Negav - Lower Tier

Shady Knight wrote:

Bael, saying that you made buildings with magic is a handwave.  Explaining HOW you made buildings using magic, is not.  Here's an example.  Instead of snapping your fingers and then POOF, instant building, earth mages instead use their magic to shape the materials to make the workers' job easier.  They still need the help of architects so that they have an idea of what the finished building should look like, and they also need the help of engineers so that the house is structurally sound and doesn't crumble by just blowing real hard on it.  Earth mages can also transmute material so that they're fit for construction, making finding materials easier, but they also need a good idea of what the desired material is like so they can properly transmute a more common material.  Furthermore, mages can use spells like levitation to more easily transport material up to the workers on higher floors.  When you explain it like that, it's far less of a handwave, ain't it?

And Bael, are you saying that people wouldn't want to see some pit fighting at Jaslow Arena?  That nobody would want to see performances at Dayama Theater?  The not a soul would want to have fun at the Street of the Red Flower?

Magic being used in assistance with the building process is one thing, but if you describe how structurally sound they are it still doesn't change the fact that mages would have conjured up, in some way, massive amounts of earth to create a whole city. If you can do that for one part of the city, then you can do it for other parts of the city too. It sort of makes the whole building process worthless and meaningless if you can summon a wall like that.

I'm sorry, there's just no logical way that magic being used to build a city is in any way...I mean...it sounds totally preposterous!

Yes, Bael, transmuting already existing material, material you would naturally extract if you were to do completely man-made construction anyway, into something else for the actual workers who do all the actual construction, is the exact same as mages conjuring massive amounts of earth from thin air. That makes perfect sense.

Its not the same. Construction is time and energy intensive. Making a ritual for something to summon a city out of thin air completely destroys the efforts. Its the same way as the concept of using magic to assist in your daily lives instead of using magic FOR your daily lives. If you can summon a city why stop there? Why not make automatic magic feeding devices, and machines that let you sit around and still keep you fit, and becoming a super lazy all powerful can do anything you want society with no strings attached? Yes, I'm going there, because summoning a city out of thin air is so absurd that it makes me feel like I'm trying to talk to Raveolution all over again.

That, and look at the Chronology and how long it took to build the Negav walls, I believe they took many many years. If it was magic, it would be instant. That's also part of the problem as well, it also destroys any meaning to have a poor district with poor looking houses. There'd be no point to it. Not to mention the loss of jobs as well. Shady, its just creating far too many problems to have mages literally able to summon buildings.

Magic should be used to assist your daily life, not to live your life for you.

Tell me, Bael, where in all my posts have I said that transmuting, converting existing material into something else, is an instantaneous process?  How does the process of converting one type of material into another equates to conjuring additional material that did not exist out of thin air?  How does does it make the still man-made construction made by workers, not magicians, despite the magical assistance?

You are making no sense, Bael.  You are twisting my ideas completely out of context.  There is no, I repeat, NO SUMMONING A CITY OUT OF THIN AIR.  Mages ASSIST workers.  They CONVERT useless material like useless rocks extracted during mining for your fancy-shmancy Not-Sandstone into something that can be useful.  They HELP shape the material so as to make the STILL MAN-MADE construction take less time.  None of this is instantaneous.  Transmutation and shaping of stones takes time.  It takes experience.  If you make a mistake, you ruin the material all the same. Not any run of the mill mage can do that.

Instead of crying about how it makes everything lazy, about how it "summons a city from thin air", think.  Think for a moment.  How do you turn the idea into that something that works?  Which is what I did, but you are still too blind to see.

Sorry for the outburst, but this shit right here just pisses me off.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

Magic should be used to assist your daily life, not to live your life for you.

Precisely. It's like machines in our life. They assist us while we do the living. They don't live for us. Even machines like the iron lung and pace makers are there to assist us. We still gotta pull the majority of the weight.

@Shady Knight

Shady Knight wrote:

Making buildings this size, not to mention the great wall, isn't something any run-of-the-mill earth mage is going to be able to do alone.  To make the bigger buildings, they're going to need more experienced mages who have more powerful magic.  

You can argue that the most talented earth mages stuck to making the higher and middle tier, while less skilled ones made the lower tier.  Alternatively, the lower tier seems to be the most recent tier since Negav could only have gotten such a big influx of adventurers once the gate was made, so the lower tier was made on the cheap.  

And the space problem is simply because the buildings are built so close together while still being inside the wall, which is a result of their location being sandwiched between a big river on the north and west and a jungle to the south.  Even if you use magic, you're still messing with the terrain big time, so one mistake can have catastrophic results, so you can't just telekinetically push the wall away.

Or, you know, it could be the work of mages. I did mention earthshapers in my revision of Negav's main article that this was how the original great wall was built. Have mages that specialize in earth magic do their thing, rise huge walls of earth from the ground, probably uses some transmutation to turn it from sand or dirt to stone.

It seems to me that the more time passes, the more people forget that Felarya is built around the premise that it's supposed to be very rich in magic and that magic has a ton of very mundane applications.

Rise huge walls out of the ground. I rest my case.

That's it, I'm done here. If you're not gonna bother realizing that magic can be used as a TOOL in a city that's headed by MAGES, and you're going to keep taking everything I say out of context, then we have nothing left to discuss. Have a good day.

I agree that magic can aid in the construction of the city, but more as levitation / accellerator, to replace the function of some machines. Personally I am not 100% sold in that "Mages transmute stone into better stone" idea, i feel it restricts building the city to the hands of those mages that can do that. Or at least, restrict a large part of the city building to those. It makes the entire city depend on them, at least when it comes to fortifying the walls. On the other hand, especially the walls WOULD be something that would be made of the best materials available, even if that meant transmuting. But i cant imagine all the buildings being made that way. Cant we strike a middleground here and say very few palaces and the fortifications have been made that way, but the mayority of the city may have been made by the aid of magic, but from available ressources that do not require a small handful of mages to create? It would really ease the mainentenance of said city.

I guess I'll take it from here, Shady.

Bael, you're the only one saying it was instant. While Shady's line you just quoted doesn't eliminate the possibility that it was done instantly, he did not mean it that way, and he's been trying to tell you that. Furthermore, the line you pulled doesn't come from the article, but from his clarifications- let him clarify more if he so desires.

I think we can build on Amaroq's suggested compromise- what if the third wall was built by the magiocrats, who have the manpower to transmute on this scale, while the other two walls were built with stone that had to be physically quarried because they had not been able to transmute that hard yet?

Where I did say it was instant, before when I read what you posted I kept thinking to myself that I didn't actually say that- but I did apparently. What I meant was that relevant to the time scale it would take to just transmute a whole wall would be far quicker than building it manually, which was ridiculous. I didn't mean to literally say "oh look they rose a mountain out of the earth instantly." Though that is what I said anyway. I was exaggerating as that line (that it was instant) came rather later in the argument. I was getting frustrated, because as I read it, Shady Knight wanted to use magic to build the whole wall, which is what I was opposed to.

I believe what I originally said was: "I am building Negav with Magic" used as a way to basically describe what Shady Knight posted, and how hand-wavey that sounded. That was the original point I wanted to contest. Not the fact that it happened instantly.

I have another idea for the Jaslow Arena, although it probably goes without saying, but how about that weapons used in fights between humans and such are blunt, but against beasts, they're sharp? By that I mean, if two guys were to fight, one uses an axe and the other a spear, both would lack an edge to make them less lethal, which would not only help legalize the combat sport, but also lead to longer fights to get the crowd more excited, because sword fights between two dudes who are serious about killing each other don't last very long and are therefore not very exciting to watch, regardless of what fiction wants you to believe. Against a monster, however, they're as sharp as they can be since, unless the animals are tamed not to kill, they're pretty much fights to the death.

So how do you propose that to happen? By some weapon that magically changes from sharp to blunt? Or two separate weapons?

Different sets of weapons, obviously. It does get tricky when it comes to weapons that are naturally blunts like maces and war hammers, though. Less lethal maces I imagine are flat and round, while lethal ones are flanged, but for hammers, no idea.

Archmage_Bael wrote:

So how do you propose that to happen? By some weapon that magically changes from sharp to blunt? Or two separate weapons?

Why not a weapon that changes into both, like a sword attached to a sheath with a hammer on the end, but when you unsheath it, the sword itself is extremely sharp?

I could swear Bloodborne had a similar concept.

Personally I don't think using magic as a mean to help construction is that much of a problem.

And speaking of that, here is a picture I'm doing about Negav :



Indeed the sandy colors is a trait of many structures there.

Yes I need to get around to posting that material idea I've mentioned before that takes on a sandstone like color, but is not actually sand. As I said before, hauling large quantities of sand from anywhere is illogical considering the distance and amount that sand is from, and in.

Cross that out. Edit, here goes nothing on the idea:

Takrit
Uncommon

Takrit is a sedimentary rock, similar to sandstone (which is also sedimentary), and taking on a similar color as well. It is found semi-commonly underground and used to considered precious until traces of one of the larger deposits in Felarya was discovered right underneath where Negav is located when the ancient tunnels were dug thousands of years ago. However, the sediment also has micro-crystalline materials embedded into it from deep underground - in addition to a cementing material, where it has been subjected to pressure and heat enough to form into a stone much harder than sandstone. Due to the micro-crystalline materials it is also capable of being enchanted, and also transmuted as well.

When subjected to heat magic, the micro-crystalline substructure helps morph it into an even denser rock almost as strong as metamorphic. The refined Takrit is very smooth and a beautiful gold-like color. As such even poor housing districts in Negav look nicer than they would otherwise because of this stone's slightly altered properties.

Takrit is also often used as an aquifer for groundwater, or as a reservoir for oil and natural gas - especially when shipped off to other civilizations from the portal.

wow, nice picture, neat karbo
As for the jaslow arena, instead of you guys trying to blunt force weapons. Why not emulate. I had an Idea for an arena but you know what i'll just go ahead and spoil it.

I was thinking that instead of using actual bodies, why not go the avatar route (via magic) in making emulated doll bodies. People will go in, pay and use the doll, then fight another day, fail to many times, your actual body goes in on the line of your reputation and life. The weapons will be real and to make the arena(s) what was was thinking was that there needs to be some kind of elemental half illusion half reality bending rock that can morph the arena into what ever it wants to be orchestrated by a cadre mages and magick technics, while having the excitement of real magic/explosion/sword-cutting/ gun play action that the audience spectates while being protected by a pretty sturdy magic enhanced glass.

That being said, the underground would probably be the best place for it due to it's vastness and scumbag,cutthroat low life atmosphere in general. How ever this was planned for freeblades,mercs, nobles that wanted to settle an agreement with trial by action and such the like. What do you think?

That... would not work considering the arena is pretty much Rome's colosseum turned into a giant wrestling ring of sorts.  It also goes against the very concept that admittance to the arena is free. I know I'm the guy who suggested that magic assisted in the city's construction and am shooting down an idea to have magic be involved more heavily in arena matches, but really, wouldn't just normal weapons be cheaper and more efficient in this particular case?

It would if you didn't care about people dying. Which in this case bael does, how ever if you want to spectate in a different route and make it more like a intense sport, go vix's route. I honestly don't like the idea of a Colosseum based arena when you have magic in the air honestly. It just seems over done and i think negav can come up with something more original like vix is suggesting with all the magic they have or reclaimed from past.

I'm still opposed to the virtual doll thing.  Part of the reason the arena is so successful and popular is because, in-universe, it's real people fighting in person, using real weapons, sharp or not, the jury's still out on this one, sustaining real injuries, defeating real beasts.  It serves as an inspiration for the common folk in what they otherwise see as living in a crapsack world.  The virtual doll thing, yeah it's still technically people fighting, but it probably feels a lot more fake as a result and probably feels cheap.

But if you want to include more magic, there are several solutions to that.  The obvious one is including magic users as fighters.  They'd most likely have to limit what spells they can and can't use to keep matches between warriors and wizards from being too one-sided, though.  Failing that, magic could be used to alter the terrain of the arena itself to keep things interesting and always have an element of surprise.  For one match it's sandy, for another it's rocky and craggy, and in another there are magic traps all over the place. Another idea might be the use of enchanted gear to allow fighters to pull physics defying maneuvers for the crowd's excitement.

Shady Knight wrote:

I'm still opposed to the virtual doll thing.  Part of the reason the arena is so successful and popular is because, in-universe, it's real people fighting in person, using real weapons, sharp or not, the jury's still out on this one, sustaining real injuries, defeating real beasts.  It serves as an inspiration for the common folk in what they otherwise see as living in a crapsack world.  The virtual doll thing, yeah it's still technically people fighting, but it probably feels a lot more fake as a result and probably feels cheap.

I agree. Think about the world here, what its like. Its brutal, its like how rome saw itself as civilized but still held their "games" which were bloody, and wildly popular.

Magic can be used for a variety of other games as well, but I somehow do not see it as being as popular as the regular games despite magic being more prevalent and useful in Felarya.

I am sorry I am being absent at the moment. I am dealing with extremely HEAVY depression that makes it hard for me to focus on anything. I do want to continue on this, and will try to respond to all thats been said very soon when i feel a little better. maybe even today. maybe the next days. Just as a heads up.

Shady knight saids:

So for not asking in depth of her idea and acknowledging what people come up that are good things.. You like her concept of having the terrain alter idea and magic as a principal key of fighting. but you don't like the idea of dolls. That's kind of understandable but honestly i think you should ask more about it instead of totally dismissing it. The way i see it is only some rich (or lucky) people get dolls while everyone has to fight in teams or alone. The suspense (and I have seen this kind before) is that you got the "eternal champion" concept. They keep winning they stay. If they are a noble or a V.I.P that wants to fight, people will be cheering them on. but if some underdog that doesn't have this kind of luxury beats them over and over again, then they might actually put their lives on the line by making bets and wagers against other nobles or V.I.P into them for actually dying for a background of schemes and political entourage in the shadow of things. Basically you are getting more excitement watching the match between pompous respawners and fledgling fighters that are fighting for a better freedom or glory. She was trying add some element other then "Oh yeah so people just fight to the death with magic and archaic fighting." Which, if not that then some other variety you guys can come up with to make the "arena" interesting. She took a stab at that, and i kind of like it because it adds another element to going into the arena and it isn't needless, it fits right in given the right context

As far as keeping magic "fair" i think that heavily requires on the persons skill. Obviously we can't have juggernauts fighting peons in sessions unless some event was going to require that, but aside from magic i can see people using somewhat complicated or intuitive technology for their fighting needs as well. I imagine the handicaps aren't too broad because people like watching eccentric fights. The more powerful you are, you move up in a leauge and fight people around your same level. Which i can imagine for the liasons and the people who organize the fighters is in a small bit of challenge distinguishing that, but trial by fire and some other screenings determine that.

Archmage bael saids:

I disagree, I see them being more mainstreamed then regular fights because of all the unexpectant comebacks or tactics people can pull. That's makes no logical sense when you live in a world filled with it. Though i will agree, it can become more interesting, but really I imagine those for the few that want a "general" and "fair" fight in their eyes by being more limited to senses and reflexes alone.

Well, there's certainly a lot of good discussion here. My few cents:

I'd agree with Blue in that avatar dolls would be available, albeit expensive; that's got to be a rather complex enchantment. I could see nobles or mages using them for no-holds-barred duels; perhaps even using more durable dolls for extended superpowered slugfests. Studies into the possible military applications of these have been slow due to the cost of prototypes.

Also, while the Hydromancer's Guild sounds nifty, there's a pair of major problems with them:

• Water might be more plentiful near the river and near manmade sources, but given the sheer size of Negav, if there was a huge fire in the Lower Tier, they wouldn't be able to fight it efficiently; they'd have to carry a lot of water (which is heavy) from the river. It wouldn't be so bad in the higher tiers, presumably, because of man-made sources distributed evenly throughout.
  
• Not all fires go out with water (though Negav probably doesn't have much electricity to cause electric fires).

The solution? While the Vishmital will (grudgingly) admit that the Hyromancer's Guild is efficient for normal fires, the Guild must (just as grudgingly) admit that when things really get out of hand, VISA can deploy some serious fire-fighting capability of their own, primarily in the form of exotic chemicals and foams that are not only fireproof, but protect anything under them from fire; absorb oxygen from the air in large quantities and expel inert gasses with enough positive pressure to prevent more oxygen from finding its way back in; and which chemically bond with most flammable materials, to the point where it can even damp phosphorus. Of course, VISA doesn't have an endless supply of this; while they can manufacture it locally, their Negav facilities lack much throughput and they don't have a lot of space to store it, despite its extreme compressibility. Because of this, VISA and the Hydromancer's Guild, while they may not like each other, have a mutual respect and tend to coordinate decently well; in places where VISA is the primary law enforcement group, they'll often provide crowd control and medical services while the Hydromancers deal with the fire.