A few in game questions

[Rhialto]

On 6/3/2021 at 11:18 PM, Legate of Mineta said:

One discipline that does genuinely seem to be informed by Gates experience is what one would broadly call magical architecture.  Avila's first great tower (and therefore, indirectly, a lot of the modern Avila and Vernin campuses) is thought to have been based on a deserted structure in an otherworldly wasteland visited in the 320s by the twins Aelia and Aelius Re (or Rep, in some writings)."

@Legate of Mineta: 1. How widely known is this connection?

2. Does Oriabel Sidot know about it?

3. Are there any vetalas known to the Empire of Man (spirits that live in graveyards until they find corpses suitable for them to animate and use as bodies)?

4. Could a mage skilled in gates magic, mastery magic, and/or necromancy become a vetala?

5. When gates magic was legal, did any mages develop equivalents to pokeballs for storing their familiars or even other beings?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

"1.  It's relatively esoteric knowledge, in the sense that only specialized scholars would likely encounter it, but it's not something you'd have to find a forbidden history to know.  Any good history of the Avila towers will either mention it, or point the reader to biographies of the Res that would touch upon their travels.

 

2.  Probably not in year one.  Sometime in her Academy stay, though, I expect she will.

 

3.  Yes.  It's actually a big part of the reason that Gates magic was discouraged around the recently deceased even in the days in it was legal.

 

4.  Yes.

 

5.  It was somewhat dangerous for the stored critters, but not unheard of - if only as a display of magical power.  Often the receptacles were caskets or boxes - or sealed amphorae in the very old days - but there were special rings and amulets that served the purpose as well."

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Would it be legal to publish for general readers a guide to how to counter gates magic and creatures summoned through gates magic?

[Metis]

Could you aim a book on that subject at "general readers"? What is a barber supposed to do against a Gates mage summoning undead other than run to the nearest guard in abject terror?

[Schwarzbart]

Hmm if you have no ability in fighting and no magic of your own wouldn't it about the same as for any other type of magus hide and pray to the gods that you and your family stay unharmed?

[Rhialto]

1 hour ago, Metis said:

Could you aim a book on that subject at "general readers"? What is a barber supposed to do against a Gates mage summoning undead other than run to the nearest guard in abject terror?

Good point. I was thinking by general readers mages/scholars without any security clearance.

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

"Yes, as long as it stuck to Negation and/or best ways to incant fire on the undead."

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Are there any items that only act in certain ways when touching dragons? Can such things be easily made?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

"Historically, yes, there were.  Both weapons to be used against them (which didn't always work very well) and weapons/amplifiers of their own power, which tended to be absolutely terrifying.  Some of the former, particularly the Avernisi Lance, are thought to be hidden somewhere in the Imperial Palace in case they're ever needed again.

Such things can't really be made now without access to a living dragon, which is... thankfully hard to come by."

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Are there any laws about portraying fay on stage? I imagine that even fictionalized fay could attract dangerous attention from certain fay... Am I right?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

"You're right about the dangers, but there are no such laws.

Plays involving fey characters are almost as old as Minetan theater, going back to early pageants for the Festival of Pixies and the proto-Dance of Fools - and, yes, there's some indication that the day remembered as "the Dance of Fools" was a day significant to the Light and Dark courts even when it was still "the Dragon's Memorial" in the Early Empire.  (Not that that history is widely understood, obviously.)

Regardless, those plays were probably originally meant to pacify or appeal to faerie powers - the stories would be of humans going out into the woods and getting transformed by their weird neighbors into animal forms or being driven mad, and then being restored and expressing gratitude at the end for faerie mercy and inspiration.  Over the centuries, the plays became less formal, and most of them fell out of fashion, but the cultural roots run deep enough to preclude outright banning of the subject matter.  If people are stupid enough to invite ruin, it's widely understood, then there's no point in standing in ruin's way."

[Schwarzbart]

So there no longer regular educations on the dangers coming from the faerie? Or how can I interpret it that some of our player character have to go trough a scene from such a play personally (just saying penguin).

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

"In this case, the warnings would be most likely to come from experienced actors, or at least people who know theatrical traditions.  "Don't forget to leave milk and roses outside your door after every performance or you're in for a spot of terrible luck... or worse," that kind of thing.  Not everyone necessarily believes it's a problem, because it's very rare to draw notice - most of the time you're not going to see a fairie host appear in your dressing room in person, after all.  If you're not trained in Astrology or Negation. there's a decent chance you'll never really be sure you've crossed the eternal world (unless you wake up with a tail or goat's legs).

That said, the situation might be more direct and more difficult for an Academy student.  Offended fey might reckon that you should've known better, or that you're worthy of being tormented in person."

[yurisama]

7 hours ago, Legate of Mineta said:

If you're not trained in Astrology or Negation. there's a decent chance you'll never really be sure you've crossed the eternal world.

Aren't fairies related to glamour tho? As in a someone trained in hedi's magic should be able to see past their nature too

[Legate of Mineta]

yurisama;

Yes, that's correct.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Is it possible for two or more mages to collaborate in casting the phemes for a single spell?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

"The New Gods were known to have been able to combine their Palettes; the Bridge in particular was the result of such magics. However, if mortals are capable of doing it, the art was lost. Experimentation is banned as both heresy and proscription - to the magical establishment, the magical intimacy (for want of a better word) of the practice would surrender control of the Perspicace and therefore would place the magic in Mastery. Experimentation into it was banned even when Mastery was legal, for reasons which presumably are still held in the archives. It's unknown how, if possible, a single caster would not have full control over the 'combined' Palette."

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Was there a "bonfire of the vanities"esque burning of material glorifying Gates and Mastery magic when they were banned?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

Heh.

Sorry, the whole answer I got is [Redacted].

Edit: Yes, there were such bonfires.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Are there any famous satyrs who were warriors against the dragons? I ask because I am thinking about having a group of Satyrs in an adventure that I will write claim to be descendants of such satyrs who have become merchants (rather like Jews and Lydians in Earth's history).

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: What is a popular card game for four players in Mineta?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

"Famous warriors in their own rights?  Not so much - or, at least, humanity doesn't remember them, which admittedly isn't the same thing.

That said, there are some traditions (widely regarded as legitimate) that say that King Durand had a Satyr tutor and strategist named Aegetus - some tellings have him almost as a Merlin figure.  Satyric traditions say he was more heroic still, though he succumbed to madness and vanished into the woods in the end.

(Note that that's the kind of thing that's so common in Satyric legends that it may well be a folk tradition rather than fact.  Satyrs don't like stories in which Satyrs die, heroically or otherwise, whereas madness and enlightenment are seen as two sides of the same coin.)"

And:

"Flusso.  It's kind of like blackjack, in that you're aiming to get as close as you can to a certain total number without going over (in this case, 23, because it's the ninth prime number and somebody in the distant past thought that was significant).  The big difference is that there are four "estate cards" (like Jokers) you can play to add or subtract from the value of any card of a certain suit - i.e., if you have and choose to play the Estate of Swords, then every card of the Sword suite in every player's hand is worth either one point more or one point less than the number on the card."

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: So, I take it that the suits in Mineta's cards are Cups, Coins, Clubs, Swords - right?

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

"Cups, Coins, Wands, Swords.  Come on now.  ;)"

[Metis]

2 minutes ago, Legate of Mineta said:

Rhi;

"Cups, Coins, Wands, Swords.  Come on now.  ;)"

Quoth the raven Wikipedia:

Quote

The Latin suits are coins, clubs, cups, and swords. They are the earliest suit-system in Europe, and were adopted from the cards imported from Mamluk Egypt and Moorish Granada in the 1370s.

There are four types of Latin suits: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,^[c] and an extinct archaic type.^[4][5] The systems can be distinguished by the pips of their long suits: swords and clubs.

• Northern Italian swords are curved outward and the clubs appear to be batons. They intersect one another.
• Southern Italian and Spanish swords are straight, and the clubs appear to be knobbly cudgels. They do not cross each other (The common exception being the three of clubs).

Mind you that as far as I'm reading further development of these suits started in the mid-fifteenth century, with both German and French speaking areas adopting their own variants (French notably putting together the well known hearts/clubs/spades/diamonds variation). Also as far as I'm reading the original inspiration for the coins/clubs/cups/swords series is, in short, based on Chinese currency denominations brought over to Europe by way of Muslims who had contacted china.

In short I've no idea how a seventeenth century Mineta would have settled on the cups/coin/wands/swords...in fact I'm not having much luck finding the origin of those four (I recall them being the traditional Tarot suits, but, eh...*shrugs*). So how did those four suits end up being the predominant ones in Mineta, and how have other variants not taken over? Assuming other variants exist, of course.