A few in game questions

[Schwarzbart]

So the military don't use tournament to find promising future wizards they need to keep an eye on for the time when they actual become a wizard?
After all there should be the biggest demand of new combat usable wizard for this dangerous profession.
Didn't mercenaries even recruit 1st year to fill up their lines? (Wonder what Orso is saying in this case that promising students where already recruited in the 1st year ^^)

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

The reply!

"Oh, to be clear, the Guard has people watching for standout participants in all the Renaglian-speaking world's larger magical tournaments (that includes Gravity Ball and the Elemental Warriors scenarios that play out in some of the Y1 adventures), and outside of Mineta a great many nobles stage tourneys for entertainment and local prestige - and people that excel in those events tend ultimately to attract the Captain's attention as well.  So, that works more or less the way you describe.

Within the city of Mineta, though, there are complicating factors when we're talking about the Guard themselves putting on big shows.  There are always complicating factors.

By the city's ancient traditions, there are three categories of "high" magical competition: Games of the Empire, Games of the Academy, and Games of the Temple(s).  This isn't necessarily legally binding (or even particularly well defined in civil and criminal law) in every case, but it's widely taken for granted.

Most of what the player is likely to encounter in Y1 - from duels to student Rimbal - falls under the umbrella of "Games of the Academy."  They're relatively informal, they don't require a feast or a festival or some ritual/holy event to provide a legitimizing context.  On one level, they're meant to be educational, and on another level they're ways for the Academy to police itself; the Guards aren't supposed to involve themselves in Academy business unduly, so wronged students can duel for satisfaction, etc.  They're also mostly opaque to the outside city; your average Minetan will never see a magical duel, but will tell fabulous stories about what they might be like.

Games of the Temples are sanctified.  They generally take place on holy days, and in most cases their results are thought to be Astrologically significant.  If one side wins in a magical tourney under the influence of the Gods, that doesn't mean that they're better wizards than the other side, but rather that the Gods are weighing in on some matter of great political or social relevance (in theory).  The Emperor or the Empress and their champions could have been involved in these events in the old days, because they were invested with religious roles by the great temples themselves - but the Captain hasn't been, so openly using Temple tourneys to his own ends would be absolutely scandalous.

Games of the Empire were called and hosted by the Emperor or Empress themselves, usually in commemoration of a military triumph or a moment of particular significance to the Imperial Family - i.e., the designation of an heir, or a major anniversary.  These are a chance for participants to show off and build reputations, and they're usually absolutely spectacular.  The Captain has asserted the right to hold events like these, and he's done a few, but not as many as you might thing.  Partially it's because he himself is kind of a stoic, and has a grave distrust of bread and circuses as they were known in the Empire's most decadent days; partially it's because they're expensive as hell, and he's trying to keep taxation relatively light at the moment.

There weren't any of those in the player's first year.  In later years, though...

(All of this is mostly relevant within the limits of Mineta itself, we have to stress.  The Guards' Grand Tourneys generally take place outside the city, at a series of sites along the Ardica River, and they're not considered particularly politically loaded.)

But, all that said, there's that separation between "Games of the Academy" and all the other kinds.  If you're an Academy student or an Academy graduate, the idea that you'd have to compete for a place with the Guard is almost an insult to the Academy itself; if you graduate in good standing, you're understood to be one of the best wizards in the land and you're basically guaranteed a place in the Guard as an officer if you want it.  Students serving in the Guard while being students is frowned upon by the school itself, officially, but Orso is obviously unusually tolerant of students getting themselves into potentially horrible situations."

[Schwarzbart]

thx for the nice explain!

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: Does the Schohanwicht School accept older transfer students often? I ask because gates magic's illegality may mean that it is less easy to ensure that people are gathered with the same approximate ages and levels of experience.

[Legate of Mineta]

Rhi;

"The safest way to answer this is: any player character who attended classes at Schohanwicht would probably have seen more late teens and adults than early adolescents.  Whether they were all pursuing the same curricula is certainly open to speculation - but an educated guess would be that the school takes the people who find the school (and can pay for the school) whenever they arrive, regardless of age."

[Schwarzbart]

4 hours ago, Legate of Mineta said:

Rhi;

"The safest way to answer this is: any player character who attended classes at Schohanwicht would probably have seen more late teens and adults than early adolescents.  Whether they were all pursuing the same curricula is certainly open to speculation - but an educated guess would be that the school takes the people who find the school (and can pay for the school) whenever they arrive, regardless of age."

Isn't Academagia one of the exceptions where because of the popularity of the school they actual can keep class at a certain age range?

I pretty sure that at Esteban Contu our character in Academia is within the youngest who take this kind of classes.

Beside how will it be handled for tournaments when someone study at 2 Academy at the same time? Like many of my character train at Esteban Contu and Academagia.

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

"You’re right - there are other magical schools that do follow the Academagia age/class model, but none of the ones reasonably close by are specialized and elite enough to be worth Academy notice.

As for tournaments: you’re a student of the Academy of Mineta who may or may not be taking additional instruction from other sources upon your own discretion - but by tradition, and by ancient law, your first loyalty is to the Academy.  You would have to receive special dispensation from Regent and Legate to represent another school against the Academy in any formal tourney, or else you’d be in real risk of being asked to leave."

[Schwarzbart]

Is it known if the fay are living in an actual dimension of their own or just hide them self via powerful glamour?
For my story I using the first method as explain. 

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

"It's generally held that the fay courts and greater fay powers are in another world/dimension/plane of existence, and that the lands that bridge the mortal world and the fay world are wrapped in Glamour.  So... both are true, technically."

[Schwarzbart]

Can you answer why the player was chosen over Katja Quinnecht, a Violin genius, to play the Maestringer?
If it was any other music instrument, I could understand why she wasn't chosen but the Maestringer is a violine.

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

Interestingly, this particular story has a bit of a history, and there's some [Redacted] in it. However, here's what the Team said:

"The answer might well be one of two options, and the player wouldn't necessarily know which:

Option 1)  The player was seen as the better candidate.  Maybe Professor Chastellain just likes you more.  Maybe Katja's magical skills were seen as less sharpened than yours.  Maybe the professor worried that she'd be offended by the whole idea of an instrument like the Maestringer, given how central playing a conventional one is to her identity.

Option 2)  Katja was actually asked first and nobody ever told the player.

It probably depends on what kind of student the Main Character is in your game...."

[Schwarzbart]

When was the last book written that have a book spirit?
Having a spirit bound to a book sound very much like Mastery, Gate or even a form of necromancy magic.

[Schwarzbart]

Is there a well-known Research institute that take apprentices?

I think about making an Apprenticeship: Researcher background what gives:
- a Ring that give +1 Luck and +1 to all Research Action and Abilities
- a Research action that Give a complete random SS, a complete random Research Topic +1, on a Research roll vs 5 and 10 each a Research Topic +1 
- Decipher Handwriting +1
- The Early Empire +1
 (I also take suggestions to balance it better)

 

[Legate of Mineta]

S;

For 1:

"That's something a first year player almost certainly wouldn't know - because, you're right, it's Gates techniques by definition and it's probably going to involve Mastery as well.  As far as documentation goes... if you read between the lines in some rather old Enchantment texts, there are hints that something along these lines went on with a volume called "Six and Three Treatises on Night and Fire" in or around 1284 - the fact that the author's name has been struck out of every reference material you could find is another clue - but there's no way to say definitively whether it was the "last."

Note that it's rumored that this something Draconic cults get tempted by, even in the present day: bind the shade of a fallen dragon to a book of magic to gain utterly inhuman powers, risk being possessed or just bringing the thing back in physical form.  The fact that nobody can point to a case of it actually happening isn't necessarily all that reassuring."

And for 2:

"Probably not a research institute, per se.  The closest you'll find, outside of the Academy itself, is either a forward-thinking "social club" (i.e., the Caldano Utopianists' Society in the Republic of Pievre) or a court that patronizes explorers of the higher arts and studies (i.e., that of the Prince of Montevre).  The Captain still controls the Imperial Laboratories, but they don't generally go on to send their apprentices to the Academy.

Either with a court or a social club, though - or even just as an apprentice to a solitary eccentric with a keen mind - we think Apprenticeship: Researcher is totally legit as a background.  We're tempted to give a boost to Chance of Discovery as well - if you're digging into strange archives and collecting all this information, it increases the odds of catching people's attention and being discovered somewhere you technically shouldn't be."

[Schwarzbart]

wow thanks for the fast answer, the idea to add a CoD to the research action is a good idea

Let see if I manage to build a mod with all this.

[Metis]

Is vampirism something that can be cured (other than the more technical and less practical cure of "actual death"), and if lycanthropy or other similar curses can be caused by infections or what have you, can those conditions be cured?

[Legate of Mineta]

Metis;

"The prevailing textbook theory is that "true" vampires and lycanthropes - i.e., individuals born with the condition, raised directly from the dead with Gates magic, etc. - can't be cured.  Their natures can perhaps be suppressed, but they are what they are.  Secondary sufferers of these curses, people who contract the curses as though they were diseases, have a chance of reversal with magical intervention, if they sincerely desire it.

That said, there's a contrasting body of scholarship that holds that the context of "curses" and the metaphor of disease are modes of existence that are not fully understood.  And if they're not understood, who knows what can happen when you try to change them?"

[Schwarzbart]

That means there quite the big research left open with how Negation magic works best against curses and diseases.

[Legate of Mineta]

Indeed...

[Metis]

Does the side gate of the Academagia have any special name and/or history like the Great Gate does, or is it just "the side gate"?

[Legate of Mineta]

M;

"Yeah, mostly "the side gate." 

It's sometimes playfully called "the gate of shame," just because it's the way in and out for people who don't want to be seen, from expelled students to first-years enjoying their freedom a bit too much to certain Familiars.  In other eras it was called the Shepherd's Gate or the Monks' Way Gate, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anybody who would immediately recognize those names today."

[Metis]

Does Gorithnak (and I guess minotaurs by extension?) have a last name? If so is his last name known among the faculty/student body, or does everyone just know him as Gorithnak?

[Schwarzbart]

On 10/5/2022 at 3:51 PM, Schwarzbart said:

That means there quite the big research left open with how Negation magic works best against curses and diseases.

Is the team planning to give the player the opportunity to research in this topic because of a plague outbreak or similar?

[Legate of Mineta]

M;

"Minotaurs are rare and weird, and on the rare occasions when two who don't know each other interact, in place of a last name suggesting either family lineages or professions they tend to make it about the territories they control or inhabit.  And, those territories are often labyrinths.

There may or may not be magical dooms and astrological causes for that.

Gorithnak's full name wouldn't be "Gorithnak Kathinak's Son," for example.  It would be "Gorithnak of the Academy," "Gorithnak of the Academagia Smithies," or - much more formally - "Gorithnak, Lord of the Grand Maze of Emperor Celsus at the Academy of Mineta.""

S;

There are some pretty varied options here, yes.

[Rhialto]

@Legate of Mineta: In real life, complete invisibility would lead to blindness, because eyes' lenses must intercept at least some light in order to work. I assume, however, that magical invisibility, at least at the more advanced levels, avoids this problem. But do some invisibility spells create invisibility at the cost of total blindness? Or ensure that at least the eyes' lenses remain visible? Such spells, I assume, would be cruder and less useful - rather like a fire lance to a hand-cannon.