OOOOOHHHHH!!!

I love the way you think!!!

Now that we are back in business we have some job openings for mana engineers at Doom.

You are going to be very high on the list!

I just need to snail mail you a package with some stuff from my garden so that you can apply in person at Mount Doom!

Probably need to find you a wizard as well. Hmm, not sure, maybe I can get Vasselle to summon/bind/enslave you!

Tizzy I am a fan of like 90% of that statement I just don't particularly care to be enslaved as I am sure you know that feel.

In regards to being a mana engineer I would really enjoy that job there are just so many devious ways you can generate mana.

There is also a lot of mundane things you can do to improve on things like for example all those high tech goodies you run on electricity converted from mana you could instead run them on electricity generated geothermally or really environmentally in the abyss it lets you save on mana which you can use for other purposes.

It is all just really kinda exciting all the possibilities!

That is a valid point Iume. It just depends on how far disparate the quantity of mana generated is. The next thing is you are viewing bacterial biomass as small which is true yet at the same time you can fit exceedingly larger quantities of that biomass in the same space for example in 50 x 50 x 50 space you can easily fit 10 to 15 times more bacterial biomass than you could wizard (since fleshy beings have so much wasted space inside having thoracic cavities and what not). So say your individual bacteria only generates 25% of the mana of what a wizards cell would be capable of you still come out about even. Mind you I have not busted out a calculator figure it out exactly but that seems to be a pretty profitable endeavor to me especially when you factor in maintenance and what not. That and bacteria require less energy for life than wizards do.

Edited by user Tuesday, September 20, 2016 2:36:39 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Oh yeah I definitely agree on there being a difference in mana production ratio.

Assuming on a whole scale yes the bacteria would require more as there is more of it but I think when you break it down to the individual cell scale the requirements are less as on a whole bacterial cells are simpler with less complex processes so they are less energy intensive.

What make bacteria so great is you can easily alter and create new strains which could result in higher mana production etc. Which is harder to do on sentient organisms they tend to object to that kind of experimentation. While bacteria have no choice but to be your guinea pig for experimentation.

This is probably one of those things you would have to set up and let run to see how it works out unless you want to do all kinds of high order math with a bunch of unknown variables that you cannot find out with out several separate rounds of testing granted in the Abyss you basically have unlimited time for all kinds of interesting experiments.

Actually now that I think about it bacteria do indeed have sentience granted its exceedingly low sentience but they respond and change in accordance with external stimuli in ways plants cannot.

They would definitely be able to provide key information then. The fact that druids and shamans are able to gather mana in that fashion is at least proof of concept. Its just a question of being able to scale that up to a more industrial level in a realistically feasible fashion.

Actually, some healers (specifically animage healers and the priests of healing gods like Hendel--a healing god) would probably know about bacteria.

Not sure other clerics would, they have very straightforward rituals that they learn, much like wizards. So it's very much a 'canned'/'miracle' approach. They would not need to know. But they might have different rituals for viral vs bacterial symptoms? Maybe? Depends on the god I suppose.

Druids? The animistic/animage like ones, probably do know because they would heal like an animage healer.

Priests of Healing gods, like Hendel, I assume study medicine and healing in great depth, so I would suspect they would understand the difference between viral and bacterial infections.

Trained/experienced animage Healers would know given the way they work. They would be able to scan the body for "foreign animus" and should be able to detect it. Think back to Maelen on the ship doing healing; that is how they work at a very microscopic level. Very much like Deryni healing in Katherine Kurtz' books.

Heh, heh you note that we mentioned it had it's own independent power supply?

The problem is, they're just sitting there, sleeping. Not actively generating much mana, however they do produce a lot just by existing.

Doom has a very large primary mana pool and several auxiliary ones (subject to limitations on multiple MPs) (see all the crystals in the basement--these were used to create them)

The amount Doom can produce is definitely limited by the number of people there. At the moment it's very weak compared to what it used to produce when there were 25 to 30 thousand people living there, demons, d'orcs, titans, deities. Also, don't forget there were 666 Doomalogues out there generating power. Each with mana pools and thousands of people living nearby having shamanic ceremonies, parties, wars etc.

Purer mana is basically going to be higher octane, you need less of it do the same thing. This is one big advantage the gods have.

We talked about using our guests for filtering, but decided against it as the flow would not be regular enough and fluctuations would risk destabilizing them and the system. I.e. wake them up. Decided at the time it wasn't worth the risk. You really don't want to suddenly have a bunch of angry gods, titans and monsters awake and rioting your basement.

Not fun!

It's a bit more complex than that.

One big thing to keep in mind is that the gods really don't like deploying their resources on the material planes for a variety of reasons.

There are several things that keep the various gods at bay but the biggest is other gods. Anytime one god or pantheon gets too involved on a material plane it attracts the others and war can escalate.

I think you need to view the entire thing as a game of "Powers" and "Super Powers" not unlike conflicts between nations, particularly during the colonial era, and even during the cold war and today.

The material planes are the central power supply for the gods. It's also supposed to be "shared territory" if one pantheon starts getting too much undo influence somewhere, others will move in to stake their claims.

The worshipers on various planes are basically colonists who send valuable resources back to the "old country" e.g. outer plane. Every pantheon has its colonies from which it extracts mana. It's a balancing act.

At the moment, Doom is still weak (they are missing 20K+ warriors and 664 doomalogues), and its biggest ace in the hole is Tartarus. With Orcus gone, it was a "hope and pray to ourselves" that the system doesn't break down and people escape. Now that Tom's there? Doom once more has a key and means to open the prison and let angry people out.

As a god, you really don't want a kraken popping up on your favorite world and wiping out your largest cities.

And there are worse things than the titans in Tartarus. Notice how you haven't seen any of those eldritch tentacle gods running around in millenia? That could change.

In any event, part of the rebuilding will be rethinking old strategies and how power is distributed.

And finally, you are only starting to see what the D'Orcs can actually do. You will see much more in Book IV. I know for a fact that Ragala-nargoloth and Aarg-nargoloth are going to be making thunder and lightning in places other than the bedroom! Almost pity those alfar in their little temple on top of the dead doomalogue....

Yes, although a lot of the digesting problem was that he was stuffed. I.e. he was stretching his mana capacity. He'd consumed too much mana, very rich mana.

So it's basically like he'd been to a mana buffet and gorged himself and was feeling very bloated and sick with too much mana.

All holy artifacts are made with purified mana, and then the priests seal it/dedicate with the god's signature/nature/etc. For this purpose think of the mana as being the paper. Purified mana would be like really good parchment that takes the ink well without bleeding, seeping and is easy to read. Raw mana would be rough, uneven and the signature would come out a bit sloppy, uneven etc.

Note that these are "feelings" that an aniimage would probably use to describe the mana. Wizards generally don't notice such things much.

This is also basically why using Tiernon's refined mana was so nice against the Unlife. It was very pure and designed to use against Unlife and for healing. When using it, he was basically acting as a cleric of Tiernon. Now that being said, if he were taught, he could learn to purify mana for himself. Phaestus obviously knows how it's done and could build purification devices.

However, after much discussion, we decided it wasn't a high priority project because it wouldn't make that much of a difference for what we did, and because Doom uses a lot more "live" recently created mana than the gods do, you'd have to do a lot of the filtering in real time, which could slow things down.

Wow. Don't know, it's all science to me!

Yes, I think that is pretty close to what they are doing. We also know they transmit it encrypted streams to protect it from being hijacked.

Although for wizards, it might be a bit more complicated....although it could be, I'm not a wizard. Let me think.

As a layman, my understanding is that the mana is relatively neutral, and it's the element and its astrological associations, along with the caster's that makes the difference.

But I suppose that would work as the underlyer.

For example a person with a water sign is a bit better with water magic than say fire magic, and someone with a water sign doing a water spell during a water period of time has the best chances of getting it right.

So, yes, it could be the harmonics adding up, if the elements had associated frequencies as well. Mathematically it would make the most sense.