Aspiring Emperor Quest Q&A Pastebin #2

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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 Thread VIII 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

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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.

#NEW# The four questions below are new.

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.

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2. UNDINE'S ABILITIES
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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.

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 Gnome?
A3. You can have Maloric try to summon her as a familiar (DC19), use Undine's plan to summon her as a pseudo-Champion or attempt to reach her PoP and awaken her (see 3.Q2). Undine's plan involves summoning Gnome at the Source in the Harrowmont, then within 7 days you must claim her PoP underneath the Marnn mountains (see 3.Q1). Failure to do so in time will result in her being unsummoned. Claiming the PoP earlier will result in Undine not offering to do the ritual as you cannot reach a PoP in time right now.

#NEW# Modified below answer

4.Q4. How do we get Sylph?
A4. 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.Q5. Can other mages summon the elementals/Champions?
A5. 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.Q6. Can Maloric summon multiple familiars?
A6. 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.

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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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#NEW# Added this section

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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#NEW# Added this section

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.