magically driven forestry/husbandry

Games Discussion Ars Magica
34

To me, there is indeed a pragmatic understanding, in that you need to feed the soil to grow good vine/plants again and again. That the plants and trees need water and a rich dark soil to grow well, and that every few years it is good to let the soil rest.

The fact an surnatural growth will lead to an early exhaustion of the soil is not something that could have been part of the medieval paradigm, as this is not something that can be observed or deducted. Some plant will exhaust the soil faster, but only because it is their nature to do so, the abnormal rate of growth should not have an impact on the nature of the plant (light or heavy feeder)

To me, when the spell is cast on a plant, the nature and quality of the environment will tell the end product :
If the seedling is set in a rich soil, with room to grow and in a sunny spot, with an amount of water matching its needs, it will grow big and tall. If some or all of these elements are missing, it will grow the best it can in such environment.

The soil would not degrade as all it does it to host plants and as it has been fed properly once a year, it is a great soil, that is the "natural behavior"
The water will not be sucked out dry, as a rain shower every few days is enough to keep the soil wet enough to grow plants.
For plants to grow properly they must be planted in a place exposed to some degree of sunlight, the actual exposure of the plant during its growth does not seems to be a factor (it can grow overnight) so I would say that if the spot is suitable, the plant will grow well.

That would indeed lead to an incredible industrial potential, but that's magic, so of course it is ^^ The restrictions, if you want to set some, would be more appropriate if they come from the side effects : meddling with mundane, jealousy > Can be seen as a miracle from your end, but pure witchcraft from another one, and if you do start flooding the regional market with high quality timber, dirt cheap... I can definitly see a demon enjoying this to spread some Diabolic taint over the region ^^

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35

Also something to keep in mind that magically created goods often runs afoul of the convention of magically created silver. The Order understands that magically creating too much of anything for introduction into the mundane market can and will cause problems for everyone. It's generally better to use magic to reduce your covenants actual costs - one favorite of our sagas has been a chest that creates charcoal with Moon duration - than trying to increase one's revenues.

It's probably better being as subtle as possible. Fell the big, valuable trees for sale - preferably when no one is looking - and immediately replace them with barely mature trees and let them grow up naturally. At least this way you could argue (in tribunal) that the 'value' of the tree was grown naturally, you merely got the tree established using magic, and you gain a small, steady income that doesn't draw attention. You also don't risk soil depletion.

The same spell can be used to raise productive orchards of fruit and nut trees quickly on land that's unsuitable for plowing. Only your closest neighbors might have any idea what sort of crops you're growing (and even then have a hazy idea at best) so you suddenly producing apples or walnuts for sale will attract a lot less attention than suddenly spewing out huge amounts of lumber. It only takes a decade or so to establish an orchard so only those most intimate with your lands have any real chance of noticing, so long as it's not in direct sight of a road or something.

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36

I don't agree, there was definitely an understanding at the time that growing things in soil depleted something (not necessarily nutrients. but some property of the soil). Crop rotation was a pretty universal practice (where at the simplest level the soil must be left fallow for half the year, that is an equal amount of time it is used for growing).

Not long after this period when woad production as a cash crop starts to ramp up we see laws explicitly restricting the practice because it renders the soil barren, so again this implies an understanding that overfarming a certain soil depletes and eventually permanently destroys some "fertileness" property.

So if growing a given plant in a given patch of soil depletes this property by a certain amount, supernaturally growing it faster will deplete it by the same amount.

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37

You don't need to remove the stumps. Coppicing is the usual way of harvesting forests in period, not clear felling.

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38

I would not have the magic used to grow the plants negatively impact the soil or water quality in the area. Its creo herbam magic and that means things like nutrient loss would not occur in my opinion.

39

I'm thinking we need to get a bit more medieval Europe. Creo makes it as close to those Greek philosophers perfect form. Is it shaded and thus it's growth will be stunted ? Is there enough nutrients in the soil? I perceive that as a bit of 21st century overthink, however, YMMV. I believe if it's a timber tree, it's big and ready for chopping down. If it's a fruit true, it's laden with fruit, etc.

There's a bunch of balance options if the story guide doesn't like it.

Many people before me have mentioned potential issues with the mundane authorities and OoH, so I won't repeat them.

A magic balance option, is that due to the extreme size of trees, the spell needs to be a very high level. Yes, the seed is small, however, if you want to make something grow to size +6 or more, which I'd think a large timber tree or fruit tree would be, that's a lot of magical energy.

40

If I'm not wrong, the High lvl spell can be easily avoided with the "circle" target, especialy for a spell like this one.

41

Note that the spell of Gwidion (Fast Grow CrHe30, MoH 39), does not work for trees. It can only affect plants of the size of an individual Herbam. You would need at least a +2 size for a decent sized tree (so CrHe40).

42

That spell is a basic CrHe effect. If you target a seed or sapling it will grow into full maturity within the duration. If you need to account for the final size of the fully grown tree then the spell guidelines would have said so.

Essentially you can get the sapling of a red sequoia and by sunset it will be many more times than size +2 and it would not change the spell level one bit.

If it were a Mu spell that would be a different matter.

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43

At what point is the tree 'mature'? What does the book say for Corpus and Animal requisites? If you want to let the spell grow a tree to gigantic size, cool. If you are looking for an in-game reason to stop it at 30 feet tall, then point out the tree might become 'mature' when it produces fruit or flowers or reproductive plant-parts. Any further growing would probably be a different spell.
You can argue either way!

44

Now that I have a book, here's what it says for Corpus:

Cause a person to reach full physical maturity over the course of a sin-
gle day or night. This accelerated maturation only applies during
the spell’s Duration, and thus full effect requires a Sun Duration
spell cast early in the day or night. People do not learn under the
influence of this spell, and for these purposes full maturity is
reached around the age of twenty.

And the Perdo Corpus aging doesn't work on someone under 16, because it's not aging at that point. If you want to limit how much magic can grow plants, you can probably argue that once it's flowering, plants are 'mature' and everything past that is a different spell. If you don't want to limit it... don't.

45

the thing is, even after maturity I would expect plant growth to be an issue of creo, since plants don't exactly decline after maturity the way animals do, or at most switch to rego instead of to perdo…

although apparently trees do get old and stop being able to recover from damage from their environment- if we use the dividing line between when they stop growing and when they start deteriorating as the base fore the guideline (which makes sense for the forms) you will get some truly massive trees. redwood apparently get so large that atmospheric pressure prevents nutrients from traveling from their roots to their tops. As an example the average lifespan for an oak is between 100 and 300 years- and can grow to be over 75 feet tall and wide. So presumably when it has reached maximum growth, that would be when creo could not help it any more...

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46

My interpretation is that the spell will stop affecting the tree when it reach a size larger than the spell allows.

All you can get with a normal herbam individual is a very mature bonsai. Of course your bonsai will be able to reproduce. No problem with that.

47

Btw, I don’t think that Sequoia seeds are available for mythic Europe characters.

48

The problem with your interpretation of how the size of a base individual limits a spell is that it has some very weird implications for the rest of the game.

imagine for example the MuCo spell "Preternatural growth an shrinking" which can increase the targets size by +1. By your interpretation casting this spell on a person who is already size +1 (maximum size for a base individual of Corpus) would only cause that person to grow to the maximum size of a size +1 individual.

Or if we have a giant blooded character who would be size +2 when fully grown. If you cast a CrCo spell to mature a child with giant blood then that person would be mature at the end of the spell but only size +1 which means that you have effectively robbed them of the chance to grow to size +2, as humans dont grow after they have reached maturity.

It sounds reasonable to say that a CrHe spell to mature plants is limited by the size of a base individual but it has all sorts of strange implications once you start to apply that logic to the rest of the spells.

You dont provide much in terms of a definition of maturity in trees either which is a problem. By virtue of not being trees we have a very limited understanding of what tree maturity looks like and so we have to provide a set of criteria to rely on. I would argue that maturity has to be bound up in some physical characteristic and that only when a tree meets that characteristic can it be considered mature (as is also the case for humans in Ars Magica). What characteristic does your "mature" bonsai tree meet that allows us to investigate it and say "this is indeed a mature tree".

49

It all depends on how you define the size of the affected target, before or after the spell effect. I tend Tod engine it before, but I can see the alternative interpretation working as well. In the later case you would need a size modifier for the CrCo spell to mature a giant blooded character. Otherwise it would not work. Easy.

50

You can consider maturity as the ability to reproduce. That has nothing to do with size. Bonsai trees are not special species of trees. They are just starved trees.

Anyway, I based my interpretation in "The Forest Giant" toy, in The Faerie Toy Market on Devil’s Lane, from Mythic Locations (page 108).

It creates a tree using the same guideline to grow it overnight and includes a +3 size to be able to bring to maturity a "towering oak tree".

51

You can consider maturity as the ability to reproduce, and in fact it has been considered in some detail earlier in the thread.

However in Ars magica the ability to reproduce is specifically not a determiner of maturity in humans as the spell guidelines specify that humans are mature for the purposes of Creo magic at the age of 20. Humans are generally able to reproduce at a much earlier time than the age of 20. When reproductive ability is not the basis of maturity in humans why would it be so in trees?

I have not checked out the spell you refer to in Mythic Locations but I have looked at a different spell(Fast Growth) in Magi of Hermes on page 39 which does not include an adjustment for size.

EDIT: I forgot to mention this, but I hardly think a bonsai tree, which is by your own admission starved to prevent ideal growth, can serve as an argument for how a Creo spell should work. Creo brings things towards their ideal form and "starved into stunted growth" cannot be considered a relevant example of ideal growth. By comparison you can also prevent humans from growing very much with age by starving them (its immoral but you can) but I doubt anyone would argue that this would be the most likely outcome of a Creo spell to mature a human, so why would it be for a tree?

52

Just as a note, Magi of Hermes is not considered to be a good source of material without checking that the maths are kosher first.

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53

That unnecessarily restricts a lot of spells. Would be okay for low-magic games I suppose, but not RAW.

And yes, I am aware that sequoias are native to North America. It was an example.

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