There are two main pillars of the weave:
- Creation & Destruction
In addition there are three bases for binding:
- Terrestiral
- Celestial
- Infernal
Every weaver can bind strings of these bases using links of the pillars. I will explain these stuff shortly with an emphasis on the economics aspect.
Strings are passive objects which fall into four main categories correlated with their frequency of appearence as: common, uncommon, rare and unique. They do not have any effect themselves. Links on the other hand are the action abilities of the weaver. Weaver binds the strings using links to construct spells.
Every spell is a sentence. Strings are nouns and adjectives. Links are verbs.
Every sentence needs a verb and a noun.
For example, calling is a link of creation and is the verb for summoning. On the other hand, bone is a common noun infernal string which represents the lesser undeads. A weaver can twine bone with calling in order to summon skeletons. To make things more interesting, we can introduce a common adjective infernal string, fiery to the sentence (the spell), resulting in summoned undead on fire.. neat..
For another mightier example, we can start with the hurling link of destruction, which is the verb for ranged attacks. We will add two adjective strings, uncommon infernal explosive and rare celestial smiting. Explosive stands for itself: introduces an area effect, whereas smiting is a heavenly force that greatly effects evil creatures. Now we need a noun to complete the spell. We can use the common terrestiral string, spear. Hurling explosive smiting spear stands for itself.
Now obviously not every string is meant to work with each other. You can think of strings as puzzle pieces, some get along really well (completing and even enhancing effects); some don't get along at all (creating mayhem). That is left to the curious weaver to discover. In addition not every link can bind these strings in a meaningful way. For example, calling a spear hardly makes any sense, but that doesn't mean it won't create any effect.. it's up-to the weaver to discover.
Strings you can purchase or find in your adventures. Links on the other hand, you learn as you advance. You can get trained by other weavers to learn new links, or you pick new links as you advance. You start with three links at first level and get a link every two-levels of advancement. Some links have prerequisites, for example in order to get the creation link of resist you need to know the creation link of protect.
Weaver needs a weaver recipe to learn any spell, if he is not creating it himself. For example just because you mastered the link calling and have a bone, doesn't mean that you can summon an undead. That is actually a basic spell named Call Undead and you can find it's recipe lying around in dungeons or available to purchase in stores. Once you have the weaver recipe for Call Undead (which is basically a scroll), you can copy it to your recipebook and can use that spell anytime. You can also produce weaver recipes for any spell you know (takes resources, meaning gold) and sell them to other weavers.
If you want, you can do your research in your workshop and re-create any spell yourself. However the research takes resources and does not necessarily lead to success. The quality of your workshop and your level of expertise make a huge difference in the outcome. Now, if you create a spell that was not in existence before. You can name it, and that spell is yours now. You can also contact the Association of Weaver Economists or AWE to file a trademark for the spell. If you do so, any time a recipe of your spell is sold, you get a loyalty of 30% and the spell is registered under your name and it is your Weaver Property (WP). Which means, if anyone else is to discover that spell, they cannot register or rename it + you get 30% loyalties still. Therefore it is highly recommended for the curious weaver to check the AWE recordigns prior to any spell forging experiment.
Every weaver has a secret workshop. That's just given to you once you create your character. You obviously start first level and some strings are provided to you + a small capital. You will start with supplies of 30 common, 3 uncommon and 1 rare strings. Now the important thing is noun strings dissappear after you cast a spell using them. However adjective strings stay with you. Therefore adjective strings are generally more expensive and harder to find - there are only a small amount of common adjective strings. Nouns on the other hand are generally common, but you probably can imagine that the celestial rare noun string of baby angel is very expensive and hard to find. You will also select 5 preset spells, which will be recorded in your recipebook (your supplies will be given accordingly). Your workshop will also start with level 1, you can enhance it with buying (finding) needles.
Your secret workshop is also your gateway to the outer world. You will be able to contact the AWE (they are very prompt in replying to inquiries about WP), the Adventurer's Hall (where you can meet up with fellow Weavers to get clues) and the Tailor (which is basically e-bay for the weave, where people sell/buy/trade stuff). Most importantly, you will see the list of Dungeons that you can explore. Each Dungeon has a specific task and you gain experience + find stuff while crawling the dungeons. You can also create your own dungeon.
Now, I can see you asking the question of: Why the f*ck I would want to build my own dungeon. I'm glad you asked.
Firstly, because it is fun. Secondly, because when other weavers crawl your dungeon: if they die, you get to have the equipment that they were carrying plus some experience. And what if you die?? If you die, you travel within the weave back to your workshop. You revive there (equipment you carry is gone though, do not forget - never take more than what you think is necessary).
How you build a dungeon? Your ability to create larger dungeons, scale with your level and wealth. You obviously spend resources when you create the dungeon. However, populating the dungeon is done with the help of AWE. AWE wants you to prepare the best dungeon crawling experience for other weavers and therefore they are more than happy to provide (random) strings and wealth that other weaver will discover when they crawl your dungeon. AWE also acts as an employment agency for dungeon dwellers, therefore they will provide you with a set number of creatures (depending on your alignment they can be either good / evil creatures) for you to place in your dungeon.
Once you finish constructing your dungeon, you submit it to AWE and they will send some explorers to your dungeon. This is a necessary precaution step - just to make sure that your dungeon is actually feasible. After your dungeon is approved, other weavers will get notified and they will be able to explore it. Now you can put a bounty on your dungeon to attract more weavers - this can be a secret recipe that you have or a rare string or just money. Expect the weavers to exchange information about your dungeon (and rate it) in the Adventurer's Hall.
Weavers cast spells, which costs strings. Therefore you cannot afford to cast an unlimited number of spells. That is true. That's why the AWE introduced the wands. Each weaver has a wand, which is a part of him. Basically it revives with you and you cannot sell it. Wands advance as you do, starting with two basic powers of your choice. They have charges which regenerate with time - some sort of mana system.
Wands powers are completely separated from spells - they are basic energy bursts that do damage or heal. They are not generally comparable with spells' powers, however they are a vital part of the weaver. You can advance your wand with power links that are very rare. Most of the time, the powers of your wand will just increase with your level and you will be able to add new powers in every four-levels.
To gain further insight to spell creation mechanics, let us consider the aforementioned common infernal noun string bone with creation link calling and destruction link hurling. Now as discussed above calling bone summons a lesser undead. However hurling bone results in a spell burst range attack, which inflicts a damage as would be dealt by a bone-type weapon (obviously much higher in this case than a single attack by a lesser undead since it will be a one-time damage only). Now, here bone interacts with these two links in different aspects. With calling it is used to summon a creature and with hurling it is used to inflict a certain type of damage, as a weapon. Therefore, it is immediately obvious that noun strings has sub-categories: creature and weapon being two of these.
Every link has certain affinities for these sub-categories. For example creation link of calling has the highest affinity towards creature sub-category, whereas destruction link of hurling has the highest affinity towards weapon sub-category. It is important to note that, strings do not need to implement every available sub-category in the world: they only need to implement one. Current list of these sub-categories are:
- Weapon-Type
- Creature-Type
- Force-Type (elemental, magical, negative etc.)
- Ability-Type (any number on your char sheet that can be modified)
Now, destruction link hurling has an affinity of 90% to weapon-types and 40% to force-types (0% to creature/ability-types, it just doesn't make any sense). Meaning that if you were to combine a weapon-type noun with hurling you have 90% chance of success, discarding any of your expertise bonuses (40% for a force-type noun). What if I combine hurling with infernal rare noun string of demon horn, which has a weapon-type implementation (a potent evil spear) and also a force-type implementation (a potent fire elemental)? Well, you get to choose. AWE will tell you that there are two possible routes that you could pursue with these ingredients.
Another question arises here, will every weaver be able to tell what each string is capable of doing? Of course not.. Every-time you find a string, you roll a lore-check to see how much of its potential you are aware of. You can go to the Tailor and get the string identified by an expert Weaver if you would like to for a certain sum (which obviously changes depending on your string being common or rare etc.).
I will not go into the details here but also keep in mind that depending on strings implementations, probability of creating a spell changes. For example bone's creature implementation has a factor of 1 (which means it doesn't change your probability of success), on the other hand it's weapon implementation has a factor of 0.95. For example this reduces the chances of hurling bone from 90% to %85. There might also be multiple implementations of the same sub-category of a string with different factors. For example the rare terrestiral noun string of durthium (a rare metallic substance), has three weapon-type implementations with factors of 1, 0.8, 0.5. You can imagine that their powers are very different with the last one being one of the highest max-damage dealing implementations.
Nouns and links being multi-dimensional puzzle pieces probably makes more sense now.
Adjectives will now fit in naturally. Depending on how you twine the noun string and the link, adjectives might do different effects. They also have the aforementioned sub-category implementations. For example if we return back to the infernal common adjective string of fiery, it has three implementations: 2 creature and 1 weapon. For creature-types it adds to creature's damage roll a fire damage of +1 (2nd one i will not reveal), whereas for weapon-types it adds a fire damage of +1d6.