Questionable Questing

Silly thought for that hypothetical magus family (Who I want to come up with a name for, but can't think of one that's quite right): Do the standard 'replace Saito with someone else' zero no tsukaima plot with one of them...and have them refuse to teach Louise any magecraft, or how to produce nerve circuits.

It's a matter of their family's pride: they're willing to adopt and teach those adopted, but sharing the torch with someone who will not even take the name of their clan is a betrayal of their family's hard work over the intervening centuries.

Despite being scientifically minded, seeking magecraft out of liking magecraft and wanting to help themselves, and recognizing that they don't properly fit the bill of 'magi', family is a thing that really matters to them, whether blood family or not. Their arts weren't passed down and improved by the ancestors so they could invoke the wrath of the association by spreading magecraft.

Perhaps, though being equipped with a crest for the sole purpose of giving them access to the spells within the family's knowledge, they'd never 'trained' that earnestly before. By which I mean they didn't really practice with the spells, or study magecraft academically...and only ever made a comparatively insignificant number of nerve circuits. 40 they made themself, 17 in their crest.

Each capable of prana output equivalent to 1/2 Shirou's temporary nerve circuit, if they push it (raw power is sacrificed for stability). They'd need to spend time making more to boost their available prana throughput.

What did you think of my idea for actually creating them?

Also, I think you're underestimating how many nerves exist in the human body.
I don't think they'd be very clumsy unless they willy nilly started producing hundreds of circuits.

My mental image is that, to match Shirou's natural circuits for maximum output, they WOULD need hundreds. Mental image is that for stability, actually, each nerve circuit might actually be capped at just 1/2 units of prana.
But yeah, I like your idea for the process.

Essentially, I consider the permanent nerve circuits to be a pseudo mystic code in themselves, and the nerve crests an outgrowth of that.

My thinking is that they COULD do more than 2, but are artificially capped around that number because the maker had to PAY for that thing, so damaging it is terrible, and 2 is the limit without inflicting wear upon them.

My thesis on this family is that the very nature of their magecraft, until the perfection of farmed nerve circuits, is sacrifice. All magecraft requires it, of course, but they're defined by taking sacrifice as far as they want magecraft to take them...outside of crest endowment.

Which only became possible when mundane science discovered cortisone, the first known immunosuppressant, which allowed magecraft to prevent transplant rejection in the capacity needed.

But the thing is, is magecraft is /bullshit/, I honestly think they could just stick the nerves in someone else with only a bit of effort.

Kotomine took Archer's entire arm and transplanted it on Shirou.

And before you say they're the same person, the nerve, tendons and muscles all had to be connected to Shiro properly for it to work, and the Shroud prevented a much worse event than tissue rejection.

That's ignoring the fact that they aren't technically the same species, or even similar existences'.

Tissue rejection would be /much/ easier.

All the family would have to do is implant them, and make it seem like they're naturally part of the body.

Maybe just a curse where the nerves are 'part of the whole', something a parasite would have that's incredibly useful for such an operation.