Spidersilk Clothing Vs Chainmail

Games Discussion Ars Magica
21

In the 18th Century the first spidersilk clothing was created as oddities, because the process was not commercially viable (spiders don't produce enough silk)

Not exactly right; spiders can (and do) each produce prodigious amounts of silk -- the problem is that spiders are not amenable to being densely 'farmed'. They eat each other. Silkworms can happily live shoulder to shoulder, but they only spin silk to make their cocoons once -- where spiders can rebuild their web in an hour, and probably do so about every day.

The jump from 'Silkworms make nice silk thread, but are a pain in the neck to feed -- what else makes silk? Spiders!' is not difficult. And where magi using CrAn get involved, no actual silkworms or spiders ever need to be wrangled.

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24

IIRC the Flemish Covenant are specifically silk spinners

25

Magically tamed and controlled spiders seem the way to go.

Or with CrAn, they can be tame and tolerant of neighboring spiders, specially created

(sunglasses)

whole cloth.

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26

The real deal is making a maga using RoP:M to give her monstruous features to make your own aracne that can make spider silk naturally. Bonus points if she is Verditius so she can enchant her silk cloth :stuck_out_tongue:

27

It seems like one way to do this is to use several spells:

Level 15: Base 5 MuVi (maintain a concentration spell of up to level 15); D: Ring +2, Target: Circle +0
Level 10: Base 5 MuAn (minor unnatural change: Produces only non-sticky webs, of a specific color), D: Concentration +1, Target: Circle +0
Level 3: Base 2 ReAn (plant a single suggestion in the mind of an animal: Only houseflies are worth killing / eating), D: Concentration +1, Target: Circle +0
Level 3: Base 2 ReAn (plant a single suggestion in the mind of an animal: Wrapping my thread around this spool is much better than building an ordinary web), D: Concentration +1, Target: Circle +0
Level 3: Base 2 ReAn (plant a single suggestion in the mind of an animal: Never leave the Ring), D: Concentration +1, Target: Circle +0
Level 10: Base 5 MuAn (minor unnatural change: Spider is marked as a 'production spider' by having its colors & pattern changed to vivid colors of the covenant), D: Concentration +1, Target: Circle +0
Level 10: Base 5 ReAn (paralyze an animal: any live vermin (which are not 'production spiders') which touches the inside of the production tank is paralyzed as long as it does so), D: Concentration +1, Target: Circle +0
Level 10: Base 5 PeAn (Destroy an animals corpse: any dead vermin (flies, spiders, mice, etc) which touch the inside of this jar are destroyed), D: Concentration +1, Target: Circle +0

Level 10: Base 5 ReAn (paralyze an animal); D: Diameter +1, T: Circle +0 -- paralyze (for two minutes / 20 rounds) any spiders in a circle. Enough time to get it into a jar for transport, or to place it in the 'farm' while you do the spells to get it into production.

These spiders are under a constant minor magical effect, so accumulate 1 warping per year -- which is longer than spiders live in any event. They need to be fed, the spools changed, and you will need a different tank for each color thread -- but the colored thread is non-magical; the animal which produced it was magically altered to make this the natural color.

There are probably better ways to do this; as each new batch of production spiders (all of them within the 'Circle' target) will take several castings, each followed by the MuVi spell at the top. Giant spiders which are shrunk down are an easier-to-manage size, and their thread is full sized --- but they eat more, too, and the resize spells might be hard. I guess you would need to feed them giant houseflies which had been shrunk down as well.

None of these spells are particularly advanced; this is something that could be relegated to whichever apprentices who could manage the MuVi spell.

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28

I like this idea, but also posit, why not use summoned spiders? If you feed the summoned spiders real food (attracting insects across your covenant into a tank shouldn't be hard) then they leave behind a real corpse after X amount of time. By the same thought process, they could leave behind real silk of the desired color and such as well since it is mundanely created through consumed food. You don't need the spider's corpse, just the mundane byproduct (again, like a summoned horse leaves horse poop, spiders can leave silk). By the same virtue, you could have a Rego requisite to make spiders that obey your simple commands on the spell that summons spiders, and then have it function with a single spell plus the MuVi spell to maintain it or whatever right? Maybe the thought spells are necessary (no rego requisite to save on magnitudes due to complexity or just the one for req) in which case I could easily see a nice set of enchanted rings that A) wards the wearer against spiders or even makes them not attack the wearer, and B) allows you to command spiders as a group and have the ring maintain concentration.

Would there be some issue with this thought process? Am I missing something that would make this less efficient than like 9-12 spells?

Silksong (Lvl 20): Cr(Re)An, R: Touch D: Concentration T: Individual
You summon a spider within your cupped hands which produces silk of a desired color. The spider will obey simple commands whispered to it while you are touching it. The spider will not resist attempts to touch it by you but otherwise behaves as a spider does until given specific orders. You may give the spider multiple commands, but it is likely to forget beyond the first requiring a Finesse roll against an Ease Factor of 3 times the number of commands beyond the first (only a single roll is made for all orders made while touching the spider, but old orders are forgotten each time). (Base 5, +1 Touch, +1 Concentration, +1 Multiple orders may be given)

Something like this feels like a single cohesive effect (a spider that is friendly to you) and feels in line with things like The Crystal Dart which allows you to manipulate a dart of stone like Yondhu's arrow, at least, IMO.