Effects to Live in the Volcanic Crater

These effects can provide health and wealth to the inhabitants of a covenant occupying the mineral-rich environment of a volcano.

Sculpt the Stone Machine

CrTe 20

R: Touch, D: Momentary, T: Individual, ritual

This ritual creates a machine made of stone that is suitable for use as the invested item Stone Harvester. The machine appears to be a large stone beetle about one pace in length. Until it is invested with the Stone Harvester suite of effects, the machine is merely a very elaborate statue.

(Base 3, +1 Touch, +3 elaborate design, +1 minimum ritual effect magnitude)

Required Lab Total to invent ritual: One Season (40), Two Seasons (30), Three Seasons (27), Four Seasons (25).

Stone Harvester

This invested item is a beetle-shaped machine that crawls along the rim of the volcanic crater. It collects and sorts the volcanic debris for valuable and exotic materials, which can be used to reduce the Upkeep of Hermetic Laboratories (see Covenants, page 110). Each Stone Harvester can provide the Free Outfittings Virtue Volcanic Minerals (see Insert) for up to 5 Hermetic Laboratories. Note that the laboratories do not have to be located in the volcano — the minerals can be transported to a remote laboratory.

The Stone Harvester is a huge stone device. It requires 20 pawns to open for enchantment (taking one season and a Magic Theory Score of 10). The effects later require 13 pawns of vis to invest into the Stone Harvester.

As the Stone Harvester is made of stone and only traverses the volcanic crater rim, it does not need any particular protection from either heat or fumes. A version of the Stone Harvester that actually enters the lava would obviously require some protection.

Harvest Stone

ReTe 43

Pen: +0, unlimited uses

R: Sight, D: Diameter, T: Part

The Stone Harvester uses this effect to collect stone/mineral/metal material of a particular sort that it encounters — the stone is identifying material using the Stone Wealth effect. The collected stone is placed in a large stone basket on the back of the Stone Harvester which must be periodically emptied by a grog (precisely how frequently depends on the rarity of the collected stone). If the grog fails to empty the basket, the Stone Harvester will continue to harvest, but excess stone will fall out of the basket.

(Base 3, +3 Sight, +1 Diameter, +1 Part, +2 effect metal; +10 unlimited uses, +3 linked trigger (Stone Wealth))

Required Lab Total to invest effect: One Season (86), Two Seasons (65), Three Seasons (58), Four Seasons (54).

Stone Wealth

InTe 19

Pen: +0, constant effect

R: Personal, D: Sun, T: Smell

This effect grants the Stone Harvester the sense to smell whether a particular sort of stone, metal, or mineral is nearby (within about 5 paces). The Stone Harvester contains a small compartment and it targets materials that match the material in the compartment. If there is no material in the compartment the Stone Harvester continues to move about the crater rim, but will obviously not find any matching material. The Stone Harvester only identifies Terram based objects, but of course additional effects could be invented to allow the Stone Harvester to identify and manipulate Animal, Aquam, Corpus, or Herbam objects.

This sense allows the harvester to smell