Ask A Delene

[Ezra]

Due to their magical effect, would kobolds all show up as spellbearers (if they weren't not showing up at all)?

[Adelene]

Yup. The magic detection magic has enough detail to it to differentiate between spells that use different forms, though, so a mage who's familiar with that kind of spell can tell whether their tribemate has other spells in addition to that one.

[DanielH]

Kobolds do show up at all to magic, they just show up as illusions, right? So any mage that learned the trick could make a trap for kobolds by looking for real beings pretending to be illusions?

[Adelene]

If there was an illusion-detection form, that could cause kobolds some problems. Without that, Carp-magic spells can't react to illusions at all, and also can't react to kobolds appearing to be illusions.

[DanielH]

I thought there was a way for spells to detect kobolds if it was a known issue? Couldn’t they, for example, make a trap which can detect when the appear-to-be-an-illusion spell is nearby?

[Adelene]

I thought there was a way for spells to detect kobolds if it was a known issue?

...no? Most kinds of magic from other worlds can detect kobolds, and some can detect them more easily because of the appearing-to-be-an-illusion spell, but within the one magic system it's very reliable.

Couldn’t they, for example, make a trap which can detect when the appear-to-be-an-illusion spell is nearby?

Nope.

[DanielH]

I think I must have been misremembering an odd interaction from the MWF then.

[Lambda]

My memory re: MWF is that there's a very few outworld magics that can see through the I'm-an-illusion effect, and a somewhat larger number that are fooled even by the first-order illusion.

[DanielH]

I am catching up on Portalbold in The Old Republic. After the conversation with Ana about giving Sith the benefit of the doubt, I am even more disappointed that she didn’t notice this blind spot of hers with elves. I guess it is harder to see one’s own biases.

How difficult would it be to get her to admit, in the abstract, that there probably are tigerfolk-elves (to borrow the metaphor used for Sith) and not just elf-elves, without meeting Dusk or similar? Especially after having a conversation like that one it seems like it should be relatively easy to get her to admit than in theory they probably exist even if in practice it is still to dangerous to approach elves for probably no benefit.

[Adelene]

Different instances of Lurker vary in how hard it is to get them to acknowledge elves as people; Milliwaysbold is about as likely as it's possible to get without explicit intervention/meeting Dusk. A lot of it comes down to how stressed they are at the time; MWFbold had been exiled and was just about at the point of hitting 'stable' reliably when Inavet was sprung on her, iirc, which was a pretty big factor - and even then, if it'd been approached in a less alarming way she'd've handled it better.