The Well of *Infinite* Mana
Chuckg
It doesn't have enough oomph. The power generation figures are waaaay too low.
Besides, it's too darn big... suppose I don't have room for a 150-foot deep hole
in my basement?
Soooooo... I have decided to post the process for enchanting something that will
allow *any* number of mages to tap more mana than they could even dream of
handling, all day and every day, forever and ever and ever.
Period.
And unlike that last big clunky gizmo I made, this one will just fit in the
average closet.
Ladies and gentlemen... I give you the Well of Infinite Mana.
(note -- since I describe every little stinkin' step of the process, it's got a
slow beginning. The juicy stuff is at the end. Read carefully, please.)
# of mages to build -- your average circle of enchanters. Call it 5-6
experienced enchanters -- the Mages Guild of Megalos has decided to back the
project. They've budgeted a few months, so we can take our time.
=====
** Phase One -- build the casing.
Create one solid hex full of Essential Earth. (8 mana)
Have one mage cast Shape Earth, (2 to cast, 1 to maintain). Have him shape the
essential earth into the shape of a hollow cylinder one hex wide and two hexes
tall, with a top and bottom lid and six-inch thick sides. Then have him him
hold in position while...
Mages #2 and #3 cast Earth to Stone, twice. (5 mana each, for a 1-hex object).
Mage #2 is turning the top and bottom lids into stone. Mage #3 is turning the
cylinder walls into glass. (For the purposes of GURPS Magic rules
adjudications, glass is "stone". Gurps _Grimoire_, p. 105, under the heading
for "Metal and Plastic" spells.)
Since Essential Earth produces stone with three times the DR and HT of ordinary
stone (or glass) when you use the Earth To Stone spell on it, our stone-capped
glass cylinder should be more than sturdy enough to support its own weight...
especially since I used six-inch thick sides, and the stone lids don't have to
be more than a couple inches thick.
At this point, some DM's would rule that the glass sides and the stone top and
bottom already have an airtight seal, seeing as how you just transmuted them
both out of one continiguous earthen object. But even if the DM doesn't agree,
make the seal between the sides and the top and bottom airtight by casting yet
another Shape Stone (4 to cast, 2 to maintain), and working on it until by God
those seals are absolutely airtight.
Cast Destroy Air on the inside of the hollow cylinder. (2 mana). (And now you
know why the walls were made out of glass... so the caster could maintain LOS to
the contents.)
*Foop*. We now have a hollow, transparent cylinder whose inside is a hard
vacuum.
On p. 80 of the GURPS Grimoire, there is a spell called "Repel". What it
basically does is set up a force that repels all objects from a given hex, with
a force of 2 ST per point of energy put into the spell. An area can be
permanently enchanted with Repel for 100x cost. So for 100 mana per hex of
surface area, we enchant the entire inner surface of the glass cylinder wall
with 2ST of Repel, all the way around.
# of Repel spells needed to enchant the entire inner surface of the cylinder.
The surface area of the inside of a hollow cylinder is pi * inner diameter of
cylinder * height.
pi * (2.5 ft) * (6 ft) = 47.124 square feet.
The area of a one hex-wide circle(assuming perfectly round hex in "real life"--
the hex lines on the map are abstractions, remember), would of course be pi *
radius squared = pi * (1.5 ft)^2 = 7.069 square ft.
Given that 7.069 goes into 47.124 about 6.5 times, we can use seven Repel
enchants at 100 mana each to get the entire inner surface of the cylinder (not
counting the top and bottom) enchanted with surface area to spare.
So that's 700 mana total cost.
The most mana-intensive part of the enchantment is already finished.
OK, now if you have a cylinder whose inner wall is continuously radiating 2 ST
worth of repulsion effect *all the way around*, but whose top and bottom aren't
radiating anything, that would mean that any small, lightweight object inside
that cylinder would be pushed to the exact center of the cylinder and stay
there, right? So we now have a cylinder whose inside is a hard vacuum and is
set up to confine any small object (about BB-sized or so) to it's exact center,
right?
Good. Such was our intention. On to phase two.
** Phase Two -- set up the Gates.
Enchant a pair of permanent Gates into the top and bottom of the cylinder.
Strangely enough, the surface area of a Gate (one hex by two) is too large to
fit on the top and bottom lids. Well, you can always voluntarily reduce the
size. Since the two gates are only two hexes apart, energy cost to enchant the
permanent Gate pair is only 300 mana.
** Phase Three -- Final assembly.
Mage #1 casts Create Earth (4 mana per hex is the lowest cost listed, negotiate
with your GM for a reduction) to create a tiny tiny piece of earth in the
center of the cylinder. Mage #2 catches it and holds it with an Apportation (1
mana for one minute, which is long enough.)
Mage #1 then casts Earth To Stone (3 mana for an object up to 20 lbs) to turn
that dollop of earth into a 1 gram stone ball.
Mage #2 then Apports the ball to the exact center of the cylinder... and lets it
drop. Then everybody just kicks back and waits a few days.
Phase Four -- *Commence primary ignition.*
As you have no doubt figured out, the whole purpose of this setup is to take
that 1 gram stone ball and have it fall into the bottom gate and back out the
top gate with absolutely no loss of speed, to keep on falling right back through
the bottom gate and out the top gate again -- *forever*.. And this time,
there's no dog-leg at the bottom to kill momentum before Gating back to the top.
In this version of the Mana Well (tm), I *want* to continuously accumulate
momentum over time.
The Repel effect, of course, is to ensure that the ball never ever ever ever
ever touches the sides of the cylinder, or ever does anything besides fall
exactly straight down along the center axis of the cylinder. The hard vacuum is
to avoid the problems of atmospheric friction heating at high speeds.
How high?
Well, given that that 1-gram ball will be continuously accelerating at 1-g
*indefinitely*, how high do you think?
After one week of building up speed, that little ball ought to be moving at:
(3600 sec/hr) * (24 hrs/day) * (7 days/week) = 604,800 seconds/week.
(9.8 m/sec^2) * (604,800 seconds) * = 5,927,040 meters/second.
(For a comparision standard, the speed of light is approximately 300,000,000
meters/second.)
The kinetic energy of a 1-gram object moving at that speed is [1/2 (.001 kg) *
(5,927,040 m/sec)^2] = 17,564 megajoules.
Which would, of course, equate 17.564 gigawatts of power if you tapped it all in
one second with a Draw Power/TL3 spell.
Given that 2 MW = 1 Fatigue of mana, 17.564 gigawatts equals 8,782,000 points of
Fatigue.
Given that an HT 10 mage with Magery 2 can safely conduct only (10 * 2 *2) = 40
MW of power, or 20 Fatigue worth of power per turn, that means that you would
need 439,100 "average" mages tapping this sucker simultaneously for 20 Fatigue
each to suck it dry.
430,000+ guys with Magery 2 and average HT's. I don't think there's that many
people with Magery 2 on the entire planet of Yrth.
And, of course, the total amount of energy available is building exponentially
as time goes by. Even if you waited only *one hour* longer to tap the energy,
the available power would have increased by:
v = (9.8 m/sec^2) * ((604800 + 3600) seconds) = 5,962,320 m/sec.
KE = (1/2) * (.001 kg) * (5,962,320 m/sec)^2 = 17.774 gigajoules.
If tapped all in one second, that much energy would produce 17.774 gigawatts of
power, which means that about 210 megawatts available to tap have built up over
the course of the last hour. And the kinetic energy available to tap as the
further hours go by would of course grow exponentially.
So basically, after the first day or so of letting this sucker spool up, it's
pointless to actually crunch #'s for how much kinetic energy (and therefore how
many Fatigue are available to tap with Draw Power/TL3) is actually there. Just
assume that there's "way more energy than you and every other mage and town
could tap simultaneously" and act accordingly.
Voila. The (effectively) Infinite Mana Well.
However, there is one "little" drawback.
Specifically, after about a month or so, that goddamn 1 gram stone ball is
moving at relativistic velocities, which means that it won't be just one gram of
mass no more. I really hope you've been beefing up the ST of the Repel
enchantments on the inner surface of the cylinder during the early weeks using
all of that boundless mana you had available to tap.
And a couple of months after that, the relativistic mass of that ball has built
up to the point where it will begin to warp local gravity and destroy the
integrity of the casing... and as soon as the vacuum seal is breached...
(shudder), I don't even want to think about it.
I suppose that the only safe way to build one of these is to use Destroy Earth
on the stone ball every couple of weeks, and start again from scratch, thus
never letting the ball build up more than a "mere" couple of thousand kilometers
per second of velocity.
Can anyone here think of ways to further Enchant this damn gizmo so that it
never, ever, ever matters if it's left unattended periods of time? I mean, this
thing is wonderful and can completely change the world and generate infninite
mana, but it is NOT inherently safe. Left unattended for several months, it
will wreck the entire planet you left it on. (I leave as an exercise for the
student what happens when a 1-gram stone ball moving at .99c plus suddently is
trying to move through air, as it will do once the mass of the ball has grown to
the point where the local gravity of the ball is sufficient to collapse the
walls of the cylinder. (I mean, we did make the damned thing out of glass. It
has to be transparent, or otherwise we can't create the stone ball of inside it
and place it properly, or see the stone ball to hit it with a Destroy Earth at
any time we feel an emergency shutdown is required.)
But that leaves the stability of this device solely up to the vigilance of its
operators. I would like a refinement of this device that could be safely left
unattended for indefinite periods of time.
Suggestions?
--
Chuckg
Mike Harvey
here: the movement of the planet. Even of the planet is tidally locked,
it is still rotating a star, and the star is rotating around the
galactic core. Assuming the cylinder is sitting somewhere on the surface
of a rotating planet in a universe similar to ours, won't the falling
ball have angular momentum? It seems that the "top" of the cylinder is
moving laterally at a higher velocity than the "bottom" of the cylinder,
and the whole thing is very slowly "spinning."
Every time the ball passes through the gate and reappears at the top,
the cylinder (with respect to the ball) has a slightly different
absolute attitude and velocity than it did before, and the "reentry"
gate is moving at a different speed than the "exit" gate. So each time
the ball reenters the cylinder, the repulsion fields must re-orient it,
adjusting its vector. At low speeds this won't matter, but at high
speeds it could be quite significant. (I'm just guessing here)
Also, the *slightest* bump to the cylinder could destabilize the thing,
repulsors notwithstanding. So better keep apprentices and cats well
away, and pray there's not an earthquake!
---
Per your question, it sounds like what you need is a "speed limit" on
the ball; you want it to easily attain a certain velocity but not exceed
it. If the repulsor fields at the bottom of the cylinder were slightly
stronger than those at the top (or an additional repulsor was cast on
the lower gate, directed upwards), then there would be a slight drag on
the ball. It would reduce start-up time but could greatly increase the
useful lifetime before it destabilized.
The ideal solution would be a "Neutralize Gravity" type spell
permanently enchanted on the container, limited by a "Trigger"
enchantment to automatically activate when the ball reaches a certain
velocity. This would act sort of like a thermostat, turning the engine
"on" when velocity drops too low, and turning it off when it reaches
capacity.
You could also add a fail-safe: cast Destroy Earth limited by a Delay so
that it activates if the unit violates certain safety parameters.
I'm not sure if spells exist to implement the "safety valve" and the
"fail safe" , but if they do, you could create a much safer version: a
one-ton ball of lead! It would provide equivalent power at much lower
velocities due to the increased mass. It would cost a lot more to create
this device, but you could get the energy from the miniature version
that you described.
---
Nothing can create energy, presumably not even magic. Thus this device
must be sucking up enormous amounts of mana to power itself. Your
calculations for a velocity of 5,927,040 meters/second provide some
8,000,000 mana, which ought to be enough to cause a magical "brownout"
over quite a large region. It would make a great plot for a villain: he
creates this device and suddenly all the wizards in the kingdom have no
mana for their spells. It could even cause magical items to temporarily
become non-functional (though that would destroy the device). The PCs
have to somehow defeat a villain who has access to unlimited mana and
figure out a way to destroy the device, all without benefit of magic...
---
One last thought. If you can tap a tiny stone ball, why can't you tap
into the momentum of the Earth itself? Surely that has a LOT of energy
available, more than you could ever use...
Mike
Zereth
<snip details>
> However, there is one "little" drawback.
>
> And a couple of months after that, the relativistic mass of that ball has built
> up to the point where it will begin to warp local gravity and destroy the
> integrity of the casing... and as soon as the vacuum seal is breached...
> (shudder), I don't even want to think about it.
Well, it would make a great Doomsday Device for a fantasy campaign...
<snip>
> Can anyone here think of ways to further Enchant this damn gizmo so that it
> never, ever, ever matters if it's left unattended periods of time?
<snip>
> (I mean, we did make the damned thing out of glass. It
> has to be transparent, or otherwise we can't create the stone ball of inside it
> and place it properly, or see the stone ball to hit it with a Destroy Earth at
> any time we feel an emergency shutdown is required.)
>
> But that leaves the stability of this device solely up to the vigilance of its
> operators. I would like a refinement of this device that could be safely left
> unattended for indefinite periods of time.
>
> Suggestions?
What about Force Dome?
IIRC (don't have the books on hand) it says it creates something
impenatrable to
physical stuff? So just make the cylinder out of a pernanent Force Dome
or a variant.
Chuckg
Mike Harvey wrote in message <35A6BC4B...@intel.com>...
>I was not a physics (or math) major, but I think I see a potential flaw
>here: the movement of the planet. Even of the planet is tidally locked,
>it is still rotating a star, and the star is rotating around the
>galactic core. Assuming the cylinder is sitting somewhere on the surface
>of a rotating planet in a universe similar to ours, won't the falling
>ball have angular momentum? It seems that the "top" of the cylinder is
>moving laterally at a higher velocity than the "bottom" of the cylinder,
>and the whole thing is very slowly "spinning."
Coriolis force? Minimal... the repulsion fields are more than strong enough to
handle the sideways vector. Either that, or just build the darn thing on the
equator.
Besides, Gate spells allow for changes of facing. If you enter the center of
gate A on a vector perpindicular to that gate's surface, you will leave the
center of Gate B on a vector perpindicular to Gate *B*'s surface -- even if Gate
A is facing west and Gate B is facing north.
So as long as the ball drops straight down into the bottom gate, it will appear
straight down out of the top gate's *current orientation*, no matter what said
orientation is.
>Also, the *slightest* bump to the cylinder could destabilize the thing,
>repulsors notwithstanding. So better keep apprentices and cats well
>away, and pray there's not an earthquake!
Remember, the only reason the repulsion fields are ST 2 is to save on initial
mana costs. Once the thing is spun up to a good working speed, I no longer have
mana limitations, and could easily enhance the enchantment of the repulsion
fields up to ST (fill in the blank) should I feel the need.
>Per your question, it sounds like what you need is a "speed limit" on
>the ball; you want it to easily attain a certain velocity but not exceed
>it.
You got it.
Waitaminut... brain-flash!
Instead of putting a hard vacuum on the inside, leave a little gas in it! Then
the ball will have a high but *finite* terminal velocity!
Exactly what that velocity will be can be fine-tuned by exactly what density of
air you leave in the cylinder.
Of course, you'd then have atmospheric friction and the problem of heating
effects... but with the mana available from the generator itself at working
speed, you could easily add some "follow-on" enchantments re: Delay spells
linked to Cold spells.
Either that, or make the cylinder's lids out of metal, not stone, and put the
cylinder where a cooling flow of water can run across the metal lids. I.e., use
the local stream as a heat sink.
>The ideal solution would be a "Neutralize Gravity" type spell
>permanently enchanted on the container, limited by a "Trigger"
>enchantment to automatically activate when the ball reaches a certain
>velocity. This would act sort of like a thermostat, turning the engine
>"on" when velocity drops too low, and turning it off when it reaches
>capacity.
There's Slow Fall -- reduces the velocity of a falling object to 3 feet/second.
There is nothing in the spell's description about an upper limit of velocity
that the object can be slowed from.
But I don't want 3 feet/second, because then I have to wait while the engine
restarts from scratch. Research a variant of slow fall that "only" slows it
down to 10 km/second or something like that?
>You could also add a fail-safe: cast Destroy Earth limited by a Delay so
>that it activates if the unit violates certain safety parameters.
Delay has a limited duration. But Link can be permanently enchanted into an
item.
>I'm not sure if spells exist to implement the "safety valve" and the
>"fail safe" , but if they do, you could create a much safer version: a
>one-ton ball of lead! It would provide equivalent power at much lower
>velocities due to the increased mass. It would cost a lot more to create
>this device, but you could get the energy from the miniature version
>that you described.
>Nothing can create energy, presumably not even magic. Thus this device
>must be sucking up enormous amounts of mana to power itself.
No. The Gate spells are permanent enchantments, and require no maintenance
cost.
The power is coming from the gravitational field of the planet. The two
"teleport gates" at the top and bottom of the cylinder have effectively turned
the cylinder into a tunnel of *infinite* length, but the entire "tunnel" is
within the 1-g field of a planetary surface. Ergo, the ball is falling downward
through an "infinitely long" tunnel at 1-g of acceleration, *without* any
outside mana needing to be supplied.
>Your calculations for a velocity of 5,927,040 meters/second provide some
>8,000,000 mana, which ought to be enough to cause a magical "brownout"
>over quite a large region. It would make a great plot for a villain: he
>creates this device and suddenly all the wizards in the kingdom have no
>mana for their spells. It could even cause magical items to temporarily
>become non-functional (though that would destroy the device). The PCs
>have to somehow defeat a villain who has access to unlimited mana and
>figure out a way to destroy the device, all without benefit of magic...
>One last thought. If you can tap a tiny stone ball, why can't you tap
>into the momentum of the Earth itself?
It could just as easily have been a thin stream of water running down the
central axis of the cylinder, which could theoretically be tapped
*non*-magically for power... waterwheel.
>Surely that has a LOT of energy available, more than you could ever use...
Size limitations. In order to use Draw Power/TL3, the "engine" has to be within
range of the caster. What's the range penalty for trying to cast a spell over
an entire planet? -10000 to skill or somesuch?
BTW -- here's another nightmare. An enemy casts Drain Mana on the hex that the
Infinite Mana Well is in, turning that hex into a no-mana zone.
The Gates stop working. The repulsors stop working.
But the ball is still there. And smacks right into the bottom of the cylinder
at *what* velocity? *Boom!*
Is there a spell I can Link to the device that can block a Drain Mana casting?
Alternatively, can I have the existence of the ball be dependent on the presence
of mana (like Create Object, but maintains itself indefinitely so long as
there's mana present at all), so that if the hex is Drained, the ball disappears
along with the Gates?
Keep those speculations coming, people! Especially the ones about safety
features! Thanks!
--
Chuckg
Chuckg
Zereth wrote in message <35A6C588...@kerch.decoy.com>...
>Chuckg wrote:
><snip details>
>> However, there is one "little" drawback.
>>
>> And a couple of months after that, the relativistic mass of that ball has
built
>> up to the point where it will begin to warp local gravity and destroy the
>> integrity of the casing... and as soon as the vacuum seal is breached...
>> (shudder), I don't even want to think about it.
>
When I was originally building this device a couple months ago in my head, it
*was* designed to be a bomb. Trying to "tame" it for a less destructive purpose
is something that I've only been playing around with since yesterday, but on the
original blueprints of yore that I have around here somewhere, this sucker
wasn't called the Infinite Mana Well -- it was the Niven Relativity Bomb.
And I did the math in my original post. For less than 1100 mana worth of
enchantment total -- approximately *half* the mana that it would take just to
Enchant an Accuracy +2/Puissance +2 magic sword...
.... you can build a device that can BLOW UP AN ENTIRE PLANET!
Does this qualify as "intrinsically cool?" (ROTLFMBO)
>What about Force Dome?
>IIRC (don't have the books on hand) it says it creates something impenatrable
to physical stuff?
>So just make the cylinder out of a pernanent Force Dome or a variant.
If a Force Dome can completely block a gravity fields (which would require a
SJgames rules call to find out), then yes, I can safely keep my
soon-to-be-nearly-infinite-in-mass *relativistic projectile* safely contained
within it and have no nasty effects spill out to warp the gravity field of the
local landscape..
But God help me if some magical terrorist with Drain Mana decides to cast it on
my gizmo -- as soon as the Force Dome is dispelled for even a nanosecond, I'm
doomed. And so is the entire planet that I'm living on.
BTW -- there are no rules in the book for enchanting a permanent Force Dome, and
while a DM could easilyu make some -- I really wanted to build this thing with
absolutely *no* "home-brew" rules being necessary, just to prove that it can be
done without having to even *begin* to bend even a single rule.
The original gizmo, as written up at the beginning of this thread, was entirely
GURPS Magic and GURPS Grimoire straight off the rack, no rules tweaks *at all*.
--
Chuckg
Xplo Eristotle
>
> Nothing can create energy, presumably not even magic. Thus this device
> must be sucking up enormous amounts of mana to power itself.
That's highly subjective. Magic, almost by definition, does not follow
physical laws, and that includes conservation of energy.
The pseudoscientific explanation I usually use for this sort of thing is
"tainted mana".. using the well as a mana source for enchantment wouldn't
work, because the enchantments "taint" the mana and prevent (or perhaps flaw)
the enchantment.
> Your
> calculations for a velocity of 5,927,040 meters/second provide some
> 8,000,000 mana, which ought to be enough to cause a magical "brownout"
> over quite a large region. It would make a great plot for a villain: he
> creates this device and suddenly all the wizards in the kingdom have no
> mana for their spells. It could even cause magical items to temporarily
> become non-functional (though that would destroy the device). The PCs
> have to somehow defeat a villain who has access to unlimited mana and
> figure out a way to destroy the device, all without benefit of magic...
Regardless, "safe" versions such as what was originally suggested are unlikely
to cause this effect while still providing "free" mana, and I wouldn't want
players trying it unless it were already integrated into the world.. too
unbalancing, too weird.
Otherwise, neat idea. Maybe you could give the villain Weird Magic...
> One last thought. If you can tap a tiny stone ball, why can't you tap
> into the momentum of the Earth itself? Surely that has a LOT of energy
> available, more than you could ever use...
That's when the GM gives the player the Evil Eye. If he doesn't, the player
should get REALLY worried.. magic is fickle, y'know...
Xplo "Endymion" Eristotle xp...@infomagic.com
# Grand Master - Lunar Inquisition #
Yog: http://www.infomagic.com/~xplo/index.html
Chuckg
Xplo Eristotle wrote in message <35A6D674...@infomagic.com>...
>Mike Harvey wrote:
>>
>> Nothing can create energy, presumably not even magic. Thus this device
>> must be sucking up enormous amounts of mana to power itself.
>
>That's highly subjective. Magic, almost by definition, does not follow
>physical laws, and that includes conservation of energy.
>
>The pseudoscientific explanation I usually use for this sort of thing is
>"tainted mana".. using the well as a mana source for enchantment wouldn't
>work, because the enchantments "taint" the mana and prevent (or perhaps flaw)
>the enchantment.
A) When the DM has to make up new rules from thin air to stop my idea from
working, that's when how I know it was a *really* neat idea. :-)
B) And the "DM shortstop" as outlined above is what you do if a player comes up
with the idea and the DM doesn't want it. (Personally, I'd let a player build
the damn thing, and then watch him panic when he reailzes that in a couple
months, his wonder toy is going to blow up the entire planet... and then see how
long it takes him to realize that a simple Destroy Earth spell can save his
booty. It would be funny.)
But why discount the possibility that a DM *would* want it? What if a DM comes
up with the idea?
What if a DM *wants* to try out the concept of a game world where some NPC
genius had suddenly realized how to produce effectively limitless mana using
only several standard enchantments and a little clever thinking?
What would be the social effects? What would be the industrial effects? What
would be the political efects?
But before you can get into any of that, you gotta work out the complete
engineering design for the damn gizmo in the first palce, and then make it proof
against *PC* sabotage.
(I have DM'ed players before who would quite cheerfully make the goddamn sun go
nova if they could figure out any possible way to do it, and not care that they
killed themselves in the process -- because if they make the DM have to create a
new game world, that means they've "won". Sheesh.)
<snip>
>Regardless, "safe" versions such as what was originally suggested are unlikely
>to cause this effect while still providing "free" mana, and I wouldn't want
>players trying it unless it were already integrated into the world.. too
>unbalancing, too weird.
First we do theory. Then we build and test the prototype. *Then* we start
worrying about social consequences...
Hey, worked for the Manhattan Project, works for us, right? (LOL)
>Otherwise, neat idea. Maybe you could give the villain Weird Magic...
The beauty of it is, nothing about the original design for the Infinite Mana
Well was Weird Magic. I built the thing entirely out of "off-the-shelf"
components, straight out of the books. Not even custom spell research.
>> One last thought. If you can tap a tiny stone ball, why can't you tap
>> into the momentum of the Earth itself? Surely that has a LOT of energy
>> available, more than you could ever use...
>
>That's when the GM gives the player the Evil Eye. If he doesn't, the player
>should get REALLY worried.. magic is fickle, y'know...
Nah... I'd just let the player roll complete with the range/area penalty for
trying to cast a spell on an entire 8000 mile-wide sphere, and then not be
surprised when he missed, given that said penalty is about -1000 or -10000 or
something like that.
When finding ways to say "No" to players, always go for the simplest solution.
The simple solutions are usually the ones least easily twisted to their corrupt
ends by really clever players who just don't wanna give up on their twisted
little idea.
Besides, you'd need at miniimum Physics/TL??? just to come up with the *concept*
of tapping the planet's rotational energy in the first place (tapping the
angular momentum of the planetary rotation is *not* a TL3 concept!) -- which
means that if that some player's fantasy wizard ever wanted to do it, I would
just note the absence of any such high-TL skills on his character sheet and
refuse him outright.
It's the same principle behind saying "Ahem, convince me that your character
could *possibly* think of that" that a DM uses when some low-TL fighter
"coincidentally" wants to mix sodium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal together
"just to see what would happen.". Yeah, right.
--
Chuckg
"It's going to be hard to test my theory without destroying the universe... but
what the hell!? It's a really neat theory!" -- GURPS _Illuminati_, p. 78
Leszek Karlik, aka Mike
foul capitalist propaganda by writing:
>Suggestions?
Sure. Spool it up to, say, 0.1 c, then TURN it 90 degrees sideways.
Voila.
The stone ball just stopped accelerating. However, since there's no air inside,
and since the ball is being supported by the Repel spell, it's just constantly
wheezing inside. When you Draw Power, it'll slow a bit, but after a month (or
so) of use, you can set it to "Accelerate" for a day or two.
Oh, and it'll also make a killer weapon. Just Teleport the ball going at, say,
0.1 c directly OVER the enemy army approaching your wizard tower.
Instant micronuke! And no radiation... hehehe.
With a few (say, ten) Infinite Mana Wells you have ten tacnuke strikes at your
hand. Cute, neh?
Leslie
--
Leszek Karlik, aka Mike - tr...@friko.onet.pl; www.wlkp.top.pl/~bear/mike
Star Wars junkie; ICQ UIN 6947998; WTF TKD; FIAWOL; IMAO; SNAFU; TANJ
GL/O d- s+: a20 C+++ L++ P E--- W-(++) N+++ K? w(---) O+ M- PS+(+++)
PE Y+ PGP- !t--- 5+(-) X- R*+++>$ tv-- b++++ D+ G-- e h--*! !r-- !y-*
JefWilson
writes:
>
>Specifically, after about a month or so, that goddamn 1 gram stone ball is
>moving at relativistic velocities, which means that it won't be just one gram
>of
>mass no more. I really hope you've been beefing up the ST of the Repel
>enchantments on the inner surface of the cylinder during the early weeks
>using
>all of that boundless mana you had available to tap.
>
>And a couple of months after that, the relativistic mass of that ball has
>built
>up to the point where it will begin to warp local gravity and destroy the
>integrity of the casing... and as soon as the vacuum seal is breached...
>(shudder), I don't even want to think about it.
This is where things start to get really interesting. While it's not stated in
the book, I would argue that a gate has a definite mass limitation that it can
handle. Your Gate spell is based on Teleport, after all, and Teleport
definitely has a mass limitation. I would say that long before you need to
worry about gravity problems, the mass of your pebble has progressed beyond the
point your gate can handle. (With the resulting explosion.)
However, regarding slowing the pebble down, you could combine as many Air
Golems and Links as you need to slow the thing down once it reaches the speed
you want.
(Sigh, now I need to figure out how come no one has built this damn thing in my
campaign world.)
Jeff Wilson
GURPS Page: http://members.aol.com/JefWilson/rpg/
jrne...@my-dejanews.com
"Chuckg" <cgla...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> But that leaves the stability of this device solely up to the vigilance of its
> operators. I would like a refinement of this device that could be safely left
> unattended for indefinite periods of time.
>
> Suggestions?
>
> --
> Chuckg
>
Fantastic!!! I love it!! I have a few ideas to keep it from becoming a
runaway time-bomb. First decide how much energy you want it to have, now I
would suggest a fairly low (i.e. non-relativistic) speed for the particle.
As long as it is non-relativistic you can simply assume the force needed to
slow it down is simply it's mass * 9.8 m/s^2. On the bottom lid cast a repel
spell on the inside who's strength equals this force. You now have stopped
the particle's accelleration. The problem though is that as you draw power
from the object it will continue to slow down, and never regin its lost
power. Have no fear!! Put a password spell on it that turns off the repel
spell on the base of the structure. Voila! You now can turn the repel off
to charge up the beast! "But when should you turn the base repel on or off"
you ask? Simple, cast a continual light on a knob on the top of the
container. Make it, say, red. Then put a delay on the sucker so that it only
activates if the particle is moving slower than "X" and the base repel is
off. Put another continual light spell on another knob on top. Make this
one, say, green. Put a delay on this one that turns on only if the particle's
speed is less than "Y" and the repel spell is on. Now as time goes by you
will need to re-cast the continual lights and delay spells (Heck you could
cast another continual light, say, yellow, and delay it so it only goes off
if one of the other delay spells is not active anymore).
Now you can simply use it and forget it. When the power gets below a
certain level the green light will come on, and you can say the password.
Let the thing charge up for a day or 12. When the particle gets fast enough
the red light will come on, and you can turn the password off. This will
cause a resistance of exactly the gravity working on it to come into being,
and it will maintain its velocity, and power, forever.
Just a thought. <evil grin>
Tali
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
Tomansky
<brilliantly twisted design> . . . or is that twistedly brilliant
. . .
I can't seem to get this thing out of my mind. I think that the
container could be somewhat less thorough. Once that sucker gets up
to speed, the container's DR isn't going to matter in a "mishap".
If the gates were only a meter apart, would it work the same, just
take slightly longer?
The physics and chemistry needed to create/understand this design
doesn't seem to be tech level-3, so a GM could use that as an excuse
. . .
David Levi
Tomansky
> (Sigh, now I need to figure out how come no one has built this damn thing in my
> campaign world.)
>
> Jeff Wilson
> GURPS Page: http://members.aol.com/JefWilson/rpg/
I'm just hoping no one in my corner of the meta-verse reads this
... I am having fits as it is with the "Enlarge" spell. Amazing
what that can do.
David Levi
Ray Cochener
> So basically, after the first day or so of letting this sucker spool up, it's
> pointless to actually crunch #'s for how much kinetic energy (and therefore how
> many Fatigue are available to tap with Draw Power/TL3) is actually there. Just
> assume that there's "way more energy than you and every other mage and town
> could tap simultaneously" and act accordingly.
>
> Voila. The (effectively) Infinite Mana Well.
>
> However, there is one "little" drawback.
>
> Specifically, after about a month or so, that goddamn 1 gram stone ball is
> moving at relativistic velocities, which means that it won't be just one gram of
> mass no more. I really hope you've been beefing up the ST of the Repel
> enchantments on the inner surface of the cylinder during the early weeks using
> all of that boundless mana you had available to tap.
>
> And a couple of months after that, the relativistic mass of that ball has built
> up to the point where it will begin to warp local gravity and destroy the
> integrity of the casing... and as soon as the vacuum seal is breached...
> (shudder), I don't even want to think about it.
>
there is one other little flaw you haven't thought about. Magical
assasin X hires a thief to steal the super generator, or mabe builds one
himself- once the little stone ball builds up enough speed, he plants a
new gate spell (temporary) on top of the bottom gate, changing the
destination of the little stone ball to the middle of a rival mage's
labratory.
All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
Thomas Weigel
Chuckg wrote in message <35a6a...@news1.starnetinc.com>...
[...snip...]
>
>Ladies and gentlemen... I give you the Well of Infinite Mana.
>
>
>Suggestions?
>
>Chuckg
Chuckg wrote an article about a Well of Infinite Mana (or
thereabouts). Although I have not quoted him (this text was
long enough as it is), this article is in direct response to
and was directly inspired by his original article.
This article runs a bit long. Roughly, it consists of a
few math corrections for Chuckg's article; a discussion
of the possible approaches to building it; a revised
design of the casing; a slight revision of the placement
and ignition; discussion of some key protection issues;
and finally a few thoughts on its impact on the world at
large.
Also, some notes on the final product (so that you don't
have to read the whole article to find out):
Building the first one took 7.5 months; it will take around
7-8 days to build each one thereafter. After two hours of
warm-up, the Well has built up its maximum charge of 20,000
Fatigue. A mage can suck it dry faster than it can build up
its energy, BUT this will take several minutes at the mage's
maximum Draw Power rate.
Starting dry, it generates 2.777_ F per second; thus, a
desparate mage can at least get SOMETHING from it.
It takes up one hex, plus a few inches at the edges.
All BASIC security measures are included in its redundant
safety construction. Additional protection against evil
mages and greedy dragons are the responsibility of the
institution building or purchasing one.
Cost to research and build the first one is $150,000 and
225 days. Each one thereafter takes a week and costs what
you pay the mages. All mages involved must know around 34
spells... and the more spells the better. Five mages with skills
in the useful spells at around 21+ is ideal.
CORRECTIONS:
1 kJ is equal to 1 kg moving at 10 m/sec. Measurement of energy in
joules is a function of *momentum* NOT *kinetic energy*.
1 kWh = 3,600,000 J = 10 F
1 F = 360,000 J
1 MW/sec = 2.7 F/sec
According to "Conduct Power", p. 101 of Grimoire, the maximum
safe energy a mage can conduct is equal to
HT * Magery * Magery * 1/4
That "1/4" at the end is important, because it quarters the
original estimates. Thus, a HT 10 mage can safely conduct
2.5 MW at Magery 1, 10 MW at Magery 2 and 22.5 MW at Magery 3.
In other words, 6 Fatigue, 27 Fatigue, and 62 Fatigue
respectively.
WHAT CAN WE DO WITH IT?:
We want at least 250 F available each second. That will feed five
HT 10 mages with Magery 3 quite nicely, so will be adequate for all
reasonable purposes. That translates into 90,000 kJ per second
of momentum. Ick.
Assuming the item inside will be accellerating at 1 Gravity, that
means an item weighing 90,000 kg, or 90 metric tons.
An alternative:
The alternative is to treat this as a flywheel assembly, which we
slowly build up so we can tap it all at once. Assuming that we
only want a 10 kg item inside the shaft, it will need to be
travelling at 90,000 m/sec. Fortunately, that is an incredibly
small percentage of the speed of light, and can be achieved within
the space of 2.5 hours.
Another way to look at it is that the device automatically generates
and stores 100 F per hour with a 10 kg device. Or that it generates
1 F every 36 seconds.
Get a 100 kg object inside, and it generates 1 F every 3.6 seconds, or
1000 F per hour. A 100 kg lead ball will take up 8,800 cubic centimeters.
As a sphere, it would be 25.6 cm in diameter (roughly 10").
At this point, we cackle with glee and (slightly more than) double its
diameter to 55.2 cm. That makes it a 1000 kg ball of lead that measures
about 22 inches across, nicely fitting within our proposed 1-hex wide
mana well.
Our ton of lead will generate an easy 2.777_ F every second, or 10,000
per hour. This ball of lead WILL NOT keep up with the power requirements
of any reasonable mage, if he *keeps sucking power* for an extended
period of time, but with a single hour of build-up, even the most
obscenely powerful mage will have problems sucking that much power
quickly. To wit...
After one hour, there is 10,000 F stored in the Well. A Magery 3, HT 20
mage can safely tap 124 F per second. It will take even this supermage
over a minute to completely tap the damned thing. And he'll be able to
cast 123 F spells (Draw Power has a 1 F/sec requirement itself) every
second for the entire 81.5 seconds.
Conversely, a Magery 2, HT 10 mage will take around 3.5 minutes to tap it.
=====
A quick revision, with these things in mind.
The following revision is also built with a number of safety features, as
I do not wish to have a one ton ball of lead land in my tower moving at
somewhere around 36,000 m/sec. This would be a Bad Thing(tm) IMHO.
THE CASING:
I'm more than willing to spend a little extra energy on the casing,
given the importance it will have throughout the process. My guild has
allocated enough resources (in mages, powerstones, and time) for me to
use permanent Force Walls as the outer surfaces. Given a 1 m diameter and
2 m height, the surface area of the cylinder will be 7.85 square meters.
Assuming a "wall" stretching across a hex is 1 m wide and 4 m high, this
will require "two hexes" of Force Wall.
This costs 400 Fatigue. With 5 mages, this will take 80 days, or just
over two months. While this may seem like "too long", my personal
safety knows no bounds.
I selected Force Wall because of its ability to completely and utterly
absorb ANY amount of kinetic energy. If the ball hits the side of the
cylinder, there's no real problem (although we will fix that too).
We then create the Gate spell. The Gate will open from the bottom to
the top (distance of 2 m) and will cost 300 F. With our five mages,
that becomes 60 days.
We then place the entire thing into a "jewel casing" of steel bands
set on pillars.
| There is a reason for this. We now enchant the steel
/ \ bands with Missile Shield for 400 F. Since Force Wall
|/ \| is effectively "superthin" the steel ball will always
|\ /| miss it. This is an "absolute" spell, and affects ALL
| \|/ | missiles, even supersonic ones.
|\ | /|
| \|/ | This adds another 80 days, but we're almost done
\ | / now.
\|/
PLACING THE BALL:
Jenkins (one of the mages) casts Destroy Air in the tube. He does
NOT destroy all of the air. He destroys most of it. We decide we
want a maximum speed of 72,000 m/sec (two hours of accelleration)
so as to not risk our planet. We calculate how much air we need
by some esoteric engineer/mage method (anyone want to help on
this???). This costs 2 F and takes 1 second.
We then create our ball of lead by whatever means desired. Create
Earth, Shape Earth, and Earth to Stone seems a favorite, but having
it cast at the local shop isn't too shabby either.
Regardless, we will now Teleport Other this massive object one
meter, costing us 63 F and 10 seconds (Ceremonial group casting).
We then take a couple of hours off to party.
When we get back, we Measure the speed of the ball a few times to
make certain of our air estimates and adjust as necessary. This
will cost a few F here and there, and take the rest of the day.
We are now at 221 days. We take the next day off, too, to bring
it to 222 days... we're mages, we're weird.
WE COME BACK:
When we come back, the lead ball has developed a nasty case of
energy buildup. Specifically, 20,000 Fatigue, just itching to
be used. So we're going to use it for the rest of the setup.
SECURITY MEASURES:
Oh yes, protection. We need this, yes yes yes?
First, we examine potential problems.
Enemy Mages:
There's really nothing we can do about this. Given a bit of
time and a strong desire to destroy the Well, a fanatical mage
COULD penetrate virtually any magical defenses we set up,
mainly by means of Steal Spell, Analyze Magic, and similar
things. A quick Teleport Other to bring the ball out of its
cage would do NASTY things. Drain Mana would have a similar
effect.
However, for any enemy mage to penetrate the usual defenses
of our tower AND survive casting enough spells in succession
to do the dirty deed (Drain Mana takes an hour), he would have
to be so skilled that we could not handle him anyway.
So we decide that the basic protections, plus the usual
guarding of our tower, is sufficient for any enemy mage we
can conceive of.
Heat Buildup:
Terminal velocity does not produce a terrible lot of heat,
and the time span it would occur over woudl allow us to
cast occasional Cool spells. This is not really a serious
problem.
However, to quiet the grumblings of those who fear such a
powerful generator sitting unattended for months...
We Quick&Dirty cast Resist Fire on the ball of lead. This
costs 800 F, so it takes us 1.6 hours (8 mage-hours divided
by five mages).
We then Q&D cast Power at level 4. This costs 4,000 F, so
it takes us 8 hours. We retire for the night.
The next day, we Q&D increase Power to level 5. This also
costs 4,000 F (and 8 hours), so we retire for the night
again.
The next day, we grit our teeth and push Power to level
6. This costs 8,000 F and takes 16 hours. We congratulate
ourselves - the lead is now effectively immune to heat of
all sorts, up to and including a star's nuclear furnace.
Then we pass out.
Total time was three days. Heh. I love this Mana Well
already.
Some General Measures:
We spend a few hours to put Conceal Magic at level 5 on
every piece of the item (500 F each time).
We spend an hour to put Scrywall on the chamber holding
the Mana Well (300 F).
We may decide to put a Pentagram in place, for something
like 60 F or so.
We may enchant a permanent Sense Danger and provide a
Linked Slow Fall to throw the lead out of our atmosphere,
but this is a bit extreme. Similarly, we could set some
nasty permanent traps if we wanted... Permanent
Forgetfulness, for example.
NOW FOR THE FUN PART:
Chuckg the Magnificent approaches a couple of his mage buddies
with an idea for a perpetual essence generator, which he
has named The Well of Infinite Mana. Although skeptical at
first, the various mages look over his sketches, diagrams,
equations and spell lists and begin nodding approvingly.
Soon, with their assistance, the small coterie has developed
a working plan. They approach the guildmaster for permission
(and funding) for the project. They do not show him the
specifics, waving their hands and saying "It'll work!".
The guildmaster knows these guys, and is fairly certain that
they'll at least create a good spin-off magickology, so he
asks them what they need.
So we make a shopping list:
Required Spells To Know (includes prerequisites): 34 spells
Force Wall
Force Dome
Apportation
Weather Dome
2 spells from Water and Earth (4 spells total)
Create Gate
Teleport
Hawk Flight
Flight
Levitation
Control Gate
Seek Gate
Seek Magic
Detect Magic
Missile Shield
Destroy Air
Create Air
Seek Air | Purify Air
Measure
Resist Fire
Extinguish Fire
Ignite Fire
Cold
Heat
Shape Fire
Create Fire
Power
Enchant
Recover Strength
Lend Strength
1 spell from one College not represented above
(Mind Control, Animal, Body Control, etc.)
Number of Mages: 5
at $25/day, this costs $30,000...
so we ask for $100,000 to represent the rarity of
all five of us knowing 34 spells and in return for
the Infinite Return On Investment they'll be
getting :) :) :)
Equipment:
big steel casing ($10,000, we'll say)
big lead ball ($10,000, we'll say)
munchies for one year ($10,000 we'll say)
Other:
guards (say, 20 guards for one year, $20,000)
The guildmaster ends up shelling out $150,000 to us, and
you can probably expect a bit of overbudgetting, so say
$250,000. Yipes, that's a lot of money... but soon to
be worth it.
Half a year later, the Infinite Well of Mana is completed.
We then build a second one, using magic this time to make
the lead ball and steel frame. It takes us about a week.
We HIDE the second one.
Then we tell the guildmaster we're finished.
We still don't tell him how we did it...
Alternately:
The secret gets out. Within two or three years, every
mage guild worth their britches will have one or two of these
things. Because these things are not very portable, and are
the social equivalent of hauling a large missile silo around,
the Wells will probably not impact travelling mages THAT
much...
But mage guilds will become damn near invincible. Towns may
spring up around the mage guild for protection, and indeed even
develop into fortress cities, providing mundane as well as
magical protection.
Indeed, mages may become the new Elite Warrior Nobility class...
===
a little fish in a big pond (thomas weigel)
<there is no .sig here... it is a figment of your illuminati>
idcr...@cmq.com
Chuckg wrote:
> Of course, you'd then have atmospheric friction and the problem of heating
> effects... but with the mana available from the generator itself at working
> speed, you could easily add some "follow-on" enchantments re: Delay spells
> linked to Cold spells.
There may be a simpler solution than that... What is the exact text of the Draw
Power spell? Could it be used to convert the heat, instead of the ball's momentum?
-IdentityCrisis
Ray Cochener
Let's consider- in order for this device to be of use, one must have a)
the ability to draw power, b) the ability to build it. The first of
these becomes important in that draw power is a TL based spell, and the
GM could easilly rule that this device was a weird technology requiring
its own spell to draw from- a minor setback in the grand scheme of
things. It should be noted that the spell description states that low
tech versions allow the mage to tap *natural* powerhouses, and this is
decidedly unnatural...
The second issue then comes into play. spells required are create
earth, earth to stone, shape earth, destroy air, apportation, and repel.
Including prerequisits this is 18 spells(4 earth, 3 air, 3 movement,
plus seven spells from other colleges for enchant) which is a minimum of
9 years of concentrated study for the mage and assistants, plus any
study needed to improve the skills to an enchantable level. On top of
this someone has to think of the idea, which also requires an advanced
knowledge of gravity typical of TL:4 (Galileo's eexpiriments)
Alistair J. R. Young
Tomansky <toma...@sprintmail.com> (== tomansky)
praised Shub-Internet thus:
> I'm just hoping no one in my corner of the meta-verse reads this
> ... I am having fits as it is with the "Enlarge" spell. Amazing
> what that can do.
Don't cast it on any lumps of pitchblende, for a start... :)
> David Levi
Alistair "Yes, he tried. No, I didn't." Y
--
Computational Thaumaturge -- Sysimperator, dominus retis deusque machinarum.
e-mail: avata...@arkane.demon.co.uk WWW: http://www.arkane.demon.co.uk/
"What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of
inelegance." -- Jane Austen
Bob Schroeck
>> operators. I would like a refinement of this device that could be safely left
>> unattended for indefinite periods of time.
>> Suggestions?
>IIRC (don't have the books on hand) it says it creates something
>impenatrable to
>physical stuff? So just make the cylinder out of a pernanent Force Dome
>or a variant.
I think what you mean is an Utter Dome.
And according to official SJG sources, an utter dome (and maybe a force
dome, too, I don't remember) works by turning the forces it intercepts
into mana and dumping them back into the local "magic field".
Can you just imagine what would occur if an utter dome were used in this
manner? Millions points of mana fed directly into a single hex. I have a
feeling this would push that hex and its neighbors past "High Mana",
through "Wild Mana", and out the other side into something I'd rather not
think about...
-- Bob
--
===============================================================================
Robert M. Schroeck || "When in trouble or in doubt,
r...@cnj.digex.net || Run in circles, scream and shout."
http://www.cnj.digex.net/~rms || I have no mouse and I must scream.
Chuckg
Tomansky wrote in message <35A70704...@sprintmail.com>...
>Chuckg wrote:
>
><brilliantly twisted design> . . . or is that twistedly brilliant
>. . .
>
>I can't seem to get this thing out of my mind. I think that the
>container could be somewhat less thorough. Once that sucker gets up
>to speed, the container's DR isn't going to matter in a "mishap".
True, but there is also breakage from the outside to worry about. I mean, what
happens if somebody throws a brick at it?
>If the gates were only a meter apart, would it work the same, just
>take slightly longer?
It wouldn't matter if the gates were only a centimeter apart. If the gates are
flush with the top and bottom of a cylinder, then that cylinder is of
(effectively) *infinite* length no matter what it's exterior physical dimensions
actually are.
>The physics and chemistry needed to create/understand this design
>doesn't seem to be tech level-3, so a GM could use that as an excuse
Actually, no.
It's a TL0 concept to understand a rock falling down a well. It's well within
TL3 geometry to figure out that if you put a bottom gate and a top gate in a
vertical mount, a rock falling down a well will keep falling forever... the
concept of the Moebius strip is not TL-dependent (a Stone Age native playing
around with a flat strip of leather could discover it at TL0 if Stone Age
natives ever played around with anything not related to basic subsistence
survival, if you know what I mean)...
... and my concept of the "endless cylinder" is roughly similar to the concept
of the Moebius strip. As a matter of fact, it's even more intuitively simple to
understand than a Moebius strip.
What *is* outside TL3 thought is the understanding of the dangers inherent in
the relativistic effects of the rock after a couple months... oh my God...
At TL3, the average Mage's Guild would know just enough to build it -- but NOT
know enough to realize the need for any safety measures! They'd just build it
without any velocity cap whatsoever and wind it up, entirely unheeding of the
danger!
Ooooooooh shit!
Well, at least they would have a discrete span of time to notice local gravity
warping and various other ominous effects before final integrity failure
occurred... and you can shut this thing off *immediately* at *any* time with
either a Slow Fall or Destroy Earth spell on the little 1-gram rock, so the
world shouldn't be blown up even if it was spun up to speed by ignorant TL3
wizards. But there would be a close call.
But waitaiminut... after the first close call, the wizards would still be alive,
and then they'd have *empirical* knowledge of the dangers inherent in letting
the velocity build up too high, so they wouldn't need TL7 relativity theory at
that point to understand that the Mark *Two* version had better have a safety
measure built into it to cap the velocity at a given set speed...
Hey, some of the first steam engines blew up too. But enough of the
experimenters survived, and eventually they built one that didn't!.
--
Chuckg
Chuckg
Thomas Weigel wrote in message <6o74id$2e5$1...@birch.prod.itd.earthlink.net>...
>
>Chuckg wrote in message <35a6a...@news1.starnetinc.com>...
>[...snip...]
>>
>>Ladies and gentlemen... I give you the Well of Infinite Mana.
>>
>[...snip...]
>>
>
>>Suggestions?
>>
>>Chuckg
>
>
>Chuckg wrote an article about a Well of Infinite Mana (or
>thereabouts). Although I have not quoted him (this text was
>long enough as it is), this article is in direct response to
>and was directly inspired by his original article.
>
>This article runs a bit long. Roughly, it consists of a
>few math corrections for Chuckg's article; a discussion
>of the possible approaches to building it; a revised
>design of the casing; a slight revision of the placement
>and ignition; discussion of some key protection issues;
>and finally a few thoughts on its impact on the world at
>large.
<snip>
As Helmuth might have (but never did) say, "This report was both complete and
conclusive."
I thank you.
--
Chuckg
cgla...@hotmail.com
Alistair J. R. Young <avatar...@arkane.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Jul 1998 02:12:07 -0400, in message
<35A70237...@sprintmail.com>,
> Tomansky <toma...@sprintmail.com> (== tomansky)
> praised Shub-Internet thus:
>
> > I'm just hoping no one in my corner of the meta-verse reads this
> > ... I am having fits as it is with the "Enlarge" spell. Amazing
> > what that can do.
>
> Don't cast it on any lumps of pitchblende, for a start... :)
No, pitchblende is fine... it's self-moderated. It's way too impure to ever
achieve criticality, you need a purer fissionable material to do that.
However, if you push an Earth to Stone spell at x2 cost, it's Earth To Metal.
Check your Grimoire.
They suggest that the DM forbid use of this spell to produce gold, silver,
etc. But did they remember to forbid U-235?
Suddenly turning a 1-yd by 2-yd column of Earth into pure U-235... that's
thousands of times above the critical mass for pure U-235.
KABOOM.
And the horrible thing is -- Earth to Stone is one of the spells any
apprentice has in his Grimoire, it's not one of the Magery+ required M/VH
spells.
Yes, mages at TL3 don't know what U-235 is... but why hasn't the Merlin
timeline from Time Travel Adventures or any other TL7 technomagic civilization
not suffered magically-induced nuclear terrorism?
--
Chuckg
Chuckg
Given that the density of lead is 11.34 grams/cubic centimeter, that means that
a 90 metric ton ball of lead will take up only 7.937 cubic meters... which means
that in the form of a sphere, the diameter of the sphere would only be
approximately 2.5 meters.
That's not all *that* big.
And you can make all the lead you need simply by using Earth to Stone at double
cost to act as an Earth To Metal spell, as detailed at the end of GURPS
Grimoire. Furthermore, one hex for purposes of "Earth to.." spells is defined
as a 1-yard by 2-yard cylinder, which is just about big enough.
<snip>
Resist Fire has a permanent enchantment variant? None is listed for Resist
Fire... only for Fireproof, which is not what we want.
Besides, using the 90-ton ball, it can spool up to full speed in one second, so
we don't need the terminal velocity cap... just a Linked Slow Fall to stop the
ball every other second.
And with the 90-ton ball variant, it still fits in the average 20x20 room, even
though it can't fit in the closet anymore.
And it's sooo much safer, seeing as how a 90-ton object hitting the floor at 20
m/sec (100% over maximum rated design speed of 10m/sec) doesn't cause anything
other than a nasty hole in the floor, as opposed to the effects of a .99c
man-made meteor strike.
So go ahead, cast Drain Mana. All you did was ruin the rug.
--
Chuckg
Leszek Karlik, aka Mike
disseminated foul capitalist propaganda by writing:
[...]
>The secret gets out. Within two or three years, every
>mage guild worth their britches will have one or two of these
>things. Because these things are not very portable, and are
>the social equivalent of hauling a large missile silo around,
>the Wells will probably not impact travelling mages THAT
>much...
I would disagree with Wells being non-portable, though. Just make small Wells
(say, a 20 cm long tube with 1g lead ball inside and very strong Repel spells to
make it safe to carry the tube around. The mages could just keep a few closets
full of these things, and when a mage would have to venture out of the tower,
he'd grab one or two, just to have a few thousand of spare Fatigue points
available...)
>But mage guilds will become damn near invincible. Towns may
>spring up around the mage guild for protection, and indeed even
>develop into fortress cities, providing mundane as well as
>magical protection.
>
>Indeed, mages may become the new Elite Warrior Nobility class...
Looks like an unusual fantasy world background. Say, GURPS: Manapunk. ;))
So, anybody wants to write this up for a Pyramid article?
Ray Cochener
>
> >> But that leaves the stability of this device solely up to the vigilance of its
> >> operators. I would like a refinement of this device that could be safely left
> >> unattended for indefinite periods of time.
> >> Suggestions?
> >IIRC (don't have the books on hand) it says it creates something
> >impenatrable to
> >physical stuff? So just make the cylinder out of a pernanent Force Dome
> >or a variant.
>
> I think what you mean is an Utter Dome.
>
> And according to official SJG sources, an utter dome (and maybe a force
> dome, too, I don't remember) works by turning the forces it intercepts
> into mana and dumping them back into the local "magic field".
>
> Can you just imagine what would occur if an utter dome were used in this
> manner? Millions points of mana fed directly into a single hex. I have a
> feeling this would push that hex and its neighbors past "High Mana",
> through "Wild Mana", and out the other side into something I'd rather not
> think about...
>
Ray Cochener
> >The physics and chemistry needed to create/understand this design
> >doesn't seem to be tech level-3, so a GM could use that as an excuse
>
> Actually, no.
>
> It's a TL0 concept to understand a rock falling down a well. It's well within
> TL3 geometry to figure out that if you put a bottom gate and a top gate in a
> vertical mount, a rock falling down a well will keep falling forever... the
> concept of the Moebius strip is not TL-dependent (a Stone Age native playing
> around with a flat strip of leather could discover it at TL0 if Stone Age
> natives ever played around with anything not related to basic subsistence
> survival, if you know what I mean)...
>
The idea of a rock falling down a well may be a TL:0 concept, but the
fact that they continually excellerate in a vacue as compared to having
a set "falling speed" is at least TL:4, as is the idea that falling
speed is not dependant upon weight. (heck, the whole idea of a vacume is
TL:4, but in a world with the destroy air spell I think we could let
that pass)
> ... and my concept of the "endless cylinder" is roughly similar to the concept
> of the Moebius strip. As a matter of fact, it's even more intuitively simple to
> understand than a Moebius strip.
>
> What *is* outside TL3 thought is the understanding of the dangers inherent in
> the relativistic effects of the rock after a couple months... oh my God...
>
> At TL3, the average Mage's Guild would know just enough to build it -- but NOT
> know enough to realize the need for any safety measures! They'd just build it
> without any velocity cap whatsoever and wind it up, entirely unheeding of the
> danger!
>
Now assume that a mage from that guild outlined the basics of the
project shortly before the guild went kablooey and you have a perfectly
good explination as to why nobody in your world builds them!
> Ooooooooh shit!
>
> Well, at least they would have a discrete span of time to notice local gravity
> warping and various other ominous effects before final integrity failure
> occurred... and you can shut this thing off *immediately* at *any* time with
> either a Slow Fall or Destroy Earth spell on the little 1-gram rock, so the
> world shouldn't be blown up even if it was spun up to speed by ignorant TL3
> wizards. But there would be a close call.
>
Assuming they figured out that there was a problem. Also have you
figured out the penalties for targeting a rock moving at relativistic
speeds?
Fhaolan
wrote:
>Ooooooooh shit!
>
>Well, at least they would have a discrete span of time to notice local gravity
>warping and various other ominous effects before final integrity failure
>occurred... and you can shut this thing off *immediately* at *any* time with
>either a Slow Fall or Destroy Earth spell on the little 1-gram rock, so the
>world shouldn't be blown up even if it was spun up to speed by ignorant TL3
>wizards. But there would be a close call.
>
>But waitaiminut... after the first close call, the wizards would still be alive,
>and then they'd have *empirical* knowledge of the dangers inherent in letting
>the velocity build up too high, so they wouldn't need TL7 relativity theory at
>that point to understand that the Mark *Two* version had better have a safety
>measure built into it to cap the velocity at a given set speed...
>
>Hey, some of the first steam engines blew up too. But enough of the
>experimenters survived, and eventually they built one that didn't!.
Yup. Basically, you have to survive the first attempt in order to
improve the technology.
The only problem with the survival issue is: How long can it go
unmonitored before it will go *boom*? And will the mages who created
this thing think of checking on it before that time elapses?
And when the gravity effects begin to show themselves, would the mages
make the connection between their new toy and the strange things going
on, in time to do something about it? It's not like they're expecting
these effects. They *could* think it was some form of attack from a
rival group of mages.
Next, I was wondering as I don't have the spell description for this
'Draw Power' thing handy, when it draws power, does the thing it's
drawing power from loose kinetic energy in proportion? In other words
will the ball slow down when a huge amount of mana is pulled from it?
Not an overly useful thing to know, but a interesting 'special
effect'.
-Fhaolan
Xplo Eristotle
Ultra-high mana?
UH Mana was something I invented for one of my game worlds. It can only be
created artificially, and it's pretty much unusable for magical purposes,
because casting spells with it do terrible things to the caster and the area
(in that order). Think of making toast with a rocket booster, or drinking from
a firehose stuck to your mouth and turned on full force.
The only time it actually appeared was in one adventure where a mage was
creating it in order to find and study a "lost" variety of mana which allowed
the casting of certain spells (gates, resurrection, wishes, stuff like that).
The campaign kinda died before it got going, though.
Tomansky
> there is one other little flaw you haven't thought about. Magical
> assasin X hires a thief to steal the super generator, or mabe builds one
> himself- once the little stone ball builds up enough speed, he plants a
> new gate spell (temporary) on top of the bottom gate, changing the
> destination of the little stone ball to the middle of a rival mage's
> labratory.
> All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
Suddenly we have a serious market for industrial espionage.
David Levi
Chuckg
>[...snip...]
>>
>>Ladies and gentlemen... I give you the Well of Infinite Mana.
>>
>[...snip...]
>>Suggestions?
>>
>>Chuckg
I just had another inspiration... an application of the Well of Infinite Mana
usable in a more modern technomagic setting. Forget about unlimited mana
changing the world, how's about unlimited electrical power changing the world?
Use a magnetized iron ball.
Wrap copper coils around the outside of the cylinder.
Electrical power generation... and the "regulator" on the speed of the ball in
this instance is, of course, the slowing down of the ball produced by the
constant electrical load your power grid is tapping off of the generator coils!
(And for the low-usage periods at night, use a dummy load or hand off to another
grid. Somebody on another power grid elsewhere in the modern TL7 techno-magic
world has got to be having a brownout.)
Since this is a *modern* power plant, there will of course be a full shift of
technicians on duty 24-and-7.
Plus the Linked Sense Danger and Slow Fall spells.
What are the effects on the world of effectively infinite electrical power
generation, with no fuel required and no poisonous emissions?
--
Chuckg
Tomansky
> True, but there is also breakage from the outside to worry about. I mean, what
> happens if somebody throws a brick at it?
If I weren't on the planet, it would be funny. Seriously, I was
thinking of using the device to improve itself after construction,
so as to minimize costs. I was also wondering about portability,
but after sleeping on it, this is an amazingly bad idea.
> >If the gates were only a meter apart, would it work the same, just
> >take slightly longer?
>
> It wouldn't matter if the gates were only a centimeter apart. If the gates are
> flush with the top and bottom of a cylinder, then that cylinder is of
> (effectively) *infinite* length no matter what it's exterior physical dimensions
> actually are.
This could make it smaller and maybe *hide-able*.
> >The physics and chemistry needed to create/understand this design
> >doesn't seem to be tech level-3, so a GM could use that as an excuse
>
> Actually, no.
>
> It's a TL0 concept to understand a rock falling down a well. It's well within
> TL3 geometry to figure out that if you put a bottom gate and a top gate in a
> vertical mount, a rock falling down a well will keep falling forever... the
> concept of the Moebius strip is not TL-dependent (a Stone Age native playing
> around with a flat strip of leather could discover it at TL0 if Stone Age
> natives ever played around with anything not related to basic subsistence
> survival, if you know what I mean)...
I guess I'm going to need a better excuse.
David Levi
Martin Leslie Leuschen
: > So basically, after the first day or so of letting this sucker spool up, it's
: > pointless to actually crunch #'s for how much kinetic energy (and therefore how
: > many Fatigue are available to tap with Draw Power/TL3) is actually there. Just
: > assume that there's "way more energy than you and every other mage and town
: > could tap simultaneously" and act accordingly.
: >
: > Voila. The (effectively) Infinite Mana Well.
: >
: > However, there is one "little" drawback.
: >
: > Specifically, after about a month or so, that goddamn 1 gram stone ball is
: > moving at relativistic velocities, which means that it won't be just one gram of
: > mass no more. I really hope you've been beefing up the ST of the Repel
: > enchantments on the inner surface of the cylinder during the early weeks using
: > all of that boundless mana you had available to tap.
: >
: > And a couple of months after that, the relativistic mass of that ball has built
: > up to the point where it will begin to warp local gravity and destroy the
: > integrity of the casing... and as soon as the vacuum seal is breached...
: > (shudder), I don't even want to think about it.
Fun with physics:
Your scheme mocks conservation of energy, so I wouldn't worry
too much about relativity.
If you really, really want to, some quick calculations tell me
that the mass-energy of your rock is not going to get out of
hand for some time, noteably:
time mass-energy Gforce at .5meters
1 day 0.001kg neg
1 year 0.002kg neg
1000 years 1 metric tonne neg
1,000,000 years 10^9 tonnes .03g
1 *billion*yr 10^15 tonnes 280,000g
Since 1N of force is about the weight of a golf ball, IIRC,
there is no problem here unless dinosuar mages made these.
: there is one other little flaw you haven't thought about. Magical
: assasin X hires a thief to steal the super generator, or mabe builds one
: himself- once the little stone ball builds up enough speed, he plants a
: new gate spell (temporary) on top of the bottom gate, changing the
: destination of the little stone ball to the middle of a rival mage's
: labratory.
Or simply smashes it with a slegehammer. This is a real problem.
When you mess with COE, you get these kinds of things.
Regards,
Martinl
Chuckg
Martin Leslie Leuschen wrote in message <6o8g1h$9c$1...@joe.rice.edu>...
Magic itself mocks conservation of energy. The Gate spell by definition
violates the law of conservation of momentum, because if a man walks into an
entry Gate facing west and pops out of an entry gate facing North, his velocity
has changed (his speed is constant, but the vector component just went 90
degrees sideways)... without any additional energy having been applied.
>If you really, really want to, some quick calculations tell me
>that the mass-energy of your rock is not going to get out of
>hand for some time, noteably:
>
>time mass-energy Gforce at .5meters
>1 day 0.001kg neg
>1 year 0.002kg neg
>1000 years 1 metric tonne neg
>1,000,000 years 10^9 tonnes .03g
>1 *billion*yr 10^15 tonnes 280,000g
>
>Since 1N of force is about the weight of a golf ball, IIRC,
>there is no problem here unless dinosuar mages made these.
I have HOW long to let the original, no velocity limit, Mark I model spool up
before the local Gforce of the ball reaches the point where it can collapse the
integrity of the casing?
One million years plus?
I had no idea... (not knowing enough relativity math)
Forget all the safety engineering we've been trying to do, the problem of
eventual containment collapse has ceased to *be* a problem in any practical
sense. Not with that long a time factor.
My only problems now are the problems deliberate breach of containment and/or
disruption of the Gates -- both of which are solved by a simple Sense Danger
spell Linked to a Destroy Earth to "vanish" the stone ball the second *before*
the saboteur strikes.
Not to mention, of course, the many many many many MANY multilayered and linked
magical and mundane defenses that an entire Mage's Guild with an infinite mana
source could accumulate around their most precious possession after a few
years... or a few thousand years.
>: there is one other little flaw you haven't thought about. Magical
>: assasin X hires a thief to steal the super generator, or mabe builds one
>: himself- once the little stone ball builds up enough speed, he plants a
>: new gate spell (temporary) on top of the bottom gate, changing the
>: destination of the little stone ball to the middle of a rival mage's
>: labratory.
>
>Or simply smashes it with a slegehammer. This is a real problem.
After it's spun up to speed (for the first few days, glass is sufficient), we
can then enchant a permanent Force Dome around the sucker... plus the Missile
Shield, etc. refinements
>When you mess with COE, you get these kinds of things.
cgla...@hotmail.com
silv...@feist.com wrote:
<snip>
> Assuming they figured out that there was a problem. Also have you
> figured out the penalties for targeting a rock moving at relativistic
> speeds?
Zero, if I'm standing on top of the cylinder. There is no speed penalty for
targeting an object moving either straight towards or straight away from you.
--
Chuckg
"It's going to be hard to test my theory without destroying the universe...
but what the hell!? It's a really neat theory!" -- GURPS _Illuminati_, p.
78
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
cgla...@hotmail.com
>
> > >The physics and chemistry needed to create/understand this design
> > >doesn't seem to be tech level-3, so a GM could use that as an excuse
> >
> > Actually, no.
> >
> > It's a TL0 concept to understand a rock falling down a well. It's well
> > within TL3 geometry to figure out that if you put a bottom gate and a top
> > gate in a vertical mount, a rock falling down a well will keep falling
> > forever... the concept of the Moebius strip is not TL-dependent (a Stone
> > Age native playing around with a flat strip of leather could discover it at
> > TL0 if Stone Age natives ever played around with anything not related to
> > basic subsistence survival, if you know what I mean)...
> >
>
> fact that they continually excellerate in a vacue as compared to having
> a set "falling speed" is at least TL:4, as is the idea that falling
> speed is not dependant upon weight. (heck, the whole idea of a vacume is
> TL:4, but in a world with the destroy air spell I think we could let
> that pass)
Well, the original discussion was if the Mages Guild in Megalos could build
one... and parts of Yrth are TL4.
Besides, just because Galileo didn't happen to be born until TL4 on this
world, that does not prevent the possibility of another world's equivalent of
Aristotle dropping a 1-lb and a 50-lb stone ball out his window back during
TL2, just to see what would happen.
It is theoretically possible to invent calculus at TL1 with nothing more than
a stretch of sand and a stick, assuming that the person fiddling around with
#'s in the sand is enough of an intuitive mathematical genius to do it in his
head, and had enough leisure time to fiddle for that long.
And about the concept of air resistance in flight... umm, any world with the
Hawk Flight spell soon finds out about that one.
>> ... and my concept of the "endless cylinder" is roughly similar to the
>> concept of the Moebius strip. As a matter of fact, it's even more
>>intuitively simple to understand than a Moebius strip.
>> What *is* outside TL3 thought is the understanding of the dangers inherent in
>> the relativistic effects of the rock after a couple months... oh my God...
>> At TL3, the average Mage's Guild would know just enough to build it -- but
>> NOT know enough to realize the need for any safety measures! They'd just
>> build it without any velocity cap whatsoever and wind it up, entirely
>> unheeding of the danger!
> Now assume that a mage from that guild outlined the basics of the
> project shortly before the guild went kablooey and you have a perfectly
> good explination as to why nobody in your world builds them!
Unfortunately, somebody posted today to the effect that it would be 1,000,000
years plus before the relativistic effects even became noticeable, much less
hazardous... which ruins this whole line of speculation.
Plus, we forgot Divination spells. As the description of the construction of
the Lapis Potentissimus on pg. 62 of GURPS Magic Items indicates, mage's
guilds engaged in really massive experimental enchantment projects do use
Divination spells to check their work as they go.
What would a Divination spell reveal to a circle of mages that had just
finished one of these? Perhaps a nice augury of "Danger! Danger! Don't let
it get too fast!" Or "Danger! Danger! Flying into a stone wall at 1 million
miles an hour is a really bad thing! Make sure you have a fail-safe in case
somebody shuts down the Gates!"
>> Ooooooooh shit!
>> Well, at least they would have a discrete span of time to notice local
>> gravity warping and various other ominous effects before final integrity
>> failure occurred...
A *very* long time, I just found out.
> and you can shut this thing off *immediately* at *any* time with
>> either a Slow Fall or Destroy Earth spell on the little 1-gram rock, so the
>> world shouldn't be blown up even if it was spun up to speed by ignorant TL3
>> wizards. But there would be a close call.
> Assuming they figured out that there was a problem.
Scenario one -- Somebody's Sense Danger spell or Danger Sense advantage
tripped. He cast a Divination to find out what was wrong.
Scenario two -- Somebody cast a Death Vision *anywhere else in the city*. He
got a vision of a little rock in a cylinder flying into the floor at
impossible speeds and destroying the entire city in a flash of fire.
He rushed to tell his Mage's Guild compatriots about his uniquely horrifying
vision... and the guys in charge of the Infinite Well project heard his
description, recognized just *which* little rock in a cylinder he had seen,
turned pale, and quickly ran to the basement to turn the darn thing off until
they could work out some safety measures for the Mark II.
And if there is psionics in the game world, let's not overlook what
Precognition can do for you.
Or if the Infinite Well project was being built in a TL7 techno-magic world,
well obviously they have no problems with not having enough of a scientific
background.
cgla...@hotmail.com
silv...@feist.com wrote:
<snip>
> Let's consider- in order for this device to be of use, one must have a)
> the ability to draw power, b) the ability to build it. The first of
> these becomes important in that draw power is a TL based spell, and the
> GM could easilly rule that this device was a weird technology requiring
> its own spell to draw from- a minor setback in the grand scheme of
> things. It should be noted that the spell description states that low
> tech versions allow the mage to tap *natural* powerhouses, and this is
> decidedly unnatural...
Fine -- change the falling stone ball to a little bit of water running down
the center of the cylinder. If I can use Draw Power/TL3 to tap a waterfall,
I can use it to tap this.
> The second issue then comes into play. spells required are create
> earth, earth to stone, shape earth, destroy air, apportation, and repel.
> Including prerequisits this is 18 spells(4 earth, 3 air, 3 movement,
> plus seven spells from other colleges for enchant) which is a minimum of
> 9 years of concentrated study for the mage and assistants, plus any
> study needed to improve the skills to an enchantable level.
The Mage's Guild of Megalos can easily supply this level of expertise. So can
any circle of enchanters sophisticated enough to build most of the items you
see listed in GURPS Magic Items... and most GURPS fantasy worlds have those.
It's a fair-sized project, I'll admit -- not the kind of thing the average
mage can whip up in his basement. But even in a medieval fantasy world, some
mage's guidld somewhere will have a wallet big enough to fund this.
> On top of this someone has to think of the idea, which also requires an
> advanced knowledge of gravity typical of TL:4 (Galileo's eexpiriments)
True... but nothing Galileo did *absolutely* needed TL4 engineering to work,
that's just when Galileo happened to be born. If Galileo had been born in
ancient Greece, he could still have dropped rocks of dissimilar weights out
of his window to see what happened. etc. If Newton and his mathematical
predecessors had been born in ancient Egypt, I think they could still have
given him the basis Newton would need to write the _Principia_ in ancient
Egypt too.
(Just because you have calculus don't make you TL4 automatically... theory
does not necessarily equate to engineering, and TL's are mainly a measurement
of a culture's engineering ability, not it's theoretical knowledge.)
DLKnight20
writes:
>Well, at least they would have a discrete span of time to notice local
>gravity
>warping and various other ominous effects before final integrity failure
>occurred... and you can shut this thing off *immediately* at *any* time with
>either a Slow Fall or Destroy Earth spell on the little 1-gram rock, so the
>world shouldn't be blown up even if it was spun up to speed by ignorant TL3
>wizards. But there would be a close call.
>
>
If they decided destroying the rock is the way to disable it. They might
just decide to dispell the whole thing...But, on the other hand, would they
understand that wind resistance is a impedement to the falling rock? That a
vacuum would allow almost unlimited acceleration? The average TL3 person would
probably think that a rock falls and hits the ground and that's it. How much
more advanced are the Mages going to be?
If you use the Yrth world, though, you could have a physicist (maybe a PC)
come and organize the whole thing...He would understand the safety procedures
needed, and he definetly would understand the "realitivity bomb" benefits (you
know how players are)...And if he and his group of mages are the only ones who
own one, every other mage on the planet is going to come after them...Hmm...I'm
getting ideas now.
cgla...@hotmail.com
jrne...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> In article <35a6a...@news1.starnetinc.com>,
> Fantastic!!! I love it!! I have a few ideas to keep it from
> becoming a runaway time-bomb. First decide how much energy you want it to
> have, now I would suggest a fairly low (i.e. non-relativistic) speed for the
> particle.
The beauty of it is, somebody just posted to say that we'd have to let this
sucker run for a million years before the relativistic effects became
noticeable. Makes our life quite a bit easier.
> As long as it is non-relativistic you can simply assume the force needed to
> slow it down is simply it's mass * 9.8 m/s^2. On the bottom lid cast a repel
> spell on the inside who's strength equals this force.
ST 2000 repel? Sorry... my mages can't traffic that kind of energy. I have
the mana to tap from the Well, of course, but they can't traffic it.
> You now have stopped the particle's accelleration. The problem though is
> that as you draw power from the object it will continue to slow down, and
> never regin its lost power. Have no fear!! Put a password spell on it that
> turns off the repel spell on the base of the structure.
Forget the Password and the Continual Lights. Use a Measurement spell to
track the velocity of the ball, and a Link spell to hook the measurement spell
into the on/off for the Repel spell directly. That way, it does not need an
operator present.
Plus, there's the TL7... hell, TL *5*... "technomagic" version.
Use a magnetized iron ball and copper coils wrapped around the outside of the
cylinder. Draw power from the coils to charge up a big accumulator.
When you want to slow the ball down, feed power back from the accumulator to
the coils... IOW, turn the generator back into a motor. And thus, you slow
down the ball.
And when the accumulator runs dry, then you let the ball speed up again. And
you flip the thing back into "generator" mode instead of "motor" mode, and
start recharging the accumulator from the coils again...
And, of course, since tapping power from the generator coils acts by itself
to slow down the ball, you can help keep the ball slowed down by feeding the
power into the local power grid once the accumulator is slowed down, saving
the 'feedback circuit' only for when the build-up is exceeding even the
normal power load of the grid.
cgla...@hotmail.com
jefw...@aol.com (JefWilson) wrote:
> This is where things start to get really interesting. While it's not stated
> in the book, I would argue that a gate has a definite mass limitation that it
> can handle. Your Gate spell is based on Teleport,
No... for accounting purposes, the *cost* of a Gate spell is *figured* from
the Teleport chart.
That does not necessarily mean that a Gate spell shares any of the limitations
of the Teleport, Timeport, or Plane Shift spells.
> after all, and Teleport definitely has a mass limitation. I would say that
> long before you need to worry about gravity problems, the mass of your pebble
> has progressed beyond the point your gate can handle. (With the resulting
> explosion.)
> However, regarding slowing the pebble down, you could combine as many Air
> Golems and Links as you need to slow the thing down once it reaches the speed
> you want.
More practically, research a variant of Slow Fall that slows the falling
object down to however many meters/second of velocity you want to cap the
device at, instead of to it's set speed of 3 feet/second.
But since I just found out that it will take thousands of years before
relativistic mass effects even start showing up, the whole point is moot
anyway.
> (Sigh, now I need to figure out how come no one has built this damn thing in
> my campaign world.)
A lack of really twisted evil geniuses? :-)
--
Chuckg
Xplo Eristotle
>
> Chuckg wrote:
>
> > It's a TL0 concept to understand a rock falling down a well. It's well within
> > TL3 geometry to figure out that if you put a bottom gate and a top gate in a
> > vertical mount, a rock falling down a well will keep falling forever... the
> > concept of the Moebius strip is not TL-dependent (a Stone Age native playing
> > around with a flat strip of leather could discover it at TL0 if Stone Age
> > natives ever played around with anything not related to basic subsistence
> > survival, if you know what I mean)...
>
How about "at TL3, people have no concept of how energy works, and Draw Power
doesn't exist". Whacking Gate spells pretty much does the trick, too. Neither
omission is likely to have any significant effect on a world that didn't
already have this kind of magical "tech" as commonplace.
Xplo Eristotle
>
> In article <35A715...@feist.com>,
> silv...@feist.com wrote:
>
> <snip>
> > Let's consider- in order for this device to be of use, one must have a)
> > the ability to draw power, b) the ability to build it. The first of
> > these becomes important in that draw power is a TL based spell, and the
> > GM could easilly rule that this device was a weird technology requiring
> > its own spell to draw from- a minor setback in the grand scheme of
> > things. It should be noted that the spell description states that low
> > tech versions allow the mage to tap *natural* powerhouses, and this is
> > decidedly unnatural...
>
> Fine -- change the falling stone ball to a little bit of water running down
> the center of the cylinder. If I can use Draw Power/TL3 to tap a waterfall,
> I can use it to tap this.
...said the player.
I can think of a number of pseudoscientific/mystical explanations why the well
won't work, no matter WHAT you put in it. For instance, your "artificial
waterfall" is no more natural than your "artificial rockslide".
I find it amazing how so many people on this NG seem to naturally accept that
magic is subject to physical laws, or even common sense. Remember the steamgun
discussion, anyone? I also find it amazing how such people can go ahead and
say "if I can do this, then I can do that", when in fact they have no such
assurance whatsoever.
Granted, I have no more authority to say that it DOESN'T follow physical laws
or common sense.. and indeed, in some worlds it does. But I find that some of
you seem to take magical "laws" for granted.
Thomas Weigel
Chuckg wrote in message <35a79...@news1.starnetinc.com>...
>>Assuming the item inside will be accellerating at 1 Gravity, that
>>means an item weighing 90,000 kg, or 90 metric tons.
>
>Given that the density of lead is 11.34 grams/cubic centimeter, that means
that
>a 90 metric ton ball of lead will take up only 7.937 cubic meters... which
means
>that in the form of a sphere, the diameter of the sphere would only be
>approximately 2.5 meters.
>
>That's not all *that* big.
In my first post on this topic, I posited a 90 metric ton ball of
lead, which I indicated was "a bit extreme". The primary reason
for this was not the fact that the ball of lead was rather large, but
because using it requires many more permanent Force Walls,
a larger Gate and a heftier Resist Fire spell (objects larger than
one hex multiply cost by the number of hexes). What this means
is that the "reasonable" $150,000 cost and "reasonable" 7 1/2
months becomes somewhere around four times both amounts.
Since I was building this as if I had to present it to the
guildmaster...
So I dropped it to one metric ton (well within the magical one hex
limit).
>And you can make all the lead you need simply by using Earth to Stone at
double
>cost to act as an Earth To Metal spell, as detailed at the end of GURPS
>Grimoire. Furthermore, one hex for purposes of "Earth to.." spells is
defined
>as a 1-yard by 2-yard cylinder, which is just about big enough.
However, creating the ball is not all that important at first. Really, I
only
used lead because it was dense -- if you're going to create it yourself,
use something heavier AND sturdier...
>>Heat Buildup:
>>
>>Terminal velocity does not produce a terrible lot of heat,
>>and the time span it would occur over woudl allow us to
>>cast occasional Cool spells. This is not really a serious
>>problem.
>>
>>However, to quiet the grumblings of those who fear such a
>>powerful generator sitting unattended for months...
>
>>We Quick&Dirty cast Resist Fire on the ball of lead. This
>>costs 800 F, so it takes us 1.6 hours (8 mage-hours divided
>>by five mages).
>
>
>Resist Fire has a permanent enchantment variant? None is listed for Resist
>Fire... only for Fireproof, which is not what we want.
Resist Fire Regular
The subject blah blah blah...
Item: Staff, wand or jewelry. Affects wearer only. Energy cost to create:
800;
must include a ruby worth $500 and a black onyx worth $200.
The jewelry can easily be set into the rock.
Reading the Power description, we find that if we can reduce the cast to
cost to 0, the item is ALWAYS ON. Nifty. Now we only need a ridiculously
powerful Power 6.
>Besides, using the 90-ton ball, it can spool up to full speed in one
second, so
>we don't need the terminal velocity cap... just a Linked Slow Fall to stop
the
>ball every other second.
Actually, with the full 90-ton ball (if we wished to expend the years
necessary),
you don't even need that much. Just fill the tube with water. The ball will
have a
terminal velocity somewhere around 30 m/sec, which will provide all the
energy any sicko mage could desire (750 F/sec) and regenerate used F at
a rate of 250 F/sec. Casting Drain Mana will certainly ruin the rug, tho.
>And with the 90-ton ball variant, it still fits in the average 20x20 room,
even
>though it can't fit in the closet anymore.
It also becomes slightly out-of-reach for 7-day reproduction. Given its lack
of
useful advantage (in 14 days we can have two of the 1-tonners or half of the
90-tonner, with both having equivalent usefulness 90% of the time).
Especially when you consider that the 1-ton version is both more portable
(not that either one is very portable) *and* four of them can be in four
places
at once.
>And it's sooo much safer, seeing as how a 90-ton object hitting the floor
at 20
>m/sec (100% over maximum rated design speed of 10m/sec) doesn't cause
anything
>other than a nasty hole in the floor, as opposed to the effects of a .99c
>man-made meteor strike.
The 1-tonner hits at considerably less than 0.99c ;).
a little fish in a big pond (thomas weigel)
<there is no .sig here... it is a figment of your illuminati>
Chuckg
Xplo Eristotle wrote in message <35A7F455...@infomagic.com>...
>cgla...@hotmail.com wrote:
>>
>> In article <35A715...@feist.com>,
>> silv...@feist.com wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>> > Let's consider- in order for this device to be of use, one must have
a)
>> > the ability to draw power, b) the ability to build it. The first of
>> > these becomes important in that draw power is a TL based spell, and the
>> > GM could easilly rule that this device was a weird technology requiring
>> > its own spell to draw from- a minor setback in the grand scheme of
>> > things. It should be noted that the spell description states that low
>> > tech versions allow the mage to tap *natural* powerhouses, and this is
>> > decidedly unnatural...
>>
>> Fine -- change the falling stone ball to a little bit of water running down
>> the center of the cylinder. If I can use Draw Power/TL3 to tap a waterfall,
>> I can use it to tap this.
>
>...said the player.
Actually, said the player/DM/campaign designer.
And I phrased it with less than total precision. It should have read "If I can
use Draw Power/TL3 to tap one waterfall, then I can use it to tap another
waterfall."
>I can think of a number of pseudoscientific/mystical explanations why the well
>won't work, no matter WHAT you put in it. For instance, your "artificial
>waterfall" is no more natural than your "artificial rockslide".
Scenario -- I, the Wizard-King of Wherever, do hereby order my TL3 corps of
siege engineers to build a large dam across a river and then cut a spillway in
the center of the dam, thus producing a convenient waterfall for me to use. I
then attempt to use Draw Power/TL3 on that "artificial" waterfall, just ilke I
used the same spell to draw power out of that natural waterfall I ran across
last year while travelling through other lands.
It worked then, why shouldn't it work now? Even if the second waterfall is
"artificial"?
There's nothing in the description of Draw Power/TL3 that prohibits it from
being used to draw energy from "artificial" soruces. I could also use Draw
Power/TL3 to tap the energy of a huge gear that I ordered a dozen slaves (or
better yet, a dozen zombies) to keep cranking. There's "non-natural" energy for
you -- it's being produced solely by a human (or formerly-human) agency. Yet I
can tap it.
>I find it amazing how so many people on this NG seem to naturally accept that
>magic is subject to physical laws, or even common sense.
In the GURPS system, at least, magic *is* subject to internal consistency with
*itself*, if not the laws of nature.
In the GURPS system, at least, if a given spell produces a given effect under a
given set of conditions, then barring critical failures the same spell will
produce the same effect under the same conditions a week later, a month later,
or a year later. So sayeth the rules, and while any specific DM can annul
whatever rules he wants *within* his own campaign, when two *different* DMs are
discussing one interpretation vs. another then the published rules are almost
always the arbiter.
Ergo, if I can tap the energy of falling water with Draw Power/TL3 once, then I
can tap the energy of falling water with Draw Power/TL3 twice.
>Remember the steamgun discussion, anyone?
Nope, wasn't here then. Brief recap, please?
>I also find it amazing how such people can go ahead and
>say "if I can do this, then I can do that", when in fact they have no such
>assurance whatsoever.
Actually, what I said "If I can do this given thing here, then I can do the
*same* given thing in another nearby location."
Tapping falling water in a Mana Well and tapping falling water in a waterfall
are not two similar actions, they are the exact same action. What is different
between the two situations is not what the mage is tapping, or even why he's
tapping it -- the difference is in how the falling water he is tapping came to
be present.at his location, and there's nothing written anywere that even hints
that the spell could care less how the falling water came to be present, as long
as its there.
Natural waterfall, artificial dam, God sending the Second Deluge down upon your
head -- the spell don't care why the water's moving, it just sucks the power
down. Or so says everything that I've been able to consult.
>Granted, I have no more authority to say that it DOESN'T follow physical laws
>or common sense..
Magic doesn't follow physical laws, and some of it doesn't even follow common
sense.
But to be at all fair to the players, however it chooses to work, it should at
least work that way *consistently*, instead of working one way on Tuesday and
another way on Wednesday. Because no matter what the rules are or are not, if
those rules don't stay *constant*, then the players are being dumped on.
> and indeed, in some worlds it does. But I find that some of
>you seem to take magical "laws" for granted.
Must have been those GURPS Magic design notes. You know, the ones that said
that as originally designed, GURPS Magic was intended to be more than a little
mechanistic?
--
Chuckg
Chuckg
Thomas Weigel wrote in message <6o9cck$49j$1...@ash.prod.itd.earthlink.net>...
>
>Chuckg wrote in message <35a79...@news1.starnetinc.com>...
<snip>
>In my first post on this topic, I posited a 90 metric ton ball of
>lead, which I indicated was "a bit extreme". The primary reason
>for this was not the fact that the ball of lead was rather large, but
>because using it requires many more permanent Force Walls,
>a larger Gate and a heftier Resist Fire spell (objects larger than
>one hex multiply cost by the number of hexes). What this means
>is that the "reasonable" $150,000 cost and "reasonable" 7 1/2
>months becomes somewhere around four times both amounts.
>
>Since I was building this as if I had to present it to the
>guildmaster...
When the odds of success are near-certain and the reward for success is
near-limitless power, no wise guildmaster is going to quibble about an extra
$100,000 or so in the budget. Cost-benefit analysis says "spend the extra
money, fool, it's worth it. What price to save only one quarter's margin of
profit and lose the world?"
>So I dropped it to one metric ton (well within the magical one hex
>limit).
<snip>
<snip>
>>>However, to quiet the grumblings of those who fear such a
>>>powerful generator sitting unattended for months...
In real life, I used to be a trainee in the US Navy nuclear power program.
Unless I'm deliberately intending to build something that will blow up , I
simply cannot settle for a design that is not as inherently fail-safe as
possible. So I keep refining the design until it is, no matter how much
brainstorming I gotta use.
>>>We Quick&Dirty cast Resist Fire on the ball of lead. This
>>>costs 800 F, so it takes us 1.6 hours (8 mage-hours divided
>>>by five mages).
>>Resist Fire has a permanent enchantment variant? None is listed for Resist
>>Fire... only for Fireproof, which is not what we want.
>Resist Fire Regular
> The subject blah blah blah...
> Item: Staff, wand or jewelry. Affects wearer only. Energy cost to create:
>>800; just include a ruby worth $500 and a black onyx worth $200.
>
>The jewelry can easily be set into the rock.
Clever! I like it!
>Reading the Power description, we find that if we can reduce the cast to
>cost to 0, the item is ALWAYS ON. Nifty. Now we only need a ridiculously
>powerful Power 6.
As soon as the Mana Well is spun up to speed, the words "We don't have enough
mana to enchant this thing" are heard a lot less often around the house. :-)
>Actually, with the full 90-ton ball (if we wished to expend the years
>necessary),
Why years?
> you don't even need that much. Just fill the tube with water.
>The ball will have a terminal velocity somewhere around 30 m/sec, which will
>provide all the energy any sicko mage could desire (750 F/sec) and regenerate
>used F at a rate of 250 F/sec. Casting Drain Mana will certainly ruin the rug,
tho.
That's why we always put these things in the basement. :-)
<snip>
>Especially when you consider that the 1-ton version is both more portable
>(not that either one is very portable) *and* four of them can be in four
>places at once.
>
>>And it's sooo much safer, seeing as how a 90-ton object hitting the floor
>>at 20 m/sec (100% over maximum rated design speed of 10m/sec) doesn't cause
>>anything other than a nasty hole in the floor, as opposed to the effects of a
.99c
>>man-made meteor strike.
>
>The 1-tonner hits at considerably less than 0.99c ;).
(bliss)
The basic proof of concept has been done, and it works. From now on, it's just
a matter fine-tuning the #'s (size of ball, terminal velocity, density of
worknig medium, etc.) to get the specific model of Infinite Mana Well that the
customer wants...
... but the point is, the #'s *can* be crunched whenever anyone feels the need.
The basic concept is down, and it works.
Thank you for all your support.
--
Chuckg
Knight
Wouldn't the particle just punch it's way through the planet? What
exactly would cause the damage? Would any of the damage count as magical?
cgla...@hotmail.com
xp...@infomagic.com wrote:
> How about "at TL3, people have no concept of how energy works, and Draw Power
> doesn't exist".
There's a Pyramid article devoted entirely to how the spell of Draw Power can
be used in TL3 worlds. It covered rules for tapping waterfalls, forest fires,
large wheels cranked by slaves, etc.
> Whacking Gate spells pretty much does the trick, too. Neither
> omission is likely to have any significant effect on a world that didn't
> already have this kind of magical "tech" as commonplace.
Whacking Gate spells does do the trick quite nicely... but IMO, the real fun
here re: brain exercise lies not in "How do I stop players from having it?"
but instead "How could we make it work?", along with the follow-on step of
"How would having it change the world?"
Being far more of an engineer than a social scientist, I'm concentrating most
of my brain power (right now) on just making the darn thing work. My social
speculations will... well, that's why I dumped the darn thing on this .ng.
I'm trying to pick all of *your* brains about the social/political/etc
consequences of the invention of the Infinite Mana Well.
Thomas Weigel
Chuckg> Chuckg wrote
Thom> Thomas Weigel wrote
Thom> Since I was building this as if I had to present it to the
Thom> guildmaster...
Chuckg> When the odds of success are near-certain and the reward for success
is
Chuckg> near-limitless power, no wise guildmaster is going to quibble about
an extra
Chuckg> $100,000 or so in the budget. Cost-benefit analysis says "spend the
extra
Chuckg> money, fool, it's worth it. What price to save only one quarter's
margin of
Chuckg> profit and lose the world?"
Hm. True enough. However, I still believe that the *first* one built would
be the one which could be constructed in less than a year. Especially
when our "mediocre" first will enable us to build the second (which is
our 90-tonner) in a matter of a month or less. More time efficient, that
way.
Of course, if the guildmaster had the foresight to cast a divination and
discover what kind of profit the enterprise was to engender, he'd probably
have paid us lowly engineer-mages a goodly fortune each just to make
it and *then* keep quiet...
Thom> However, to quiet the grumblings of those who fear such a
Thom> powerful generator sitting unattended for months...
Chuckg> In real life, I used to be a trainee in the US Navy nuclear power
program.
Chuckg> Unless I'm deliberately intending to build something that will blow
up , I
Chuckg> simply cannot settle for a design that is not as inherently
fail-safe as
Chuckg> possible. So I keep refining the design until it is, no matter how
much
Chuckg> brainstorming I gotta use.
Heh... well, that IS why I included the safeties. I kind of envisioned the
process
as something like this: mad scientist mage comes up with project, everyone
else "grumbles" about "time bombs" and "relativistic speeds" and "thermal
buildup", and the mad inventor grudgingly puts in the safeguards I
mentioned.
Thom> Resist Fire Regular
Thom> The subject blah blah blah...
Thom> Item: Staff, wand or jewelry. Affects wearer only. Energy cost to
create:
Thom> 800; just include a ruby worth $500 and a black onyx worth $200.
Thom>
Thom> The jewelry can easily be set into the rock.
Chuckg> Clever! I like it!
There are some local players who pointed out the inevitable: what if the
GM rules the wearer has to be sentient? Heh. I won't go into my nasty
nasty Soul Gem + Pentagram idea.
Okay, I give in. I will.
The piece of jewelry is Soul Gem'd with, oh, I don't know, anybody the
mage guild deems less than worthy of a wonderful life. Then Pentagram
the surface of the jewel's casing.
Of course, this is needlessly cruel and evil. When presented with it, I am
certain that a GM would be more than happy to go with the *alternative*
sentience - Illusion + Independance & Initiative :).
Note that the Illusion + Independance & Initiative could be useful in
other ways as well, such as activating a variety of special defenses and
such. Think a sort of Holographic Defender; no spells of his/her own, but
with a *wave of the hand*, the Linked Fireball Of Doom (Link Event: illusion
waves hand certain way) comes down upon the chamber.
Thom> Reading the Power description, we find that if we can reduce the cast
to
Thom> cost to 0, the item is ALWAYS ON. Nifty. Now we only need a
ridiculously
Thom> powerful Power 6.
Chuckg> As soon as the Mana Well is spun up to speed, the words "We don't
have enough
Chuckg> mana to enchant this thing" are heard a lot less often around the
house. :-)
ALTHOUGH, even with Quick & Dirty casting, time-to-cast can be a pain in
the butt, even with Vigil and such, for some of the most powerful spells.
Casting
Power 6 will likely always take 3 days, with the last day being a major
marathon.
Thom> Actually, with the full 90-ton ball (if we wished to expend the years
Thom> necessary),
Chuckg>Why years?
Assuming that the 90-tonner is the first to be created, it will take many
more hexes of permanent Force Wall to contain... which will take many
more than 80 days. Ditto the Gate spells. Remember, we're limited to
Slow & Sure casting for the first Well. I know, I know, Slow & Sure seems
so retro once you've thought of the Well, but the first one has to be "the
old way".
After the first one, it takes around a month or less, depending on mage
stamina.
Chuckg> (bliss)
Chuckg> The basic proof of concept has been done, and it works. From now
on, it's just
Chuckg> a matter fine-tuning the #'s (size of ball, terminal velocity,
density of
Chuckg> worknig medium, etc.) to get the specific model of Infinite Mana
Well that the
Chuckg> customer wants...
Chuckg> ... but the point is, the #'s *can* be crunched whenever anyone
feels the need.
Chuckg> The basic concept is down, and it works.
For that matter, we even have a number of workable equations for
the damned thing.
We decide how much power we want, measured in F/sec, develop
the required momentum from that. Once we know that, we ask the
customer how big they want it, and *stress* to the customer that
the bigger it is, the safer it is. They give us a mass, we determine
our required velocity, and everything else falls into place.
Chuckg> Thank you for all your support.
Believe me, the pleasure was mine on this one. The Well (under a slightly
different name: Mana Engine) is already becoming a part of my new fantasy
world creation.
a little fish in a big pond (thomas weigel)
<this .sig about the illuminati is declared to be>
Fhaolan
<seas...@sprintmail.com> wrote:
>
>Chuckg wrote in message <35a79...@news1.starnetinc.com>...
>
>>And it's sooo much safer, seeing as how a 90-ton object hitting the floor
>at 20
>>m/sec (100% over maximum rated design speed of 10m/sec) doesn't cause
>anything
>>other than a nasty hole in the floor, as opposed to the effects of a .99c
>>man-made meteor strike.
>
>The 1-tonner hits at considerably less than 0.99c ;).
*blink* 1-tonner, 90-tonner, 1/4-pounder.
It's either a cannonball salesmen, or a medieval MacDonalds. :)
I can just see this:
"Step right this way! You've never seen a IMW, until you've owned one
of ours! Fully automated, with all the latest safty features, you'll
never lack the oomph for that special spell again!"
If this thing ever happened, it would cause a massive change in the
local culture. In the same way electricity changed our culture. Mage
guilds capable of funding this kind of endevour would quickly become
'suppliers' of mana to all those mages who can afford it, but aren't
able to make their own IMW. Governments may step in, to reap the tax
rewards, and possibly try to regulate this new industry. Mana Well
Inspectors, prone to bribes, would monitor the saftey levels of the
various guilds, in the interest of protecting the public, of course.
Someone mentioned 'MagePunk'. I think that's very appropriate. This
thing would spawn a higher 'Mage Level' and maybe even Tech Level, as
the power available would inspire far more ... esoteric spell
research. Including new spells, and tech, for making better IMWs.
That's what humans are good at. Taking an idea and going completely
ga-ga with it. :)
-Fhaolan
delph...@geocities.com
>
> On Fri, 10 Jul 1998 19:06:16 -0500, "Chuckg" <cgla...@hotmail.com> disseminated
> foul capitalist propaganda by writing:
>
>
> Sure. Spool it up to, say, 0.1 c, then TURN it 90 degrees sideways.
>
> Voila.
>
> The stone ball just stopped accelerating. However, since there's no air inside,
> and since the ball is being supported by the Repel spell, it's just constantly
> wheezing inside. When you Draw Power, it'll slow a bit, but after a month (or
> so) of use, you can set it to "Accelerate" for a day or two.
>
> Oh, and it'll also make a killer weapon. Just Teleport the ball going at, say,
> 0.1 c directly OVER the enemy army approaching your wizard tower.
>
> Instant micronuke! And no radiation... hehehe.
>
> With a few (say, ten) Infinite Mana Wells you have ten tacnuke strikes at your
> hand. Cute, neh?
Actually, the number of balls flying through the Well is limited only
by the surface area and our comfortability with ralativistic impact...
As long as you consider the Well as a single power source and Draw Power
from all the balls at once, the latter shouldn't be a problem.
Regarding the question of conservation of energy... Gate spells and
permanent spells violate it to begin with.
- Dare "Just grin and Dare it!"
* All typos in the previous message are to be considered edicts of Eris.
Please update your dictionaries accordingly.
* Pursuant to 47 USC, unsolicited email sent to this address is subject
to an archival fee of not less than $500 U.S. per copy. Email received
after any receipt of this notice implies acceptance of these terms. A
copy of the specific law regarding this activity may be found at
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/227.shtml .
* I report all unsolicited email sent to this address. This is your only
warning to remove it completely from *all* your email lists and anywhere
else you have info on me.
(Thanx, Coyote!)
.. \ôô1!1 !‰I²éqq1²Aq1rÆ ‰!Q)±r „Ìô,„
http://members.xoom.com/Darekun
delph...@geocities.com
Thomas Schoene
<6o9im4$72p$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
If you feel that you absolutely must restrict the thing, consider the
approach in Niven's "The Magic Goes Away" After some period of time,
this sort of gizmo will deplete the mana of the area around it (sort
of like the spinning disks in the book, but slower). This need not
make them useless (you might say it takes decades to have this
affect), but it introduces an interesting environmental concern. You
will have activists arguing that we are building too many IMWs, that
we need to develop more efficient magic spells. etc. This is
potentially one of those neat side effects. Greenpeace/TL3, anyone?
--
--------------------------------------------------
TomSc...@worldnet.att.net
*Insert pithy quote here*
Bob Schroeck
Thomas Schoene <TomSc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>If you feel that you absolutely must restrict the thing, consider the
>approach in Niven's "The Magic Goes Away" After some period of time,
>this sort of gizmo will deplete the mana of the area around it (sort
I don't see why it would do that. It's built with maybe a half dozen or
so permanent spells, none of which require a "Power" enchantment to keep
running. Permanent-duration spells, once permanent, require no further
mana to maintain. While Magic and Grimoire are silent on the topic, I
think it's safe to say that this includes environmental mana -- otherwise
any mage with a few decent protective devices and enchanted weapons would
never be able to settle anywhere because he would automatically drain the
surrounding area. Even *powerstones*, no matter how large, don't exhaust
their surroundings when recharging.
And the mana generated by well doesn't start as mana -- it starts as
kinetic energy accumulated by a rock sliding along a local spacetime
curvature. Properly designed, this gadget could actually pump mana *into*
the local field!
-- Bob
--
===============================================================================
Robert M. Schroeck || "When in trouble or in doubt,
r...@cnj.digex.net || Run in circles, scream and shout."
http://www.cnj.digex.net/~rms || I have no mouse and I must scream.
delph...@geocities.com
> PLACING THE BALL:
>
> Jenkins (one of the mages) casts Destroy Air in the tube. He does
> NOT destroy all of the air. He destroys most of it. We decide we
> want a maximum speed of 72,000 m/sec (two hours of accelleration)
> so as to not risk our planet. We calculate how much air we need
> by some esoteric engineer/mage method (anyone want to help on
> this???). This costs 2 F and takes 1 second.
I know terminal velocity is inversely proportional to air pressure, so
we divide 1atm by 72 000 and multiply by the terminal velocity for our
ball in 1atm in m/s.
Chuckg
<snip>
>*blink* 1-tonner, 90-tonner, 1/4-pounder.
>
>It's either a cannonball salesmen, or a medieval MacDonalds. :)
>
>I can just see this:
>
>"Step right this way! You've never seen a IMW, until you've owned one
>of ours! Fully automated, with all the latest safty features, you'll
>never lack the oomph for that special spell again!"
(LOL)
>If this thing ever happened, it would cause a massive change in the
>local culture. In the same way electricity changed our culture. Mage
>guilds capable of funding this kind of endevour would quickly become
>'suppliers' of mana to all those mages who can afford it, but aren't
>able to make their own IMW.
Draw Power/TL3 is a Regular spell, subject to range penalties. You can't really
bottle mana and store it, you can only draw it if you're standing close enough
to the IMW itself. So Mages Guilds with IMWs can't supply mana to guilds
without it, per se.
They can, however, supply *IMWs* -- remember, so long as the cylinder is
*empty*, they are quite portable.
It's only a 6-foot by 3-4 foot cylinder, after all... stick it in a wagon.
Better yet, use the energy from the first IMW that gave you the energy to
cheaply enchant the housing for the second IMW to Teleport the second IMW to
where it's supposed to go.
It's only after the falling ball inside has gotten up to speed that IMWs cannot
be moved safely. So you do all the work of enchanting the cylinder for an IMW
next to another IMW, then you Teleport the IMW-under-construction to the site
where you want to set it up -- and then you perform the last, low-Fatigue step
of teleporting the ball into the empty cylinder. ("arming the device", so to
speak)
Voila. As soon as you have even one IMW, you have as many IMWs as the owner of
the original IMW cares to sell.
>Governments may step in, to reap the tax rewards, and possibly try to regulate
this new
>industry.
With power like this? In a TL3 world? I think the mages guilds just *became*
the government. Either that, or they've got whoever is the local government by
the gonads.
>Mana Well Inspectors, prone to bribes, would monitor the saftey levels of the
>various guilds, in the interest of protecting the public, of course.
Sign seen on the front door of a Mages Guild -- "Government regulators not
welcome... and if you don't like it, just what are you going to do about it?
You can't even afford to joggle our elbows too much, the glass might break! Not
to mention what our battle mages can do to you with limitless free mana
available to pump up the volume with! Now piss off!"
>Someone mentioned 'MagePunk'. I think that's very appropriate. This
>thing would spawn a higher 'Mage Level' and maybe even Tech Level, as
>the power available would inspire far more ... esoteric spell
>research. Including new spells, and tech, for making better IMWs.
And better everything else.
Oh yes, this 'technology' is revolutionary, to say the least. The mages who
invent one of these will have changed their world beyond recognition...
>That's what humans are good at. Taking an idea and going completely
>ga-ga with it. :)
Interesting topic for speculation, to say the least.
--
Chuckg
Chuckg
<snip>
>There are some local players who pointed out the inevitable: what if the
>GM rules the wearer has to be sentient? Heh. I won't go into my nasty
>nasty Soul Gem + Pentagram idea.
>
>Okay, I give in. I will.
>
>The piece of jewelry is Soul Gem'd with, oh, I don't know, anybody the
>mage guild deems less than worthy of a wonderful life. Then Pentagram
>the surface of the jewel's casing.
In the average medieval "justice" system, I could probably *legally* do this.
All I have to do to make it legal in Megalos is use a prisoner who's been
convicted of a capital crime.
"You have been found guilty of murder most foul and are sentenced to death. But
if you are willing to accept such slavery as the Crown dictates instead, your
sentence of death will be commuted." (needless to say, of course, the judge
ain't telling the poor slob exactly what *kind* of slavery they've got in
mind...)
Cruel, but that's medieval life for you.
>Of course, this is needlessly cruel and evil. When presented with it, I am
>certain that a GM would be more than happy to go with the *alternative*
>sentience - Illusion + Independance & Initiative :).
>
>Note that the Illusion + Independance & Initiative could be useful in
>other ways as well, such as activating a variety of special defenses and
>such. Think a sort of Holographic Defender; no spells of his/her own, but
>with a *wave of the hand*, the Linked Fireball Of Doom (Link Event: illusion
>waves hand certain way) comes down upon the chamber.
Or we could Link the Fireball directly to a Watchdog spell (Protection and
Warning college, p. 77 of GURPS Magic -- 200 per hex to enchant on an area.
Warns the caster of anyone crossing the hex boundary w/ hostile intent.
There's also Sense Danger (needs a gem to be enchanted with) -- gives 1 minute
warning of potential danger *with details of the danger*, gives 5-minute warning
with only a vague premonition. One of these permanently in the chamber, linked
to a Voices spell? ("Intruder Alert!" "All mages to the Well chamber!"
"Intruder Alert!")
>Thom> Reading the Power description, we find that if we can reduce the cast
>to cost to 0, the item is ALWAYS ON. Nifty. Now we only need a
>ridiculously powerful Power 6.
>Chuckg> As soon as the Mana Well is spun up to speed, the words "We don't
>have enough Chuckg> mana to enchant this thing" are heard a lot less often
around the
>house. :-)
>
>ALTHOUGH, even with Quick & Dirty casting, time-to-cast can be a pain in
>the butt, even with Vigil and such, for some of the most powerful spells.
>Casting Power 6 will likely always take 3 days, with the last day being a major
>marathon.
8,000 mana (the cost for Power 6) is a pain in the butt to enchant, all right.
Hmm... Q&D casting moves at a max speed of 100 fatigue/hr, so that's 80 hours of
work to enchant regardless of the # of mages used. However, w/ the Mana Well
there to tap, there is are at most two mages needed (only one, if the enchanter
feels up to maintaining the Draw Power spell himself while enchanting), seeing
as how the Mana Well is giving the enchanter far more than 100 fatigue/hr
available to tap.
Hmmm... 80 man/hours is 10 days, or two weeks with weekends off. It's a bit of
drudgery, but nowhere near the years of effort it used to be. And as you pointed
out, the first "no-frills" IMW will be used just as a "primer" for the
enchantment of the second Full-Featured Deluxe IMW, so the Deluxe IMW won't be
the work of months so much as it will be only the work of weeks.
>Thom> Actually, with the full 90-ton ball (if we wished to expend the years
>Thom> necessary),
>
>Chuckg>Why years?
>
>Assuming that the 90-tonner is the first to be created, it will take many
>more hexes of permanent Force Wall to contain... which will take many
>more than 80 days. Ditto the Gate spells. Remember, we're limited to
>Slow & Sure casting for the first Well. I know, I know, Slow & Sure seems
>so retro once you've thought of the Well, but the first one has to be "the
>old way".
(grin). Yup, but the first one is the el cheapo model with no Force Dome or
etc. and the 1-gram ball... that's the "temporary" one we use to get the juice
to make the Deluxe IMW.
>After the first one, it takes around a month or less, depending on mage
>stamina.
>
>Chuckg> (bliss)
>
>Chuckg> The basic proof of concept has been done, and it works. From now
>on, it's just a matter fine-tuning the #'s (size of ball, terminal velocity,
>density of worknig medium, etc.) to get the specific model of Infinite Mana
>Well that the customer wants...
>
>Chuckg> ... but the point is, the #'s *can* be crunched whenever anyone
>feels the need. The basic concept is down, and it works.
>
>For that matter, we even have a number of workable equations for
>the damned thing.
>
>We decide how much power we want, measured in F/sec, develop
>the required momentum from that. Once we know that, we ask the
>customer how big they want it, and *stress* to the customer that
>the bigger it is, the safer it is. They give us a mass, we determine
>our required velocity, and everything else falls into place.
>
>Chuckg> Thank you for all your support.
>
>Believe me, the pleasure was mine on this one. The Well (under a slightly
>different name: Mana Engine) is already becoming a part of my new fantasy
>world creation.
When you finish creating that world, let me know how it turned out, OK? I am
really interested in the social consequences of this thing, and not having a
campaign of my own available to playtest it in at this moment (temporary player
shortage around here), I'd really love to see how the experimental runs turned
out elsewhere.
--
Chuckg
JefWilson
this thing just occured to me.
ALL the contents of the chamber are as liable to pass through the gate as the
ball. This includes the atmosphere, which is also subject to gravitational
effects. Eventually (though much slower than with the ball alone), the
atmosphere itself is going to be "falling" through the cylinder, effectively
eliminating air resistance.
So, you're back to using spells to make sure the thing doesn't get out of hand.
Jeff Wilson
GURPS Page: http://membes.aol.com/JefWilson/rpg/
Knight
vacume <which is c, right?>, how big a boom will you get if it does break
down? Are we talking planets, solar systems, galaxies?
James G. Cyr
>
> Oh, and it'll also make a killer weapon. Just Teleport the ball going at, say,
> 0.1 c directly OVER the enemy army approaching your wizard tower.
>
> Instant micronuke! And no radiation... hehehe.
>
> With a few (say, ten) Infinite Mana Wells you have ten tacnuke strikes at your
> hand. Cute, neh?
Remember, if you can teleport the ball, so can your enemies. Having your
rivals teleport the ball 1 meter to the left would be devastating. As a
bonus, the force walls would protect the cylinder (which only needs to have
a new weight teleported into it to function again). They can march into
the crater where your guild headquarters used to stand and pick up an IMW
for free.
A smart guild would keep the production of an IMW secret until it was built
and functioning for a while. The first spell to cast would be a protection
spell.
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
James G. "Quixote" Cyr "Whoever named it necking was a poor
c...@cadvision.com judge of anatomy" - Grouch Marx
Chuckg
JefWilson wrote in message <199807121815...@ladder03.news.aol.com>...
>Woops, a problem with using atmosphere or water to enforce a speed limit on
>this thing just occured to me.
>
>ALL the contents of the chamber are as liable to pass through the gate as the
>ball. This includes the atmosphere, which is also subject to gravitational
>effects. Eventually (though much slower than with the ball alone), the
>atmosphere itself is going to be "falling" through the cylinder, effectively
>eliminating air resistance.
>
>So, you're back to using spells to make sure the thing doesn't get out of hand.
Doh!
It's always the simple things that bite you in the behind.
But I just figured out a way to get around even this.
The Duplicate spell (Grimore. pp 56-57) let's you copy an object with a variant
of the Create Object spell. For x100 times casting cost, the Duplicate can be
made permanent... that is to say, it will last even if not in contact with a
living being.
But like any other thing made with one of the various Create spells , the
Duplicate will go *poof* if the hex it is in suddenly becomes a no-mana zone.
So what we do is we first build the Mana Well 'on the cheap'... no safety
measures beyond the 2 ST Repel spell, nothing but a hard vacuum inside the tube,
and a one-gram ball. We let the ball get up to speed.
We then use the energy we can tap from the first ball to Quick & Dirty enchant
*another* ball... a magical Duplicate. We also enchanted a reversed Link into
the Duplicate ball... as per the spell description of Link, a reversed Link can
be used to deactivate a magic item upon a given set of circumstances. Our given
set of circumstances is "when the Linked Sense Danger spell I've set up trips."
We then make the first ball go *poof* (Slow Fall to slow it down, Earth to Air
to make it go away, Destroy Air to clean up the traces).
We then teleport the second ball -- the Duplicate -- into the cylinder, and let
it get up to speed.
Since Sense Danger gives one minute's advance warning of catastrophe, we now
have a ball that will instantly vanish itself into nonexistence one minute
*before* any possible containment breach can happen. Enemy terrorists can't
even cause catastrophe by hitting the whole place with Destroy Mana -- like
Created objects, Duplicated objects vanish if brought into a no-mana zone!
And with that kind of fail-safe in place, we don't need a velocity cap. Just
let the darn thing run.
(Somebody posted yesterday to the effect that even at full acceleration, a
one-gram stone ball would not build up enough relativistic mass for the effects
to actually be noticeable for thousands of years, and wouldn't build up enough
relativistic mass to actually be able to collapse the containment casing for
over a million years. So that's not a real problem anymore, either.)
Now, people will point to all of the permanent enchantments that need to be done
to make this thing run, and how much mana it will cost. But remember, the
original "no-failsafe" version was merely 1000 mana or so to create... 300+ mana
if you didn't even bother with the Repel enchantments. And the original version
of the IMW will run safely enough for short periods of time, with proper
attention... which is all the time the mage's guild need to tap enough mana from
the original IMW to finish the work on the second, fully fail-safe, ultra-deluxe
IMW.
--
Chuckg
Chuckg
Knight <10671...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
<35A949...@compuserve.com>...
I actually did the math today, and you wouldn't believe how embarassed I am. My
earlier statements about blowing up the entire planet turned out to be wild
overestimations.
Let's assume that the one-gram stone ball is going so close to c that it
completely converts itself to energy upon colliding with a solid body... IOW,
we're getting the full-on e=mc-squared
(.001 kg) * (299,792,458 m/sec)^2 = 8.987551787368 * 10^13 joules = almost 90
trillion joules.
According to the sidebar on p. 89 of GURPS Lensman, you need 2.24 * 10^32 joules
to completely vaporize a planet, so even the maximum possible containment
failure of the Infinite Mana Well can't vaporize an entire planet. (We'd need a
ball of approximately 1 * 10^15 kg *rest mass* being completely converted into
energy to completely vaporize a planet.)
OTOH, since the explosion of one ton of TNT = 4.2 * 10^9 joules, that means that
our 1-g ball undergoing total conversion would equal a 21.398 kiloton explosion.
So much for nuking the planet with a 1-gram ball. The most we can get with an
IMW on the Ultimate Failure Contingency is one city.
(sob)
And it was such a really neat theory... oh well, I guess we'll just have to be
content with unlimited free mana (and at higher TL's, electrical power
generation).
--
Chuckg
Douglas Kilpatrick
> I know terminal velocity is inversely proportional to air pressure, so
> we divide 1atm by 72 000 and multiply by the terminal velocity for our
> ball in 1atm in m/s.
Remember that the air inside will also start moving. While you might be
able to depend on zero speed at the walls, in the middle the lower gate is
going to act as a vacume, and the upper gate is gonna act like a fan... Add
in a huge block of stone traveling at significant speeds and I don't even
wanna think of trying to figure out terminal velocity.
So basically the zero-velocity-at-boundary condition (I forgot what this is
supposed to be called) is your only aerodynamic braking system... IMHO
someone really better link in some slow-fall spells.
OTOH, I wonder how much mana you could harvest from just the air flow
inside?
Doug
-- kilp...@erols.com
Ray Cochener
>
> In article <35A79B...@feist.com>,
> silv...@feist.com wrote:
> > Chuckg wrote:
> >
> > > >The physics and chemistry needed to create/understand this design
> > > >doesn't seem to be tech level-3, so a GM could use that as an excuse
> > >
> > > Actually, no.
> > >
> > > It's a TL0 concept to understand a rock falling down a well. It's well
> > > within TL3 geometry to figure out that if you put a bottom gate and a top
> > > gate in a vertical mount, a rock falling down a well will keep falling
> > > forever... the concept of the Moebius strip is not TL-dependent (a Stone
> > > Age native playing around with a flat strip of leather could discover it at
> > > TL0 if Stone Age natives ever played around with anything not related to
> > > basic subsistence survival, if you know what I mean)...
> > >
> >
> > fact that they continually excellerate in a vacue as compared to having
> > a set "falling speed" is at least TL:4, as is the idea that falling
> > speed is not dependant upon weight. (heck, the whole idea of a vacume is
> > TL:4, but in a world with the destroy air spell I think we could let
> > that pass)
>
> Well, the original discussion was if the Mages Guild in Megalos could build
> one... and parts of Yrth are TL4.
>
> Besides, just because Galileo didn't happen to be born until TL4 on this
> world, that does not prevent the possibility of another world's equivalent of
> Aristotle dropping a 1-lb and a 50-lb stone ball out his window back during
> TL2, just to see what would happen.
>
> It is theoretically possible to invent calculus at TL1 with nothing more than
> a stretch of sand and a stick, assuming that the person fiddling around with
> #'s in the sand is enough of an intuitive mathematical genius to do it in his
> head, and had enough leisure time to fiddle for that long.
>
> And about the concept of air resistance in flight... umm, any world with the
> Hawk Flight spell soon finds out about that one.
>
Not necissarilly. Hawk flight is powered by magic, and limitations on
speed will probably be attributed to problems with the magic rather than
a property of air. And invoking a "pre-TL:4 Galileo" is like any other
anacronistic advancement- once you allow anacronisms the whole concept
of linear technology is thrown out.
All this doesn't mean they won't build the machine, simply that they
won't realize how powerfull it is until after they have built it, and
their ability to deal with unforseen effects may well prove
catastrophically inept. It all depends on whether the GM is looking for
reasons to include it or exclude it from the campaign. Or maybe this is
why wizards towers are kept out in the wilderness far away from other
people...
> >> At TL3, the average Mage's Guild would know just enough to build it -- but
> >> NOT know enough to realize the need for any safety measures! They'd just
> >> build it without any velocity cap whatsoever and wind it up, entirely
> >> unheeding of the danger!
>
> > Now assume that a mage from that guild outlined the basics of the
> > project shortly before the guild went kablooey and you have a perfectly
> > good explination as to why nobody in your world builds them!
>
> Unfortunately, somebody posted today to the effect that it would be 1,000,000
> years plus before the relativistic effects even became noticeable, much less
> hazardous... which ruins this whole line of speculation.
>
Forget relativity, the first model is likely to overlook the need for a
vacume, superheat the rock, at detonate the lab long before achieving
anything like relativity! And who knows what all that heat will do with
those unstable alchemical mixtures sitting arround.
> Plus, we forgot Divination spells. As the description of the construction of
> the Lapis Potentissimus on pg. 62 of GURPS Magic Items indicates, mage's
> guilds engaged in really massive experimental enchantment projects do use
> Divination spells to check their work as they go.
>
Which might just kill the project safely. Someone asks "what happens if
we do this?" and gets an image of the lab exploding, so they decide its
not a good idea.
> What would a Divination spell reveal to a circle of mages that had just
> finished one of these? Perhaps a nice augury of "Danger! Danger! Don't let
> it get too fast!" Or "Danger! Danger! Flying into a stone wall at 1 million
> miles an hour is a really bad thing! Make sure you have a fail-safe in case
> somebody shuts down the Gates!"
>
Divination as written is not that precise. It would simply register "if
you do it that way, it will detonate in X fashion." It could be amusing
to see the project abandoned after they had figured out how to change
how it exploded but not how to keep it from exploding...
Chuckg
Ray Cochener wrote in message <35A93A...@feist.com>...
>cgla...@hotmail.com wrote:
<snip>
>And invoking a "pre-TL:4 Galileo" is like any other anacronistic advancement-
once you
>allow anacronisms the whole concept of linear technology is thrown out.
Strictly speaking, in order to build this thing they don't even *need* a
Galileo, or the realization that objects of dissimilar weights have similar
falling speeds.
All they needs is the knowledge that the farther an object falls, the faster it
goes... and *that* knowledge can be easily found by direct observation at TL0.
> All this doesn't mean they won't build the machine, simply that they
>won't realize how powerfull it is until after they have built it,
Wrong. I don't see anything that can stop a TL3 mage/philosopher from realizing
that if I can tap a waterfall with Draw Power/TL3, and that a waterfall is more
powerful the higher the waterfall is, and if that funny parlor trick Bob thought
of once with the two Gates and the cylinder means that something inside the
cylinder keeps falling straight down forever...
<snip>
>> Unfortunately, somebody posted today to the effect that it would be 1,000,000
>> years plus before the relativistic effects even became noticeable, much less
>> hazardous... which ruins this whole line of speculation.
> Forget relativity, the first model is likely to overlook the need for a
>vacume, superheat the rock, at detonate the lab long before achieving
>anything like relativity!
Gee. You think the mages working on the project would somehow not notice the
rock heating itself to a dull glow hours *before* the explosion tripped? And
decide to stop the rock until they could figure out what was going on?
>And who knows what all that heat will do with those unstable alchemical
mixtures sitting arround.
Why are we assuming that TL3 equals no common sense? Even TL3 mages' guilds
know that you put lots of elbow room between separate research projects...
especially
"All those unstable alchemical mixtures sitting around"... I think not.
Alchemists -- the smart ones, at any rate -- have learned not to store the
volatiles next to the guys playing with weird spells.
>> Plus, we forgot Divination spells. As the description of the construction of
>> the Lapis Potentissimus on pg. 62 of GURPS Magic Items indicates, mage's
>> guilds engaged in really massive experimental enchantment projects do use
>> Divination spells to check their work as they go.
> Which might just kill the project safely. Someone asks "what happens if
>we do this?" and gets an image of the lab exploding, so they decide its
>not a good idea.
They get an *image* of why the lab exploded -- i.e., they see the rock slamming
at super-speed into the floor. "The answer to one yes-or-no question or one
vision relevant to their query", remember?
As soon as I see the rock hit the floor in a vision, I can quite easily work
from there to get the concept of "don't let the rock move too fast" or "don't
let the rock ever hit the floor."
And I notice you didn't answer my possible scenario about the Death Vision
casting... and Death Vision is a useful, if somewhat stressful, tool of
diviners.
>> What would a Divination spell reveal to a circle of mages that had just
>> finished one of these? Perhaps a nice augury of "Danger! Danger! Don't let
>> it get too fast!" Or "Danger! Danger! Flying into a stone wall at 1
million
>> miles an hour is a really bad thing! Make sure you have a fail-safe in case
>> somebody shuts down the Gates!"
> Divination as written is not that precise. It would simply register "if
>you do it that way, it will detonate in X fashion."
Actually, no -- it will show you a *picture* of it detonating in X fashion. And
as soon as I know what the "X fashion" *is*, I can start working on ways to
prevent it. That's why people use Divination spells at all -- to forecast
possible hazards *and compensate for them*.
>It could be amusing to see the project abandoned after they had figured out how
to change
>how it exploded but not how to keep it from exploding...
Excuse me, but if a circle of enchanters will spend years of effort and hundreds
of thousands of $$$ just to experiment with making some of the weirder (and more
useless) items in the GURPS Magic Item books... anyway, if they'll put that much
work into researching and designing things that relatively *trivial*, they are
*not* going to give up on The Gizmo Of Ultimate Power just because the first few
attempts tripped bad Divinations.
That's like saying that the Manhattan Project would have given up after losing
their first scientist to a radiation accident... and they did lose at least one.
--
Chuckg
William Knowles
Chuckg <cgla...@hotmail.com> wrote in article
<35a6a...@news1.starnetinc.com>...
> I've decided that the Mana Well (tm) I posted yesterday is just far too
tame.
> It doesn't have enough oomph. The power generation figures are waaaay too
low.
<snipe construction details>
I suspect the relativistic mass doesn't create a safety problem if you have
the well on a planetary (i.e. rotating) suface. Unfortunately, this is
because the coriolis effect will cause the rock to hit the side before then
dispite the repel spells.
Wow, you can do it! Don't use a cylinder, use a Force dome! If hits the
side you just lose the lateral energy. Or maybe not... if an object moving
in a straight line hits a force dome at an angle it just stops doesn't it?
Deflecting it would require the dome to exert a force. Except the object
would rotate and roll. My head hurts.
I think I'll leave this to people with more experience in non-conservation
of energy physics.
william
--
> Chuckg
Euel Ball
mana whenever I've played a mage. Now, if I can get my GM to go along
with it, I can build flying ships, turn desserts to forest, reshape the
landscape, create life in my laboritory, all the things that a young,
power-mad mage -really- wants to do!
The great thing is, the -rest- of the characters in my group are mages
as well...
Douglas Kilpatrick wrote:
>
>
> OTOH, I wonder how much mana you could harvest from just the air flow
> inside?
>
I have an idea...
1) Fill IMW with -water-.
2) Beef up Repel spells, bigtime.
3) Allow to run until water is moving swiftly.
4) Either from a distance, or using someone expendable, make a -small-,
nozzle shaped hole in the -bottom- plate.*
*Or open the plug in the prepared nozzle in the bottom plate.
5) From a distance, observe.
Congratulations, you have just invented the rocket. Trial and error
experimentation
should allow you to eventual design a vehicle that can reach orbit...
--
Euel Ball, Writer And Mutant At Large
"Normal?, normal's boring!"
Tom and Jessie Karpf
As the BB accelerates, its mass will increase. This means that, given an
infinitely strong cylinder, that the mass of the BB will continue to
increase. Eventually, the gravitational field that it generates will become
so strong that the cylinder will implode. I'm not sure exactly how massive
the BB would need to be to exerting even a .1 g field at a distance of half
a meter, but it would certainly be at least millions of tons. If we assume
that the cylinder fails when the BB masses 1 million tons, then the impact
could POTENTIALLY generate an impact in the range of 21 BILLION kilotons, if
the BB actually interacted with sufficient matter to transfer that much
kinetic energy to the planet. Of course, by the time the BB is generating a
gravitational field sufficiently strong to implode the cylinder, the BB has
certainly collapsed into an atom-sized speck of neutronium, or possibly down
to a black hole. This ultra-dense object will do effectively no damage to
the planet other than drill a tiny (microscopic?) hole through the planet by
the tidal forces of that BB at extremely short range.
Chuckg wrote in message <35a91...@news1.starnetinc.com>...
Chuckg
Deirdre M. Brooks wrote in message <6oblnl$n5$1...@user1.teleport.com>...
>In <35A7DD63...@infomagic.com> Xplo Eristotle <xp...@infomagic.com>
writes:
>
>>How about "at TL3, people have no concept of how energy works, and Draw Power
>>omission is likely to have any significant effect on a world that didn't
>>already have this kind of magical "tech" as commonplace.
>
>
>I think I'll have to utilize the WoIM in my fantasy milieu (which is TL3-5
>for science, and effectively TL11-12 for magic). It renders most of the
>logistic problems for enchantments I've had rather moot.
Well, the prereqs for Draw Power are pretty extensive -- it limits the usage of
Infinite Mana Wells to only the more experienced and talented mages.
Draw Power has as prereqs -- Magery 2, Steal Power, Conduct Power, Seek Power,
Minor Healing, and at least 2 spells from 10 different colleges in addition to
the above. Mages who know all that are not commn... however, in a technomagic
world with a modern educational system, they would at least be somewhat more
common than they are on Yrth or similar worlds.
While Draw Power and the Infinite Mana Wells used together can still extensively
change a world, they can't give every apprentice mage and his brother unlimited
free mana... only the senior enchanters.
Darn. I'd really love to find something -- in the rules, preferably, no
home-brew -- that would let me build or enchant a device that would be able to
tap the IMW and pump out the mana in such a way that the recipient wouldn't need
to know Draw Power to fuel his spells' Fatigue costs with it.
--
Chuckg
"It's going to be hard to test my theory without destroying the universe... but
what the hell!? It's a really neat theory!" -- GURPS _Illuminati_, p. 78
delph...@geocities.com
>
> Knight <10671...@compuserve.com> wrote in message
> <35A949...@compuserve.com>...
> >If this baby <1g stone sphere version> spools up to maximum speed in a
> >vacume <which is c, right?>, how big a boom will you get if it does break
> >down? Are we talking planets, solar systems, galaxies?
>
> >If this baby <1g stone sphere version> spools up to maximum speed in a
> >vacume <which is c, right?>, how big a boom will you get if it does
> >break down? Are we talking planets, solar systems, galaxies?
>
> I actually did the math today, and you wouldn't believe how embarassed I am. My
> earlier statements about blowing up the entire planet turned out to be wild
> overestimations.
>
> Let's assume that the one-gram stone ball is going so close to c that it
> completely converts itself to energy upon colliding with a solid body... IOW,
> we're getting the full-on e=mc-squared
>
> (.001 kg) * (299,792,458 m/sec)^2 = 8.987551787368 * 10^13 joules = almost 90
> trillion joules.
Yes... from the mass. The velocity provides some energy, too...
fortunately, the equasion we need is E=MV^2, and since V=C we can just
double the energy above. Still not a planet-destroying force, but a
significantly scary thing to have materialize over your capital.
> According to the sidebar on p. 89 of GURPS Lensman, you need 2.24 * 10^32 joules
> to completely vaporize a planet, so even the maximum possible containment
> failure of the Infinite Mana Well can't vaporize an entire planet. (We'd need a
> ball of approximately 1 * 10^15 kg *rest mass* being completely converted into
> energy to completely vaporize a planet.)
>
> OTOH, since the explosion of one ton of TNT = 4.2 * 10^9 joules, that means that
> our 1-g ball undergoing total conversion would equal a 21.398 kiloton explosion.
>
> So much for nuking the planet with a 1-gram ball. The most we can get with an
> IMW on the Ultimate Failure Contingency is one city.
>
> (sob)
>
> And it was such a really neat theory... oh well, I guess we'll just have to be
> content with unlimited free mana (and at higher TL's, electrical power
> generation).
Well, what kind of magical attack could we power with this...?
delph...@geocities.com
>
> OK, I've got it. If you like the idea of this device, no problem. If you
> don't, there's a very simple solution. GRAVITY also passes through the gate.
>
> Under normal circumstances this isn't a problem (or even noticed). However,
> when you have two gates facing each other in the direction of the local
> gravity, something strange happens. Effectively, gravity DISAPPEARS. (Maybe
> some of you people strong in physics could confirm this?)
>
> Congratulations, you haven't invented infinite mana, but you have invented
> contragravity.
>
> As I said, if you like the IMG you don't have to use this idea, but if you
> don't, I think this is a neat way of controlling it.
Not unless the back of the bottom gate can teleport the gravitons to
the back of the top gate.
The control is simple, however. Gate spells and permanent spells
violate conservation of energy; this uses a permanent Gate spell to
radically violate it.
Tomansky
> That's like saying that the Manhattan Project would have given up after losing
> their first scientist to a radiation accident... and they did lose at least one.
The Manhattan Project was starting out to construct a device that
they knew full well was incredibly dangerous. The possibilities
were widely varied, discussed at length, and all of them scary. Yet
they proceeded, because thay were willing to do dangerous research.
All that is really needed to research the "Chuckg mana well" is a
healthy sense of FEAR combined with a vision of the possible.
David Levi
idcr...@cmq.com
> home-brew -- that would let me build or enchant a device that would be able to
> tap the IMW and pump out the mana in such a way that the recipient wouldn't need
> to know Draw Power to fuel his spells' Fatigue costs with it.
How about a fairly large powerstone permenantly enchanted with the "Draw Power"
spell, set to take it's power from the IMW?
-IdentityCrisis
Deirdre M. Brooks
> The idea of a rock falling down a well may be a TL:0 concept, but the
>fact that they continually excellerate in a vacue as compared to having
>a set "falling speed" is at least TL:4, as is the idea that falling
>speed is not dependant upon weight. (heck, the whole idea of a vacume is
>TL:4, but in a world with the destroy air spell I think we could let
>that pass)
You create mark I and discover that the thing does not accelerate to
infinite speeds, so you utilize magic or other tools to determine why.
Eventually, you'll work it out. TLs don't really apply to magical
societies, IMO. Or rather, magic can result in discoveries similar to
those of science.
Deirdre M. Brooks
JefWilson
don't, there's a very simple solution. GRAVITY also passes through the gate.
Under normal circumstances this isn't a problem (or even noticed). However,
when you have two gates facing each other in the direction of the local
gravity, something strange happens. Effectively, gravity DISAPPEARS. (Maybe
some of you people strong in physics could confirm this?)
Congratulations, you haven't invented infinite mana, but you have invented
contragravity.
As I said, if you like the IMG you don't have to use this idea, but if you
don't, I think this is a neat way of controlling it.
Jeff Wilson
GURPS Page: http://members.aol.com/JefWilson/rpg/
JefWilson
Power, and what do you have? Something pretty close to Wild Magic area.
Right?
idcr...@cmq.com
made small enough to fit onto a shelf. I'll need those of you who are strong in
physics to tell me if this will or won't work, and why.
First, create a hollow, airtight transparent cube (glass or crystal). A cubic foot
should be more than enough. Next, use Destroy Air to create a vacuum inside it.
Now, enchant the bottom surface of the cube with the Repel spell. The spell's push
must be *exactly* strong enough to equal gravity's pull, so that anything inside the
cube is effectively weightless, pulled towards and pushed away from the Earth with
equal force. I'm not sure exactly what ST that would be, but I'm sure trial and error
could discover it.
Next, cast a Repel spell (any ST) on one half of one of the cube's side faces, and a
Repel spell of equal ST on the *other* half of the opposite face of the cube. Thus,
anything in one side of the cube should be pushed towards one wall, and anything in
the other half of the cube should be pushed towards the opposite wall.
Now, use magic to create a perfect sphere of stone (say, 6" in diameter), and enchant
the surface of the sphere with a low ST repel spell, then use the Teleport Other spell
to move the sphere into the approxamite center of the cube.
Now, once inside the sphere should be effectively weightless, caught between Earth's
gravity and the Repel spell on the bottom surface of the cube. It should, because of
it's own Repel spell, drift to and stay in the exact center of the cube. Because of
the Repel spells on the cube's sides, it will be pushed in one direction on one side
and in the opposite direction on the other, causing it to spin in place like a top.
Because the inside of the cube is vacuum and the sphere is not touching any surface,
there is no friction to slow it down; thus it's spin will accelerate indefinitely.
Voila. A shelf-sized, Gate-free IMW. Now, can anybody find any flaws in this?
-IdentityCrisis
Paul Andrew King
r...@cnj.digex.net (Bob Schroeck) wrote:
>Can you just imagine what would occur if an utter dome were used in this
>manner? Millions points of mana fed directly into a single hex. I have a
>feeling this would push that hex and its neighbors past "High Mana",
>through "Wild Mana", and out the other side into something I'd rather not
>think about...
Adron's Disaster, anyone ?
--
"Hullo clouds, hullo sky, hullo pile of severed human heads," said Major
Basil Fotherington-Thomas.
(Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman "Teddy-Bear's Picnic")
Replace "nospam" with "morat" to reply
Paul K.
JefWilson
> Not unless the back of the bottom gate can teleport the gravitons to
>the back of the top gate.
Nope. Think about it. Even assuming the backs of the gates aren't permeable,
as the ball emerges from the top gate gravitons pass through to the bottom gate
and are reversed in phase, canceling the gravitons passing through the back of
the bottom gate.
JefWilson
>Voila. A shelf-sized, Gate-free IMW. Now, can anybody find any flaws in
>this?
Just one (which may not be too serious). Eventually the stress on the stone
from centrifugal force is going to cause it to break apart. (See the power
storage discussion in the "TL 12 Weapons for Warp Drive Ships" thread.) I
don't know when this will happen, so it's possible you'll get enough energy out
of the device to meet your needs.
Deirdre M. Brooks
>Well, the prereqs for Draw Power are pretty extensive -- it limits the usage of
>Infinite Mana Wells to only the more experienced and talented mages.
Precisely, which prevents it from mutating the setting beyond what I'd
envisioned.
I'd experimented with other concepts, but this might work best. :-)
>Draw Power has as prereqs -- Magery 2, Steal Power, Conduct Power, Seek Power,
>Minor Healing, and at least 2 spells from 10 different colleges in addition to
>the above. Mages who know all that are not commn... however, in a technomagic
>world with a modern educational system, they would at least be somewhat more
>common than they are on Yrth or similar worlds.
I've two technomagical worlds, both utilize magic to develop technology...
one has far more magical development than the other, but both are not
quite the same as Yrth.
>Darn. I'd really love to find something -- in the rules, preferably, no
>home-brew -- that would let me build or enchant a device that would be able to
>tap the IMW and pump out the mana in such a way that the recipient wouldn't need
>to know Draw Power to fuel his spells' Fatigue costs with it.
No idea.
Djim
says...
> In article <6o6n6e$bmp$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
> jrne...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> > In article <35a6a...@news1.starnetinc.com>,
>
> > Fantastic!!! I love it!! I have a few ideas to keep it from
> > becoming a runaway time-bomb. First decide how much energy you want it to
> > have, now I would suggest a fairly low (i.e. non-relativistic) speed for the
> > particle.
>
> The beauty of it is, somebody just posted to say that we'd have to let this
> sucker run for a million years before the relativistic effects became
> noticeable. Makes our life quite a bit easier.
>
> > As long as it is non-relativistic you can simply assume the force needed to
> > slow it down is simply it's mass * 9.8 m/s^2. On the bottom lid cast a repel
> > spell on the inside who's strength equals this force.
>
> ST 2000 repel? Sorry... my mages can't traffic that kind of energy. I have
> the mana to tap from the Well, of course, but they can't traffic it.
>
> > You now have stopped the particle's accelleration. The problem though is
> > that as you draw power from the object it will continue to slow down, and
> > never regin its lost power. Have no fear!! Put a password spell on it that
> > turns off the repel spell on the base of the structure.
>
> Forget the Password and the Continual Lights. Use a Measurement spell to
> track the velocity of the ball, and a Link spell to hook the measurement spell
> into the on/off for the Repel spell directly. That way, it does not need an
> operator present.
>
> Plus, there's the TL7... hell, TL *5*... "technomagic" version.
>
> Use a magnetized iron ball and copper coils wrapped around the outside of the
> cylinder. Draw power from the coils to charge up a big accumulator.
>
> When you want to slow the ball down, feed power back from the accumulator to
> the coils... IOW, turn the generator back into a motor. And thus, you slow
> down the ball.
>
> And when the accumulator runs dry, then you let the ball speed up again. And
> you flip the thing back into "generator" mode instead of "motor" mode, and
> start recharging the accumulator from the coils again...
>
> And, of course, since tapping power from the generator coils acts by itself
> to slow down the ball, you can help keep the ball slowed down by feeding the
> power into the local power grid once the accumulator is slowed down, saving
> the 'feedback circuit' only for when the build-up is exceeding even the
> normal power load of the grid.
>
> --
You'd have to worry 'bout them thar cables melting due to resistive
heating(unless you built 'em real well, but excellent idea.
Djim
>
>
>
>
Other than torque ripping your ball to shreds as its rotational velocity
generates shear forces great enough to excede its material strength, no.
This could be resolved by using a MUCH bigger, slower rotating sphere or
other radially symetric solid, but a six inch sphere would have to be
really strong to hold an apreciable amount of energy.
the only other flaw is if the GM rules that repel only affects 'whole
objects', the other thing I'd suggest is that the repell everything spell
on the sphere be stronger than either of the walls repells or the box may
well periodicly eject the central sphere if perturbed.
Excellent idea
Knight
>
> In article <35A99DB6...@cmq.com>, idcr...@cmq.com writes:
>
> >Voila. A shelf-sized, Gate-free IMW. Now, can anybody find any flaws in
> >this?
>
> from centrifugal force is going to cause it to break apart. (See the power
> storage discussion in the "TL 12 Weapons for Warp Drive Ships" thread.) I
> don't know when this will happen, so it's possible you'll get enough energy out
> of the device to meet your needs.
>
> Jeff Wilson
> GURPS Page: http://members.aol.com/JefWilson/rpg/
Arrrrgh! I missed the first post, and now it's expired! What did he say?
idcr...@cmq.com
>
> Other than torque ripping your ball to shreds as its rotational velocity
> generates shear forces great enough to excede its material strength, no.
>
> This could be resolved by using a MUCH bigger, slower rotating sphere or
> other radially symetric solid, but a six inch sphere would have to be
> really strong to hold an apreciable amount of energy.
>
Hmm... Well, there's always Stone to Metal. Solid titanium, anyone? ;7
Seriously, though, perhaps the "shelf-sized" bit won't work, if it needs to hold a lot of
energy at once, but it's still a simpler, easier-to-control setup than the "bottomless
cylinder." You can increase the rate at which the sphere regains drained momentum simply by
strengthening the two polar Repel spells (something the cylindrical version couldn't do),
and you can easily set a Link spell to turn the polar Repels off whenever the sphere is
revolving at or above a certain rate (a much simpler cutoff switch than the cylindrical
version required). If the sucker recharges fast enough, it may not have to hold too much
energy in the first place.
> the only other flaw is if the GM rules that repel only affects 'whole
> objects', the other thing I'd suggest is that the repell everything spell
> on the sphere be stronger than either of the walls repells or the box may
> well periodicly eject the central sphere if perturbed.
>
Easily designed around. The cube itself need not be enchanted at all. Simply cut a flat
square of, say, copper, which is as big or just slightly bigger than the bottom of the
cube. Cast Repel on that, place the cube on top of it, make sure it's anchored, and you're
set for weightlessness. As for the two polar Repel spells, just set up two small posts
(again, anchored) just outside the cube where they're needed.
> Excellent idea
Thanks. :)
-IdentityCrisis
idcr...@cmq.com
No sweat, here's a repost.
Voila. A shelf-sized, Gate-free IMW. Now, can anybody find any flaws
in this?
-IdentityCrisis
Lance
Chuckg wrote:
> >> One last thought. If you can tap a tiny stone ball, why can't you tap
> >> into the momentum of the Earth itself? Surely that has a LOT of energy
> >> available, more than you could ever use...
> >
> >That's when the GM gives the player the Evil Eye. If he doesn't, the player
> >should get REALLY worried.. magic is fickle, y'know...
>
> Nah... I'd just let the player roll complete with the range/area penalty for
> trying to cast a spell on an entire 8000 mile-wide sphere, and then not be
> surprised when he missed, given that said penalty is about -1000 or -10000 or
> something like that.
>
The penalty on a spell is to the nearest point of the spell, not the farthest,nor
the center.
If I want to cast a spell on Fiji, while standing here in Lancaster, PA, USA, I will
stand a better chance of success (assuming the mana is available) by casting it on
the whole earth than on just my target area.
> When finding ways to say "No" to players, always go for the simplest solution.
> The simple solutions are usually the ones least easily twisted to their corrupt
> ends by really clever players who just don't wanna give up on their twisted
> little idea.
>
> Besides, you'd need at miniimum Physics/TL??? just to come up with the *concept*
> of tapping the planet's rotational energy in the first place (tapping the
> angular momentum of the planetary rotation is *not* a TL3 concept!) -- which
> means that if that some player's fantasy wizard ever wanted to do it, I would
> just note the absence of any such high-TL skills on his character sheet and
> refuse him outright.
>
> It's the same principle behind saying "Ahem, convince me that your character
> could *possibly* think of that" that a DM uses when some low-TL fighter
> "coincidentally" wants to mix sodium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal together
> "just to see what would happen.". Yeah, right.
I prefer to change the physics of my magical universe, such that (in this instance)
the sun really does go around the earth, and thus there is no momentum to tap.
Now if the players insist on trying the cast that spell, it seems to be a dud. The
fun part is, never explain why they "failed," let them figure out how the cosmology
works on their own, and kick themselves for using OOC "knowledge" which
turns out to be false in the game world...
--
Lance Berg
http://empyre.net
AStoner942
about due to the Well of Obscene Amounts of Mana discussion. Any good
sourcebooks that cover TL4? Better yet any REALLY good source material on
society in our own Renaissance?
Andrew Stoner - aston...@aol.com
"He who fights and runs away, is ambush bait."
"Power corrupts. Knowledge is power. Study hard..."
Tony Atkinson
<cgla...@hotmail.com> writes
>OK, now if you have a cylinder whose inner wall is continuously radiating 2 ST
>worth of repulsion effect *all the way around*, but whose top and bottom aren't
>radiating anything, that would mean that any small, lightweight object inside
>that cylinder would be pushed to the exact center of the cylinder and stay
>there, right? So we now have a cylinder whose inside is a hard vacuum and is
>set up to confine any small object (about BB-sized or so) to it's exact center,
>right?
Would it? I would assume that the repulsion cancels out within the
cylinder and that the nett effect is therefore zero.
Caveat... I don't have magic or grimoire in front of me, so I haven't
got access to the text. Feel free to shoot me down.
--
Tony Atkinson
Tony Atkinson
writes
>Zero, if I'm standing on top of the cylinder. There is no speed penalty for
>targeting an object moving either straight towards or straight away from you.
Can you cast through a gate? And can you see the ball?
--
Tony Atkinson
Robert Kelk
>
> >> But that leaves the stability of this device solely up to the vigilance of its
> >> operators. I would like a refinement of this device that could be safely left
> >> unattended for indefinite periods of time.
> >> Suggestions?
> >What about Force Dome?
> >IIRC (don't have the books on hand) it says it creates something
> >impenatrable to
> >physical stuff? So just make the cylinder out of a pernanent Force Dome
> >or a variant.
>
> I think what you mean is an Utter Dome.
>
> And according to official SJG sources, an utter dome (and maybe a force
> dome, too, I don't remember) works by turning the forces it intercepts
> into mana and dumping them back into the local "magic field".
>
> Can you just imagine what would occur if an utter dome were used in this
> manner? Millions points of mana fed directly into a single hex. I have a
> feeling this would push that hex and its neighbors past "High Mana",
> through "Wild Mana", and out the other side into something I'd rather not
> think about...
Magic Items 1 has about half a chapter discussing "mana wells" - places
where mana "naturally" appears in great amounts, and is replenished
after a certain amount of time. While the book says these are
naturally-occurring phenomona, I don't see why they couldn't be created
with an Infinite Mana Well and an Utter Dome...
--
Robert Kelk
robert {dot} kelk {at} pemail {dot} net
Robert Kelk
<snip>
> (Sigh, now I need to figure out how come no one has built this damn thing in my
> campaign world.)
Many inventions that seem obvious to us weren't created for quite a long
time after their component parts were invented. (Example: Anyone
_could_ _have_ put a belt around both Heiro's Steam Engine and a wagon
axle, creating a self-propelled wagon in ancient Greece. Nobody _did_
do anything like that for centuries, AFAIK.)
Thus, nobody has built this thing yet because nobody's thought of
building it yet.
Sakura
>> > Voila. A shelf-sized, Gate-free IMW. Now, can anybody find any
>flaws in this?
>>
>
>
>
>> generates shear forces great enough to excede its material strength, no.
>>
>> This could be resolved by using a MUCH bigger, slower rotating sphere or
>> other radially symetric solid, but a six inch sphere would have to be
>> really strong to hold an apreciable amount of energy.
>>
>
>Hmm... Well, there's always Stone to Metal. Solid titanium, anyone? ;7
Essential Earth, Earth to Stone, then Stone to Metal. It'll be even
stronger. (Hmm, maybe that's how they made scrith for the Ringworld...)
--
Hostes aliengeni me abduxerent. Jeff Johnston - je...@io.com
Qui annus est? http://www.io.com/~jeffj
Robert Kelk
<snip>
> And the horrible thing is -- Earth to Stone is one of the spells any
> apprentice has in his Grimoire, it's not one of the Magery+ required M/VH
> spells.
>
> Yes, mages at TL3 don't know what U-235 is... but why hasn't the Merlin
> timeline from Time Travel Adventures or any other TL7 technomagic civilization
> not suffered magically-induced nuclear terrorism?
Line-of-sight penalties, probably. If you're close enough to see the
column, then you're close enough to be caught in the firestorm. If the
people on Merlin are anything like the people in Real Life, there's a
severe shortage of mages with the On The Edge disadvantage. Those mages
that _do_ have OTE won't all be terrorists, either...
Besides, who says there _hasn't_ been a nuclear incident in the Merlin
world? Just because there wasn't one mentioned in the gamebook doesn't
mean one never happened.
Martin Leslie Leuschen
: >CORRECTIONS:
: >
: >1 kJ is equal to 1 kg moving at 10 m/sec. Measurement of energy in
: >joules is a function of *momentum* NOT *kinetic energy*.
: >
*WHAT?*
What universe did your physics come from? You got it exactly
backwards, energy of a moving object is KE, *not* momentum.
1 J=kg*m^2/s^2
Derivation:
a(cceleration)=d(istance)*t(ime)^2 -> m/s^2
F(orce)=m(ass)*a -> kg*m/s^2
E(nergy)=F*d(istance) -> kg*m^2/s^2
<bonus section>
P(ower)=E/t -> kg*m^2/s^3
For the well of infinite mana, with ball mass M and gravity
field g,
F=Mg
The distance the ball falls over time t will depend on its
current velocity, namely,
d=v0*t + 0.5*a*t^2 Since v0 (initial v) is 0, d=0.5g*t^2
So Energy at time t is
0.5*M*g^2*t^2
Since v=g*t, this is exactly 0.5M*v^2, the KE equation.
Note that it also shows that system energy will increase
parabolically with time, so that a stone of any size will
work fine.
Power output is 0.5M*g^2*t, or linearly increasing with
time.
90,000 kJ/sec = 90 MW, with M=0.001kg, implies waiting
at least 59 years. This could be decreased to 5.9 years
with a 10 gram ball, or 22 days with a 1kg ball.
Note also the g^2 term. You could beef up your system
considerably simply by adding a strong repel spell facing
"down" from the top gate. (Effectively increasing g.)
This has the added bonus of making the thing work even
while in zero gravity.
As a footnote, I do not allow tech college, and *especially*
draw power, in my fantasy games, and put power restrictions
on gates. Things just get too silly otherwise.
: >1 kWh = 3,600,000 J = 10 F
: >1 F = 360,000 J
: >1 MW/sec = 2.7 F/sec
: >
: >According to "Conduct Power", p. 101 of Grimoire, the maximum
: >safe energy a mage can conduct is equal to
: >
: > HT * Magery * Magery * 1/4
: >
: >That "1/4" at the end is important, because it quarters the
: >original estimates. Thus, a HT 10 mage can safely conduct
: >2.5 MW at Magery 1, 10 MW at Magery 2 and 22.5 MW at Magery 3.
: >In other words, 6 Fatigue, 27 Fatigue, and 62 Fatigue
: >respectively.
: >
: >WHAT CAN WE DO WITH IT?:
: >
: >We want at least 250 F available each second. That will feed five
: >HT 10 mages with Magery 3 quite nicely, so will be adequate for all
: >reasonable purposes.
<Snip incorrect physics.)
Regards,
Martinl
Charles Griswold
<description of Infinite Mana Well snipped>
Only one problem -- conservation of energy. If the pellet accumulates X
amount of energy falling 1 yard, it's going to take *exactly* that
amount of energy to teleport it back to the top of the cylinder. That
energy will presumably be extracted from the kinetic energy of the
pellet, leaving it motionless at the top of the cylinder.
If you say that the pellet keeps its kinetic energy, then the Gate has
to get its energy from somewhere else, such as the local mana field.
Once the energy source is depleted (temporarily or permanently), the
Gate will close, the pellet will hit the bottom of the cylinder, and you
get a really big bang.
In short, as Robert Heinlen would say, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A
Free Lunch".
-- Charles Griswold (WARNING -- do not export this .sig :)
#!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
$/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)
Thomas Weigel
Tony Atkinson wrote in message ...
>Chuckg Wrote:
>>Zero, if I'm standing on top of the cylinder. There is no speed penalty
for
>>targeting an object moving either straight towards or straight away from
you.
>
>Can you cast through a gate? And can you see the ball?
According to the Grimoire, Gates "don't exist" from the backside. They're
literally one-sided.
a little fish in a big pond (thomas weigel)
Neko2048
Take what you want of the Chaos bits (or not) and you've got a semi-realistic
early Renaissance world just waiting for adventure.
I'm running a translated WFRP-to-GURPS game as we speak, actually...
Neko
"Life is hard and then you Tao"
Dan Tompkins
to have to make some major revisions to Technomancer, there was nothing
like it mentioned in the original adventure, see TTA page 86.
Dan
Charleson Mambo
And in a bunch of other articles <a bunch of other article numbers>, "A
bunch of other people" <a bunch of other email addreses> wrote:
A bunch of stuff I'm not bothering to repeat.
Somewhere in the thread it was pointed out that keeping some atmosphere in
the IMW to keep the ball at a top speed because the air would also go
through the gates. So the question is, can Gates be made so they are
selectively permeable?
If so, make the gate capable of transporting only lead! (At less cost
because it works less often or greater cost because it give the player
more specific uses for gates? ... hm ..."And the door to my giant vault of
gold is a gate that only passes living matter! Any would be thieves would
have to strip naked to enter and then face my guardien golems bare-fisted,
bare everything actually!, and since they cant get the gold through the
gate anyway they'll just be wasting their time! Nyah Hahahahaha! Hey guys?
Why are you all staring at me like that?"... greater cost, sigh.)
The air is pushed down by the ball, cant go through the gate, get pushed
aside and back up along the wall of the tube, hitting the side of the
falling ball slowing it down. And if you think laminar flow would reduce
the air drag, add the steel band with missile reflection inside the tube ,
serving double duty as baffles breaking up the laminar flow of the air and
increasing drag.
What do you all think? Is it doable? Are selectively permeably gates
possible? Allowable even? I dont relly know enough GURPS magic to be
sure.
Charleson Mambo
--
To send me email, first get rid of "SPAM"
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Trust no one.
Shoot everything.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Charleson Mambo
<kar...@iconn.net> wrote:
> Problem with the Well of *Infinite* Mana as a doomsday weapon
>
> As the BB accelerates, its mass will increase. This means that, given an
> infinitely strong cylinder, that the mass of the BB will continue to
> increase. Eventually, the gravitational field that it generates will become
> so strong that the cylinder will implode. I'm not sure exactly how massive
> the BB would need to be to exerting even a .1 g field at a distance of half
> a meter, but it would certainly be at least millions of tons. If we assume
> that the cylinder fails when the BB masses 1 million tons, then the impact
> could POTENTIALLY generate an impact in the range of 21 BILLION kilotons, if
> the BB actually interacted with sufficient matter to transfer that much
> kinetic energy to the planet. Of course, by the time the BB is generating a
> gravitational field sufficiently strong to implode the cylinder, the BB has
> certainly collapsed into an atom-sized speck of neutronium, or possibly down
> to a black hole. This ultra-dense object will do effectively no damage to
> the planet other than drill a tiny (microscopic?) hole through the planet by
> the tidal forces of that BB at extremely short range.
> Chuckg wrote in message <35a91...@news1.starnetinc.com>...
> >
Wouldn't an atom sized black hole absorb quite a bite out of the planet,
even in the short time it would have going at near lightspeed. Expect
earthquakes at the least, does it go through the hot molten core? How of
that is absorbed? How much heat would be lost? A colder planet with less
tectonics? And would the mass absorbed be great enough to change the
planets gravity? Of course, on the way into the black holes event horizon
an awfull lot of mass gets turned to energy or at least vaporised and
ejected at near lightspeed itself (even before reaching the event horizon
it would have to be going at hellish speed to escape the black holes
gravity, no?)
Just a bunch of questions and guesses. Anybody got any answers?
Pinochet
AStoner942 wrote in message
<199807131311...@ladder03.news.aol.com>...
>I'm about to start a fantasy campaign based in a TL4 society. This all
came
>about due to the Well of Obscene Amounts of Mana discussion. Any good
>sourcebooks that cover TL4? Better yet any REALLY good source material >on
society in our own Renaissance?
You might want to look at GURPS: Swashbuckler, which I just saw that
Titan-Games happens to have a copy for sale...