Planar Travel and scientific research (at TL4-TL5)

[dcarson]

Could a permanent portal to the Plane of Fire let you pipe fire places. Instead of a city gas plant the generates gas that is used for gas lighting and heating you just pipe fire directly. Expensive to build but it is a city wide bit of infrastructure and those are worth serious investments.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by dcarson

Could a permanent portal to the Plane of Fire let you pipe fire places. Instead of a city gas plant the generates gas that is used for gas lighting and heating you just pipe fire directly. Expensive to build but it is a city wide bit of infrastructure and those are worth serious investments.

It could.

There are several fallen civilisations testifying to the dangers involved, though. For some reason, permanent portals tend to attract the attention of extraplanar creatures who really like the idea of vacationing on the Prime Material, often in fairly large numbers. As in, millions upon millions.

Doesn't mean another civilisation won't do their best to improve the safeguards and try again, of course. Using planar gates to pipe in endless heat and fresh water is plenty attractive on its own and when you add that you could visit all sorts of places where rare minerals, gems or other valuable stuff can be picked up off the ground without any work... it makes it tempting.

I'm looking for slightly less ambitious attempts to use the planes. As places you go to experiment, without ever opening a permanent portal between the worlds.

Useful, but not 'utopia or apocalypse' kind of high-stakes bet. More like, 'I may die horribly or I might learn a really useful and fascinating fact that will revolutionalise this one field of study'.

[Flyndaran]

TL 5 is all about the industrial revolution, so it's hard to think of appropriate advances of that era without redoing history in the direction you don't want.

Thinking along the lines of what you don't have at that tech level.

Iconic lodestones that could create permanent magnets for navigation.
Cheap defect free lenses for making sun sighting at sea easier, and the more obvious vision correction (tele/micro)scopes. Weird otolith-like structures from planar creatures, and whatever they use them for.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Room temperature superconductors and magnets? But what use would levitating objects provide?

That's why I'm asking the Hive-Mind. I'm sure there must be something.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Powerful magnets moving past copper wire could generate electricity, but you said that lightning doesn't stay around long enough to be useful.

Not useful as a power source, generally, but you could use this to shock someone right next to it. Probably because you were a sick, twisted sadistic little twerp. And the machine would be 'The Machine'.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Icelander

That's why I'm asking the Hive-Mind. I'm sure there must be something.


Not useful as a power source, generally, but you could use this to shock someone right next to it. Probably because you were a sick, twisted sadistic little twerp. And the machine would be 'The Machine'.

Or it's the device you use to talk to the lightning elementals.
A horribly inefficient way to generate a spark.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Possibly there are local life-forms there that he thinks can survive and maybe even breed on the Prime Material. If this is the case, smelters and foundries will pay top dollar for them. Of course, as far as the efreet are concerned, he's a common cattle rustler, and deserves to be treated accordingly.

Interestingly, the PCs have recently come into possession of a huge complex of smelting/foundry equipment, intended to be powered by the breath of a great red dragon. Who is unfortunately deceased.

They are looking into replacing that with fire elementals.

On the other hand, rustling elementals is something that has already occured to the PCs. I don't want the egg-head wizard to be already engaged in the same crass, commercial schemes as they want him to perform for them.

No, he's into science, now. And if they want him to rustle fire elementals for them, they have to help him perform his experiments.

Which they might eventually learn are also valuable in their own right. Because the merchant prince PC has lots of Luck and Serendipity and is not afraid to use it to ensure that he comes across a steady stream of new things just waiting for his Merchant -27, Finance -23, Market Analysis -23, Propaganda -22 and various other skills to turn it into obscene wealth.

Originally Posted by Dalillama

He could learn things about heat propagation through various materials, what makes good insulators, etc.

True. He's already extremely well informed about that, of course, since he's spent the last few decades being able to summon flame and heat on command.

Wizards like him are a big part of the reason metallurgy is known at TL4+1 to many leading experts in big cities.

Originally Posted by Dalillama

Most applications that occur to me would involve electricity, which is disallowed. If they're powerful enough, though, the effect of launching them from a catapult through a troop of armored men could be amusing.

I suppose. Anything else?

Originally Posted by Dalillama

It might be worth someone's while to make/pay for one permanent portal to the Plane of Salt, inasmuch as it would give their kingdom and/or company and/or family access to an inexhaustible salt mine.

Similarly to the portal to the plane of salt above, a portal to the Plane of Water, combined with a large collection of both serial and parallel reservoirs and catchments, could provide a lot of water power.

Incredibly useful, incredibly dangerous.

The water part has been done several times before. The civilisations that did have always fallen, but in fairness, it's never been linked exclusively to the water portals bringing in terrible planar monsters. Their falls did generally have something to do with meddling with extraplanar powers best left alone.

This does not mean someone will not try again, of course.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

TL 5 is all about the industrial revolution, so it's hard to think of appropriate advances of that era without redoing history in the direction you don't want.

A lot of innovations that didn't rely on high-energy storage stuff also happened at TL5. Clockwork is okay, so are springs and highly efficient mechanical devices, as long as they are powered by animal or human muscle-power.

The strange chemistry of the world is pretty well understood, as TL4+1 is available to those chemists skilled enough to be involved with wizards. Mostly, those are actually alchemists, of course, who use magical reagents to make their concoctions. Those can achieve effects that duplicate TL7+ stuff.

Of course, actually enchanting the potions results in up to TL12^ equivalents*, but cannot be done by anyone except fairly powerful spellcasters.

Materials science has definite advancement possibilities, what with Information spells that can analyse stuff. Only a few applications really require one to travel to other planes to perform the experiments, though. Mostly you can get along with casting fire spells at home.

I'm sure there are other fields I haven't considered, however. That's what the Hive Mind is good for, suggesting things that one wouldn't otherwise consider.

*Insta-healing draughts, etc.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Iconic lodestones that could create permanent magnets for navigation.
Cheap defect free lenses for making sun sighting at sea easier, and the more obvious vision correction (tele/micro)scopes.

Okay, how does one perform experiments on other planes that lead one to those advances?

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Weird otolith-like structures from planar creatures, and whatever they use them for.

I imagine those are built with magic, for magical purposes.

[William]

How's his alchemy? The name Azoth suggests he's in to it.

Studying pure elemental essences in their home planes would allow him to try a lot of small variations on mixtures, cook processes, reaction conditions, etc., which would certainly be a plausible route to rapidly learning secrets not widely available to other alchemists. This could provide him with formulas other alchemists don't have. (If you really want to be mechanical, he could be inventing, with his trips to the Planes functioning as a really high-quality lab.)

For more immediate applications, as long as the Planes are inhabited with a variety of creatures and conditions instead of extremely homogeneous, then exploring generally-unknown places is likely to lead to finds of generally-unknown specimens, whether of elementals, minerals, energies, et cetera. You could give him access to a potion without putting points into alchemy if he finds a secret fountain where the draught can be harvested once every full moon, or similar.

Do you use Words of Power? If he wants to find the elemental Words, the Planes are probably a good place to look.

Does Azoth Malishar answer to or claim membership in any wider organization? Sending explorers somewhere is a traditional way of planting a flag. If his activities are strengthening someone's claim to control and exploit regions of the elemental Planes, his trips themselves could be attracting external funding.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by William

How's his alchemy? The name Azoth suggests he's in to it.

He was named by his parents and the name reflects his quick-temper more than his interests. He is an archmage and has a wide knowledge of magical matters, including alchemy, but it's just one field of study among many he has mastered.

Originally Posted by William

Studying pure elemental essences in their home planes would allow him to try a lot of small variations on mixtures, cook processes, reaction conditions, etc., which would certainly be a plausible route to rapidly learning secrets not widely available to other alchemists. This could provide him with formulas other alchemists don't have. (If you really want to be mechanical, he could be inventing, with his trips to the Planes functioning as a really high-quality lab.)

That's a possibility.

Originally Posted by William

For more immediate applications, as long as the Planes are inhabited with a variety of creatures and conditions instead of extremely homogeneous, then exploring generally-unknown places is likely to lead to finds of generally-unknown specimens, whether of elementals, minerals, energies, et cetera.

Indeed. He has been a planar explorer for years, now. On the other hand, I want him to be performing some specific experiments on the Plane of Fire as well.

Originally Posted by William

You could give him access to a potion without putting points into alchemy if he finds a secret fountain where the draught can be harvested once every full moon, or similar.

I was thinking that collecting some form of fiery mana from the Elemental Plane of Fire would probably be useful for magical components and the creation of items having to do with fire.

That's probably one of the reasons the efreet don't want anyone messing about in those caves and the origin reason Azoth went there. The place is lousy with mystically-attuned eternal flame which can be harvested and used to power fire spells or items.

But that's not what he's doing there this time.* No, this time, it's FOR SCIENCE!

*Though he might as well pick up some while he's there.

Originally Posted by William

Do you use Words of Power? If he wants to find the elemental Words, the Planes are probably a good place to look.

I haven't so far, as no PC does more than dabble in wizardry, but it is, of course, axiomatic that the Elemental Planes contain many arcane secrets relating to magic that employs those elements.

Originally Posted by William

Does Azoth Malishar answer to or claim membership in any wider organization? Sending explorers somewhere is a traditional way of planting a flag. If his activities are strengthening someone's claim to control and exploit regions of the elemental Planes, his trips themselves could be attracting external funding.

Azoth is a government minister in his home city of Ravens Bluff, being responsible for the administration of matters relating to elementalists wizards and magic. The relatively new Ministry of Magic is viewed as a naked power-grab on the part of the government by the established Wizards Guild, but it has not encroached all that much on the traditional prerogatives of the Guild and Azoth remains a member in good standing.

Azoth amassed a considerable fortune through adventuring and has been financing his own research, to the tune of millions upon millions of GURPS $. Even a huge fortune can't last forever, however. As it happens, the PCs are his new financial backers.

[patchwork]

Moving gasses through sealed containers (which sounds like something Azoth might do for any number of reasons) could let him discover air conditioning. Boyle's Law and basic clockwork is all it takes. Which is something people will pay money for. Of course, without electricity you need a water mill or something similar to power it, but it's still probably cheaper than paying a mage. This doesn't require the planes, but it seems like something he might stumble into.

It also lets you discover canning. While it seems this would be useless to ordinary farmers in your world, canned food is incredibly important for military logistics. The first empire with it can probably embark on a series of lightning-fast 'acquisitions'.

Like others, the first 20 ideas that occur to me all depend on electrochemistry that doesn't happen in this world.