I believe we need someone to SG the faerie market story--though I can take over after that, since I doubt Viola willl want to participate in the search for the lost king.
Scott
Given the deafening silence on this one, should we reorder, and have Stephen go for the missing king barrow first?
Yeah, I'm not sure what to do. I take it you're not interested in running it?
Scott
Not really, I'm afraid.
Hello all. Sorry to have disappeared on you all of a sudden last year. I wrote a note to MTKnife, but I figure I owe the rest of you an explanation too.
What happened is that my dad fell suddenly ill (mentally and physically) and had to be hospitalized with a family member monitoring him 24 hours a day. He has Parkinson's Disease and it's very bad for a person with Parkinson's to be in the hospital. Many, many things can go wrong, and you want to have someone there who knows what's going on and is willing to advocate for him. He also entered into delirium, which exacerbated his slow dementia. All in all, it's been a bad time for the whole family.
It also happened very suddenly. One evening he went into the emergency room for blood pressure issues, and the next day he slipped into the delirium that he's never really come out of, and it was all hands on deck. In any case, the last several months have been a lot of dealing with that, and trying to keep up with work and family in between. Thankfully we finally found a good place for him at an assisted living facility that specialized in memory care.
So that's what happened. I know I should have found time to say something. but in the early months I was too busy, and after that, it' seemed like it was too late. But in the end, I decided that you all deserved an explanation as well. I'm sorry if I made life difficult for you or burned any bridges.
Best,
Trogdor
I apologize for not replying yet. I'm really sorry to hear about your dad, but glad to hear that things have gotten at least a little better.
Don't worry too much about the saga--most people who leave don't even do this much. 
Scott
Thanks for letting us know. Certainly no bridges burnt man. Hope it improves
Oh, it's certainly improved. My dad's getting the care he needs in as good a place as we can hope. And more importantly, my mom isn't burdened by 24/7 caring for my dad. But it's certainly difficult to 'lose' a parent, but have them still there. Not what I'd wish on anyone.
But it seems like things haven't gone all that far in the saga. Any chance I could jump back in more or less where I left off?
Yuck - sorry to hear about that.
I've no objection to you rejoining.
Yes, you are absolutely welcome to rejoin. 
Sorry to be late in responding, but I missed this message.
Scott
Excellent. Now I just need to figure out what's happening.
Thinking about it...a seventh magnitude spell is probably warping us every time it's cast. Which isn't great for the magi, and pretty bad for the grogs.
Ooh, I adore limitations on magic. Now if I can just find a way to mitigate the effects of Posing the Silent Question.
Scott
Hmm. I had thought that it was only warping the ship. Hadn't thought about the effect on the people in the ship. That may be a major miscalculation on my part. If this spell does Warp the people on the ship then it severely limits the use of a spell that I spent a lot of time working on.
I suppose the way around it is to cast the spell on the ship whilst everyone's off it, then cast individual Veils of Invisibility. It's a bit cumbersome, but doable in a lot of circumstances (if bad for escapes).
I did feel a little bit bad about the "pick their brains from our invisible ship without every engaging them" plan (but not enough to stop me enjoying working out how to put together the pieces to achieve it).
Things I can think of to mitigate the effects of Posing the Silent Question: magic resistance, (risk of) demons, playing around with one's own mind and the magical defense Veil of Secrecy (Mentem) (hedge wizard with that defense can made a Per + Magical Defense Bonus + simple die roll vs an ease factor of six + spell magnitude - if they suceed, the information provided is reduced, although isn't false and always provides at least some info).
Re: Warping from the Ship's invisibility spell...
Salutor's onto a good idea for the short term by doing the ship separate from the people - I'd favor that rather than getting warping.
That said, its plausible to invent a PeIm effect which destroys the species emitted by the ship and it's inhabitants when it travels a pace or so from the ship. A non-standard Target is needed (which is fine in formulaic magic) which might be an ovoid shaped shell which destroys the species raveling outward from the ship. The Jerbiton chapter in HoH has a set of quick examples for those types of "invisibility" effects. They use the same baselines, but implement the effect differently. It'll avoid warping the boat and crew too.
I'm not sure what the guidelines are (I still haven't found all my books), but I would think you'd have a couple of magnitudes for added complexity: first, your target is hollow, and second, you're destroying the species moving outward, but not those moving inward.
Scott
Yep, I was roughing out a version of the spell and came to similar conclusions to you MTK. The species flowing one way isn't really an additional complexity, as that is what invisibility spells do "out of the box" now. The basic PeIm in core spell is doing exactly this, it's just not explaining it in the same terms as the core rules don't explain how it works at all. The real complexity is in having the more complex shape (as you say above), and then the size increased as needed.
In Trogdor's current spell is a design of +3 mags for T:Structure which is far too much in terms of "paying for" the size of affecting the boat that Trogdor designed. IMHO better to use the T: Ind with a +2 size increase, which is 100x times larger than a standard human. Doing +1 for 10x times the volume isn't enough, but 100x is certainly large enough. It means the spell can't be used for Structures, but I'd not expected that was a real intended use anyway.
So my 2c is: if the spell was reworked to the shell style, then it gets +1 mag more complex, and -1 mag less size needed; so the same end level but an effect which is as intended and avoids warping.
I'd be all for that!
My take on it was that destroying all of the species emitted by a particular object was what invisibility spells did out of the box - the directions issue isn't usually relevant.
Is the intent of the spell to destroy all species coming out of the shell (which seems like it would probably leave the sphere looking black), or only those emanating from the ship and its passengers? The latter seems more useful, but also more difficult to do. I suppose it's basically a variant of "Ambush on the Deserted Road" (pg 64 of HoH: S), but that only works in a single direction, has a Circle target and requires a Per + Finesse Roll of 9+. In the case of destroying all the species emitted by a structure-like target, you'd need a Per + Finesse roll of 12+ (would be 15+ for a boundary-like target).