(Was sick for a while. Feeling well enough to write for the time being)
"We need masonry tools, a bunch of wire (two colors) and a Engram crystal. I need that doll, he'll be my beast of burden."
Myrtrice will craft an eye to place in the doll, this way she can remote control it with a wire if needed. Her primary strategy however will be to program the crystal and place it in the doll to follow a wire course she'll lay from the start to the end. Before that though, she'll have the group help her cut away the rock around the crystal objective. Starting with the largest safe slices possible and then finely chipping away at the rock around the crystal.
The girl makes a bit of a pout. Yet, without your help she'd be kicking the doll around with her feet. She had an underwhelming amount of neuro-circuits in the rest of her body, so it seems she would hardly be able to use magic, too. Some people use their hands predominantly, others use their feet, their eyes, even their torso. But for the most part the fingers are the easiest part of the body to control. Using magic with nothing but your mind is more difficult than it sounds. To most people, it's rather like playing a three-dimensional instrument, taking a great deal of fine motor coordination and synchrony between the brain and its parts.
Eyes are difficult to craft. You saw the students carrying a bucket of eyes, in fact. They did mention a tree. Though you're not sure you'd like to put up with whatever spirit cursed them.
You have a couple of eyes to copy, so you go ahead and craft a handful. [12 -- No masterwork. Eyes are hard!] Some are small, some are oversized, but you have a couple that are just small enough to fit inside the doll's head, while being large enough to function like an eye. The wire is fine enough to trail after the doll.
Programming the crystal, now, will be more difficult. It's nothing like sculpting a body. When a crystal is triggered, either by a brief pulse from the mind, or by electrical stimulation, it gives off a signal omnidirectionally, the same signal it was programmed with. You know this much. You will have to find a mathematical way to make different body parts react to different parts of the signal.
Octavia decides to implement the other parts of her plan now, then finish the auxiliary wavegear after that. She didn't want to spend too much time on her plan B before plan A was ready.
(Using the values from pg. 2 for TBH's box on wheels)
[d12: 8][d12: 1!] You spend some time creating circular holes in the chassis for bushings to pass though. You realize, however, that your skills aren't quite up to the task of building precision bushing out of stone alone. Fortunately you have some scrap metal to use as axles, but this bites into your time.
It seems a lot of the students (NPCs, mostly) are finalizing their designs.
Next you raise up the box you must stand in, painted on the ground, and place it inside the vehicle. [d12: 5] Very... carefully. It doesn't fit perfectly, but you can't physically leave the box except by falling out, so that's good.
You have a vehicle with wheels with the starting point inside, and the marble block with the crystal inside is fashioned into the form of a vehicle.
The thing somebody ran into.
...is the field emitter on the ceiling? On the sides of the finish line?
Anyway, time for a parts run. Let's get some metal, some filters, something to broadcast with...
As for running things through other things...can not the rock and metal be shaped? And metals cast into or wound through the stone...or wound around the crystal, once it is extricated.
Test one: is the field keyed to the marble? Bring a chunk of somebody's cast-off to the field at the finish line and see if it does anything.
Test two: As per one, but with a crystal.
Test three: I believe I've told you I want to build a hole in the field at the end many, many times now and it has never actually been processed.
Test four: Jam the field! Try generating some destructive interference patterns so it stops. Or if I've found the emitters, block them off.
...inspect the apparent violation of physics, if not waved off, for insight.
To ice lady:
"You are not planning to test? The field creates, effectively a zone of almost no energy...or at least it does not replenish. It may impact the ability of your creation to reach the finish.
Additionally, there is a field at the end that no-one here seems to have yet pierced, though I think that one is on to something."
Elena gestures to the person at the end of the track with the antimagic mandala.
It would be hard to tell if the field emitter is on the ceiling, not without flying up there and checking. But your tempestry...
The skills you've learned in your pursuit of artifice include using magic to carve stone, to slice, to melt metals, and to shape them in various ways while molten.
Test one/two: Someone else's marble also encounters resistance. Your crystal, however, does not. So it is technically possible for you to win without circumventing the forcefield.
Test three: ((I recall you asking twice to punch holes in the track, and twice your character has excavated the track. My apologies if I missed it, it's been some time))
The field at the end seems to be emitted from the finish line itself, so to punch a hole in the field you will have to punch a hole in the finish line.
A fiendish trick they have here.
Test four: Fortunately you have a solution in mind! All matter obeys the laws of physics, hence this forcefield cannot possibly be an exotic state of matter, it must be made up of mist just like every other ethereal magical structure like mandalas and such. If the signal which creates the forcefield is cut off, the forcefield ought to fall apart.
A noise generator should do the trick.
...
You head over to the main campus and encounter the shops at the ground level where traffic from the Flowering Hall meets (
a description). You grab some RF equipment, filters, wires, tools, and so on, and even a cute battery-powered soldering iron, likely intended for children who can't use magic yet.
The shocking thing is that you didn't have to pay for any of this. They sort of gave it to you for free.
...
After you get back and pick up conversation again with the ice lady (is that the correct order?):
"My companion stores energy of her own. She is no fickle spirit. How else could I walk when the storms of magic drain away all power in the air?"Another student chimes in, a student with a metal flower sticking out of her back. She holds her crystal in her arms, like a cat, and it seems to have gained four stubby metal legs made out of an unknown silvery substance.
"I would say constructing society based on such an unstable energy source is questionable in itself," eliciting a shrug of the shoulders from the ice witch herself.
Marble isn't exactly a good material for cannon construction, but it should be able to hold for one or two shots. I could use the quartz to reinforce the barrel, that should help a bit.
The crystal does need some protection though. Perhaps a sabot? I could use quartz and vines to shield the crystal during flight.Maybe I should make a full-on shell for the crystal, add quartz shell with a pointed front and vine cushioning.
Reinforce the barrel with quartz to increase it's resilience. Create a quartz shell with vine filling to cushion the crystal during launch.
[d12: 1!] You hackney something together but as it turns out, building a cannon out of easily-shatterable parts is only compounded by the introduction of additional brittle substances such as quartz. Your sabot comes out perfectly and fits into the barrel just as you intended. However as you load it for the first time you hear the sad, awful sound of cracks forming.
You fish out the crystal using your staff in order to inspect the damage. And there it is: a small crack growing larger and larger the more you handle it.
Darn. It may be a good idea to procure scrap metal instead. Another student seems to have done so already, as you can tell by the metal axles she found for her wheeled device. That won't be an issue.
The real question: What kind of spell are you planning on using to propel the crystal out of the cannon? You might head back for a wavegear, but what sort of spell will you program the wavegear with? An explosion spell would be fantastic, if you could find one somewhere, being used, so that you could copy it.
Right, did you read the OC? Guess I'll, try to work with it, I guess..
Take the stone, and attach it to the crystal, turn it{the stone} into a wavegear.
WG Program-
[Spirit Within Self used]
[Guidance of Sagitta-Type Magic]
[Propagation of Energy via Spirit-Transference]
[Binding Spell to Matrix]
Tempestry- Ribbon of Wind{Sagitta ae Capturae}
Magic coalesce into ribbons of wind which then shoot toward the target, binding it. A variant of the Sagitta spell. The element used affects it's property. Wind is very good at capture, while fire is more offensive, and not that good at holding a target.
In this case, I'll be using it as propagation/containment. It keeps the spirits inside the gear safe, and acts as the conduit for the Sagitta spell I'll be using. See if I can't bind the other spell mandala as well.
Turning mundane stone into a wavegear is normally a difficult task, but this marble is especially sensitive to magic. Perhaps it wasn't formed naturally, but rather crafted for a purpose, a purpose such as statues that walk and move about as humans do.
[d10: 8] You infiltrate the stone with small channels the same width as the signals you are passing through. It won't be a perfect waveguide, but it will at least make the stone a bit more sensitive. It is now a Lv5 Granite Matrix (5/5).
[d12: 8] Hence, when you conjure a spell to make a cage of wind, small currents gushing around the marble enclosure, the stone itself retains the spell, and even weakly echoes the spell without input. You will set it going soon enough.
The wind acts as both cushion, forming pressure against the floor and also creating some noise of its own. This actually makes the crystal pretty difficult to handle. But you can store it in a bowl for the time being.
You can make a second identical engram for the disk sitting at the end of the track as well, to keep it safe from interference if you so desire. The primitive filters you engraved into the mandala should keep Ribbon from interfering with Sagitta, at least not in a way you won't be able to tune out before setting things in motion.
Is there an easily available moldable rubber or rubber-like material in this setting? Something to make a contruct bounce on the ground without using magic?
You head to the city's fountain, where organic material wells out of a pipe at the center. The black tar still sparkles with blue purifying flames, fragments in the ignitions used in the pipes to kill off any and all spirits entering the fountain from the tar sea.
The side-effect is that the magical energy in the tar takes a little while to replenish. This makes it difficult to do immediate, intensive crafting with it, and vulcanizing it into rubber is one of those things. However you may be able to 'power it up' so to speak by feeding it energy in the way things naturally absorb magical energy: via high-intensity radio waves.
Either way you are done at the fountain after taking a bit of tar with you, converting the outer layer into a skin to keep it from bubbling out.
Next to the fountain you observe a pair of women lifting a body-shaped mass of tar out of the fountain. they begin wrapping it in bandages and ropes.
Author
Topic: Antinomy of the Five Spectra (IC) -- The Academy Exam (Read 17765 times)