Aspiring Emperor Quest Q&A Pastebin #5

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Aspiring Emperor Quest Q&A Pastebin
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This pastebin will contain a list of questions and answers that have appeared in threads but not integrated into other pastebins for various reasons. I will also add anything I can note.

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OTHER EDITIONS
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This is the latest edition of the Q&A of AEQ.

A master pastebin with links to all editions for all bins is below.

http://pastebin.com/6Su7M3fh

NB: All content added since the most recent edition has a #NEW# tag above it. Use Ctrl+F to find new content this way.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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1. General Questions
2. Undine's Abilities
3. Location Questions
4. Elemental Questions
5. Quest Questions
6. Enchantment Questions
7. Source Questions
8. Vampire Questions
9. Salamander's Abilities

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1. GENERAL QUESTIONS
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1.Q1. Who knows about the Source?
A1. "You don't know. You'd guess if it were widespread, you'd have a lot of important people knocking on your door. I mean, an active Source? The first in 200 years? You wouldn't be surprised if one of the archangels appeared in your entrance hall one day. So you suspect it's mostly a secret. Viktor Oaln might have thought he could use it himself to defeat the RSK, after all."

1.Q2. How big are Harrowmont's walls?
A2. 30m tall and 10m thick. Magic lets you build them big.

1.Q3. Are we a mage-knight?
A3. No. Mage-knight is basically a term to refer to professional soldiers who rely on magical equipment. Knights are either nobles or powerful warriors who don't rely on them (sometimes both). A mage-knight is little more than a regular soldier without his equipment, whereas you could still benchpress a half-tonne of steel naked.

1.Q4. Are we really drawing on the power of the Source?
A4. Everybody you say this idea to thinks you're a nutter. The Source is a font of astral energy which it converts to sorcerous energy as it uses it (with some by-products). You somehow got a faceful of astral energy earlier, but it seems inconceivable to most that you're using it - the Astral Adepts can do it, but they undergo a special process.

1.Q5. How do we learn X?
A5. Find somebody who knows X. Keep in mind learning new magic is hard for you as you do it instinctively - you never learnt formal magic like Maloric did, and you don't really have the time. Furthermore, you don't have the slightest clue as to your magical affinities.

1.Q6. How big is Harrowmont?
A6. Big. It can support a small town (thousands of people) plus some noble manors and has defenses not dissimilar to Helm's Deep from LotR. You can also expand it. It's rather close to the highway between Darlesia and Vitria, too.

1.Q7. How is Maloric blocking enemy mages from casting?
A7. He's not using anti-magic if that's what you're wondering. Rather, he excels at manipulating large amounts of magical energy (despite being an evoker). This means that he can effectively steal or disrupt the magical energy another mage is using to cast. This is difficult to do against talented mages as they channel and cast quite quickly, but against lower ranked mages he can effortlessly block dozens at once.

1.Q8. What is anti-magic?
A8. There are two types of anti-magic. One is the explosive kind you saw the assassin use - it reacts violently to magic and explodes. The activation of the anti-magic in this way also disrupts the magic that triggered it, turning whatever spell it hit into raw (and harmless) magical energy. The second kind hasn't been seen yet and is theoretically impossible - yet it exists in a special weapon known as the Anti-Magic Blade, a weapon of power that can nullify all magic near it. The AMB has been lost since the end of the Golden Age of Magic, the same period it was created in.

1.Q9. Can we buy armor and equipment from other nations?
A9. You can. Talon has a small amount of wealth from his travelling. Taxes have (kind of) just been collected, so it will be almost a year before you can collect them yourself, though the collapse of Darlesia means there's enough stockpiled for your troops to collect from villages under your rule. If you choose to buy these items, you'll need to engage a smuggler as there are wartime restrictions on the passage of military equipment.

1.Q10. How is taxation working?
A10. Right now it's not a worry. Your relatively small military and the current short timeframe means you will have enough food. In the future you will need to worry about this and set up a bureaucracy to manage it. Due to sendings and other magical inventions, the Lord of the Manor system used historically IRL doesn't truly exist (along with serfdom) - therefore effective taxation will require a mixture of a centralised bureaucracy and middlemen. Much of this can be assumed to be put together as your empire grows, but important questions about how it will come together may be asked.

1.Q11. How large can our military get?
A11. Although I stated a hard cap of 1 soldier per 500 population, I've changed my mind on that. Currently, there is no cap as it's unlikely you'll muster a military large enough to cause economic troubles. In the future, once taxation and expenses are properly introduced, the cap on your military will be financial (as well as in terms of loyalty).

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2. UNDINE'S ABILITIES
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#NEW# Added the exception to the below circumstance.

2.Q1. Can Undine control the weather?
A1. No. Her ability to control water is limited to her immediate surroundings - the systems controlling the weather are too far away and too large. She could manipulate it in a localised fashion if you were to put her up in the clouds, though this would be limited to a single cloud or two.

2.Q2. How do Undine's flash floods work?
A2. She simply places a lot of water in a magical container she creates, then lets it out. She can control the temperature of the water, too. Her traps work by her spending some time added sorcery to these to enable her to activate them from afar. At a distance, she doesn't move the water herself - the reason they worked so well in Harrowmont is that the entire area is on an incline leading up to the keep. This won't work as well in flat land.

2.Q3. How does her healing work?
A3. Slowly. Healing isn't like spells in D&D - it's more akin to an extended lay-on-hands action. As her imitation sorcery tends to take longer as well, and she needs catalysts she doesn't usually carry, it will take longer. She also doesn't really have the power to do proper combat healing (which doesn't use catalysts and can be done on the move without touching the target).

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3. LOCATION QUESTIONS
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3.Q1. Where is Undine's Place of Power?
A1. In an underground lake under the Marnn mountain range. It is accessed via a tunnel system in Mier province and will take roughly a days travel from the entrance to reach the lake. It takes three days to reach this entrance from Harrowmont. Her PoP will take a party of no more than ten but consisting of at least the combined power of Talon, Lynn, Undine and Maloric.

3.Q2. Where is Gnome's Place of Power?
A2. Underneath a dwarven citadel in the Sithran mountains. See Q4 for info on the Sithran mountains. Her PoP is surrounded by a colony of the monsters from the other side of the Barrier of Marie and is very unsafe.

3.Q3. Where is Maern?
A3. Near the Sithran mountains, in the RSK. See Q4 for info on the Sithran mountains. This is where Lynn is from.

3.Q4. Where are the Sithran mountains?
A4. To the south-west, on the other side of the RSK (RSK territory runs around them, as the dwarves claim much of the mountains). It is around 20 days travel by land to reach the mountains (I said a smaller amount in a thread, but that number is wrong). If you look at the continental map (a glimpse of it is in Thread VII at the start) it is the brown hex.

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4. ELEMENTAL QUESTIONS
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4.Q1. Who are Undine's sisters?
A1. Gnome (pure earth elemental); Salamander (pure fire elemental); Sylph (pure wind elemental)

4.Q2. Which one is stronger?
A2. For the quest, you can assume they're all the same strength due to plot, though they may be of different strengths relative to each other at various times due to PoP empowerment etc. Otherwise, Gnome is by far the most powerful, followed by Sylph then Salamander and Undine in a tie. Currently, Gnome and Salamander are slightly stronger than Undine - but Undine is more versatile with her imitation sorcery and Gnome and Salamander will likely increase in strength slower.

4.Q3. How do we get Sylph?
Ae. You must either find where she is and convince her to join you (or her master, if she has one). If she remains unsummoned you can attempt to find a mage with enough ability to summon her. You cannot use the Source to summon her as she is not connected to it.

4.Q4. Can other mages summon the elementals/Champions?
Ar. Yes and no. The three pure elementals can be summoned by other mages, though it is much harder for most mages. Maloric only has a chance because this is a major area of his research and suits his talents - most mages could not even attempt to summon a familiar outside their affinities or beyond their power. As for the other Champions, there is almost no risk of them being summoned as Mystic Foxes are not normal familiars, and Revenants are not familiars period. With that said, magical races can be bound as familiars as Alyce of Lyss has proved by binding an Aefir (a near-extinct type of elf). The Revenant will still be working for the divine being who turned him into a revenant, as he can do nothing else.

4.Q5. Can Maloric summon multiple familiars?
A5. Yes, but he won't be willing to. Mages can summon as many familiars as they can empower and Maloric will have difficulty keeping one pure elementals anywhere near full strength, let alone two or three. Maloric has more power than he has talent right now - keeping in mind that most grand magisters don't hit the rank until their fifties or sixties (even Alyce, a true prodigy, was forty) and he is lucky to be a magister at his age.

4.Q6. How long does it take the elementals to recharge their magical energy?
A6. If they do nothing but rest, about 4 hours in a normal location. In a high energy environment (like near the Source or their PoP), about 2 hours. Note that recovery of HP/wounds can take longer for them (up to 24 hours for non-major wounds, weeks for major wounds without healing).

#NEW# This has been added. Technically in retrospect, but I didn't want to create a new bin for one question.

4.Q7. Where is Sylph?
A7. Sylph is unsummoned and near her Place of Power, which is not connected to your Source. It is in the same region as a PoP that is connected to your source though.

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5. Quest Questions
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5.Q1. These travel times are too fast!
A1. The travel times are partially abstract, partially based on reality. Marching speed is 20-25 miles a day (more than historically). You move faster than IRL for gameplay reasons but not so fast that teleportation won't be useful - no LotR-level speeds involving traversing the continent in a month.

5.Q2. Which cultures are each side based on?
A2. All of them. You might pick up themes, but I tend to blend my knowledge of medieval Europe (by which I mean France, England and Germany) so I prefer not to try to stick to one as it will show how bad my knowledge really is. So be careful about drawing IRL analogies (the widespread use of magic notwithstanding).

5.Q3. What happens as the quest gets larger?
A3. I will attempt to abstract lesser elements and characters. With that said, as the scope grows so will the number of characters and the politics, even as I limit micromanagement. My intent is to continue to expand the pastebins and create recaps to try to make the quest as accessible as possible.

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6. Enchantment Questions
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6.Q1. What are the different types of enchantment?
A1. There are three: magitech enchantment (i.e. machined enchantment); evocation enchantment; and transmutation into magical items. Magitech can mass produce enchantments, but they are typically of a lower quality. Having a mage use evocation to enchant items can produce high quality items, but can be very time consuming and few mages are talented at it - Maloric is your best enchanter right now. Transmutation lets you produce permanently magical items of great power but requires a mage skilled in transmutation, which is rare - you do not have the ability to do this.

6.Q2. How do we get magitech?
A2. Magitech is produced by machinists - machinists are broadly talented mage who specialise in bringing multiple magical talents together in rituals. You do not have a machinist currently but there is likely one each in Vitria and Taour.

6.Q3. What are the limits of enchantment?
A3. Complex. Whilst enchantment can do a lot things, many of these are needlessly difficult and better accomplished with evocation. For instance, magical explosives are possible but exceedingly complex (Maloric would have difficulty making them) whereas having an Adept cast a long-distance burst of flame is reasonably simple and easy - and both can be disrupted by talented mages.

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7. Source Questions
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7.Q1. What does it mean that the Source can bend reality? Can't sorcery do that, too?
A1. Sorcery doesn't truly bend reality - it uses magical energy that is naturally present in the world to create the otherwise impossible. In order to use sorcery, you must have both the talent to manipulate this energy and have the energy itself - the more complex and large the sorcery the more of both you need. For instance, trying to build a castle out of magic needs a lot of talent and a very large amount of energy but making a hammer wouldn't. There are also things that sorcery cannot feasibly do or that it can be blocked from doing (e.g. teleportation can be easily blocked with sorcery). Astral powers on the other hand can do this (e.g. Gnome says that the archangels can teleport anywhere in the world without impediment no matter what barriers are present). As the Source draws on astral energy it can therefore do these otherwise impossible things and it has no real limit on the amount of energy it can draw on (this means you could feasibly block the archangels teleportation - astral power v astral power).

7.Q2. What is the real limit on the Source's power then?
A2. Two things: using that level of power will alert any and all magically sensitive beings (Fae, archangels, infernals, powerful mages, Astral Adepts, dragons...) and there are limits based on the number of Places of Power you've bound to yourself/the Source. Depending on the number of PoP bound, the radius of effect of the Source is limited - one might let you affect the keep, whereas three might let you affect all of Harrowmont and then some. Finally, you have mental limits - you control the Source's power mentally and your mental limits can create restrictions on the things you can do.

7.Q3. What is the Source's range as it becomes empowered by PoPs?
A3. 1 PoP can affect Harrowmont's keep. You need 3 PoPs to affect all of Harrowmont (plus the bluffs behind). 7 would be about 4x that range. Not quite the province but a very large area. Increasing the number of PoPs does nothing except increase the range (and provide a buffer should somebody else claim it from you later).

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8. Vampire Questions
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8.Q1. What's the difference between daywalkers and nightwalkers?
A1. Nightwalkers are nocturnal, vulnerable to sunlight, turn bestial around a full moon and aren't exceptionally dangerous. Daywalkers are very rare and can operate normally in sunlight - in fact, they aren't any stronger at night.

8.Q2. How many daywalkers are there in Taour?
A2. Not that many. The council consists of six currently, and there may be a couple dozen or so more at the most. Even for a city ruled by vampires, they aren't that common.

8.Q3. What can daywalkers do?
A3. Lots of things. The only things Salamander tells you they all have in common is a bizarre form of shadowy sorcery and powerful regeneration. Otherwise, each daywalker may have slightly different abilities.

8.Q4. What are thralls and how do we detect them?
A4. Thralls are humans (or elves or dwarves) that are susceptible to a vampire's influence. This isn't mind control but instead a form of suggestion - thralls find it impossible to not follow their master's orders. This continues until the thrall is dead, not the master. If a thrall cannot receive orders from his master, he is not susceptible. Otherwise, daywalker thralls behave like normal humans and have the same capabilities as normal humans (though they may be mages or knights). Nightwalker thralls are more zombie-like. Detecting them involves a mage making contact with them and detecting the taint of the vampire - this requires the mage to know what that feels like.

8.Q5. How are thralls made?
A5. It varies. Salamander says that the methods she's seen range from making a human drink vampiric blood, to kissing them, to simply being in the same room as the vampire. Presumably, the more indirect the method the easier it is to resist - or maybe it signifies a more powerful vampire. And yes, it is possible to resist enthralment. Magical beings like elementals find it easier to resist. Note that all methods involved require the daywalker to be present - given their general rarity, it can be safely assumed not everybody in Taour's military are thralls but only some.

#NEW# Added the below section

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9. Salamander's Abilities
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9.Q1. How hot can Salamander make her fire, for how long and how much?
A1. The length of time she can manifest, control, heat up etc fire is effectively infinite, so long as she has enough magical energy. As such, I'll use as a base the length of time she could do so from full strength to complete exhaustion, without any recharge or rest. If you're controlling less volume of fire, she gets more time but not necessarily in a linear fashion. It is important to note that extended casting leaves Sala unable to do anything (including moving) and has a 15min prep time attached no matter how long she casts for.

Instantaneous Casting (i.e. no prep or ritual)
900C-1000C for 60 seconds for up to 10m^3
1400C for 60 seconds for up to 3m^3
2500C for 60 seconds for 30cm^3
3500C for 30 seconds for 30cm^3

Extended Casting (i.e. with prep and/or ritual)
900C-1000C for 6 hours for up to 10m^3
1400C for 60 minutes for up to 3m^3
2500C for 180 seconds for 30cm^3
3500C for NA - this cannot be cast in an extended manner at Sala's current strength

9.Q2. How does Immolate differ from Fire Control?
A2. Aside from being more flexible (e.g. allowing her to fly) it lets her create and control a much larger amount of fire than otherwise. The downside is that it's weaker (only about 600C-700C) and she can't heat it up with her normal ability without losing control. Another side-effect is that the fire isn't manifested - it's corporeal and will continue to burn after she stops maintaining it (so long as it's physically possible). Fire Control only maintains fires caused by the fire, not the super-high temperature flame she was manifesting.

9.Q3. How does volume work for fire?
A3. Very frustratingly. You can generally assume it refers to the 'core' of the flame (i.e. the continuous flame region or the middle) and that intermittent flames and thermal plumes form naturally from this and are otherwise beyond control. Sala could control this area, too, but at the cost of the size of the main part of her flame.

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10. Random Stuff
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10.Q1. How does the social status of mages compare to that of nobles and knights? Didn't we grant additional status to them across our entire empire when we made the decision in Vitria? What problems would there be in extending that additional social status to other organisations, including non-human ones like the mystic fox clans?

A1. You agreed that representatives in Vitria's legislature can be any organisation that Sarah deems fit.

It might not have come across too clearly, but mage towers have always had similar social status to noble houses and knightly orders. They can own land, their members are typically wealthy and from noble families and they typically have some form of representation in royal courts or the equivalent. The difference is that their status doesn't equate to power like with actual nobles and knights - if the mage comes from a noble family, he will likely own land and have representative power in whatever form of royal court or legislature the nation has. The mage tower might be able to speak in the royal court.

But he mages and mage towers will not have any actual power to accompany their social status. If there was any form of voting, governing body or committee to act on or decide important matters then the towers had no say. They could attempt to influence the nobles and knights who did have the power, just like merchant trading houses and companies would, but could do nothing more. They had social status equal to knights and nobles but the actual power of merchants. As was stated in the Vitria conversation, this is partially due to the Mage Guard not wanting mages to have actual power in nations but also because doing so kept power with the nobility rather than the mages (remember: a mage with a noble background still has voting power or the equivalent; a mage who was a commoner does not). This was the model in just about every royal kingdom and Vitria also used it, despite its lack of nobility.

Grand Magister Spoker wanted to overturn this tradition mostly because the four great noble families had much greater power and wealth than equivalent families in other kingdoms. When there's one royal house calling the shots, there's a lot more competition among the weaker noble families and so individual nobles have more power and say. When four noble houses replace the one royal family, it's easier for them to ignore the smaller houses and do their own thing (as they can make deals with each other). This then results in the whole vassal house problem, where the only way to have power is to offer the larger houses your voting power and assistance. The mage towers didn't even have that and individual nobles had minimal influence in doing so, weakening their position much more than in other nations.

tl;dr You potentially have opened the floodgates for other organisations, but only mages have the social status of nobles in the eyes of the public. Merchants guilds etc don't and it would be more historic to grant them or non-human races power without the equivalent status.

With that said, the problem in your empire is different. You don't have a legislature for the empire. Nobles, mage towers and knightly orders can represent themselves to governors and yourself. As can merchants guilds and the foxes. Power, social status and influence are all completely independent currently. If you decide to change that, which may happen as you grow and need to grant more power to the states and move further away from direct control of even the empire-level matters, then the things you're bringing up will be important (and, yes, the actions of the foxes in helping knights etc. will be important).

10.Q2. Do all the cities in Gauron lay on or very close to rivers like IRL historical cities?

A2. The river system is complicated because the Marnn mountain range used to extend through much of the region (basically extending from the middle of Balkarin, through to Marnn itself, then out along to the mountainous region near Dermost and Cassenne in the Worremburg region. As a result, the cities and modern layouts don't really correspond to the geographical layout (as it hasn't had the time to change in the last few centuries).

There's also the issue of technology being different. Evocation has been around for the past thousand years (during most of modern society) and before that there was still a lot of magic around (for non-human races) or left behind by the old powerhouses (the old Angelic and Infernal empires). This means that transport is easier (if not railroad quality) and that water can be found more easily (easily purified; major constructions like dams and aqueducts are easier; water elementals and mages can create water; magitech can create water etc). Your cities all have a river within a day's travel but newer cities aren't as reliant on rivers for their water supply.

10.Q3. How are mages treated in Farun? its been indicated that they have pretty low status (as shown by how that prince was considered ineligible for the throne).

A3. THe same as in the RSK, largely. A member of a mage tower becoming the ruler of a country (or taknig on any titles that imply service to the crown) is frowned upon in general. Neir isn't a member of a mage tower, despite her talent at magic, precisely because she was being groomed to succeed her father on the land management side (some of which he does so on behalf of the king, whose family owns a lot of land). Sarah did similar because she wanted to be the head of one of the ruling families (technically an official position in the former nation). It'd be like electing a president or similar elected official who is still an employee of a private corporation (jokes and cynicism aside) or the same for a public servant.

10.Q4. How do construct familiars, pattern familiars and faux-patterns differ?

A4. Faux-patterns are just what are created when the shell of a pattern is filled by a familiar rather than a proper pattern. A construct familiar is a familiar that is a construct. I'm not sure I've ever used the wording otherwise.

Basically, being able to create patterns means you can create faux-patterns. Most pattern research falls short of the real thing because making a shell is easy, as is envisaging and manifesting the sorcery you want the shell to be capable of. The hard part is creating the pattern that can then control the shell, its own actions and that magic - so most mages just bind a vague familiar soul to the shell. Such a being is more powerful than the pattern would be but all but the weakest of them are impossible to sustain normally. Patterns, on the other hand, are supposed to be able to either sustain themselves or run off magical batteries of some form.

Constructs don't have familiar souls in them. They already have life as a construct and you just bind them as a familiar to give them additional power. A faux-pattern is inert without the familiar soul, so it's the binding of the soul to it that makes it a fake (because it doesn't have a true pattern granting the shell life). You can also bind a pattern as a familiar just like a construct, though, with all the same benefits (more power) - at which point it is a pattern familiar.

Again, the main difference is at the base level - a construct has a fully working body and is simply animated by magic, whereas a pattern has a shell that may have no resemblance to anything that could function as a being (e.g. a gigantic metal chimera statue) and the pattern itself needs a certain level of power to actively maintain its own conceptual existence (e.g. Corrfax doesn't have any muscles or joint, nor any actual way of breathing fire - heck, those magical runes that protect him were never inscribed on his statue, he merely created them as part of his being as a familiar. Corrfax can only move, talk and use magic because of the power of his familiar soul and the conceptual magic around his binding, whereas a construct version would need much less magic but a body that could already do everything).

10.Q5. Could knights summon familiars strong enough and in enough numbers to make a noticeable difference in combat?

A5. Most battlemages wouldn't have a familiar and those that would probably have weaker ones. That would also be an issue for most knights - probably around 60-65% of knights can use magic but maybe 10% overall are strong enough to match your average adept in magical power and even less the sort of power necessary to summon a combatant familiar. There's a reason even your better knights tend to rely on their fancy suits of armour over their own talents, after all. Pretty much any familiar below the regular elemental level (about half as strong as Bartom) is effectively useless in combat. Journeyman could summon those and they're probably as good in combat as your average mage-knight or battlemage - assuming they don't get a knowledge familiar (which would enable them to become stronger mages rather quickly).

If you were to go ahead with this and try to build separate units for knights with combat familiars (the only way to improve their stat line) then I'll consider how to handle that. Also, most of your mage-knights would be ineligible - those with enough magical talent join knightly orders, bringing the mage-knights well below the 10% mage rule for the general population.