What does the typical non-black market telesma store look like? Is it anything like a department store, or will it look and smell new-agey? I'm assuming corp mages are issued their own telesma.

Also, how common is orihalcum, market-wise? Do they sell it in stores by the ounce, or is it something you have to special order?

Did you ever read a sourcebook?

It all depends on the owner, the owners preferences and the crowd that the owner wants to play to. Hippiemart will have all the new age trinkets and a few actual foci and is probably a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Aztechnology or SK.
On the opposite side there are some legal small business enchanters who will have none of the useless decorative content but just a forge in the back, some appearance examples on the shelves, and a safe with the products that have been made but not picked up by the customer.

I've actually read about half of them from 2nd edition and so forth; I've just managed to completely avoid the ones about magic.

First off, if you take a peek into Magic In The Shadows, page 42 you'll see that Orichaicum is sold in 10 gram units.

I remember that; 44000 a piece.

Orichalcum is 88,000 per unit.

Wow... how much would the block of orihalcum that Dunkelzahn's offering up in exchange for a nonlethal weapon worth?

And does this basically amount to 8800 per Karma saved on bonding foci? That's not a very good deal.

Millions dude, thats why it's worth it them going for...

Huh?

That's true... how hard is it to sneak out of a facility? Is it magnetic? Is it astrally active?

So you could shape earth it into a person's cyberdeck or some other piece of equipment that isn't opened up much. Basically plate it with orihalcum, then remove it for use. Without magical or magnetic detection, there isn't much stopping you.

Never send a mundane to do a mage's job. What do you need to do for ritual tracking? I'm sure that could be masked against relatively easily. Spirit guards can be masked against, too. Masked trap spells can be assensed. And what are vaults? Are they just mundane ones, or is this some new magical term?

I haven't done any runs yet, but the guy I'm making's an astral chameleon and he has near-maxed-out intuition and assensing.

Oricalcum not only reduces the first bonding cost of a foci it also reduces the target number to create it.

There isn’t anybody alive, including the immortal elves that could make a force 10 power focus without using oricalcum, but with enuf of it a young punk with enchanting 2 could make one.

Edward

Seriously? Force 10 powerfoci are that hard to make? I thought that progression for them was pretty much linear. I'm sure an immortal elf could make a target number of 50 after having his mary sue modifiers.

PBTHHHHT:Pentacle Press

Emo: How many 50
s have you rolled off of 1 D6. I don't recall the exact number off the top of my head, but the 3rd edition t# for a power foci starts at IIRC an 8, plus the rank, so a rank 10 power foci would be base t#18, which is not easy to roll , and pretty much imposible to roll wit hany assurance of success every time, now matter how immortal you are. Rules are still rules. Now if you start throwing in a bunch of orichalcum or virgin telesma and the like, it's a hell of a lot easier.

The 44,000 BTW, is the pirce of radical-refined level gold, plus the other required materials in radical form to make Orichalcum. Hell of a profit.

If the bottom's out of the market, then we can buy it cheaply. Win/win.

Hrm ... in the games here, my second eldest character and definitely the biggest/most powerful/diverse was an "Enchanter". It was his thing, and you definitely never gave a character like that any length of time alone. It's the kind of character (right alongside a decker) that if given time can become self-sufficient presuming the resources are available (or can be made available).

I have to agree, more precious materials such as Orichalcum are probably well guarded. In the games here, we simply use Supply/Demand as the ultimate determiner. The PC's often times have learned historically that if they ever encountered a "large quantity of Ori-gold" that they would often sell it off piece-meal in smaller quantities when their own funds/resources were running low. This way the market never flooded (and dropped the value of their own stash) and not as many people had the opportunity to realize they were sitting on a "gold mind of the stuff".

As for detecting it, even simple chemistry can detect the stuff. The "Litmus Test" for instance would work. Once you have the Orichalcum batch completed, you take a litmus test (inexpensive and relatively fast), then archive that information. Whenever Orichalcum comes along later that matches that "litmus test", you have the beginnings of realization that somethings amiss. You also then get to use stuff like "Chemsniffers" which can literally identify the stuff at distance based upon their own database interface to all those "litmus test" results.

And this is before you encounter stuff like "Detect Orichalcum" or "Detect Radical" spellcraft which some of the more ingenious talismongers are likely to have somewhere.

And finally as for enchanting anything of sufficiently high target number (pre-SR4 obviously), with the right volume of radicals, aspected workspaces, and sheer skill ... damn near anything is possible. Getting to the point where it becomes possible however is often the inspiration for some good games.