New Errata

New errata are up, and Michelle is busy right now, so I'm letting you know.

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Hornet Fire (p. 142): Replace the beginning of the final sentence of the description with "Their burning touch gives one person with range…".

Shouldn't that be "within" range?

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Busy with what? Figure I may as well ask :slightly_smiling_face:

And thanks for your constant efforts.

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Argh. Yes. Fixed for the next version of the errata.

I'm not privy to the top secret activities in the Atlas Underground Laborat… Wait, I'm not supposed to mention that.

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I noticed what looks like an error in some older errata while looking through the story seeds in Lords of Men. Specifically, the following errata:

Assarting (p. 84): The insert entitled "Story Seed: Swift Assarting" was laid out over several paragraphs of text. They should read as follows:

Assarting

Hermetic scholars know that the weather in Mythic Europe is notably drier in the 13th Century than it was in preceding years. This has made farmable a great deal of land that was previously marginal. Coupled with the population boom being experienced in Europe, one of the simplest ways of expanding a fief is assarting: carving new cropland or meadow from fertile wasteland. This process has been occurring for much of the last century, so marginal land is becoming increasingly scarce.

A single strong laborer with proper tools clears one acre of lightly wooded land per month, if he does no other work. This means that villeins who are assarting land work much slower than an acre a month, because their other duties take precedence. Many lords use only local labor, or hire a small team of famuli who assist with the clearing and then are kept on to work the lord's increased demesne, so that assarting is a gradual but continual process that takes years to have a marked effect.

There are many ways of assarting land magically. Changing the topography or soil type to allow large field farming where it was previously impossible, altering water flows for irrigation, and removing trees or reducing them to ash are all simple and popular strategies.

A covenant that secretly clears itself land using magic alarms nearby lords. The sudden appearance of cropland in an area that was previously waste indicates to neighboring nobles that the new lord of has hired an enormous workforce. This, it is assumed, will cause predictable problems when it is dispersed.

Conquest

Taking land by conquest is rare, among the lower nobility, in most of feudal Europe, because it requires political skill and perfect timing. Conquered land must be taken from someone, and the lord of the dispossessed noble appears weak if he does nothing. In some cases, he will do as little as demand a fine and fealty from the invader, but this is seen as a pathetic response by his other vassals who, sensing their lack of security, form coalitions of mutual support that are often provoked into open war. All nobles know this, so unless a lord is beset by more important issues, conquest is rarely able to succeed in the extended term. 

Seems to replace the entire Story Seed: Swift Assarting insert with the text of the Assarting and Conquest portions of the Improvement section.

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No, it just tells you what the missing text is.

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Ah, I see. I took "laid out over several paragraphs" as referring to the insert's adjacency to those paragraphs, rather than literally covering the paragraphs. I probably would be still trying to figure this out if I didn't stumble on an old rpg.net review.

My bad, sorry about that.

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An oversight that someone brought up on the old forums, and has apparently slipped through the cracks:

In the Creo Ignem guidelines, we have "Heat an object enough to make it glow red-hot" under level 5, while we have "Heat an object enough to melt lead" under level 10. The problem here is that anything that's glowing red-hot is more than hot enough to melt lead. These should probably be swapped.

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@SEE good catch.

Yes, they probably should. If anyone is aware of any spells this affects, please let me know.

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I wouldn't swap them, because someone not aware of the melting point of lead and the temperature of red hot iron (eg., me before Googling it just now) would be very confused that it's easier to heat something until it melts then it is to heat it until it's red hot.

The intent behind the guidelines seems clear (melting is harder than heating).

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That's a fair point, but for people who do know, it's extremely confusing.

Does it actually create problems if we swap, and change to "hot enough to melt iron"? The higher level guidelines do not explicitly mention melting other metals.

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Or highly amusing :wink:

That's the issue many of us have faced for a long time. It's been mentioned many times over the years. And since it was also well-known in 1220 in the real world, it's not like magi should think it's in the order written in the guidelines, either.

I don't think the either of these guidelines has been used in a canonical effect. I could be wrong, but I haven't been able to fine either. So swapping them to the sensible order should only involve actually doing it.

There's no official spell that seems to use those guidelines, according to the Grimoire.

But it would have an effect on two spells I've designed, and that will be in the Fan Grimoire...

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Could try a simple errata
Base 5: Heat an object to color-hot, enough to melt metal.
Base 10: Heat an object to hottercolor-hot, enough to melt toughermetal.

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In scientific words that would still match mythic medieval paradigm and knowledge:

  • red-hot (around 700 °C), enough to melt lead, zinc tin
  • orange-hot (more than 1100 °C), enough to melt silver, gold
  • white-hot (around 1400 °C), close to melt iron (depending on purity, 1538 °C is needed).

Forging iron happens at much lower temperature than melting temperature (slightly higher than red-hot).
Steel has higher melting temperature than iron (I don't go into the detail of carbon content).
The lowest (red-hot) is obviously plenty enough to make any metal armor or weapon impossible to wear or hold.
Medium one (orange) is good enough for most forging, and close enough for iron-welding (ideally, it should be hotter).
Shaping and hardening are done at lower temperatures.

It is grossly simplified, but can be used to establish a scale.

I would go with red-hot and orange-hot since they are probably the two most useful temperatures for craft-magician wanting to instant-heat for forging.
If you want to expand the scale, every magnitude increase the temperature by 500 °C starting at 600° (if you are not too picky about correlation colour/heat).
So you could have Base 5 = 600°C (melt tin, lead), Base 10 = 1100° (melt silver, gold), Base 15 = 1600° (melt iron).

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My problem with the color-hot stuff is that it runs contrary to what many people seem to think. When I go to the store to buy an LED light, I see a more red one and think "cool" v. seeing a more evenly white one and think "warm." But the actual labels on them are exactly the opposite. If people tend to think this backward about blackbody radiation, I wouldn't want to rely on their understanding of it. :frowning:

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when we were redecorating my husband flatly refused to have the hot tap labelled in blue and the cold tap labelled in red despite that being the correct black-body mapping, becaue he felt it would "confuse people"

Bob

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Plenty of people are familiar with fire color/temperature stuff?