Spanreeds for Copying books

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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So I understand the metagame reasons that magically copying books needs to be different, and I know people have discussed this a lot before, but as I'm reading TME, it shows us the Quills of Arcane Correspondence, and says:

"If this enchantment is modified it can potentially be used to write multiple books at once, although not being able to see the remote text makes for poor quality reproductions. Substitute the character’s Finesse score for Profession: Scribe, but with a –3 penalty, and reduce the Quality of any remotely written text by 3 points."

Now, I love Brandon Sanderson, and he gives us a really good example of a Quill of Arcane Correspondence in the Stormlight Archive, where the quills have been placed in a slate fitted with armatures, ensuring that the quill, the paper, and the ink all stay in just the right place. If combined with high quality vellum, perhaps even created en masse with spells so that we can make it perfectly regular, do you think that would overcome the quality reductions?

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My short answer would be yes.

Reward players for putting efforts/ressources in a project.

Setting is that the market of books has not been destroyed by easy copying so we still have great copyists and having them in a convenant is a sign of maturity and prestige. Magi probably fight in back alleys to secure the best ones :wink:

If you have players wanting to disturb that fragile balance, then by all means, it should be possible and create a number of interesting stories where purists insert errors in the magically created copies or the existing copyists that stand to lose a lot of money become ennemies. A populist Magi might place an order for a large volume of copies of his propaganda. A demon might ask for a specific bible to be copied in great numbers, etc.

W

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'The First Furrow Guides the Second' (covenants, page 97) is a great aid to copyists; it is written as 'To aid or replace Illuminators', but it makes a group of images of a single page which can be traced over -- the mechanics of the spell are in terms of avoiding the 'unskilled in Scribe' penalty. A group of (up to ten, presumably) mundane scribes with a single point of Magic Theory could make full-quality copies of the same tome in a single season.

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So it's not so much the "unskilled to scribe" penalty I'm worried about, it's the Finesse rolls and loss of quality that is caused by enchanted copying devices and spells - the Quill of Arcane Connection solves this by making it a Profession: Scribe check, putting it in the hands of a specific expert - because the penalty to quality comes from remote writing, I don't think First Furrow helps specifically (while I suppose it would make corrections easier after the fact, The Copyist's Critical Eye is probably better).

I'm hoping that improving the design of the Quill and making it significantly less error prone will remove the quality penalty - as it stands, the penalty seems to be justified by the irregularity of the movement and the non-uniformity of the parchment, which I think is solved by stabilising the Quill and paying Vis for a CrAn ritual to make perfect vellum.

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It seems like the quality reduction is from not being able to see the remote text; and even having the 'remote' quill working on the same desk as the original scribe means having to split concentration between two (or more) tasks.

That is why I recommended ten scribes using 'FFGtS', it gets you to ten people making ten (high quality) copies from one book in one season. Each scribe concentrates on applying their full skill to a single task, but access to the original is equally easy for all of them.

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It does say that the quality reduction comes from not being able to see the text, but that's not a specific enough explanation for me - everything else being equal with regards to placement and quality of materials, I can't see how not being able to look at the remote text would have an impact.

If the scribe is producing a copy on their desk, and there are 9 other devices exactly copying the motions of that scribe, using identical equipment, then surely the scribe only needs to be able to see the one they're working on directly?

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The need for a Finesse roll is inherent in the Guideline you'd use to remotely move the other quill(s). It's not comparable to Stormlight's spanreeds, which have a spren (= spirit) guiding the copied motion.

There's no such automatic oversight in Hermetic magic -- you're not getting automatic movement, you're getting controlled movement. And someone has to be controlling it, hence the Finesse roll you can't get away from. There's no "exactly duplicate the movement of [target]" Guideline available without some sort of original research.

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As I've quoted above, the Quill replaces the Finesse roll with a Profession: Scribe check, and I'm perfectly fine with that, it's the automatic and unavoidable loss of quality I'm trying to mitigate.

The spren in a spanreed is in no way "guiding" the motion of the device - it's more akin to an elemental being used to power the device, and would have cunning instead of intelligence. If I was to compare it to something in Ars Magica, its more like Spell Binding than Hermetic Empowerment. The link between the gemstone in one and the gemstone in the other means that the writer is moving the weight of both gems simultaneously, which is why the gem in set inside (a completely nonmagical) device to hold things in place and remove errors introduced by things being in slightly the wrong place.

The wording for the spell "Twinning The Quill", which is used to enchant the Quill of Arcane Correspondence, reads as follows:

ReAn 19
Pen 0, 12/day
R: Arc, D: Conc, T: Ind
When the effect is triggered, any movements of the enchanted quill are exactly mirrored by the other, which is usually left atop a sheet of parchment with an open inkwell in a precisely defined position. Errors must be crossed out rather than scraped from the parchment in the usual fashion. A concentration roll is required every few sentences. Arrangements are usually made to change the parchment and refill the inkwell.
(Base 1, +4 Arc, +1 Conc, +1 precise control; +4 12/day)

Given that the spell itself does say "any movements of the enchanted quill are exactly mirrored by the other", it feels like the nonmagical, mechanical innovations used to make the spanreed work accurately on Roshar should be sufficent to make the Quill of Arcane Connection work in Mythic Europe.

9

I think this part is the one that makes up most of the loss of quality.
In a regular fashion, when writing a summa or tractatus, you'd scrape the parchment if you made a mistake, and continue forward, making the entire text flow naturally and without a problem. But when using this, you can't do the same to every parchment, so you have to scratch and continue, making the text not flow as well, thus reducing it's quality.
What you'd need, is another device that will scrape the copies, and therefor restore the flow, and quality.

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10

Okay interesting - I believe there's already some spells out there for the removal of text, if some kind of scraper can't be added to the device itself, so I won't need to invent Wizard Tipp-ex or anything - thank you!

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Creating an Empty Book From a Filled One
PeAn 3
R: Touch, D: Mom, T: Ind
This spell creates a palimpsest (a book that has had its writing
scraped away so that it can be reused) from an existing book. It
does this by flaking away a thin layer from both sides of each page.
An Intelligence + Finesse roll determines the skill with which the
previous writing has been removed.
(Base 2, +1 Touch)
Source: Covenants, 97

But you'll want a device with T: Part.

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Regarding the removal of mistake, it will likely require a human intervention: considering that magic is not "smart", I cannot see how it would be able to identify, then remove the mistake and finally rewrite in the proper place without human supervision.
Each task can be done by a spell, but coordinating all effects to work properly, no spell so far can do that.
I like the idea of binding spirit for the task. It will need a bunch of house rules, but it could be a promising and interesting path:

  • binding a spirit, not to maintain a spell, but to monitor a task (a variant of the Binding Spirit virtue),
  • then granted them the ability to trigger various magical effects (probably using familiar's bond enchantment as source of inspiration),
  • and also how to make sure the spirit does correctly its tasks - having the right skills, but also preventing any shenanigans and sabotage from the spirit.

Trying to complete such project will require collaboration from various specialists, which is always a neat story tool.

On the other hand, once all those problems are solved, a Spirit should be able to work 24h/day, basically tripling the output (without considering the boost from other improvements).

As personal view, I like the idea of balancing skills with loyalty: if some form of coercion is used, it limits strongly the coerced target to use efficiently his skills and his aptitude to take initiative, on the other hand, if the target is able to take initiative, it could theoretically rebel/plot/prank depending on their treatment.
Somehow how immortality is link to being immutable, thus making growth and evolution more difficult.

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So due to the device being used, mistakes will arise from the scribe making errors that are reproduced across the quills moving in concert with them - they should be aware of any errors as they happen, and can either activate the equivalent of the backspace enchantment or use the slate that's attached to the device, same as the quill.

I do like the idea of a bound spirit producing books on demand, and it would make a good alternative to this system - I'd want some spirit of knowledge or something, perhaps motivated to help this exact task, although tbh I'd worry about infernal beings trying to get placed in further devices, after the first is made known - seems a great way for devils to influence mortals!

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14

I also think that when using magic as a technological tool, one should consider how invention occurs: it is gradual improvement.
To stick with printing press, it started with carved cylinder of clay (I believe ?), then carved wood blocks, then individual characters in lead (but other materials where used until the "good" solution was found). And at the same time, the design of the press itself went from manually applying the carved cylinder of clay on a support, then a flat, mechanical system where a page or a sheet of support was imprinted (and finding out how to assign pages when printing a large sheet that would be folded afterwards), then the cylinder applying evenly pressure as the sheet rolls on the character.
In parallel, the writing support evolved, the inks, the ability to include image through several application of different colours (and different carved blocks).

Although magic can ease many of these steps, a gradual improvement of writing/copying feels organic - and also avoid a sudden technological jumps that would completely upset the economical/power balance: how would Durenmar justifies anymore the lengthy delay to get a certain books once this technology is available ? it will be a huge loss of political influence, so house Bonisagus (which technically swore to share its knowledge, but most sourcebooks show to be "difficult" to fulfill its oath) will take measure to prevent that, one way or another.
If gradual changes are introduced, it becomes easier to get buy-in from a larger audience, thus gaining allies against some hard-core opponents and gently pushing them aside instead of butting heads with them.

Regarding quills making perfect copies, there is a level of uncertainty: each quill will wear off differently, and the quality of the writing support will also be slightly inconsistent, leading to some letters being misshaped, a small hole, a blot of ink.
It is assumed that magic can repeat perfectly the movement, but how accurate is it when doing minute details ? maybe, the initial texts copied with this technology are larger, with larger characters - after several trials and errors the mage found out that below a police of 20 (to use modern reference), the errors starts to creep more and more.
It would require another improvement (steel tip quills? spell to control ink flow ? alchemically purifying ink) to reduce to a smaller character size (let's say 14).
To further reduce the character to 10, the writing support quality need to be improved, to be perfectly smooth. Possibly moving from parchment to wood pulp/bamboo/linen/mulberry fibers mixture (maybe a similar improvement from iron to alchemical steel, from wood plank, to supple paper sheets).

Pitch it like that, it is easier to get buy-in from a troupe, than going straight from Scribe to Xerox machine.

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15

I do agree about the incremental rate of technological improvement, and I think once Hermetic magical technology is introduced it will continue to improve from there, but I think what magic can do already if applied in this context will be a massive change even before its been iterated upon - glasses, gunpowder, zero, once they started being used in the right way they were impactful immediately, before they were developed further (I guess you can't innovate zero, but you get my point).

I think at first using magic as technology should be seen more as applying existing old ideas in a new way, as was happening across Europe with technology and ideas brought in by the Crusades, and so significant development comes after its introduction and improves its use.

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And occasionally insert cries for help in the copies it is correcting?

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Ooohhhh... that's looks good. Could it be the origin of the strange or funny illuminations in the margins? the command of the spirit does not allow to write anything else but the exact text, however, the rules are more fuzzy when it comes to pictures and drawings...