Fantasy Arcane Epistles: A Fantasy Worldbuilding RP

[ithinkcat]

My gal is gonna be a new graduate as well looking to make her mark and prove certain professors wrong. Fair warning, she a bit of a bitch. I hope you all are going to like what I have planned for her first travelogue. Immediate drama between her and another professor.

Probably not an inspiration for Astrophel. Maybe a rival, though.

 

[Sunsmiter]

My gal is gonna be a new graduate as well looking to make her mark and prove certain professors wrong. Fair warning, she a bit of a bitch. I hope you all are going to like what I have planned for her first travelogue. Immediate drama between her and another professor.

Probably not an inspiration for Astrophel. Maybe a rival, though.

Astrophel and the adventurer on their way to competing to create the most chaotic event known to history:

 

[Sunsmiter]

ithinkcat ’s characters could have inspired Sunsmiter ’s adventurous spirit, maybe be someone the trifling really admires or even them both ending up treasure hunting together (and Obsina needing to wipe the mess that ensues)

Astrophel summons shoggoths and ithinkcat's character can stab them. /j

 

[Sunsmiter]

Is there a discord for this?

 

[Idea]

Fair warning, she a bit of a bitch.

Good thing we don't necessarily have to interact with each other much then haha

Immediate drama between her and another professor.

Wait is she a new graduate or a professor?

 

[ithinkcat]

Maybe graduate was the wrong term. She just finished her doctoral/phd or whatever that would be called for wizards and rolled immediately into a position as a research professor (no teaching classes yet).

 

[Sunsmiter]

I am now making character-specific memes.
Any takers?

 

[Idea]

Maybe graduate was the wrong term. She just finished her doctoral/phd or whatever that would be called for wizards and rolled immediately into a position as a research professor (no teaching classes yet).

Would that still be a professor? Not saying otherwise, I might just be out of of the loop with that particular term's use.

 

[Sunsmiter]

Would that still be a professor? Not saying otherwise, I might just be out of of the loop with that particular term's use.

According to a quick google search, the standard academic ranks are Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor.
Would all be acceptable, or are only fully fledged professors allowed?

 

[Idea]

According to a quick google search, the standard academic ranks are Instructor, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor.
Would all be acceptable, or are only fully fledged professors allowed?

Well, my question is more like, is someone not giving or not charged with giving classes still a professor in an academic sense? If you're just doing research, even if for an academy, wouldn't that just be a researcher?

 

[CommanderNecro]

Well, my question is more like, is someone not giving or not charged with giving classes still a professor in an academic sense? If you're just doing research, even if for an academy, wouldn't that just be a researcher?

I think that's Research Professor.

 

[Sunsmiter]

Well, my question is more like, is someone not giving or not charged with giving classes still a professor in an academic sense? If you're just doing research, even if for an academy, wouldn't that just be a researcher?

Lemme google this real quick...

 

[Idea]

I think that's Research Professor.

View attachment 1132623
Lemme google this real quick...

Well, the more you know!

 

[ithinkcat]

Thanks for the memes and answering Idea, Sunsmiter. So yeah. Researcher is someone that does research. For a company, government agency, university, or whatever. Research Professor is just the sub-category of researcher that works specifically at a university. They often have deals like: we let you use our fancy equipment for your research project for X years, after that you come teach Y at our university for another X years, and if your research is profitable we get a cut; or something close to that.

 

[Sunsmiter]

Is there a discord where I can put my memes?

 

[Stars Above]

I'm fine with divine beings being associated with Yellow.

Some more questions.
- Does the order of mana matter? Ex. 1Y/1O vs 1O/1Y
- What is the title of the head position over the academy? Headmaster? Arch-Wizard? Grandmaster Wizard?
- Can there be multiple spells with the same cost? For example: 1Y Cast a small radiant orb of light that follows you; and 1Y Your hands glow and mend minor wounds of a living creature you touch.

Promise I'm working on my gal. Not gonna be finished tonight because I'm super busy tonight and because I'm flip-flopping between her being rich or poor (and the implications of each). Sounds like a lot of people are going the nobility route, but I like the idea of her being from a family of adventurers and her grand-pappy slayed a dragon and the family is stupid rich from the treasure hoard it had. Something like the academy actually borrows or buys a lot of their magical artifacts from her family's treasure vault. Thought it would be interesting, but we don't got any scrappy underdogs, yet. And I love me an underdog.

Hello! I can answer two of your questions! There is only one spell for each unique combination of quiddities, and I would be very surprised if order matters (but ChamomileHasWords would have to confirm to be sure). I like your backstory idea btw! You could have her family lose their wealth somehow (gave too much of of it too the academy mayhaps?), if you want to keep the dragonslaying but still have her be an underdog.

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Sooo, I have quiet a few ideas for this RP. I personally really liked the idea of yellow-purple quiddities having a truth-deceit dichotomy (necromancy being false life, yellow's healing restoring things to how they are meant to be and Yellow harming undead because they are not meant to exist. They are a lie.), because it gives a very evocative reason for why this these two building blocks of magic are mutually exclusive and opposed. I like idea of all the quiddities having opposing, opposite-definition keywords like this (along with their other traits), which they more or less do. Like with Red and Green, you can emphasise Red's extraction. and exploitation, and lack of sustainability (all connected to the industry keyword) and in turn green is connected to giving, and being sustainable, and cycles (Also maybe when using materials to cast spells, red quiddity spells always destroy/use-up the materials whilst green spells almost always preserve them undamaged.) They have a give and take dynamic. Okay so finally, with Blue quiddity being simplifying (abstracting) things, orange should gain focus on complicating things (like mutations), maybe even creativity. That would suit the eldritch theming of the later, with the whole mad artist trope. (Sidenote, bards should be associated with orange.) Maybe Blue vs Orange could get an logical scientist vs mad artist dynamic! Yk, in addition to it's current mind vs body stuff.

Again, I don't think I am suggesting anything new here (well I didn't meant to, orange being artsy is kind of new), I just want to bring attention to and emphasise something I like about what you guys have built with the magic system so far. What do you all think of my ramblings? You agree with it? Does it make sense? Was it kind of redundant?

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Okay. Soooo another thing, I have been thinking about various spells in this and what quiddities they should have (e.g. I think most healing spells should be green-yellow, but that be up to whoever makes the first healing spell). So I was wondering what quiddities a spell to become a Lich would entail. Purple obviously, but perhaps also some green because it's life connections obviously but also because the connection to enduring cycles that I suggested above? Blue because of it's connection to the mind? Orange due it needing an eternally regenerating body? Perhaps it could be the coveted nine quiddity purple spell? Maybe, it be fitting if the apex of necromancy was lichdom but I wasn't sure. The 9P spell probs should be like a strong kill curse or something but nothing else felt right.

So I figured becoming a lich shouldn't just be a single spell, which I thought was a bit boring, but should instead be a process. You have to cast a series of different spells, each with their own use outside of achieving lichdom, to become a lich. Like you have a red/purple spell to yoink your soul into a jar, an orange/purple spell to make a simulacrum to inhabit, maybe one spell that is just used for becoming a lich and nothing else (probably a blue/purple one because of blue's metamagic stuff) and so on. Until you finally finish the ritual off with the nine purple spell.

Now what is the nine purple spell? It could just be a death curse; you cast it, you murder thing. Which is fitting but a bit boring and somewhat hard to balance. (Plus it overlaps with touch of decay. Just being a stronger version of it basically, not the end of the world but something to note.) Maybe it could be used to make something completely secret (bringing in the deceit part of purple I like) or erasing something from existence. Completely and utterly killing it.

Now that's very op, like ninth level spells should be reality warping imo but purple wizards should not just be able to erase things from existence willy nilly. So I have two ideas on how to balance it. First one being that for bigger changes, it takes much longer to cast and becomes much more noticeable that you are casting something big. So like at low severities you could just use it to make your nan's cookie recipe a secret, or just as a death curse to kill a troll without much trouble. But if you wanted to erase a entire city or even hex from existence that take might take months if not years. And if you wanted to make how to breathe a secret that would take well over a millennia, and any mage worth their salt could sense what you were doing, and a properly trained one could disrupt your casting from anywhere on the planet.

The second limiting factor being that you can only every cast the 9-Purple Spell once. No matter what. (Name for the spell is pending. Current ideas are Soul Kill, Whalesong Lament and The Whispering Spell but pls give me any better ideas). I like this. Like powerful purple mages are able to threaten a instant kill or worse, but they can't use it lightly because they only got one shot. It's dramatic and I think it could lead to cool worldbuilding moments as well. Like imagine a powerful and near unstoppable dragon that was slain by this spell, or an entire city wiped from history because of it. I especially like how it interacts with lichdom, being the last spell you need to cast in the ritual to become one. Like you have this really powerful spell, but if you ever want to become a lich you can't use it. And if you are a lich you've already used it up. I think that's really cool, and opens up some storying telling possibilities. Like maybe a lich is training up an apprentice so that they can make use of this powerful spell they missed out on through them?


Okay so that's a lot of words. Hopefully I didn't miss anything important. What do you people think? Especially you CommanderNecro ! Being as you are the purple wizard. I personally wasn't planning on choosing purple at first, (was probs gonna go green) but like if I am going to spend this much time thinking of purple spells for the lich process then I probably should. I mean my idea for an eccentric immortal who spends way too much time on writing about weird and unimportant stuff works perfectly as a lich so. But that all depends on whenever or not you like what I have thought of for purple, as you choose it first so you have dibs.

It got a bit late where I lived when I was writing this btw, so sorry if there's any major spelling or grammar errors! I didn't have time to proof read

 

[Idea]

Okay so finally, with Blue quiddity being simplifying (abstracting) things, orange should gain focus on complicating things (like mutations), maybe even creativity. That would suit the eldritch theming of the later, with the whole mad artist trope. (Sidenote, bards should be associated with orange.) Maybe Blue vs Orange could get an logical scientist vs mad artist dynamic! Yk, in addition to it's current mind vs body stuff.

I would point out (based on the current conceptions of the colors) you got the simple vs complex dynamic backwards. The orange would still very much be the mad artist kind of thing with blue being more the logical scientist, but blue's abstraction is about dealing with things which are abstract, rather than abstracting tangible things. It's about directly dealing with and messing with things which are more conceptual and intangible like the mind, or with metamagic or dimensional magic. A blue quiddity mage is not one which sticks to "it works" but one that looks into the process of how something works and messes with that process for new results. By contrast orange's energy motif does deal with the simplest breakdown of concrete and tangible things, energy.

Orange's mutation does make things more complex, but the contrast with blue there is about material vs immaterial and about blue's crafting of the nonorganic vs orange's organic artifice. Speaking of that, one of the initial examples of blue's complexity is the difference between blue's crafting and red's industry. Red can create the materials and general things on a speed, ease and scale blue doesn't really match, but blue's focus is on meticulousness, mechanical function and complex designs.

lack of sustainability (all connected to the industry keyword) and in turn green is connected to giving, and being sustainable, and cycles (Also maybe when using materials to cast spells, red quiddity spells always destroy/use-up the materials whilst green spells almost always preserve them undamaged.)

I'm not 'in charge' of green, but it might be an interesting thing if green's association with growth took this one step further. You don't simply preserve your materials, your spells could depend on growing and preserving the so-called materials. For instance a spell being channeled through, powered by or else sustained by or linked to a tree you grew yourself.

Now what is the nine purple spell? It could just be a death curse; you cast it, you murder thing. Which is fitting but a bit boring and somewhat hard to balance. (Plus it overlaps with touch of decay. Just being a stronger version of it basically, not the end of the world but something to note.) Maybe it could be used to make something completely secret (bringing in the deceit part of purple I like) or erasing something from existence. Completely and utterly killing it.

This roleplay affords us a lot of creative liberty but this one is something I think would absolutely not fly, as it trips one of the few things we've been explicitly told we cannot do: Be able to just solve problems from afar. Now granted, this doesn't solve every problem, but it can take a big issue and deal with it without you being there. Furthermore the impact it can have on the roleplay and on other characters could be absolutely catastrophic and non-intuitive. This kind of spell has just too wide a consequence, not just from a worldbuilding perspective, but also in directly interfering with other players in a very negative way, not to mention potentially warping the RP around your character (either as a consequence of the spell being cast or trying to stop the character from ever having the chance to).

The second limiting factor being that you can only every cast the 9-Purple Spell once. No matter what. (Name for the spell is pending. Current ideas are Soul Kill, Whalesong Lament and The Whispering Spell but pls give me any better ideas). I like this. Like powerful purple mages are able to threaten a instant kill or worse, but they can't use it lightly because they only got one shot. It's dramatic and I think it could lead to cool worldbuilding moments as well. Like imagine a powerful and near unstoppable dragon that was slain by this spell, or an entire city wiped from history because of it. I especially like how it interacts with lichdom, being the last spell you need to cast in the ritual to become one. Like you have this really powerful spell, but if you ever want to become a lich you can't use it. And if you are a lich you've already used it up. I think that's really cool, and opens up some storying telling possibilities. Like maybe a lich is training up an apprentice so that they can make use of this powerful spell they missed out on through them?

I'm not sure I like this limitation, as a general rule anyways. I think a spell here or there could be so powerful it can only ever be used once, but this should be limited to maybe a couple of spells. The RP gets a limited set of spells and even if we disregard how disruptive the power of a spell you can only use once would be, I feel we shouldn't handicap the system itself as a rule.

So I figured becoming a lich shouldn't just be a single spell, which I thought was a bit boring, but should instead be a process. You have to cast a series of different spells, each with their own use outside of achieving lichdom, to become a lich. Like you have a red/purple spell to yoink your soul into a jar, an orange/purple spell to make a simulacrum to inhabit, maybe one spell that is just used for becoming a lich and nothing else (probably a blue/purple one because of blue's metamagic stuff) and so on. Until you finally finish the ritual off with the nine purple spell.

Lichdom is so necromancy-iconic I can't see it as anything but pure purple. Also, for the reasons I laid above (the magic system has a limited number of spells to begin with) it should definitely be a single spell. Now that doesn't mean by any means that it necessarily should be an easy spell to cast. Mana isn't necessarily the only requirement of a spell, after all. I don't think it should specifically require other spells to do it though, outside of maybe general spells that do not exist specifically for this (like if you need an enchanted item, blue or red enchanting could be used to make that, but the spells for it don't exist specifically for that purpose).

Okay so that's a lot of words. Hopefully I didn't miss anything important. What do you people think? Especially you CommanderNecro ! Being as you are the purple wizard. I personally wasn't planning on choosing purple at first, (was probs gonna go green) but like if I am going to spend this much time thinking of purple spells for the lich process then I probably should. I mean my idea for an eccentric immortal who spends way too much time on writing about weird and unimportant stuff works perfectly as a lich so. But that all depends on whenever or not you like what I have thought of for purple, as you choose it first so you have dibs.

There's going to be an immortal's club in this RP at this rate hahaha

 

[Idea]

Is there a discord where I can put my memes?

Not at this time.

 

[ChamomileHasWords]

Some more questions.
- Does the order of mana matter? Ex. 1Y/1O vs 1O/1Y
- What is the title of the head position over the academy? Headmaster? Arch-Wizard? Grandmaster Wizard?
- Can there be multiple spells with the same cost? For example: 1Y Cast a small radiant orb of light that follows you; and 1Y Your hands glow and mend minor wounds of a living creature you touch.

Stars Above is correct, there can only be one spell for each combination of mana and order does not matter, 1Y/1O and 1O/1Y are the same spell. That gives about 360 spells for each quiddity (including all the double and triple quiddity spells that quiddity can access) and about a thousand different spells overall, which is already a huge number, plus you can and should pack related ideas into a single spell. When I wrote Enchant Metal, I didn't split up all seven metals into different spells because that would be a waste of slots. If 1Y creates a little orb of light, that doesn't mean it can only do that. Maybe the orb of light can also carry messages or project images of something. On the other hand, it's also fine if level 1 spells kind of suck and are mostly stepping stones to learning how to cast better magic. Bear in mind that you're not really a fully trained wizard unless you can cast spells of at least 3rd level, and it's not until at least 6th level that you start to become a Big Deal Wizard. Like, all wizards are a big deal compared to peasants and stuff, but only 6th+ level spells get the attention of kings and dragons.

On a related subject, though, one idea people might want to keep in mind is modifying spells to get yourself access to it. You can only cast spells that have at least one point of your quiddity in them, but it's fine to throw a single point of your quiddity into an existing spell to create a variant that's slightly altered so that you can get access to it. They should be noticeably different, but "I want that spell, how would it change if my quiddity were added to it" is a perfectly good prompt for a spell so long as you take it somewhere interesting and distinct from the original. For example, I have in mind a 3R/1B spell that's some kind of stabilized fireball, which doesn't explode in your face after a few minutes the way the standard kind does, but probably with some kind of material cost to them so that they can be stockpiled at all, but not infinitely. R/P might have a version that explodes into toxic gas that withers and rots everything it touches, R/Y might be a blinding flashbang kind of thing.

The title for the head of the academy would presumably be chancellor, although I'm not particularly married to that and have been wondering if it should be archmage instead.

Is there a discord for this?

I'm on the RPNation Discord, and I run a Discord server that I could set up a channel on if people want, but I want to keep conversations important to the RP on the forum where it takes place. Joining a Discord server shouldn't be a prerequisite to participating in a forum RP. If you just want some place to meme dump, though, we can find a place for that.

Would that still be a professor? Not saying otherwise, I might just be out of of the loop with that particular term's use.

I want to keep the academy's structure simple, so while there would definitely be an informal pecking order between newer professors and older ones as well as academic turf wars between different colleges within the academy, I don't want to split things up into detailed ranks. There's not especially likely to ever be more than maybe ten people playing at once, and I don't want to end up in a situation where we have nearly as many ranks as people who hold them.

This roleplay affords us a lot of creative liberty but this one is something I think would absolutely not fly, as it trips one of the few things we've been explicitly told we cannot do: Be able to just solve problems from afar.

Assuming it works like a Death Note where you kill people from unlimited range as long as you can identify a target, then I very much agree, that's an I-Win button so powerful that once it exists, the whole setting and story pretty much has to center on that. On the other hand, if it's supposed to be like a Ray of Death where it kills anything it touches but only works out to bowshot range, then it seems pretty underwhelming for the 9th-level slot. Probably 6th-8th somewhere, or maybe a 9th-level dual-quiddity, since it's a pretty hard counter to a lot of the mega-monsters I would expect Green or Orange to be creating, but Fireball kills most things and that's only a 3rd-level spell.

I think it's workable to have lichdom come from multiple different spells as long as each of those spells is still usable by itself, like, maybe to be a lich you need to be able to cast the 9P spell plus all the 8P/1X spells, so a lich necessarily has access to pretty much the entire purple spellbook, but all five of those spells still need to be worthwhile high-level spells on their own.

Also, as long as we're throwing out suggestions for purple/green, I would guess a lot of it is stuff related to fungi and maggots, living things which eat decaying flesh.

 

[Idea]

Assuming it works like a Death Note where you kill people from unlimited range as long as you can identify a target, then I very much agree, that's an I-Win button so powerful that once it exists, the whole setting and story pretty much has to center on that. On the other hand, if it's supposed to be like a Ray of Death where it kills anything it touches but only works out to bowshot range, then it seems pretty underwhelming for the 9th-level slot. Probably 6th-8th somewhere, or maybe a 9th-level dual-quiddity, since it's a pretty hard counter to a lot of the mega-monsters I would expect Green or Orange to be creating, but Fireball kills most things and that's only a 3rd-level spell.

Yep. Though I should mention what Stars Above was seemingly suggesting (erasing a concept or making something “a secret”) was way and above the effects of death note. It’s not “something” that was erased but “everything of a certain category” being erased from existence or made unknown (in one of the given examples the spell made everyone forget how to breathe).

I want to keep the academy's structure simple, so while there would definitely be an informal pecking order between newer professors and older ones as well as academic turf wars between different colleges within the academy, I don't want to split things up into detailed ranks. There's not especially likely to ever be more than maybe ten people playing at once, and I don't want to end up in a situation where we have nearly as many ranks as people who hold them.

Oh apologies if I was unclear, I wasn’t really questioning rank, rather than just the terminology. It was a question of English not of importance. I was just unfamiliar with the idea and term “research professor”.

 

[Stars Above]

I would point out (based on the current conceptions of the colors) you got the simple vs complex dynamic backwards. The orange would still very much be the mad artist kind of thing with blue being more the logical scientist, but blue's abstraction is about dealing with things which are abstract, rather than abstracting tangible things. It's about directly dealing with and messing with things which are more conceptual and intangible like the mind, or with metamagic or dimensional magic. A blue quiddity mage is not one which sticks to "it works" but one that looks into the process of how something works and messes with that process for new results. By contrast orange's energy motif does deal with the simplest breakdown of concrete and tangible things, energy.

Orange's mutation does make things more complex, but the contrast with blue there is about material vs immaterial and about blue's crafting of the nonorganic vs orange's organic artifice. Speaking of that, one of the initial examples of blue's complexity is the difference between blue's crafting and red's industry. Red can create the materials and general things on a speed, ease and scale blue doesn't really match, but blue's focus is on meticulousness, mechanical function and complex designs.

Yeah fair enough. Orange and blue both have elements of both simplifying things and complicating things. So you can't really use that to draw the distinction between the two.

I'm not 'in charge' of green, but it might be an interesting thing if green's association with growth took this one step further. You don't simply preserve your materials, your spells could depend on growing and preserving the so-called materials. For instance a spell being channeled through, powered by or else sustained by or linked to a tree you grew yourself.

Oh that's a cool idea!

This roleplay affords us a lot of creative liberty but this one is something I think would absolutely not fly, as it trips one of the few things we've been explicitly told we cannot do: Be able to just solve problems from afar. Now granted, this doesn't solve every problem, but it can take a big issue and deal with it without you being there. Furthermore the impact it can have on the roleplay and on other characters could be absolutely catastrophic and non-intuitive. This kind of spell has just too wide a consequence, not just from a worldbuilding perspective, but also in directly interfering with other players in a very negative way, not to mention potentially warping the RP around your character (either as a consequence of the spell being cast or trying to stop the character from ever having the chance to).

I can definitely see it being too much. Didn't think it would have infinite range though, you would have to be at least somewhat close to your target in order to use it.

Just to be clear. I have no intention of making my character use the spell, or have it ever be cast. I just like the idea of it existing. I didn't intend to make a purple quiddity character, I just realised I had to in order to actually submit these spell ideas I had (as per the rules). My character can't actually even cast it, as they are Lich and would have already used it to become a lich (unless that gets changed). It would be Captain Necro who could potentially learn and use it if we wanted that to happen in the RP.

Any major usage of it would have to be cleared OOC, so I don't really see it having much of an impact to other people's RP. And in universe it's pretty easy to stop massive uses of it. That's what the whole 'forget how to breath' example was supposed to convey. Then again even on a small scale it could still have a massive impact tbf. So like yeah, I 100% get it not being allowed.

Yep. Though I should mention what Stars Above was seemingly suggesting (erasing a concept or making something “a secret”) was way and above the effects of death note. It’s not “something” that was erased but “everything of a certain category” being erased from existence or made unknown (in one of the given examples the spell made everyone forget how to breathe).

The 'forgetting how to breath' example was something that's technically possible, but practically impossible. I said that it would take 1000s of years (way longer then a human lifespan), and be very easy for anyone to dispel. The keeping your nan's recipe a secret is more what the spell is actually used for. Anything massively reality warping is basically impossible. I like the idea of a crazy necromancer trying to destroy the world with it, not a crazy necromancer succeeding in destroying the world with it.

I am not sure where you are getting 'destroy everything of a certain category' from. Forgetting how to breath is one piece of knowledge that can technically be lost. And the second biggest example I gave was removing a city's memory from history, which is a fairly local single target thing. Tbf I have probably not been explaining this well. I should be asleep.

I'm not sure I like this limitation, as a general rule anyways. I think a spell here or there could be so powerful it can only ever be used once, but this should be limited to maybe a couple of spells. The RP gets a limited set of spells and even if we disregard how disruptive the power of a spell you can only use once would be, I feel we shouldn't handicap the system itself as a rule.

I disagree. Obviously, it should be the case for only a couple of spells. But I think it can add a bit of impact to a spell. Make it's use more of a moment.

Lichdom is so necromancy-iconic I can't see it as anything but pure purple. Also, for the reasons I laid above (the magic system has a limited number of spells to begin with) it should definitely be a single spell. Now that doesn't mean by any means that it necessarily should be an easy spell to cast. Mana isn't necessarily the only requirement of a spell, after all. I don't think it should specifically require other spells to do it though, outside of maybe general spells that do not exist specifically for this (like if you need an enchanted item, blue or red enchanting could be used to make that, but the spells for it don't exist specifically for that purpose).

Oh, I am sorry I didn't make myself clear enough. The other spells will be fully independent spells with their own uses. Like the red/purple (Iit should probably also have blue now that I think about it) one will be the soul jar spell. As in, the spell you use to yoink someone's soul and put it in a jar. It just so happens that the process to achieve lichdom would also use that spell. I more or less stole the idea from 5e.

There's going to be an immortal's club in this RP at this rate hahaha

I mean were are a wizard school lol

For example, I have in mind a 3R/1B spell that's some kind of stabilized fireball, which doesn't explode in your face after a few minutes the way the standard kind does, but probably with some kind of material cost to them so that they can be stockpiled at all, but not infinitely.

The title for the head of the academy would presumably be chancellor, although I'm not particularly married to that and have been wondering if it should be archmage instead.

Honestly I was kind of head-cannoning that Staffs of Fireball were just very common. I mean it makes sense!

Archmage is a very fitting title for the head of a magic school...

Assuming it works like a Death Note where you kill people from unlimited range as long as you can identify a target, then I very much agree, that's an I-Win button so powerful that once it exists, the whole setting and story pretty much has to center on that. On the other hand, if it's supposed to be like a Ray of Death where it kills anything it touches but only works out to bowshot range, then it seems pretty underwhelming for the 9th-level slot. Probably 6th-8th somewhere, or maybe a 9th-level dual-quiddity, since it's a pretty hard counter to a lot of the mega-monsters I would expect Green or Orange to be creating, but Fireball kills most things and that's only a 3rd-level spell.

I think it's workable to have lichdom come from multiple different spells as long as each of those spells is still usable by itself, like, maybe to be a lich you need to be able to cast the 9P spell plus all the 8P/1X spells, so a lich necessarily has access to pretty much the entire purple spellbook, but all five of those spells still need to be worthwhile high-level spells on their own.

Also, as long as we're throwing out suggestions for purple/green, I would guess a lot of it is stuff related to fungi and maggots, living things which eat decaying flesh.

Oh huh. I thought 'You point at thing in range and it dies.' was kind overpowered. I mean that's a unblockable murder attack that would instantly win any like wizard duel, kill any living thing no matter how many magical wards protect it, instant murk a dragon and so on. That plus 'you can only use it once in your life' was going to be my backup suggestion if the 'making something secret' was too weird.

Yes that is more or less what I thinking. Just slightly less spells. Needing to know all 8P/1X spells is interesting idea though.

I did have an idea for the 2G/2P/2O spell. It being a gross, regenerating dead but not dead clump of flesh and bone. Constantly dying and regrowing, mutating and shifting. Sounds like some sort of slime monster now that I think about it. And anyways you could mould it into some flesh abomination to serve your goals. It'd also be the base of the Lich's undying body.

 

[Idea]

Yeah fair enough. Orange and blue both have elements of both simplifying things and complicating things. So you can't really use that to draw the distinction between the two.

I guess there's some truth to that. I would still say blue is more about complexity than orange, merely because as currently defined that is a core trait of how blue approaches things (as exemplified in the example contrasting red and blue). Blue is the difference between looking at a clock from inside rather than just accepting it's external looks, expanding on the idea of the clock by seeking to directly understand and interfere with the internal mechanics rather than just the pointers and glass most would look at. Orange on the other hand is gluing random stuff to a clock and ends up with an art piece or with a wall clock. Blue is intentionally and precisely complex, but orange does also achieve complexity just as a biproduct.

I can definitely see it being too much. Didn't think it would have infinite range though, you would have to be at least somewhat close to your target in order to use it.

if it's impact is global (as in the case of turning something into a secret for instance, this as far as what was written would affect everyone) the range is effectively infinite, even if the initial target isn't. At least, the way I would rule it.

I am not sure where you are getting 'destroy everything of a certain category' from. Forgetting how to breath is one piece of knowledge that can technically be lost. And the second biggest example I gave was removing a city's memory from history, which is a fairly local single target thing. Tbf I have probably not been explaining this well. I should be asleep.

I went back to your original post just now, and I'm not finding the expression which I thought had brought me to that conclusion "erasing a concept from existence". I think because one example was conceptual and the other was mass destruction I may have mixed up the two sides of the suggestion. As is I still think it's too disruptive and too vague in its criteria for what a "single target" might constitute.

Just to be clear. I have no intention of making my character use the spell, or have it ever be cast. I just like the idea of it existing. I didn't intend to make a purple quiddity character, I just realised I had to in order to actually submit these spell ideas I had (as per the rules). My character can't actually even cast it, as they are Lich and would have already used it to become a lich (unless that gets changed). It would be Captain Necro who could potentially learn and use it if we wanted that to happen in the RP.

I would raise the objection that if you don't intend for it to be something with a presence in the world, then you shouldn't add it. After all if something like that exists it would be extremely contrived for it to not be sought out by anyone capable of casting it. Character, worldbuilding and plot would all be disrupted by just leaving something like that in the shelf, at least from a writing perspective. Which is not to mention the warping impact of deranged undead wizards having a nuke at their disposal (even if one use).

Now in fairness since it wasn't as strong as I had the impression of I think with some tweaks this could be added as some kind of forbidden spell nobody is allowed to access or even know about due to the catastrophic impact it had in the past, and there might still be signs of the devastation (though this kind of spell would probably never be published in an arcane studies for obvious reasons, making it so it could only be around if we all collectively agreed to not have a purple spell of that mana value at all and only find signs of its use).

The 'forgetting how to breath' example was something that's technically possible, but practically impossible. I said that it would take 1000s of years (way longer then a human lifespan), and be very easy for anyone to dispel. The keeping your nan's recipe a secret is more what the spell is actually used for. Anything massively reality warping is basically impossible. I like the idea of a crazy necromancer trying to destroy the world with it, not a crazy necromancer succeeding in destroying the world with it.

It does appear that non-human lifespans are a lot more common in this setting than most, if our characters are anything to go by. Also forgetting how to breathe is not exactly instant death, but it doesn't really give you a lot of time to think about and execute on dispelling a spell, even if it is that easy to dispel which I quite doubt for a spell of this magnitude.

I disagree. Obviously, it should be the case for only a couple of spells. But I think it can add a bit of impact to a spell. Make it's use more of a moment.

Not sure what part of it you're disagreeing with exactly. It seems we both agree it should only be for a handful of spells, and we don't disagree there are potential benefits. The only difference between what we said - if one can call it a difference given it's kind of implied in "only a handful" - is that it shouldn't be a rule that spells of that level can only be used once. It could be that a few spells have that built into them, but it's not something which should apply to the whole category.

kill any living thing no matter how many magical wards protect it,

I mean, an instant kill spell doesn't necessarily ignore defense.

 

[Sunsmiter]

Behold! The 9O spell:

Summon Cthulhu

(For legal reasons, this is a joke)

 

[Sunsmiter]

Okay so finally, with Blue quiddity being simplifying (abstracting) things, orange should gain focus on complicating things (like mutations), maybe even creativity. That would suit the eldritch theming of the later, with the whole mad artist trope. (Sidenote, bards should be associated with orange.) Maybe Blue vs Orange could get an logical scientist vs mad artist dynamic! Yk, in addition to it's current mind vs body stuff.

Blue is like "order" sorta and Orange is like "chaos". And ye, bards would definitely be associated with Orange, as it's sorta like creativity and imagination and the horrors of things created beyond the realm of comprehension! (Ex. like the King in Yellow's eldritch play, although he's probably more like the King in Orange this time around.)

And as for the lich thing, maybe all quiddities can become "immortal" in some sense? Ex. Blue for Automaton, or ascending into an eldritch horror for Orange, living on through imagination and thriving off of chaos, green means mastering nature to the point your cells no longer age and purple = lich?

 

[Sunsmiter]

I would point out (based on the current conceptions of the colors) you got the simple vs complex dynamic backwards. The orange would still very much be the mad artist kind of thing with blue being more the logical scientist, but blue's abstraction is about dealing with things which are abstract, rather than abstracting tangible things. It's about directly dealing with and messing with things which are more conceptual and intangible like the mind, or with metamagic or dimensional magic. A blue quiddity mage is not one which sticks to "it works" but one that looks into the process of how something works and messes with that process for new results. By contrast orange's energy motif does deal with the simplest breakdown of concrete and tangible things, energy.

Orange's mutation does make things more complex, but the contrast with blue there is about material vs immaterial and about blue's crafting of the nonorganic vs orange's organic artifice. Speaking of that, one of the initial examples of blue's complexity is the difference between blue's crafting and red's industry. Red can create the materials and general things on a speed, ease and scale blue doesn't really match, but blue's focus is on meticulousness, mechanical function and complex designs.

Yeah, that makes sense, since another part of Orange's entire motif is: I can't explain it, I can't comprehend it, but it works. It's very much in line with the scientist vs mad artist theme I suppose. They're opposite(literally), and wholly contradictory since Orange is pretty much "if it works, it works" while for Blue there's more or less a reason why it should work. I would imagine there's little rhyme or reason to why Orange works, it's just chaos, and energy and forces made from whacky laws that shouldn't exist, it follows no rules but its own, whereas for Blue, you can like..."harness" it in automatons and stuff.

This roleplay affords us a lot of creative liberty but this one is something I think would absolutely not fly, as it trips one of the few things we've been explicitly told we cannot do: Be able to just solve problems from afar. Now granted, this doesn't solve every problem, but it can take a big issue and deal with it without you being there. Furthermore the impact it can have on the roleplay and on other characters could be absolutely catastrophic and non-intuitive. This kind of spell has just too wide a consequence, not just from a worldbuilding perspective, but also in directly interfering with other players in a very negative way, not to mention potentially warping the RP around your character (either as a consequence of the spell being cast or trying to stop the character from ever having the chance to).

Maybe the spell can be cast only if multiple mages(and player characters) agree to participate in a ritual? Like, only if everyone agrees, and there's some kind of "event" going on?

There's going to be an immortal's club in this RP at this rate hahaha

we can annoy each other even after death!