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A few in game questions


Adrian
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S;

"Absolutely!

If there's anyone on the faculty (which is a broader group than the professors, obviously) with that kind of background now, they aren't known to the player character - but there were several salaried Academy staffers of... less than pristine backgrounds twenty years ago or so, during Legate Agnetti's reign.

In fact, before Piaxenza came along and cleaned the place up, the Minetan Guard used to joke about the Hedi Thieves' Guild, apparently run by one Cossuela Oxensound, the Secretary of the Regent before ol' Finus.  Oxensound had been brought in from a checkered career in Undergate by Agnetti herself; it was never really publicly made clear why."

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On 11/28/2020 at 12:27 AM, Legate of Mineta said:

Metis;

"Homunculi represent kind of a legal gray area - in sophisticated, magic-affluent settings like Mineta they tend to be considered products of alchemy (not least because when they appear they're often specifically designed familiars, and nobody wants to ban weird familiars) and are presumed legal, if kind of creepy.  In more isolated settings, they are often considered to be products of Gates magic, and are destroyed accordingly - sometimes with their wizards/creators subject to severe consequences as well.

As to the creation, there are different routes - the most common is to carve certain runes into a mandrake root, then leave it to simmer in an alchemical broth in an enchanted cauldron for thirty-one days.  At the completion of that term, it should look vaguely humanoid (albeit without eyes or nose or genitalia - but with a mouth); the alchemist or wizard responsible for its creation then gives it regular infusions of blood for a period of some months (depending on the enchantments on the cauldron and the intent of the creator).

When all's said and done, they generally look like tiny children - from the size of a hand to the size of a forearm.  Unless they become familiars most don't really seem truly sentient, but they can often walk and speak well enough to answer astrological questions.

They are, again, considered unsettling to be around.  They're also not common, even in Mineta; there may be a handful around at any given time, but it's fairly unlikely that the player character would have encountered any by the start of Y2.

But there's plenty of reading material in the Venalicium."

  1. Would it be at all possible to change the design of such a specifically designed Familiar after the fact, without resorting to illegal magic? If yes, how much modification can be done? If not, or if it isn't known all that well or whatever, would trying to figure out a method be something that Orsi could be convinced to sink his teeth in? Whether genuinely or only as an excuse to do something other than the worst work that his office has on offer.

2. How advanced, common, cheap to produce, etc., are general and/or local anaesthetics in the game's setting? Since barbers still double as dentists I'm assuming "not very much", and IIRC ingame text seems to supports that idea - the PC's treatment stage during An Outing... in particular comes to mind as one example where if anaesthetics existed they probably would have have been available and used in that scene. But it just sounds like one of those things that every brewer and their dog would have tried to create at some point or another, and surely one of them would have succeeded at some point. So...what's the story?

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M;

"1.  Start from the end and work back: would Orso be interested in this instead of paperwork?  Orso loves you, and is so grateful you asked.

You can take that as a yes, at least as an abstract pursuit.

As for the question of how possible it is - it's largely possible, though the ease of the procedure depends on the scale of the changes, and how permanent you want them to be.  If you changed the clothes of the Strange Doll that's currently in the game, it would be easy enough to do... but then you might well notice the new clothes coming slowly to resemble the older set.

Whereas if you wanted the Strange Doll to look less like a child and more like an elephant, you would probably have to do extremely powerful Revision work, and then play with enchantments that are simply beyond any first or second year to lock it all in.

Now, Orso might have some ethical problems with it, unless the idea was strongly embraced by the familiar itself, but the exact procedure would probably fascinate him.

2.  They're actually quite uncommon - particularly since it's generally so much easier for a magical professional to glamour someone insensate or revise him/her/them into deep unconsciousness.  Granted, even moderately skilled alchemists can generally induce pharmacologic coma, but commonly available painkillers that don't knock you out are usually no more sophisticated than alcohol, and localized anaesthetics are extremely rare.  Not completely unknown, but rare."

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M;

"There's a set of mythic messengers, of which the most 'commonly' known are "Raven Women."  They're not commonly talked about anymore - a thousand years ago, they were believed to be demi-goddesses and agents of destiny (or of specific gods, which may or may not mean the same thing), but over the centuries they came to be associated with Gates magic (with arguments supporting both the idea that they're necromancers and the idea that they're Gates creations).

A belief that has remained consistent, though, is that if you see them over a battlefield, the battle will prove decisive."

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Rhi;

"There are several, depending on how she might want to approach it.  There's precedent for same gender marriage at Louise's social level, but the arrangements tend to be stuffed with legal complications - often mandating opposite-gender concubines/donors for the purposes of procreation or setting up fixed adoption/inheritance plans to ensure estates and family names are preserved - so there are salons and legal consultants that cater to needs of practical advice. It's expensive and unpleasant to go through, of course, and at the mercy of one's family if you are not independently wealthy.

If you're talking about more casual relationships, yes, there are taverns that have particularly welcoming reputations. And if she were to find herself going to society "marriage market" balls and parties, there are fairly well-established (if not necessarily formally recognized) conventions for signaling the kind of meeting you want to encourage (i.e., wearing yellow flowers instead of white or red); make yourself visible at a few of those, and helpful people will probably start seeking you out."

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21 minutes ago, Legate of Mineta said:

Rhi; "There's precedent for same gender marriage at Louise's social level, but the arrangements tend to be stuffed with legal complications - often mandating opposite-gender concubines/donors for the purposes of procreation or setting up fixed adoption/inheritance plans to ensure estates and family names are preserved."

Would it be fair to say that when Gates Magic was legal there were more options?

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16 minutes ago, Legate of Mineta said:

Rhi;

"When Gates marriage was legal marriage contracts were more flexible?

No. In any case where the question of fertility wasn't reasonably likely to take care of itself without magical intervention, powerful families always tended to want marriage contracts to be... thorough."

I was not asking about the precise contracts, but about whether gates magic was ever used in same-sex marriages to create children. Still, I suppose that that would be redacted.

So, on another topic: would a person be ostracized and/or lose legal rights if revealed to have been created by Gates Magic? This question is not asking whether such a thing has happened.

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Rhi;

"Oh, yeah.  If it's known that you were created by Gates magic, directly or indirectly, then the presumption would absolutely be that you're not human, and probably extremely dangerous. This would have all the consequences levied as a normal use of Gates.

As to whether it ever actually happened - there are folk/campfire stories about magically-created babies that look normal at first and then fly around at night stealing people's heads, that kind of thing.  Probably untrue and certainly not definitive, but the first thing most people are likely to think of."

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3 minutes ago, Legate of Mineta said:

Rhi;

"Oh, yeah.  If it's known that you were created by Gates magic, directly or indirectly, then the presumption would absolutely be that you're not human, and probably extremely dangerous. This would have all the consequences levied as a normal use of Gates.

As to whether it ever actually happened - there are folk/campfire stories about magically-created babies that look normal at first and then fly around at night stealing people's heads, that kind of thing.  Probably untrue and certainly not definitive, but the first thing most people are likely to think of."

Could the source of this story related to vampire? I doubt our bat owning character is the first to be subject to experiments of a vampire. A cross between vampire and human could easy imagined that "it" need fresh bloody meat as food and depending on what it does to cover the tracks "stealing heads" could be a resulting story.

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Lets go back to the basics:

1) If I remember right every human can cast magic with the right knowledge and a casting device (wand, enchanted finger, ring and so on) that can point in a direction. Is this correct?

2) Are there some people that actual don't need a casting device or familiar to successful perform magic? Maybe even to the point where they are dangerous to them self and their surrounding if they lack the knowledge about what not to do ...

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S;

1) Correct.
 
2) There's in-game precedent for someone casting spells using a specially tattooed body part rather than a wand, but this was a prodigy who'd obviously invested a lot of effort and research into preparation.
 
In terms of people who can turn their will into magical action without physical accessories or obvious modification, there are definitely stories of it happening - but, none known that did not have some type of magical preparation in order to create the Phemes. It's also dangerous.  The magic isn't really controlled so much as released - fires start, weather goes berserk, etc.
 
That said, the player character has probably never actually seen anything like this, so it's hard to be confident."

 

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Just how advanced in Mastery would you have to be if you wanted to focus on learning the mostly benign spells and defensive techniques? And can you tell us of any practical reason why Mastery would be preferred in something like killing pain over a Glamour?

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Free;

"Unsurprisingly, there's a range of benign spells and defensive techniques, and some require quite intensive study.  Still, back when Mastery was considered appropriate for study, most students typically started with defensive steps along with basic theory; it's not unduly hard to learn.

As for why you'd use Mastery over Glamour as an anaesthetic: bluntly, it's more reliable.  Even the strongest glamours are at least partially shaped by the people experiencing them, and a glamoured mind that's expecting pain, or is suddenly startled in the midst of a potentially traumatic experience can be subject to some unpredictable consequences.  Mastery is just pure domination; the person subjected to the spells can actively resist or not, but there isn't usually a lot of "spillage" of other stimuli."

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