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[Happerry]

Plan A: (3) Jerick, Madman, Happerry

[NUKE9.13]

Well, since no one has any complaints, I guess I'll vote for Plan A. I could well be persuaded to change my mind, if something comes up.

Plan A: (4) Jerick, Madman, Happerry, NUKE9.13

[helmacon]

Hey, we got 2 extra points on the spotter. Let's give them 2 extra sidearms! It's a waste of points otherwise, right?

Gunslinger spotters!!

You know what, sure, they can have an extra pistol. Not two, though, that would be frivolous spending that the military might frown upon.

I kinda meant an extra side arm for the Artillery Spotter, since, you know, they don't have a main weapon.

[NUKE9.13]

Oh whoops, I edited the wrong one. I'll fix that.

[evictedSaint]

Design Phase, Turn 2

5 Dice Available.

Gauntlets of Force have been COMPLETED.

Platoon Burano 3 has become COMPETENT.

King Gioffre II has increased our budget by 5.

Our Lack-Luster Performance has failed to impress General Feo.

Spoiler: Relations (click to show/hide)

Army: Miserable.  "More or less useless.  Can't work a radio, can't scout, can't even keep a bridge intact.  Their only saving grace is they don't die easily, but I'd make much better use of sharpshooters than they ever would." -General Feo

Navy: Poor. "Card tricks won't win the war, but maybe they'd be able to entertain the sailors at port." -Admiral Cesena

Political: Neutral. "The flag - yes, you see, the flag was my idea, really.  I had them whip up the design for me, since they weren't terribly busy in the first place.  I think it came out quite well, don't you?" -King Gioffre II

Public: Ambivalent. "I read about them in the paper.  I think they're ceremonial?  Or some kind of religious thing, maybe?" -Random Citizen

Spoiler: Equipment (click to show/hide)

Sorceries
Soaring Memory of Crystal Mind, Version 4: Created by one of the junior members of SPELLS in an attempt to modify his memory and perform better in school and updated by the 208th for intelligence gathering.  Maps the cone of vision through a monocle onto a sheet of pigment-laden paper.  Resolution is impressive despite the small size of the photos. Requires a monocle to cast, and operates by re-arranging the pigments of the paper slotted into the monocle.  Requires a second casting to clear. [Rookie] [1]

Galilei Lensing: 8x brass binoculars.  Casts a field of Mana tracers out from the main lens in a bent cone.  The cone curves proportionally to the sliding engraved rail system on the side of the binoculars, which currently allows a curve of a radius between 5 and infinite kilometers (i.e. at a 45° angle, the binoculars grant sight range of 10 kilometers).  Light bends back along the tracers towards the binoculars, giving line of sight beyond the horizon.  Top and bottom sections of the image can't be focused at the same time.  Significantly drains Mana.  A Rookie-level mage can perform observation for an hour, with an additional hour per level.  [Rookie] [4]

Gauntlets of Force: Largely leather in nature, with engraved steel rings implanted into the fingertips and palms.  The rings are connected to one another with copper wires, trailing down the backs of the fingers and terminating in another steel ring that goes around the wrist.  The ring around the wrist is the most heavily engraved, and handles most of the flow and direction of input Mana. Holds up to rough use. Left Gauntlet controls the movement and direction of the object being cast upon, and the right controls power.  Possible to use other equipment while casting, but multi-tasking becomes difficult.  Can complete tasks such as throwing a ball into a bucket or punching a dummy.  Range of 15 meters.  Max force is limited to manipulating around 650 Newtons (or about 150 pounds).  As the distance and force increases, so does Mana consumption.  Does not stop bullets. [Competent] [5] [>50% Complete]

Evocations
Snap-Lighter: A brief conjure of flame, for lighting pipes and cigarettes.  Mana is channeled by snapping one’s fingers while casting, causing a match-sided blue flame to appear on the users thumb.  Runs entirely off Mana, though the spell is intended to only last a short period of time.  Caster is advised to wet their thumb before casting in order to prolong the time the flame can appear before burning the thumb. [Rookie]

Enchantments
Lucky Rabbits Foot: A preserved rabbits foot, using a rather convoluted weave of magic.  Effects seem dubious, but through rigorous testing it is revealed to subtly move the wearers foot just enough to avoid stumbling over unseen rocks or stubbing toes on furniture.  Further testing reveals it performs an on-going analysis of the users gait and compares the projected footfall with the terrain immediately ahead.  Replenishes naturally while in close proximity to a mage, but will otherwise run dry within an hour.  [Rookie] [4]

Fulcrum Armor V4: A canvas trench coat lined with steel wire.  Comes with a hood and a collar that buttons up over the nose.  Redirects force around and through the coat, exiting on the opposite side to which it was applied.  Steel wire handles most of the stress, but canvas will rupture around impact and exit locations.  Does poorly against multi-impact weapons such as shotguns or shrapnel.  Can be turned off when not in use.  Can maintain its enchantment for more than 48 hours when on standby mode, and run down a Rookie's Mana Pool in 8 hours when active. [Rookie] [6] [>50% Complete]

Thaumic Radio: An AM radio, capable of communicating in Morse Code.  Small enough to be worn as a backpack, with a long, swishy antenna.  Converts Mana to electrical energy to replace the battery.  Vacuum tubes are replaced with magical logical components.  Goes staticky with every time the wearer takes a step.  Prone to breaking down, but operators are described as "bizarrely seductive". [Competent] [8] [>50% Completed]

Trench Broomstick v2: A modified Sava '00, to which King Gioffre II has turned a blind eye.  Magically operated modified straight-bolt turns the gun into a semi-automatic.  A subtle magic auto-kinetic enchantment on the barrel allows the user to maintain accurate sights to whatever he's looking at.  Casts a pair of Mana Tracers downrange to perform accuracy improvements.  User must manually adjust for range, drop, wind speed, etc. [Rookie] [6]

Misc Magical Equipment
Focus Talisman, Version “Bear”: A modern Mage’s talisman, used to help direct a Mage’s magic into Sorceries.  The contraption is a little bit bigger than an open hand and features intricate inner workings that blend the magical and mechanical.  Physical appearance represents a bird cage, with the bars joining together in a central point.  The device allows a Mage to focus her Mana through a well-understood means and redirect it into a secondary means of spell direction, such as a wand or circle.  The device is a bit like an intricate net, helping capture unfocused magical energy from a Mage.  This reduces the amount of Mana needed to perform a given spell and helps a Mage split their focus between two spells, but each Focus Talisman must be hand-crafted by skilled non-combat Mages, making it quite expensive.  Enchantments must be maintained daily.  Delicate and prone to breaking.  [10]

Wooden Wand: Carved from broom handles, fence posts, and any other scrap of wood that can be found.  Used to assist in Direction during spell-casting, allowing the user to more efficiently spend their Mana and apply their Will.  Generally engraved with lines and symbols by the user.  Used for casting low-level Sorceries, with a penalty to effectiveness.  Generally, a wand should be specialized to whatever spell is being cast, but this works in a pinch. [0]




Mundane Weapons
Sava ’00:  Bolt-action rifle, firing 0.333 caliber rounds out of a 5-round internal box.  Named after the King’s father, may God rest his soul.  Manufactured in the homeland, and a shining example of our people’s technical skill.  The Sava ’00 is standard-issue to all infantrymen, and a single round will kill just as well as a lightning zap (as magic detractors will quickly point out).  The wooden body cradles a rifled barrel fitted with lugs for bayonets.  It’s light and wieldable, but cycling the bolt causes loss of sight picture.  Prone to jamming as the bolt wears out.  [5]

Pavle Sidearm: Standard-issue sidearm, 0.35 caliber.  Remarkably cheap and easy to use, but unreliable.  The slide is prone to jamming in place, and the sights are more of a suggestion than anything used for accurate fire.  Comes with an eight round magazine.  [1]



Misc
Mage Uniform ’14: Standard mass-produced infantry uniform, adapted for mages.  Warm and sturdy, and made mostly out of scratchy wool.  Brown trousers and overcoat with a drab green undershirt.  Boots are oiled leather and come up to the ankle, with cloth wraps that go up past the calf.  A belt around the waist holds ammo and supplies, although there’s not a lot of room.  A fashionable cloth cap keeps the head warm.  A set of fancy, billowing robes that go over top marks the wearer as a Mage, though the hem drags in the mud and the sleeves snag on everything.  Does not protect against bullets or shrapnel. [0]


Budget: 20

Spoiler: Projects (click to show/hide)

Gauntlets of Force | (12/12)(3) | 3 Dice Spent | [Competent] | [5] | Sorcery | [COMPLETED]
Fulcrum Armor V4 | (12/14)(2) | 8 Dice Spent | [Rookie] | [6] | Enchantment
Thaumic Radio | (12/15)(3) | 3 Dice Spent | [Competent] | [8] | Enchantment

Spoiler: 208th Mage Support Company (click to show/hide)

Magia e Scienza unite per la Vittoria

Murano 1 | Rookie | Artillery Spotter | -none-

Torcello 2 | Rookie | Artillery Spotter | -none-

Burano 3 | Competent | Footsoldier | -none-

[helmacon]

Ideas:

Multi focus lenses for the binocs (easy revision)
Copy their artillery shell throwing with our gauntlets (requisition shells)
Revise the radio to work while moving (easy revision)

some sort of first aid project. (Project)

[NUKE9.13]

Better binocs, definitely.
Chucking shells, maybe.
Improved radio quality, maybe.
First aid project... I mean, not saying that wouldn't be helpful. But if we could be more original (whilst still being equally effective), that'd be nice.

Anyway, I was thinking of camouflage, perhaps? Something like this:

Mimetizzare:
So, the design team was visiting a lovely little seafood place in Murano, and someone joked about finding a way to write it off as a business expense. Well, the bill ended up a bit higher than expected, so we put our heads together to come up with something. Inspired by the restaurant's excellent squid calamari, and the waiter's insightful comments as to the nature of the beast, we thought to look into the field of camouflage, which after all pairs well with our existing optical magic (much as the squid paired well with a delightful rosé).
Mimetizzare (Camouflage) is a relatively simple, quick spell, designed to provide a mage with a brief period of significantly reduced visibility- perfect for slipping past a sentry or crossing an open area. A dried squid tentacle, contained within a leather pouch, is used as a focus. The spell covers the caster in a layer of magic which changes how light interacts with them, such that they take on the colour of whatever lies on the opposite side of them. This is achieved in two parts; the magic layer interprets the colour and intensity of the light hitting it and transfers this information across to the opposite side, then alters the reflective nature of said opposite side to create the same colour and brightness. The spell is capable of creating limited luminescence as well, so that if a bright light is being shone on one side of the mage, the other side will 'shine', as if the light were passing through them (although, to be clear, this is not the case).
It is not expected that Mimetizzare will be perfect- an astute observer would probably notice minor discrepancies. However, it should be enough to avoid detection by more casual observation, and should ideally be paired with low-visibility conditions.


E: Alternatively, we could do a project to give Gauntlet wielders more use in the field of construction. We could turn the Snap-Lighter evocation into a welding torch, perhaps? I'm thinking about that fallen bridge, you see, and how people who can lift 150lb objects could help the reconstruction efforts. There will probably be more situations in the future where bridges, buildings, and fortifications need constructing ASAP. Then again, we don't want to focus solely on support roles, as we've seen that direct combat is the fastest way to earn experience.

[helmacon]

I see two possible avenue for camo with our experience.

The first is just bending the passing light around our mage the same way our binoculars bend light.

The second is with pigment rearranging itself across clothing the way it does when we take pictures with the monocle.

Or we could do some combination of both.

[NUKE9.13]

Hmm. I considered bending light around our mages, but figured that might be quite tricky. As for rearranging pigments, that's similar to what I'm suggesting, except instead of using actual pigments we just use magic- I think that'd be cheaper/more convenient than having to produce every-colour-robes.

Also, scratch my comments about construction magic. I just remembered my rule: if it can be done equally well by ten muggles, don't bother.

[Madman198237]

So, should we deploy the Gauntlets of Force anytime soon, we will be capable of accelerating small masses on the order of half a kilogram to ~280m/s. In other words, respectable bullet velocity...except for something the size of a 20mm cannon round or more.

Were we to step down to a standard-issue 7.62mm rifle bullet of about 10 grams, we'd see a maximum velocity over the whole distance of 1974 m/s...Almost Mach 6, in other words. Of course, drag is going to reduce that effect...but we could basically fire bullets at railgun velocities capable of opening up the inevitable late-war tanks or gun shields like so many tin cans.

[helmacon]

Speaking of the gauntlets, seeing as they blew the bridge, deploying some gauntlets down there might help us move equipment across the river as well.

[Madman198237]

Well the biggest possible advantage is that the Gauntlets are highly useful for anchoring, say, guidelines across an otherwise-uncrossable waterway, allowing us to start construction of a bridge from both sides and whatnot. Other than that, though, they're not really good for anything normal people can't do just as fast, even if said normal people might need to get their boots wet to do it while we would not...


Though four such mages, working in tandem, would almost certainly be capable of moving people, one at a time, across a waterway up to 30 meters across. Two could manage a fifteen-meter one. It'd be enough to allow strike forces of our mages to cross such obstacles silently and without needing a boat or a beachhead on the other side from which to anchor guidelines or small rope bridges.

[NUKE9.13]

Speaking of the gauntlets, seeing as they blew the bridge, deploying some gauntlets down there might help us move equipment across the river as well.

We'd have to revise the gauntlets to be able to move heavy equipment, but that may be doable. As a stopgap measure whilst the bridge is repaired, it could potentially be useful, provided the river isn't too wide.
E: No, wait, that wouldn't be significantly more practical than a boat.

Anyway, folks on Discord seemed to prefer the idea of using light-bending to make folks invisible. It was also suggested that making it an evocation could be useful, although I worry it may be too complex for an evocation... but it may be worth a shot. I'll try writing up a proposal.

E2:

Okay, so, I'm working on a light-bending invisibility proposal, and I really don't think it'll work as an evocation.
A camouflage spell might, but a light-bending spell requires a number of things that I believe would require more finesse than an evocation is capable of.
Here are two of the problems:
-The shape that light is redirected around has to be form-fitting; if it's just a spherical 'bubble', you'll get really weird distortions whenever you stand near a solid object that intersects the 'bubble'.
-A spell that perfectly redirects 100% of light would render the caster blind. So either the spell redirects significantly less, in which case the caster is still visible, or it has to 'replicate' the incoming light so the caster can still see.
A form-fitting light-bending field would likely require finesse, as would replicating incoming light.

Also, whilst I don't think we should do it now, here's a proposal for a magical explosive we could develop for sabotage type missions:

Thermo Thaumic Tactical Traumatiser (T4):
Sometimes you have a thing, and you want there to not be a thing. What do? Blow it up, obviously.
Thermo Thaumic Tactical Traumatiser, or T4, is one way of making this happen. Using ropes of a clay-like substance infused with magically charged materials, a mage can shape T4 into whatever form suits the situation, from a small blob in a lock, to a large band around a structural beam, or even a swan if they're feeling fancy (and wasteful). Once suitably shaped, the mage empowers the explosive, pouring mana into it until it visibly glows (in larger use cases, multiple mages may contribute to charging a single explosive), then backs the hell away. The T4 can be triggered by the mage, simply by sending it a pulse of the right magical energy- from a safe distance, obviously. If possible, development of 'timed fuses' would be useful, simply small inscribed wooden sticks- like mini-wands- that delay the release of magical energy by up to several minutes, allowing a mage to activate the fuse, insert it into the T4, and beat feet.
The specific mechanics of the explosive are remarkably simple. The substance consists largely of chemicals that are explosive-adjacent; mostly harmless, but not all too difficult to magically transmute into the most unstable explosives ever devised, the sort that have no military applications on account of being impossible to transport. When triggered, the charged magical energy is used to nigh-instantly perform aforementioned transmutation, and then nigh-instantaneously set off the entire concoction at once. This is further enhanced by the remaining mana, which simply adds more energy to the result.
We estimate the explosive potential of T4 to be several times that of TNT.

[NUKE9.13]

Alright, light-bending invisibility sorcery proposal:

Svanire:
Optical magic has a bright future ahead of it. Notably, whilst it can enable us to see the enemy, it can also be used to make the enemy unable to see us. To this end, we are combining elements of Galilei Lensing and Fulcrum Armour- albeit in a modified form- to drastically enhance our stealth abilities.
Svanire (Vanish) is envisioned as a quick, relatively simple sorcery, that renders the caster temporarily invisible (or at least much harder to see). It does so by utilising the light-bending techniques of Galilei lensing (making much sharper changes, but at much shorter ranges), combined with experience from Fulcrum Armour, where the ultimate direction is not changed, but merely made to experience a small detour, leaving a small area untouched. The spell creates a roughly form-fitting field around the caster, which redirects light from one side to the other. To prevent this from rendering the caster blind, the spell does not affect a small area around each eye- this does mean the eyes will be visible (from the front, anyway), but it should be fairly difficult to notice a floating pair of eyes in most situations.
The focus for this spell is an amulet set with a black gemstone (cheap Tourmaline should suffice, but can be substituted for a more convenient option) cut in the shape of a lens. Casting should be fairly rapid, and the effect should last for as long as the caster maintains concentration (and has the required mana).

It not perfect, but nobody else is suggesting anything, so...

Svanire: (1) NUKE9.13

[Jerick]

Svanire: (2) NUKE9.13, Jerick