Weapons Crafting

[Florry]

My biggest worry is that making angreal directly useful in crafting makes tower rp particularly awkward. If we are going to be held to the bookish "all angreal are tower property" position, which has been the case as long as I've played, we're going to end up with either a lot of unhappy situations or a lot of willful abandonment of the rp.

The obvious case is that it looks pretty bad for an aes sedai to be giving tower property to a craftsman to melt down for her own personal benefit. But if that were the only issue, it wouldn't be a big problem. I can't make weapons in a crafting guild due to the second oath; I can handle being shut out of this too.

But think about what I suspect will be a common situation: A smob group wants to craft some new weapons, and needs to smob up an angreal. They ask an aes sedai to help (and indeed, just today, I was asked to help hit IoMM). The trip is successful, and we pull an angreal useful for crafting. Now what. If I'm keeping to my rp, I have to demand the angreal. This used to be less of an issue. No one but a channeler could make direct use of them, and if people think I'm just qp grubbing, I can always turn it in to a non-awarding mob. But now that angreal are directly useful to hunters, rogues, etc., and not just as black market trade goods or something to "drop" for a channeler friend, this is much more of a feel-bad situation for all concerned. I don't want to stop my smob buddies from getting what they need to craft things, but I also don't want to just look the other way with respect to my obligations as an aes sedai.

I have lesser worries about a surge in cross race transfer of tokens and crafting items, and potentially an undesirable surge in angreal loads if we start adjusting smobs to make this crafting more accessable, but the rp issue is the biggest frustration to me. Isn't there something else rareish besides angreal that could be used here?

Or are we willing to just jettison this part of tower rp, and start the fiesta of aes sedai openly bargaining and bartering with angreal, and encouraging the same in others? Maybe that's the best option, if we continue on this route, but it would leave a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

I've been wondering this too.

I can't deal in trading angreal as a merchant for fear of displeasing the White Tower (rightly so!), so I'm curious how this trader is going to work. Along with the smobbing issue Elyse brings up, what's to stop an Aes Sedai from sitting at the trader mob and taking note of people giving this guy angreal?

[Aishana]

1. Don't do it in front of a Tower member
2. How does Tower know that a male angreal is an angreal in the first place? It's just a pretty statue as far as they know.
3. How does anyone besides Tower know what a female angreal is icly? Also there's nothing stopping you from burning out the moonstone disc before you hand it over, it's just a useless lump of rock at that point surely you can justify getting rid of it.

Really though sometimes a little bit of an rp sacrifice needs to be made for playability. In the books each angreal was a unique snowflake and could be made out of anything, and things usable by men couldn't be determined by women unless it had something special about it like it was unbreakable or something or apparently made out of wood yet heavy as metal etc. So this 'jade carving of an old man' is just that even to the Tower, why should you be able to claim it as angreal except that you oocly know that it is? The whole concept is already muddy and I dont think having them used in crafting items changes anything about it. Tower also doesn't claim things like lightsticks though they are clearly ter'angreal. Or shocklances. So we kind of pick and choose to begin with.

If you really do have rp issues with it then I suggest not crafting using angreal on your Tower alt and obtaining those weapons through other means (pk). They're certainly not necessary to compete. Also regarding the oaths, you are not the craftsperson, the mob is, so I dont see any issues with it but again if you feel your character shouldn't be doing it, these things are certainly going to be attainable through pk and are not the end-all of weapons besides.

[Florry]

2. How does Tower know that a male angreal is an angreal in the first place? It's just a pretty statue as far as they know.
3. How does anyone besides Tower know what a female angreal is icly? Also there's nothing stopping you from burning out the moonstone disc before you hand it over, it's just a useless lump of rock at that point surely you can justify getting rid of it.

So if I want to sell a pretty wood carving of a bear, it's okay?

[Melayna]

My biggest issue is that the moonstone disc is issueable by Aes Sedai. While I think it is neat that pods have the name moonstone in them and we have an angreal that also is called moonstone, I think the angreal for crafting PoDs should be changed to a nonissueable angreal - for example the sapphire necklace. Or make sapphire necklace the issueable one for Aes Sedai and remove moonstone disc from it - granted this then comes with the issue of DF quests requiring sapphire necklaces, but I'd say its the lesser issue of the two.

Anyway just my two cents.
@Exyle kill the mob glancour that loads it, with the additional flame to lugard it doesn't seem that much of an issue.

[Elyse]

1. Don't do it in front of a Tower member

But there's much more fall out than just: do the actual crafting discreetly. There's the whole new push to trade for and smob for such things.

If you really do have rp issues with it then I suggest not crafting using angreal on your Tower alt and obtaining those weapons through other means (pk). They're certainly not necessary to compete. Also regarding the oaths, you are not the craftsperson, the mob is, so I dont see any issues with it but again if you feel your character shouldn't be doing it, these things are certainly going to be attainable through pk and are not the end-all of weapons besides.

Here, the issue isn't the second oath, it's destroying tower property. And as I noted above, I'm okay with being shut out of crafting by rp if need be. But my big example, the issue of very awkward situations in group smobbing and similar situations, remains.

Am I wildly up in arms? Goodness no. Change happens. But my concerns remain, and "just don't do it if it bothers you" only addresses a portion of my worries.

[Aishana]

But there's much more fall out than just: do the actual crafting discreetly. There's the whole new push to trade for and smob for such things.



Here, the issue isn't the second oath, it's destroying tower property. And as I noted above, I'm okay with being shut out of crafting by rp if need be. But my big example, the issue of very awkward situations in group smobbing and similar situations, remains.

I think this was true before and of course will be now, but I don't see how this is necessarily a terrible thing. The Tower certainly has no trouble getting an smob group together to do whatever they want, and I think Tower should be careful about joining non-tower groups as well in a lot of cases given conflicting interests and factions. I do think it'll end up non-tower groups will just not invite people known to name and claim all angreal as theirs, but that happens already.

Perhaps the Tower should rethink its strongarm stance after all these years (give us the angreal that we want or be warranted) particularly given the shaky rp ground they're on to begin with. But that's just my opinion. I've felt for a long time now that it should be more of a gentle political thing than threats of warrants. Bookishly I certainly could see Moiraine sedai-talking people out of an angreal but taking them by force or under threat of a death warrant? Not so much. You see Mat with foxhead and how bad the Aes Sedai want it but they're not exactly going to steal it from him in his sleep.
Regardless of what happens though I dont think it's a reason to change anything with the new weapon crafting.

[Melayna]

Not sure how it is shaky RP - didn't the Tower store all kinds of things in Randland or am I mixing it up with Tear storing all kinds of junk they suspected of being ter/angreal ? Fairly sure the Tower was very mad at Tear for having an angreal storage that they deemed was their property. To the point of not knowing its a male angreal I'd assume the Tower would also have information on male angreals from before the breaking. Been a while since I read the books, but I dimly seem to recall Rand telling the Dark Tower about a bunch of male angreals in some known storage(Tower or Tear maybe?), although I could just be misremembering been a fair few years since I last reread them.

@Palaemon
Just seems to be an uneven playing field for the people who do not have Aes Sedai or Aes Sedai friends. From memory sapphire necklace and moonstone disc are both fairly low tier angreals so swapping them around as issueable would make sense to me.

[Aishana]

Not sure how it is shaky RP - didn't the Tower store all kinds of things in Randland or am I mixing it up with Tear storing all kinds of junk they suspected of being ter/angreal ? Fairly sure the Tower was very mad at Tear for having an angreal storage that they deemed was their property. To the point of not knowing its a male angreal I'd assume the Tower would also have information on male angreals from before the breaking. Been a while since I read the books, but I dimly seem to recall Rand telling the Dark Tower about a bunch of male angreals in some known storage(Tower or Tear maybe?), although I could just be misremembering been a fair few years since I last reread them.

Oh without a doubt both of them would be collecting them. But the Tower also wouldn't be going to war with Tear over it, or threatening Defenders with a death warrant for not handing one over if found. If they even recognized it for that.

There's quite a few storages of angreal/ter'angreal noted in the books, collections of random objects half of which either did nothing or they couldn't figure out what they did. They collected anything funny looking or with properties that seem to defy logic. You see all kinds of people collecting heartstone objects or other things from the age of legends throughout the books. What you dont see is Aes Sedai raiding the personal belongings of people collecting these things. They buy/trade/politically obtain them.

[Florry]

But there's much more fall out than just: do the actual crafting discreetly. There's the whole new push to trade for and smob for such things.



Here, the issue isn't the second oath, it's destroying tower property. And as I noted above, I'm okay with being shut out of crafting by rp if need be. But my big example, the issue of very awkward situations in group smobbing and similar situations, remains.

I think this was true before and of course will be now, but I don't see how this is necessarily a terrible thing. The Tower certainly has no trouble getting an smob group together to do whatever they want, and I think Tower should be careful about joining non-tower groups as well in a lot of cases given conflicting interests and factions. I do think it'll end up non-tower groups will just not invite people known to name and claim all angreal as theirs, but that happens already.

Perhaps the Tower should rethink its strongarm stance after all these years (give us the angreal that we want or be warranted) particularly given the shaky rp ground they're on to begin with. But that's just my opinion. I've felt for a long time now that it should be more of a gentle political thing than threats of warrants. Bookishly I certainly could see Moiraine sedai-talking people out of an angreal but taking them by force or under threat of a death warrant? Not so much. You see Mat with foxhead and how bad the Aes Sedai want it but they're not exactly going to steal it from him in his sleep.
Regardless of what happens though I dont think it's a reason to change anything with the new weapon crafting.

Always thought if an Aes Sedai found I had an angreal of any kind, she'd ask for it and then find suitable payment for the item. I wouldn't know what the item was, but I'd happy I sold the thing. (as a merchant selling Jade carvings or some such. How would I know what it is, it's just Jade to me.)

Aes Sedai aren't thieves, forcing people to give then what they want without recompense.

[Elyse]

Always thought if an Aes Sedai found I had an angreal of any kind, she'd ask for it and then find suitable payment for the item. I wouldn't know what the item was, but I'd happy I sold the thing. (as a merchant selling Jade carvings or some such. How would I know what it is, it's just Jade to me.)

Aes Sedai aren't thieves, forcing people to give then what they want without recompense.

Yes, I do typically reward those who hand over angreal (even used up ones). I don't barter for them, though. I'm sure different people handle it differently.