4th year project - Re-Creating the Healing Beat

The thing about trying to make it look like you're a wizard when you are, by everyone else's definition, an artificer, is that it's really really hard.
Well, for most people that is. Ned spent his entire childhood studying arcane spell casting to try to make it work for him, so when he infused his first arcane spell into one of his rings, he didn't find it nearly as difficult as his artifice class would later make it sound.
Bardic magic is a completely different matrix.
Sure, he could have tried to pass off one of his older rings as a 'new' project for his artifice class, but Ned doesn't lie. . . well, not when it comes to academics. Besides, he wanted the challenge. Over achieving is in his blood - literally, according to his parents.
First he needed to actually learn about bardic magic, but by the White Dragon, if talking to bards, especially Darina, about bardic magic isn't the most frivolous endeavor in the Four Kingdoms, then Ned sure hasn't found it. If it wasn't for his deep understanding of how arcane spell casting works, he probably wouldn't have been able to decipher any useful information from them. (13 insight)
Second he needed to hit the books, but not the books available at the Great Hall, since none of them were about Bardic magic, that isn't covered for another few years or so. One request to the librarian later and he had every book he needed about bardic magic - Magical String Theory, Primal Music Theory, and a selection of songs by the legendary bard Lu'Shio, known for their healing effects. (16 investigation)
Turns out, while he did need to make a completely different circuit for energy shaper, the output was almost the same as he'd used for the thunderwave he'd built into his necklace. He pulled up the schematics he used for that, scaled down and duplicated the projection generators, and then added a modulator to each so that with the proper input, it would create a resonant harmony. For the modulator to work properly, the energy input had to be patterned properly. This could only be achieved if the base energy itself was clean, not chaotic like most sources of arcane magical energy, including his own.
Ned spent much of free time trying to solve this puzzle. A series of perfectly clear crystals to store and release magical energy, with each crystal smoothing the flow slightly could purify the energy input. Though this would allow the his modulators to work, the output effect would be bland and ineffectual. The smooth, pure flow had to be rearranged to create one that was more... pleasant? That's a strange way to describe magical energy, but it's what the book said. Ned analyzed the energy patterns in the Musical String Theory book, dissecting them down to their component elements. This he could work with. Carefully crafted crystals, each with a specific design could alter a portion of the energy flow, then could be mixed to create the correct "timbre" as the book called it. This would be sufficient for his ring to work.
Several hours of trial and error, swapping crafting, and recrafting crystals and finally he was confident he had achieved his goal.
Slipping the ring on a finger on his right hand, he noticed for the first time the cut that he must have gotten on a hard edge of one of his jeweler's tools. He clasped his hands together, pressed the band of the ring into his left hand, and focused some his magic into the ring. The runes around the edge of the ring danced and he felt a pleasant, massaging vibration flow into his left hand and spread throughout his body, where it started to amplify itself inside him, morphing into a healing beat. With each pulse of the beat, the cut on his hand shrank until only the subtle scale pattern of his skin remained. (Nat 20+6 arcana)
 
Relieved and exhausted, Ned pushed aside the stray tools on his desk, laid his head down, and fell asleep, content in the knowledge that he had successfully infused a bardic spell into a ring and was sure to earn another A+ grade. Though the results may have lacked the aesthetic elements of typical bardic magic, it still worked, which was technical marvel.
If he was going to fully realize the implications of successfully mimicking one type of magical energy with another, it wasn't going to be tonight.