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  1. - Top - End - #121
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    The Esterwald Estate

    Bolten holds back a sigh of relief as Eduard warms up to the idea. He looks over the medical paperwork and clearly nods in acknowledgement of the noble's words. "I'll not speak of this to anyone. You have my word. It's a good thing you showed me this. Seems like a mere cage set-up for the leggings will be insufficient; too much risk of him breaking his legs in case of a bad fall. I'll have to armor them up somewhat to provide some protection and cushioning. And now I know that an independent means of propulsion beyond his own movements will be vital to futureproofing his ability to use them."

    Handing back the papers to the man, Bolten replies, "I don't think I need anything else at the moment, beyond those measurements, obviously. I just had a few more ideas for quality of life features for the apparatus, but I need to start putting these thoughts to paper and seeing how all the parts play together. It might take me a few days to have a proper schematic to show. Will that be acceptable?"

  2. - Top - End - #122
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    The Ranger's guild

    Shandara quietly walks her way through the ranger's guild, and even more silently without realizing it. Just how quiet the place was filled her with some sort of dread, as if she was a disturbance merely visiting the place. And judging by the looks she was given, it seemed so. When she got to what she thought was the captain's room, she rapped on the open door gingerly.

    Shandara herself was dressed pretty similarly to the days before. Today in a relatively simple skirt and blouse, though they were dyed some pleasing colors. She still wore her silk cloak, however, the hood was still up. Sometimes when indoors and taking refuge from the sun, she would lower her hood, but in this case she was clinging to it almost like a safety blanket. Her closed parasol was in one hand, and her pack was worn normally along both her shoulders.

    When the scarred woman crossly asked Shandara what she needed, she cleared her throat and quietly said, "Uhm, you are Captain Eshanel, correct? I am with the Royal Artificery Society.. about the commission for the weapon you wanted enchanted..?" She seemed somewhat unsure of herself; perhaps it was shyness or tenseness from the environment. Maybe it was just the way the captain looked at her too. It did seem that many elves (or half-elves even) did not look at her kindly. Or was it just Shandara's imagination?
    Last edited by WindStruck; 2021-02-18 at 04:33 PM.
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  3. - Top - End - #123
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    The Goldrow Bank

    Zeal hops over the teller’s counter and crouches down to avoid the front guards. She crouch walks while searching behind the counter for some way to bypass the security in the next room. At the backdoor, she lowers her tinted glasses and raises a different pair off around her neck and to her eyes. The sheath in her wrist straightens enough to release lockpick tools into her hand. She inserts a pry bar into the lock, straightens the disks, and tensions the lock. A hook slides in through lock's disks, and she quickly picks the lock. She slips inside the security hallway.

    She whistles in her head and tries not to set off any magic trips by looking haphazardly. That is a lot of tiles. She switches her glasses. She searches the floor/walls/ceiling for a bypass that would allow her to avoid the hallway. A secret door? A master switch? She didn’t find anything on the way down. The tiles themselves could be the answer.

    There could be a way to cross them safely. She pulls out paper and paths her route. She doesn’t have to disable every trap. She only needs to make a safe route and disable the traps she can’t avoid. The magic traps are the hardest to avoid. If she discovers a pattern to the tiles, she could potentially find safer tiles faster, though she would still need to check each one individually. She takes time to search out the traps near her and from afar.

    A sealed jar comes out of her backpack. She unstops the lid and pours sand at her feet. She presses her mind upon the psychoactive sand and shapes the sand to her will. If the tiles allow instead of jumping from tile to tile like the gymnast she isn’t, she will create a solid bridge from safe tile to safe tile and walk across and disable any traps in her way.

    * post roll count doesn't match database
    Last edited by Elbeyon; 2021-02-20 at 10:06 PM. Reason: Woops. I edited this post instead of submitting a new one

  4. - Top - End - #124
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    The Esterwald estate
    "Yes, that should be fine." Eduard responds. "Ideally, this device of yours would be ready in time for the harvest festival, so that my father can attend the festivities at the palace standing up straight, rather than confined to a chair carried by servants. Do you think you could manage that?"

    The Ranger's guild
    The half-elf shakes her head in response to Shandara's introduciton Not in denial, but as if attempting to clear her mind. "Right, of course. I just hadn't expected a..." A slight blush appears on the half of her face still capable of showing emotion that way. "I'm sorry. Please, grab a chair..." she gestures at the simple wooden chairs clustered around the small table in her room. "And I'll explain what I need the weapon to do."

    Once Shandara is seated across from her position at her desk she begins her explanation. "I assume you've heard of the Deathless Kings? Every couple of decades we've got one of them waking up beyond the Southern border, looking to take back their empire of old. They'd be welcome to most of it too, as most of it is inhospitable desert, but since we own the few good bits now, they always end up sending their undead legions at us sooner rather than later."

    "A year or so ago, another one of the bastards woke up and started raising its armies. Luckily, an enterprising 'adventure archeologist', or 'tomb robber' for those of us disinclined to use fancy words, stumbled across his tomb complex and managed to make it out again to warn the Empire. Defeating one of the bastards in pitched battle is always a costly affair, and the tombs are deep in the desert so sending a big enough army to raze it to the ground wasn't an option either, so instead I led a squad of Rangers to take the bugger out." She falls quiet and stares off in the distance beyond the dark elf for a moment before continuing.

    "We'd underestimated just how many soldiers he'd raised, and he'd even started getting his more dangerous vassals up and moving. Nonetheless, we managed to push past his defenses and take our swords and spells to the undead beast himself. We even managed to down him, despite being swarmed by his minions." She falls silent again, a bit longer now as she searches for her next words.

    "Problem is, they don't stay down. There's a specific ritual to kill one of these monsters, and we didn't have the time to complete it. We tried, but we just couldn't hold back the tide of undead. I lost half my unit, and all we did was temporarily inconvenience that beast." Anger creeps into her voice as she continues her story to the point that she was almost shouting that last bit.

    "Sorry." She apologizes after taking a moment to calm down. "A lot of the wounds I suffered in there are still raw. I've been on many missions for the Ranger corps, and since obtaining my captaincy I've never lost. Dragon hunts? Some burn wounds maybe, but we felled the beasts. Marauding giant tribes? We cowed them into submission. Drow slavers taking our people? We got them back, with no one left behind. But this thing? I've been told we did was well as could be expected, but we're Rangers. Defeat is not an option."

    "Which brings me to the weapon I need made. Having it be especially effective against undead would help when we make our way back into the beast's tomb, but it's main purpose is killing the Deathless King, and making it stick. I don't want to have to rely on complicated and time-consuming rituals, I want to be able to hack the beast to pieces and know that it will never rise again. Can you make me something like that?"

    Spoiler: common knowledge on the Deathless kings
    Show

    The Deathless kings are undead, remnants of some great prior civilization that called the lands to the south of the empire their home. They're fearsome combatants and are known to curse those that dare face them with a disease that whither the victim away. They also tend to raise great armies of other undead creatures which they lead in assaults on the Empire. They're very difficult to put down, and even harder to keep down, though over four subsequent incursions the empire has devised a way to ensure they don't return to plague them once more.

    (there's more to be known, but that'll require some research, though you could roll knowledge religion and/or knowledge history to see fi you remember anything else of the top of your head).
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  5. - Top - End - #125
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    The Ranger's Guild

    Ah, Shandara had definitely heard of these Deathless Kings. It was a prominent story she had seen mentioned several times as she perused libraries and archives, both as articles of important news and in more historical documentaries. She listened on the edge of her seat as the captain spun her tale. And when her other exploits were mentioned, including drow slavers, Shandara tried her best to maintain a neutral facial expression. It was definitely an awkward topic to bring up, however briefly.

    "Erm, I understand, Captain.. I am sorry for your loss." Though both meanings of the phrase were accurate, Shandara did not say it with any hint of mirth.

    Then came the important question: could she make it? Bringing her hands together and resting them on the desk, she answered as confidently as she could muster. "Well, I believe it is possible. However, as I understand it, no small nor simple amount of magic is capable of ending one of the Deathless Kings for good. And it would take at least two extremely powerful mages to cast the ritual.. If I was able to enlist the aid of two such individuals, I should be able to store the magic into the long sword you wish to be created."
    Last edited by WindStruck; 2021-02-19 at 03:20 PM.
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  6. - Top - End - #126
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    Royal Artifcer Society - Crystal lab 2

    Z was sitting with the miniscule chissel hacking into a small blue crystal. He only worked with jewelry on occations and his workshop wasn't outfitted to do the detail oriented work he was attempting to do. He squinted for a moment he nooded in satisfaction and put the chissel down. Now that the foundational engravings had been made all that was left to do was to fill in the modules and the pathways with the proper material.

    This modular style of enhancement was incredibly new. In fact the invention of it had constituted the entirety of his graduation project. It wasn't more efficient or faster than other styles of enchantments but it was so much easier to implement since the modular nature meant that you didn't need to say recalculate the entire bloody spell matrix every time you wanted to change even a tiny small part. Bad memories from enchantment 101.

    He started out with the pathways that would be transporting the psionic energy since detail was the least important with that part. As he was intending for the crystal to do two distinct things he had had to make two distinct pathway networks. He was quite proud that he had been able to arrange it so that they didn't overlap, thus changing them into a single network, while placing modules such that some of the modules could be reused in both networks thus cutting costs.

    He grapped a small pencil and dipped it in the mixture based on folugub tongue, for then to slowly and methodically filling the pathways with the mixture. Granted folugub the ideal component for pathway conductor as it wasn't as efficient as one would have liked. Ideally a mixture based on temporal filcher or gray glutton would have allowed for more daily uses, however the first was hard to find and the second was hard to kill once you found it, and given that this was intended as a prototype there wasn't much point in letting each network be used more than 3 times a day.

    The modules in the memory capture network was fairly straightforward. Crystals was generally well suited for networks related to the mind and blue crystals in particular was well attuned to memory. The integration modules was of standard design: a psionic matrix for integrating the psionic energy inside the cryrstal structure with a connected matrix to draw energy continually from the astral plane, one to extract that energy to power the network, and one to integrate the memory into the crystal structure in a way that didn't mix it with the energy.

    The memory recieval modules however wasn't as straightforward. The challenge was to extract the memory in perfect condition while allowing the design to have space for adding additional modules later. The connection matrix were simple as even the simplest of psionics was able to connect to the mind and it didn't have a penetration matrix attached so unless the recipient was willing it could never penetrate past the first mental layer. It did however have a locational matrix attached in order to aid the user in locating the memory they were intending to put in the crystal and a module that, if the user allowed it to work, would cause the user to enter a meditative state that ordered the mindscape so connections to relevant memories was easier to identify. The matrix intended to extract the memory is industry standard and it has not one but three support matrix in order to ensure that the memory was transported fully intact out of the complex layers of mind. It was probably overkill but according to his research it seemed that this was the part of the extraction process that most often caused failure.

    The extraction network was where Z had had to be creative. It seemed relatively easy to insert memories wholesale, you just had to have the memory, make the connection in the mindspace, and complete the transfer. From his research it seemed that there were two major challenges. First, while the mind was continually expanding in capacity, it was also continually being filled with new memories, connections and personality traits. As such you could pop the mind like a balloon by overfilling it with memories, and while it was possible to create space by destroying memories you had to be really careful with not destroying a foundational memory. Secondly, the mind and soul was in constant communication and a too sudden change to the mind was easily interpreted by the soul as an attack. This would cause it to go into defensive mode, which wouldn't just destroy the inserted memories but the collatoral might also destroy important or even foundational memories.

    To circumvent those issues Z had decided to instead hijack the natural processes the mind formed memories, namely through processing experience. As such, rather than doing a forcibly insert, the unique modules in the reconstruction network fed the memory in real time to the sensory process such that the user would experience the memory and thus allow the natural integration processes to do the bulk of the work. He added an adjacent matrix to lock the body while the memory was being experienced and connected it such that as soon as one exited the memory, either by it finishing or by voluntarily resisting it one regained that control.

    Once he finished with that project he started the process of making a similar crystal. On this second crystal he adds a set of matrix to locate and process the psychic impression associated with the relevant memories, and to use that information to add additional information to the memory stored in the crystal. He also adds a matrix to cut the psychic connection between the enhanced memory and the donor after processing is completed to avoid any weird interactions related to psychic imprints.

    After all of that is done he makes a questionaire for himself(including a few relevant things he can't remember) and attempts to extract and reconstruct the memory of his breakfast and lunch today for the first and second crystal respectively. He fills out the questionaire before extraction(during which he knows most of the answers), after extractions(during which he expects to know none or very few of the answers) and after reconstruction(during which he expects to know the same things as during first time he filled it in for the first memory crystal and hopes to know the answers to everything for the psychically enhanced memory crystal). What are his results?

    Afterwards he goes huntin on the psionics department for something to make sure that his mind is still intact and undamaged. He doesn't have such a tool himself but he hopes that either the psionics department does or the enhancement department. He doesn't expect any damages, if he did he wouldn't have done it, but with this type of experiments it's better to play it safe.
    Last edited by Sønderjye; 2021-02-19 at 07:39 PM.

  7. - Top - End - #127
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    The Esterwald Estate

    Bolten stops to do some mental calculations before nodding. "Yes, I think I can manage that... barring any extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances. To be perfectly honest, though, I'd much rather take too long and make something that's safe than give your father a 'half-wound clock', as my mother used to say." He means to show his concern for the baron's well-being, but realizes how that might come off to Eduard. Boltens holds up his hands in a placating wave and stutters, "Er, what I mean is... I will do everything in my power to make sure that the apparatus will be ready by the festival." Clamping his lips shut, Bolten mentally chastises himself. Sometimes, it would be easier if I just didn't talk at all...

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    The Ranger's guild
    "I can arrange a meeting with Duncan, he can help with the divine portion of the power required. My unit's Arcanist though..." the Ranger captain shakes her head. "She didn't make it. I'll do some asking around, but as usual most Rangers are out and about on empire business, so I'm not certain I could find a suitable mage for you."

    The Esterwald estate
    "Thank you, mr. Cogturner." Eduard doesn't seem to be particularly bothered by Bolten's comment on taking his time to make certain it works. "If it proves impossible to deliver a safe solution before the harvest festival despite your best efforts, I'll understand, of course. Attending with the support of servants would still be marginally better than something going awry with your creation. Still, if you can manage in time, house Esterwald will be very grateful." He stands up from behind his desk and extends his hand for Bolten to shake. "If there's anything else you need from us, don't hesitate to ask."
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  9. - Top - End - #129
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    The Ranger's Guild

    Shandara nods at the mention of the divine caster. Then she eventually asks, "Whoever it is need not be a member of the guild, necessarily.. But what of the ritual itself? Is it written down anywhere? As you can imagine, it would take extra time to prepare for such an enchantment. It might take longer than it takes you to find a suitable mage..."
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    The Ranger's guild
    "I should have some information on the ritual somewhere here." captain Eshanel gets up and walks to the bookcase. She picks out a roughly bound book with all kinds of loose pages sticking out of it. She picks out several of these, and hands them to Shandara. "These are the notes Elizae made on the ritual in preparation for our assault. I assume you could find the full version somewhere in your Society's archives as well."

    Spoiler: Elizae's notes on the ritual
    Show

    The notes do describe it in full, but its clear that whoever wrote them mostly did so for personal use, and they weren't really intended to explain the ritual to anyone else.

    The ritual consists of three steps. First two inward focused magic circles are cast. First a magic circle against evil is put in place, and then what looks like an altered version of a magic circle against good. The notes contain a diagram for how this last one is to be cast, with a note that it's only purpose is to keep all the positive energy that will be pumped into the circle from going elsewhere.

    The second step consists of the cleric channeling the power of their deity into the interior of the circle. This step has very little explanation, but Elizae does note that 'while Duncan does his thing, I need to focus on maintaining the circles, and be ready to counter any attempts by the Deathless King's spirit to escape'.

    The final step involves sundering the protections the Deathless King has against positive energy, and the bindings that keep its soul locked to the mortal realm. This is like a standard Dispel effect, but a lot more precise, and with a lot more power behind it, requiring both caster's to cooperate on the casting to muster the required strength.

    The final sentence of the note reads: 'If all goes well, the creature will suddenly find itself without any sort of protection in an area that might as well be the plane of positive energy for all the difference it'll make. This should completely destroy what passes for its soul in a matter of seconds.'

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  11. - Top - End - #131
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    The Ranger's Guild

    Shandara skims through the notes at first. She purses her lips, not like a kiss, but one of some disappointment and confusion. "It seems to work different from what I thought. It basically just overwhelms them with positive energy.. and traps the soul so it cannot leave the circle to be sure of its destruction.." She reads over the notes again, more carefully.

    She makes a face again. "Hm. I'll try to find the ritual in our archives as well. But I am thinking that I'd need to come up with a slightly different approach. I will still need the aid of Duncan later.. I will meet you again in some days. Is this the only place I can find you?"
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  12. - Top - End - #132
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    RAF - Psionics department

    After running the experiments Z is a little worried about the headache. He wasn't expcting that and getting a headache after messing with your own mind is definitely a red flag. Normally forgetting a memory shouldn't cause headaches and similarly noticing your senses similarly shouldn't. He had a few ideas as to why it might be. One scenario was that the connections to the original memory still existed however they just lead to a blank area in the mindspace and the lose connections was causing the headache. A more potentially dangerous scenario was that the abrupt removal of the memory was interpreted by the soul as an attack and the headache was a symptom of a mild defensive stance. For recovering the enhanced memory it could just that the senses were sharper than he was used to and it either could be fixed with being able to selectively ignore parts of the memory or with growing accustomed to the sharper senses. Regardless, Z didn't know before he look a proper look at his mind space.

    "Yes I'll pay your fee," Z says trying to keep his annoyance from his face as he hands over the 80 gp. He then proceeds to scan his mind to see what exactly caused the headache and to see how it looks both with and without the memory. Additionally he uses a tool to see whether the module he used to sever the psychic connection between the donor and the memory works as intended.
    Last edited by Sønderjye; 2021-02-20 at 07:46 AM.

  13. - Top - End - #133
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    RAF - Psionics department
    The reason for the fee become clearer as Z is brought to a room with a rather sophisticated rig. A comfortable looking chair is positioned in the middle of the room. The device is positioned in the middle of what seems like a large gyroscope, but rather than the chair moving, the large rig allows for a variety of arcane instruments to be moved around.

    "Please, take a seat." A youngish elf wearing a white coat is standing at a bank of controls, next to the chair. "This'll take about half an hour all told." He tells Z. "You can do some light reading while I work, but try to avoid anything more stressful than that. And before you ask...." he raises a hand, forestalling a question "... this will not allow me to read your mind or anything like that. I'll just be checking whether there are any gaps where memories are supposed to be, as well as looking for any other anomalies in your cognitive processes."

    ***

    Half an hour later the various spinning instruments come to a rest, and the elf steps up towards where Z is seated. "The good news is that there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with your cognitive processes. The head-ache you mentioned was probably just a stress-response from whatever experiment you where running, and isn't a sign of any sort of permanent damage." He takes a moment to let that sink in and consult some notes. However, you have lost a memory, probably about an event in the past month. Based on the size of the hole, it's either something that had a lot of emotional charge for you, or alternatively, it would be about a full day's worth of memories. Does this mean anything to you? Any unexplained holes in your memory that you know of?"
    Last edited by DeTess; 2021-02-20 at 08:36 AM.
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  14. - Top - End - #134
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    The Esterwald Estate

    Surprised by the friendly gesture from the noble, Bolten stands up (on account of his shorter height) and shakes Eduard's hand with a shy smile. "I will keep my requests reasonable, serrah."

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    RAF - Psionics department

    Quote Originally Posted by Unnamed NPC
    "The good news is that there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with your cognitive processes. The head-ache you mentioned was probably just a stress-response from whatever experiment you where running, and isn't a sign of any sort of permanent damage."
    "Would you mind elaborating?" Z asks after hearing the diagnose. "What kind of stress response and what provoked it? I was under the understanding that trying to remember a missing memory only resulted in not being able to remember it and not in headaches? And what about the enhanced memory viewing?"

    Quote Originally Posted by Unnamed NPC
    "However, you have lost a memory, probably about an event in the past month. Based on the size of the hole, it's either something that had a lot of emotional charge for you, or alternatively, it would be about a full day's worth of memories. Does this mean anything to you? Any unexplained holes in your memory that you know of?"
    "Nothing I was expecting to be of that caliber," Z says, concern apparent in his voice: "Is there a way it can be restored?"

  16. - Top - End - #136
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    The Esterwald estate
    After finishing his meeting with Eduard Esterwald the younger, Bolten is led back to the estate entrance by a servant. before leaving he's handed a sheet of paper containing all the measurements of the Baron's legs and feet that he might need for his project.

    The Psionics department
    "Ah, let me think for a moment about the best way to explain this..." The Elf stares of in the distance for a couple of seconds, before continuing. "There's an essential difference between naturally forgetting things and magically losing a memory. Naturally forgetting things affects not just one memory, but a lot of associated memories as well. Like, you might remember one or two things from when you where very young, but most of the rest of those memories have gone. Your mind considers this decay as just a natural part of the landscape of your memory. But magical or alchemical removal of a memory leaves a hole. You've got perfectly fine memories from before the event, and from after the event, but not from the event itself, and this bothers the mind. The harder you try to remember it, the more parts of your mind start panicking as it knows there should be something there, but it's gone. That naturally puts quite a bit of stress on your system, which results in the head-ache."

    "I can't really speak for the head-ache caused by the other part of your memory." He shrugs. "It was probably due sensory overload combined with the stress you'd already put on your mind. I expect the head-ache to fade in a matter of hours."

    "As for your missing memory, we might be able to restore that, though it depends on the method used to remove it. If someone with a lot of skill at removing memories got to take their time removing this one then it's probably gone forever, but if it was a quicker spell or an alchemical solution then I reckon we could bring most of it back. It'd have decayed a bit though, as if it's something that happened a year, rather than a couple of weeks ago." The elf walks to a small cabinet in the room, unlocks the door and takes a out a small bottle. "If the memory was erased with traditional means, then this should restore it. Just take it tonight just before you go to sleep. The potion will knock you out for a couple of hours while it attempts to repair the paths in your memory that have been cut loose, and if it works you should remember things again in the morning when you wake up."

    After giving the potion to Z he turns back to his notes, before suddenly straightening, as if suddenly remembering something. "Ah, one thing though. As you don't seem to know what this memory could be, it'd be best if you made sure you aren't alone when you wake up. Have a friend or family member be nearby, just in case the memory you lost was something that had better been left forgotten."
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  17. - Top - End - #137
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    The Psionics department

    Z nods along as the elf explains. That seemed definitely to be worth the 80 gp.

    When given the potion he studies it for a bit. "How does it work? I thought the memory was gone, how is it reconstructed?"

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    The Psionics department
    "Right, if the memory is actually fully erased, then getting it back is very difficult." The elf explains. "By which I mean, if you're willing to spend a year or so on call as my test subject, I might be able to figure out a way to get a tiny bit of it back. It's what I'm writing my thesis on." He raises his hand in a placating gesture to forestall any objections. "However, most methods that cause amnesia don't go that far, because it either requires full cooperation, is very difficult to accomplish, takes a lot of time, requires some really expensive components, or some combination of these. Generally, an amnesia spell or potion just cuts off all connections that would allow you to access the memory, but the memory itself is left intact. Over time it'll whither away like any other memory you stop bringing up, but if you get to it within a month or two it's possible to restore the connections. That's what that potion does."
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    Bolten's Workshop

    After leaving the estate and receiving the baron's measurements, Bolten wastes no time in heading back to his workshop. There is some serious brainstorming to be done.

    With paper and quill, the dwarf quickly sets to work. The measurements prove invaluable in keeping the design tight and constrained, providing a set of operational limits that Bolten must work within. He can't make this too bulky because this has to be a chassis that the baron is able to sit comfortably in and there can't be so many exterior parts that it shreds whatever seating the noble uses. The basic design for the leg braces become like a lighter suit of armor with plenty of crossing elements for support and to disperse force. The back area with the seating and the upper part of the calves are designed to be able to swing open like a door and allow the man to slide his legs into and out of the apparatus. The primary clockwork gears are placed on the sides of the hips, at the front and back of the knees, and in front of the ankle area. Along with the obvious forward and backward motion of the gears, a central gear will also be necessary to allow for flexing movements and twisting. A fair bit of resistance will have to be set for these particular gears, however; Bolten shudders at the thought of them twisting too far... The swinging gate entry design also might allow for the baron to open the back in case he needed to... use the facilities. Bolten does what he can to incorporate a similar swinging gate design on the front of the chassis. The baron will be wearing pants underneath these, anyway, so it won't be scandalous.

    Now comes the issue of controls... Earlier, Bolten had mentioned a control rod like golems use, but he's not sure how cost-effective that really is. On the one hand, it's far easier to control a set of legs than an entire body. On the other hand, the demands for precision are higher and Bolten is not a fan of binding elemental spirits to any of his machinery. An external set of control switches or levers is an obvious alternative, but that does create problems with an asymmetrical design and the potential for accidental brushes against the controls. Perhaps having a lid to cover the controls when not being used will be sufficient? There may also be the potential for a circlet or crown that would allow mental command of the legs, just like normally, but Bolten worries that such magic may be beyond him. It might even be worth considering multiple methods of control just to be on the safe side in case one fails. The old man would not be easy to move in such a state if the device froze up after control measures failed for whatever reason.

    As for the power source, Bolten wonders if winding the apparatus every day will be sufficient enough for the baron's needs. He is aware that the humanoid body does naturally produce its own electricity, so there is the potential to utilize that to minimize power usage while the legs are in standby. Perhaps some sort of arcane battery, either separate or present on the chassis itself? He'll need to see what the most efficient method of powering the movements will be. Time to do some research...

    Before engaging in study, Bolten also tinkers with a few rough sketches of adding quality of life features like belt loops, a collapsible grasping hook that can be attached to a holster on one leg, sealed compartments for holding objects of varying sizes and importance, and even a foldable cup holder. At a certain point, Bolten forces himself to put the pen down. He only has so much real estate to work with and the essentials came first. He begins pouring over reading materials, trying to turn the hypothetical into plausible.

  20. - Top - End - #140
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    The Goldrow Bank

    Zeal hops over the teller’s counter and crouches down to avoid the front guards. She crouch walks while searching behind the counter for some way to bypass the security in the next room. At the backdoor, she lowers her tinted glasses and raises a different pair off around her neck and to her eyes. The sheath in her wrist straightens enough to release lockpick tools into her hand. She inserts a pry bar into the lock, straightens the disks, and tensions the lock. A hook slides in through lock's disks, and she quickly picks the lock. She slips inside the security hallway.

    She whistles in her head and tries not to set off any magic trips by looking haphazardly. That is a lot of tiles. She switches her glasses. She searches the floor/walls/ceiling for a bypass that would allow her to avoid the hallway. A secret door? A master switch? She didn’t find anything on the way down. The tiles themselves could be the answer.

    There could be a way to cross them safely. She pulls out paper and paths her route. She doesn’t have to disable every trap. She only needs to make a safe route and disable the traps she can’t avoid. The magic traps are the hardest to avoid. If she discovers a pattern to the tiles, she could potentially find safer tiles faster, though she would still need to check each one individually. She takes time to search out the traps near her and from afar.

    A sealed jar comes out of her backpack. She unstops the lid and pours sand at her feet. She presses her mind upon the psychoactive sand and shapes the sand to her will. If the tiles allow instead of jumping from tile to tile like the gymnast she isn’t, she will create a solid bridge from safe tile to safe tile and walk across and disable any traps in her way.

  21. - Top - End - #141
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    The Ranger's guild
    "This'll be the most reliable place to find me. I've still got some healing to do and reports to finish on the mission against the creature. If I'm not here...." The ranger considers for a moment. "... there's half a dozen places I could be. I'll ask the caretakers to point you in the right direction in that case. Which reminds me, I don't think I caught your name, miss Artificer of the Royal Artificery society."
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  22. - Top - End - #142
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    The Ranger's Guild

    "Oh, right..! It's Shandara. Just Shandara, if you would please." Her last name, if she even technically had one still, was missing.

    "Farewell, captain," she said, as she stood up and took her leave.

    --

    Hm. There was a lot of stuff Shandara was wanting to do at once, she felt. Not overwhelming, but her time definitely needed to be managed more. Before she headed back to the campus area where her home and the archives were, she swung by the markets to try and find some ingredients for a drink she was thinking of.

    Market District - Raspugobble's Emporium

    Despite calling itself an emporium, the place was actually a little small, dingy, and cramped full of stuff. Who is to say how old all the stuff in the jars and bottles really were? But a trained eye could at least tell much of the stuff was hard to come by. Many things were not from the surface, and much of what was from the surface blended well with the rest for more potent, more stable, more strange alchemical concoctions.

    A shrewd hobgoblin ran the place, who undoubtedly knew his stuff. He was probably a skilled alchemist too, but oddly enough not part of the society. Probably because he had many black market dealings on the side too, which he may have found far more lucrative and fitting for his lifestyle. And whenever Shandara had come in, he always looked at her with a creepy, toothy grin.

    Still, there weren't many other places to find such ingredients. Shandara knows she had looked.. though given the size of Vaungate, it was a lot to look through. She had found this place, perhaps only by chance.
    Last edited by WindStruck; 2021-02-21 at 05:22 AM.
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  23. - Top - End - #143
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    The Psionics department

    "That does sound interesting," Z responds when the elf elaborates on his thesis project: "No promises about being a test subject but I am starting to dapple into Mnemomancy myself so it is interesting. What are your ideas of how restoration could happen for a fully deleted memory?"

    "That's actually quite an elegant solution," he rumenates for a long second before continueing: "How does it locate the memory it wants to restore, how does it create the connections, and what would happen if it tried to restore a memory that was in fact gone?"
    Last edited by Sønderjye; 2021-02-21 at 07:30 AM.

  24. - Top - End - #144
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    The Psionics department

    "Ah, the methods I'm studying are mostly theoretical at the moment, but..." The elf thinks for a moment. "You might have noticed while trying to recall that memory that you'd lost that eventually you did start to remember things, but the thing you remembered was a composite of other, similar memories. Still, those memories did at least concern the same topic, so there is some part of the mind that still knows what the lost memory was about. I'm studying that mechanism and seeing if I can use it to get a more accurate restoration."

    "Regarding the potion, it doesn't exactly target a specific missing memory. Rather, it restores all sundered memory connections, or as many as it has power for at least. If you had a lot of holes in your memory than you might need to take multiple doses, but that isn't the case for you. The connections themselves are restored by... I suppose you could say they're 'extrapolated outward until they hit the memory they were initially connected to', but that's a gross oversimplification of the architecture of the mind. I could lend you several texts in the topic if you're interested."
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  25. - Top - End - #145
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    The Psionics department

    "That does sound like a really interesting," Z replies. He is thoughtful for a moment before putting that thought behind: "Where can I read about your research once you are ready to publish it?"

    "Ah, I see," Z responds: "I am definitely interested in those."

    Once their conversation is about to be over but before he leaves he says: "This have been a very fruitful conversaiton. Allow me to compensate you for your time." He hands over a few coin: "Would you be open to be contacted in case I stumble across other challenges when working with mnemonics?"

    If he says yes Z will exchange names and contact information.

  26. - Top - End - #146
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    The Psionics department
    "I expect my research would be available in the archives, as well as here at the department. It'll be a while yet before I'm ready to publish anything, however." The elf responds.

    he refuses the offer of money. "Don't worry about it, it is always nice tot alk to someone else interested in this field. I'm happy to discuss things again in the future if you wish, though I'd like to hear a bit more about your own research as well then. You can drop by the department or sent a message here..." he falls quiet, a look of consternation crossing his face. "Oh, I've done it again, haven't I? Sorry, I have a bad habit of forgetting to introduce myself. The people here at the department call me Reno, you can as well."
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  27. - Top - End - #147
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    Shandara buys a mildly hallucinogenic mushroom from the seedy hobgoblin's shop, as well as some clumps of edible phosphorescent moss she recognizes from underground. Also at his store, she buys ingredients for the counter-poisons to Blackfinger's Salt, Dark Reaver Powder, and 'Oil of Restfulness', some common ingested poisons assassins would use to incapacitate or outright slay their marks. And also, a small vial of spider venom.

    Out in the more mundane markets, she also picks up a couple of other nice mushrooms which would be great for fermenting, and some rich, aromatic spices. Not just any would do. Most would break down during the fermentation process, and so she had to carefully select one that would maintain most of its flavor.

    Spoiler: ooc
    Show
    So... could I get a cost estimate for all this?


    She returns home from her shopping trip with the sun already sinking below the horizon. Then she sets to work, in her kitchen, chopping up and grinding the mushrooms and moss into a paste. Ah, she would need a sweetener too.. or something else for the yeast to feed on. It just so happened that she had a jar of giant ant royal jelly.. or at least, half a jar left.

    It was a bit of an exotic sweetener she used in tea sometimes. Oh well, might as well use the rest of it so she didn't have to go out again. It would be a fitting addition to the mixture. Being a type of honey, the giant ant's royal jelly typically would not go bad. However, if diluted with some water, and kept warm, a spore life form like yeast should thrive in it without issues.

    Shandara decided that she would add the spices later and the counter-poisons last. But the spider venom was probably best going in now. With the sweetened fungal/moss concoction on a very low heat, Shandara's stomach was rumbling for some dinner, and after that, she headed to the archives to see if she could find this ritual used to slay a Deathless King.

    Also, there were a few other questions that Shandara was hoping to answer while in the archives: was positive energy alone enough to destroy a twisted soul of an undead? And if destroyed, was unbinding it from the mortal realm even necessary?

    Spoiler: rolls
    Show
    knowledge: religion (1d20+10)[13]
    knowledge: arcana: (1d20+18)[29]
    knowledge: planes: (1d20+10)[19]

    with library bonus
    Last edited by WindStruck; 2021-02-21 at 03:19 PM.
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  28. - Top - End - #148
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    Bolten's workshop

    Studies prove to be beneficial, but not all-encompassing. Powering the apparatus will be relatively easy. All he really needs is a small bit of Ghost's Crystal to serve as the "heart" of the clockwork machine. Cut properly, it could provide the force for moving the gears without a monstrous amount of energy.

    Hmmm... Maybe I can get Shandara to help me with that? She's a jeweler, after all. I could either pay her or owe her a favor...

    The control system proves to be more of an issue. Making a sealed control box for the chassis seems doable, but the means to make a control "crown" work elude him. Bolten briefly debates putting up a notice on the commission board before deciding that he doesn't want to deal with the turn-around time. Gathering his notes, Bolten makes his way down to the Artificery Department of the Society grounds. It would be too much to hope to meet with Curator Dustmark himself, but perhaps someone there might help put him on the right track.
    Spoiler: OOC
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    I'd ask if anyone wants to jump in with this particular bit, but it seems like everyone is busy doing their own thing.

  29. - Top - End - #149
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    The Artificery department
    The Artificery department is a large, blocky building connected to the archives by a raised walkway. like all department buildings it contains a multitude of lecture halls, study rooms and workshops. The insides are a warren of stairs, hallways and rooms, with a multitude of signs providing the minimum of information needed to get around. however, there is a reception desk next to the main entrance, with a bored looking gnome sitting behind it, reading a book.
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  30. - Top - End - #150
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    The Goldrow Bank

    She double checks the tile from the left wall, that had the greatest pressure, to search out more information. Zeal works to temporarily stop the trigger mechanism and digs underneath the tile to disable the suspected trap. If/when she thinks she disabled that (false) trap, she will move up a row and double check the three adjacent second row tiles for traps. The riddle remains unsolved, but the answer may lie in the second row. She obsessively searches for the answer to the puzzle. There is a joy to be found in exploring the unknown, not sure if underneath the next rock is poisonous gas or a key.

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