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lizardtitsVelo No
Velo has an issue where she can't leave an explanation well enough alone without trying it herself. Someone can tell her a thing, and rather than taking their word for it her first instinct is to test that thing and see if it's right, no matter how bad an idea it may be. In fact, a frequent conversation between a young Velo and her blacksmith father would go something like this:
Velo: Hey Dad what would happen if you smelted those two metals together?
Dad: It would just make something super brittle and impossible to work with.
Velo: Sweet. I wanna try.
Dad: Velo no
Velo: I did it! Wow, this just falls apart.
Dad: I told you!
Velo: What if I made arrowheads out of this?
Dad: VELO NO SHRAPNEL IS A WAR CRIME
Velo: Too late I did it. They just kinda shatter and get buried in whatever they hit. What if I made a bomb casing out of it?
Dad: /internal screaming
So yeah. Even if it is a clearly bad idea, Velo more often than not needs to see it through herself to satisfy her curiosity. She calls it scientific reproduction, but it's really just an inherent inability to trust the word of other people when it comes to facts, especially without proof. This is a big part of the reason why she wants to go through with helping Percy despite Malcer's objections. Sure, she knows he's probably right and that Percy has an agenda of his own that may or may not be dangerous, but Velo can't leave well enough alone without figuring this out for herself. In fact, Malcer telling her not to do the thing is what made her want to do the thing in the first place.
Wild Magic
Being a dragonborn, magic is kind of in her blood. There's a reason Draconic is widely known as the language of magic, after all. However, it was kind of an untapped potential thing for most of her life. It was there, but she never really learned to harness it. That was okay, though, as not all dragonborn became sorcerers and wizards and whatnot.
This changed during her servitude in the Empire workshop. Constant exposure to magical energies combined with the question of "why do they have some of these safety regulations in place, anyway?" led to her experimenting with stuff that should not have been messed with and unlocking all that latent magical energy. ...Well, less "unlocking" and more "breaking off the lock and half the door it was attached to so there's no closing it again oops." So that's why she's a wild mage instead of a draconic sorcerer. Because she messed with shit she was explicitly told not to.
---
On the subject of magic, while spells do require verbal and somatic components, they are not as strict for Velo as they are for, say, wizards or clerics. It's more for focusing and achieving the right thought process to cast it correctly and just trust that the magic will do its thing. So instead of strict, practiced movements and incantations, Velo will just yell and do... whatever. There are certain patterns to it, as Velo will perform a similar gesture and shout each time she casts, but there's none of the uniformity or ritual that, say, Naeris or Nin might have.
For example, Velo will always cast Lightning Bolt by using a fingergun with her right hand and pointing in the direction she wants the bolt to go. However, she could either do the fingergun Fonzie-style complete with grin and wink, or as a John Woo action dive, or a simple dramatic point. Along with this, she will yell anything from "Bang!" to "Zap!" or the word for lightning in Draconic, or even something like "What's tall, angry, and smells like ozone and grilled meat? It's you!" Similarly, Thunderwave will always be cast with a clap, Chromatic Orb with an open palm and some word related to the element she's using, and Storm Sphere always thrown like a grenade before expanding at the intended location. It's loose and undisciplined, but it works 95% of the time.
Tides of Chaos & Bend Luck
These two tricks allow Velo to manipulate dice rolls by giving herself advantage on a thing or slightly altering any roll made by anyone using a d20. There's no information as to how this works in-universe, but for Velo, it's mostly by letting her grip on her magic loosen for a moment and take advantage of how it warps reality around her. She still does have limited control of it, but she relies on instinct and intuition to react and guide the warping, and there's no guarantee it'll come out right. For example, if she uses Bend Luck to cause a wayward axe to miss Varis instead of hitting him, she might warp the space between him and the axe to cause it to miss, or might fire a few synapses off in his brain to get him to dodge left instead of right, or slightly raise the ground underneath the attacker to disrupt their footing just enough to make a difference. All very little things; any bigger than that and she loses control completely and no one wants that.
As for Tides of Chaos, since she can only use it on herself, she's able to let loose a bit more and bend things more to her favor. If she's trying to pick a lock or something, she might warp the space to allow her a better view, magically steady her own hand, suppress a trap attached to the lock, or just flat-out break it from the inside. It comes with a cost, though, and warping reality like that could make it backfire later in the day.
Velo has an issue where she can't leave an explanation well enough alone without trying it herself. Someone can tell her a thing, and rather than taking their word for it her first instinct is to test that thing and see if it's right, no matter how bad an idea it may be. In fact, a frequent conversation between a young Velo and her blacksmith father would go something like this:
Velo: Hey Dad what would happen if you smelted those two metals together?
Dad: It would just make something super brittle and impossible to work with.
Velo: Sweet. I wanna try.
Dad: Velo no
Velo: I did it! Wow, this just falls apart.
Dad: I told you!
Velo: What if I made arrowheads out of this?
Dad: VELO NO SHRAPNEL IS A WAR CRIME
Velo: Too late I did it. They just kinda shatter and get buried in whatever they hit. What if I made a bomb casing out of it?
Dad: /internal screaming
So yeah. Even if it is a clearly bad idea, Velo more often than not needs to see it through herself to satisfy her curiosity. She calls it scientific reproduction, but it's really just an inherent inability to trust the word of other people when it comes to facts, especially without proof. This is a big part of the reason why she wants to go through with helping Percy despite Malcer's objections. Sure, she knows he's probably right and that Percy has an agenda of his own that may or may not be dangerous, but Velo can't leave well enough alone without figuring this out for herself. In fact, Malcer telling her not to do the thing is what made her want to do the thing in the first place.
Wild Magic
Being a dragonborn, magic is kind of in her blood. There's a reason Draconic is widely known as the language of magic, after all. However, it was kind of an untapped potential thing for most of her life. It was there, but she never really learned to harness it. That was okay, though, as not all dragonborn became sorcerers and wizards and whatnot.
This changed during her servitude in the Empire workshop. Constant exposure to magical energies combined with the question of "why do they have some of these safety regulations in place, anyway?" led to her experimenting with stuff that should not have been messed with and unlocking all that latent magical energy. ...Well, less "unlocking" and more "breaking off the lock and half the door it was attached to so there's no closing it again oops." So that's why she's a wild mage instead of a draconic sorcerer. Because she messed with shit she was explicitly told not to.
---
On the subject of magic, while spells do require verbal and somatic components, they are not as strict for Velo as they are for, say, wizards or clerics. It's more for focusing and achieving the right thought process to cast it correctly and just trust that the magic will do its thing. So instead of strict, practiced movements and incantations, Velo will just yell and do... whatever. There are certain patterns to it, as Velo will perform a similar gesture and shout each time she casts, but there's none of the uniformity or ritual that, say, Naeris or Nin might have.
For example, Velo will always cast Lightning Bolt by using a fingergun with her right hand and pointing in the direction she wants the bolt to go. However, she could either do the fingergun Fonzie-style complete with grin and wink, or as a John Woo action dive, or a simple dramatic point. Along with this, she will yell anything from "Bang!" to "Zap!" or the word for lightning in Draconic, or even something like "What's tall, angry, and smells like ozone and grilled meat? It's you!" Similarly, Thunderwave will always be cast with a clap, Chromatic Orb with an open palm and some word related to the element she's using, and Storm Sphere always thrown like a grenade before expanding at the intended location. It's loose and undisciplined, but it works 95% of the time.
Tides of Chaos & Bend Luck
These two tricks allow Velo to manipulate dice rolls by giving herself advantage on a thing or slightly altering any roll made by anyone using a d20. There's no information as to how this works in-universe, but for Velo, it's mostly by letting her grip on her magic loosen for a moment and take advantage of how it warps reality around her. She still does have limited control of it, but she relies on instinct and intuition to react and guide the warping, and there's no guarantee it'll come out right. For example, if she uses Bend Luck to cause a wayward axe to miss Varis instead of hitting him, she might warp the space between him and the axe to cause it to miss, or might fire a few synapses off in his brain to get him to dodge left instead of right, or slightly raise the ground underneath the attacker to disrupt their footing just enough to make a difference. All very little things; any bigger than that and she loses control completely and no one wants that.
As for Tides of Chaos, since she can only use it on herself, she's able to let loose a bit more and bend things more to her favor. If she's trying to pick a lock or something, she might warp the space to allow her a better view, magically steady her own hand, suppress a trap attached to the lock, or just flat-out break it from the inside. It comes with a cost, though, and warping reality like that could make it backfire later in the day.