From:	Jan-bart van Beek <flake@***.NL>
Subject:	Polarized Orichalcum
Date:	Mon, 14 Aug 1995 16:11:13 +0200

This post is on behalf of a frend of mine.
He's also one of my players, who recently got himself in quit a lot of
trouble when he tried to doublecross the Seattle Yakuza (which is
generally considered to be dangerous to your health)

Any way the Yaks send this killer after him. A real pro, by the name of
the death ninja. He is absolutly positive that this guy is gonna take him
out in close combat, and is extremely likely to be using a weapon fous of
some sort.

A weapon focus as you may know contains orichalcum.

Now here's a piece of information about the workings of orichalcum.
This from actual "real world" hermetic knowledge, as by the way is most
of FASA's own material. As real world hermetics are kinda of vague on the
actual technical workings of spells and magical materials, this
information is extrated out of several hermetic handbooks and grimoires,
and could be interpreted in several different ways.

As you may know, oricalcum is composed of four radicals.
Gold,copper,silver and mercury. Why these four metals ? Becausethey
represent and are infact the four hermetic elements. Gold is fire, silver
is the sky, copper is the earth and mercuy is ofcourse water.

If you would radicalisze water through I believe 4 different stages you
would in the end get radical mercury. Some holds for earth, fire and air.

Something that was never mentioned in any FASA material is the fact that
radicals work as an attractor for their mundane parts. So in essence
making radical gold a magnet for real gold. They also work as an
attractor for their element, so radical gold attracts fire.

So what is orichalcum, also known in alchemy as the stone of the wise, it
is a magnet for all elements. Which makes it a magnet for everything. So
you could see it as a mundane material magnet.
But all magnets have poles, well so does orichalcum. It works as an
astral deflector, so it pushes away astral fabric, while in the same time
pulling at mundane fabric. (That's also the reason why it doesn't weigh
anymore heavy then normal material, It's material component pulls itself
towards the earth while it's astral part pushes itself away from the
earth as it is a living being)

This is the reason why orichalcum works in the first place, as a weapon
focus it attracts itself like a heat-seeking missile towards it's target.
You can use it as an astral weapon, because it has an active astral
component. Although it won't aid you very much, as it tends to push away
your target, some theories state that this fenomena is itself harmful, if
two astral object are forces to collide with each other one or both will
most probably be harmed by the sheer shock of it.

This astral deflection is also the part that helps other foci.
What exactly does a power focus do, it protects you from hostile astral
entities like spells, spirit attacks, and drain effects (Yes, this is an
astral entitie, as it is the workings of the astral plane that produce
the drain effects)
At the same time it helps you cast your own spells, making them more
powerful.
Why is this ?

Imagine that your standig in the center of a forcefield, say a powerfull
electrostatical field with a negative load. now imagine that your in a
fight where all the weopons you have got are projectile weapons with also
a negative load. What would happen if somebody would throw a stone at
you, well it will be slowed down by the electric field, right. Reducing
it's inpact speed and thereby the damage it does.
And what would happen if you would throw away the same stone, it would
get pushed away by the field, increasing it's speed and thus the damage.

In other words it stops incoming magic and accelerates outgoing magic.
It's a little more complex than that, but this basic model will do for now.

Now what would happen if you were able to polarize oricalcum, so that it
would work the other way around ?

That's right you would get something that defects mundane matter but
attracts magical energy.

In game terms it would reduce your magic dice pool, but if you would
combine it in a armored jacket you would get something that would not
only work as an extremely efficient armor (it kinda deflects the incoming
bullets), But it would also counter the effects of weapon foci, and
protect you from any elemental effect, meaning most attacks from
elemental spirits and elemental based combat spells.

It would render you something damn close to magical armor.

Would do you guys thinks. Any comments or suggestions ?

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**** The Cornflake Killer Strikes again ****