina was merely a receptive surface of the brain; what was seen was intrinsically linked to what could be thought. Perceived color could even alter how things tasted.
The fact that everyone’s color perception was different was such a chore. Simple conversations would be interrupted by misalignments—you couldn’t even tell the other person of the joys of the sights you had seen.
However, as Nanna learned of the internal workings of sight alongside the Setting Sun cadre, she noticed something: everything the body experiences is created by the brain.
Impairment of color perception couldn’t solely be attributed to damage to the retina or optic nerve; it could also occur due to problems in the brain. In some cases, psychological factors could bring about physical changes in the body too.
In other words, our minds could affect our bodies.
The brain was the stronghold of one’s ego—the absolute boundary that allows an individual to say, “I am me and you are you.” In other words, all phenomena are nothing more than reactions in our brains—feelings triggered by sensory stimuli.
These idle thoughts became firm beliefs when she rifled through the notes of an acquaintance in Setting Sun who was studying the makeup of the brain. As she read, she was struck by its power. If someone was given a pill of sugar-coated ash and told it was poison, their bodies would writhe in pain, but on the other hand, if they were told it was a panacea for some illness, their condition would improve.
At the end of the day, our worlds were nothing more than emotions and perceptions—stimuli that our cells received in order to recreate the world around us, completely independent of how it may actually appear.
When Nanna reached this conclusion, everything in her world lost its purpose; everything she saw was nothing more than a charade playing out in the tiny confines of her skull. The delicious taste of black tea infused just right, the dazzling sight of the dawn sun and the hope it instilled in one’s heart, the rushing emotion from seeing verdant trees come back into bloom—at the end of the day, all of these feelings were illusions of the sensory nervous system.
If that were so, then it didn’t matter what the true nature of the world was—surely stimuli on their own would bring sufficient happiness.
Nanna’s friend couldn’t perceive color—Nanna’s reds were simply grays to him, his world daubed only in a dull monochrome. In other words, one’s brain and neurons rendered the fundamental elements of the world that we shared completely different.
It was then that Nanna decided to seek salvation through magic that dealt with the mind.
Reality was false—nothing more than a show that played out in our heads. By this same token, with perfect control over the chemical mechanisms that governed one’s senses and reactions, one could live in a state of permanent bliss; practiced at scale, the whole world would be only a dose away from paradise. If she managed that, then her research on the unique properties of methuselah bodies would become worthless.
Nanna had stepped up as her own number one guinea pig for the sake of reaching the depths of knowledge. However, even after breaking the rules to enter the innermost depths of the College’s library, she was still far from her goals.
“Are you feeling all right?” Erich asked.
“Quite fine...thank you,” Nanna replied.
However, there was something she had realized. Where most people sought to make the dreams—the hell—that played out inside their jostling, busy heads that little bit more bearable, this boy, Erich of Konigstuhl, had said that there was worth in those dreams. He found joy with where he stood in the here and now, chasing his dream of becoming an adventurer.
Nanna thought Goldilocks was quite deranged. People only went on adventures for the loot and fame that came afterward. However, over the little time they had spent conversing, Nanna had come to realize that, lunatic that he was, his feelings were genuine.
Despite the deadly foes that lumbered toward him, the difficulties that stood in his way, the mental struggles he brought upon himself—he would cut through them all and give a victory cry at the end. This was the life of an adventurer, to transform all these hardships into joy and contentment.
What a strange creature she had tried to meddle with.
“I was merely thinking about...how you were enjoying your life.”
“Are you teasing me? I didn’t do something to warrant it, did I...?”
The College dropout smirked at the clearly troubled lad before her, visions of hell playing out in her mind. Erich found pure and utter joy in life itself. In her heart, Nanna prayed that in time her potions would allow her to reach such a state.
[Tips] The fun of TRPGs comes from talking, role-playing, and taking on challenges together. It goes without saying that adventures, too, aren’t a means to an end—the fun is in the adventure itself.
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