CrAn spell to create mundane animal(s)

Games Discussion Ars Magica
51

Let me offer a simple suggestion.

Do not think about "making money". Money is a means, not an end, and it seems in your situation (small local market) it's not working to solve your problems. Your covenant is too big for the local scene. It's a little as if, in the real world, you were the leader of a large country that got wiped out by a natural disaster, and had 400 million people to take care of. Money is necessary, but by no means sufficient. You can't think of securing food, medicines, housing etc. for 400 million people in 3 months just by "spending money". What are you going to do, order 100 million tons of food on Amazon? Buy 40 million houses on Zillow?

Instead, think about your end, which is to obtain the mundane stuff your covenant needs. So, the first thing to ask yourself is: what does the covenant need? Food (including water)? Stone? Wood? Metals? Animal skins? Craftsmen (which craftsmen)? Basic tools (including weapons and workshops)? Lab equipment (at least the mundane stuff)? Make a list and prioritize.

Then ask yourselves: of this list, how much can you obtain directly via the resources you already have (e.g., it seems you have a sizable workforce)? For example, in terms of food, it seems to me you can probably feed everyone using a fraction of your workforce and a little spontaneous magic, assuming you have enough land as it seems to be the case. First and foremost, you need freshwater (super-easy to get from seawater through Hermetic desalinization). Then, you need cereals and vegetables (easy), and some source of protein like fish (easy, since you are by the sea). Some eggs, dairy, oil, salt are not strictly needed, but without them fare is a bit boring. Alcohol and Spices are certainly not needed, but they sure make life much nicer. Think how you can get each of these with generous applications of non-fatiguing spontaneous magic, or with just a few fatiguing (i.e. potentially botchful) spontaneous castings. You can do a lot given the Art scores listed above.

There will be a few things that you can't get immediately and directly. For example, skilled craftsmen. Possibly metal. Some dyes and inks (useful for making books). List them, and do not ask yourself how much they cost, but where can you get them. In modern terms, think of having to buy an assault rifle: it does not cost that much, but you can't buy it on Amazon. Only once you have an idea of where to get the stuff, think of how to "pay" for it. When I say "pay", I do not necessarily mean "pay with money". For example, you generally cannot "buy" craftsmen. But you may have found a young monk with a fantastic talent for illumination. How do you convince him to join your covenant, or at the very least to teach his craft to one of your covenfolk?

Of course, in some cases, the answer will be: some merchant network is willing to provide me with some of the stuff, as long as it makes some profit. In this case, the same merchant network may be willing to barter what you need for other goods it may sell. The crucial issue is that not everything will be accepted as payments, and certainly not in arbitrary quantities. Plus, you may have to do some triangulations: produce good A, barter it for good B using merchant network 1, barter B for what you really need using merchant network 2. Ultimately, it's up to your troupe to decide how complicated this should get, based on the storytelling opportunities it offers. Keep in mind that Hermetic covenants have a unique advantage: the Mercere trading network.

Now, there are some fairly common goods that you may want internally produce a surplus of, and trade. The fundamental idea is that there should be a) a sufficiently broad, accessible market for them (good luck trading in emeralds) and b) they should be relatively easy to store and transport (good luck trading in hay) and c) they should be obviously easy to produce. Some common options:
Salt, by seawater evaporation.
Pearls (not a broad market, but great to barter for other precious materials): magic makes it easy to find them and collect them.
Easy to preserve foodstuff (e.g. fish, but vegetables too, olive oil, wine, flour, honey, nuts, marzipan, and pasta). With a little magic you can probably produce much more than you consume, and Hermetic drying is fast and easy.
Fine wool, linen, cotton, raw or processed. Again, a little spontaneous magic goes a long way.
Metals, raw or processed. Not clear if they are available on your island, or in the surrounding area, but magic makes it incredibly easy to find them, and to extract them.
Silk: if you know it's secret, it's incredibly valuable, and not that hard to produce with the help of a little spontaneous magic. E.g. transform a sheep so that it produces silk instead of wool: your Bjornaer can probably pull this off spontaneously, though fatigue will be necessary. Or, transform some covenfolk so that they will grow silk hair, ideally at a much faster rate than normal - that's just a few MuCo5 effects! There's not a very large market for it, but still...
High quality stone, like marble. Not too easy to transport, but easy enough to quarry in large quantities with spontaneous magic.
Soap, like the famous soap of Aleppo.
Apparently valuable stuff that's just an illusion. Dangerous, but you can easily pull one big sting: offer your clueless mudane merchant network a very valuable cargo, something worth a few years of your provisions, and arrange for some "accident" so it gets lost at sea...

Let me just look at the first one as an example. Salt. One cubic pace of seawater provides about 20Kg of salt. How much that might be worth varies widely, but putting it on par with wheat or maybe a little less (say, half as much) is reasonable. So, three Individuals of sea water provide the equivalent of a bushel of wheat. The merchant network needs to profit too, so, I'd say that you can exchange the salt of 10 Ind for the equivalent of bushel of wheat, or, roughly, salt from ... 500 Ind of seawater for 1 Mythic pound? Something like that - the troupe will have to decide the exact ratio, but you'll note changing it by a factor 2 or even 4 won't change things much. Exercise left for the reader: how much can one of your magi "earn" by spending a single day (8 hours) engaged in non-fatiguing, spontaneous spellcasting extracting salt from seawater? Show your work, including the spells!

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52

Everything Ezzelino wrote is why a covenant which is poor in mundane currency is generally not a problem.

It's a really good mechanism for getting new players to think of low end spont spells effects (and often be surprised at what can be achieved). If the players go for more middling spells with divide by 2, not divide by 5 sponts, the first time someone botches and gets a warping points, is a good warping intro.

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53

Just for context, the Hansa League (Lübeck and friends) was largely build on the income from selling fish from the Baltic Sea in the Mediterranean area. At least initially.

... and this business was so busy it lead to serious problems with inflation of silver in the south of England, IIRC.

Those are really good suggestions from @ezzelino

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54

Welcome to Thebes! I was part of a long saga in Thebes, so allow me to suggest a very convenient way of earning wealth that I didn't see in skimming the answers: Venice.

There are lot of Venetian merchant ships around. It'd be an absolute shame if one of them sank in a sudden unexpected squall, or disappeared in pirate-infested waters. Also, the Jerbiton can likely make a few quiet allies in the area to help conceal or disperse wealth more effectively. But I might be channeling my Hades-sworn Grecian Pirate Captain companion here.

Man, we are a bit off topic, this is fun.

55

"Eh, this is so below me... but very well."

Orthon is an Arch Magus, who has a non-fatigue ReAq spont of 14 (could actually hit 15 in the Covenant, but the Magic Aura on the coast of our island is only 2) and a Finesse of 12. So he can use a variation of 'Alchemical Separation of Brine' (TME, p.119) with Group. That is ReAq 10, Base 3, +1 Touch, +2 Group.

Per the book, a Base Individual of Aquam is 4,350 gallons of seawater which yields about 147 gallon of salt weighing in at 1,228 pounds. With Group that is 43,500 gallons of seawater to 1,470 gallons of salt weighing in at 12,280 pounds or 6 1/8 ton per casting. The Finesse target is 12+. Non-stressful so he won't be failing or botching the roll. So cast 10 times a minute, 600 times an hour, and 4,800 times in an 8 hour period. That is 29,472 tons of salt.

The issue here is that you need something to separate the sea water into such as tide pools. Otherwise you have to add Part. Since he doesn't have sufficient non-fatiguing capacity to include Part he would have to drop Group which would cut his total production down to 2,947.2 tons of pure salt in 8 hours of work.

Anyone who can non-fatigue a ReAq 4 could use the lower power version. They would produce nearly 3,000 tons of salt. You can calculate how pure it is based only their chance to roll a 12+ on the Finesse roll. Without Part however they would most likely be far lower since they need tide pools or containers to cast the effect on.

So really the limit for most Magi is going to be how fast can their "helpers" separate out portions of sea water for them to cast on and how often they pass the Finesse roll to get pure salt out of it. For enough salt to supply the Covenant and have a few tons to sell you are looking at a day of work for their "helpers" and an hour or so of casting by a Magi with a ReAq total of 20+.

Of course Orthon would never do this personally. Spending a season to enchant a device while he has workers build evaporation pools on the coast would be the way he would go. Using a fraction of his ReAq Lab Total he could build a ReAq Base 3, +1 Touch, Unlimited +10 item and use the rest of his Lab Total to produce other things.

That is the method that would be easiest for anyone to do after a few hours of casting the non-fatiging spont version to build up an initial supply. The workers build up lots of little tide pools that can hold a Base Individual of Aquam (or a touch less) which are filled when the tide comes in and then can be closed. You enchant the item with a number of daily uses equal to (or greater than) the number of pools you have built.

With a Lab Total of 20 you could enchant an item with 50 uses per day which is overkill but if you want it for a salt producing Income Source more than capable. This would allow the Income Source to expand to 50 pools and several hundred workers (collecting and packaging the salt). That would produce 30.7 tons of salt per day (minus the percentage of failed Finesse rolls) which is how much a normal operation of this size could produce in a month.

Finesse is the limiting factor. It almost always is.

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56

A few threads that touch on wealth creation in some form or other. There is useful stuff in all of them for building up some magically boosted Income Source.

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57

Part / Size+1 is also 43,500 gallons, no? Same result, no tide pools.
And tide pools are individuals, ReAq 5 with Ind / Size+1.

58

You are all amazin guys. Many thanks everyone. They are in an island and noone has high Aquam. About the salt, they will not cast those spont. But ofc they are able to create the spell then use it. If you had any more ideas, please tell them I do appreciate it al, even if I sound like oppositing to them.

59

4000 gallons for Individual. (A&A p.76, with a tiny bit of math. See the erratum for that spell you're looking at.)

40,000 gallons for Part/Size+1 or Individual/Size+1.

60

Many many thanks for all your ideas. I will let them consider all of them.

Its a good idea to make a list of doings. Its easier to focus on what magic can do, once you have it listed and shorted. Will do that It is an amazing tip to organize the situation. You will make me work, but probably is the best if i wanna focus a bit in the early foundation, additionally it is much more rewarding when you play it and you develop the situation much more.

Then ask yourselves: of this list, how much can you obtain directly via the resources you already have (e.g., it seems you have a sizable workforce)? For example, in terms of food, it seems to me you can probably feed everyone using a fraction of your workforce and a little spontaneous magic, assuming you have enough land as it seems to be the case. First and foremost, you need freshwater (super-easy to get from seawater through Hermetic desalinization). Then, you need cereals and vegetables (easy), and some source of protein like fish (easy, since you are by the sea). Some eggs, dairy, oil, salt are not strictly needed, but without them fare is a bit boring. Alcohol and Spices are certainly not needed, but they sure make life much nicer. Think how you can get each of these with generous applications of non-fatiguing spontaneous magic, or with just a few fatiguing (i.e. potentially botchful) spontaneous castings. You can do a lot given the Art scores listed above.

In fact when its listed I will probably realize that magi can do much more. I was using the Covenant rules, for simplicity, but in this case for a while at least, untill they establish and let most of the things to be organized by their grogs, I should use a very complicated simulation. To make them chase some objetives, let some of them go play to try to secure some of the stuff they need.

There will be a few things that you can't get immediately and directly. For example, skilled craftsmen. Possibly metal. Some dyes and inks (useful for making books). List them, and do not ask yourself how much they cost, but where can you get them. In modern terms, think of having to buy an assault rifle: it does not cost that much, but you can't buy it on Amazon. Only once you have an idea of where to get the stuff, think of how to "pay" for it. When I say "pay", I do not necessarily mean "pay with money". For example, you generally cannot "buy" craftsmen. But you may have found a young monk with a fantastic talent for illumination. How do you convince him to join your covenant, or at the very least to teach his craft to one of your covenfolk?

Glassblower and blacksmith is something they have access to. My Verditius magi is a blacksmith, he has the skill at lvl 5, but he does have a group of fellow blacksmiths to work with usually. My mage can not do much yet. There are no labs yet, they are being built. Can use those in Mistridge, but there is no good Verditius lab in there, so meanwhile, my blacksmith grog helpers can easily be employed as covenant blacksmiths. Also the issue in both cases is to have the working places ready.

They though about cotton already, they declined because of the labour that is needed to be collected. Salt has not been thought of, neither soap or pearls. Stone mines and metal mines I did not think about having them or not in Crete I will think about it.

All in all thanks for the time and effort to write it all. I will give it a go. And tell you all how we finally develop it and why.

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61

Have you heard of Sea Silk? It's made from the fibers produced by pen shells (a kind of clam). It's a natural golden color and is finer than silkworm silk. It is an extreme luxury good, a persian noble paid 1000 gold pieces for a robe made of it in the 9th century. Labor intensive as hell to produce, but I'm fairly sure magic could streamline the process.

Probably the easiest option is just to create the byssus cloth directly. This would be CrAn25 (base 5, +1M Touch, +2M Group, +1M Worked), but would require a decent Finesse roll. Conjuring pen shell fibers would be CrAn20, but they'd probably rot before you could work them all (preservation Ring spells would help). You could make a magic item to harvest the fibers from the pen shells without harvesting the shells unduly, though this might require grogs trained in Finesse, as well as water breathing spells.

Or magic could be used to farm pen shell reefs, either creating them directly or creating the conditions they need to thrive (shallow seagrass fields with rocks). This and other 'slow grow' income sources are a lot less likely to attract attention; planting forests of saplings with magic and using 'grow healthy and strong' magic over time is good and subtle. Since it's the Mediterranean, olive orchards and/or vineyards can be good money makers, alongside other fruit and nut trees.

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TL;DR Vineyards and orchards are an Income Source that can be setup and greatly boosted by subtle magic.

Vineyards and orchards are a great source of income. They are easy to setup with magic to overcome the years to decades buildup normally required, can use subtle magic to boost productivity, produce a product that can generally be traded almost anywhere with a long shelf life, and the products produced generally have a premium segment which you can work into.

For a vineyard you want to choose a grape that does good in the local climate. Even better if you can get "magic" ones that produce a better quality product. Even mundane grapes can become "magic" over time if they are in a Magic Aura and subject to powerful or ongoing effects (they Warp). Just being in a Magic Aura will also tend to make them better (being closer to perfection is a side effect of a Magic Aura). Generally avoid Faerie grapes and Aura since they can have unpredictable quality and effects.

If there is a type of fruit that grows well in the climate then you can make hybrid or fruit wines. Unless there is already a demand for a specific one this requires building a market up but could be a valuable alternative.

If you are not going to go for adult beverages from your orchard, then generally you want to focus on products with a long shelf life and good value. Olives are OK, but olive oil is much better. Varies nuts are also good. Things like fruit are not unless you are going to make something from it since they are harder to transport and have a much shorter shelf life so are generally consumed locally.

The initial setup phase is the roughest for new enterprises. It generally requires a massive outlay of capital and labor with no return for years. Fortunately this is also the phase which generally has the least external oversight and can be easily sped up with magic.

Magic to bring the plants to maturity quickly is a big time saver. This will shave three years off of a vineyard and possibly a decade from an orchard. It will also allow expansion of the fields easily later on if you decide you want more production capacity. Being able to mostly ignore that years in advance planning is very helpful.

Setup of the property and building the facilities are another big sink, though this one often is more labor and money. Terram spells will allow rapid setup of the fields without having to use massive amounts of labor and time.

Aquam effects can be used to power irrigation. I would recommend setting up a large underground reservoir on a hilltop. This would allow subtle means of filling it, such as magic water pumps through underground pipes.

For ongoing effects those suggested by John are good. There are lots of example spells and effects published, which can boost both how good the crop is and make it more resistant to disease. You can also use subtle weather effects to improve things. Spells and effects can also be used to keep out pest which could destroy your crop.

I mentioned a bunch of the ones for processing in my earlier post. Often you are better served by ones that do a very simple but labor/time intensive activity. These are the type that does not require Finesse and lets your craftsmen do a lot more work. For example rather than Rego Craft Magic to process grapes or olives, you create things like magic powered wheels/presses to crush them. Things where the craftsmen skill is still the deciding factor.

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63

Note that picking the cotton isn't the labor intensive part, it's picking out the seeds from the cotton balls. It was the cotton gin that made this task (relatively) trivial. For comparison, someone (usually a slave) could pick 200 lbs of cotton in a day, but only separate the seeds out of 10 lbs of cotton per day. Cotton gins of a kind have existed in India since 500AD but it really wasn't until the late 1700s that a proper mechanical cotton gin made cotton production truly profitable (and this drove the slave trade to grow massive plantations of cotton).

Oddly, ReHe magic (fruiting) might be able to produce cotton fibers without the seeds (since the seeds are new life, they need to be Creo), completely eliminating the labor intensive step.

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64

Worth noting that basing your production numbers on these directly is probably worth avoiding, the peasants in your covenant are not chattel slaves.

65

Better numbers for hand picking cotton can be had by some of us asking our parents/grandparents or looking at something like cottonfarming.com. Hand picking is still done to this day (in limited amounts), but was very common throughout the south US going into the '60s.

200# would be an average day for an adult (mid teen or older), with 250~275# being a good day. People picking for the maximum possible sunrise to nearly sunset (mostly a contest or really needed the money) were often well north of 500#. In the late '50s/early '60s that was paid at about $2/100# which would be $25~28 a day today.

Paid laborers were often more productive than slaves. For picking cotton about 25% more is the average.

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66

Yep, there's no need for slaves, especially if you can automate the most labor intensive parts of things. Not that spinning and weaving aren't labor intensive either, but automating every step just requires a boatload of Finesse that most magi and grogs won't have.

Going the lowest magic method (Craft Magic) you could do a day's labor route for a Per+Finesse requirement of likely a 6 (since removing seeds is simple but tedious), meaning your enchanted item operator would probably need a Finesse of 4-5, doing 10 lbs of cotton at a go. That's a specialist grog right there at that level of skill that would need several years of training (2 seasons a year) to achieve. Further stages are even more difficult, probably requiring a specialist magus, so are best left to the manual methods.

Once you've got the processed cotton, you can hire locals to spin/weave it for you. This was common with the wool industry, the wool producers were seldom the cloth makers. Then you sell the cloth abroad.

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Actually you already stated what might be the best method. Use a ReHe effect to make a plant blossom in a moment. The SG would have to rule that the cotton fibers were still produced but if so this method would be a bigger money maker than the cotton gin was.

Granted it would be a fairly difficult item for a young non-specialist Magus to make, since you are looking at a level 30 (Base 15, +1 Touch, Unlimited +10) item at minimum. Group (making it level 40) would be worth it since that raises the effect to 10 cubic paces of material which is a whole lot of cotton plants. If you have the spare vis it could easily be worth the x3 cost to have one made to get this Income Source going.

Combine this with a CrHe effect to bring the plants to maturity quickly and you are looking at a truly rapid crop. The item would be 10 levels higher since its cheapest is Base 15 and +2 Sun. So a level 50 item with Group.

If you hired someone to enchant them you are looking at ~27 (lesser) or ~54 (invested) pawns of vis and a year of waiting. Worth it compared to rituals though.

You would still require a field set aside for blooming cotton the slow way to get seeds. A greenhouse to germinate the seeds before transfer to the fields for rapid growth would help. And of course labor for the picking but that is a lot less intense when you don't have to remove the seeds except for the ones you need for the next cycle.

68

Look at you, casually tossing around Rooks of vis like it ain't no thing. :smiley:

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69

Look at you, casually tossing around Rooks of vis like it ain't no thing.

Truth be said if you Focus your income source on It, for sure It can serve you for your entire life. It is easily worth the Vis payment. No doubts on it, although being so much Vis. will make you think twice or more for sure, before acepting you will probably try to lower it or will think other options. But the fact is that it is a great item. And they can not do it, even if they would like ,so they should pay extra to have it done.

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There's no real reason for this item to unlimited per day and group, you're flooding the regional market either way, probably you would prefer unlimited per day, but the herbam base ind is fairly large, somone else can check lmao. Anyway that saves you 10 levels