So, let’s just say you had a non Hermetic cult with some water transportation mystery magic going on. What are some good ways, if there are some, to create a river or a canal?
Djehuty and others in the EnDor game, do not read, spoilers
I’m in a saga in the Levant, near Tiberias, and we have a pagan Egyptian magus. I’m working up a plot thread involving a Venetian merchant bringing in agents of the Isis Myrionmos cult at Saint Zachariah’s nunnery in Tim Ferguson’s Mythic Venice. This is after a local feast of nobles, and I’m trying to figure out some agendas. I had the idea that maybe there’s a plan in the works to make sort of a Suez Canal, either in its RL location or east of the Sinai akin to the ideas for the Ben Gurion canal, if the territory can be secured through crusading, and the cult and the Venetian leadership are in cahoots on it. The pagan magus would get suckered in before he knows how political things are due to his story flaw about his obligations to serve cult of the old gods.
What I want to know is how they might actually do this. Like, obviously this was a huge undertaking even in our industrialized world. It would take some serious magic. I was thinking of the bits in Between Sand and Sea about trying to have the Black restore the other parts of the Nile from the otherworld or whatever; is something similar possible here? Is there a cool way to do this with a mystery or something that you guys can think of or come up with?
Also please let me know if I have botched the spoiler function. I can’t tell if I can see it because it’s not working or I can see it because I created it.
An approach, and it’d probably take some futzing of the rules a bit, is to combine Old and New - perhaps the Venetian Merchants have some sort of Alchemic Formula that turns the dirt and stone far more pliant in some way - perhaps easier to wash away (slow route) or highly flammable (exciting route) such that they just start burning it away (and the material turns to smoke and just goes away because Something Something Aristotelian Elemental Spheres). It would probably still take an incredible amount of physical labor to make happen, but it could turn it into something doable in a lifetime, especially if there’s some Ancient God(like being) using their influence to make the workers tireless, or creating ongoing rains to wash away the top layer of transformed material.* A sort of anti-cement. Such a deity could also be sponsoring said Alchemist (and their team), augmenting their lab so that they’re able to make a lot of this stuff en masse.
*In this schema the material is transformed in chunks so that, layer by layer, mile by mile, it eventually washes away, first one foot down, then another, then another. It would probably be something that’s been going on for a WHILE, and feels like it would be hard to achieve without people noticing already? But maybe that’s why they want your pagan magus, to take what they’re doing and scale it up.
There are two easy ways to do it, without having to mess with code. There is that little button that looks like a circle with a + in it right above your text edit, that says “Options” if you mouse over it.
Yea that, click on it and pick ether “Hide Details” (which is what I think you wanted) or “Blur spoiler”.
Short answer - any magic that can move, change or destroy earth could theoretically do it. A Hermetic magus can easily do Perdo Terram to destroy earth in the shape of a big trench, practice that enough to master it and you can make a canal (as makes good sense to those living near big lakes in Loch Leglean or Hibernia, or to those in between major river systems).
A Philosophical Elementalist (from Hedge Magic revised edition) can physical summon the earth away, presumably they’d need a finesse roll to make a nice trench rather than a pit in the ground. A Theurgical Elementalist could try summoning the biggest earth elemental they can to dig, while a Sahir (whether Hermetic or from the Order of Solomon) could try finding an earth-related Djinn. If you really want a mythic solution, summoning devils or faeries to do a massive amount of work for in exchange for a dreadful price is always appropriate.
For another more mythic/story-driven solution, lots of rivers are embodied as beings. The Danube is a big one, mentioned all through AtD. It would be an interesting quest to seek out and trick/persuade (or kidnap) the river spirit, and thus the river, to move somewhere else. A pagan magus might be already in the right space for the relevant abilities and virtues to make a start on that.
Obviously, moving The Danube ~1,000 miles south would have a number of other exciting consequences.
I agree, with one added wrinkle. I had to think about this a little for the Magical Island and you need to line the canal in some way or the water will get out (or get salty in that other case). So, you need to jacket it in something that’s not particularly reactive with water.
I love the idea of making a canal from the Rhine to the Danube. I sold it to Atlas twice, I think? Charlemange wanted one but couldn’t get it done. My point is there is one in the modern day, so you can just steal their map and assume they found the best spot.
You need nothing more than “It happens.” It does not need numbers. You are the SG.
How it happens is interesting. Does the ritual use a captured fae god,completely destroying the fae god? Are their people being constantly drowned as the water flows to power the magic? Is there a pact with infernal powers?
Is there nothing dark? The magi is literally a prodigy at the level of Bonisagus. There are 20 magi doing the ritual and they have a monstrous supply of vis.
Hermetic magic, the logic is easy. Perdo terram with enough size mods, and let the water rush in. Add a Rego requisite to keep the outer walls of the canal collapsing while the water rushes in, may be necessary. If hermetic magic could do it, an NPC with weird magic should be able to do it.