[Ars Magica 5] OOC: It's PeIm for darkness, not PeCo

[Laertes]

That said, Talismans are really good and you should make one as soon as you have enough Magic Theory to get the good bits in.

Edit to explain this more fully:
Amber is a semi-precious stone, and you only need a little bit of it. Therefore, by the Material and Size table on p97, it has a vis cost of 12 (semi precious) x 1 (tiny) = 12. Since you may not use more vis in a season than your MT x2, this means you need an MT of 6 (or 5 with speciality) to open this item for enchantment.

When you make a composite magic item, you may include a number of different elements and only need to pay the vis cost for the single most expensive. (You may instead choose to pay the vis cost for the total if you wish, and there are reasons for doing that, but not on a talisman.) Therefore, other elements which have a cost not higher than 12 may be added at no cost.

For example, you may have a staff (4) made of human bone (x3); a wooden (2) shield (x4); and a dagger-sized crown (2) made of silver (x6).

You may have a total number of such elements combined in your item equal to your MT. There's no reason not to. However, since they don't stack when casting spells, you may run out of bonuses you care about.

Once you've opened the item for enchantment and spent the twelve vis, you may spend a second season attuning the item as a talisman. Doing so takes a season but has no cost and requires no roll. Once you do this, it unlocks a single bonus from the list of various bonuses you can get from the materials and forms you put into it. Every season thereafter you spend working on the thing, you may unlock an additional bonus.

In the above example, your first choice may be the +4 "Destroy things at a distance" from the staff. If you then come back to the talisman to enchant a spell into it or whatever, then in addition to that season's actual effects, you get to unlock an additional bonus. You might pick the +3 Corpus bonus from the amber.

Please note that they don't stack: when casting Perdo Corpus at a distance you could take the +4 bonus or the +3 bonus but not a +7 combination of both.

In practise you will probably never unlock all the bonuses in your talisman. Don't sweat it.

[Prak]

Ok, so the internet at my house has been wonky the last few days (my parents can get on, but my computer cannot connect, and my phone was only able to connect as of yesterday). So my posting may be a bit erratic. Given that my phone can connect, and that I will probably start going out and using public wifi more (since I have to look for a job too), I'm not ready to bow out because of this, I just wanted to give a heads up.

[Laertes]

No worries, Prak; real life takes priority over gaming. Good luck with the job hunt and Nidratr will always be at the covenant doing (useful/useless/annoying) (delete as applicable) things like his usual squirrelly self when he's not being played, or out having adventures, or in his lab, or stuff like that.

Once we properly get set up in the covenant, this sort of dropping-in will be easier because magi can just disappear into their own affairs for seasons at a time.

[momothefiddler]

@Prak: Bit of confirmation - I'm pretty sure the wolves you targeted did retreat. This other group of flanking wolves, however, is still under that same spell. You could break that too, probably.

[Prak]

Oohhh.. didn't realize there were two groups of wolves. Thank you.

[Laertes]

Glad to have you back, Prak. The game suffered in your absence.

momothefiddler -
Since you're creating houses rather than huts, these things can be fairly large and imposing. Two floors, six largish rooms sort of large and imposing. What's your architectural preference? It's only an aesthetic consideration but these things help to give flavour.

Some ideas off the top of my head, feel free to hybridise or ignore in favour of your own ideas:

- Roman style single-storey courtyard houses, to encourage communal living and for that classical vibe.

- Italian style loggias for the hot steppe summers.

- Moorish style casbahs, where the houses are right next to one another and have internal connections and access across flat roofs, turning it into a very defensible hybrid of separate buildings and one single building.

- German style huge pillared communal hall with multiple bays leading off it for private living.

- Spanish style wall houses, built right up against one another with a thick rear wall and no low-down rear windows, in order to form part of the curtain wall of a settlement.

- English style manors, set apart from one another with a space around them to keep animals, erect outbuildings and grow vegetables.

[momothefiddler]

Well, first priority is something that will please the inhabitants.
Second, encourage interaction and communal living, so the Roman sounds good there.
Third, safety. While we will eventually have a wall and an Aegis and things, there's a nice benefit to having even the single structure be reasonably defensible. Of course this "solid boundary between inside and out and fewer/looser boundaries inside" thing applies to weather and so on, too, not just people/animals.
Fourth, badger influences. Not a lot of impact here, probably, but is there any reason we can't have a basement and ground floor instead of a ground floor and upper floor? Things like that.

[Laertes]

You can of course have underground spaces too if you want them. They'll be nice and warm in winter, too, even if they're stiflingly hot in summer.

Your character is the one casting the spells; I leave it therefore entirely up to her (and therefore you.) Our mental image of the covenant is in your hands.

[momothefiddler]

even if they're stiflingly hot in summer.

I'm really rather confused by this. In my experience, any area sunk into the ground is cool (vs cold) in winter and cool (vs hot) in summer. The one basement we've ever had, for instance, or the giant hole my brother and I dug in the back yard. Is it the rest of the building? Is it the stone lining? Just lack of airflow?

[Laertes]

You're right that soil is warm in winter and cool in summer, but airflow is the killer. In my experience, stone buildings in hot climates become ovens, for which good ventilation is the only cure.

Edit: I'm not an architect. Please feel free to correct me if what I'm saying is in fact wrong.

[momothefiddler]

That makes sense. I am also not an architect. My parents made us fill the hole in because they were afraid it would collapse on us, and if I were an architect they'd likely have had less issue with that. (EDIT: I do know that root cellars apparently didn't have that problem, but also I don't think they were stone boxes)

Hm... What if the central area (for eating and whatnot) was tall (two stories, based on the German one) and domed (like a burrow, plus it looks nice from outside), with stairs and a balcony, and the living quarters branched off that? The kitchen and various storerooms and workrooms could be on the lower floor, along with any extra bedrooms... hm. I'd like to give the upper rooms big doors to airy outer balconies, but until we have doors to put in the doorways, I think I'll leave them closed off for heat. The bedrooms could be shared? I'm guessing a barracks-style arrangement would leave people less happy than separate rooms.

Are those reasonable ideas? Do they have repercussions I'm missing? Is that too big and imposing (or, to put in another way, will it take more spell? Edit: If I'm adding more spell anyway, can I put in a basement as well as the two stories?)

[Laertes]

After doing a little reading on architecture, I now realise that I am completely wrong. Hmmm.

Traditional buildings in hot climates do not have cellars; however, this is in fact nothing to do with temperature as I'd thought. It's because cellars are a hassle and why bother digging one if you don't have to. The reason to have a cellar in a building is to get the foundations below the frost line; and if you're doing that much digging then you end up making a cellar anyway.

Apparently well-ventilated cellars are in fact the coolest part of a house. I was speaking out of ignorance. Still, it gave me a chance to learn something so yay.

On architecture:

Your plans sound awesome! It sounds like a single giant building which would mean that no matter how deep the snow got outside, people would be snug indoors. I can see it gradually growing additional corridors, courtyards, towers, catacombs and suchlike as the covenant expands. The idea of a big central hall is a nice one, since it gives the covenant a natural meeting / hanging out space. The only addition I can think to suggest would be a separate common room / dining room for the magi. The Gift sets people on edge: even if they like working for you they may not actively enjoy your company.

People at the time didn't have as much of an expectation of sleeping in privacy as we do. Most people slept in their workplace; having a separate bedroom was an unmistakable marker that you were a big deal. Even then, families would sleep in the same room (often in the same bed) unless they were seriously well-off. As such, your covenfolk will probably be fairly happy with barracks rooms for now, or will sleep in the hall where it's nice and central and there's a fire. In the long term they will gradually settle down and raise families, and at that point they may want family quarters rather than barracks.

In Ruthenia and other poor areas like Scandinavia it was very common to keep animals in with the people, partly because houses were small but also for warmth. You might decide to do this, but otherwise stables or a barn or something might be an idea.

Other architectural things you might want include but are not limited to:
- Hay loft
- Granary (specifically constructed to keep rats out)
- Sick bay
- Library / scriptorum
- Vis store
- Strong room for mundane money and valuables
- Dungeon
- Parade ground / training hall
- Archery range
- Well house
- Ice house
- Bathhouse (or, for the Norse, a sauna)
- Watchtower
- Chapel
- Chapel equivalents for the Pagans or Muslims among the Norse and Bulgars

On mechanics:

I think the best way to do this would be modularly, with each casting of the spell adding or remodelling more rooms, and the Finesse roll going up as the construction gets more complex. We already know a few data points:
Hut: Ease factor 12, two rooms
House: Ease factor 15, six rooms, two floors
Tower: Ease factor 18, even bigger (serf's parma, I can't remember the numbers we decided for it.)

You can just keep rolling until you succeed, of course, but more rolls would naturally lead to more chances to botch.

Also, does the covenant have any views on sancta? Would you like me to summarise Hermetic law and common practise on sancta?

[momothefiddler]

On architecture:

Fantastic! Then a basement cellar will definitely be included.

I was imagining an entirely separate building for mages than for covenfolk, but your idea is better; extra sleeping/living area is all that's really needed and making servants trudge back and forth through the snow to cook in two different kitchens and so on is just unnecessary. Let's apply both successful castings to the one building, then.

As to your potential options: YES ALL OF THOSE.

More realistically (at least for now), let's go with two barracks-style rooms, one large one for covenfolk (does this term technically include magi? What's the right word for how I'm using this? "Grog" seems to interchangeably mean "soldier" and "non-story, non-NPC character", and if we had companions I'd want to include them in the word...) and one smaller one for magi. We'll put both up on the second floor so they can be opened up pretty soon when it gets warmer.

I'm envisioning the second floor interior balcony having a railing (maybe with cute little arches) so people can come out of rooms and hang around on the balcony, chatting, looking down into the common room, maybe use it as extra audience room for any ceremonies.... Maybe even make it wide enough for benches or something.

One of my favorite things is walls wide enough that you can sit/lie in the bottom of circular windows and read a book or knit or something in the sunlight. I'm going to include that here, if you have no objection. It's probably not such an easy thing to do with individual stones and 13th century tech, but hey - I'm using magic.

(I was going to discuss architecture further, but I've been sitting here with this open for... hours, now, drawing blueprints. So that'll be a separate post.)

On mechanics:

An important top end is that the spell is Part +3, so it only affects 1000 m^3 of stone. Or 1000 m^3 of building; I think I asked you about that and I don't remember the answer. EDIT: Found it, and it's 1000m^3 of building. So that might well top out before the Finesse Ease Factor does, especially if the latter is extrapolable. I think the 6-room, 2-story measure you've given me for a month's work means that three times that for a Season is about as much as I'm gonna need unless/until I invent a Part +4 version.

Looking back, the most recent thing I have from you on that is "Tower: Average 9 + Year 6 + Rego 3 = 18" - though glancing at the book, it looks like you probably meant Season 6, since Year is 9. Not that that's a big deal; the basic idea is that it's not more complexity, it's just more work - three times as much, or twelve (nine?) times as much for 21. Though I only have a 3.8% chance of making a 21 with my current Finesse, so maybe leave that off for now. 5.9% of 18, which is... little better. And Finesse takes a long time to raise, so... this'll be fun, especially depending on the answer to the next part:

I think the best way to do this would be modularly, with each casting of the spell adding or remodelling more rooms, and the Finesse roll going up as the construction gets more complex.

On first read, this looks like you're saying the Finesse roll for each casting will be determined based on the overall structure - so if I'm moving a wall over to enlarge one room at the expense of the other, it'll be based on the time/complexity of the whole structure (easily 21+), rather than the time/complexity of moving a wall (possibly as low as Easy 6 + Day 0 + Rego 3 = 9 if it's small/plain/whatever). If this is what you mean, I don't like that.

Now, some of the reasons I don't like that are bad reasons to change something other than my expectations (it means I can't do everything I want to do because my numbers aren't big enough yet), some (I feel) are (it means that making "separate" houses next to or on top of each other that happen to have doorways facing each other is notably easier - and easier to maintain - than making separate rooms of one house, which seems an absurd result), and some might or might not be (when I wrote the spell, I totally meant for it to be useful for moving walls around and turning a tower floor full of storerooms into a wide open lab; if it can't do that, I guess maybe I wrote the spell wrong).

[Laertes]

On architecture:

I just wanted to include some of my favourite pictures of medieval stone buildings. Yes, I'm a geek.

On mechanics:

By "modular" I meant "the Finesse Ease Factor will be determined by how much stuff you're changing with this particular casting." So you can add little bits or change little bits fairly easily, but adding or changing big bits will be a more difficult roll. I agree that twitching little bits of architecture around from day to day as the whim takes you is the birthright of every earthbender Terram mage.

So what I should have said was that the building itself will be treated as though it's modular, if that makes sense. Changing one part of it will not affect the rest.

Does that work?

On the word "grog":

It's White Wolf's fault. Back in the day, when White Wolf ran Ars Magica, they weren't very good on their history. Which is odd with a game like that with a player base like that.

The word "grog" was coined to describe a non-magician who goes on adventures with magicians. This worked fine with what Ars Magica was originally, which was an adventuring game. But then 2nd Edition came along and invented the concept of a player character covenant, and suddenly everyone wanted one because it was an awesome idea, and so when 3rd edition came along the game was definitely about this community that you had.

Expecting consistency from White Wolf was never easy, and so they were never sure whether "grog" referred to specifically a soldier, or just to anyone of that power level. At one point the claim was made that they were called grogs because that's what they drank, which was... slightly anachronistic. So when Atlas Games acquired Ars Magica for 4th edition, they called a do-over on a lot of things and this was one of them. As of 5th Edition, the word "grog" has been given a new explanation: it's now a corruption of the Latin term "gregulus" which means "companion." This is also confusing, but it's solid historical sorts of confusing rather than made-up bullshit sorts of confusing.

Regardless, grog is first and foremost a term for a character's power level. Covenfolk are grogs, because they don't have Major virtues and flaws and don't have Story Flaws. Allied outsiders can also be grogs, even if they're not covenfolk. Some Companions can be covenfolk too even though they're not grogs. In its broad sense the word just means "an ordinary person who hangs around wizards", and that's the sense I use it in here.

[Prak]

Nidratr can help with some of this. The granary can easily be kept free of rats with a very simple ReAn spell, and a slightly more complex one could probably encourage rats to eat only things left in a specific area, and not shit where they eat, or anywhere else we didn't want rat shit. Nidratr would prefer to give rats their own space and a small amount of food each week or so for their own personal love of animals, but it would also create a sort of natural waste management system.

A wall of wood would be reasonably easy to create, especially if I use Nine Days on the World Tree and an animated skeleton. Something along the lines of "make skeleton>animate skeleton>target skeleton with Nine Days>cease concentration>move on," of course this assumes the "mighty oak tree persists as a natural tree.

Failing that, conceivably I could do something like CrHe, voice, group to make a bunch of saplings, then follow that up with CrHe Ring to make them grow to full maturity in a day. I'd then follow up with stuff like CrHe to protect them from disease and grow well, a ReIg effect to protect against burning and such with a ring duration.

Edit: oh, also on the architecture- I really like the germanic layout idea. For the living chambers, what about something like each magus having their own two story tower, where the bottom level is a living space and the second level is their lab, with as much or as little of a view as they want?

[Laertes]

A wall of wood would be reasonably easy to create, especially if I use Nine Days on the World Tree and an animated skeleton. Something along the lines of "make skeleton>animate skeleton>target skeleton with Nine Days>cease concentration>move on," of course this assumes the "mighty oak tree persists as a natural tree.

The tree goes away after the spell duration expires.

Failing that, conceivably I could do something like CrHe, voice, group to make a bunch of saplings, then follow that up with CrHe Ring to make them grow to full maturity in a day. I'd then follow up with stuff like CrHe to protect them from disease and grow well, a ReIg effect to protect against burning and such with a ring duration.

You could definitely do that. As a bonus you don't even have to make a bunch of saplings; you can just harvest acorns from the forest and turn them into mighty oaks. Mass producing forests is quick and easy when you apply magic. Naturally they would get warped as hell from all that constant effect magic, but that's not a biggie, right?

Edit: oh, also on the architecture- I really like the germanic layout idea. For the living chambers, what about something like each magus having their own two story tower, where the bottom level is a living space and the second level is their lab, with as much or as little of a view as they want?

My very first 5th edition campaign had a four storey tower for each magus. Grog workshop on the ground floor, grog quarters on the first floor, magus living quarters on the second and lab on the top floor where you can get a nice big view. We also made sure that the two people who could cast the best Pilum of Fire lived in the gatehouse towers.

[Prak]

Oh, we're using european floor terminology? It's not an issue, I just need to keep that in mind.

edit: also, what would be the warp effect on trees? Just weird shapes?

[momothefiddler]

Edit: oh, also on the architecture- I really like the germanic layout idea. For the living chambers, what about something like each magus having their own two story tower, where the bottom level is a living space and the second level is their lab, with as much or as little of a view as they want?

Here's what I recently finished drawing up as a starting point.

Ground(First) Floor:

First(Second) Floor:

Laertes pointed out that there needs to be more food storage room and I was discussing some options for rearrangement and he pointed out (quite reasonably) that that should be in-character. What say the above is what she made, and we can IC discuss changes? I'll make a post about walking people through (i.e. explaining what, on the images, is text labels) and we can go from there?

[Prak]

sure

[Laertes]

Oh, we're using european floor terminology? It's not an issue, I just need to keep that in mind.

Since you're all American, I think it's probably easiest for me to switch over.

edit: also, what would be the warp effect on trees? Just weird shapes?

It's unpredictable, but depends heavily on the Form of the source of the warping. Let's use the tree as an example. Here are some things that might result from a tree being warped.

Animal - Tree grows wool instead of bark.
Aquam - Tree slowly replaces all the soil around itself with water, until its roots are floating in a pond.
Auram - Instead of a canopy of leaves, the tree has a small but dense cloud the same size and shape.
Corpus - Instead of fruit, the tree sprouts small bunches of human eyes.
Herbam - Tree appears perfectly normal but its seeds are those of any form of plant other than itself.
Ignem - Instead of sap, the tree has lava. Every cut becomes a very small volcano. Tree is immune to its own heat.
Imaginem - Tree sings constantly in a soft but audible voice.
Mentem - Tree gains human intelligence. If someone ties a piece of chalk to a twig it might be able to communicate via writing.
Terram - Instead of wood, the tree is made of stone.
Vim - The tree becomes immortal, a platonic essence of tree. It no longer gives fruit or seeds, and exists almost as a symbol rather than a real biological entity.

[momothefiddler]

So mad wizards can make their monstrous creations entirely without meaning to, just by leaving long-term (or major) spells on things?

Owlbears: not made on purpose, just the result of their mama bear (the mage's steed) having far too many flight and stealth spells cast on her.

[Laertes]

It also means that covenfolk may mutate slowly over time into hideous Things That Were Once Men. Or more likely, point-blank refuse to go anywhere near that magical spill. You made it, you can clean it up. Experienced covenfolk know what magic is and know what warping is and are very dubious about it.

[Prak]

I'm almost tempted to put the trees under a long term Vim effect, just to make that warp effect happen.

[Laertes]

I'm almost tempted to put the trees under a long term Vim effect, just to make that warp effect happen.

If you do, I am going to make Prak_Anima decide what happens when Nidratr does that. Nidratr may not appreciate having someone as capricious as Prak_Anima deciding on the results of it.

There are Creo Vim spells you can cast that just give things Warping.

[momothefiddler]

Oh gosh I never thought I'd register as spam just for discussing the layout. I should have guessed, though. At least I didn't say anything about sinks!

Anyway that bit was just how the cooking room lacked a need for expansion.