Art of a City Conjured

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

So I just found this image from Iron Bound Throne and I have to say that it gives me all sorts of amazing and awesome ideas. The fact that its so completely circular to me indicates some high level geometry, maybe even one based on spells. The fact that its in the middle of the woods indicates to me that the place is in either some new lands or is hidden from the prying eyes of mundanes.

I also cannot help but think that this might be a perfect example of an even more potent and powerful Conjuring the Mystic Tower, probably called Conjuring the Mystic City, hehe. If you consider there to be paths between the buildings in each circular area than a single spell could connect them all. It would be an epic undertaking but I think it could potentially be awesome for either at the middle, end, or even beginning of a saga. I could see it be the end result of hours and days of gameplay, of characters rresearching and adventuring to gather the material. I could also see it be at the very start, with the elder master of the PCs casting the ritual, establishing the base, and then sacrificing himself willingly to empower it and become the spirit of the city. I could see the city being in the middle of a wilderness tucked in a regio so that mundanes can't see it, or in a wood covered valley surrounded by mountains, or somewhere else.

Anyway, I wanted to share the image cause it really called to me. And I think anything that causes a creative person to be like "oh my lord that is awesome" should be shared to others for maybe discussion and conversation.

As a final note some questions. What sort of size do you think the city might be. I'm thinking maybe something like a mile around, basically the equivalent of old London central, but I don't know. I would probably make everything stone, with a Muto Herbam requirement that makes them regrow on their own. I could even see that what looks like the statue in the center being the focal nexus point for the ritual spells and bindings that surround the city.

Anyway, I think it was fun to share and I hope that maybe others might find it discussion worthy.

PS. I do not in anyway claim creative power over the picture, I tried to find its origional source but all I could find was a relink of a relink of something else, so no actual original.

2

Here's a medieval example of a representation of a circular city. It is the Hezilo chandelier (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezilo_chandelier) from the middle of the 11th century, with a diameter of some 6 m.

Cheers

3

One Shot,

Interesting chandelier. I wonder if one could use it as a sort of lead into the whole super powered ritual effect of making a city from nothing. Maybe its got some sort of arcane symbolism that can provide for a mystery initation or something.

4

It's Transforming Mythic Europe that The Island of the Magicians is in, right? That's pretty much what this makes me think of.

5

Conjuring the Mystic Tower is level 35. Bump up its target to Group and add another size magnitude, and you can make 100 towers or a larger number of smaller buildings. It's already got 3 magnitudes worth of intricacy, but the variety of structures here probably deserves another magnitude or two.

So Conjuring the Mystic City would probably be level 55-60. Not easy to invent or cast, but definitely not impossible.

6

Also, the Finesse would be a horror if you wanted an artistic city.

My personal variant of that is a spell creating a giant wall, with towers. Interior buildings are handled mundanely. (Note: Casting it twice is a nice idea, but even one of these walls is going to be terrifying. Two is a concentric castle, and you'll want to be prepared for the implications of a construction of that nature.)

7


BlackLiger,

Yep, Transforming Mythic Europe has a bunch of awesome information for making an island. I use it a lot when I'm trying to figure out the math. Its a really interesting and informative and cool book.

This isn't from it but it is quite aspected towards it.

Sanctaphrax

Part of my problem is that I wish to understand the math but certain elements of what I think it should be don't always make sense. The whole use of both cubic foot and cubic pace and the way that some of it talks makes figuring out exactly what each magnitude can do and should do and stuff difficult.

I know I would never sit down and actually mathematically figure out exactly what the amount of mateials the city in the picture requires, but it would to find a balance point in the spell that actually logically works.

Its funny cause theoretically if you bump up the Mustic tower spell by say one level you can make ten towers in an area connected by little road lines to keep it Individual.

Ramidel

The idea of having the walls and the towers that come from the walls and the main road entertaining into the city being conjured through the ritual but then having the stuff inside be constructed normally makes a lot of sense. It allows for internal weirdness of sizes and shapes and stuff, without everything just coming out of nowhere one single moment. I think that sort of, I cannot say balance but thematic utilization of magic, might make a lot of sense compared to making the entire city and all its wallsa nd towers and mroads and buildings in a moment by magic. Though if done it would totally be an epic act.

8

As far as using Transforming Mythic Europe is concerned, the relevant spells are found on page 61 and focus on making cottages with the appropriate amenities (roads, plumbing, etc.) They are:

  • Creation of the Walls of Simple Cottages (CrTe 20)
  • Creation of a Legion of Appointed Cottages (CrTe 30)
  • Creation of a Well Appointed Town (CrTe 30)

Without additional magnitudes devoted to size, they only make 10, 9 & 8 houses respectfully. The reason why they are comparatively low compared to Sanctaphrax's ball park is that they use the Individual target (connecting the relevant buildings by a thin layer of stone). In order to make the cottages non-identical, which would be required for your 'Conjuring the Mystic City' spell, they suggest adding additional Complexity.

Adding towers to any of these spells (as per Conjuring the Mystic Tower) adds at least 2 Size, though I'm not sure how much. And that still only gets you 1 Tower, 7 cottages. Raising target to Group makes that 10 Towers, 70 Cottages.

Honestly, I'd do it in at least two spells, 1 to create the outer wall, the second with a target of Boundary (with extra Size!) to fill in the rest of the City. Rinse and repeat as necessary. Explains the multiple defensive walls inside the city, (based on the picture in the original post). Transforming Mythic Europe has 'Wall' spells on page 55.

And dear Ramidel is right. The Finesse roll would be a nightmare, at least an Ease Factor of 27. Just say that it's obvious to everyone that this city wasn't constructed through mundane means and looks...somewhat unnatural.

9

Glad you liked it, I can't recall where the image was found now but I like the idea that it is the result of the Conjuring the Monumental Fortress, at CrTe45.

10

Creo spells that create matter must be either Individual or Group.

The Finesse roll is going to be pretty epic. A city of that complexity is at least daily work of skilled artists (12; HoH:S pg61 insert), so you can't default to the 'no roll situation' (HoH: pg61 insert) for the work of semi-skilled artists.

However, even Conjure the Mystic Tower suffers from this problem. An 'elaborately carved tower' is at least the daily work of highly skilled artists (base 15) and the result of at least a year of work (+9), so it has a Finesse base of 24. The majority of towers cast using this spell are going to look very poor indeed. It is possible to get those levels of Finesse reliably, but you require strong specialization:

Finesse 10, Intelligence +5, Puissant Finesse +2, Spell Mastery:Finesse +3, Familiarity from Craft:Stonemasonry5 +3 = 23 + stress die + Confidence. But that's probably the greatest tower conjuring magus ever. Your average mature/old magus is probably Finesse 5, Int +3, Mastery +1 and enough Familiarity to cancel any penalties, so 9 + stress + Confidence, so in most cases your CtMT will just look bad.

Another, possibly better option, is to conjure huge volumes of natural stone in approximately the right shape and use subsequent magics to refine the shape and let mundane craftsmen finish the job. Stone walls and solid towers can be conjured as a single block of stone in simple shapes that would qualify for the 'no roll' level of Creo magic.

11

DeedNay

Yep those spells are my guidepost, lol. I use how they are set up to provide me with enough of an understanding on how the more epic spells can work.

The fact that each magnitude increase x10 the amount of buildings built the easier it is to expand.

I really like the while make s line or road of stone connecting the buildings so they are individual. It's a nifty and cool way to design it.

I guess what I'd do is figure the stone in cubic feet or pace of material and then roughly decide what one building needs to see how many a level of the spell can conjure n though admittedly I'm bad at the math for figuring that out.

The two spells sound s nifty way to do it. Though you would have to make it Individual or Group, I'm pretty sure Boundry won't work. But your point still stands.

I plan on easing the Finesse ro, magnitude boosts fir complexity and such things work enough for me. You can clearly tell it's magical, but that is fine to me.

Ironboundtome

Yeah it's an awesome pic. I'm immensely grestful for finding it and you for posting it on your site. Has given me inspiration. :slight_smile:

John Prins

No offense I don't see s need nor would I use such an epic finesse roll. I prefer and like and use the idea of added Complexity for creation spells rather than Finesse. I know it's not entirely accurate but I see no reason to penalize a player who wants to make a magical construction out of whole cloth. Mostly cause I love the idea.

Such magic looks good, is strong and stable, but is clearly lower case magical in how it forms. So it's fine for me.

Notes

Anybody have any thoughts on how big such a city from the image might be?

And what sort of resources might go into magically creating it?

Oh and I wanted to ask since its related, has anybody used the rules in Transforming to Gove a construction say the healing properties of wood while adding a plus one Magnitude. I love that idea and I know it adds s Herbam requisite bit I think it's awedone. So I was wondering if anybody had ever actually used said rules.

12

You can use the horses drawing the carts between inner wall and citadel for scale: take their size with compasses - and with that you can roughly measure the architecture.

Cheers

13

Oh wow that's nifty. Cannot do it now as I'm at work but I now know what my really fun epic project will be even I get home. Hehe

Great idea by the way!

14

For a more manageable city-conjuration project, create the walls as one spell, the main roads as another, and the main public buildings as another. More modest buildings can be created or built. Put in the bones and the rest of the city should grow.

Finding city inhabitants is a different problem.

15

If his character isn't extremely specialized towards city-making, then just to be old enough to consider this, he'll probably have longstanding membership in a covenant full of potential inhabitants. Also you could make the city awesomer than the surrounding ones, but that tends to require some people already within the city to receive (and thus vouch for) the awesome benefits.

16

Heru Kane: I'm aware of the maths. I was in on the playtest for that book, and spent a LOT of time fiddling with the numbers to see how they could go. It was... interesting. Though I must admit, I'm a bigger fan of the machines in the last chapter than I am the island.

17

This is a very, very old debate. Many players, myself included, believe that the extra levels of complexity in the spell eliminate the need for the impossible finesse roll. One reason for this is that Mystic Towers never looked like trash when we made them using previous editions of the game and some of us have gotten pretty attached to the spell.

18

TimOB

Doing it in multiple steps makes a lot of sense and it doesn't actually take away from the magical nature of the project. Plus, its probably a bit cheaper in terms of roll cost than trying to make everything all at once. Plus, even more interesting is that it lets a wizard come in to make his own personal abode or the commoners to live in say wooden structures or whatever, to give difference to the city.

LuckyMage

I have to agree there are probably many ways to get people to populate the city. Including both options that annoy other mages or mundane lords and those options which nobody gives one wit about. Another option is to use the pan-Europe nature of the Order to get small group of peasants from all throughout Europe so that no one location ever finds themselves depleted. The differences in culture could be useful to create either a true melting pot that forms a unique culture in the end or makes what comes out of it unique. It has a lot of potential, depending where the city site is.

BlackLiger

That is really cool. The math of the Terram power confuses me sometimes, especially when one talks about conjurign and manifesting huge constructions. Par tof that difficulty is that spells use different units of measurants than I am immediately used to, and then they switch it up from spell to spell. A good example is cubic feet and cubic pace, and pace itself, they are interchangeable but they alternate in spells.

Jabir

I know you said this to John, but I have to say I agree with you quite a lot. My use of Complexity or Unique (I have seen that as well) and other such buzzwords to add to magnitude is what I use in conjuring stuff to stop me from having to make outlandish (and I will be honest and say stupid as far as I am concerned) Finesse rolls. I like Finesse when making something a work of art (I should have some restriction if I want to make the Mona Lisa and make it look completely like it) but not if I want to make a tower.

One Shot

So I was looking into your suggestion and i have to say its more difficult than I thought. For one reason, the image isn't exactly centered. What I mean is that the foreground is larger than the background so what is a dot in the back is an inch in the front. So its hard to truly get a full on scale for things.

That said I might just say about one mile around, which is similar to what London Center was and thus is not entirely out of logci to have it be walled off and seperated.

But it was a good suggestion. :slight_smile:

19

I imagine that word of a new, mysterious city will spread relatively rapidly, and with many variations on the story. Mystics, magi, covenfolk, faeries, demons, magical people, and a few ordinary mortals will probably show up on their own. Depending on accessibility, of course.

The local powers, mortal and otherwise, may be very surprised, displeased, puzzled, and/or awestruck.

20

You need to take into account the reduction by perspective. But since the diameters of the outer wall's towers should all be the same, this reduction is easily assessed. Still it is work - and if guesswork is right for you, that is fine.

Have fun with the drawing.

Cheers