Ship's Doctor Ashton Rys-Davies

Born March 13, 1794 in Tunstall, Kent to the Rys-Davies Baronetcy.  The baronetcy was granted to Ash's grandfather for services to the Crown in India during the Seven Years' War, and removed from the books completely in 1836.
Trained as a surgeon at St. Bartholomew in London, 1810...Joined first of Hellfire Clubs 1815...Observes first blood transfusion 1818...Begins magical studies 1821
Developed an aptitude for archeology during school and spent 1826 in Eygpt with James Burton.
Begins in-depth occult studies 1828
Member of several Hellfire Clubs and began taking the magic side far more seriously than the debauchery.  Implicated in the ritual murder of an Earl's daughter, he fled England to the Americas.(Dec 12 ,1835)
The baronetcy was removed from the records, and the situation was hushed up.
Springheel Jack is most likely a weak demon that Ash summoned and failed to control (1835);  Jack would have waited until Ash was out of the area before engaging in shenanagans (Springheel Jack "encounters" begin in Oct 1837)
Ash keeps track of the latest medical trends, and if they don't seem insane, will experiment with them as possible.  Has recently discovered the value of loyalty as a personal advantage, if not necessarily an ethic.
Goes by the name "Dr. William Edwards" currently.
Maintains English sangfroid, Overconfident and callous, overconfidence is telegraphed by self-satisfied smirk.

Ash took service with the "Phantom" initially, but has moved with the rest of the party to the 6-gun "Beulah" (formerly "The Liberty", but renamed by the new owner after the prettiest whore in the boomtown of Ft. Worth) 

Magical Questions in a low-mana world

We have morphed into a spin-off of the original Texas Revolution campaign, based on the 1st Texas Navy.  I'll hold off on a campaign description for now, as I'll be focusing this post on some questions regarding my character, the ship's doctor, who also just happens to be a necromancer. I want to use this opportunity to ask these questions without eating into game time...

One "skill" I took was "Necromantic College" through GCB.  I didn't know what it did when I chose it, but it sure sounded cool ;> After looking through the books, and then finally through the GCB manuals, I discovered that this is a GCB placeholder for college summaries to use for improvisational spellcasting.  I just wasted 5 CP, oops.  As an aside, GCB has a printing option (the Grimoire), which calculates and prints this data as part of your spell lists.

On the other hand, considering that we are playing in a low mana campaign, it may just be that we consider this "skill" to be a prerequisite for learning magic at all, or to add a +1 bonus to the college for learning improvisational spells, or perhaps a bonus in spell research.




If we decide to do this as an explanation for character background, is it possible to do this for the other colleges as well?




This leads to the second set of questions; how did Ash learn his spells to begin with?  Grimoires? Research (spell invention, "Magic" p16)? Improvisational spellcasting?  Teacher?  Demonic tutoring? I can certainly see a doctor with a comfortable wealth level able to drop some bucks in the research department :)


This brings me to a follow-up question regarding the learning of improvisational spells:  If a spell is learned in this method, does it allow the mage to learn the spell without learning the prerequisite, or does the mage have to learn the prerequisite as well, and spend the CP for both?


I also have questions about the skill of  thaumatology...can this skill be used as a substitute for college skills when attempting improvisational spellcasting?  Can it be used as a  bonus for spell invention?  "Grimoire" references "new inventions" in the "Basic" manual (186-187) for this skill, but that seems too easy compared to the method in "Magic".

Finally, there is a section  in "Magic" at the end (p119) - Time, Energy and Cost Tradeoffs (Hurried or Careful spellcasting) that discusses additional time for energy or for skill; this is different then the "Alternate Magic
Ritual Rule" sidebar on p7 that we have been using.  The biggest way in that this is different is that there is not a limit set to how much time can be spent preparing, and that might not be appropriate for a low mana world.


All I know is that is going to be a major pain learning new spells!

This Ones For You, Brent