Starlight Aura

The Trader confound is the Starlight Aura; the ability to siphon the supernatural energies of the stars through their minds and around them for later use. This is done automatically under the correct conditions, but may be augmented by the Noumena and Stellar Collector spells. Many Trader spells have environmental requirements which Starlight Aura can substitute for.

Environmental Requirements

Trader spells can require unobscured starlight, starlight aura, or moons in order to be able to cast. Noumena will make it so clouds do not obscure starlight.

• Can be cast freely: Finesse, Last Gift of Vithwok IV, Membrach's Greed, Nonchalance, Noumena, Platinum Hands of Kertigen, Turmar Illumination
• Must have access to unobscured ambient starlight or starlight aura: Arbiter's Stylus, Starcrash
• Must have access to ambient starlight. Starlight aura will not work: Avtalia Array
• Must have access to starlight aura. Ambient starlight will not work: Elision, Enrichment
• Must have access to unobscured ambient starlight, starlight aura, or the light of Xibar/Yavash: Blur, Crystal Dart, Fluoresce, Iridius Rod, Regalia, Stellar Collector, Trabe Chalice
• Must have access to starlight aura or any moon. Ambient starlight will not work: Avren Aevareae, Mask of the Moons

Regeneration Overview

Without Noumena in place, there are three conditions necessary for natural aura growth:

• It must not be overcast. Mild cloud cover doesn't hinder you.

• It must be night time.

• You must be out under the open sky.

Having Noumena active may remove the first two restrictions if it was cast with enough mana. More mana is required to remove the night time restriction than the cloud cover restriction. Regeneration will be slower if one of these restrictions is bypassed by Noumena. The more mana put into Noumena the smaller this regeneration penalty will be.

You can also make a deal with the Negotiants via your tessera to take out a starlight aura loan or greatly increase your natural aura regeneration, but these both come with lethal consequences if not managed properly.

Three things to note about the aura.

• Its capacity is directly related to your Lunar Magic and scales pretty high. The floor of the system is at 20 ranks of Lunar Magic (below that you're just given the value of 20 ranks as a courtesy). Your aura will have double its original capacity by 40 ranks, and it will continue to grow until you hit 1000 ranks.

• Its regen is directly related to your Wisdom and each and every point in Wisdom contributes to the size of your regen pulse. It will double from its default (assuming a 0-mod race) at around 40 Wisdom and continue to grow in perpetuity (though there's a practical limit to how much you'll want to invest into Wisdom).

• Most aura costs are related to the mana you're putting into the spell. It costs more aura to power a 4-mana spell than a 2-mana spell.

When you're drawing on your aura in the early stages of your magic you want to be careful about how much mana you put in. Bearing in mind that early in a Trader's life they have free access to Analogous Patterns spells that cover every skill except Utility, which can be covered by Noumena at 2nd circle.

As your skills and stats increase, the aura's limits loosen up considerably and casting more powerfully and repeatedly under adverse conditions will become possible. By the time you lose access to the AP spells you should have enough Lunar Magic to notice a substantial improvement over Noobler's First Aura.

Perceiving Your Aura

• PERCEIVE AURA: Will give a few lines of information:

You close your eyes and take a measure of your aura.
Starlight dances vividly across the confines of your aura.
Your aura contains as much starlight as you can safely handle.
Local conditions are hindering the growth of your aura.
Roundtime: 6 sec.

The first line is just messaging, but the next three each convey a separate piece of information:

• STARLIGHT DANCES VIVIDLY ACROSS THE CONFINES OF YOUR AURA:

This is like your aura inventory. It's just telling you how much you currently have stored up. It corresponds to the list of levels given below. So I'm currently at a 6 on that list.

• YOUR AURA CONTAINS AS MUCH STARLIGHT AS YOU CAN SAFELY HANDLE:

This tells you that you can't fit any more Starlight. You've charged as much as you can. If this is not true then this line will not appear at all.

• LOCAL CONDITIONS ARE HINDERING THE GROWTH OF YOUR AURA:

This is telling you the rate of change of your aura inventory. So how fast you are charging.

There are three variations here:

• "prohibiting": you're not charging at all, which means one of three conditions listed above is not met
• "hindering": you are charging your Aura, but charging it slowly -- you are probably using Noumena to bypass one of the conditions above
• "optimal": you are meeting all three of the conditions above, and your Aura is charging as fast as it can

Starlight Aura Levels

Levels:

1. The smallest hint of starlight flickers within your aura.
2. A bare flicker of starlight plays within your aura.
3. A faint amount of starlight illuminates your aura.
4. Your aura pulses slowly with starlight.
5. A steady pulse of starlight runs through your aura.
6. Starlight dances vividly across the confines of your aura.
7. Strong pulses of starlight flare within your aura.
8. Your aura seethes with brilliant starlight.
9. Your aura is blinding!
10. The power contained in your aura defies visual metaphor.

Regeneration Mechanics

Regen pulses come every 100 seconds.

There are a few different regen rates that determine your pulse size, which add different %s to your SLA pool. As noted above, PERC AURA will tell you if you have "optimal" or "hindered" conditions. But there are different levels of hindered even after maximum potency Noumena cast, depending on time of day and weather. The most common hindered rates seem to be 75% (referred to here as minimally hindered), 50% (middle hindered - the thick red line in the chart), and 33% (max hindered) of optimal.

The optimal SLA regen rate stops improving at 80 Wisdom, with a fully optimal 0-100% regen taking 60 minutes. But while the optimal regen rate maxes out at 80 Wisdom, your hindered regen rates continue improving, until they also hit 60 minutes. So past 80 Wisdom, that 50% middle hindered regen rate grows to 100% relative to your capped optimal rate, until it too eventually hits 60 minutes.

There are a few breakpoints:

• 80 Wisdom: Optimal regen caps at 60 minutes
• 110 Wisdom: Minimally hindered regen caps at 60 minutes
• 180 Wisdom: Middle hindered regen caps at 60 minutes
• 240 Wisdom: Max hindered regen would cap at 60 minutes

Each point of Wisdom increases your regen pulse size by the same absolute amount. With very little Wisdom, that modest amount is really noticeable. But even at very high Wisdom, extra Wisdom ranks still have a decent impact. Assuming a 50/50 split of optimal and middle hindered conditions, going from 170 to 180 Wisdom should lower average regen time by 3% (62 minutes -> 60 minutes). Assuming worse weather would be an even bigger improvement.

The EXPOSURE deal doubles the regen rate and ignores caps. So a fully optimal regen under EXPOSURE will take 30 minutes.

Discipline has no effect.

SLA regeneration is improved by Wisdom buffs. Similarly, your overall SLA pool size is improved by Primary Magic buffs (SYMBIOSIS CAST).

Spell SLA Cost Estimates

Although many SLA-based spells won't always consume SLA depending on conditions (such as the moons), it is possible to infer precisely how much of your SLA pool is consumed when SLA is required. The lowest SLA-consuming spell is minimum mana CRD, which is defined as 1 "SLA bit."

With 700 Lunar Magic, one's SLA pool is approximately 1,700 bits, meaning you could cast 1,700 2 mana CRDs without residue indoors before running out of SLA.

Most spells to increase their SLA costs pretty close to 1:1 with mana. So a 100 mana BLUR uses roughly 20x SLA as a 5 mana BLUR. The main exception seems to be Regalia, which is always 15 SLA bits regardless of mana. FLU and AVA also have more generous SLA costs than expected at higher mana levels.

Elison's SLA is per attack avoided, not per cast. The amount of SLA used depends on how thoroughly you win the contest. So more difficult enemies probably have higher SLA costs.

Glowing Iron Fragments

Can INVOKE a glowing iron fragment while holding it to refill your entire starlight aura pool:

• WITH AN INSTINCTIVE, SHARP INHALATION, YOU DRAW THE ENTIRETY OF THE FRAGMENT'S POWER INTO YOUR STARLIGHT AURA! ITS GLOW DIES, LEAVING MERE IRON IN YOUR HAND.

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