The Royal Artificery Society - OOC II: electric boogaloo

[DeTess]

Okay, I think Shandara's "Day 1" would be going to the archives to look up the spells mentioned (freezing object spell, and plant preservation spell) and copying them to her spellbook, and going to cut some suitable gems for the violin. This does probably include needing to go out and buy two suitable gems to cut, so I guess that's actually what she does first while most business are still open...

Ah so let's see.
1) buy gems/supplies
2) go to archives and copy spells
3) cut gems.

Would this all take one day or would I need two for the gems, given how long high value items generally take to take?

preparing the gems would take more time, yeah. So you'd be doen with those around halfway through day 3 or so on this schedule.

[WindStruck]

preparing the gems would take more time, yeah. So you'd be done with those around halfway through day 3 or so on this schedule.

I guess that's fair enough. So then I guess you'll have me make some rolls, right? I have two spells (magecraft and crafter's fortune) that would help.

And anything to RP, or will we just speed through this?

[DeTess]

Yes, I think it's fine to just cover these days with just a couple rolls for you and @mrabdiel.

[WindStruck]

Okay. I'm only really expecting a bit of trouble with the plant spell because I think the scope we need is far more than just preserving a single flower. I imagine a "gentle repose for plants" might be easy to find but only for very small volumes, so it may take some modification to be suitable for Aiden's idea.

Spellcraft with investigative mind:

(1d20+16)[31] or (1d20+16)[36]

And then for the gem cutting: (1d20+23)[42] using both crafting buffs.

What will be the total cost for the gems and scribing these spells, by the way?

[MrAbdiel]

Okilly Dokilly. Let's see about this business.

Day 1's all complete.
Day 2: Perform at Injured Fellow Plaza - (+2 Masterwork, +1 Songbird, +8 Inexplicable Luck) (1d20+26)[42]
Hope he likes it, poor lad.

Now, the 1/2 Day on the Violin. I'll use Shandara's Crafter's Fortune on this one; Inexplicable Luck is the greater bonus but it just feels exploitative to hit that button every time, plus I like the idea of the first input on this work being Shandara-assisted.

It requires 1000SP of progress to complete a masterwork instrument. The DC is normally 20, but I typically crank it up to just to finish the project quicker. The material isn't unfamiliar exactly anymore, but I'll leave the DC up to you DeTess. Carpentry - (1d20+27)[44].

Progress will be (Result)*DC, finally divided by 14 (because it's a half day rather than a week) of progress in SP.

Day 3: Full day on the violin. Using Inexplicable Luck this time. Carpentry - (1d20+30)[35]. (Total gain: Result*DC/7)

Day 4: Half day on the violin. Using Inexplicable Luck this time. Carpentry - (1d20+30)[31]. (Total gain: Result*DC/14) I'll take 10 to play at the Plaza this time.

And then.. assess progress.

EDIT: Dang. Nice probust success on the first roll, but then a natural 5 and 1 on the next efforts. Inexplicable Luck has saved Aiden from screwing up the project entirely, I think.

[WindStruck]

So, end of day 3 (for Shandara) maybe I'll swing by the archives and see if she has been approved to take a look at that forbidden book?

[DeTess]

@windstruck, you can find a spell like gentle repose but for plants without too much difficulty, finding both details for the spell as well as ways to enchant objects to apply the effect (such as a vase that casts it on its contents). However, all applications you can find are for relatively small bundles of plants, such as bouquets of flowers. Applying it to something as big as a tree is probably not impossible, but will require significantly more power, which means you'll likely have to design an enchantment to handle it, as casting it yourself will be beyond your ability.

The gem was for holding power to expand the field right? Let's say it's 500 gp int otal to cut and enchant it for holding and releasing te energy.

Also, yes, when you check in at the end of day 3 your application ahs been processed and you can read the book at the archives.

Spoiler: Adaptations of psychic abilities using Arcane principles

Show

The book starts by giving an overview of what the author refers to as 'psychic abilities', which appears to be a range of abilities to read impressions and imprints left by emotions and events on people and the environment, but which seems to extend also to the ability to read minds and even get glimpses of possible future. The author explains that it is possible for most people to train themselves to obtain one of these abilities, but that doing so is a harsh and difficult process, and that acquiring such abilities can be very dangerous, as you can't get rid of the ability again once you have gained it this way, which will result in significant mental strain with a risk of insanity.

The author then refers back to past research that determined the exact ways the brains and essences of people having acquired these abilities have altered, and proposes that it would be safer to use spells to temporarily and reversibly mimic these alterations. The work than focusses on working out this idea, describing several spells to temporarily gain one of these psychic abilities, including the ability to read the past of objects, or see the aura's of people to determine their emotions or capabilities. The book also describes ways to use this method for limited insights in the future or reading the thoughts of someone else, but notes that both spells are roughly equal to 'traditional' methods of getting similar effects using arcane magic.

@mrabdiel, let's set the base DC at 25, as working with the tundra oak is still trickier than with normal wood, though you do have better grasp of its properties now.

[MrAbdiel]

Awesome. Then.. rounding down to coppers...

Day 2 is worth 78.5
Day 3 is worth 125
Day 4 is worth 55.3

So we're at 258.8/1000!

Now that I have a measure of this wood, (more or less, not enough to take 10!), I'll probably accelerate the DC to 35. It's not a sure thing but I can't fail it by the 5 or more that would damage the materials. Or not mechanically; I would expect a DM to pounce on a natural 1 when someone is being so hasty! But Aiden has a lot of plates spinning, he has to try to finish some of them!

Am I good to do another 3 days on it?

[WindStruck]

Regarding the gentle repose spell, can it not be applied individually to the chunks that Aiden wanted to cut up? Not like, to the whole tree, which is probably still technically alive?

[DeTess]

Hmmm, yeah, you could do that with the spell as is, but it'd need a lot of castings to cover everything then (around 20 or so).

[WindStruck]

Right. So I suppose we could plan to make a wand. And if the spell is simple enough, Shandara wouldn't even have to be the one to do all the work...

Maybe a rich noble could commission that?

So in that case, I guess I'm done with that subject, until it's confirmed that Aiden's idea is accepted.

[DeTess]

Am I good to do another 3 days on it?

That should be fine, I think.

[MrAbdiel]

Alright. Aiden is hurling himself at this one, hammer and tongs.

Or Fiddle and Saw, I guess.

Day 5: Full day on the Violin. (1d20+30)[39]
Day 6: Full day on the Violin. (1d20+30)[40]
Day 7: Half day on the Violin, half day playing and Injured Fellow Plaza. (1d20+30)[45]

All chasing DC 35.

Edit:

(39*35)7= 195
(40*35)7= 200
(45*35)14= 112.5

So by the end of day 7, we're up to 766.3/1000; three quarters of the way there and no disasters so far. Another couple of day should finish it off, with 5 to spare before I have to return the tools.

[MrAbdiel]

Just for the sake of efficiency, I'll bang through days 8 and 9 here to see if the project completes or if there's a hiccup; but feel free to nix my rolls if you have something you intend to drop in to complicate matters, DeTess.

Day 8: Full day! (1d20+30)[42] || (42*35)/7 = 210 (986.3/1000) ;-;
Day 9: Full day! (1d20+30)[44] || (44*35)/7 = 220 (1206.3/1000)

Masterwork Tundra Oak Violin is fully completed and functional on day 9, probably by about 10AM. Rest of that time spend workin' on the boat with m'boys.

Chasing 35's. And in case either fails and a 10th is needed:

Day 10: Full day! (1d20+30)[50] Though it breaks my heart to discard a natural 20 on a craft roll, it is not required and I can't just bank it. Off to the void you go, fair 50.

[DeTess]

Provided you prepare everything in advance you'd need about half a day's help from Shandara for shaping the curved parts.

@prehysterical, I think we're done with your current scene. What will you do next?

[WindStruck]

Wow, Aiden would actually finish the tundra oak violin without having to go through some convoluted scheme to be bequeathed some tools indefinitely?

Well, nice job!

Last we were speaking here, Shandara was only at like, day 3, now you're up to 9... I've still got the other job she commissioned to do, so.. hm. Doesn't seem like I get much useful information out of "Adaptations of psychic abilities using Arcane principles" (though it is interesting).

However, I did have an idea of someplace to get started. And this idea involves divination and time. So we know using either psychic abilities or divination to peer into the future is sketchy at best. It's all probably most accurate and useful in the here and now. But, if we were somehow able to peer into the past.. well, at least the past is immutable and already written.

So my idea is this: take a sample ripped cloth from something bigger. Cast a spell on it, which "follows" this object through the past, up until we reach the point where it was part of something bigger. Then, follow that bigger object back through the past and up to the present.

Not exactly sure how to tackle going about this, but I guess I'll spend three days researching each of the following subjects:

Traditional divination methods: (1d20+17)[19] or (1d20+17)[32]

Use of "time" to attempt to peer into the past: (1d20+17)[28] or (1d20+17)[24]

Extending the range of a locate object spell: (1d20+17)[24] or (1d20+17)[22]

These are arcana rolls. And I'm up to day 6 now.

[DeTess]

What exactly are you hoping to find/learn with the first roll?

Regarding looking into time, it seems peering into the past is quite tricky using traditional divination magic. You find some spells capable of doing so, but they are very short duration (less than a minute), and can only go a short distance back in time (no more than a day or two, three at most), require you to be at the location you want to view, and can't be cast repeatedly at the same location (you generally have to wait about a day, something about 'temporal currents needing to stabilize'). In other words, you need to have the 'when' right in a single go.

The object reading spell you experience before could be closer to what you need, but as you experienced before, there are issue with processing the information. If you could either 'record' the spell's entire output so you can look through it in detail afterwards, or enhance your own processing abilities to better parse the results of the spell that could be promising though, and your research does find some avenues to do either of those. You reckon you could also try removing some of the limiters on the spell, as it is currently designed to only give you the ability for a really short moment, ad it wouldn't take much in the way of energy to keep it up longer. The book did state that the short duration was intentional to avoid overloading the one using the spell, so there could be serious risks to that though. There also remains the question of 'jumping the tracks' to the larger object, which you're not quite sure how to do given your limited knowledge on the abilities. If you could speak to someone with the actual psychic ability, they might be able to help you with that, or the Steiner papers might contain clues to this as well.

For extending the range of locate objects, you find ways to do so, but anything more than double the range gets rapidly beyond the abilities of most mages. It should be noted that the spell has a duration in the minutes, so if you could figure out a way to rapidly move the sensor there might be ways to extend the total area covered that way.

[WindStruck]

So when I was asking about traditional divination methods, I was just wondering if there was something already buried in the archives that might be helpful. Like, I'm not expecting something that exists that solves the problem, but maybe there is a spell out there that has some key component Shandara is looking for. Something like a building block, or a foundation Shandara could build on top of or modify.

Right, so as for the fourth day, I think Shandara would want to look into temporarily creating some sort of intelligences. Seeing as the psychic spells have so much sensory data and information that would overwhelm the caster, I think it might be an interesting approach to temporarily create an intelligence that (for the most part) simply just filters out all unnecessary information and focuses on one thing. I think rudimentary intelligences already sort of exist, something like the unseen servant spell. By utilizing something like this, then the limiters to the psychic spells could be removed, and all the information could be forwarded to the thing instead. While we can remove absolute limits to the spell, we still can probably slow it down a bit to make it easier to process.

So, right. Creating a helper intelligence: (1d20+17)[19] or (1d20+17)[18]

Hm. Not great. I feel I'm stuck between failure, or creating something that will one day become SkyNet and end the world.

[DeTess]

So when I was asking about traditional divination methods, I was just wondering if there was something already buried in the archives that might be helpful. Like, I'm not expecting something that exists that solves the problem, but maybe there is a spell out there that has some key component Shandara is looking for. Something like a building block, or a foundation Shandara could build on top of or modify.

You don't really find anything along the lines of what you'd been thinking off, though you did do a lot of reading up on all kinds of divination related techniques as well as other things related tot racking and the mind (not really much immediately useful results for that day, but you had a good roll which will help in case you run into some trouble... oh look at that :P)

Right, so as for the fourth day, I think Shandara would want to look into temporarily creating some sort of intelligences. Seeing as the psychic spells have so much sensory data and information that would overwhelm the caster, I think it might be an interesting approach to temporarily create an intelligence that (for the most part) simply just filters out all unnecessary information and focuses on one thing. I think rudimentary intelligences already sort of exist, something like the unseen servant spell. By utilizing something like this, then the limiters to the psychic spells could be removed, and all the information could be forwarded to the thing instead. While we can remove absolute limits to the spell, we still can probably slow it down a bit to make it easier to process.

So, right. Creating a helper intelligence: [roll0] or [roll1]

Hm. Not great. I feel I'm stuck between failure, or creating something that will one day become SkyNet and end the world.

So, the issue you run into with trying to figure out how to create intelligences is that most stuff like unseen servants and the like are very simply menial-task oriented creatures, and for what you need you need something capable of far more cerebral tasks. You find a couple cases were smarter intelligences were used in magical constructs and the like but these intelligences were always summoned, rather than created, involving he binding of extraplanar entities like fey, demons or elementals.

In your earlier research you had found some information on how to use a familiar to extend one's senses, and you reckon it might be possible to have your familiar help you in this matter, though you would have to be careful with how much load you put on them. You'd also encountered some research on storing memories in psionic crystals which could be of use as a capture medium for the information, allowing you more time to sift through it all.

[WindStruck]

Okay, if I'm understanding this correctly, arcane divination magics usually have that time limit on them, but the psychic abilities/magics not so much?

So I have an idea now, to remove the time limiters on the psychic spells but place another limitation such that the information received comes at a much slower frequency, and with the addition to prematurely block out similar sensations/readings after getting one bit of information.

So for instance, taking the ripped piece of cloth example again: let's say the spell can store a queue of a number of certain sensations or bits of information. It only feeds one such thing to the caster per round. After receiving that bit of information, the caster can choose to block other information types of that sort (for example sound, emotion, scent). And as a swift action once per round, the caster can choose to stop blocking one of those categories.

Hope that makes sense. Going about it another way: in the original spells Whitecliff made, it seems you just get a whole burst of all sorts of things at once, but then it only lasts for a very short amount of time. In the modifications Shandara makes, all the sensations are saved up but then only given to the caster once per round in chronological order (if it's a tie, it's randomly). Then with the option to block certain things, the caster is able to focus more on what they find pertinent and cut out on the noise.

So day 5 I guess. Which will be a spellcraft this time I think. (1d20+16)[23] or (1d20+16)[22]

I don't know. I might go back to Whitecliff himself to get some advice on this. Because I think it feels promising. Should be on "Day 8" currently, and trying to see Whitecliff would be "Day 9" and caught up with Aiden again?

[MrAbdiel]

Shandara can come visit Aiden's shop in the wee hours of the morning of day 7 or 8, to do the icy-hot wood warping. Then he could drop it over on day 9 with all the settings and channels cut into the violin for her enchantments, and then it'll be... done, I reckon?

That owl better not mess with my rats.

[DeTess]

Yeah, the divination spells seem to be brute force looking back into the past, which brings limits, while the psychic ones are more subtle but have the other limits you encountered.

You can certainly design the spell you described, though you'll need more time to finish it. Also, Aiden will need your help at some point in those 9 days, but you could make that the morning of day 9.

[WindStruck]

Alright, morning of Day 9 is actually afternoon for Shandara. If that's okay?

[MrAbdiel]

Works for me. Want me to set up a short scene, just to get us back into the RP of it?

[WindStruck]

Sure, set up away!

[WindStruck]

Perception: (1d20+7)[20]

So I guess Shandara sees the mice. That's a nice image you have there as well.

[WindStruck]

The gem just needs power. I'm not sure if Shandara can simply put some into it, or if she'll need to set up a special ritual or get some outside help. But I think I'm delivering it unpowered. Gimmick with this violin is, it can expend the energy in the gem once to cover a larger area and affect multiple people. But only that one time, then it has to be charged up again. Just like that sword she made, which contained spells to banish one of those deathless kings.

It should still be fine to slot into the gold fittings and violin though.

Do we need to make any final rolls to make sure everything has gone according to plan? There should be certain markings on the violin, which Shandara will finish up. IF everything is done correctly, she would only need to insert the right ingredients and apply a bit of power to get the enchantments going? But I would also think not only do all the potential runes need to be formed and aligned correctly, but all the interconnected parts of the violin should fit together (as it is all essentially one interconnected unit).

Awaiting DeTess's opinion on how close we are to just saying the dang thing is done!

[DeTess]

You'd need to do a bit more to place all the other enchantments, but iirc at this point it is just execution based on the planning Shandara did a while back, so you should be able to finish up this morning. Shandara would do the actual enchanting, but Aiden could help with making inlays for any runes and the like.

[Prehysterical]

Provided you prepare everything in advance you'd need about half a day's help from Shandara for shaping the curved parts.

@prehysterical, I think we're done with your current scene. What will you do next?

Sorry, been a weird week. Before I decide, can Bolten go ahead and put the funds into his account?

[DeTess]

Sorry, been a weird week. Before I decide, can Bolten go ahead and put the funds into his account?

Yes, they decide quickly and you get contacted the next morning that they want to move ahead with your design as discussed, including payment. You would need to spend a bit of time making the second model afterwards of course.