Smith, Smith, Space, and Time [25 Lage 4385]

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

And here is what I plan to do by way of martial improvements on Strayway. Minor adjustments and other comments are welcome.

Extra Time

As a minor weapon and internal defense, the answer is clearly “Extra time-flow for friends”. This will be an interesting enchantment to control. The basic effect is simply Quick Instant, a simple complexity-10 spell that any Herethroy with one semester of highschool Tempador could cast, which grants the subject a few seconds of extra time. Then I need with extra expansions to make it work on many people, and arbitrarily often.

But of course I don’t want to constantly give everyone extra time. A few extra seconds here and there are harmless enough. Making someone experience two days for every one that passes will age mortals quickly, which means they will (a) be bored on the journey, and (b) die too soon. (I have to watch this with Phaniet already, though I don’t intend that she be mortal.)

Also, I don’t want to give everybody on board the extra time — last time the pirates boarded us, and I don’t want to help them. So the device must recognize its friends, and that means having a great deal of a mind, and allow people to be introduced to it, and split off from it as well.

So by the time this does what I want, it’s going to be quite a substantial enchantment indeed.

With one trick — I will put the enchantment all about Strayway, so I will be able to do it in a single week. This will mean doing it outside of my time bubble, though, so it’ll be a very busy week indeed.

Twisty Space

For the major defense, the score was tied: half a Locador force field, half a Locador distortion labyrinth. The force field would block incoming things, as many as were incoming, which is useful. The distortion field can only handle a few at a time, but it can toss them around nicely — throwing a ballista bolt thrown by Duncan’s Glory into Soothing Ointment or The Terrible Bean, instead of simply trying to stop it.

Both of them are good for more than defense, I think, but the distortion labyrinth could be used for many things. For one nice example, carts of supplies coming towards Strayway could be labyrinthed into the store-room directly, with sufficient finesse. Or fleeing pirates could be induced to collide with each other, or even be sent into a store-room.

Besides, the labyrinth sounds like much more fun.

Four weeks’ work.

Metal-Tipped Missiles

Missiles tipped with iron points was solidly the favorite choice of a main weapon. And indeed, nothing says “You are fighting a mighty smith-wizard!” quite like having treetrunks with big iron points slamming through your hull. Or your carapace. And, of course, slam they will. Few people fight with such big Durudor weapons, because they are so hard to build. So few people defend against them, because they are so rare and so hard to defend against — barring things like the distortion labyrinth I am planning to install, of course.

But it is hard to do, so it won’t be quite as imposing as I wanted. It will have twelve shots a day. Now, a single shot will probably make an inistella have second thoughts, or go much of the way through a battle-barge like Duncan’s Glory. It should be quite terrifying.

Oh, and for extra intimidation value, the log might as well be blazing, and spray fire in a huge blast when it hits. (Optional, on the off chance that we want to skewer someone but not be quite so forward as to roast them.)

This will take four weeks.

Chain Khtsoyis

And, for the animata. The leading option was sentient Locador distortions, but the distortion labyrinth is already doing such things and I don’t want too much Locador about. So, it’s a choice between living glass blades and animated metal-chain Khtsoyis. Of these, I can best imagine the animated metal-chain Khtsoyis being useful in various ways. They could lift and carry things, or they could leap into the path of an incoming ballista bolt and not be utterly shattered. Or, I daresay, they could try to restrain someone who we want stopped but not killed. Less dangerous than the blades, and harder to perform, of course.

Yes, harder to perform.

(I hereby do some more math.)

Oh, dear. Much harder to perform.

My original design was a device that could summon animata, so I could have a dozen around at need. This places certain requirements on the animata themselves — in particular, most lesser animata would fight amongst themselves if present in such numbers.

So, there’s a bit of a choice here. Either I can make one enchanted iron Khtsoyis — a devastatingly powerful automaton, probably provided with three or four auxiliary powers, but made out of real iron in insanely large quantities, or I can make many lesser Khtsoyis out of some lesser substance.

Actually, it won’t be an iron Khtsoyis, it’ll be a silver Khtsoyis, because I have a silver-maker but not an iron-maker. (Yes, I could make iron by spells in the usual way, but that’s a lot of cley. I’d rather take the time out to make an iron-maker if I did that… still more time to do so, and I want to be ready to move sooner than later.)

OK, so it’ll be a single mighty silver Khtsoyis automaton.

So now it’s time for Fitted Effects. (This, for those of you who are not advanced enchanters, is a fancy enchantment technique allowing for a bit of extra potency in multi-effect devices where the effects do not share any Nouns or Verbs.)

• The actual animata enchantment. It could be as small as Ruloc Durudor Spiridor. I am going to add Mentador to make it smarter, and Sustenoc to make it tougher.
• A teleporting enchantment: probably for the automaton and whatever it is holding. A seven-tentacled automaton can hold a lot. Mutoc Locador 20. It will be able to bop just under half a mile at a hop.
• A healing spell, Healoc Corpador 20. Since the purpose of the automaton is to assist endangered wrongfolk, especially during battles, giving it powers of healing seems like a good idea. Probably Heal the Awful Wound, I guess. I would prefer something stronger, but cannot manage it.
• A Wall of Wood effect, Creoc Herbador 20. A nice flexible spell, useful for a variety of things, many of them also nicely defensive. It’s a temporary wall, and not as tough as my usual since I have used Sustenoc for strengthening the automaton. That will have to do.
• A spell of broad awareness, Kennoc Illusidor 15, so that the automaton can see and hear at quite a distance.
• A weakener of spells, Gnaw the Whining Spell, Destroc Magiador 20. Not quite sure about this really, but I can’t think of a Destroc effect with Airador, Aquador, Pyrador, or Tempador that would be comparably useful. It does have the useful feature that it can gnaw a spell that has already taken effect. It has the useless features that (1) repeated gnawing is rarely effective, and (2) the gnawing doesn’t do all that much usually. Still, this is one of those odd and highly variable spells, so if it sits around all day and gnaws on a spell it might do some good, and, by construction, it has both the personality and the power for doing so.
• All five subsidiary effects have power 20.

And this will take pretty much everything I’ve got to build. Six weeks work, too, and that’s at an insane pace: any reasonable enchanter would take twice or thrice as long, and not be working on anything else at the same time. I am not reasonable.

Comments

[delight-in.livejournal.com]

Yay giant metal Khtsoyis! <3 And in only six weeks seven staring gods it took me TWELVE just to make my scroll and that was EASY this is why I'll never be a real enchanter like you.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

I've been at it for a while -- longer than you've been alive. Longer than I've been alive, for that matter.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

The mention of a personality for the Khtsoyis automaton does concern me! Given the most proximate Khtsoyis after which it might pattern itself...

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

Orren rush the enchantments!

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

That's what it's called, yes.

[terrana.livejournal.com]

To be fair, most reasonable enchanters can't take an hour off for a couple of days. (Or would that be a couple of days off for an hour? The most confusing thing about time manipulation is semantics.)

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

You can always make a bigger iron Khtsoyis summoner later.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Not that I want to be picky with your clay, but is it possible to use bronze instead? Silver, while impressive and pretty looking, isn't horribly *strong*, even in great quanities. Bronze would be stronger, without sacrificing impressiveness.

... I'm still disappointed there will be no Bee Cannon... or Motherly Bees...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Silver's the only metal I can make in quantity at this point.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Considering that Sustenoc Durudor can make glass be as strong as bronze, I think the Sustenoc going into it will make that silver plenty tough!

[kobolds.livejournal.com]

Personally I am most interested in the first one, just for the control and recognition aspects of it.

Also yay for giving Phaniet the option of not being Mortal.

[kobolds.livejournal.com]

Incidentally is there an opposite enchantment you can make for travelling purposes, one that steals a second for every two, to speed up journeys?

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

* The actual animata enchantment. It could be as small as Ruloc Durudor Spiridor. I am going to add Mentador to make it smarter, and Spiridor to make it tougher.

I'm a bit confused by Spiridor being in there twice. Sustenoc? You later mention that being unavailable, so...

I'm more surprised by the range of that teleportation. But I guess that's what the extra complexity does - compared to Change Places(MuLo10), bumping the range up two orders of magnitude is estimated by our crude resources as being +10 complexity, so that'd be about 2000 feet a hop. Not bad at all, really - I'd be surprised to learn that such isn't available as a semi-standard spell among serious wizards(since it's Locador and thus somewhat deep-magic, even if the function is entirely practical), even if it's not in our reference.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

My typist has failed again! I wrote Sustenoc. It mis-transcribed it as Spiridor. I can't imagine how; the two words are utterly different.

[fringe-worthy.livejournal.com]

Can you direct how the Automata prefer to fight among one another?

For example, endless, take no prisoner, card games around a table?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Yes, I ... could ...

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

>>So the device must recognize its friends, and that means having a great deal of a mind, and allow people to be introduced to it, and split off from it as well.<<

You have already given all Strayway crew some kind of livery, and if I remember right, it was even magicked for scrying. Wouldn't it be simpler to have a spell keyed to the livery, instead of recognizing individual people? Add livery, add person in the livery. The chance of an enemy figuring out to steal the livery is low.

Re: Hmm...

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Unless they read the journal, in which case perhaps sythyry shouldn't fully describe all of zir defences here?

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

I've got a smithing question, Sythyry. The translator is translating a metal as "iron". Do you all differentiate between "Iron" and "Steel"? In our world, Iron is a basic type of 'durudor' material (like silver, gold, aluminum, tin, copper, platinum, or tungsten), and steel is a MIX of materials, similar to how tin and copper make bronze; steel might have carbon and tungsten mixed into the iron to make it. By the way, in our world, we have many many many more elements, and they aren't categorized into things quite like 'durudor' as a grouping; we just have the actual specific material. Regardless, do you have tin and copper, and if you mix them, is that how you get bronze?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Iron is a primitive metal. There are a great many alloys: iron with silver, iron with brazinion, iron with sapphire, iron with silver and sapphire, and so forth. The range of possible properties is quite great. We don't have tin, unless my translator has committed another one of its characteristic errors.

[relee.livejournal.com]

If you think you've got it difficult, I had to make a ship that can move freely in air, underwater, through solid matter, through vaccumn, through energy, and through thought! It wasn't easy I can tell you that.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Wow, where can I read about this?

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Kennoc Herbador has a simple spell to let you see through eyes painted on a boat. You can paint a lot of eyes on a boat.

Or, you can do both seeing and hearing with Kennoc Airador.

That frees up Destroc Illusidor to let it cast invisibility on people, and on itself.

And if you used Herbador, you could do Creoc Aquador to create walls of ice instead. About as useful as the wood for most purposes.

[alex-muridae.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...a technical question into the nature of Tempador: as I understood it, when dealing with spells that speed or slow time for individuals, the world considers two different time streams, "personal time" and "world time", so even if your personal time is accelerated several days, you won't gain further cley based upon the world's dawn. I was under the impression that ones aging and natural death was actually tied to world time, so it wouldn't be a problem to give everyone double-time, or such. Is that not the case?

Also, as a minor aside, are all the livery and their scrying attachments accounted for?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Aging is tied to personal time. It's about wear and tear on the body, which happens as the body is used, not as the world happens. This is not 100% true, but is more true than false.

[Sythyry checks] Yes, indeed they are. I hadn't really meant to investigate Phaniet and Este quite that way, but ... well, their ~marriage~ is doing quite nicely, it seems.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Oh, by the way, I'm glad you chose the flaming, fire spraying, metal tipped torpedoes! It is a good use of your skill and a great intimidation value, which was really the theme behind my suggestions! And also, chain golems are great! It's too bad that, by your math, you will need lots and lots and lots of effort in making one, though...

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

One wonders if you couldn't make the time spell more nasty by taking the time from your unfriends and giving it to your friends? Slow the bad guys at the same time you're speeding the good guys, thus doubling the effect?

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Harder to do technically, and it has two flaws: (1) if the enemy resists, you get no advantage from it; and (2) it relies upon the enemy being in range, or, indeed, there being an actual enemy. So your spell is better in a sabre, say, but mine may work better for my intended use.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Oh my god... it's a khyterminator.

All you need are (a) glowing red eyes, and (b) to send it back in time 100 years to prevent some horrible disaster from befalling your younger self.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Um ... but ... those were such nice disasters. By my current standards, anyhow.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I'm probably overlooking something obvious here, but if it's prohibitively difficult to make enough iron for an iron Khtsoyis, is it then less difficult to make the iron for iron-tipped tree trunks? 12 iron-tipped trunks a day sounds like a fair quantity of iron.

Also, at some point, I'd wonder if you don't risk actually inviting attack by firing large chunks of valuable iron at an enemy. A sufficiently villainous pirate commander might send an expendable ship to attack you, intending to sacrifice them so as to collect the iron after the battle.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Given the shot limit, they're probably temporary conjured iron bolts? Whereas the khtsoyis needs to be made out of real metal.

Effectively zie's making a (limited) ironmaker as part of the ballista, I guess.

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Oh, and for extra intimidation value, the log might as well be blazing, and spray fire in a huge blast when it hits.

With this kind of thinking, Sythyry, there is a monster organization called DARPA that might want to employ you. :)

Twisty Space

[(Anonymous)]

it really depends on how many you are fighting. if you are fighting one ship, unless you can control where you send what's sent at you and can fling them back, you want to take the blow. if you are fighting multiple ships, you will want to cause friendly fire.