A few in game questions

[Schwarzbart]

How uncommon are clock- and steampunk like creations?

Are there any famous clock- or steampunk like objects?

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: We know that an old form of Bassan is used as the main language for writing about Gates Magic. But given the role of Aminþia Que’la in maintaining gates magic in the Empire of Man (and elsewhere) as well as the veneration of Aminþia Que’la, is an old form of Oncestrian or related language used?

[Legate of Mineta]

Schwarzbart;

"Clockworks, automata and spectacularly gear-based systems are more common in the north (particularly the Vilocian-speaking north) and in exotic parts of the Saisyne sphere than in Mineta - but you do have strange machines (albeit often powered by enchantment as well as fire and expanding gasses) around the docks and in certain merchant compounds.

The most famous is the Palazzo degli Armeggi, a compound on the eastern side of the docks with a clock tower that tracks both commercial time (as strict accounting of hours and minutes is still sometimes known) and astrological phases and cycles.  The building complex is actually primarily a warehouse system, and has an elaborate system of pulleys, rails and self-propelled carts to deliver things and people to where they need to be.

It's a wonder, and it does attract and welcome curious visitors, but it's also seen as something of a folly by most of the Minetan citizenry - a lot of trouble to go to just for someone to demonstrate they're so rich they don't even need magic or servants."

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

"Anything the students have seen is presumably a translation into Renaglian or Bassan (or, worse still, into Renaglian from Bassan from the original); the bulk of Aminþia Que’la's Gates writing was originally in a constructed language called Noechian, ostensibly derived from the language spoken in a city of canals created by the Gods' legion of messengers.

It's almost impossible to find samples of it today, for obvious reasons."

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Are or were any saints/minor gods exposed as beings summoned through gates magic?

[Legate of Mineta]

@Rhi;

"The short answer is yes.

There's a longer answer about how some "folk saints" - regional hero-figures who were locally elevated to sainthood in the eyes of the community - were also sometimes tarred as Gates manifestations by hostile political forces, etc.

But, yes, out-and-out instances of things from beyond claiming divine provenance are well-documented, and sometimes very close to home; there was a cult of a "Saint Durocce of the Wood" active in the Imperial Reserve - including Guards and rangers - until at least 1597.  The "saint" itself may or may not have had a physical presence - it seems to have been capable of possessing animals and human congregants, and may have been only a sporadic presence - but its highest acolytes were certainly Gates practitioners in their own rights.

Generally speaking, the Imperial Temple swiftly puts an end to such aberrations. If a temple receives reports or complaints from a neighboring community, an auspex will make an astrological study to test the general validity of the accusation/concern.  If it's found to have merit - if there are signs of significant Gates activity - then either auspex travels to the area in person or grants his or her lituo (a kind of curled wand that's a mark of the auspex's office) to a designated exorcist and sends that person out.

(Complicated aside: there's an official order of exorcists, the Ordo Rodovicii, but it's small and rarified and that's generally not what we're talking about here.  Generally speaking, we're talking about a temple inductee who's training to be an auspex, but is still a step or two away from being fully consecrated in the role.  Still, she'll have had training in apotropaic rites.  Hopefully.  In theory.

(Standards can vary the farther out in the countryside you go.)

The exorcist is generally carrying something - maybe the lituo itself, maybe a mirror, maybe a feather (which is very sensitive, though the enchantment can break down quickly) - that's been enchanted to signal as it enters the area of malign influence.  A really bold auspex might do some astrology, determine the anchor point of the Gates emanation, and immediately wade in to break the thing.  Most, though, are advised to seek out nearby sites of positive energy - ley line confluences, strongly moving water, untainted pilgrimage sites, etc. - and use them to set up a series of resonating wards that will confine the Gates thing's movement and influence to a manageable area.

They then offer the ministry of exorcism to anyone inside that area and evacuate them if possible.  Then, depending on the level of threat, attempt to banish the false god/saint directly, or summon more assistance from local temples if it's safely confined, or get as many brave souls with torches as can be found and charge in to disrupt any ongoing rituals, destroy any enchanted anchors, and do whatever's possible to keep the mess from spreading.

When it's done, edicts of instruction are generally nailed to the doors of every house and barn in a three to five mile radius explaining what happened and listing consequences for attempting to continue worship of the false powers.  (Problematic when the locals are illiterate, but that's what the local priests are for.)

Then there's a follow-up a year later."

[Schwarzbart]

Is the Astrology of the Imperial Temple more accurate then what we learn at Academagia? 

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

"They have phemes they don't share, and they absolutely have a stockpile of enchanted tools that even Avila can't match.  Moreover, a senior auspex has undergone rituals and training that alter her consciousness slightly.

That said, most of the greats learn foundational astrology from the Academy - or at least from an Academy syllabus.  It's not so much that you're getting an inferior education as that you're just at the start of a career of learning."

[Schwarzbart]

Are there other common mage jobs beside the mentioned one from the Imperial Temple that need years of education after graduated from Academagia?

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

"The obvious example is being a master airshipwright.  A Vernin graduate - or any other student who leaned hard on enchantment studies - would be able to grasp the basic principles, but without either a lengthy apprenticeship or a few years' extended study at one of the old Imperial aeronautical academies (at Hoxhelm, Quinet, or Braida) he or she probably wouldn't be able to design anything from scratch that could hold a candle to the vessels of the old Imperial Navy."

[Schwarzbart]

So even someone who have the dual focus Engineering and Enchantment still need extra study time to become a master airshipwright?

I suspect that people planning to work in the Weather office (or how it is called again) need some extra incantation training before working there?! Otherwise the regulations around weather magic make little sense when the strong spells are not limited to people working in that field.

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

Here you go:

"Basically, there are three major magical tracks: extremely specialized astrology work to determine when and how it's appropriate to alter significant meteorological patterns; incantation work to fine-tune humidity, escalations in air pressure and temperature and the like; and, lastly, negation for stalling and slowing potentially destructive forces (and for altering the effects of the incantations if it's a multi-stage process, as it often is).

It's also worth noting that major weather work (as opposed to a student clearing away cloud cover directly overhead) is done by large groups of wizards working in concert, and it takes hours.  And that kind of coordination often requires specialized group training as well; ideally, a group will work together for more or less their entire careers.

This isn't common.  Traditionally its uses are military (where they can often be complicated by wizards on the other side dueling for a different effect), and the only place in the world where it's done at all regularly over the course of many months is at the most important ward points along the Wall; they want to maintain visibility and deter draconic hurricanes.  (There are regions that ensure the skies are clear on specific holy days or harvest days, and the City of Mineta heavily invests in maintaining currents around the City.)

And a general note about efficacy: the Captain has weather wizards in place in Mineta, but he prefers not to use them - even when pirate fleets are attacking.  It's widely believed that it's because they're just not up to the job; with all the enchantments embedded in the city over the centuries, local weather magic often has a way of going very wrong."

[Schwarzbart]

Will some of the fights we can do in Y2 be simulation similar to the adventure we could do in Y1?

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

No, it's a whole new system (the Conflict system). It's not Story based, although it can happen in Stories.

[Schwarzbart]

Sorry it probably got over wrong, I mean are some of the fight we can do just declared as simulations instead of real fights?

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

Oh sure, they can be 'simulations', definitely.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Would it be illegal for students or professors to create simulations of gates mages or mastery mages to fight?

[freespace2dotcom]

1. In the past, you've said that an ideal career path for an omni disciplinarian would be a court wizard. Why is that especially likely? Since you have implied recently that at least in some cases, further education in a pillar can well be had with on the job training after graduation, I have to ask about opportunities where a jack of all trades could continue to grow. The primary worry is avoiding getting stuck only doing all the 'easy magic' that the Masters can't be bothered to do anymore.

2. Can you give an example or two of the limits of generic Negation spells against exotic magic? I suppose a simple way of looking at it is probably to compare the relative power of both spells, but I also imagine that there's a limit to raw power in negation when the spell to be negated is sufficiently unexpected and unknown. Can you give us a better picture?

[Legate of Mineta]

Free;

"1.  The advantage - if that's the word - of being a (senior) court wizard is that there's a decent chance that any given apparently insoluble problem in the barony/county/whatever will ultimately make its way to your doorstep.  Farmer with a cursed item looking for salvation?  That's yours.  Aberrant weather?  Your job to look into it.  Should the baronness allow her son to marry that damn trobairitz?  Break out the astrology!  A range of skills will get tested in any given five-year period, and the political rewards can be significant.

Jobs with merchant houses (or, frankly, pirates) can offer the same sorts of variety of experience, and often more travel.  And Alan Driscoll would happily remind you that exploring, prospecting and adventuring are still options for the well-rounded generalist - work with guilds or soldiering companies for a few seasons, buy an airship, do some astrology, find an island nobody's seen before or a haunted silver mine or an abandoned castle waiting to be reclaimed, get rich, spend everything you've earned on new equipment, repeat.

It sounds vaguely ridiculous, but it's not totally inconsistent with Orso and Sido's earlier careers.

2.  This one is tough to answer without [Redacted].

Say that somebody comes to you looking for help banishing terrifying apparations they (and only they) see from the corner of their eyes.  If it's a personalized Glamour, a very broad Negation spell is probably going to be enough to dismantle it - partially because Glamours are often fragile to begin with, and partially because that's the sort of thing Negation is really good at.

If the person is hallucinating because - either through Revision or through Incantation or via some kind of potion - a hallucinogenic compound has been introduced into the bloodstream, that burst of Negation gets a lot more iffy.  If it's an unstable Revision, there's a decent chance it'll break down, possibly with alarming results.  Incantation?  Anyone who could pull that kind of magic off is likely to be able to make it stick for hours unless you know exactly what you're looking for and target it with specific spells.  That's even more true with a conventional potion.

If the person is suffering Mastery effects, a general Negation might work, but it would likely have to be *very* broad, and the effects are hard to predict - really strong Mastery work tends to involve the target's own magical energies in its perpetuation, so in an odd kind of way it's hidden from Negation.  It blends in. If Mastery is suspected, a specialist is usually called in straight away.

If the person has suffered a Gates affliction of some kind and is actually seeing disembodied spirits - or if someone is using Astrological techniques to try to make sympathetic contact with your unwitting victim, or to pass along visions of a possible future - then a general Negation spell is almost entirely useless.  It would be targeting something that simply isn't relevant to the problem.

Same goes if by some chance the problem is familiar-related and the visions are being passed along the Bond.  There obviously are magical ways to address any of these concerns, but blunt magical force generally won't do it."

[Schwarzbart]

It sound like Negation magic will need to know the Magic Theory of all other schools of magic to be good at it so I wonder:

Will later years allow to focus on the theory of the different magic schools?

(For me in year 1 it is nearly as easy to become a generalist as it is to focus on all the theories because there is no action / ability to exclusive focus on learning the theory .. to my knowledge ^^)

[Legate of Mineta]

Schwarzbart;

You certainly can focus on theory. In Year 1, you can dabble in many things, but as you will see in Y2 it becomes very, very difficult to be at the top of your craft in everything.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Why are Avila and Godina Colleges rivals? I understand the rivalry between Morvidus and Vernin (wild change v. orderly permanance) and the rivalry between Durand and Aranaz (brave determination v. cunning plans), but Avila and Godina do not seem to have such thematic rivalry.

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

"It's not a particularly fierce rivalry among the Avila and Godina students of our year, compared to the Aranaz-Durand feud; it's hard to imagine Ana Flavia and Silke going out of their ways to prank one another just because of college ties.  Certainly, as you say, there isn't a great ideological conflict between the two colleges.  There's a degree of personal animus on high - Regent Badcrumble thinks Regent Massioti is a vulgar clod and Regent Massioti thinks Regent Badcrumble is pretentious and humorless - but that usually doesn't escalate to anything worse than the occasional public put-down.

That said, there's a historical rivalry that's connected to the old Dawn Games; Godina has traditionally been the most athletically-inclined college, and every generation or so they would become convinced that Avila was using astrology to cheat at everything from rimbal to competitive dueling to public debates.  And, not unreasonably, Avila would take that personally and would fight back - sometimes by using astrology to cheat, ironically enough. 

Sidebar: the Dawn games haven't been held since 1643, when Valeria Krantz pulled Avila out in a huff - and then demanded the Captain launch an official investigation of corruption among the judges.  She was essentially accusing them of petty personal bias against her, but it then turned out that some of the judges were being influenced by Thieves' Guilds and the whole thing turned into a mess.  The Dawn Chalice (or Cup), the big prize of the event, was ultimately shattered.

Regent Massioti really wants to bring it all back, it should be said, and Regent Badcrumble, who was about sixteen when they ended, seems amenable to the idea. This would certainly bring into the fore a lot of the older rivalry."

[Schwarzbart]

So are the Dawn Games something that is planed for the player to help bringing back? (As Mahouka reader I love the 9 School competition there and so a big intra-school or inter-school competition where the player can join would be a nice thing)

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

It's fair to say that an enterprising Player might do that, yes.