Why not have an organization of namers similar to the druids?  Also, I think this magic should be wild and untamed.  The results should be unpredictable because of tiny uncontrollable changes in their voices.  The magic could be about as unprecise and unpredictable as clerical magics.  Just an idea.

Kali, I'd love to help you with the spells! ^^

Hmm... Iunno if such extreme effects could be achieved unless the song was a long one, hours long to preform I suppose.  It seems like some really powerful magic, but it looks like it could be fun!

Let's drag Xarl in here for a final decision about the orb.  He made the dern thing.

At 50x200 peds they're gonna be fat cans or cones instead of towers, but hopefully the tapering will make up for the base.  

For the towers, let's enlarge the area around them, the hexagons.  Maybe have the base of the tower half the width of the hexagon and see how that turns out.

Dear Beth.....

Why are the towers so high?  We don't need storage space 'coz of the catacombs below.  We don't need to protect the sphere at 150 peds in the air coz the towers wouldn't do that anyway.  The only reason they're as high as they are is for looks.  And those proportions simply look better and more elegant on a tower, that's all I was saying.

Here's a good place to note that if we don't shrink their radius as they get higher into the air and they're touching, they would form a massive wall around the dome..... which would be pretty cool looking ^^

Dear Beth.....

Edited by: Kikhku at: 6/11/04 17:53

IMO, they shouldn't be narrower at the top.  Why not have the six towers the same width at all points?  I always envisioned them as columns, a monument to the greatness of Ximaxian magic.  These would also have twice as much storage space as the pointed towers.

The 8:1 proportion is always used in building.  Any 1:2^X proportion always gives the structures a sense of order.  

Dear Beth.....

Uhh, sixty peds would be more like a building.  And that would be huge.  We should shoot for an 8:1 height/diameter proportion.  16:1 would be better, but that would mean a very high tower.  Still, keep in mind that if the base is twenty peds wide, that gives us 314 square peds of room per level and still leaves us with elegant proportions if we can bump the tower to 160 feet.

Assuming they need 1/2 of the space for halls etc, a 20 ped wide base gives us 157 square peds of living space per floor.  

How much does a student need.  Would a 16 square ped room be enough for two (that's twelve feet by twelve feet, as large as most small dorm rooms).

That's twenty students per level, a good round number.  That means we should have a total of lessee here.. between 25 and 30 levels devoted to student lodgings (We'd need 26 levels at least).

We could also have the rooms rectangular at 3x4 peds (12x16 feet) and gain another 5 people per floor.  That'll just be room for the beds and basic belongings, but I doubt that most of the students will spend much time in their rooms anyway, especially if each level has 100+ square peds set aside as a recreation area.

Dear Beth.....

Uhh, Rayne, space isn't that limited.  Read my post about the dorm room size.

Dear Beth.....

I think we were talking about real water flowing down tower origionally.

How about the middle of each tower being hollowed out and having that element flow through the middle.  

Dear Beth.....

I propose that each tower be about 20 peds wide and each level between three and four peds high.


My rambling thoughts....

Well, let's assume that each story is around three peds high.  Nine feet seems like it would leave enough room, and I think that's a little tighter then the average modern level but this was the middle ages.  

If we use three peds per level, that gives us 45 stories to play with.  

Now comes the question of how much of the tower we want to be dormitories.  

We'll assume that we have a 3x3 ped dorm room for every two students.  That's enough for beds, some possessions, and a bit of breathing room.  

4.5 square peds per student * 450 comes to 225 + 1800 = 2025 square peds for dorm rooms alone.  

If we have 1/3 of the tower as dorms, that gives us 15 stories, making each story have on average 135 square peds of dormitory space alone and 7.5 dorm rooms per level (the octogonal shape would be perfect for eight dorm rooms).  Believe it or not, that tower would be less then ten peds across (guesstimating here)  

Now keep in mind if we double the diameter, we quadruple the living area.  If each level is twenty peds across, that will still be impressively slender, the kids will have space to live a little, and we'll need less then one ninth of the tower devoted to dorm rooms.

I do like the chandalier though ^_^  

Thats coz there's not much to discuss

I do not believe that even Xeua magic could make a perminant illusion.  It would have to be refreshed periodically, and how many Xeua mages would really care about outward appearances enough to cast illusions on the school when they should be meditating on magic.

Time to come to come conclusions, here are the options that I see

Outter towers: all symmetrical, perhaps some gardens or a grove of trees near the healing tower etc.

Do we all agree on that?  I haven't heard otherwise in the thread, and it would be a leap forward if we had that okayed.


Inner towers: Three options I see here.  

-Six identical towers either indistinguishable, or distinguishable only by the trim (each element with their respective color.

-Six identical tower bases, then as the tower gets higher, the element will take effect (partially dissappearing for wind, a waterfall for water, magma flow for fire, and perhaps just a huge miniature mountain, or a paritally buried tower for earth)

-Six totally differant towers all made purely from the element (crystal or glass for wind, molten rock for fire, stone for earth, ice for water)

The third one really doesn't seem to popular, and the first one is just boring.  I vote we have six identical marble bases for the six elemental towers.  Six identical towers underneath it all, but the evidence of each element surrounding the tower.

Dear Beth.....

Touche, salesman.... touche

oooh, it could be an avalange.  THe water magic is so strong at the top that the water is ice, then it melts as you go further down and the magic becomes weaker.

Water towers?  Why worry about those when you have the most potent group of water mages in santharia (presumably).

Why not just have a waterfall flowing down the water tower.  It would look beautiful if the entire tower was constantly covered in a torrent of running water, it would provide security, and it would provide more then enough water to keep an entire city watered, let alone the acadamy.  

That could work well.  And the tower would look really cool..

I agree on the higher levels being higher in the tower.

Why not have the base of each tower identical: A large structure built of stone.  As the tower rises higher (and as the students become stronger with their element, higher level students being at higher levels of the tower) the tower will take on more and more of that element's attributes.  I am picturing the air tower starting with stone at the bottom, slowly melding into a glass structure, and the top floors will simply be currents of air which the archmage creates.  
The fire building might be normal stone, then volcanic rock, and at the very top, flowing magma with flames leaping from it.  
For earth, I doubt the tower would go very high.  Perhaps just have the earth tower be a mound of dirt and a huge network of underground caves.  Most earth mages are dwarven anyway.
Water would start with stone once more, and slowly the stone would become ice, and at the very top, liquid water.
I picture the tops of Xeua and Ecua as dust storms.  Material would constantly be breaking up and gathering together, causing them to be shrouded in the resulting air and dust currents.

It makes sense really, the higher levels have higher level mages with stronger magic.