A wealth creating scheme a day for January

Games Discussion Post a Day
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DAY 18: TOLL COLLECTING

To collect a toll, you need to offer a path of transport that speeds people's journeys in a way that encourages them to pay for it, and have a point where you can collect your money (so destroying a couple of mountains to create a huge mountain pass might be counter-productive, as there is too wide an area to try and collect tolls from).

Using vis: CrTe base 3 (create stone) + 1 touch with up to 4 magnitudes for size gives you the minimul ritual level of 20. As an example "Wall of protecting stone" with 2 magnitudes creates a wall 25 paces wide, 4 paces high and 1 pace thick - put that on its side and you have a modest bridge, so an extra level of size and maybe 1 for complexity to create supports or to arch it neatly gives you a major bridge.
Alternatively, a ritual version of "Bridge of Wood" from Arm5 p 135 will work if Herbam is your strength.

You could enchant items for sun duration spells and have them cast twice a day with "constant effect", this gives a bridge that looks permanent but you can dispel it in an emergency and also you can reposition the item and hence the bridge in case of war or in case someone stops your toll collecting and you want to take your toys home.

You can use PeTe or ReTe to dig canals (a suggestion for an epic one linking the Rhine and Danube is mentioned in City & Guilds, or maybe you create the Suez canal centuries early and make trade with East Africa and Asia much easier). You can also tunnel through hills and mountains, if people will trust your toll tunnel, but you probably want to use InTe effects to check your work is secure. As mentioned at the start, you can always try digging a pass through tunnels and then making a path or road, but it needs to be narrow enough to be taxable.

You could also use MuAq (reduce the size of a river), ReAq (redirect the flow or slow the flow), or PeAq (just forcibly drop the water level) to create a ford that might be taxable.

Just flying people over with rego effects is a blatantly magical solution and likely to get you in trouble, but you may find it fun.

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DAY 19: TO DYE FOR

so on day 4 I mentioned Rego magic to apply dyes without needing extra chemicals, and day 5 mentioned creating Alum for fix dyes. Now on to sources of dyes for mythic Europe for you to try and make.

RED – madder is a red dye from rubia tinctorum, this is the red of the Danish flag. You take the roots and harvest them. Mentioned in Hildegard of Bingen’s herbal, Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica, Pliny’s De Re Natura; kermes (kermes vermilio insect provides scarlet or crimson. To show how expensive this is, in 1182 the Sheriff of Lincoln bought Scarlet at 6s8d/ell, Green 3s/ell, Blanchet 3s/ell, Gray 1s8d/ell), the ell being a standard measure -in England it's 45 inches for cloth.
Armenian cochineal (or kirmiz in Persian/ vordan kamir in Armenian) produces a red dye – half a million porphyrophora insects are needed to dye one kilogram of silk crimson. Lac is from kerria lacca – India and Vietnam produce this, the dye is red and used for wood, silk and as a cosmetic. This resin can be turned into shellac – used for lacquer, and the resin can be made into tribal bangles. Carmine is from other species like polish cochineal.
Vermillion is ground up mineral cinnabar (mercury sulphide) – would this count as a base rock? Cinnabar is found in Almaden in Spain, Idrija in Slovenia (started 1490 in real-world history), Moschellandsberg near Obermoschel, La Ripa and Mount Amiata in Italy, Mt Avala in Serbia. Not to be confused with vegetable cinnabar, a red resin mentioned in the Socotra section of Rival magics.

BLUE - Indian indigo has a high concentration of indigo, woad contains the same blue pigment and is easily grown in northern europe.

YELLOW - weld (Eurasian plant which prefers waste places) provides a bright yellow dye, which when dyed over woad forms greens like Lincoln Green; also dyers' broom is a plant that provides a yellow dye. Old fustic from india and Africa is a yellow dye.

GREEN - Lincoln Green is cloth dyed with woad and then overdyed with weld or dyers’ broom. Coventry blue and Kendal Green are also English ethnic dyes.

BROWN - Dyewoods – brazilwood, catechu/cutch from acacia wood produces dark brown dye. Tanner's sumac (also known as Sicilian sumac - native to southern europe and west asia) has leaves
that are very rich in tannins and so provides brown dye (and apparently yellow, red and black from other parts of the plant) and the ground fruit is used as a spice in the middle east. Chestnut bark is also tannin-rich.

RED/ORANGE/YELLOW (depending on chemistry) - brazilwood.OK, in medieval Europe they used sappanwood powder imported from Asia, but the modern country of Brazil gets its name from paubrasil, wood used as this sort of dye – the Brazilwood tree was such a major export it became the nickname of the country that was formery known as Ilha de Vera Cruz. It’s a red pigment. Powder the wood into sawdust, soak in lye for a deep purplish red or in hot alum solution for an orange-red, then add alum to lye or lye to alum to fix the color. Using different Ph changes this – yellow in acid, red in alkali.

PURPLE - produced from sea snails, the wikipedia page tyrian purple mentions that 12000 snails provide enough for 1.4 grams, or enough to dye the trim of one garment.

C&G prices - Plant and mineral dyes £50/ton (average), £10,000/ton expensive for insect/shellfish dyes like purple and crimson. Can you use CrAq to create liquid dyes – would they count as processed (1/100th of water individual) or corrosive/dangerous (1/1000th)? Otherwise you would need the plants, minerals or vermin (as insects and shellfish are regarded like all invertebrates as) and then to extract the dye.

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keep in mind that a lot of period dyes used minute amounts of precious materials- gold was used for red coloration, while copper was used for blue and green.
The question of Mercury sulfide gets into one of the fundamental flaws of AM- because while it claims to be about what people believed in medieval europe the fact is that people at the time had conflicting theories- the same Egyptian based school of alchemy which held that diamonds reproduce sexually, which is canonically part of the game, also held that metals were a combination of mercury and sulfur with different qualities- mercury and sulfur being elements of their own and not earth in their model. Thus mercury sulfide - which is a salt. should be considered, based on alchemical theory, as a metal.

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DAY 20: GETTING WITH THE HERD

To ritually create mammals – CrAn base 10 for corpse +1 touch +1 size – get a full cow or auroch for meat. However, magically creating meat only gets you so much, actual breeding stock is better if you have the land. CrAn base 15 if you’re creating living ones – so level 20 gets 1 sheep or pig, 30 gets 10, 35 gets 100 – at this point you’re getting enough to stock farms. Typical livestock income is 1000 pigs, so level 40 ritual to set up and you need enough land and farmers. Therefore the ritual Stock the Farm CrAn 40 creates 1000 pigs, and a version Stock the Fields exists for 1000 sheep. Cattle would need a size modifier.

Alternatively with a size modifier level 25 gets 1 horse, level 30 gets 10, 35 gets 100 horses - £2 each by C&G (2 per ton, £4 standard quality) so assuming you have a market big enough to sell that many horses you could make money.

As an out-there idea to test the limits of hermetic theory, you could make a touch-range item which does CrAn 15 create animal +1 touch +2 sun for level 30 and +4 levels for continuous effect (2 charges/day and sunrise/sunset trigger) for total level 34. This item conjures a sheep out of thin air. Feed the magical sheep grass and it will create droppings as normal. Over the course of 12 months it slowly turns grass into real sheep flesh. After 12 months, deactivate the device - suddenly your sheep dies, but as it's been eating real food for a year, I believe it leaves behind actual meat and hide. Ludicrously inefficent but allows you to test the limits of Creo magic.

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I think technically you may have a different sheep every sunrise and sunset so that the food would not accumulate in this way- I'm not certain it would even if this was the same created sheep.

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DAY 21: CREATING LESSER BEASTS
Mammals are more difficult in the CrAn guidelines than birds, fish and reptiles. Vermin have already been covered earlier on day 7.

What impressive specimens can you create? The CrAn base 10 "create a bird/fish/reptile" +1 touch +1 size creates a sturgeon at level 20, or a crocodile if you’ve seen one in the wild. Ostriches are very large birds (level 10 base + 1 touch, as the minimum level for rituals is 20 you may want to do group at 25).

Now these may be farmable to some extent - in the modern time sturgeons are farmed for caviar. I'm not aware of crocodile farming before the 1890s, but the north american alligator is farmed for its hide and chewy meat. It may be just about possible with ReAn wards to keep the dangerous, not-really-domesticable reptiles in their place. Ostriches are the size of a large human, but looking at the history of them it seems they were mostly hunted for feathers and meat until African populations suffered large losses in numbers in the 18th century, and farming started in the 19th century.

Overall, creating these for fresh meat and hides is cheaper than for mammals, but farming will require clever use of rego animal to anachronistically farm. Lands of the Nile does mention the struthophagi of Mythic Aethiopia - if you manage to recruit some of them to your covenant, maybe they could help you farm ostriches?

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DAY 22: GRAINS

Grain farming is the basic way of feeding people, as it produces large quantities of staple food that can be turned into bread, gruel, pasta, noodles, and so on. As it is so widely used, it has already been covered to a fair amount by published material.

Covenants page 52 has "The Motivated Plow" as a labour-saving device.

Transforming Mythic Europe goes to town on this. The section on creating a magical island includes how to create the topsoil and plants to cover it. Page 62 has The creation of verdant grassland to cover an area with grass one pace deep - and wheat is a grass. The same page includes spells for creating trees and acorns.

The magical technology section of TME has on page 120 the effect "nourish the displaced vines" to allow you to grow plants well outside their usual climate, if you want to grow herbs or fruit in places not suited to this. The same page has "Filling the capacious silo" if you just want a huge amount of grain in a store to slowly eat. The real trouble here is storage.

The spell "The Bountiful Feast" (CrHe35 from the core rules p135) looks good, but at 7 pawns of vis it is more expensive to have a year's perfect growing season than just to magic up a huge amount of grain, and trade the surplus for the crops you didn't grow.

Your grain will need storing. To prevent plant products from decaying is a level 2 base. Therefore warding a storehouse is CrHe base 2 +2 sun +1 touch = level 5 +1 magnitude/size of your store, and in an item you'd add the +4 levels to keep it on constantly. Ring wards are easier, but also easily broken - as a grain store is something that would be accessed on a regular basis, the opportunity for accidents is big. You may want a ReAn ward to keep rats and mice away, or you may invest in cats instead.

Finally, as an alternative you might just have a load of sweet chestnut trees. Forest communities in medieval times would gather chestnuts, dry them and grind them into flour. This allows remote communities with not much farmland but plenty of trees to survive.

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a flaw with this- grain is seed, and seed cannot be produced without the expenditure of vis. In theory you could produce seedless fruits by visless creo casting, and you can accelerate the growth of plants which take a long time to develop (certain olive trees take a century of growth before they produce fruit, which can now be a single day), but grain is simply another way of exchanging vis for cash.
If you can find a regio with an accelerated time rate it would certainly be worthwhile to plant and harvest there more often, whether it means having grog in the accelerated regio or sending them in for very short days to plant and harvest.

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Day 23: MIND READING FOR PROFIT

The first point is to cast your mind-reading spells forcelessly unless you are sure your target isn't a magus in disguise. No accident scrying!

A method that can be used ethically is to find out at arcane connection range what prices are being paid for certain goods in a certain market, or what goods are in demand, or what seems to be fashionable. This allows any merchant to set off knowing that at the start of their journey they are definitely carrying items that will sell well. (Of course, things can change during the course of your journey unless you're using magical transport).
A spell Posing the arcane question as a level 35 Arcane Connection range version of Posing the Silent Question (ArM5 p149) allows this, as long as you have connections to suitable people. Merchants from the target city, or perhaps the officials in charge of weights and measures in a particular marketplace, are ideal.

You could also attempt a spot of borderline court wizardry - by determining who is loyal to a noble, and the intentions of their rivals, you can try and make money from being an advisor. After all, many covenants do similar spying on local nobles to try and keep ahead of any political changes that may damage their interests. The trick is not getting caught, so you would either need to pretend that it's all done through mundane spying or that you are using astrology of the sort practiced by learned men everywhere.

If you don't give a damn about ethics, how about blackmail? Using higher level InMe to determine deeply-buried secrets and guilty feelings is the straightforward part. Actually blackmailing people without getting informed on to authorities or having people try to silence you is the hard part. Now you need people with Intrigue, Guile and Folk Ken skills to blackmail the targets without getting killed or letting it get traced back to you.

As an alternative to InMe, you could use InIm to actively scry on people, or MuIm to disguise spies (or even PeIm to make spies invisible) to gather your secret intelligence.

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DAY 24: JUST TAKING IT

Covenants includes Crime as one category of income. It is also one likely to attract the "Indiscreet resource" hook. Yesterday I covered blackmail, but today let's consider just stealing goods to the value of what your covenant needs.

Spell wise - PeIm for invisibility - both for your potential thief, and also to hide your loot . Alternatively, MuIm can help with disguises. You can always use ReTe to teleport the goods out (Transforming Mythic Europe p107 has a sidebar with guidelines for instantaneous transportation). If you want to steal livestock or horses, ReAn lets you do this with ease but maybe a grog with Animal Ken and a high level of animal handling would be more straightforward.

What about using the art of Mentem? Using MuMe to change someone's memory so that "no, I am the owner of this" or CrMe to put into people's heads that they meant to deliver something to you may sound like a good idea, but unless you PeMe their memory of doing this soon after people will realise what happened quickly. In fact, missing goods and people struggling to remember what happened may make people very suspicious. Mentem methods require extreme care to avoid getting caught.

Once you've done this, unless you have directly stolen exactly what you need (unlikely for lab equipment, weapons, armour, paper) you will need people with Area Lore and Bargain to fence the goods. The further away you sell them from the victim, the better.

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Redcaps can make great fences...

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DAY 25: SPICES

The problem with spices is that most magi have never seen the plants spices are gathered from. This prevents Creo magic being used to conjure up a vast quantity of the tasty and expensive stuff, or conjuring a field full of plants to be nourised using "nourish the displaced vines" from TME page 120. Therefore, if you wanted to try this you would need to go on a journey to where these come from naturally.

Black pepper and long pepper are native to southern India. Cinnamon is native to southern India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Bangladesh. Cardamom has two types - "true cardamom" in southern India and Malaysia, and "black cardamom" in the Himalayas. As "Mythic Hind" is an exotic land whose goods are transported by Arab and Persian middlemen before European traders get their hands on it, arranging an adventure to these parts would be tricky and involve either colossal research or an awful lot of hand-waving. Nutmeg, mace and cloves come from Indonesia - Arab traders have discovered where these comes from, but this knowledge has not reached Europeans yet.

(One interesting note is that Jean de Joinville mentions in his documentation of the 7th crusade in 1248 that he heard that cinnamon is pulled up in nets at the source of the Nile on the edge of the world. In Mythic Europe, this could be true and a journey to Mythic Aethiopia mentioned in "Lands of the Nile" could do.)

One crop used for flavouring is a lot more accessible - sugar cane. This is grown is southern Iberia, Cyprus and Egypt in medieval times, so it is possible to find the plants and observe them. City & Guilds prices sugar at 50 pounds a ton, so it is quite profitable. Lands of the Nile page 69 has a whole sidebar on story seeds involving southern Egypt and sugar cane, as historically it becomes a major crop in the 13th century,

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On the other hand coriander, fennel, juniper, cumin, garlic and thyme have been cultivated since ancient Egypt and would be known and likely grown in most European countries. thyme, sesame, cardamom, turmeric, saffron, poppy, garlic, cumin, anise, coriander, silphium, dill, and myrrh were known in ancient Sumeria and likewise would have been widely known how to grow them.

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White and and black mustard are two other spices to consider, since a preparation of mustard seed and vinegar was becoming popular in France during the 13th century. White Mustard has been grown in Europe since Roman times and most likely originated around the Mediterranean, while Black Mustard is most likely from north Africa. Watch out for Wiki, since they seem to mix up Black and Asian Mustard. Horseradish is also native to Europe.

Some other spices from the Mediterranean are are Anise, Hyssop, Garden cress, Lavender, Mahaleb cherry, Myrtle (used as a pepper substitute), Nigella (Black Cumin), Oregano, Rosemary, Sage, Savory, and Sumac.

The biggest bang for your Vis are Saffron and Truffles.

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DAY 26: SHIPPING
There is money to be made in buying low in an area where something is produced and selling high in an area where there is demand. On day 23 I mentioned that you could try reading the mind of people at a target market to see what prices are currently being paid. Now let's look at shipping. I am not covering instantaneous teleportation as a) your house rules may not like it and b) it's covered in the final chapter of Transforming Mythic Europe pages 108-115.

Whether going by road or sea, the first thing you can do is shrink your cargo. MuAn uses a base of 4 in beast of miniscule proportions and MuTe uses a base of 4 for Object of increased size, so I will consider Mu(form) 4 to be the general base level. You will need to shrink your cargo, keep it shrunk while in transit, and then restore it at the other end. For quick journeys, you could just us muto to shrink for moon duration, ship it, and then let the spell wear off in a warehouse, but for anything that doesn't easily fall into this duration (or if you want to sell instantly at the end) you will need multiple effects.

MuAn covers animal products like meat, wool, leather. MuHe covers grains, wood,flax and linen. MuTe will cover all your pottery, metals and stones. Transporting oil, wine and beer will require both MuAq for the liquid and either MuHe (for coopered barrels using only wood) or MuTe (for pottery jugs or glass bottles). You will need to consider the requisites for what you can cast, so you devise an appropriate effect or know which cargos you can't ship this way.

Using MuAn to shrink wool for the wool trade as a common Northern European example - MuAn 4 +1 touch +3 moon for a total of 20 will shrink one fleece's worth by a factor of 8 (half in each direction, so 1/8 volume and weight). You will really need group target to get multiple fleece's worth at once. For a longer journey, you need MuAn 4 +1 touch +2 sun + extra for target (level 15 + group +size modifiers) to shrink initially. The maintaining hold will have the same effect with +4 levels for continuous effect. At the end, you will need to either wait until sunrise/sunset or have Unravelling the fabric of Animal (PeVi) to undo the spell.

If you are taking fragile goods on a bumpy road or rough seas, you may want to have a rego effect to hold items still. If you are transporting livestock by sea, then ReAn to calm the animal and PeTe(Aq) to magically destroy their urine and dung will make the job vastly easier. (Medieval horse transport for crusaders was a notoriously difficult business - you would immobilise horses in slings, and have grooms feeding them and shovelling their dung continously.)

When it comes to market, if you haven't got local agents then Thoughts within babble to understand people and InMe effects like Posing the silent question to check if a potential buyer is ripping you off or a potential agent is honest can really help.

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Note: you can also use muto spells with a moon duration to transport fragile goods safely- if the fine china or crystal is transformed into granite cubes with moon duration before shipping then breakage in transit can be eliminated entirely. Similarly MuHe(te) or muAn(te) can prevent spoilage.

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OK, I'm running out of decent ideas for mundane wealth gathering, so the rest will be magical services or ideas for magical plundering.

DAY 27: JUST SELL YOUR VIS

The vis economy in Ars magica has always been something which gets handwaved or gets just enough detail to make a game session work but not enough to withstand detailed scrutiny. I am not going to attempt this mammoth task of make-believe economics. However, HoH:True Lineages indicates you can sell vis. At the very least, you should be able to swap it with other covenants for what a covenant needs.

In 3rd edition canon, the Roman Tribunal was short on vis as most of its magical sites were now under Dominion auras. It had a decent population of magi, and access to the finest cities and craftsmanship. This makes them obvious places to sell vis to, and a great place to get fancy manufactured goods (weapons and armour for the grogs, glassware and ingredients for the lab, writing material and inks) that your vis-rich but cash-poor covenant.

The main attractions to selling vis are:

  1. you may be in a vis rich area or have a personal vis source.
  2. you have a decent Intellego Vim score and want a use for all those vis-detecting, measuring and gathering spells.

The books suggest 10 or 20 mythic pounds per pawn, however I'm sure most covenants who are buying either want to pay in magically created wealth or dump excess produce. Finding the right people to do the deals with is the tricky part, and one which encourages you to send redcap mail to other covenants and to go out and meet other magi.

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My perspective on the vis economy- given the resources of books, it should not be uncommon for there to be rituals, and people who ca cast them, at level 40 for CrTe, which means at range touch base 15 (create precious metal) 8 pawns of vis should be able to generate 100 cubic feet of gold, which would be 120485 lbs of gold for 8 pawns of vis, so a pawn should be worth more than 15065 MP, otherwise it would be routinely used to create gold in exactly this fashion.

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DAY 28: MAKING LAND

There is only so much land to claim in Mythic Europe. I might look at assarting forests and unused land another day, but today let's look at getting land where there is currently water. Transforming Mythic Europe has a chapter on creating a large island of your own and building it from scratch. I'm looking at something much more modest for struggling covenants.

There are many marshes that could be turned into farmland. Much of the Netherlands (so in 13th century the Northeast of the Normandy Tribunal and the Northwest of the Rhine Tribunal) is polder, land reclaimed by putting down dikes and letting water out. Simple rego terram on base dirt lets you build these quickly. You can use rego aquam to move water out, or perdo aquam to just destroy it. Alternatively, one of the great inventions of the late 12th century, the vertical windwill, can be used to pump water if you happen to have mechanically-minded magi or companions. In the Stonehenge Tribunal, the Fens of east anglia and the Somerset levels are reclaimed swamp.

Further afield, theFucine Lake is Italy's third largest lake throughout the medieval period. It is known for its rapidly rising and falling levels. The Romans made drainage tunnels which dropped the level and reclaimed a lot of land, but after an earthquake and neglect it became blocked in the 6th century. Interestingly, Frederick II is supposed to have tried to repair these tunnels but was unsuccessful, and may have lacked the funds or the technical expertise. If I ever play in the Roman Tribunal, I'm definitely heading here.

Covenants page 10 under "poorly defensible" mentions a covenant that was paid in a narrow strip of rocky coastline, and the magi built a massive dike to reclaim land from the sea. This example shows you how bold you can go.

As an alternative, you could go somewhere there just isn't enough soil - the Mythic Iceland for 4th edition AM and the far north of the Novgorod Tribunal have areas with very thin soil. Creating a huge amount of fertile dirt is possible with a CrTe ritual level 20 and 4 pawns of terram vis - Base 1 +1 touch +6 size magnitudes to get to the minimum ritual level of 20 give you 10 million cubic paces! The trick is planting enough trees around the dirt and enough plant covering to stop it blowing it away, and that requires a lot of Herbam magic. This can also be used if you find a desert oasis with little fertile land, or use aquam magic to bring water in.

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Day 29: MAGICAL NOVELTIES

Covenants mentions that a typical income from magic would be a couple of minor items or a longevity ritual sold through a mercer house each year. The crucial part here is protecting yourself under the code, so using the redcaps of the mercer house to arrange the deal or having a trusty Venditor (from HoH:MC in the Verditius chapter) is a good idea.

What sort of trifles can you get away with selling? I am thinking of ones that allow nobles to show off their wealth and power, without necessarily upsetting any balance of power. Imaginem magics work well - an item of Aura of Ennobled Presence is doable as a lesser item for starting magi, and would enhance the owner's status. Items of Taste of Herbs and Spices could make it appear like they were spending a fortune on expensive spices when they are in fact just using an item.Items to produce magical music would be a way for more auditory-inclined magi to create items.

Considering auram, a magical air freshener (Chamber of Spring Breezes) or magical rain diverters could earn well. An item to make a plant blossom of of season uses the rego herbam base 15, so would be a minimum of level 20 at touch range, but would appear amazing while not destroying the orchard unless you give it unlimited uses/day. The sort of ignem effects used to keep buildings warm and comfortable (as used by magi to get the "magical heating" benefit for their lab) saves a lot on fuel, and perdo ignem to make any room into a magical icehouse (rather than requiring massive construction) is also impressive and useful.

The aim is to create something that the wealthy would enjoy while limiting the possibility of wrecking the medieval world around you to the point that you could be accused of "interfering with mundanes".

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