From Covenants Chapter Seven “Library†- Great Works p102
“The best known of the Great Works is the Forest of Shining Stone at Durenmar, where Bonisagus’s epitome concerning Magic Theory, The Art of Magic, has been etched by later magi into 36 clear crystals, each six feet high.â€
Ooooo, that sounds neat. Too bad it doesn’t appear in Guardians of the Forest. I wonder if it’s been typed up before. Ah well. “Great Works are, in game terms, created and used as summae or tractitus.†Alrighty then...
<snip 1300 words>
Yep, just over two pages.
I don't have a web site.
Is that a bit much for a forum post?
Pax,
Ram
The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by
quotations.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
Hard to say how many people would slog thru it, esp since no one knows you from experience, Ram. Why not post some paraphrase, a paragraph or three, and see what the interest is?
First off, crystals like that don’t grow on trees:
Assume thirty-six cylinders about eight feet high (two below ground) and three feet across (~56.5 cu ft or two cubic paces each). That’s a little over 2000 cubic feet of material total – around 75 cubic paces. And each crystal monolith weighs around 9000 pounds. Don’t drop one on your foot.
Birth of the Supreme Rock - Creo Terram momentary ritual
Base 3 ‘create stone or glass’
Range: Touch +1
Duration: Momentary +0
Target: Group +2
Size +2 (at most 100 cubic paces of stone)
Complexity +2 (excellent quality mostly clear rock crystal)
CrTe 30
The spell creates a small group of large rock crystals or a large group of smaller rock crystals. The created crystals all have natural proportions and several may still have minor flaws of various sorts. (A spell that created only ‘Perfect’ crystals would probably have a complexity around +6, imho. Unnatural shapes (balls, slabs) would add +2 or +3 more.)
Now contents of the Art of Magic needs to be carved onto the set of crystals.
Either it was done with a quick & flashy ritual spell that probably consumed a copy of the great book (& required a good finesse roll) or it was done slowly by hand with minor magic items in place of mundane scribing tools. I’ll go with ‘slowly by hand’ – it’s more authentic. A decent scribe can copy an ability summa in a season (ArM5 p 166) – triple that for the difficulty of the material and add a season for excessive care. Carving took a year.
Ah, but what exactly was carved?
We need a Level & Quality for The Art of Magic. Here are some random numbers (YMMV!). Assume Bonisagus had a Magic Theory skill of 12 (pre Puissant MT). Yes, he was a genius, but only self taught. Assume he had a Com 3 and Good Teacher virtue. Remember, Great Works don’t usually get the skilled Scribe, Illumination, & Binding plus three Quality bonus. In this case I’m sure some later Bonisagus magus was obsessive enough to get his scribe skill up to six for this project (of course no mundane hand has ever touched these crystals). The base text on the crystal has Level 6 and Quality 10.
Now for the enchantment...
For each crystal the first point of resonance came from a fine copy of the text on that crystal done with expensive materials. The second point came from a small artifact from the great man himself – a few strands of hair from Bonisagus’s head or a small scrap of original writing. Then each crystal pillar was enchanted separately (material: hard stone (4), size: huge (x5) 20 pawns of vim vis for each). Yep, that’s 36 mage/seasons with a Magic Theory of ten required. Oh, and 720 pawns of Vim vis plus spells. Wow. That’s like a decade’s worth of resources from an ancient & powerful covenant. If you call the material ‘glass (1)’ the total cost drops to 180 pawns plus spells. Most likely there was some final mondo ritual spell to set all the crystals in place – something like Hermetic Architecture (TMRE p 97). The Order has no way to tax members so the whole bill probably came out of Durenmar’s pocket.
Add nine (resonances x 3) to the Quality and you have a final Level 6 and Quality 19.... uh, well... that seems a bit low to me. Assume up to six magi can wander through and meditate in the 20 x 20 pace site with out being crowded. (Check the map on GotF p 53 – the site isn’t small) Still hard to justify the cost in time & vis... perhaps this was a ‘folly’? Ah, heck. Bounce the numbers up to Level 7 & Quality 20 because this is Durenmar.