Ah, yes, that might have been what happened--I don't remember that one, personally.
Scott
amul never officially bowed out, did he? I wonder if we could possibly lure him back.
Scott
It might be worth pm-ing him? At the least, you might manage to get what he'd planned for the barrows. It looks like he was last on the forums about a month ago, so he hasn't completely disappeared.
OK, I've created a new topic for the plumbing.
amul replied to my PM, and while he's not interesting in playing ArM right now (in any saga), he did give me enough information on the barrows to get me going--once I've read the last couple of pages of that thread.
Scott
Excellent - it'll be good to get a thread with Ironboundtome moving again.
I've just got the last two pages to read before we can restart, and I should be able to do that tonight.
Scott
Ah, OK. In any case, you can apply those retroactively if you like.
BTW, still nothing from ironboundtome, I see. I'll try sending him another PM.
Scott
Now that we've finished with the plumbing, are we about ready to declare a date the Still Caverns thread is happening on and start it moving again?
Given what Patrick said in the "Haunted Covenant" story, I would assume "Still Caverns" starts in Spring 1226. Of course, that creates the awkward problem that the plot should finish long before Patrick is out of the picture.
Realistically, it makes sense for "Plumbing" to have happened in Spring 1226, too, or at the latest in the summer of that year.
Scott
I think we need to have Still Caverns start after Fray arrives, so that means at some point after the Barrows thread, i.e. probably in 1228. We can say it's taken that long for the quarryers to get to be in a position to implement the cave draining idea.
Spring of 1226 sounds fine for the plumbing.
That is not in the House Rule section, and as Fray has that flaw I need to know more. Viola's custom virtues make the [Weird Magic] flaw far weaker than it normally is. It becomes trivial imho. I don't think that is the case for a Magus who casts regularly. Fray has cast spells many times in his threads, each with risk of botch.
I also have played that a botch is a botch, so while it is colourful, it is not an otherwise successful casting. That could be the key difference.
Can you give me more info (perhaps in another thread?) on how this applies in this saga?
Oops, yeah, it's not in there--I don't know if I ever came to a firm decision about how to apply it.
I hadn't thought about the possibility that a Weird Magic botch still results in spell failure, though you're probably right, and that's one reason not to do it the way I was suggesting. My problem with the Flaw is that it hardly ever comes up, because it's just one botch die. Because of that, something that seems intended to add color to a character will only come up on one stressed casting in 100--which, in practical terms, is almost never.
As for Viola's custom Virtues--I don't think they really reduce the chance of botching, since she can only benefit from them by rolling a stress die (even the /2 sponting with no Fatigue). If anything, they make it more likely for her to botch, because she usually uses sponts rather than formulaics.
Scott
Thinking about it more, whilst a 1 in 100 increase in botch chance is pretty mild, a 1 in 10 chance of botching is pretty harsh.
If the both makes the spell fail and adds a Warping point, yes, 1 in 10 is quite harsh. The way I read the Weird Magic rule, it didn't result in failure or Warping. Personally, I think have it happening 1 in 10 but being not very severe makes things more interesting than having it happen 1 in 100 but be more severe. Any suggestions? Or just leave it with the RAW, at 1 in 100, with failure and Warping?
Scott
If it does not result in Warping or a Botch result, but instead adds a change for weird side effects then I'm more than happy to have it a 1 in 10 for all stress casting. Sounds very reasonable, and very story oriented.
The changed flaw seems slightly weak, but reasonable on the understanding that the weird side effects are likely to be at best neutral and more usually moderately disadvantageous even though the spell goes off (as otherwise you're getting into "very weak flaw" territory again. It needs to be more than a version of Warped Magic that only happens one time in ten.
[Also, should we move this discussion to an OOC thread?]
I've edited the "Covenant" thread to reflect changes since the start of the saga, and added posts for finances and Prevailing Loyalty. I still need to work out the finances, and also work out how much vis is currently on hand.
BTW, does anyone have any idea why I have current vis stocks listed as 82 pawns? We were supposed to start with 100, plus the vis needed to set up the labs. I assume 8 pawns of vis were used in the first Aegis, but what happend to the rest?
Scott
I think the "current stock" is a bit later in time, so we've had an extra Aegis casting (or possibly two) - I think those are currently 5 pawns each. In addition, the covenant paid off Portia over her familiar with Corpus vis (I think that was 5 or 6 pawns).
Admittedly, that doesn't quite add up.
It would be good to get a breakdown of what are remaining vis stocks consist of. My suggestion for the original vis provided would be:
Vim: 50 pawns. (Aegis, opening items)
Corpus: 25 pawns. (Emergency healing)
5 pawns of each technique. (Contingencies)
Which adds up to the 100 pawns nicely.
Yes, we gave Portia 5 pawns, and the original Aegis was 8 pawns, for a total of 13...still no clue where those other 5 went, because I don't think I was counting a second Aegis. We can count everything over from the beginning, but I want to make sure I'm not missing any expenditures.
And yes, that distribution sounds fine.
Scott
OK, I'm going to bring the records (particularly the vis and expenses) up to the end of (Winter) 1228. I realize that we're still playing out some events from before that time, but Spring 1228 seems a good point to bring in new characters.
Scott