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[Devastator]

Materials are random, you don't know what you're going to get.  I'll let PW talk about good hunting areas, although IIRC, the western forests are good ones for that.

People aren't really running Cabals, the game shifted a bit in scope.  Not quite enough players and too many secret actions for that, but don't let it stop you from building something or trying to get a gang together.

Ironic that the man (or small asian girl) with the most other players with him is talking about how Cabals don't really exist anymore.

You know me, Piecewise, the surest way to make me run one is for them to be discouraged.  Also, you kinda threw Egan's character at me, rather than it being a willing thing..

Then again, I suppose being thrown together with semi-hostile forces under somewhat contrived circumstances is both a final fantasy and a magical girl thing.

[Shadesmar]

k nice. Since i know my materials now i can break camp. the wisdom and insight into lodestone will be my lodestar
Looks like im the only dwarf who can build a proper zeppelin, and fly it without getting lost. Or a Tokamak fusion reactor  .... just need some mana now (and a lighter to play with the flammable aspect of the ether :3 ...... i need some flint-stone).

After an uncomfortable night, sleeping at the floor and no food, i, Edzul Zestegël, pack my stuff into the bag and stretch my numb limbs. Carefully i sort through my beard. Then i scratch all the bugs out my hair and kill the flames of my campfire, not before lighting my lantern of course.
One step after another, i turn south in direction of the delta, without looking back. On the prowl, not very speedy, but with open senses, i sneak through the brush. The only sound i make is the infrequent scratching of metal on metal by the chain mail, which is as standard size a bit too small for me. my glance meets from time to time the water surface of the nearby river to look out for crocs and huge snakes. i look up to the sky to check the weather, but no chance. the huge trees blocking the view and theres a constant dripping of water from leaves, which could be condensed from the humidity around, or just rained down from the sky or an even bigger tree.
my stomach is grumbling. The tracks in the swampy earth are deep and recognizable. The hunt has begun
Does anyone want to join the hunt? im feeling kinda weak with medium equipment and no mana >.<
can i build some animal traps from foraged materials? how is my craftsdwarfship limited? Do i have to say what prey im looking for? cuz i think im not in the state to hunt dragons or stuff like that.... more like rabbits and maybe a boar. im planning to do my first steps here carefully and patiently and my first goal is to get in possession of some mana of course :3

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Edzul Zestegël
Appearance: small figure (but huge for a dwarf) and wide shoulders, black dreads, long triple-braided beard
Magic path: Hunter Gut-Reader
Mana: 0
Strength: d8
Speed: d6
Endurance: d8
Knowledge: d4
Will: d8
Senses: d10
Material: Lodestone, Flammable Ether

Ongoing effects: bored by surroundings, angry-mad at the rain right now, hungry

Inventory:
1 (full body) chain mail d6, 1 repurposed scythe blade with home-made handle d6, wool bag, bandages, lantern

[Lenglon]

Doctor route

[syvarris]

Yeah, I got nothin'.  Help with unlimbering Benedict if necessary, otherwise just hide.

Since "hiding" really just means "waiting", Ekrov will take that clockwork sword and cast a kno-based spell with "Clockwork" to figure out what it is, how it works, and what it needs.  It's the sword he looted from the wreck, which has a slot in the hilt for something to plug into.

Spoiler: O.o (click to show/hide)

Name: Ekrov Trenian Vyachilad
Description: A noble's son, Ekrov is a boy on the cusp of adulthood, and barely looks it.  His hands are soft, his appearance taken care of, and his bones slightly visible under his unmarred skin.  He's scrawny, clearly having never done manual labor in his life, and somewhat short--though it's hard to tell whether that's due to age or genetics.  His eyes are wide and constantly look around in absentminded wonderment; he's clearly out of his element in this, and gives off a tourist-y impression.  He wears a clearly high-quality outfit, but to his credit it looks unusually practical for a noble, subdued brown in color and light aside from thin pieces of light leather in strategic locations, clearly intended more as protection than a fashion statement.  He carries a small backpack, and wears a light cloak that's had an absurd number of little pockets clumsily sewn into it.
Magic Path: Alchemist Sculptor
Mana: 36 (300 thaum carried)
Magic Words: "Animate", "Cloud", "Banish", "Iron", "Human", "Clockwork"

Stats:
Strength: d6
Speed: d6
Endurance: d6+1
Knowledge: d12+2
Will: d6
Senses: d12+1

Ongoing Effects:  None.

Current Sculpture Materials:
1. Something of perfect roundness
2. Ash from the ruins of a city
3. Skin containing an old scar
4. A book
5. Honey
6. Something that came from beyond the skies

Inventory:
Backpack
Lightly armored traveling outfit (enchanted to d6, from d4)
Wooden shield (+1 to armor rolls, most of the time)
Steel stilleto (d4 melee)
Merc Longsword (d6 Melee)
Ornamental spring pistol (d6 ranged) [6/6] (30 spare shots)
Alchemist gear
12 gold, 8 silver (Saeko owes him 400 gold...  For someone with d12 sense, Ekrov can be pretty gullible.)
LOTS of thaum.
FERROUS MEMENTO, THE MEMORY SKULL!
--Enchanted to only open when the correct passphrase is spoken to it.  Only Ekrov knows the passphrase.
--Enchanted so that Ekrov is always aware of its location and status.

Two broken clockwork robots, shoved in crates.  Details here and here.
A pair of strength-increasing clockwork gauntlets, which were clearly meant to be used by the robots, "seemingly for bending metal".
A strange blunt clockwork circular saw that is extremely effective at cutting through metal.
A  straight bladed clockwork sword, with a slot in the bottom for some missing piece to plug into.
A large bag of bomblets, taken from an unexploded clockwork bomb.

Paints, a dish, sands, glitter, water, general scrying supplies.
Pencil + Paper.
Expensive medical supplies.

Sketches of:
Gyrotourbillon's workings
Benedict the Griffon
Detailed but incomplete schematics of clockwork robot people.
Clockwork machinegun schematics.
Simple clockwork tools schematics.
Schematic for a simple remotely-operated alchemist-gear manipulator thing.
Maps to the three caches of clockwork loot buried somewhere between Alkahest and Lake Candentis.

TO-DO LIST:
MEMORY TINKER!!!

Clockwork stuff:
Fix a robot
Try to reverse engineer and understand those power pellet crucibles.
Fix the broken machine guns
Look into cloning machine gun ammo?  Probably not something we'll care about ever, but I wanna DAKKA...
Use 'clockwork' to figure out how that sword works and what it needs.

Cache A: The buried death pellet furnaces, both the unopened ones and the empty opened one.
Cache B: All the unexploded bombs from the wreck, including one that's been opened and had some of the bomblets taken out.
Cache C: The rest of the loot from the wreck, buried inside crates.  Contains:

"A large number of tools (These are what you could call mundane tools like wrenches, screw drivers, plyers, and the like. There are a lot of them in different sizes and shapes but none are hugely rare or valuable on their own. Though they are admittedly well made.)"
"A pnumatic self heating rivet gun and the air compressor for it"
"A sort of 'Jaws of Life' style combination spreader and cutter. Basically a massive pnumatic pair of plyers/snips."
"3 more working machine guns, and a half dozen that are broken in some way"
"About 10 or so big boxes of ammo (there are a lot of loose belts around so the amount isn't exact)"
"A welding system"

[Shadesmar]

Since "hiding" really just means "waiting", Ekrov will take that clockwork sword and cast a kno-based spell with "Clockwork" to figure out what it is, how it works, and what it needs.  It's the sword he looted from the wreck, which has a slot in the hilt for something to plug into.

this spell should be at least "human" based to, because functionality as well as synergistic patterns are concepts of the human mind, and not just figured out by waiting, passing time or any mechanistic concept of repeated rhythmic and frequent gear shift transfer action

[Devastator]

Dunno.  Not sure where Human would come into it.  It's not a weapon shaped like a human, or a weapon that uses something human to power it.  It's also entirely possible it wasn't even used by a human, if it was intended for one of those clockwork robots.

I think functionality would be covered by a different word.  Break is known to exist as a word, and so probably does Repair or reverse-break.  A word like that would probably help determine functionality and make the spell easier.

Adding Human might help answer different questions, such as 'who made this' or 'who designed this', but that might add to the difficulty of the spell, due to possibly being pretty remote from the item here now.  What it is, how it works, and what it needs doesn't have anything to do with the identity of whoever designed it.

[Shadesmar]

functionality is intended and planned. understanding knowledge about something is to realize the functionality, and thereby reveal the intention and planning behind this. "human" here stands for intelligent being which imposes and predestine intention into an (crafted) object, while also realizing the functionality as pattern of information, and storing this as sample of knowledge in his memory.
functionality and the concept of missing or fitting parts, does not exist outside the perception and experience of an intelligent being, while "human" is an exemplar of intelligent being.

as an example: imagine this clockwork sword is just a random arrangement of stuff, not made by anyone but brought into existence by accident. is the hole inside the sword then still a indicator for some missing part?- no, its just a hole. but because it is very likely that  someone (intelligent) made this sword and put planning and thought into it and into the creation of this cavity, it draws functionality directly from the intention of the maker.

[Devastator]

I'm not sure what you're getting at.  Knowledge is another word in the system, as well as the stat covering the gaining or learning of information.  If he had that word, it'd help.  It's also a stat in addition to that, one held by many creatures and things that aren't human.  "Knowledge" would be handy for learning about anything, but "Human" would only be good at learning information about humans, or things like humans.  Whatever that clockwork sword is, it's not a human.

Saying that 'human' should help because the sword was designed by humans.. well, it might.  Seems a bit slim, though, and it might be trying to gather information on something that happened years ago, a long way away.. it might be a worse way than just examining the object in front of him instead of trying to determine magically what a person did a long time ago a long distance away.

But the last bit, about how functionality doesn't exist without the perception and experience of an intelligent being?  That just seems wrong.  Purpose may not exist, but functionality is just stuff happening, which occurs without the intervention of intelligent beings all the time.  A stream can wear away rock to form a canyon just fine, and that's just a natural process occuring in an unthinking manner.  It would take an intelligent being to appreciate the beauty of the scene, but that's different than saying the processes that created it wouldn't function without intelligence.

[Shadesmar]

interesting discussion, i enjoy it. but ur use of the word function/functionality is a bit loose. processes happen all the time, but they dont need an inherent functionality to proceed happening. water is flowing down the river. if i dig a channel and reroute the water into a water mill this stream of water gets some functionality it didnt have before. rivers dont have inherent functionality. they can be used to drive something, to wet something, to still thirst of someone, but this has to be intended.
that something has a certain functionality is a judgement we make exactly to differ from natural processes that happen anyway, like existence, possession of physical properties and interactions. the possibility to do something with a stone, like throwing it at an enemy for example, is not inherent in the stone, but inherent in ur way of thinking.

i would say using "human" at least helps to get insight into this kind of intention an intelligent being can channel into the object, iff the functionality doesnt exceed the limits of human intelligence. if this is a demon artifact for example with functionality way to complex for human intelligence, then, of course, its beyond the reach of this magic, but even then u can draw helpful insight, at least in the form of knowledge that this object is too complex for human thought

[Naturegirl1999]

Also, humans aren’t the only animals to use things for functions. Crows use cars to crack walnuts. While cars were not built to crack walnuts, the crows learned that they can be used to do so. Seeing objects as tools for a purpose isn’t exclusive to humans.

[Devastator]

It doesn't need to be intended.  Water drives stuff unintentionally all the time, it's why the oceans are salty; from minerals carried down to the sea, and left behind from evaporation.  They wet things just fine without intention, the rocks and mud and ground around them gets wet.

What intelligence gives is purpose.  People can turn the water that wets land into irrigation channels, so it wets the right land in the right ways.  They can harness the energy stored in it's gravity, that which was added when the water evaporated, by damming and directing the flow into other purposes.  But people don't give water its mass, its wetness.  They didn't create the friction that causes erosion, or the hydrogen bonds that make it such a good wetting agent, or provide the large specific heat that makes it so useful for steam power.

The difference between functionality and purpose is the difference between what something can do, and what something is for.  If it's not functional, it can't do it, but it could still be intended to be able to do something.  If it didn't have the ability to do something, it wouldn't happen, regardless of if it's supposed to do something.  And if it can be used to do something, it had that ability before it was applied to the situation in the first place.

So when Ekrov is trying to find out what something can do, he's much better off using words related to that object directly.  If he was trying to discover what something is for, it'd be relatively better to use a word related to it's creator.

Still, Human isn't a very close link, and probably would make the spell harder.  He's got a clockwork sword.  So some good words would be the Clockwork he is using, and then Sword, because that's what it's shaped.  Then maybe Weapon, because it's a weapon, and then Knowledge, because it's good for all this in general.  Human would be right there with stuff like Matter, a bad word to use that doesn't help much.

[Shadesmar]

i never said that humans alone are the creators of functionality.

the wetness and mass of water is not its functionality. google tells me: functionality "is the quality of being suited to serve a purpose well; practicality."
functionality is deeply connected to purpose and intention and differs much from mere physical properties, like i said before, especially when talking about crafted and not natural objects.
and to find out exactly this kind of functionality(and purpose) is the goal of ekrov, and not just the physical properties of the clockwork sword.

of course, u could argue that rivers primarily are suited best to serve as a river, but this is tautologic. the mysterious clockwork swords primary purpose is being a mysterious clockwork sword, but this fact was already known by ekrov and therefore i doubt that he really wants to reveal this fact with his spell.

[Radio Controlled]

84 mana for those diamonds then. Seem reasonable?

 I'll of course start applying that same math to all prices and mana conversions from here out, which will probably result in the prices of most goods being lowered. I'll try to stick to historical numbers where I can find them, or convert modern prices where I cannot; though these numbers can vary a good deal. For example, Historical suits of armor are rated as costing "100-166 days worth of wages" or 100-166 gold. Meanwhile a modern full plate suit converted at the 150 dollars to 1 gold rate would give you something like 40 gold.

Of course, whatever you deem fair is what we will take. In fact, keeping an object’s value in gold and thaum the same is what I proposed originally way back when we came up with the gold to thaum conversion factor, remember? This will hopefully make things easy on the space accounting front.

One question I then do have though: how would you see that interacting with the “objects are worth less thaum if a lot of that thing is around” and the “diminishing returns when you convert the same thing too much in a short period of time” mechanics?
Personally, while thinking about and coming up with the paradox snail solution to the problem of high local diamond abundance was fun, I wouldn’t terribly mind of we did away with the mechanic if you think it’ll keep things more straightforward.

Oh, and do you have an idea of how to concretely balance this with the other methods of mana generation? Or would you rather not make an explicit rule for those and just sort of eyeball it?


Anyway, if I may still ask some things pertaining the wizard heist after all that:
- If we need to do manual sneaking, I'm guessing both Ecalir and Darwin would each need to pass a speed check, while for things like noticing guards (senses check I assume) only one of us passing is enough?
- Could we put some black biometal into a keyhole and morph it into the shape of the appropriate key to open up locked doors? And would this require a roll (if yes, which stat?)

Spoiler: Darwin Zeppeli (click to show/hide)

Name: Darwin Zeppeli
Appearance: An old medicine man.

Magic path: alchemist gut-reader
Strength: d4
Speed: d6->d8
Endurance: d6->d8 + 2
Knowledge: d10
Will: d8 + 2
Senses: d10

Mana: 36
2 bottles with 10 thaum each (20 total)
Ongoing effects: None


Magical materials

Vacuum!
Reanimate
Sharpen
Viscera
Diamond
Rope

Inventory

1 sedated bugman

dissection knife: d4
Springy metal knive: d6
Springy metal sword: d6
Springy metal halberd: d8
Curved blade: d6
Icepick: d4
gun: d8 [50 rounds left]
9 smokebombs
thaumic bomb (currently empty)

Ecalir's old armor: d8 (in use)
shield (+1 to protective rolls from armor)
Sealer Suit: d4 (vs magic)

Alchemist’s Gear
409 gold 
5 silver
Octopus core
15 kg black biometal
105 small diamonds

A glass slab with a topographical map of the kingdom carved into it
a bottle of glowing blue sea water, inside protective box with lock
a glass orb with barely visible lotus inside of it, inside staff assembly.
magic coin
Small book
magic compass + map
Gimbal that points towards diamonds (range around 100 meter)

book on normal plants and animals
book on magical plants and animals/creatures
handbook on making weapons&armor, including a list of known types
a detailed account of the Artifacter war
map of the old world
good quality book&pen
good history book
series of good maps of area around Alkahest and the volcano

Paradox snail (inside jar) and things to keep them happy and fed, linked to Ecalir
Extra pair of paradox snails
Doctor's bag
set of ingredients (plants, chemicals and the like) for making poisons or antidotes (23 uses left)
High quality backpack
donkey named Yvonne for carrying
Zomboraptor head
Lantern
several hundred feet of rope
climbing crampons
a grappling hook
iron stakes
net made of rope
several vials with imp fat
20 vials
2x Collapsible rod
10 oil flasks
300 feet of really big, thick, strong rope
100 feet of metal chain
box of metal spikes
pair of binoculars
4 boxes of rags
Medium armor: d6 (not in use)
18 days worth of supplies
2 sets of digging tools (for Darwin + Ecalir)
Extra digging tools (for hired workers)
tarps, paint, and other stuff we can use to camouflage our dig site with
17 leather skins (30 gold worth)

[Shadesmar]

Anyway, if I may still ask some things pertaining the wizard heist after all that:
- If we need to do manual sneaking, I'm guessing both Ecalir and Darwin would each need to pass a speed check, while for things like noticing guards (senses check I assume) only one of us passing is enough?
- Could we put some black biometal into a keyhole and morph it into the shape of the appropriate key to open up locked doors? And would this require a roll (if yes, which stat?) [/b]

(my guess: if the one who is seeing the guard is notifying the other, everything should be fine. if u stop when seeing the guard, and the other one is exposing himself because he went ahead..... u got a problem.)

what is biometal?
do u have vacuum powers? do u know that sound doesnt travel through vacuum? could be helpful while sneaking or forcefully open a door without notifying anyone

[Radio Controlled]

(my guess: if the one who is seeing the guard is notifying the other, everything should be fine. if u stop when seeing the guard, and the other one is exposing himself because he went ahead..... u got a problem.)

((My guess as well, but never hurts to check!))

what is biometal?

Lo and behold:

The first is about 100lbs of black biometal. This isn't just a big lump of metal though; biometal will, once bonded to a partner, follow that person's orders, transforming into any object or creature they desire. This does not require a roll, but does require mana from the partner.

Also, it looks like the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise. Pretty neat eh?

do u have vacuum powers? [...] could be helpful while sneaking or forcefully open a door without notifying anyone

((Indeed we do! And yes, could be useful, but would require some potentially difficult spells so if we can do without that'd probably be safer.))

do u know that sound doesnt travel through vacuum?

((Say whuut?! Are you saying vibrations propagating through a medium can't do so without a medium? Wowzers! ))



(sorry )