The Magic Art of Metallic Air, Part III

This is post 200 for The Everwayan!

Sitka Tlingit Moose Hide Armor
with Chinese Coins

The Magic Art of Metallic Air is a magical tradition practiced in the realm of The Rust Gate. This Art is best known for the mage-assassin's spell Coagulated Metallic Air, but there are several levels of casting possible with it. Not all of them are deadly.

All spells cast with Metallic Air magic require that the caster fuel their spell using Dragon-backed metals of some kind. Shirts and gauntlets made from coin mail, and strings of coins are popular casting materials. But other Dragon-backed metal materials such as thuribles, scepters, and toys are also popular. Quantity/weight is always a consideration, since such metals will be exhausted as the spell is cast.

The practitioner should have either the Element of Air or Earth at the same level as the Magic level being used.


The Magic Art of Metallic Air

At this magic level...A mage can:

1: Create clinking sounds such as those of:

• Men-at-arms in chain or scale mail armor
• Coins being counted
• A silversmith or jeweler at work

2: Increase the luster of a metallic mirror or surface (such as armor)

3: Create a shimmering metallic cloud that can blind enemies during bright daylight

4: Coat an object in the desired metal

5: Summon Serpent Coils - a waving mass of metallic springs and coils to impede the advance of an enemy

6: Coagulate Metallic Air - encase a average individual (Earth 3) in a suspension of metallic air, suffocating and coating them in the metal of the caster's choice

7: Arrow cloud - a single arrow with a metallic head becomes a cloud of metallic arrows capable of killing a small group of people (Earth 3)

8: Unleash a metallic tsunami upon an large group, devastating a city, army, or large beast (Earth 5)

9: Call and infuriate the Dragon whose hoard was used to fuel this spell; in its wrath, the Dragon will despoil an entire kingdom or a mighty beast (Earth 6)

10: Open a Gate to the fabled City of Brass

The Magic Art Of Metallic Air, Pt. II

http://www.ehow.com/
info_8429605_metal-polishing-air-tools.html

The Magic Art of Metallic Air combines two Elements: Air and Earth. There is only one text that mentions this Art in the Library of All Worlds. The Book of the Diggers lists this form of magic as one of the dangers that miners face when delving in the Dragon- and Ifrit-infested Hot and Cold Realms.

Its powers manifest in various ways, including gaseous-metallic clouds (this is one way to create mirrors or coat other objects in a metallic sheen), serpent coil air (a striking weapon), and deadly coagulated metallic air - a favorite of the magical assassins from the realm of The Rust Gate.

The Magic Art of Metallic Air has ties to the Dragon Trade: The Book of the Diggers states that metallic coins from Dragon hoards are required to cast and control this form of magic.  Bronze coins work as well as gold coins for this purpose. Practitioners of this Magic Art wear strings of Dragon-backed coins when they cast their magic. For exceptionally powerful spells, a mage may wear entire shirts and skirts made of coin-mail.

One way that realms may protect themselves from this form of magic is by promulgating and enforcing sumptuary laws. Unfortunately the realm of The Rust Gate has long since lost the political will to regulate its citizenry in this way.

The Magic Art Of Metallic Air, Pt. I

I am developing a specialized form of magic for Everway, which is a new experience for me.  Unlike Mage, a 90s RPG that I really liked a lot and did some fan writing for, I never tried to create my own magical traditions for Everway. Other people did, but I always shied away from it for some reason. I must have been afraid of getting it wrong. But that is changing now.

My current project is based on our gaming group's most recent experience with the Lost Days of Memories and Madness story-game. About a month ago, we created a rather interesting world  - one which I decided to port over to Everway. I decided to call that realm The Rust Gate.

There is a form of magic there that can produce something called metallic air. And you can assassinate someone by entrapping them in a pocket of coagulated metallic air. Nasty stuff - and it sounds like a wicked oxymoron. Two elements combined - something a bit challenging to conceptualize with Everway's magic system.

But I'll be trying to do just that. In addition to the Playing Guide, which sets out the rules for creating magical traditions in Everway, there are also these online resources that I'll be using as references: Kat's Guide to Magic and Twisted Confession's version of Jim Henley's Magic Formula for Everway.

The Aleph Pylons

http://reflectionsonfilmandtelevision.blogspot.com/
2012_10_07_archive.html

The Aleph Pylons mark the extremities of The Rust Gate's ancient empire. These structures marked the spheres that were home to the outermost gates radiating outward from the ancient city-state. Most of these structures stand to this day. Only a few have ever fallen; they are almost impossible to pull down.

Sometimes a solitary pylon, sometimes a complex of pylons. Many of the singletons are roughly triangular golden metal shafts some fifteen or twenty hands tall. Some have diamond-shaped doorways, apparently sealed forever, since the emissaries of Aleph are long-gone. Others are conical towers of smooth adobe. These could easily shelter an entire company of warriors, but they have no windows or doors.

The Aleph Pylons sit on the site of ancient gates.  These gates preceded the empire of the Rust Gate. They stopped working when the pylons were built. In the few cases where the pylons have tumbled or been torn down, the surrounding lands have become poisoned with a strange radiance. Gates this close to the Deep Horizon often discharge such energies when they are used.

Rust Gate's Fortunes

http://talesoftheink.blogspot.com/
2011/12/jon-40.html

The city-state of Rust Gate, also known as Aleph is introduced impressionistically here, and  its rise and near fall were described yesterday, here. Today's post share's the city-state's Fortunes.

The Realm of Rust Gate

• Virtue: The Dragon - Cunning. The city-state has survived as long as it has by hook and by crook, and with a great deal of magical cunning, including necromancy.

• Fault: Law, Reversed - Treachery. The Emperor and Court are divided against each other, which makes it very difficult to control the remaining peasants and the city folk, not to mention outside adversaries such as the Trolls.

• Fate: The Cockatrice - Corruption vs. Recovery. Can the Emperor and Court turn back from the abyss and reform themselves in some manner, possibly adopting some of the democratic and self-renewing traditions of the Trolls? Or will Aleph succumb to a decline so deep and old that it finally self-destructs, or provokes the Trolls to destroy it?

The Rust Gate's Rise and Near Fall

Photo by Ying Feng Johannsson

The realm of Rust Gate lies perilously close to the Deep Horizon. Its people, who call themselves The Aleph, once made their realm the capital of a multi-world empire. That was thousands of years ago, and the Empire is now long gone.

The Empire's furthest reaches were demarcated by The Aleph Pylons. Most of these were pulled down centuries ago during the Prairie Fire Rebellions, which initiated the so-called Headlong Tumble and the Empire's decline. The Aleph lost hundreds of worlds during the Tumble, but still managed to hold on to dozens by diplomacy, bribes, seduction, treachery, necromancy and elementalism, and in a few cases, brute force.

The invasion of the Trolls did the rest. The Trolls came from Beyond the Deep Horizon, and liberated numerous Aleph worlds. Finally, the Trolls reached the center-world of Aleph's wicked Empire. They  surrounded that corrupt, dying Empire with Good Government.

The Trolls reduced the Aleph Empire to a single ancient shambolic walled city-state, a virtual Tower Realm all but surrounded by the Troll-state. Many peasants in the immediate vicinity of Rust Gate have fled to the Troll Republic. Only the most docile stayed behind to work the land for the city. Still others have declared themselves rebels and freeholders, and have sought alliances with the Troll Republic to maintain their autonomy. The city responds with terrorism and necromancy. As a result, most of the land required to feed the city has now gone fallow.

Within the city, Rust Gate's half-starved populace and nobility are subject to the unceasing intrigues and whims of the city-state's decadent Emperor and Court. The city's elites have recently hit upon intermarriage with the Troll Republic's ministers, emissaries, and high merchant families as a way of buying some security against outright invasion.

These Troll Marriages are welcomed by the Troll families, because through these arrangements, the Troll Republic gains access to some of the well-fortified and closely guarded Tower Gates within the city-state. The gates offer the Trolls new prospects for trade and conquest - new avenues down which to spread their republican ideals.

The Realm of Rust Gate

http://steampowerpublishing.com/memories-madness/

Tonight, my friends and I again played what we call "the elf memory game", Lost Days of Memories & Madness. It is an indie tabletop PVP RPG, with quite evocative PC creation rules that involve scripting one sentence memories that begin with the phrase "I remember."

From tonight's game, I see a realm taking shape: The Rust Gate.

Some of the things that came up in the memories were:

• A city-state that has diplomatic relations with an apparently quite civilized Troll-state which has a President, a Minister of Rhetoric, and a Minister of Defense
• The city-state is ruled by an unscrupulous King and a treacherous court 
• Relations between the court of the city-state and the Troll-state include intermarriage
• The city-state is infamous for its deadly fanged Rust Portcullis, which has at least once been used by the realm to kill peasant refugees fleeing disorder in the countryside
• Peasants who have been terrorized by a plague of zombies
• A King with a Necromancer-Concubine
• A King with a set of keys to most locked places and spaces within the city-state (e.g., the dry and deafening House of the Stolen Waterfalls)  
• A strange form of elemental magic which uses "metallic air"
• Courtiers and lovers who have been murdered by being trapped within coagulated metallic air

All-in-all, this has the makings of a rather treacherous, grim place and is very consistent with our Janus-Faced prophesy for 2013. 

Next time, we'll put these memory fragments together with some Fortune Cards and give the realm more shape.