portions more advanced than others

[KuKulzA]

like... like an armadillo-rhinocerous :idea1:

[Psychotic]

Originally posted by KuKulzA
like... like an armadillo-rhinocerous :idea1:

Actually that?s not a bad idea. Get some paper and get your pencils ready people!

[DarkEclipse]

Originally posted by KuKulzA
like... like an armadillo-rhinocerous :idea1:

That sounds cool too! I'll draw my terrifying elephant/spider thing and your armadillo-rhino.

[Psychotic]

Originally posted by DarkEclipse
elephant/spider

:eek: hrug:

[DarkEclipse]

Originally posted by Psychotic

Originally posted by DarkEclipse
elephant/spider

:eek: hrug:

I have a funny imagination like that.

[sphr]

This sparked off certain ideas that I was toying with.
Just a recap, I've mentioned the ideas of Computative Divination and Geomancy in one of my earlier post (refer to Hou Jyuu) This actually brings to mind an (historical) oriental character Zhuge Liang who was attributed with creating the repeating crossbow and the "wooden ox and flowing horse" to transport cargo. He is also a master of some sort of formation magic (a little like what I described under Geomancy in the first link). Another character of interest is the master carpenter Lu Ban who is well known for creating early siege weapons and the basic design for early wooden oriental buildings that pieced perfectly together like a jigsaw without a single nail in the construction which is amazing even today (the componentalized approach allows any part of the wooden building to be replaced if the wooden part gets spoilt). Mythically/legend-wise, he is attributed with creating a giant wooden bird that can float for days (modern imterpretation is that it is a sort of glider) and wooden horse carriage and coachmen (wooden automobile? sounds too fantastical but Leonardo Da Vinci also came up with a spring driven automobile design... )

What I am thinking is that we can add a more fantastical intepretation to the above, maybe have a branch of such Jyuu-Shi (recap Jyuu Users: as opposed to the Hou users who change natural laws to create magic, they do not modify the natural laws, but rather make use of them through advanced techinques. in other words, these are the "scientists" part of magic users.) that specialized in Computative Divination, Geomancy and mechanical construction (particularly, wooden mechanical construction to give them some flavor). They can construct wooden mechanical golems for many kinds of use : wooden 'horses' and 'ox' for transportation, or carriages, immobile 'wooden' sentry archers with inbuilt repeating crossbow that can be made to shoot at certain types of enemies or anybody who approach without a certain "ID card" (eg. some special metal/wooden/jade pendant that can identify the people). They can also have simpler constructs that harnesses powers of water and air (wind/water mills) that helps them with work like drawing water, or even have simple elevator systems by integrating the power sources with advanced gear work. To add flavor and potential, they can also have a small amount of Hou-type magic that are specially designed to work with their mechanical skills (e.g. the 'eyes' for the wooden archers which cannot be believably explained by mechanical means could be attributed to a special magic gem that acts as triggers for the mechanical system)

The next question comes: if they are not Tsaesci, how did they escape notice? Cooking up a similar story to Knifeblossom would ruin Knifeblossom's unique history.... (it would get boring if we use the same reason to explain how settlements escaped the Tsaesci) but they can be still be explained approproately (imo) thus: due to their skills with formation magic, they could create a giant magical formation to mask their settlement from magical/physical detection. They may even have something like the Stone Sentinel Maze outside that will make any unauthorized people that approaches loses sense of direction and get led past their settlement without knowing that it exists.

But in game terms, a large population city would not be very feasible nor believable. But a village size clan (maybe all people there have the same surname and are supposedly descended from an eminent ancester with Zhuge Liang or Lu ban as prototype), living in a large, hidden and technologically fantastical (oxymoronic term ) settlement could be interesting, especially if it can be "discovered" as part of the adventures.

EDIT: this is response to the first post by Mal... no comments for spider-elephants

[Ysne]

Interesting. Thanks for tying it all in sphr. I have no idea how this would fit in on Akavir but we do have lots of creative people here.