The answer to a lot of these is "Rituals."
I'm going to need a fair amount of description in the Beta to describe what people can actually accomplish with magic and how long it takes. I knew I'd need this going in; it's just a ton of writing, much of which goes to the all-important purpose of keeping the description as short as possible. I don't want to write a textbook of pseudoscience for each Fount. I also know that some of this will need to develop organically during playtests.
To hit a few of these and give my initial thoughts:
- Vehicles are Minor Rituals requiring Industry 2, or 3 if they'll be traveling through low-mana areas like space. If they're a first-of-kind, they're Major instead. (In fact, that's a good general rule: anything that's the first of its kind is one level of ritual up.)
- Larger-on-the-inside is Minor / Trickery 2 if you're doing it via Red Space closets, or Major / Trickery 4 if you're making an Eschercondo.
- Creating intelligent life is Major / Communion 3 + Self 3. (Along the rule above, the first one of a given species would be a Great Work.) Plant or animal life seems like Minor instead, and might be doable with Industry instead.
- Animated corpses are one of Necromancy's version of Mystic Defenders. If you want one around forever, that's a Craft ritual, War 2.
- Automata that aren't Mystic Defenders could be done with Industry instead. I'll drop "Mystic Servitors" into the rules. They'll be pretty sophisticated as long as you're supervising them, and once you leave the area you better have given them simple and easily followed commands. As for longer-lasting automata that you'd make as a ritual, that depends a lot on what they can do. If you want a robot bartender, that seems like Craft / Industry 2. If you want a self-replenishing swarm of brass termites that build cities for you, that seems like Major / Industry 4. Note that these things are not intelligent in any sense of the word. They're not even well-programmed or well-programmable. They just create what you tell them to.
- Body Swaps feel like an Enchantment using Self and Communion - you're basically shapeshifting your minds together. Maybe Self 4? You could probably do it as a Craft ritual as well. Note that you can't force this; it runs into the Gift's prohibition against mind control.
- I had thought I put perfect memory into Mystery somewhere. I'll drop in a slow version at 3 and an instant one at 4.
- Not all of those fall easily into this game. Self's shapeshifting certainly takes care of the more physical ones, but you need War to spread plagues and Trickery to make bizarre drugs.
- Cleaning up mana pollution is hard, because you can't de-summon mana. You need to send it through a lengthy process of some kind or just remove it. What most people do is have Those Above the Sky draw the mana into the Attic Lines and dump it, still polluted, off in some region near the edge of the Basin, where it will eventually blorp its way off the edge of the Basin. (Why not dump it into space? The Attic Lines don't do that yet and have safeguards against being modified for that purpose. I'm sure Those Above will try it eventually anyway because that's the kind of people they are.)
- Industry is the standard way to handle mana flows and ley lines. And yes, ritual, typically Minor to Major.
- Trickery will store some, but Industry stores it better. The shell game is more like tying someone's shoelaces together when they aren't looking, or unscrewing the top of their salt shaker.
- I mean, you can always just literally fucking saw them in half because they're immortal, but that sounds messy and painful. Enchant them with Self for shapeshifting. It's probably a Self 4 trick for most folks, but some goofballs will be able to "give you a hand" at Self 2.
There's a quick reference for rituals (projects) on the SRD.
Also, I might need to rename the "Craft" level of project when it comes to Rituals.
