Nothing on hummingbirds

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

From: Argrath@aol.com
Date: Mon 08 Aug 1994 - 02:52:20 EEST


Steve Harmsworth (Viridian Demon) says:
> So what the Shaman wants to do is gather POW spirits.
>Having got one, he returns with it (in his Fetch). He can then
>conduct a Ritual Enchantment to create an MP Matrix using up all
>the POW of the POW spirit to do so (and contributing nothing
>himself). The shaman is thus able to create MP Matrixes at no
>cost to himself except for time!
> What have I missed? What do you change/do to prevent this?

     What you have missed is page 55 of the Magic Book, where it says "Enchanting requires that the enchanter permanently lose something in order to effect the permanent change--usually the loss is current POW." If you look at POWer spirits, page 36 of the Creatures Book, it says "The master of a bound power spirit can use the spirit's magic points to power his own spells."

     Your use of the spirit's POW is an abuse which is contrary to the rules. Nothing needs to be changed to prevent this abuse.

     What needs to be changed is the whole "POW spirit, spell spirit, magic spirit, etc." taxonomy. I favor a view in which there are spirits of persons, places, and things, any of which can be placed in an enchantment, and the type of the enchantment tells you what you can get from the spirit: just MP, or spell- casting, or spell storage, or send-the-spirit-out-to-do- something.

Re: Gloranthan avatar

     After thinking about this, I think I'd be a Humakti. Today is always a good day to die.

Re: laying down beers

     The only beer that is currently made which is really suitable for storage over 1 year is Thomas Hardy's Ale, an "old ale." I've tasted it at 2 years, when it was really too young. I have a bottle that is eight years old, and I'll probably give it a little while yet. At 18 years, it is fully mature, and it should last until 21. This stuff is very thick and high in alcohol. If it weren't, it'd be disgusting after that long in the bottle. I imagine the best you could hope for with conventional brews is that you'd get malt vinegar.

     Samiclaus, another high-octane fuel, is lagered from one Christmas to the next.

     Both Thomas Hardy's Ale and Samiclaus benefit from modern brewing techniques. Not to say that such laying-down would be impossible in premodern times, just that it'd require knowledge which didn't exist in comparable times in the real world.

     Oh, and the reason that the Rheinheitsgebot doesn't mention yeast is that no one knew what it was when the law was written. This foam just appeared on the wort. Either it was airborne (as is still practiced with Belgium's Kriek) or it was transferred from the last batch through dosing it (as with yogurt or sourdough bread starter today) or through using tools covered with the stuff from the last batch. Before microscopes, nobody really understood it. Some brewers called it "God is Great."

Allahu akbar!
--Martin

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 10 Oct 2003 - 01:36:13 EEST