#manufacturing wizard

[electropneumatic]

KUKA HAAS, MANUFACTURING WIZARD

Commissioned from Ziruka (@rukafais) during her Wizard Sale - it ends on December 31st, so if you want one for yourself, move fast! They did a great job, I'm really happy with the art.

This is the MANUFACTURING WIZARD, otherwise known as Kuka Haas! It formed one day in an industrial plant, and has been exploring ever since. Spells include SUMMON STOCK ALUMINUM and SENTIENT FORKLIFT.

[electropneumatic]

for the various people and persons who like doing these

[wild-magic-oops]

It's so cute that Gale pays a sorcerer Tav/Durge a compliment about their magic:

For reference - this is the line a cleric gets:

[iruludavare]

{ ooc. @ finnish phds how does it feel to get AN ENTIRE SWORD when you graduate 🎤 }

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

It's been a bit over a year since the core four (me, my beloved, his bestie gun wizard esquire, and my bestie, doctor horse girl) went on a very successful very effective bonding group cohesion road trip, which is long enough to observe a pattern in recollection and presentation. keep in mind that literally no one in the core four is White and 3/4ths of us are from (recent) immigrant families.

the way my beloved and doctor horse girl describe this trip: we went on a roadtrip with friends! it was fun!

audience reaction: how nice!

vs

me and gun wizard, esquire describing this trip: WE DROVE TO WEST VIRGINIA IT WAS SO COOL. what? yeah, of course on purpose.

audience reaction: ...west virginia????

so anyway. maybe I'm not the normal person here.

[electropneumatic]

Hello again,

Thank you for explaining nature and ecosystems for me. It is fascinating how every organism makes an impact on the world around it. While factories and assembly lines can be very complicated, it looks like nature is infinitely more so.

As a token of my appreciation, please accept this plastic model of you. When thrown behind you, it will expand in size and act as a decoy to any in pursuit; in normal situations, it's just a decoration.

While I'm beginning to explore the world outside of factories, I don't think I'll stumble across you for quite a while, as it looks like the moist environments that you enjoy would be detrimental to me. However, maybe someday I will figure out a way to avoid these limitations, and we will be able to meet.

Thank you again,

KUKA HAAS

MANUFACTURING WIZARD

Hello Moss,

I am Kuka Haas, the manufacturing wizard. I formed last year in a factory, but I'm beginning to grow curious about the outside world. Could you please tell me a little bit about "animals" and "plants"? If you are interested, I could teach you a little bit about industrial machinery in return.

Thank you,

KUKA HAAS

MANUFACTURING WIZARD

Hello, Kuka Haas!

Hmm. Well, nature is both simple and complicated! It might help you to think of everything as a cog in a machine.

Everything affects everything else, from the smallest Flora to the largest Fauna. Ecosystems are fragile, but everything works in harmony most of the time!

Life and nature go though cycles of destruction and rebirth

In Australia, eucalyptus trees are a good example! The bark and natural oils inside the tree are very flammable, and the trees themselves have adapted specific traits to deal with their constant catching-on-fire in the Aussie heat.

When a eucalyptus catches fire, they've adapted to drop all their seeds on the ground. After the wildfire passes, the seeds have a rich ashbed to re-sprout from! Thus, the natural cycle continues.

[homunculus-argument]

My boyfriend is a person who likes exact instructions. He also has a remarkably large head. Like, in the kind of range where regular clothing manufactures do not make hats that size because it's not financially profitable. He is 2 cm taller than me and his head circumference is 3 cm smaller than my waist. Can walk into any shop that sells hats, ask them "what's the biggest size you carry?" and walk out after hearing it's too small. And if he ever ends up in a workplace where the uniform requires a hat, but they do not have any headgear available that would fit him, it's in their best interest to at least have some kind of specific instructions of what kind of hat he should have before telling him to just bring his own hat from home.

Because "it doesn't matter, as long as your head's covered" does not rule out his awesome big-ass felted giant wizard hat.

[prokopetz]

On the one hand, it's true that the way Dungeons & Dragons defines terms like "sorcerer" and "warlock" and "wizard" is really only relevant to Dungeons & Dragons and its associated media – indeed, how these terms are used isn't even consistent between editions of D&D! – and trying to apply them in other contexts is rarely productive.

On the other hand, it's not true that these sorts of fine-grained taxonomies of types of magic are strictly a D&D-ism and never occur elsewhere. That folks make this argument is typically a symptom of being unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons' source material. D&D's main inspirations are American literary sword and sorcery fantasy spanning roughly the 1930s through the early 1980s, and fine-grained taxonomies of magic users absolutely do appear in these sources; they just aren't anything like as consistent as the folks who try to cram everything into the sorcerer/warlock/wizard model would prefer.

For example, in Lyndon Hardy's "Five Magics" series, the five types of magical practitioners are:

Alchemists: Drawing forth the hidden virtues of common materials to craft magic potions; limited by the fact that the outcomes of their formulas are partially random.

Magicians: Crafting enchanted items through complex manufacturing procedures; limited by the fact that each step in the procedure must be performed perfectly with no margin for error.

Sorcerers: Speaking verbal formulas to basically hack other people's minds, permitting illusion-craft and mind control; limited by the fact that the exercise of their art eventually kills them.

Thaumaturges: Shaping matter by manipulating miniature models; limited by the need to draw on outside sources like fires or flywheels to make up the resulting kinetic energy deficit.

Wizards: Summoning and binding demons from other dimensions; limited by the fact that the binding ritual exposes them to mental domination by the summoned demon if their will is weak.

"Warlock", meanwhile, isn't a type of practitioner, but does appear as pejorative term for a wizard who's lost a contest of wills with one of their own summoned demons.

Conversely, Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Legends of Ethshar" series includes such types of magic-users as:

Sorcerers: Channelling power through metal talismans to produce fixed effects; in the time of the novels, talisman-craft is largely a lost art, and most sorcerers use found or inherited talismans.

Theurges: Summoning gods; the setting's gods have no interest in human worship, but are bound not to interfere in the mortal world unless summoned, and are thus amenable to cutting deals.

Warlocks: Wielding X-Men style psychokinesis by virtue of their attunement to the telepathic whispers emanating from the wreckage of a crashed alien starship. (They're the edgy ones!)

Witches: Producing improvisational effects mostly related to healing, telepathy, precognition, and minor telekinesis by drawing on their own internal energy.

Wizards: Drawing down the infinite power of Chaos and shaping it with complex rituals. Basically D&D wizards, albeit with a much greater propensity for exploding.

You'll note that both taxonomies include something called a "sorcerer", something called a "warlock", and something called a "wizard", but what those terms mean in their respective contexts agrees neither with the Dungeons & Dragons definitions, nor with each other.

(Admittedly, these examples are from the 1980s, and are thus not free of D&D's influence; I picked them because they both happened to use all three of the terms in question in ways that are at odds with how D&D uses them. You can find similar taxonomies of magic use in earlier works, but I would have had to use many more examples to offer multiple competing definitions of each of "sorcerer", "warlock" and "wizard", and this post is already long enough!)

So basically what I'm saying is giving people a hard time about using these terms "wrong" – particularly if your objection is that they're not using them in a way that's congruent with however D&D's flavour of the week uses them – makes you a dick, but simply having this sort of taxonomy has a rich history within the genre. Wizard phylogeny is a time-honoured tradition!

[princesssarcastia]

bold of you to say "draft dodger" like it's something derogatory?

Satine Kryze should not be a sympathetic character.

A complex and tragic one? Sure. Every day of the week.

But she did not 'have a point', neither in-universe, not outside of the sw framework. She isn't a hero, neither of her own story, nor of someone else's. There is no way she wasn't a tool. You should not look at her and think 'this woman has done nothing wrong and what ultimately happened to Mandalore was to no part her fault'.

Because guys. Friends. Strangers on the interwebs.

Pacifism doesn't work.

And it certainly wouldn't have worked in motherfucking Star Wars – the 'wars' is literally in the title – for a system or series of systems who wanted to stay neutral.

YOU DON'T STAY NEUTRAL FOR LONG BY JUST SAYING 'YEAH, NO THANKS <3' TO A LARGE-SCALE CONFLICT.

source: I am Swiss, we've looked at this in history class. Extensively.

Satine was a dreamer (thanks Obi-Wan) who was allowed to keep her delusions because they actively benefitted Palpatine's plans. And that's something you can quote me on. There is literally no other reason (apart from supremely bad writing but we'll leave that aside here) for her and her little friends' 'Alliance of Neutral Systems' or whatever to be allowed to exist.

Not that they were neutral in any way, shape or form, by the way.

So yeah sorry to the Satine stans, but you're idolizing a character that was written exclusively and specifically for Obi-Wan's manpain and who, in-universe, was a supremely bad politician. Because the level of mental dissonace needed to factually be a Republic System, have a seat in the fucking Republic Senate, rely upon their military for aid while actively proclaiming that All Violence Is Bad And Barbaric one sentence later AND THEN CLAIM TO BE NEUTRAL IN THE WHOLE CONFLICT – it's just mind-blowing. Even moreso that people actually look at this character and see something aspirational in her.

Again, I'll gladly dissect her character any day of the week. She is fascinating because of all the implications her existence as a head of state carries with it, as well as her deeply complicated family history and her relation to mandalorian culture.

But it just grates on me personally that that all gets ignored in favor of her being some sort of icon of white american saviorism (bc that's literally what she is) and her objectively bad political takes being treated like they are the only correct stance to be taken during the Clone Wars/Mandalorian Civil Wars.

If you think pacifism works and actually lets you stay neutral, I desperately urge you to open a history book. Because those two are mutually exclusive. Especially in the scenario that Star Wars paints.

[jouste]

The Iron Wizard! The Iron Wizard has manufactured the heaviest wand to ever to be Abracadabra'd, casting much weightier and improved spells! A simple Magic Missile becomes intercontinental while Detect Magic has such a range that it is always a resounding "Yes".

[electropneumatic]

The Manufacturing Wizard inspects a CNC milling machine. His belt is similar to a chain-type automatic tool changer, and he uses it to hold a couple cutting tools.

[malicious-gay]

so maybe you’re a wizard

and maybe you’re easily one of the best wizards of your generation (and maybe some before)

and maybe that’s all you are

maybe every ounce of self-confidence you have is manufactured. maybe it’s an illusion and maybe you’re convinced that if people never squint and look beyond it then they’ll never have the see the rest of you.

(because maybe they won’t like what they see. maybe you’re too selfish. maybe you’re too arrogant. maybe you’re nothing like what they expect and you have to be what they expect because they don’t want anything else.)

and maybe the idea that someone could love you for who you are instead of the skills you honed and the services you provide is strange and foreign. maybe it’s uncomfortable because of course not, no way, don’t be absurd. look at the illusion, astral project, take the fantasy version of myself I created in my hands just for you. it’s better than the real thing.

maybe the real thing is awful and messy and broken.

maybe all you’ve ever been is the sum of someone else’s aspirations.

maybe all your loved ones ever touted were your skills and abilities and how smart you were and how clever you were and how brilliant and sharp and talented you were. and maybe that was all they cared about.

maybe you were led to believe you were never more than your abilities by the same person who later helped take them away. (the same person who convinced you you’d be nothing without them, and never good enough for more. the same person who showed you the endless possibilities that were for someone better than you. someone more than you. no, no, the candy is sweet but it’s not for you.)

and maybe now you think being smarter than everyone is the only thing you’ll ever have so you have to be the smartest person in the room because that’s all you have.

that’s all you have.

and if you don’t have that then you’ll have nothing. you’ll be nothing.

without it you are nothing.

and maybe you’re a wizard and the woman you loved who constantly showed you a world outside your reach comes to you at your lowest. when you’re stripped of everything you felt made you whole.

and she tells you the one thing you can do to fix it. the one thing you can do, the one power left in your hands.

the one thing you’re good for without your brilliance, without your intelligent, without the skill she helped take away from you.

you can die

(you weren’t anything to anyone anymore anyway)

[mitigatedchaos]

One snowy night (you find it snowing even in Florida), a wizard approaches you and shows you some of his fantastical wizard powers. He then offers you $10 million to become a Christmas character for 10 years.

Your lawyer, who was drinking Christmas beverages at your house, reads through the contract. He says that the contract seems reasonable, with no obvious loopholes. Once the contract is over, you will return to your original self at the same biological age you were when it started. You may pick a gender variant you like, but the form will obey the same general style (e.g. you may not pick "that guy, but as a handsome Hollywood actor").

Additional Information...

You will receive a flying sled. The sled has a comfortable magical bubble around it which ensures that the air is reasonably still and pressurized. It can fly up to the speed and altitude of a 747, and carry up to 2 tons.

You will be immune to arctic temperatures, although you will still need oxygen, food, and water.

Every year, in the 48 hours before and after Christmas, you may use Christmas time magic to enable you to visit every occupied dwelling, and every child, in the entire world. (Christmas time magic is complicated, and may adjust if people start celebrating Christmas at a different time of year.)

If you have chosen Santa Claus...

The portal to your Christmas village domain is located at the North Pole. Your realm is a stereotypical Christmas village, with all the alpine trappings, located in a mountain valley. Local temperatures are always just below freezing. A full course of holiday food and drink is automatically generated every day, and firewood is replenished automatically.

You possess a magical gift bag from which you may withdraw one toy desired by a child within a 250ft range, per child (up to 18), per year. The item must be generally accepted as a toy (so no guns, tanks, bombs, gold bars, plutonium, etc), although for older children it may be acceptable to generate a gaming PC. The item may be worth no more than $6,000 (anchored at the start of your term as Santa) - if the item would be worth over $6,000, such as a luxury SUV for a teenager, it arrives damaged or aged, until it is only worth $6,000. You may create toys produced by no existing manufacturer, assuming the technology exists for something similar, and are required to do no engineering work. The True Spirit of Christmas prohibits you from deliberately creating dangerous toys. You may not create new video games, movies, or books, although you may copy any of these created throughout human history, even if you don't have access to it. (This excludes classified information, development plans for bombs, corporate records, etc.)

You may create a lump of coal (or charcoal) at will. You may produce one cubic meter of coal, charcoal, firewood, or lumber per minute. It appears gradually in an empty space in front of you and gently floats to the ground, making it difficult to injure someone.

Once per year per individual, you may sense whether an individual is naughty or nice. This is a form of Christmas Magic, and you have little insight into how it classifies people (your lawyer thinks it may be Confucian, but the contract is vague). Whether you give people gifts or coal anyway is up to you.

You may recruit Christmas elves for the remaining duration of your term as Santa Claus. While inside the Christmas village, a contracted elf will become the 4-foot-tall Christmas elf version of themselves, and become healthy, strong, unaging, and immune to disease. They must work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (religious observances exempt), or they will be automatically ejected from the Christmas village. Christmas elves may use Christmas magic to create toys not desired by any specific child. This takes them 1 minute per $30 of toy value. Your Christmas village automatically supports, with room and board, a population of up to 50,000 elves. It also sports truly massive warehouses for holding toys prior to distribution. You may access any toy stored in this way using your magical gift bag. All Christmas elf contracts expire at the end of your term. Any elves still in your village, as well as their belongings, will be deposited in temporary dwellings in a safe location somewhere in the State of New York. They will continue to have pointed ears afterwards.

You may not give gift cards or cash (Wizard Law prohibits counterfeiting currency). However, you may give digital assets (such as lootboxes or Steam games). You may choose to automatically compensate companies in an account with your realm, from which they may withdraw some amount of toys created by your elves. The associated website is part of the Christmas village's domain, and requires little to no oversight on your part. The toys arrive in cardboard boxes 7-10 business days after they are requested.

You may legally eat any cookies and milk you find, at any time. These count as complete nutrition for you. No matter how much you attempt to diet, you will find that you cannot lose your holly jolly weight.

You may create ordinary Christmas decorations, such as garlands, at will. The decorations created in this way are generally made out of wood, paint, pine, twine, and so on.

When using Christmas time magic to visit the children of the world, you may enter buildings using a form of magical projection. This allows you to leave gifts, eat cookies, and so on, but you aren't able to steal items and bring them back with you from inside locked or closed buildings.

If you have chosen the Grinch...

Your domain is a very large cave located in the largest mountain on your continent. It is reasonably well-lit, ventilated, and habitable. There is an unlimited supply of awful, smelly food and water. Somehow, this food seems strangely appetizing, but other people will recoil at the scent.

You possess a magical theft bag that helps you to steal Christmas. Items so stolen are transported to parts of your cave, where they are heaped into large piles. You may steal Christmas-themed items such as Christmas gifts, food, and Christmas decorations and even Christmas trees. These items become legally yours - you may even melt down golden Christmas ornaments and sell the gold for scrap. (Overtly religious items such as nativity scenes are generally protected by the True Spirit of Christmas, unless they are against the True Spirit of Christmas in some way.) Your cave has many rooms, and you may choose to divert food items to a frozen room for later, if you like.

You may also steal other winter-holiday-themed items, including gifts for New Year's Eve, gifts intended for other winter holidays, and so on. If you attempt to steal a non-holiday item, it is possible that you may be arrested by the authorities. Only holiday items can go in your magical theft bag.

Your may return Christmas. Using your magical theft bag, you may place items back where you originally found them, or back with the original owners. However, you may also choose to redistribute Christmas and give items to different people, or put them in different places. Even when using Christmas time magic, you may not e.g. place Christmas trees in front of a flying aircraft, as this is against the True Spirit of Christmas.

Unlike Santa Claus, when using Christmas time magic, you may also enter stores, warehouses, and vehicles, to steal Christmas from Amazon. You may even take down the "Merry Christmas" signs at Target.

Your holiday sense allows you to sense the range, direction, and location of nearby Holiday items to steal.

You may steal holiday music. Not pirate, but steal. If you are walking through the grocery store and hear a rendition of "All I want for Christmas is you," you may rip the song to your device of choice, and the file containing it on the originating server will be deleted.

You may create contraptions. These machines are always composed of junk and tend to have a Rube Goldberg element to them. They are not particularly durable. If the contraption is doing something unusual, it is powered by Christmas theft magic. You can only focus enough to create a contraption with magical effects if you are trying to do so in order to steal or return Christmas (or other winter holidays). (The effects of magical contraptions are limited, but generally do allow you to steal Christmas more effectively or efficiently. The more powerful a magical contraption is, the more comedic it must be.) Other contraptions are limited to what can be accomplished via ordinary technology.

You have one loyal dog. Though surprisingly resourceful for a dog, unlike the Christmas elves, he can't create any Christmas gifts at all.

In either case, you may visit people and generally travel and talk to people outside of Christmas.

[werecreature-addicted]

"Theres no way a werewolf could fit inside a human manufactured condom"

I never even thought of that, holy shit. Imagine wanting to have protected sex with your werewolf partner and having to get werewolf condoms? Or if it's a super ass magical world have a witchy alternative?

if magic is real they're simply has to be a magical way to have safe sex. there's no way Wizard chlamydia is a thing, right? In the same way that new technology is inevitably used for the manufacturing of porn (the printing press, the internet, AI chatbots) Magic simply must be used to better sex for humans and monsters at some point. there has to be a contraception spell or condom magic item.

[thepioden]

I just. I love the party I DM SO much. They're ridiculous. You know how some parties are murderhobos? Mine are litigation hobos. I think this is because the clorcerer is a former IRL lawyer and his IRL wife started out playing a fiend-pact fire genasi warlock. Her pact was negotiated by Daddy's Lawyers. And since we've established she has access to a pack of infernal attorneys, this has become their go-to.

They got Mammon and Asmodeus arguing over an infernal FDIC situation.

They brought formal charges against the Grand Vizier of the City of Brass.

They stole the Tamlin (hereditary title) from the Queen of Air and Darkness by getting her tangled in a custody dispute with Hell over his soul. The Janet Precedent has been invoked. (Asmodeus is going to notice the repeated chicanery at some point.)

The genasi is going to help our Fairy wizard depose his lightly despotic archfey father by seducing the man and then taking his kingdom and his heir in divorce court.

They're working on ousting a dragon from her involuntary indenture as a museum curator/collection object belonging to a Dao and I suspect contract law will be involved.

I will not at all be surprised if the Warforged decides to somehow seize the patent for his manufacture from the Noble Dao who holds it and liberates his siblings that way.

Just. These litigious bastards. They're ridiculous. I adore them to bits.

[genericpuff]

re: your tags on the rowling / musk post, specifically villains on saturday morning cartoons > wondering why we hate those who emulate it

idk if you ever played toontown, but i’ll always find it hilarious that disney released a game all about fighting big corporations from taking over small businesses, where the enemies (aka cogs (in the machine)) are all named after idioms / insults for types of corp employees (i.e. pencil pusher, ambulance chaser, big wig, loan shark, cold caller); esp considering disney is the Perfect example of the types of corporations that the game teaches you are evil and soulless. honestly, it’s a game i hold near and dear to my heart, and i recommend trying out toontown rewritten if you ever feel like it

i have NOT played toontown but i remember seeing the commercials for it all the time at like, the end of DVD's n junk and REALLY WANTING TO PLAY IT but ofc we didn't have a computer most of the time growing up and when we did it was hooked up with dial-up that my parents always got really clutchy over (idk if this was just a circumstance of the time period but like. did anyone else have a parent who acted like it was a life-or-death scenario if they missed even a single phone call ??? because my folks definitely did LOL) so something like toontown was just not in the cards LOL but I didn't know Toontown Rewritten was a thing so... maybe it's time for me to make another one of my childhood self's dreams come true (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

but that is really ironic, it's wild (and sad honestly) how so many accomplished writers and creators can become disconnected from what they originally represented and wrote about through... the disillusionment of fame and wealth i guess ??? or maybe it was just mold on the walls the whole time ?? 💀😆 i mean shit even rowling herself told a story about a boy literally living in the closet who finally escaped and went on to fight against an organization of literal fucking wizard nazi's, and yet now she seemingly missed the entire point of why kids resonated with her books so much and why they saw it as an inspiring message of hope and acceptance and love and persevering and standing up against literal fucking fascism ??? hello ???

actually there was a great video i watched a while ago about how despite the messages we took away from those books growing up, the HP books were also completely manufactured through the lens of capitalism, like not just as a franchise but on a narrative level. def give it a watch because it really kinda blew my mind and opened up a whole new perspective on the series for me LOL