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[My Name is Immaterial]

Tokoda is just waiting for someone to chart a course, and is completely unaware of the imminent door opening.

[Dwarmin]

Huh, yeah. Guess we should get the Pencil_Art's character to help us actually get to where we are going without running into the bunch of whacky side adventures Gig has planned.

[Haspen]

inb4 we end being chased by elven army, human headhunters, dwarven mafia, evil corporation-or-something and 2d6 eldritch abominations

[GiglameshDespair]

Huh, yeah. Guess we should get the Pencil_Art's character to help us actually get to where we are going without running into the bunch of whacky side adventures Gig has planned.

Of course n-

inb4 we end being chased by elven army, human headhunters, dwarven mafia, evil corporation-or-something and 2d6 eldritch abominations

* Gigla covers his notes :v

[Dwarmin]

@Gig: Btw, lore question!

What do spirits and demons actually look like?
And, can Demons exist in the 'wild'-i.e, without being summoned? I was actually wondering if their might be tiny Gremlins on board the ship chewing on the engines-like space rats.

I wanted to do a POV vignette about my Drake (assuming you don't want to take control of him as a separate NPC?) that could use some of that info.

[GiglameshDespair]

Update will come later today.

----

Spirits just tend to look like blobs of energy, when they take a physical form. They have neither the ability nor imagination to take anything fancier as a form.

Demons can shapeshift to an extent, but they will always have common features between all their forms. A fey will always appear to have features of plants, for example. The more powerful demons also tend to be smarter, so will have more varied and fancy forms.

For example, the demon in your drive - Gottarjang - tends to look like a centipede. Whatever form he takes, it will always have a lot of chitin and legs. He isn't a massively powerful demon, but he is a demon of movement, so he can move the ship around. If you wanted him to take over life support, you'd have to modify the ritual bindings on the drive core and even then he still wouldn't be very good at it. Vice versa with the demon in the life support, Axaspheous, who appears more like fleshy, breathing bubbles. Juts because demons tend to resemble their sphere doesn't mean, however, you can't get curveballs or demons deliberately hiding their nature.

Physically manifesting takes a lot of energy, and demons need energy to exist out the Not-Here. Demons need to be summoned to exist on the material plane. However, poor bindings - or broken ones - in areas with a lot of mana about can become home to stray demons. These would tend to be weak demons like gremlins. You have gremlins on the ship - more precisely, bound into the boots of your void suits so you can walk on the sides of ships, etc. If the suits weren't maintained, the bindings could loosen and the gremlin would get out. Most demons also don't know how to get back, so they'll hang around until either out of power or desummoned. Running out of power is a rather unpleasant experience for them.

Or someone might summon a gremlin in combat, for instance, but drawing a quick ritual circle and placing mana inside it. If the gremlin happened to find enough mana after it did whatever it was bound to do by the summoning, it could persist.

Typically you don't want loose demons running around, since you don't know how malicious they might be, and they're eating your mana.

----

For the most part, you can control your drake, but I reserve right to assume direct control of it for suitably dramatic moments, etc.

[Tiruin]

[...]
Spirits just tend to look like blobs of energy, when they take a physical form. They have neither the ability nor imagination to take anything fancier as a form.[...]

All I'm thinking now is someone's been watching much of Studio Ghibli

[My Name is Immaterial]

I spent the last hour reviewing everything from EmDrives to Ion Thrusters and the effects of acceleration to the composition of asteroids, just to make it as realistic as possible. I finally decided to throw my arms up in the air and make up some bull.
To justify burning fuel for five days to reach our destination, we'll need to be under acceleration for half that time, and then decelerating for the rest. We'll need a short, but violent acceleration to begin, probably between two and ten Gs over ten to sixty seconds, so that we can escape the rock's gravity well. With this, we'll have to use our mana as a reaction mass, actually burning it like rocket fuel. For the rest of the journey, we can rely on our lower thrust but more efficient Demon Drive. As far as I know*, Gottarjang is an fanasty EmDrive, turning energy into thrust through the power of quantum physics space opera.
*and care

Tl;dr: Strap in, or you're going to be hurled against the wall hard.

[Pencil_Art]

Gert is already, thank goodness.

[GiglameshDespair]

I spent the last hour reviewing everything from EmDrives to Ion Thrusters and the effects of acceleration to the composition of asteroids, just to make it as realistic as possible. I finally decided to throw my arms up in the air and make up some bull.
To justify burning fuel for five days to reach our destination, we'll need to be under acceleration for half that time, and then decelerating for the rest. We'll need a short, but violent acceleration to begin, probably between two and ten Gs over ten to sixty seconds, so that we can escape the rock's gravity well. With this, we'll have to use our mana as a reaction mass, actually burning it like rocket fuel. For the rest of the journey, we can rely on our lower thrust but more efficient Demon Drive. As far as I know*, Gottarjang is an fanasty EmDrive, turning energy into thrust through the power of quantum physics space opera.
*and care

Tl;dr: Strap in, or you're going to be hurled against the wall hard.

While demon drives push hard, remember they're pushing you too to a lesser extent, which is why the glass of brandy isn't now embedded in the back of Callisto's head. The sheer force is also modulated by the gravity demon. In a way, the space tech of Ocean of Stars is much more effective than our space tech. Space Opera!

Actually burning mana would probably just give you cancer or something. I don't know, I hadn't actually thought of that before.

[Dwarmin]

Humm, I've been voraciously consuming The Expanse books lately (they are really good) and I can see the point MNIM is making very well.

In the novels, ships have things called 'crash couches'-sort of like a high tech waterbeds full of antigravity gel or something-that you strap into for hard maneuvers. I figure we would have something similar, even if the Demon takes care of most of that, if only for emergencies.

Gig has said a Demon can escape if the 'seals' are broken-thus, if the ship takes alot of damage, our engine demon could f'off back to the nowhere dimension or whatever. We wouldn't be able to move an unpowered ship or be moved without being battered to death.

Also, our ship probably isn't military grade-or maybe our Demon is lazy and doesn't care if the crewmembers get tossed into the bulkheads a bit. Being sentient, he'd probably make sure the Captain is comfortable tho. That could explain the brandy.

[Dwarmin]

@Gig: What's the results of my/haspens investigation, btw?

[GiglameshDespair]

Woops!

Sorry, missed that.

One sec.

[My Name is Immaterial]

While demon drives push hard, remember they're pushing you too to a lesser extent, which is why the glass of brandy isn't now embedded in the back of Callisto's head. The sheer force is also modulated by the gravity demon. In a way, the space tech of Ocean of Stars is much more effective than our space tech. Space Opera!

That seems a bit inefficient as opposed to letting , but it's space opera, so it's not supposed to make a whole lot of sense.

Actually burning mana would probably just give you cancer or something. I don't know, I hadn't actually thought of that before.

Heh. I figured that it was more of an inefficient demon/mana reaction where lots of mana was consumed very quickly to produce lots of thrust. Mana wasn't actually being burned, but used like a conventional engine, a single burst of delta-v at the start, instead of an ion engine, with a continuous application of delta-v over the entire journey.

[GiglameshDespair]

Relax, and maintain optimal course efficiency. Ponder on what we can actually do in the midst of getting to our destination {GM Help Info please?}

One could try to train a skill, or one could try to create something. More bolts (which I still haven't added to sheets yet), modified weapons, enchanting objects with demons and spirits...