[UA] What Mechanomancers built in my game (was Steampunk)

[Cassady Toles]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 23:29:54 -0500, ua at lists.uchicago.edu wrote:

  >However - OK, here's the real question - if Mechanomancers cannot create
  >Machines capable of magical effects, then what kind of artifacts would
they
  >build?  (I love the artifact rules, BTW.  Simple, elegant and sensible.)
  >
  
I give mechanomancers leeway, but the device has to be relevant to what's
being given up or the item being used.  For example, A mechanomancer with
Sir Issac Newton's hot air balloon could feasably build something that
altered gravity in a small area.  A memory of first love could be used to
make something that alters people's emotional states.  

I also let them tie in to metaphysical truths of what they are making.  I
had an artifact floating around that was a shotgun built by one of the first
mechanomancers.  Bullets from the shotgun that wounded someone possessed by
a demon A did damage to the demon's soul as well as the person's body, and B
the demon couldn't leave as long as a piece of the buckshot was still in
it's body.

It's also worth noting, Demons knew about the gun and tended to avoid or try
to kill it's owners.  The gun was built from relevant items, the stock
carved from the gallows that the Iron 13 were hanged from, the barrel was
poured from a bar of the jail in dodge that Wyatt Earp worked for, and the
Ace of Spades carved into the stock was actually engraved from the same
playing card that was in Wild Bill's hand when he was shot.

The gun couldn't fire modern shotgun rounds (no nitrocellulose) so the owner
would have to pack their own shells with black powder, and the shot had to
be melted from nails taken from a pine box (note it didn't have to be a
coffin any pine box would do).

So, again, I let mechanomancers do things they normally couldn't, but I
added an additional restriction to how they work.  I also ruled that
annhilomancy blasts categorically destroyed any clockworks within their
range (by definition a mechanomancer cares about his clockworks) and major
items were no exception, but I'd probably have some big time phenomena
accompany the destruction of a major clockwork, quite possibly with a
secondary explosion far worse than the annhilomancy blast...
  
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"I am the messiah in the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniel's.  Drink of me
and
no peace." -- Cobra Baghdad www.peoplehateme.com
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