Making a Fantasy Game (PhoneLobster, please stay out)

[Beth_Naught]

It's kind of a shame - Frank's original system had tidy answers for all of those except specific details of powers. It's tricky following the various divagations from his 2004 proposals.

Atalaya canonically (heh!) uses Death and Air together in battle, Hive Acatl uses a hodgepodge of everything, and every Jarbahn must have some ability with Water, I think?

[Username17]

A larger question. Is all of this magic just a skill anybody can be taught, and is it on the order of years of dedication to get the good stuff, making multidisciplinary magicians very rare and very deadly (renegade Atayala Air Mage learning Ormigan Fire Magic, for example). Heck, are there rare techniques that only work through combined mastery/use of two or more magical styles?

I figure that these are unique tricks in kind of the same way that thaumaturgical rituals are unique cult secrets in Vampire. Which is to say that from the standpoint of the player character they pretty much aren't once chargen is done and past.

How does water sculpting work? Is it some kind of non-melting ice, what happens when it breaks, does it respond to heat or liquid water in any fashion, does iron discorporate it or go through it like water, can it be used with any liquid or only pure water, can it be used as a purification process, how small & precisely can it be made (can you make machines with it), how heavy is it, how long do they last, can temporary models work, what's the upper limit on hardness?

Moskitia is located in the middle of the ocean on a virtually lifeless crag similar to Sootopolis. So I imagine they'd have to be able to pull fresh water from salt. Other than that, the limits while important aren't specified. It's clear that you can make a lens of water and scoot it across the surface of the ocean at high speed. And it's clear that you can make extremely light and otherwise somewhat mediocre weaponry out of it. My thought for when it would collapse is that when it broke to less than about 40% mass it would simply revert to fluid and splash. That way you can still have the two cool things you want to happen: cutting a water pole in half and having two water poles, and bashing a water wall so that it splashes on the ground and flows away.

As for their Life magic, does their magic only really deal with expediting plant growth & health?

I'm thinking Maori wood working techniques here, so you get to have thorn clubs and cord armors. They are a nautical and violent people, after all. You could probably do worse than having them calling fish onto their boats and doing exciting things with ink and poison from sea critters.

-Username17

[virgil]

...thaumaturgical rituals are unique cult secrets in Vampire. Which is to say that from the standpoint of the player character they pretty much aren't once chargen is done and past.

You mean they aren't secrets for PCs once they start running around the world?

Part of the reason for my asking is because I can see my players asking these various questions, perchance even attempting to take advantage of them. Water arrows make for very long range ammunition (due to lightweight nature, even if just the shaft) with little evidence remaining, and a Sculptor working with a Water Mage could make floating water buildings of a much larger size than normal due to their light weight yet decent strength (already implied to be stronger than wood).

The rigidity of this hard water is also important, because it could be used for fairly decent armor; its placement hinging on their flexibility, and optimization can be attained by mixing materials.

[Beth_Naught]

Water arrows would be denser than wood arrows (wood does float after all) and probably not worth making in bulk. On the other hand, a dissolving arrow tipped with fire coral venom is the best assassination weapon I've heard of in a long time

[name_here]

You would, however, have a nearly limitless supply over the ocean. Might be worth it.

[Username17]

So anyway, Senician Life Sense. Having had a few days to digest the Sharing Knife books, I can say that they really are a pretty decent place to start from for these guys. Now obviously there's some things that Ground Setters can do that Senicians can't, and vice versa. The biggest change comes from the fact that in the Sharing Knife books there is life traveling up from the Earth into rocks and rivers and shit. People with the ground sense can literally use their animist powers to locate rocks under muddy water or repair the life force of broken glass bowls. And that's right out for Senicians, because from their standpoint rocks and ceramics are not alive - leaving them invisible to their special senses and also immune to persuasion or reinforcement from life magic.

But other than that the match seems pretty good. Certainly Senicians are going to have different ranges of their ability to "feel" the existence of life. Upper limits of about 2 kilometers doesn't seem unreasonable. The thing of being able to pump life force into things to help them heal better seems like a no-brainer. As does the thing where you can manipulate the life patterns of things to enhance their abilities or telekinetically rip them up. And the thing where you can control animals, with smaller and weaker willed ones like bugs being easier and bigger smarter ones like humans being quite difficult.

But frankly, there should be more stuff about equal life exchange like from Full Metal Alchemist. People use their blood to store up mortality in bone daggers in the Sharing Knife, but it should really go beyond that to the point of sacrificing animals to store up life to make chimerae with.

-Username17

[IGTN]

Can life-energy be stored in a nonliving/inanimate vessel? For instance, can you:
Sacrifice an animal now to charge a gem/carved bone/whatever to carry around and cast with later?
Sacrifice an animal now to enhance the energy of a plant to cast spells out of?

Actually, an idea just occured to me for the Senicians, or for another life culture: live plant armor that is used as an energy battery. Basically, wearing a single plant of an engineered species (or several plants together) as a suit of armor, and using it to store magical energy gained out of blood (yours, your enemies', who cares), focus spells, and so on. It doesn't even need to be that protective on its own, if it can create a magic force field, or be enspelled to become stronger reactively.

Also, is there a link compendium for the Culture Focus series?

[name_here]

1. Given the bone dagger example, the answer is likely yes, though if you can store it in yourself it's not nearly as useful as it would be otherwise. It would have advantages for transfer, though

2. Sure, you could do that, or maybe use an artifical symbiotic animal if the magic system requires it. It could even work just like the spell shield from the warcraft 3 expansion.

[IGTN]

On rereading the Senicians, maybe having special magic plant armor isn't exactly their thing, but it does give a seed for another culture.

Also, what's the delineation that makes a material Life or Death? I mean, Wood is supposed to be a Life material, isn't it?, but Bone is probably Death in most uses (I can see the necromancer-people using bone weaponry, for instance), but, then again, the Senicians use Life and Bone.

So, what materials are Life and which ones are Death? Is differentiating between the two even particularly useful, since one is simply the absence of the other?

[Bigode]

Also, is there a link compendium for the Culture Focus series?

There is now.

[Username17]

So, what materials are Life and which ones are Death? Is differentiating between the two even particularly useful, since one is simply the absence of the other?

Indeed, the two blend together a lot. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing when you consider the examples of carpets held up by wind magic and stones that are fixed into a point in the sky. Certainly using Life to heal by reinforcing Life and Death to heal by warding off Death seem like pretty similar effects even if they are nominally accomplished by moving power arrows in opposite directions.

I think that the Ghost Hunting swamp guys might be pointing us in a good direction as far as that goes - with Death being more akin to spirit as opposed to Life being more akin to body. At that rate, Death Magic can have a lot of stuff involving the intangible that looks more like Iron Working. But it's entirely plausible that materials can be identical and dedicated to life or death.

-Username17

[Maxus]

Chalk's good for that, I suppose. Or Limestone.

Seeing as how they're made of the cemented bones of liddle tiny critters.

Probably a very cost-effective magical aid.

[Username17]

Also creepy as fuck, when people are painting themselves up in chalk as armor. Very good point.

-Username17

[Maxus]

I wonder if other minerals and rocks are important on the magical scheme...

Gemstones are a staple, and I don't think anyone would have any objections to being sent after the "Ruby/Sapphire/Diamond Eye of Sha-la-la", as compared to being sent after the "The Really Big Pink Porphyritic Medium-Grained Biotite Granite of Ula Uru"

I suppose fossils and the like would be useful. Especially since there's something creepy about them.

As for minerals...Hm. Malachite and hematite will always be wanted (copper and iron ores), but I can't think of any actual magical properties one could attach to them. Unless you want to make magical metals, like magic-conducting copper or Antimagic Iron.

[Beth_Naught]

If possible, I'd like to shunt the elemental system towards abstractions and away from pure alchemical taxonomy (Fire is red. Rubies are red. Ergo, Rubies are Fire. Quod erat boring)

Something like the following, thus far?

Air:
Never still

• Air
• Copper, Bronze, Brass
• Breath
• Motion
• Wisdom
• Lies

Earth:
Ceaseless foundations

• Stone
• Salt
• Strength
• Law
• Gravity

Fire:
Consumption brings change

• Fire
• Glass (includes obsidian)
• Sulphur
• Gold
• Electricity
• Transmutation
• Passion
• Aging

Ghost:
Real, it eludes hands

• Limestone (chalk)
• Lead
• Shadows
• Intangibles
• Preservation
• Oaths
• Compulsion

Life:
Embodied in living things

• Flesh
• Wood
• Bone
• Trade
• Communication
• Fertility
• Sympathetic Contagion

Water:
Ceaseless change; remaining the same

• Water
• Acid
• Silver
• Mercury
• Algae
• Blood
• Nourishment
• Change

Void:
Where all else is not

• Iron
• Not-of-this-earth
• Negation
• Negative space
• Metamagic

[Username17]

Nice list. I'd put some more stuff into Life. Namely Life should probably get Bone (so yeah, it's very hard to get a sword that is Ghostly), Fertility, and it should probably get the basic emotional motivator. I think it's pretty important that Life get at least the bare minimum needed to get wasps to go where you want and sting or not sting creatures you mark.

-Username17

[Beth_Naught]

Cool

For Life, I was thinking that emotional manipulation would be sympathetic and transactional? Sympathetic magic just "makes sense" in the intuitive way. So if your combat action is offpissing a swarm of wasps you could do that with:

Fire: the wasps are frenzied now, hope you set up a smoke pot.
Life: the wasps hate your enemies because you shared that feeling with them.
Death: the wasps obey because you bade them so. Obey!
Air: the wasps obey because you fooled them into thinking your enemies attack their nest.

...and probably only the Life version is easy enough, reliable enough, and safe enough to comprise a combat style, so you can still recognize "When Wasps Attack!" as a Life working.

---

I traveled to the village of Sha Lenriq to speak law, to exchange tales and thereby grow the richer, to drink koomis and carry in my belly the seeds of their folk. I walked the game trail, though Sha Lenriq sits on the furthest Bloodroots and one lifengets only wild mad tangles beyond. Though a clammy mist that does not belong to the dry season I went, under a veiled sky. They needed me, as all do. Who would not celebrate with a bard? How could you celebrate without?

I did not find what I sought; others had found Sha Lenriq already.

Others, with their faces chalk limned to skulls and their bodies concealed in moss drapes. They had broken the backs of a dozen villagers already and arranged the corpses in disjointed postures. They stole unseen from longhouse to longhouse while the oxen grazed stupidly only a stone's throw away. It was as though all the world nodded as they worked bloodtheft.

It was then that Grandmother Enta charged from over a hilltop, attended by a shriek of razorbats. One of the lifethieves struck at her riding deer and fell dying as the wound was returned tenfold. Another fled as a sheer cloud of bats (though slowed and blinded by that damnable mist) enveloped him. She lashed around with her thorned knout and slicked the ground with their dark blood; it seemed as though the glassy-eyed others might be broken after all. She paused her assault to call on the blood-wet grass to drink its offering and ensnare the invaders.

Instead the grass died into ashes. While Grandmother Enta's attention was diverted, a lifethief spoke to her steed, which impaled itself in terror on their spears. They used a net then, and a choking powder that stifled her imprecations in her throat.

I see your faces. "Why," you ask, "Why did you not intervene?" "Or if they were so fearsome, why did you not honor your blood and save yourself?" If any here doubt my honesty, then speak! We will meet under the moon and one of us will nourish the vine. But I tell you true - brave as I am, I wished only to flee. Yet my limbs did not obey me; I could not have moved to save my life, no more than I could command the stars to stop wheeling.

After they broke Grandmother Enta's back, they drained a pale tallow from her mouth into a sponge they had prepared. In horror and exhaustion I slept then, as her body lay wasted on the sward, and I knew nothing until the next day. Luck, and the mindless cover of a tiny hillock, had preserved me from their rotblodded atrocities. Years have passed now, but to Sha Lenriq I do not return.

I traveled to your village to speak law, to exchange tales and thereby grow the richer. Tell this story as I have told it, that you may reap better than Sha Lenriq.

- Bassa Tensamai, Senician Bard