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Post by QUALITY DISCOUNT SPELLBOOKS on May 8, 2015 5:52:23 GMT
Thank you for your purchase with of QUALITY DISCOUNT SPELLBOOKS!
You have been automatically subscribed to recieve updates when we have new HIGHEST QUALITY PRODUCTS for sale! Our stock is subject to availability, so BUY NOW while supplies last! To unsubscribe, contact us by planar message during standard business hours.
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Post by Andrew on May 8, 2015 14:29:10 GMT
That went better than Leaf and I were expecting, in that not only did they give me the books (and the catalog) without charging more than I was expecting, it’s impossible for the spell they used to make a trade that one of the parties doesn’t agree to.
Specifically, last night as I was going to bed, I got a magical mental notification that somebody from their company was trying to contact me, requesting 105 zorkmids and offering the three books I requested and the catalog. The mental notice made it clear that I had to accept or reject the trade within a few seconds, and that if I accepted both sides of the trade would happen as the spell indicated.
They didn’t mention the weekly subscription, but I expect if it bothers me I can unsubscribe via PM (Mother Starlight told me that this forum uses planar message in their manifestation, which is why I asked about it).
In any case, I have successfully cast light, which was different from, easier than, and more effective than doing anything remotely similar with parlor tricks.
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Post by Leaf on May 8, 2015 17:14:07 GMT
Interesting. I admit I am surprised.
Are you going to make use of the catalog to acquire more books? With or without a quality discount?
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Post by Andrew on May 8, 2015 18:18:52 GMT
Almost certainly, but probably not right away. This type of magic is fairly slow to be able to do anything with. It looks like it might be useful at some point in the future, but not very much now. Each person has a maximum amount of mana they can have, which they use up casting spells and regain by a specific type of meditation I haven’t tried yet; mine is enough to cast light or detect magic, but not much else. I think you can increase your maximum mana, but I’m not sure how and I think it’s slow. I’ve barely skimmed Introduction to Spellcasting; I only got it translated to English a day ago and I do still have other things to do.
Since I don’t have a way of communicating with anybody else with this magic system, if I want spellbooks I’ll either need to write them myself or buy them from QDS. They don’t seem to be magical (using either parlor tricks or detect magic), but they also don’t work like other books. I was able to learn spells from them despite the books not being in any sort of language I could identify (not even the one Introduction to Spellcasting is in). Once I did learn the spells, the books became unusable (one had each page burst into flames as I finished with it; another looked like it had ink spilled on it). They also apparently can’t be conjured or copied, and it takes time, money, and magic to write them in the first place. According to Introduction to Spellcasting, the noncopyability is true for both magical and mundane attempts at copying; when I asked a demon to try conjuring a teleport book, it came out too waterlogged to use (these spellbooks are not plastic), so this is probably impossible with daeva magic too.
I’ll likely buy more spellbooks once I’ve restored my mana and if I find another spell that I both want to and am able to use. I’ve only glanced through the catalog, but a lot of the spells seem to be primarily for hurting people in fights, so aren’t that useful to me and would be dangerous to try out. If there are more non-spell books that look interesting, I’ll need to conjure electronic copies so that Mother Starlight can translate for me, but I’ll also buy copies so the authors get payed appropriately.
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Post by Botanical Engineer on May 8, 2015 20:12:54 GMT
How did you convert your currency to zorkmids, and how did QDS recieve them? I did not get the impression your world had teleportation magic other than summoning.
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Post by Andrew on May 8, 2015 21:25:59 GMT
We do not have our own teleportation magic other than summoning, unless you count the concordances. That was handled by the spell they used to contact me, minor planar ally. The spell told me the details of the proposed trade, and when I accepted the proposal, the spell carried out the trade by taking my zorkmids and giving me the books. All the magic involved was from their end. According to this post, anybody can make zorkmids out of the right materials. This implies that anything of the right size, shape, and composition is a valid, legal zorkmid. As such, I got a demon to conjure some zorkmids for me. The idea didn’t occur to me at first because my local currency does not work the same way. A dollar only counts as real if it was made by authorized people under special circumstances. Making the same thing in other ways is a crime called “counterfeiting”. Therefore, a demon could conjure something physically identical to a real dollar, but not an actual real dollar. Most people would not be able to tell the difference, of course, but real dollars are all slightly different and eventually the counterfeiting would be noticed when either two identical dollars were discovered or somebody checked and found that the conjured one did not match any that had actually been made. Once it was discovered that there was counterfeiting, the government would look for and quite possibly find the counterfeiter Therefore, asking demons to counterfeit money is both illegal and unwise. I expect some summoners still do it on a small scale where the authorities are unlikely to trace the counterfeiting back to them, but I do not condone this practice or do it myself because that law exists for a good reason. If zorkmids were like my currency in that demon-conjured ones were counterfeit, and I had decided to use demon-conjured ones anyway instead of somehow obtaining real ones or giving up, I expect the minor planar ally spell would have found that I had no zorkmids to trade and would have failed (in the same way I knew I was getting real spellbooks).
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Post by Botanical Engineer on May 8, 2015 21:54:59 GMT
Oh, I'd missed that it could do that. Thank you for explaining! Money is only produced by central authorities here, as well.
I don't think zorkmids can be made in my universe. Some of the spells looked useful.
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Post by Andrew on May 8, 2015 22:18:49 GMT
I’d expect that zorkmids could be made in your world if you had the right kind of metal, if you knew what they were supposed to be look like and how big they were supposed to be, and if you had the right kind of metalworking technology. If your planet is made from soil all the way through, then it’s likely that you don’t have any gold even if you do have other metals and metalworking, so you’re probably right that you can’t make it there.
Several of the other users of this forum almost certainly do have gold and probably the right kind of metalworking to shape it, though, so I expect some others might be able to buy spellbooks.
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Post by Leaf on May 8, 2015 23:00:50 GMT
Do they sell the spell they use to sell their books?
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Post by Botanical Engineer on May 9, 2015 0:29:49 GMT
It is probably soil all the way through, although obviously we haven't checked. It's been all soil as deep as anybody has ever checked, though. I think we probably do not have metal on our planet. I don't know about other planets, because we haven't gotten close enough, but plants or something are growing on them. Do things grow on metal?
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Post by Leaf on May 9, 2015 1:14:36 GMT
I would be interested to know the parameters of a valid zorkmid, if you care to share, Andrew.
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Post by Andrew on May 9, 2015 1:31:34 GMT
Leaf, I haven’t looked through the catalog in detail yet and don’t currently have it on me. I should be able to look that up some time tonight. It wouldn’t surprise me, though; it’s mentioned in the textbook, and I don’t get the impression it’s proprietary or anything. You’ll notice that they assumed any of their customers could cast planar message in that probably-a-form-confirmation, although that might have been because this forum uses that spell in its manifestation.
In my world, there are several different types of metal. Soil often, or maybe always, contains some types of metal mixed in with everything else. I think all living things in my world need to have some types of metal available in order to survive (except, of course, for daeva), but I could be wrong. Animals have iron in our blood, which is necessary for letting us breathe air; I’m not quite as sure about other types of living things.
Gold is a particular kind of metal which is rare in my world. People used to use it as currency, and we still use it as decoration in various ways and more recently as a component of electronics. I am not aware of it being necessary for life in any way, but I would not at all be surprised to learn that trace amounts of it were.
I would expect your soil to contain small amounts of metals, but you might not have found and extracted them. I’ll look up how metal is gotten out of ore, because metal can be quite useful and if you have it available it might be worth refining.
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Post by Leaf on May 9, 2015 1:39:36 GMT
And the zorkmid parameters...?
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Post by Botanical Engineer on May 9, 2015 1:51:54 GMT
If metal is useful for things and might be in the soil, I would like to know how to get it out of the soil and use it. What is metal like? The inflection by the pronunciation associates it with the ground, which fits with what you've said about where it is found. If it is pretty, artists will probably sometimes try to make some of it to use even if we don't have the other things for it to be useful with. Soil from two far away places looks and feels the same way, which might mean that the amount of things in it is the same everywhere? I appreciate your efforts!
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Post by Andrew on May 9, 2015 2:21:05 GMT
Leaf, I hadn’t seen your message asking for the zorkmid parameters when I posted mine response. A zorkmid is a gold coin, with somebody’s face on one side and an inscription in a language I don’t know on the other. The coin’s about an inch in diameter, about a quarter of an inch thick, and weighs several times as much as any US coin in common circulation (penny, nickel, dime, and quarter). I don’t know if it’s pure gold or what else might be part of it, I don’t have precise size measurements, and although I could probably get you a precise picture of each side I don’t have one now and that wouldn’t tell you anything about the depth to which it’s carved or anything.
I don’t know if a zorkmid’s value is exactly equal to the gold price or not, but I suspect if you want to use them you’ll need actual zorkmids instead of an equivalent amount of gold, and that this description isn’t good enough. Do you have some kind of device which could record enough detail on its shape and chemical composition to actually make something that’s likely to be a valid zorkmid, and doesn’t need any sort of infrastructure that didn’t exist in 1995? If so, I could give you that device’s output if you tell me what it’s called and how to operate it (and that output fits into my attachment size limit). If not, I’ll see if I can find anything else; I have a few ideas, but none are particularly likely to work.
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