Astral guide
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The Astral Guide is a Moon Mage"Moon mage" is not in the list (None, Bard, Barbarian, Cleric, Empath, Moon Mage, Necromancer, Paladin, Ranger, Thief, ...) of allowed values for the "Guild association is" property. enchantment used to help guide and protect someone traveling through the Astral Plane.
Creation
Components
- A random Imbued item
- An un-enchanted beacon shard
- Enchanter's Burin
- Celestial sigil of the Katamba, Yavash, Xibar, Shrew, Unicorn, Durgaulda, and Scales
- Activating Spell: Shadows, Dazzle or Unleash
Steps
- Part One: The Cradle of Moons
- Imbue the item to be used
- SCRIBE, activate, and bind the Katamba
- Scribe, activate, and bind the Yavash
- Scribe, activate, and bind the Xibar
- Part Two: The Crystal Mind (note: you can only create one Crystal Mind per RL hour)
- Scribe Shrew onto the beacon shard
- Scribe, activate, and bind the Unicorn
- Scribe, activate, and bind the Durgaulda
- Scribe, activate, and bind the Scales
- INVOKE the crystal immediately (it goes bad quickly and is then useless)
- ALIGN to one of the four moons depending on whether you wish to set destinations or attributes <Grahzir to set destinations (any color crystal), Xibar for sanity protection (blue crystal only), Yavash for force (red crystal only), and Katamba for speed (black crystal only)>
- TAP/TOUCH one of the desired destination shards with the crystal (this must be done soon after it is created, but not immediately.) This step must still be done for crystals that increase attributes, although it doesn't have to be one of the desired destination shards in this case.
- Set aside and let it age for around 22 (RL) days
- Part Three: Combining and Finishing
- Hold both the Cradle of Moons and the Crystal Mind and FOCUS on one to place the mind in the cradle
- Once the desired amount of Minds have been placed in the cradle begin to SCRIBE sigils on the Cradle until it catalyzes. The number of sigils required is tied to the level of the sigil (For example you can finish with only two Penhetia sigils vs 50+ Sun sigils.)
Use
Using the astral guide effectively bypasses the microcosm, taking a direct route from shard to shard. To use it, you simply RAISE the guide at the appropriate shard. This requires Arcana skill, and more may be required for a less powerful guide. NMUs can use guides, but they still need the ranks.
Notes
- Astral Guides have an absolute minimum of 7 charges (an exception being the Astral Guide you get for the Astral Travel quest). Charges seem to be linked to sanity, and can get as high as 40 or more.
- The aging process of the Crystal Mind can be sped up by scribing the Celestial Sigil of the Shrew on it, though this can have consequences.
- The stages of Mind growth are:
- 10 minutes - infantile
- 1 hour - made of barely coherent energy
- 1 day - made of chaotic impulses
- 2 days - beginning to form simple patterns
- 3 days - a series of repetitive patterns
- 4 days - beginning to form complex patterns
- 6 days - composed by the interplay of numerous psychic patterns
- 8 days - beginning to bring disparate patterns together into a gestalt
- 10 days - developing primal intelligence
- 12 days - instinct-driven
- 14 days - mimicing animal intelligence
- 16 days - developing a sense of cunning
- 18 days - mimicing higher-order animal intelligence
- 20 days - testing the limits of its environment
- 22 days - nearly sentient
- 22+ days - sentient... but only for a little while*
- The Crystal Mind will only remain sentient for about 5 hours before becoming insane. Putting an insane Crystal Mind into a Guide will render the Guide itself insane and make the entire thing worthless, as it will mislead the user and cause death.
- Crystal Minds become sentient at the same time of day as their original creation. Plan accordingly.
- Sentient minds give a slight bonus, but baseline difficulties were set to expect nearly sentient minds.
- Astral Guide enchantments operate on a cooldown timer shared by Gwethsmashers. If you have made a Gwethsmasher within 30 days, you cannot make a Guide. If you make a Guide, you cannot make another for 30 days, or a Gwethsmasher for 15.
- The final, catalyzing part may take as much as around 20 to possibly 30 scribes, or as few as less than half a dozen. There is a random component as well as factors relating to sigil difficulty and skill of the enchanter.
- The number of minds a Cradle may hold depends on the skill of the enchanter that made the Cradle as well as the skill of the enchanter attempting to put minds into it. Tentative testing indicates that potential charges may be roughly equivalent to Arcana/50** at the time of Cradle creation.