The Divine Lawful Republic Of Laurelin Part II – City Wards and Nodes

Cities are normally built around magical nexi, with a “Tower Of Wizardry” – usually built by the founding Sparks or the Military and almost always owned and maintained by the military – acting to channel that magic into a set of City Wards to keep out creatures of the Wyld and to empower mystical items within the city. The Standard City Wards are normally Rank Seven, providing Four Minor and Three Major abilities.

Minor Ward Powers:

• Hallowed Of Law (Hallow versus Chaos). The cities – and everyone inside – are protected by Magic Circle Of Protection From Chaos effect, creatures slain there cannot rise as undead, rolls to dispel chaotic magics gain a +4 lawful bonus, and rolls to dispel lawful magics suffer a -4 lawful penalty. A single spell can be attached to the Hallow effect as usual (Most often Resist Energy/Fire, which serves to prevent city fires). .
• Use of Charms and Talismans: Residents are granted Shaping (Use of Charms and Talismans variant). Even the poorest residents will generally have ak few bits of minor, utilitarian, magic about. It’s about 3 GP for a Charm (Limited to Seven) and 10 GP for a Talisman (Limited to Three).
• Vortex Chamber (a variant on the general suppression of malign effects): This area beneath the tower is the “eye” of the hurricane of magic that is a nexus. It drains magic – mostly from the upwelling geoarcane power of the nexus of course, but to some extent from Sparks and minor spellcasters and magical items. That makes it a point where dangerous magical items and materials can be more-or-less safely stored (and used to the benefit of the city by providing extra magic for the ward), where minor mages can be readily imprisoned (and more powerful ones can be somewhat more readily restrained), and where magical testing can be carried out with somewhat less risk.
• Wind Wall: Those defending the city are protected by a Wind Wall effect.

The occasional Rank Eight wards provide an additional minor power (chosen by the game master) related to the nexus. At that power level, even the Empire’s military engineers can’t keep EVERYTHING under control. Some cities use the Counterspell minor ward power to try and restrict particular types of items or magics they consider undesirable, but that rarely works as well as they might like.

Major Ward Powers:

• Enhanced Magical School (Variant): While Ailwellian wards don’t empower actual Spellcasting, they do empower items – although items empowered by City Wards will obviously only work within those city wards. In general, when figuring out the cost of creating items, spells of levels 0-3 are effectively two levels lower (with “-2″ being treated as 1/8’th and “-1″ being treated as 1/4’th) and spells of levels 4-5 are reduced by one level – effectively making low-level items that only operate within cities extremely affordable, especially with the x.8 “Abundant Magic” modifier for relatively standard items. After all… that’s about 200 GP for a constant Cantrip, 400 GP for a constant level one effect, 800 for L2, and 1600 for L3. After that, it starts jumping – L4 would be 24,000 and L5 would be 44,800, so the practical sequence stops at L3        
• Mystic Walls: The wards can effectively keep out most creatures and forces born of the Wyld – but can be bypassed in various ways, including simply ramming through with brute force. While this option will cause quite a lot of damage to the creature bulling it’s way through, that is not enough to dissuade a powerful dragon or other such creature.          
• Watchsight. Guards, watchmen, and guard creatures are granted a limited version of True Seeing. While they are not guaranteed to spot illusions, shapeshifters, invisibility, and so on, they are far more likely to do so than normal. Creatures using such abilities will need to supplement them with more conventional stealth skills.

While the capital, and a few of the oldest cities near the center of the disc, may be protected by Epic Wards, the additional powers of such things are generally individualized by the game master.

While it is unknown to most, magic is the essence of the Wyld and of Life itself. Left to itself… it grows, it spreads, it generates new nexi and it holds them apart from each other. Past a certain limit of intensity… it literally grounds itself, creating new lands around the edges of a disc, into which life can expand. Where mortals seek to tame the Wyld… the magic dwindles. Less magic is produced. Lesser nodes deplete, and their remaining magic flows into the greater nodes. Eventually, when there is insufficient magic to be drawn in to sustain them, the greater nodes will begin to fail – although a Vortex Chamber, if sufficiently stocked with wyld items to drain, can forestall such losses for centuries – and perhaps indefinitely if items with sufficient magical energy can be thrown into the Vortex. Mana can also be channeled in from afar via artificial ley lines, or added with rituals drawing on other reserves, but it’s very, VERY, hard to channel enough energy in to accomplish much with rituals. What would happen to an area that actually went magically “dead” remains unknown, but it is theorized that at least some Wyld remains in every node, preventing complete depletion.

Nodes are weaker near the Capital and the center of the disc however; humans there get less varied birthrights generally and tend to have abilities related to adapting to using new magic and to tapping into their personal magical reserves. That’s generally weaker, but the improved control is helpful in performing advanced magic. Nonhumans do well under such conditions however, since many of their abilities rely on their internal magic in the first place -which is why attribute modifiers, sensory powers, and similar basic personal boosts are so common among them. (Elves are important in the center of the disc because it was elven strongholds in high tree villages that helped fight off the undead apocalypse – and thus they outnumbered many other species by the time it was over. Or at least so the Elves claim).

On Nodes:

Alewelia is a realm of magic, of power that flows through its elements – but while Fire rarely occurs in any vast quantity, and Air and Water are too unstable to form very many ley lines and nexi, Earth is stable enough to provide the structure for innumerable streams and pools of power to form – Ley Lines and Nexi.

Ley Lines are gathering points for magical power, chaotic streams fed by all the elements – wild and unattuned. Their power is relatively weak, but can still be tapped in limited ways to power the magical equivalents of waterwheels and mills. They are, however, nothing compared to the power of Nexi.

Nexi are shaped – Flavored? Aspected? – by the lands about them and by the great, planar tides of power that sweep across Alewelia. As such, they have Themes. Themes can be anything, but the most common are Clerical Domains. The next most common are Elements and Schools of Magic, then Simple Concepts, then Psionic Fields – and then the strange stuff, like “Science”, “Blood”, “Ritual”, “Circle”, “Elves”, “Insanity”, “Corruption”, “Chaos” (as a method rather than an alignment), and many more.

A nodes theme determines what kind of rituals it empowers, what any dragon linked to it will be like, what enchantments can be easily cultivated by magical “farmers” in the area, what reagents are common in the area, what magical animals and plants spontaneously appear from normal versions, and a long list of other minor effects – often including a set of spells that, when cast directly by a spellcaster, are treated as one level lower within the nexus. Oddly, wyld nodes may have superficial themes or “flavors” (Pirates! Undead! Dinosaurs! Ninja! Undead Ninja Pirate Dinosaurs!) while remaining wyld nodes; they (unlike other node types) appear to be self-regulating and grow on their own – which is why they are the basis of the node network.

Sparks and Embers who trigger near a particular nexus tend to be attuned to it’s theme, gaining experience points from activities related to it’s theme, albeit slowly – and even more slowly when away from an appropriately themed node. Such Sparks and Embers are, however, even rarer then those attuned to the Wyld, despite the dense populations of cities. Wyld Energies are, after all, the forces of raw magic, transformation, and growth, and so are especially likely to trigger new Sparks and Embers. Wyld-influenced and dominated areas are more common than all of the areas attuned to themes put together. Moreover, wyld-influenced areas tend to be dangerous, stressful, and prone to outbreaks of wyld magic – all of which increase the likelihood of new triggers. Thus a solid majority of all Sparks and Embers are attuned to the Wyld, while all other types tend to be classified as “exotic”. Sure, there may be a few mid-rank clerical-domain “Cat” nodes out there, and several more at rank-1 scattered around in the fringes of the empire (if those aren’t just flavored wyld nodes) – but the total number of “Cat” sparks running around can probably be counted on one hand.

Some theoreticians say that Sparks and Embers are essentially miniature nodes in themselves – their unusually powerful internal magic having been focused by some triggering event and growing in strength as they absorb relevant energies. This may, perhaps, explain some old legends about incredibly powerful Sparks merging with the land to become nodes – sometimes with much of their personality surviving as a City Ward.

In any case, exotic Sparks are generally too rare to form parties, have far more limited opportunities to gather experience points, and tend to make lousy adventurers – although the few who get experience through rituals and/or service to others can make wonderful professions out of providing a modest, but regular, supply of XP to promote low level characters, construct specialized items that are hard to farm, to create sapient devices, or for similar purposes.

Nodes can be upgraded, degraded, detonated, split, merged, and transformed – but the larger and more powerful the node, the harder most of this is. Meddling with a rank-1 node might take nothing more than erecting a few small shrines, planting a few appropriate trees and bushes, and waiting a few days, even without boosting spells to hurry it up. A rank-7 node, on the other hand, has immense energy reserves and has likely shaped the territory around itself for many miles – and so may require a small horde of people working for a year to intentionally change.

Node Size	Maximum Ward Area	Ritual Magic	Tidal Shift	Dragon- Might	Magical Charge	Node XP
Ley	Thorp / Hamlet	—-	90%	Least	1d4	100
1	Small Town	+2	60%	Lesser	3d4	200
2	Large Town	+3	30%	Young	3d8	500
3	Small City	+4	10%	Young	3d12	1000
4	Large City	+5	5%	Adult	3d20	2000
5	Metro- polis	+6	3%	Elder	3d20+20	5000
6	Mega- polis	+8	2%	Ancient	2d20+40	10,000
7	Imperial City	+10	1%	Ascended	2d20+60	20,000

• Maximum Ward Area: The maximum size of the community that the nexus can support a Ward for. Occasional cities manage to tie Wards into several small nodes at once to cover larger areas, but those are always unique cases.
• Ritual Magic: The skill check bonus to Ritual Magic appropriate to the node performed there
  Tidal Shift: The chance of the seasonal tides of magic causing a shift in the theme of the node or of the surrounding area if it is unmaintained. Properly maintained nodes need be checked no more than once per decade, If a shift occurs, roll again; if the second roll would not indicate a shift, only the surrounding area is affected. If the node itself is affected, it will often be weakened for a time – but such events are rare enough that no one has yet derived any consistent rules for them save that nodes never weaken below level one, perhaps due to them always having at least a spark of wyld magic at their hearts.
• Dragon Might: The power level of the Dragon that the node can support. Dragons are not exactly easy neighbors, but they do automatically maintain the node they’re linked to, so that’s something.
  Magical Charge: The “Spare” energies of a nexus, measured in available spell levels per day. After this is depleted, nodes no longer offer a “price break” (as noted earlier, one level, drawn from this pool) to spells appropriate to their theme. Certain rituals and tapping spells can get more than one level out at a time. Unmaintained nodes may flare and discharge this energy in magical effects matching the nodes theme roughly midway through each season (as per Tidal Shift). Maintained nodes virtually never do so, as draining excess energy is a standard part of maintenance. Nodes that lack spell attunements – such as certain conceptual nodes – cannot release energy through spell effects, and will explode instead. While such nodes might still occur naturally for brief periods, they won’t last.
• Node XP: The total amount of XP available to matching Thematic Sparks or available to tap for in-theme magical projects per season.

A citywide spell effect designed to “ride” the influence of the Nexus requires +6 spell levels of the Area theorem or the use of the Battle Magic Metamagical Theorem (at twenty aides, five minutes casting time, 2500 GP worth of (reusable) equipment, and a (again reusable) magic circle drawn near the center of the nexus (this usually requires some hours to set up, but many cities have either permanent setups or some method of creating one quickly).

Underground nodes occur as well, and there are some reports that they may be a bit more stable than surface nodes are – but there isn’t a lot of evidence on that.