Rosha, “Blarg, whatever. Should we ask Jason if he has anything else on him to try and turn into an accessory?”
Courtney shrugs, “Worth a try. After your training with Peter, you can at least spit when something might work for it.”
Rosha knocks on Jason’s door, “Heyo! You got any last-minute accessory-worthy tat in there?”
Inside, Jason glances around the room before looking back down at his desk and shrugs, it was worth a try. He picks up the chip and goes and opens the door. “Would this work? Not the most magical of things, but I was punching blocks for weeks before this first piece came off. A nice souvenir, if nothing else.”
Rosha shrugs and grabs the rock chip. It fills her hand, but not by much and she lifts it up to examine closely. Under her Mana sight, there is a certain spark, causing her to frown and look closer. “Well, that’s annoying. Most of these things are relatively balanced between Mana and Qi, basically just the environmental mix, maybe a bit less Energy. Your personal little trinket here, of course, has to have way more Energy mixed in, making it hard on my Mana sight. Give me a second.”
She rotates the stone chip as her frown deepens. “There might be something here. Hard to tell, though that’s true for most materials you need to make an accessory. Some examples are easy enough to farm, but they produce sub-par for non-combat accessories.
“Anyone can grab the first sheaf of grain harvested in a region and turn it into an accessory. But that accessory will likely be something low-power and related to crops. So maybe an amulet that keeps small grain-eating birds away? Hang it on a specially prepared scarecrow and you’re good until it wears out. Honestly, a much better use for that kind of magical component would be as a sacrifice to a farming or harvest deity. That or as part of some magical fertilizer for next season.”
Jason, “Would that amulet even count as an accessory? I’ve seen trinkets like that before.”
Rosha shrugs, so Courtney calls over the answer, “Accessories and trinkets are the same thing. Trinkets are simply the low-power magitech to the high-end luxury of accessories.”
Rosha nods, “What she said. The reason they’re considered rare is because to make something that truly does something worthwhile? It needs enough oomph. Which is hard when accessories are one of the few things that use all power types.”
Jason, “I never heard about that. Aren’t there Mana-specific accessories and such?”
Rosha holds up the rock chip, “It is in the crafting, not the component. Though this one is heavily weighted towards Energy already.”
Jason, “But what about all those things we’ve gotten in the past? Air Mana feathers from a bird and what not?”
Rosha shrugs, “You can make regular equipment with it. However, part of what makes something applicable to be used in an accessory is that the moment that produces it is special. And in that specialness, the atmospheric powers flow into it.
“Though even that isn’t enough. After all, people have life and death battles all the time! Especially us players for whom it isn’t really as final as ‘death’ implies. In theory, after every intense fight that drags in between two evenly matched opponents, there should be something left that is applicable. Because the power in the air certainly will flow in.”
Jason laughs, “Of course it would. Experience has to come from somewhere, and that leaving would clearly in turn leave a vacuum. Which I guess is why it isn’t specific to one power, even when you kill a Mana beast with magic.”
Rosha, “Well, yeah, that holds true for monsters, but you can get these things from all kinds of situations. And sure, the grain harvest thing, you can say there is experience taken because it is farming. However, there are situations where you can just pick up a comp off the ground. A fun one is those river rocks that have a hole worn through them by natural means.”
Jason, “Aren’t those rocks relatively, well, not common, but not rare either?”
Rosha, “The magic involved is very picky about what counts as ‘natural’ and so many don’t count.
“Anyway, before you distract me further, what matters with accessory components is that when the ambient power flows into the object, it swirls around and gets knotted.”
Jason, “Oh, and the more complex the knot, the better? Wouldn’t that just lead to someone with a skill for knotting ropes, like a sailor, finding a way to artificially create components?”
Rosha sighs, “Well, for one, people already make these components. Refer back to the first sheaf of wheat thing. More important though, you have it backwards. The simpler it is, the more powerful. A knotted mess might not even qualify. The power too tangled up to be used.
“No, what you need is something so simple, power can easily flow. But there’s a catch. Power isn’t a bunch of threads. It can slip through itself and other forms of power. Which is exactly what happens more often than not when the knot is too simple.
“If you just grab a strand of Qi, Mana, and Energy and gather them together, then knot them? That will just fall apart. A more complex and tangled knot, though? It keeps the energies together. Something about the Chaos of the tangle rejecting the Order of the power threads and the whole concept of a knot in the first place.
“Caveat, nothing says that isn’t possible. In fact, if you could do a single twist knot? You’d have one of the strongest accessory comps in NeoRealm. Likely only beat out by things made of special materials, as dungeon loot, or by a deity.”
Jason, “What if you don’t knot it? Instead, just get the three powers to stick around.”
Rosha, “We’re back to the Order and Chaos thing. Free-floating power doesn’t have the Order needed to be used. Anyway, I’ve been looking at this rock chip for a while and it might work. Almost a touch too tangled, but we can hand it off the crafter and they’ll give it a go.”