Topic: Nature's Tongues

[Adunakhor]

Some questions regarding Nature's Tongues.

Would a character who has cast the spell with the scaling for Stone Tongue be able to talk to 'dead'
stones in walls or houses?
Personally I would limit this to 'living' stones in their 'natural environment'. What do you think about
this? Are there any official rulings?

What does "simple questions about objects" in the spell description mean exactly? Are questions
about persons or other (living) beings exluded?

Thanks for answers and insights
Andreas

[mocking bird]

Why would the stone used in a house be any more dead that a piece of rock in the road taken from a nearby quarry?  I can see why talking to the sand in mortar might be excluded but a rock is still a rock.

For what questions, it is really up to the GM.  Just because you can talk to a stone doesn't mean a stone has anything important to say.  After all, how does a stone 'think'?  A cobblestone probably couldn't tell an orc from an elf but it might be able to tell you if a bi-ped or group of horses just went over it.  Overhearing conversations would be right out unless you wanted to come up with a spell 'nature's ears' for such things.

[Fidoric]

I have never felt at ease with the notion of speaking with plants or stones. That's because I don't see them as sentient beings and thus I deem they can not feel the world through any kind of senses. Do they have a spirit ? If not, how can they possibly answer any question ?

[GMLovlie]

I guess some of the scaling options are setting-dependant.

Though I would allow to glean information from stones and plants, if not actually communicate with them. Getting images and flashes of the past in the direct vicinity of said stone/rock and/or tree/flower. The amount of success on the roll would give them more information... ooh... this could be neat.. but perhaps the spell should be reworked for my setting... yesss...

[Rasyr-Mjolnir]

I would the barrier at worked versus not worked, so that whether or not it is in a wall doesn't matter. Whether or not it has been hammered on or chiseled, does.

Simple questions - would be simple yes or no questions... for example-- "did a per go past here since sun up?" and not "did somebody go past in the last 5 minutes?" Its a rock, it cannot tell time.

Fidoric -- the basic assumption is that there is mana, and that is everywhere and permeates everything. Spells that "talk" with plants and rocks basically giving temporary sentience to it, and allowing to access limited "memory" or slight temporal echoes of a sort to give its answers.

At least that is how I always considered it.

[jurasketu]

Playing the rock for images/memory would be little different than Past Visions or Path Tales (and so perfectly reasonable if not particularly interesting).

I think a reasonable interpretation (and one I made when faced with the game situation) would be that rocks and plants have limited awareness. They can't see. They can't hear in the animal sense. They really can only "feel" things like warmth, cold, pressure, wind, wet, dry, pH, etc. A reasonable interpretation is that they have no memories and so once becoming sentient would only be able to report current conditions. So, a rock could only report what it was touching or feeling which would likely be sufficient to determine if the rock touched earth, more rock or air and hence reveal the existence of a secret passage, chamber or small niche behind the rock. In the interest of fun, however, I allowed "memories" of the aforementioned limited awareness. And so the scaling factor allows the caster to tap into the rock or plant's limited awareness and memories of the same sort of telepathically.

But then again, talking trees are the stuff of High Fantasy - so why NOT?

Robin

[GMLovlie]

About Path Lore and especially some it?s scaling options, some are way too powerful for my setting and style of play. It just seems to give too much, even though it might cost power points and ranks, still too much info to let my players have the spell with access to all it?s scaling options.

[Fidoric]

That's fine for me. Though I'm not at ease with that, I can imagine reasons why it can be done.
Besides, some cultures do consider that each and everything has a spirit. I think that something like that is written in Cyradon about Gryphon conception of the world. Such a mage, believing in omnipresent spirits, would have no trouble to speak with a pebble spirit.

OTOH, Rasyr if you consider that working stones "kill" the spirit within, it can be the start of big troubles between animistic cultures and stone workers...
I'd rather have the ambient mana explain this by making an "inprint" of a scene in a stone for example. I guess each GM will have to come up with a setting-specific explanation about how it works.