Space and Magic, questions of magic off Earth Options

[Arawyn]

There's no place on earth that's "zero" mana, and while paracritters whose Magic is reduced to 0 lose access to their paranormal powers, they are not otherwise injured or limited.

This got me thinking a whole bunch of questions (that I could not find in the forum search function).

1. there used to be rules for those dumb enough to look in the astral or try magic in a suborbital. What is the deal with this now?
2. what is the deal on Mars?
3. is it possible to trap mana in a mana barrier to maintain some magic outside of the atmosphere?

Personally I liked the idea of each planet in the solar system having their own astral presence as a metaplane and that the Horrors are actually from the outer planets.

That the cycle of magic was based on some Solar cycle and as mana increased the void between the planets would start to create bridges between planets when planet's orbits start to go in sync.

BTW: Did anyone see this article on trying to live on Venus?
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/08...cloud-city.html

[Zhan Shi]

1. See Street Magic.

2. Possible civilisation. Pyramids and a dragon skeleton. Info is scattered across a number of sourcebooks.

3. Don't know. However, you could create a weak mana level using plants and such. Ares is doing this on their super secret space station, for astral quests for hunting bug spirits. Again, Street Magic.

[Cang]

They are not dragon bones (that was the guess) but turned out to be troll bones or some such thing.

And the mana bubble you propose wouldn't work because i would have no mana to pull from to keep up the barrier. But if you have enough life in the area you can cast some spells at a great disadvantage.

[Arawyn]

Thanks Zhan Shi, found it on page 120.

And the mana bubble you propose wouldn't work because i would have no mana to pull from to keep up the barrier. But if you have enough life in the area you can cast some spells at a great disadvantage.

Fair enough, but mana can be manipulated, it should be able to be contained in some manner. We can see that it can pool together.
Thus I suspect that there should be some technique in which mana can be contained like we can contain an atmosphere.

Considering Domains, and the descriptors. I would assume that the location of the first Apollo landing would be equal to a Domain (equal to a Rating 6). The example of casting spells on the Moon gave a -9 for the moon location.
What if that meant that a domain could convert a -9 location into a -3 or just a Mana Ebb.

This could demonstrate a good reason for Evo to be the first to establish a base on Mars.
Assuming a higher background count and the lower impact of that first base could mean that Evo may have control of the only locations on Mars that are not a Void.

[Wanderer]

This makes me wondering how big must the amount of life be in order to create a proper (i.e. normal strength) albeit small local manasphere. I guess it's something metabologist researchers from all major governments and megacorps are studying avidly. After all, no sane would-be colonizer of space in the Sixth World would give up the benefits and comforts of magic.

[Zhan Shi]

Troll bones? Must have missed that. Still, it seems to make sense...that illustration on page 43 of Arsenal.

[Snow_Fox]

Wastelands had a whole chapter in space and this included the problems with magic up there. Basically, do NOT look in the astral and just imagine massive boosts to target numbers. On larger space stations is is a little easier but notby much. In short a mage who only uses spells and doesn't devleop other skill sets is seriously screwed.