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A few in game questions


Adrian
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@Legate of Mineta: 5. Are Cimone and Casetta places that people might often get confused? Both are poor cities whose names begin with C founded by Chorians whose populations speak a form of Eluminian - at least if I understand the matter correctly. I am thinking about how some people get various East Asian or Arab Gulf nations confused - or better yet Slovakia and Slovenia.

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@Legate of Mineta: I have gathered together here 5 questions.

1. Do ospreys live in the vicinity of Mineta?

2. Is there a cult of the simurgh or phoenix, either within the Empire of Man or in lands known to it, as benevolent aerial counterparts to dragons?

3. Would the property of a convicted gates mage be confiscated entirely by the state?

4. Is the Underground Goblin Market an open secret among the commercial elites of Mineta?

5. Is the following a reasonably accurate statement: "Gates mages are better able to detect Gates magic when they try to detect Gates magic when using Negation magic than all but the most skilled Negation mages because Gates mages know the signs of Gates magic better."?

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Rhi;

"1. Around Mineta, not so much - though people have seen reflections of birds meeting that description in Ardica Lake when there have seemed to be none in the sky.

They're reasonably common around other large lakes, though; if you're willing to travel a day or so southwest of the city to Lake Lovico, you stand a pretty good chance of spotting one.  They also sometimes appear in the Admiratio for sale - sometimes impatient wizards looking for unusual familiars take the commercial route - but it's not common and they're usually glamoured and confused when it does.
 
2.  In Mineta, the two lines are considered unconnected - though there was a period in the Early Empire when the Imperial House took the phoenix as the central icon in its seal (for reasons now largely obscure).
 
3.  Yes.
 
4.  I think it's fair to say that its existence is reasonably widely known, but its location and specific nature is not.
 
5.  "Reasonably accurate" is fair."
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For S:

"Is/are there holiday in the Academagia setting where gifts attributed to be from a other creature or a already dead holly man. (like saint Niclas, or Easter bunny?)"

No; the closest approximation is the Wedding Feast, but the gift giving tradition there is from god to god/god to man/man to man without an intercessor. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

S;

"Perhaps surprisingly, it's not common.  The magical techniques exist, but due to the difficulties it's the kind of practice that's most commonly identified with cults and secret societies - which is probably a big part of why it didn't catch on elsewhere.

The attitude in most guilds, to oversimplify things just a bit, is that either people should already know your face or you should carry formal letters of introduction and/or documents of accreditation so that people who don't know you will know exactly who's willing to speak up for you.  It signifies webs of relationships, which can be handy.

And, yes, that's obviously the sort of thing that can be forged.  Many of the guilds can be a little bit complacent, but that sort of thing is usually resolved by a test of the work of the person's hands, or sometimes by magical detection.

Now, there are exceptions for guildmasters and the upper echelons - they often carry enchanted symbols of office that are magically distinct (and sometimes quite powerful in their own right) - but your average guild journeyman isn't likely to see one of those, let alone carry its like."

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S;

"1.  Yes, very much so - at least some of them.  Random example: Durand de Thiomenes' father is probably somewhere around 87 years old at the start of Y1, and attended by a small army of medical revisionists and alchemists.

That said, there are downsides to magical longevity - not least that when spells are miscast or just go wrong (as almost any spell can), it can be tragic.  In the case of Durand's father, there's a curious paradox at hand: he's in robust good health but could literally die any day.  People living extremely long lives just isn't common, even in aristocratic Elumia, and those who try sometimes find themselves very uncomfortable.

Doesn't really stop them from trying, though.

2.  Almost certainly Alixenthe, Queen (an honorary title reflecting her descent from Hedi) of Haut-Avalle.  Her reign was, at a minimum, from her twelfth birthday in 482 until 611 - at which point the island of Haut-Avalle simply vanished.  Maybe it was Gates magic, or maybe it was traded to the fey in exchange for its queen's longevity; astrologers think it's still out there, but it's not easy to find."

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2 hours ago, Legate of Mineta said:

2.  Almost certainly Alixenthe, Queen (an honorary title reflecting her descent from Hedi) of Haut-Avalle.  Her reign was, at a minimum, from her twelfth birthday in 482 until 611 - at which point the island of Haut-Avalle simply vanished.  Maybe it was Gates magic, or maybe it was traded to the fey in exchange for its queen's longevity; astrologers think it's still out there, but it's not easy to find."

I really hope that this is mentioned in a future game. But how widely-known is Haut-Avalle, especially to members of Hedi and Avila colleges?

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6 hours ago, Legate of Mineta said:

S;

"1.  Yes, very much so - at least some of them.  Random example: Durand de Thiomenes' father is probably somewhere around 87 years old at the start of Y1, and attended by a small army of medical revisionists and alchemists.

That said, there are downsides to magical longevity - not least that when spells are miscast or just go wrong (as almost any spell can), it can be tragic.  In the case of Durand's father, there's a curious paradox at hand: he's in robust good health but could literally die any day.  People living extremely long lives just isn't common, even in aristocratic Elumia, and those who try sometimes find themselves very uncomfortable.

Doesn't really stop them from trying, though.

I think you missed the unexpected interactions with other magic as additional reason. The more active magic you have on you the higher the risk that the next magic cast on you not acting as expected, or I'm wrong here?

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Rhi;

Yes, something like that would be possible with Negation and Glamour, but it would quickly 'age' and become increasingly incorrect. You could of course use Astrology, but this too is fleeting. This is because even minute changes tend to skew the 'rules' the spell is built upon.

You couldn't tell *who* was walking around with such a spell, though; you'd need specifically tailored Negation for that, or perhaps a dash of [Redacted]...

Finally, Gates mages famously excel at mazes and labyrinths. Perhaps they would have knowledge of how to assess spaces around them, if only they weren't Proscribed. :)

You could make such a spell have much longer life if you used Enchantment to work it into the halls and spaces of the area, although this is of course expensive.

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1 hour ago, Legate of Mineta said:

Rhi;

Yes, something like that would be possible with Negation and Glamour, but it would quickly 'age' and become increasingly incorrect. You could of course use Astrology, but this too is fleeting. This is because even minute changes tend to skew the 'rules' the spell is built upon.

You couldn't tell *who* was walking around with such a spell, though; you'd need specifically tailored Negation for that, or perhaps a dash of [Redacted]...

Finally, Gates mages famously excel at mazes and labyrinths. Perhaps they would have knowledge of how to assess spaces around them, if only they weren't Proscribed. :)

You could make such a spell have much longer life if you used Enchantment to work it into the halls and spaces of the area, although this is of course expensive.

@Legate of Mineta: I take it that the negation would be used to detect people (and in its more  powerful form, to identify individual people) and structures and that the astrology would be used to identify people. Am I correct? I had no idea that powerful negation could detect/identify specific individuals - I had assumed that astrology was always used for that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Rhi;

"It's not so much a formal term as a figure of speech: "taking the glassmaker's meal;" the idea is that the production of glass regularly exposes non-magical craftsmen to arsenic and they therefore build up a tolerance.

That said, this isn't a phrase that many people would casually use - unless some criminal trial in which poison is prominently involved happens to be the talk of the tavern."

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That brings up an other question:

Are there known poisonous plant or animals on the isle, where Academagia is on, that lead to dangerous poisoning or dead in the rural communities?

Also how are the rules for drugs, be it as simple as alcohol up to the so called hard drugs? (From what I know forbidding of certain drugs is a very modern thing  in our world)

Given one adventure I think there no apothecary so far but I'm not sure, so is there?

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poisonous_plants in case the team need some ideas regarding poisons plants in the real world

Regarding drugs I just want to warn again to be carful about including them into the actual games given the hard stance the Australian government showed to other games in the past. (Although i.e. in in VB it would be realistic to include them given the history of WW2)

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