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Old 02-01-2023, 08:53 PM   #151
hal
 
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Default Re: Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

Hi ericthered. Nice analysis and layout. Some time back, CHIVALRY AND SORCERY 3rd edition spelled out some interesting rules for food value and the working man. In a nutshell, labor requires energy, which in turn, requires an increase in caloric intake (aka amount of food as measured in calories). If Marching unencumbered for 1 hour burns up one fatigue per GURPS rules, a mage who casts a spell is burning up how much energy relative to that of a marching man? Food (no pun intended) for thought.

Medieval farming methods utilized a straight line approach for an animal pulling the plow. Assuming that a world where GURPS MAGIC exists, can there be found an alternative to straight line plowing? The answer may involve the use of a Mageborn casting Shape Earth. The purpose of plowing the land is to break the soil and render it capable of accepting seed - which is generally speaking, cast by hand.

HARN MANOR gives you yeilds in bushels per acre - so you don't have to go the route of using GURPS based rules. If you divide the yield per acre by the type of grains being planted as a function of value per bushel, the yield values match that of historical farming returns circa 1200 AD It is one of the reasons I rather liked the HARN MANOR rules back when they first came out. Historically, Wheat Grains should run about 9 silver pennies per bushel instead of what is listed in HARN WORLD, but that was a world design decision made by an author who is no longer alive. Asking him why he chose the value he did is not something anyone can do short of a seance.

As for GURPS rules and energy for spells and all that fun stuff...

I've never quite understood why GURPS made a distinction between fatigue lost through spell casting and ordinary fatigue lost through exertion. GMs can rule as they wish as to the logic behind the rules - so I won't go through the rules regarding breath control and recovering fatigue lost through spell casting. I will say however, that absent the use of circular plowing techniques - that using straight circular area calculations for blelss plants is technically not feasible with the rules as written. A circle spell effect cast on a rectangular plot of land will always leave some of it missing.

And last but not least. You may want to google the amount of time required to reap an acre of land as well as threshing and winnowing a bushel of grain.

One major problem with the Bless plants spell is that it doubles the yield somehow without saying how. Grains as a rule tend to be the same size and weight - so much so that they became a more or less standard of weight. The number of grains per stalk is a function of genetics. How you can double the yield of grains would necessitate double the number of stalks, which is itself, a function of the number of seeds sown. Short of the spell making TWO stalks sprouting from a single seed - that becomes a minor nit.

There is an issue with the fact that not all seeds sown actually sprout in real life, so bless plants may increase the number of seeds sown actually germinanting, but I'll leave that as an "interesting aside" as opposed to actively demanding a solution to the issue. ;)
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Old 02-02-2023, 03:06 PM   #152
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Default Re: Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

Quote:
Originally Posted by hal View Post
If Marching unencumbered for 1 hour burns up one fatigue per GURPS rules, a mage who casts a spell is burning up how much energy relative to that of a marching man?
I'd lean against trying to convert FP into diet. I'm happy with using the caloric requirements of an "active lifestyle" for any mage who is doing a lot of casting. I suspect they'll consume a lot of food simply by virtue of making money: I think the previous post establishes that a mage can function as 30 acres ex nihilo, and thus be a fairly wealthy peasant.


Quote:
Assuming that a world where GURPS MAGIC exists, can there be found an alternative to straight line plowing? The answer may involve the use of a Mageborn casting Shape Earth.
given my experience with shape earth, I kind of doubt its going to be terribly efficient. It effects a cubic yard per FP. If plowing requires 6 inches of depth, that's 6 square yards per FP. A 50 hour week lets you get 300 FP of plowing, for 1800 square yards in a week... which is less than half an acre. Low-Tech Compendium 3 says TL0 folks using sticks are faster than Shape Earth on unmodified FP.


Quote:
HARN MANOR gives you yeilds in bushels per acre - so you don't have to go the route of using GURPS based rules.
I mean, I sort of like using the Gurps rules, and I don't have a reflexive understanding of bushels... but we can turn bushels into lbs at 1:60, and it could be interesting to compare.



Quote:
I've never quite understood why GURPS made a distinction between fatigue lost through spell casting and ordinary fatigue lost through exertion.
Hear! Hear!... But here we are. The magic number 15 is also tied up in this



Quote:
I will say however, that absent the use of circular plowing techniques - that using straight circular area calculations for bless plants is technically not feasible with the rules as written. A circle spell effect cast on a rectangular plot of land will always leave some of it missing.
Sort of. If you're willing to miss some of your land (as much as 1/4) and your radius fits within your field shape, you're fine. Wikipedia says the "Ideal" Selion is 66 feet by 660 feet, but has no reference other than the numbers working out. With some very light investigating of the literature, it looks like 10 yards across was a more typical length. Using the 10 yard radius for the spell, two adjacent selions will be 484 yards long. You can fit 24 castings along that length, hitting about 75% of the field. So you cover 2 acres in a week, but this "uses" ~2.5 acres of land.


Quote:
And last but not least. You may want to google the amount of time required to reap an acre of land as well as threshing and winnowing a bushel of grain.
Yeah, LTC 3 gives harvest time hours per acre, but doesn't split up reaping and threshing. That takes a little bit of profit off of the bless-plant gains.


Quote:
One major problem with the Bless plants spell is that it doubles the yield somehow without saying how.... I'll leave that as an "interesting aside" as opposed to actively demanding a solution to the issue. ;)
Yeah, that's an interesting aside. but I mean, its magic!
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Old 02-02-2023, 11:01 PM   #153
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Default Re: Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

I had a look at the earlier postings of the thread and there actually seems to be more of the overarching setting information in the thread than I remembered. (Together with some information that's just confirming "the overarching rule about X is that there is no overarching rule, the monarch keeps out of that and lets knights make their own rules"). Page 7 particularly seems to have a lot of useful information.

I'm still not clear whether Hal is currently planning on throwing randomly generated events at us every now and then, or whether we're each supposed to make a table and do that ourselves, or maybe Hal gives us his table to use ourselves (which might be a lot easier, if Hal's not going to generate them himself), or what.

What rule is Hal using to generate the ST, DX, IQ and HT? A few different ideas seem to have been kicked around and I've forgotten where we were up to.
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Old 02-03-2023, 10:49 AM   #154
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Default Re: Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

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Originally Posted by Inky View Post

I'm still not clear whether Hal is currently planning on throwing randomly generated events at us every now and then, or whether we're each supposed to make a table and do that ourselves, or maybe Hal gives us his table to use ourselves (which might be a lot easier, if Hal's not going to generate them himself), or what.
Hi Inky,
I plan on using both tables and my ability to throw up a scenario at the drop of a hat. Ever wonder what happens to a community when its mill burns to the ground? That could happen as a possible scenario. Ever wonder why weather was so important during the harvesting of crops? Rain in particular, could beat down those heavily laden stalks of grass with the grains nearly ready to land on the ground and germinate for next year - only the farmers don't want that to happen, they want to harvest it, thresh and winnow it, and store it for next year. Grain that hits the ground can be lost to the harvest.

Like ericthered - you may decide "ok, I've got the village, and I trust my village reeve will handle the details, as I don't really want to be bothered by that. I want to build a few NPC mageborn and see how they interact with the village. You're perfectly welcome to do that. The things you discover may prove to be enlightening as you suggest things that no one has given much thought about. For example? Suppose you decide to build a magery 0 Earth Mage with an IQ of 10. You know that mageborn is 28 years old, and you think "ok, age him using the time use rules" or you even take ericthered's idea, and use GURPS Locations: Worminghall. More specifically, the rules for studying and gaining experience points for spells or skills.


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Originally Posted by Inky View Post
What rule is Hal using to generate the ST, DX, IQ and HT? A few different ideas seem to have been kicked around and I've forgotten where we were up to.
At the time I more or less finalized my mageborn app, I had used 2d6/2 (rounded down) +7.

After seeing how it generates the primary stats, I grew dis-satisfied and have a better working model of what I think I will use going forward:

3d6/3 (rounded up) +7. The reason I like this approach better is because I did a statistical analysis of what the probabilities were for each number coming up, and the final results for stats in the range for 8 on up to 13. In the original version (2d6/2) - the results were such that 8's occured more often than 13. With the new method - each pair of numbers have an equal chance of happening. Ie 8 has the same odds of happening as 13. 9 has the same chance of appearing as 12. 10 has the same odds of being rolled as an 11 does.

Secondary attributes will be rolled as 4d3/2-4. That means that any derived secondary attribute will modify the primary attribute by values of +/-2, with the bulk of events hovering at 0, and the next most common hovering around +/-1.

Rather than say more, I'll end it here. :)
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Old 02-03-2023, 03:22 PM   #155
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Default Re: Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

Some additional discoveries about the "Bless Plants" Mage:

  • One week of work will "cover" 2.5 acres but yield ~1.47 acres worth of extra crops*
  • Thinking it over, if the mage is free to cast on whichever field they are paid to, they can probably walk away with about 80% of the extra they produce**
  • Timing is everything. There is a fair amount of adjudication to do around this. Can you bless winter grain that's just going into the ground? Fruit trees in the middle of winter? How early in their growing season do you need to target them? The stingiest interpretations can keep this spell's income for its user to about ~750d. If they can work from the planting of the winter grain in "September" to midway through the growing season in "June", they can earn something around 2500d. before ceremonial magic.
*Post 152 shows 1 acre takes 12 castings, and I'm working with 30 castings in a week (50 hours to recover). this gives 2.5 acres. pi/4 of this isn't covered by the spell, and 75% of the spells fail. 2.5*pi/4*.75 =~1.47
** Its pretty close to an extra 10% per acre. This assumes that the Lord can't extract more out of them through some sort of pressure: maybe one of those licenses, or requiring some of their days of labor to be using the magic rather than reaping, or they make a contract in exchange for paying for the mage's training, or something.
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Old 02-03-2023, 03:51 PM   #156
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Default Re: Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

Earth To Stone is our first economy-breaking spell, because it also functions as earth to metal and stone to metal. For 6 Energy, someone with magery 1 can turn a cubic yard of earth into a "simple", metal, like "iron or bronze".



They can produce a cubic yard of bronze from dirt every hour. That's 6 tons of bronze every hour. LTC3 throws out the price of 4$ for a lb of copper if it was readily available (an iffy proposition). This mage is making almost $50,000 an hour! This is of course not economically sustainable, the market won't bear it. But this means that iron and bronze, at the very least, can be everywhere.


Paradoxically, I think this means that scrap metal is next to worthless. Somebody got rich a long time ago, but its not you, and its not today. Only shaped metal has value. Or scrap metal in useful shapes, like the industrial stock for wrought iron we have today.



Which leaves some interesting questions:
  • What skill do you use to shape a plow out of clay? Can the manor support someone who's job is to learn the tricks of constructing clay creations, as well as a mage who only knows how to cast the spell?
  • Can you really get a sharp edge with clay, or will smiths have a job putting the final edges on things?
  • How hard is it to get a thin "plate" of earth? Or a shape that will easily turn into wire? Metal's weight is a serious liability in a lot of situations.
  • What kind of cost savings do you get by forming something out of clay rather than beating iron into that shape?
  • Why does Harn Manor not have any Potters show up as craftsmen?
  • What Metal Items does the Manor need if It can get them in large quantities? especially items that won't need work afterwords.
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Old 02-03-2023, 08:25 PM   #157
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Default Re: Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

Hi ericthered,

As you may have guessed, when GURPS GRIMOIRE first came out, STONE TO METAL was one of the first spells I ever disallowed in any of my campaigns. That GURPS MAGIC for 4e combined two spells into the one as it currently is, is sad, but not fixable.

Earth to Metal as written, would have the consequence of making the creation of money impossible. The basic premise of metalic coins is that they are worth the value attached to them (more or less) to the extent that manufactured metal created wholesale with GURPS MAGIC would have no more value than a wooden popsicle stick.

You also hit the sticking point in Bless plants - at what point does the casting of the spell no longer qualify as valid use. Casting the spell just before harvest on grains would be a no-brainer.

But these are world building decisions on the part of the GM, which - while not allowed in my campaign worlds, may well be possible in yours. Meanie that I am - I would suggest you explore the possibilities of how this spell, if allowed unfettered into a campaign, might change things.

For example? A fire mage working to augment the normal processes of smelting ores - may very well simply start with a half level amount of "stone" and convert it to metal after using shape earth to get it to a given shape. Wire is drawn metal where you pull a given diameter of metal through a hole slightly smaller in diameter. In theory, one could make chain based armor much more cheaply. But that fire mage aspect I mentioned? Imagine him starting the process at which a certain amount of material is heated up to a given temperature. Then let natural processes take over. That Fire mage has essentially lowered the amount of fuel required to smelt metal.

The funny thing about surplus economies is that when you have a surplus of goods (be it food or material goods), their overall value drops. Take for instance, a town of say - 5,000 souls. You know that the human body requires roughly 4 lbs of food per day based upon ancient logistics. That means that 5,000 souls will require rough 20,000 lbs of food daily (not including any animals used for muscle such as draft horses or oxen teams). Oddly enough, if you value a bushel of grains at about 50 lbs per bushel, you can get an estimate of approximately how much a city needs daily (400 bushels). At roughly 8 bushels per acre - that's about 50 acres of land per day or about 18,250 acres of land per year.

If you double the yield of food per acre, the locals would have to only set aside roughly 9,125 acres of land (more or less depending on the weather).

What happens then, when more than this is cultivated for the use of the City? Historical answer is "the price drops". What happens if you provide less than this? The price rises.

THAT is one of the hidden surprises that realistically, limit what the effect will be on the use of Bless Plants - but only if you have that level of understanding of ye olde tyme econcomics. ;)

In any event - left out of the equation is what happens when you cast a bless plant spell and a mageborn does an "oopsie" that results in the opposite effect desired (Critical failure results roll). A mageborn with a skill adjusted to 8 for what ever reason, will find that only 1 spell in 4 succeeds. SKill 10 means he has a 50/50 chance of success.

What has not been factored into all of this - is human nature. The number of accused witches and warlocks in actual history, who were convicted in the minds of the local community of hexing planting and livestock was sufficiently high that you have to think it will happen in a society where magic actually works - begs the question "how does a mageborn protect themselves from accusations of foul play?"

How do you adjudicate the effects of a spell that fails and the mage has to recast the spell? How does the local community respond to accidents? Do they throw a mageborn into a pool of water with a weight using Trial by Ordeal to prove that his intentions were pure white while their crops whither and die? If a two headed calf is born - does that evil portent show that the mageborn is in league with the devil? **shrug** We'll leave that be for purposes of this "thread" but leave that thought in your mind "hey - how WOULD a mageborn try to market their skills and services where critical back fires can mess things up?"
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Old 02-03-2023, 08:29 PM   #158
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Default Re: Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

Touching on another aspect raised by ericthered...

What value is placed on the labor of a mageborn's labor? Unskilled labor is valued at 1 silver penny per day, or 2 silver pennies per day during harvest (not shown in HARN MANOR, but shown in HARN WORLD (which itself is deemed to be two books - Harn World and Harndex). HARN MANOR skips the whole issue and just assumes an average of 1d per day instead of making it seasonal.

None the less, what is the value of skilled labor going to be, because I largely suspect that the lord will receive some pushback from his mageborn if he tries to value it at the value of a mere unskilled peasant's.

Then again - some lords MAY try to get away with that on their manor on the presumption that if they paid for the mageborn's schooling, their skilled status is strictly a function of the Lord's generosity, and their labor is in fact, valued at only 1 silver penny (1d) per day.

Of course, were that the case and the mageborn are freeborn - that would give them a lot of incentive to settle elsewhere - no?

:)
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Old 02-06-2023, 01:57 AM   #159
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Default Re: Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
Earth To Stone is our first economy-breaking spell, because it also functions as earth to metal and stone to metal. For 6 Energy, someone with magery 1 can turn a cubic yard of earth into a "simple", metal, like "iron or bronze".


They can produce a cubic yard of bronze from dirt every hour. That's 6 tons of bronze every hour. LTC3 throws out the price of 4$ for a lb of copper if it was readily available (an iffy proposition). This mage is making almost $50,000 an hour! This is of course not economically sustainable, the market won't bear it. But this means that iron and bronze, at the very least, can be everywhere.

Paradoxically, I think this means that scrap metal is next to worthless. Somebody got rich a long time ago, but its not you, and its not today. Only shaped metal has value. Or scrap metal in useful shapes, like the industrial stock for wrought iron we have today.



Which leaves some interesting questions:
  • What skill do you use to shape a plow out of clay? Can the manor support someone who's job is to learn the tricks of constructing clay creations, as well as a mage who only knows how to cast the spell?
  • Can you really get a sharp edge with clay, or will smiths have a job putting the final edges on things?
  • How hard is it to get a thin "plate" of earth? Or a shape that will easily turn into wire? Metal's weight is a serious liability in a lot of situations.
  • What kind of cost savings do you get by forming something out of clay rather than beating iron into that shape?
  • Why does Harn Manor not have any Potters show up as craftsmen?
  • What Metal Items does the Manor need if It can get them in large quantities? especially items that won't need work afterwords.

If a mage can use Earth to Stone (Metal), then metal will no longer be valuable. The economy would have adjusted. It means that the money will be based on gems, or some other material/object/item that a mage cannot just make. Maybe it will be in ounces of pepper or saffron, or vials of cannabis extract. Or maybe board-feet of ancient hardwood that takes 30 years to grow before it can be harvested. It just won't be a metal, because that will no longer be rare enough to have much value.

But it also means that iron/steel are cheap (assuming that there are enough mages to make the iron stock in high quantities), and there is a booming business of smithies churning out cheap metal goods. Much like an industrialized society, where cheap metal goods can be found in any Home Depot or Department Store. Bespoke items (plate harness, for instance, although that's a late TL3 invention and may not be available yet) would still be expensive, not for the materials, but for the labor and skill involved.

As for wire-drawing for mail....It's easier to stamp out the rings from flat stock. It's easier to rivet flat rings, and many of the rings used (1 in 4, I think) were solid rings anyway. Butted mail isn't useful, it's rubbish and good only for cosplay. Although I suppose a smith could cut the wire pieces, pound the ends flat, and form them into links which he can then rivet.

Sculpting is used to form clay. Sculpt a clay plow, turn it to metal, and have a smith sharpen the edge.

Use adobe bricks, turn them into metal ingots. Or rod stock, or flatten sheets of clay for flat stock. If metalworking is going to be a major industry of the area, invest in a water-powered trip-hammer.

Assuming that iron is as cheap as dirt, the cost savings comes from it being easier and quicker for a sculptor to make a plow, rather than having a smith make a plowshare.

Metal items, large quanitites: Nails. Rolling out wormie-dealies and then turning them into metal is much quicker than the old smithing method (although nails with a square cross section seem to hold better than round ones do). Various hardware pieces like hinges, hooks, spatulas, drinking vessels, bottles, latches, brackets, etc would all be useful on a more or less daily basis.


On a related note, Essential Earth costs 8 mana for a cubic yard. That works out to be a 3' by 9' area, assuming 1' deep, which should be plenty for growing crops. It triples yield, and is permanent (although I would assume that crop rotation must still be a thing, but we are talking about the mystical essence of earth here, so maybe it's not necessary). Over time, the entire manor's fields can be converted, even if it takes a few generations. Triple yield, year in, year out, although still subject to floods, weather, bugs, and diseases.
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Old 02-06-2023, 02:59 PM   #160
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Default Re: Mageborn are like Coins - Worldbuilding TL 3

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On a related note, Essential Earth costs 8 mana for a cubic yard. That works out to be a 3' by 9' area, assuming 1' deep, which should be plenty for growing crops. It triples yield, and is permanent (although I would assume that crop rotation must still be a thing, but we are talking about the mystical essence of earth here, so maybe it's not necessary). Over time, the entire manor's fields can be converted, even if it takes a few generations. Triple yield, year in, year out, although still subject to floods, weather, bugs, and diseases.
I'm looking at Essential Earth first, because I've already done a lot of the groundwork on agriculture. Thanks for pointing it out.

Does Harn even do crop rotation? I think its abstracted into the various crop types they list. I know LTC3 has info on it.

Quote:
On a related note, Essential Earth costs 8 mana for a cubic yard
I'm looking at the 4e spell, and its not giving quantity.

Essential Earth is weird, because it lasts. a 48 hour week will yield 36 castings, or 108 square yards. That's an extra 30 meals per year, from that one week of work. It takes 44 weeks (almost a year) to do an acre, after which that acre does the work of three acres. Sir Zeedrick has an 1800 acre manor... so it will take a very long time for a single mage to cover the manor without breath-holding, recover energy, or ceremonial casting.

Essential earth won't keep you alive with its increase ... that year. In a vacuum, it produces 2/3rd of the food to keep just the caster alive, and that's a little delayed. If its combined with another mage casting bless plants*, that's enough to keep feed the essential earth mage that year, as its doubled, and its likely that bless plants mages will love targeting essential earth before the other crops, because of the increase.

Essential earth gives two extra acres of crops per year. If combined with a perfect bless plants, the total increase is five extra crops per year: I suggest that the essential earth can claim 3.5 of these crops and bless plants 1.5: the fair split is certainly between 2.5 vs 2.5 and 4 vs 1. If combined with the imperfect bless plants method described in post 152 and 155, the increase is closer to 3.8 than to 5, and I'd suggesting splitting the credit .9 to 2.9.

Using an expected value of five years of crops (a very modern value, but you have to start somewhere), essential earth on an acre of wheat is worth
  • 10 crops (720d wheat) without bless earth
  • 14.5 crops (1044d wheat) with haphazard bless earth
  • 17.5 crops (1260d wheat) if you're hitting the whole acre with bless earth somehow (either ceremonial magic or only enchanting 100 yard radius circles)
If the mage can convince people to be more farsighted than 5 years, they can collect more: a 10 year time to pay off is double that. And if you're really working (50 weeks rather than 44), you can add an additional 13% or so.

Essential earth competes fairly well with bless plants. The floor for each of them is around 700d, which is a good living, but not economy breaking. I think bless plants might end up being the better investment for the mage themselves, in terms of income, but it depends on a lot of things. Essential earth also has better economic spells in its prereq chain, like shape earth and earth to stone, so it could be a spell that gets picked up as a way to make money when you have nothing more profitable to do.

The number of skills competing for the attention of an earth mage is a matter for another day: there are a lot, and this is one place where specifics are going to matter!
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