Mace's Hunt for Power

[Mace Parshath]

Mace has a rather flimsy plan to gain magical power. Here is his idea so far:

Mace needs to find technowizards to help run his Battlestar, the Kalayberos, that he can find willing to be trained by ritualists. (Technowizards so he saves money on paying for the services of two seperate specialists.)Six altogether, each a Capricorn, -will add other qualifications later-.

Next, Mace needs to find a large asteroid in which he can shape into a perfect sphere to use geometry to his advantage. The outside of it will be carved with a symbol dedicated to the Parshath name, and the ritualists will make it with alchemists in a magic-conductive substance so Mace's power is amplified within the asteroid. This will help increase Mace's power and help contain the energy.

Next, once Mace hits more cosmic levels, he'll get an astrologer to dedicate a constellation to him so like when Mars is in eclipse to Capricorn, the Capricorn's sexual energies are more prominent. This will hopefully do something similar, but become a draw point of power for the ritualists.

Mace will use his Erodin Eye to collect energy, then imbue it in the ritualists, one at a time. Charge, imbue into one ritualist, repeat, until all the ritualists are imbued with the power. Then Mace will be imbued with the energy, slowly, so he can gradually get used to it.

So, shopping list:

Magic Conductive Substance
Technowizards
Money-Lots
Ritualist Trainers
Alchemists
Large Asteroid
Astrologer (Later)

Will this all work, Fred? I need feed back to work on it.

[Frederic Bourgault-Christie]

All right, noting problems:

1) If you have techno-wizard ritualists, their ritual skills will be by necessity focused on technology and TW. Your ritual probably needs a lot more than that.

2) Large asteroid is fairly easy. Might have to shell out a bit of money or spend a bit of time, especially if you want one that helps the process.

3) Mace has partially rejected the Parshath name. Though his reconciliation with his father has altered that somewhat, I think his True Name may still be out there to be found. Ergo, the Parshath name does not magnify things much. (Anyways, even though Mace is buff enough to have some naming magic, especially with the help of Uncle Remzeyr, it ultimately is just a scribble).

4) You will have to find an appropriate award for these ritualists, which as you can tell would probably be incredibly difficult, since they might want in on the ritual's power. Essentially, you need to find trustworthy people willing to go through all this sacrifice and rigamarole, then provide them enough incentive of whatever kind not to quit or turn on you. If you go the mercenary route, that's A LOT.

5) A magic-conductive substance that you can find in large enough degrees to cover a large asteroid and potent enough to magnify the effect noticably without blowing at your power is difficult. A lot of magic-conductive materials, like some forms of mythril and excelsium, are magic-conductive for forging not for the purpose you're looking for. There's a reason even super-powerful godly artifacts tend to be small.

6) How the hell will the asteroid increase your power? Basically, you may have made a pressure chamber full of magic. When Mace goes into it, he gets a temporary surge of his own stored energy plus the stored energy from the magicians. What this rigging MAY do is, at certain naturally created intervals, cause an increase in power that could be permanently absorbed.

7) We discussed the problem with dedication: Even dedicating a consellation to yourself doesn't actually change the constellation much. It's also tremendously selfish and unnatural, likely to get Mace a lot of criticism, karmic backlash from the laws of magic, etc. What could be done, though, is to realign some stars or use an existing constellation. However, the constellation's energy still will be limited, especially since a lot of it will be wasted given that your attunement and gathering system doesn't seem impressive.

8) The Erodin Eye is a quite clear bottleneck here. Whatever limitations it has as far as storage, conductivity and current (how much it can keep flowing and at what rate), inducing homogeneity to the energy, etc. will be a major difficulty.

9) Mace's skill may be insufficient to handle all this. Chaos factors suck.

10) Such large amounts of magical energy attract demonic forces, hungry spirits, etc.

11) The usage of ritualists as human batteries is more than a little repugnant. Anyways, they are also bottlenecks. A circle that all share in controlling might be more reasonable.

12) Gradual working may help, but during that gradual time the energy needs to be stored (whether by your human batteries or something else), which may present difficulties, and ultimately you can only absorb so much (the Achilles Heel).

One thing you might do is basically turn the asteroid into an extension of your Mana Nexus ability. If you do that successfully, the asteroid becomes a vital part of an enhanced mystical ecosystem and provides you and the whole team with power. Everyone wins.