Valen is not visibly and obviously armed for this particular encounter. Instead, he has put on his finest clothes and jewelry, supplementing it with some clever use of Shapesand into further jeweled items, so as to make a good impression. He smiles at the group, bowing, and getting out his flask of water for the presentation he will be giving.
"Good day Gentlemen and Lady. As you no doubt know, I am Valen Hunter, magical artifice savant. Thank you for letting me be here, letting me meet you on such short notice, and hearing me out. I am here to explain to you how, with your support, we can both change the world for the better and make you and those you care about impossibly, obscenely wealthy and powerful. Incidentally, this will make much of the population far more wealthy than they could dream of, but those with appropriate foresight would still end up best placed, overall."
He pauses for a moment and takes a small drink of water. "I know your time is valuable, so I have a presentation prepared, focusing more on the 'how' and 'what'. With your leave, I will get straight to talking, and then answer any questions you might have."
"Before I get started in the 'how' I plan on doing this, I have a few concepts to get across. I have spent quite some time reading on the concept of economics and wealth, and when I found existing books lacking, I started using divinations to temporarily increase my knowledge on the topic and write down questions and answers and assumptions with the temporary skill. With that, I have come up with some perhaps odd concepts. For example, when I describe 'wealth in the concept of a city-state or a kingdom or an empire', I am not describing how much gold or land a kingdom has. Instead, I am directly describing how much capacity to affect change economic activities like production, work, farming, crafting, and so forth an area has. I am speaking of things like how much economic power does a person, a town, an organization hold. A nobleman may have more money than they can spend, because they run out of people they can employ to spend it on or those people can only work so much, to make so many sorts of things so quickly. The nobleman has lots of money, but very little true wealth because the area he is in is not economically wealthy. He can't use his money to push economic activity. Also, I am going to use the term 'productivity' to mean the amount of economic work a single individual can achieve."
He continues, "Mister Kansaw, I will assume you have at least been somewhat briefed by Veil of my goals in my techniques, but I would like to reiterate them: I want to shake up and cause chaos in the economy of the region, to lower the relative power of nobility and the crown to everyone else, and throw every assumption of the economy -- like that some people farm, some people are artisans, some people are lords and tax those that farm, and use those taxes to provide order and governance, and are able to use their wealth as a means of oppressing the others so these relative differences in power don't change. I want to do this in a way that improves the availability of 'things' for those without much to their name. I want to enable a more just and equitable society -- or at least provide a chance for such a thing to be made in the first place by those with more vision than I. I want to dramatically increase the total wealth of the civilization in which I live.
He looks down, a slight glum look for a moment, "I can certainly re-iterate my enthusiasm for the cause of social justice, and focus on these points should you wish, however I mostly came prepared to give a technical presentation of what is possible, and how, in the hopes that the promise inherent in the techniques described would speak for itself, and be impossible to ignore. I must admit that I am more a technical speaker and a subject expert than an orator or a charismatic speech-master."
I don't actually know if Elans are really immortal or not. Well, he who dares..
He looks the Elan straight in the eye. "No. I'm more than that. I will confidently say to any immortal who I presume actually remembers the whole period, that I have the most amount of raw, world-shaking talent and visionary ideas of any magical item crafter in the last one thousand years. If you need proof, I can start by skipping to the most immediately and obviously profitable technique I am capable of, and draw diagrams and show the math, should you wish, after a brief blessing?"
If he gets the go-ahead for the blessing, he continues: "Now, I shall invoke the blessing and protection of various different deities who I believe would be especially supportive of these ideas and intercede on our behalf should various inter-planar entities take exception to these concepts, either now or in the future."
Here, he takes out several pre-carved wooden symbols, the holy symbols of each deity; if not blessed in such a way to actually work as a Cleric's holy symbol, at least they should allow the deity to have some level of attention in the prayer. He presents each as he says the invocation of their blessing, setting it down when done, pausing between each request.
"Tymora, goddess of luck, personal skill, and the use of skill to achieve one's goals, please give your blessing. Angharradh, elven goddess of hope and creativity and artistry, please allow our endeavors to bring hope to those without, and bless our mission. Corellon Larethian, elven god of art, crafts, and all aesthetic endeavors, may you understand our goals, mixed in with other goals as they are, in creating a society where all may have the time and means to pursue any arts as they wish, and provide your blessing. Dugmaren Brightmantle, dwarven deity of exploration, creativity, invention, and discovery, may the fantastic devices, foreseen and unforeseen, that we may yet make bring your blessings. Thoth, Mulhorandi god of academic innovation and debate, may these innovative ideas have your blessing. Nephthys, Mulhorandi goddess of transitions, wealth, and idealists, may our idealistic endeavor carry your blessing. Shaundakul, god of portals and negotiation and trade, may our ideas using portals and travel be cause for your blessing. Lliira, goddess of celebrations and lavish merrymaking, may our plans to spread wealth be cause for celebration and worthy of your blessing. Amen."
After a bit of a nervous sigh, he continues, "Right. Originally, I had an hour long presentation planned, with a whole list of topics, which I would still like to give, but let me tell you first what I can actually do for you all."
He begins to draw appropriate diagrams or words on the chalkboard as he speaks. ""There are a lot of ways you can make a magic item actually cast any particular spell and not be expended or lessened in so doing. A ring, for example, is traditional. Most of them are quite expensive to make, especially if you want it to cast the magical effect continuously, or once every six seconds. The cheapest of these, I have discovered, is the method where you don't actually try to miniaturize it in any way, typically making it emplaced or at least require set-up to work. It is a method used to trap hallways and sometimes chests or even locks with spells, and very rarely used in 'boon traps' in defensive emplacements, to bless troops usually. However, there is no specific reason it couldn't be any spell at all. Notably, I have learned that the spell Fabricate is possible for someone, somewhere, to cast as a spell of the third circle of magic, at least for them. By emulating this casting, I can trick a magic item I am making to accept that as the spell cast into it. Further, if you are making a magic item that casts spells that normally have some form of expensive material component, if it can cast that spell 14,400 times a day, you need one-hundred units of that component to go into it. Fabricate is, for example, used to take raw materials and make them into refined materials."
He grins, "I hope you see now where I'm going with this. Give me 100 identical units, 1000 total gold-equivalent worth of, say, platinum, gold, or silver blank disks, or uncut diamonds, or any other valuable trade material, as well as sufficient material to make the 'trap' out of, like wood or stone or iron, and, with my techniques in making magical items inexpensively, I would also need exactly 3796.88 gold pieces worth of materials directly usable in crafting wondrous items --I can give you a list--, and a place to stay and work for 13 8-hour days, as well as enough completely un-coerced volunteers, who would themselves benefit from the magic item, to donate, cumulatively between them, 81 ergs of their soul-energy or lifeforce, and I can make you a device that can, provided the hopper is kept clear, make 14,400 small pieces of art objects in a 24 hour period, each worth 30 gold as an objet d'art. Each would be identical and would, of course, have 10 gold pieces worth of copper, or silver, or gold, uncut diamond, or whatever in it's makeup, and if it was one of the metals, could trivially be melted down into a bar. The 'trap' would function indefinitely until damaged. Here's roughly what I think it would look like and what some of the basic runework would look like."
He proceeds to take all of his Shapesand, and combines it into a small, table mockup of the device, basically a wooden pillar with runes on it, with a lever on the side, and a hopper that hinges out and, by weight, dumps something out into a bin and then resets. The device obviously has runes all along the outside. He sets the item down and then starts drawing some example runes, immediately obvious to anyone capable of crafting a wondrous item or a large amount of skill in the arts of spellcraft or generalized arcane knowledge, to be related in making and defining the function of a Wondrous Item. He also starts showing some of his work in the formulas, labeling the amounts, how it would require a 'normal' caster who had access to someone who could cast Fabricate as a 3rd circle spell into the magic item: 7500 gold of 'normal magic item crafting' materials and 15 8-hour days of work and 120 ergs of lifeforce, and showing what fractions of each he can enable via his own techniques to get his numbers he came up with for himself.
"Of course it could look like whatever, and actually be a trap that bonked someone on the head with the fabricated item if you wanted. And this can be done with literally any spell that can be cast into a magic item, and I can, myself, get access to just about any spell of maybe third or fourth circle, arcane, divine it doesn't matter."
Spoiler: OOC
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Erg=5xp, I just made that up
Re: [3.5] The Destruction of Empires - Chaos
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