>> If the Lunars could field a regiment of magicians they'd
>> walk into WW.
>
>Levitate, you mean?
>
>IMO they wouldn't. Whitewall has guardians of some magnitude - it is a
>holy Orlanthi place, with currently a lot of fervent worshippers at hand.
A thousand or two, mostly initiates, against 500 trained magicans drawing power from the Red Moon. Even allowing for some pretty powerful guardians that's horribly unequal.
>> However they have only half a dozen field
>> classes from the College of Magic in the entire region.
>> Each class is about a hundred strong including support
>> staff and I'm not sure how well different classes work
>> together. Military trained magicians are rare and valuable
>> so even Tatius can only bring the Seven of Vistur and maybe
>> another class to the seige.
>
>Actually, I don't think so. Tatius appears to be doing a long term magical
>build-up, powered by the blood of the regular Lunar troops and allies.
>That has precedence e.g. in the conflicts between Carmania and Dara Happa.
>Learned Orlanthi might call this necromancy or blood magic, depending on
>their objectivity.
Could be but even so that doesn't involves large numbers of magical specialists.
>As for the illusionary fire: nice idea, and certainly a good way to thwart
>elemental air countermagic. For a fire to be taken serious, it must emit
>heat, though (even more so than visual effects). Stepping into or through
>a cold fire must be a fairly normal magical effect for initiates. Creating
>enough heat through an illusion (temporal reality) will drain the
>magicians way more than relying on their proven if mythically
>disadvantaged conventional elemental powers. The economics favour overkill
>of standard fire magics.
In this case the illusionary fire was to cover the fact that an actual fire had burnt out while troops stormed the burnt out gate. As such it was little more than a conjuring trick lasting a few minutes. The original fire was a sorcerous experiment involving the remote ignition of a napalm like substance. So magical economics aren't really relevant.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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