Quality

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Quality is a periodic object used to reflect the skill of an Artifact?'s maker, the quality of any components used in its creation, and the success of the act of creation which led to its existance.

Part of an artifact's Quality is determined by factors which are inherent in the abilities used in its creation. The more abilities involved in the creation, the more chance for a lessening of quality, as each succeeding ability used can only maintain or decrease the resulting quality, never increase it.

An artifact derived from one or more other artifacts (either items of raw material? such as metal ingots, purified powders, tanned hides, etc.; or pre-made components like staves, blades, mail, etc.) can also never be made to exceed the quality of the least qualitied of the component artifacts.

If any tools are involved in the creation process, their Quality can also contribute (perhaps minimally) to the Quality of the artifact as well as affecting the checks for success for the proficiencies which use them.

This combination of factors will have the effect that Artifacts will reflect the circumstances of their making, and the creation of an Artifact of Quality will require planning, the gathering of Qualitied materials and components, and the cultivation of a broad variety of Skills, either on one's own, or by aggregating the requisite skills by means of social constructs like guilds.

Quality's Effect

Quality affects an Artifact in several ways:

Durability: Higher-quality items age and wear more slowly. This will be combined with the inherent durability of the materials out of which the artifact is made.
Magic: An artifact's Quality will determine how it can interact with magical effects. In general, an artifact of greater quality will conduct or store Mana more efficiently, but is less likely to be affected by it. An item of higher quality will be easier to enchant or imbue? initially, but re-imbueing or enchanting will be more difficult. An un-imbued item of high Quality will also pick up magical properties? with prolonged exposure to them.
Checks: A skill which requires an artifact will be more likely to succeed with an artifact of greater Quality.

Examples

For example, a smith wishes to create a steel shield for her liege, who has requested an item worthy of a king.

First, the smith must plan for the undertaking. The task will require gathering enough ingots of a sufficiently high quality of steel for such a work, as, being an Artifact itself, the ingot has its own associated Quality which reflects the skill and success of the person who smelted it. Differentiating good from average steel will require either that the smithy possess the skill necessary to evaluate the Quality of raw steel herself, or be able to trust someone who can do so for her.

If the 'make shield' ability is written so as to incorporate the quality of the tools involved in its making (which it probably should), the smith must also assure that her tools are in good working order and are up to the task. Such tools would probably be purchased or made by the Smith's Guild, and awarded to her upon completion of her Masterpiece?.

After the materials and tools are gathered, the smith invokes the 'make shield' ability (probably a script? or a style?), which invokes sub-abilities in a predetermined order and applies the success of the proficiencies that are used, the qualities of the ingots, the leather of the bindings, the qualities of the hammer and anvil used, etc. to the eventual quality of the item. The author of the 'make shield' ability would determine what proportion each aspect of the item's creation is determined by each factor.

Notes on the Philosophy of Quality

In many ways the quality of a thing is similar to the ontological Quality as described by Robert Pirsig in his books, <cite>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance</cite> and <cite>Lila</cite>. Quality is a relationship between subject and object, which meshes nicely with the behaviour of periodic objects.

The subject in the case of quality is the skill itself, and the object is the standard by which the skill is measured. As the artificer progresses from one period to the next, he or she realizes that what once seemed to be the core part of the skill has now become the new standard from which further refinements can be produced.

And what is good, Phædrus, And what is not good... Need we ask anyone to tell us these things? -Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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