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CK2 Dev Diary DD#37: Three times greater

Hello all, it’s time for another Society reveal: This week we’ll talk about the Hermetic society. Hermeticism is based primarily upon writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus ("Thrice Great"), who was said to know the three parts of the wisdom of the universe.The three parts are alchemy, astrology, and theurgy.
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In game terms, the Hermetics are an open society joinable by members of the abrahamic religions, as well as Zoroastrians and Zun pagans (OK, and Hellenic, should you manage to play as one). Their primary attribute is Learning. Their Powers and Missions tend to involve earlier scientific experimentation combined with mysticism and a dash of Theurgy. They will often reward you with technology points or artifacts.

There is some overlap between the Hermetic society and Way of Life’s Scholarship focus. As a member you will be able to build an observatory, just as characters with the focus can, and once it is built you will be able to interact with it further to observe the skies. Not only that, Hermetic members are encouraged to build a laboratory for additional experimentation.
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Other powers and abilities include attempting to divine the future using Scrying, making Horoscopes for your children, experimenting with drugs and medical techniques, and eventually writing your magnum opus - a book of lore and knowledge that you enshrine for the ages.
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That’s all for now, but remember to watch the Medieval Monday stream at 1600 CET today, followed by Three Kings at 1700.
 
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Huge amounts of energy you say? Well that's what the Faustian bargains are for.
If you just bargained for enough power to destroy the solar system why would you waste it on making a few grams of gold when you could... I don't know... blow up the solar system? Or force people to make you king of the world or you'll blow up the solar system.
 
I am a professional physicist whom took several classes on the history of science back in college. Unfortunately, you seem to lack respect for that history, and lack a respect for how much has been lost. This ignorance is forgivable, as few care.

For the record, we recently discovered that one of his 'fictional' alchemic receipts led to him discovering how to sublime led ore, and led to us discovering a new alloy of mercury.

Likewise, while we can make mercury from cinnabar using MODERN industrial processes, it is unknown how Emperor So Qin Shi Huangdi managed to make vast quantities using ancient methods. Dont tell me we have nothing to learn from history because your arrogance exceeds your knowledge of it.

Likewise, we continuously keep finding lost/forgotten scientific discoveries written over by medieval monks. This is our history!!! We can't pretend it never happened so we can feel smug. Will we learn anything 'New and sexy'...No. Is there stuff to learn of academic interest? ABSOLUTELY!

How about saxon and frisian? And I mean old_saxon not anglo-saxon.


Anglo saxon should probably use the same faces as saxon and frisian whatever that is. English and norman makes sense they'd use the same ones, let's hope they look sufficiently french.


No such thing as early scientists, the word scientist is like a century old, before that you had natural philosophers, and no philosophers were not viewed with distrust, I eman sure they may have been seen as a bit odd, but unless they openly went agaisnt the church they were tolerated, Many great philosophers were drawn from the church's own ranks. The entire structure of logic that we have had so much use of in science was perfected as a means of discussing meta physics which had it's roots in theology. It's a shame science and philosophy has such a small role in paradox GSGs, the only game that remotely touches on it is Victoria.


Disagree because of the unfortunately thing. If it gave them money to do something meaningful I fully support them selling of Newtons crackpot writings. Look newton was a loon when it came to these thing, he looked for hidden messeges from god in translated versions of the bible. Yeah he may have done ground breaking work in science (he also may not have, there are people who claims he stole their work for pretty much every major discovery he did, we'll never know for sure) that doesn't mean that alchemy is anything but a pipe dream.

The only way to make lead into gold is through nuclear fusion. These people didn't know anything that we don't know. They may have contributed to us knowing it. But the idea that there's lost knowledge when it comes to these things is just romantic BS.
 
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If you just bargained for enough power to destroy the solar system why would you waste it on making a few grams of gold when you could... I don't know... blow up the solar system? Or force people to make you king of the world or you'll blow up the solar system.
That's an easy bluff to call though, what would said bargainer do after they blow up the solar system? Presumably they'd be dead for a variety of reasons/causes, and since they've made a Deal now they're the plaything of that nasty piece of work they made the bargain with and they never had time to enjoy their side of the Deal either.
 
I am a professional physicist whom took several classes on the history of science back in college. Unfortunately, you seem to lack respect for that history, and lack a respect for how much has been lost. This ignorance is forgivable, as few care.

For the record, we recently discovered that one of his 'fictional' alchemic receipts led to him discovering how to sublime led ore, and led to us discovering a new alloy of mercury.

Likewise, while we can make mercury from cinnabar using MODERN industrial processes, it is unknown how Emperor So Qin Shi Huangdi managed to make vast quantities using ancient methods. Dont tell me we have nothing to learn from history because your arrogance exceeds your knowledge of it.

Likewise, we continuously keep finding lost/forgotten scientific discoveries written over by medieval monks. This is our history!!! We can't pretend it never happened so we can feel smug.

I can't tell the real crazies from the jokes any more.
Funny I was just talking about you. Jokes aside if you were really a physicist you'd know a little thing called the scientific method, and studying arcana is not science.

That's an easy bluff to call though, what would said bargainer do after they blow up the solar system? Presumably they'd be dead for a variety of reasons/causes, and since they've made a Deal now they're the plaything of that nasty piece of work they made the bargain with and they never had time to enjoy their side of the Deal either.
It was a joke.
 
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If we ever get back on topic, I'm really excited about this DLC. Maybe as excited as I was about Horse Lords. (Before I knew the combat fixes were going to be botched.)

Secretly Shia!
 
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We STILL don't know how the first Emperor of China made all that liquid Mercury
Do we actually know there's all that Hg in his tomb? IIRC they did some ground penetrating radar measurements, but can't remember if those were able to reveal whether or not there's Hg. If it's only the old legend we have then it might not be true.

To say nothing of the Voynich manuscript...
Could well just be somebody having fun making it/trying to trick somebody rich into paying loads of money for this manuscript of secrets. There's also been the possibility of da Vinci having made it as a child, but I can't remember whether the carbon 14 test ruled that out or not.
I don't think any star is. You probably have to look at supernovae or hypernovae to find fusion hot enough to create gold. And even then I don't think lead is what they fuse into gold.
You're correct that even the largest O stars don't have high enough core temperatures to have lead fusion, since lead fusion actually loses energy (iron and nickel are the most tightly bound nuclei). Plus gold is number 79 and lead 82. You can get gold from lead during a supernova though, but the gold which is produced will almost entirely come from other reaction chains.
 
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No, that job hunts for members of Secret Societies. As an Open Society the Hermetics are unaffected. It's possible for Zealous characters to be upset by them, but by and large they exist happily with others.
Any events to defame them during the black plague?
 
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Wouldn't it be more logical to dig into fantasy with that franchise ? Besides, I would kill for a Vampire : the Masquerade grand strategy game. Truly. :)

It would certainly be more logical, but if you read things like the mediaeval lives of the saints, you get much more fantasy there than you ever do in game. Their cloaks being torn in two and suddenly becoming two whole cloaks, a decapitated nun having her head miraculously restored, St Columba dropping a basket of eggs and instantly reforming them and even a hill growing under St David during a sermon so that people at the back could see him properly!
 
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The third screen made me wonder where they will put that Treasury button...
 
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If you just bargained for enough power to destroy the solar system why would you waste it on making a few grams of gold when you could... I don't know... blow up the solar system? Or force people to make you king of the world or you'll blow up the solar system.
Would people be able to comprehend what the solar system is and why blowing it up would be bad?

The third screen made me wonder where they will put that Treasury button...
This is totally off-topic but which kingdom is that you're using for your avatar? Just curious.
 
Do we actually know there's all that Hg in his tomb? IIRC they did some ground penetrating radar measurements, but can't remember if those were able to reveal whether or not there's Hg. If it's only the old legend we have then it might not be true.
From the Chicago Field Museum's exhibit on the Terracotta Army archeological site:
9dMZqOX.jpg


dNTj73K.jpg


UfLz75k.jpg
 
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Do we actually know there's all that Hg in his tomb? IIRC they did some ground penetrating radar measurements, but can't remember if those were able to reveal whether or not there's Hg. If it's only the old legend we have then it might not be true.


Could well just be somebody having fun making it/trying to trick somebody rich into paying loads of money for this manuscript of secrets. There's also been the possibility of da Vinci having made it as a child, but I can't remember whether the carbon 14 test ruled that out or not.
You're correct that even the largest O stars don't have high enough core temperatures to have lead fusion, since lead fusion actually loses energy (iron and nickel are the most tightly bound nuclei). Plus gold is number 79 and lead 82. You can get gold from lead during a supernova though, but the gold which is produced will almost entirely come from other reaction chains.
Yeah I know. I remember seeing a graph of it during a thermodynamics course a few year back. Iron is at the bottom of the valley.

Would people be able to comprehend what the solar system is and why blowing it up would be bad?
Well the joke started out with just the blow up the solar system line, but then I thought that's a bit morbid so I added the second part, maybe I should have stuck with the original joke.

From the Chicago Field Museum's exhibit on the Terracotta Army archeological site:
9dMZqOX.jpg


dNTj73K.jpg


UfLz75k.jpg
Or they buried him there because of the mercury and the legend arose from the fact that the ground there had high concentrations of mercury.
 
To the extent they were sometimes distrusted, it came from:
...
b) the association of astrology, especially, with fortune telling (viewed as heretical)
c) the sheer number of frauds and conmen posing as astrologers/alchemists giving the whole field a bad name

So limiting it to zealous rulers is fine.

As an interesting historical aside, I can point out that astrologers (and astrology as a science) were accepted in Byzantium, with their influence and popular approval waxing and waning over the centuries. They were derided by intellectuals such as Anna Komnene and Michael Psellos as being uneducated cranks moreso than being heretics or diabolists.
 
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So this is really interesting, but how does our involvement affect our dynasty? Like say I had a character who was high-ranking member of the Hermetic Society before they died then my heir comes to the throne who isn't previous involved with that sort of thing, then do members of the Society, or similar group, try to convince them to take a part in it or try to take away whatever items I got because of my former character's involve? IE: My Hermetic character wrote a tome, than would other Hermetic character will try to reach out to convert my character over to the society in order to share my predecessor's knowledge? Or can I offer to sell it for a hefty amount? Or, if I'm zealous or something, burn the tome in exchange for piety or to gain favors with a monastic order?
 
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Would people be able to comprehend what the solar system is and why blowing it up would be bad?


This is totally off-topic but which kingdom is that you're using for your avatar? Just curious.

It's the Kingdom of León, in the Iberian Peninsula.
 
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with dominicians being added as well, will they have any overlap? or have dominicians be weighted towards joining this society?
as during the time period they were heavily academic and at the front of science?

Would people be able to comprehend what the solar system is and why blowing it up would be bad?

They had different theories as telescopes werent as good so the evidence they had to go on was alot different.
But there was a concern about it being blow up able.

One of the flaws that brought down the theory that the sky was a jewelled sphere, with the stars being gaps or breaches that let light through or reflective objects fixed in them, was that the stresses of the moving parts would inevitably cause it to break apart, destroying the universe. So they definitely had a concept of the 'solar system' being destroyed as a bad thing.
 
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