And then I decided to get the AO3 entirely up to date

Sooo, things of note that I don't note in the chapter notes

Let's see... I'm not actually that happy with my role playing in session 11. I feel like I was too indecisive and really just
Ran against the brick wall that is Matsu Ketsui.

Which is a bit of a theme for Sakura, she lost a fight against a mortal. That one was entirely on me- I didn't use a Decisive attack against her when I should have, and paid for it. Sakura probably could have won if it was to the death, but it wasn't.
Whew. I don't know much about the setting, but the most recent part, with the first true Villain in the story...
Wow.
 
Telegenic Servant
Artifact 1
Attune 0, Activation 1m

This device takes the form of a carefully polished sphere, usually made of lightweight materials like carefully lacquered woods, skysteel or Blue Jade. At it's center lies a crystal lens ringed with focusing enchantments and aural incantations for the recording of sound and image. A single mote activates the servant and allows it to hover around the user, recording their activities for later distribution via broadcast magic. These recordings are stored as memory crystals.

In mechanical terms, this Artifact can record spoken Social Attacks as if they were written- but cannot carry any Unnatural Mental Influence effects.

A quirk of the artifact's construction leaves it's enchanted heart open to its wielder's influences. If the wielder successfully inspires an intimacy of Love in the Servant, all of their recorded social attacks add 2 to the wielder's Appearance as the Servant expertly chooses how to best flatter the object of their affection.
 
Whew. I don't know much about the setting, but the most recent part, with the first true Villain in the story...
Wow.

That quote at the end is so fucking perfect if you *do* know about L5R. The Scorpion are basically the sneaky dishonourable clan, who has as their official 'hat' being the underhand of the Empire. Doing the stuff that the other clans will not to protect Rokugan.

And the way their founder, Bayushi, got this across to his brother Hantei?

"I will be your villain, Hantei."

It
That line was a big part of why I decided to publish this, because it is so
Goddammed
Perfect

(Oh incidentally, this is actually a straight out of L5R metaplot canon- in fact, The Event that sparked it off. Shoju's plan is... not as it was in canon, though)
 
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Oh, a question to the pure Exalted peeps reading Sakuragame- should I add an introduction chapter with a 'This is the lay of Rokugan, these are the Clans of note'?
 
Not quite sure what you mean by this.

Sorry, that came out a bit garbled. Stone Shaping Fingers says that it counts as a Basic workshop when making or repairing wonders, but does not say what level of workshop it counts as for mundane projects. As mundane projects don't have a fixed terminus and thus don't care about the level of workshop, I realized that this didn't matter.

Thank you for putting the work into this.
 
So, @ichypa, any progress on the ghost-cult?

That aside, revised the Craft revision.

New Charms:

I said:
Ramparts of Obedient Earth
Cost: 5m, 1wp; Mins: Craft 3, Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: Earth
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: Stone-Carving Fingers, a specialty in architecture

With a gesture, the Dragon-Blood shapes earth and stone into a wall, tunnel, or trench about fifty feet long. Tunnels are five feet wide, trenches are five feet deep and five feet wide, and walls are five feet high. Walls and trenches normally serve as heavy cover against those outside them. This Charm can only be used on natural ground; it cannot directly reshape or destroy crafted buildings. It can, however, weaken their structural integrity by digging under them.

Infectious Enthusiasm
Cost: 4m; Mins: Craft 4, Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: Fire
Duration: One project
Prerequisites: Many-Handed Craftsman Prana

While working on a large-scale project that resonates with one of her Intimacies, the Dragon-Blood gives a short speech to her workers. Her passion spreads to them; those favourably disposed towards the Dragon-Blood will likely adopt the relevant Intimacy over the course of the project, and even those who don't care for the Dragon-Blood will find it easier to summon up enthusiasm for their work. As a rule of thumb, the increased enthusiasm of her workforce allows the Dragon-Blood to complete a project twice as fast or with half as many people. On a magical project like a manse, however, this only affects the mundane side of the work.

Buried Dreams Imagined Anew
Cost: 10m, 1wp; Mins: Craft 5, Essence 4
Type: Simple
Keywords: Earth
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: Strike the Dragon-Anvil

The Dragon-Blood abandons an attempt to complete an Artifact or Manse, then salvages the materials and begins again. If she wishes, she may use different tools, different materials, or different assistants the second time around. Until she's made the same number of rolls on the second attempt as she made on the first, she works three times faster. This Charm may only be used once per project; if the second attempt fails, it's all over.

Diligent Engineer Discipline
Cost: 5m; Mins: Craft 4, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: Air
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: Many-Handed Craftsman Prana

The Dragon-Blood takes a day to write a manual on the use and maintenance of something she built or repaired. Anyone who refers to that document in the future may use the Dragon-Blood's Craft Ability and Specialities in place of his own when attempting to understand, maintain, or repair the object. Someone who's trying to duplicate or recreate the Dragon-Blood's work, or who would not benefit from replacing their own Craft ability, gets a non-Charm bonus die instead. Manuals written with this Charm can easily by copied by any scribe; the magic is in writing them, not in them as objects.

Building Gods
Cost: -; Mins: Craft 5, Essence 4
Type: Permanent
Keywords: Air / Earth / Fire / Water/ Wood
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisites: Strike the Dragon-Anvil

The Dragon-Blood may create Elemental Allies as though they were Artifacts. To do so she must be in a Demesne or Manse that matches the Elemental's Aspect, and must be using a Craft that suits the nature of the Elemental being created. An elemental is as difficult to create as an Artifact with a rating equal to its Ally rating.

Elementals created this way are not the temporary slaves that summoned elementals are. They are free-willed beings, filled with gratitude towards and friendship for their creators. They are immortal, and even if slain with spirit-killing magic can be repaired, as thought they were Artifacts, into new Elementals that retain most of the memories from their previous incarnations. They reliably outlive their creators, only growing stronger over time, and when their creators die their friendship passes down to their creators' descendents.

Other changes:

-Clarified Flaw-Finding Examination's sharing effect
-Made Imago-Hatching Realization once/session instead of once/story and tweaked the effect description
-Added some people to the acknowledgements
-Tweaked the descriptions of the Air alchemy products
-Cut A Hundred Men Or A Single Dragon for being less interesting than the new earth building stuff
-Clarified the rules for actualizing your designs when using Ephemeral Form Composition
-Added a bit to the basic Craft rules about what happens when a project's mundane side takes longer than its magical side
 
As the person running Sakuragame for @horngeek I can say it's been an interesting challenge. Some stuff ports over well, other stuff does not, and I naturally find myself feeling kind of torn in places over decisions I have made and what to do with them going forwards.

Yuzuki, Sakura's lover, is an excellent example. I am constantly feeling like she's a bit too much of a secondary character for a Celestial exalt but in a solo game I need to be careful about upping her involvement because it runs a serious risk of 'and then the GM talked to himself for twenty minutes'.

On one amusing side note - if you were reading these logs and wondering 'man how I wonder what Maugan's planning notes look like', do not worry. The answer is I don't have any planning notes and 90% of the big character defining moments in this were improvised by me entirely on the spot.
 
Found something interesting:

Ancient Greece and Heroic Ethics

Right. The Greek mind has a very odd relationship with altruism. It might be easier to explain the mentality in terms of cosmic order.

It's no coincidence that the Greek creation story ends - and history begins - when anthropomorphic gods win a great war with the forces of primordial chaos. They exile some and adopt others, but the Titanomachy is in many ways a story about human-like beings bringing order and civilisation to a wild and untamed cosmos. The mortal world tends to reflect the divine world in a similar way: humans bring order and civilisation to a wild and untamed nature. The allegories are usually pretty obvious. Zeus, the warrior-king, father-ruler, and head of the household enforces this order, in the same way that the Greek father ruled his oikos (hence the occasional title of oikodespotes), which in turn was the way that the king or tyrant ruled his polis. Zeus' authority, like the father's authority and the king's authority, doesn't rest on being a nice person, but on two separate axes: his ability to rule and defend his own, and his ability to enforce stability on a fundamentally chaotic background.

Or in other words, if you're a Greek commoner, there are two reasons the king or tyrant should stay in power. The first is that he's really good at fighting, or can call up a bunch of guys who are really good at fighting. So he can beat you up if you don't like him, but more importantly, he can beat up anyone from outside who comes along and tries to push you around. (For remember that most Greek city-states were near-constantly raiding one another.) The second reason is that through his monopoly on force and through defining (mostly) consistent laws, he makes civilisation possible. If everyone is out for themselves with no constraints on their behaviour, things are terrible for everyone. (Thus also the immense importance of things like honour, oathkeeping, civic responsibility, and so on.)

All of this is bound up with an ordered view of the cosmos. The Greeks were self-consciously civilised, and you will notice in their mythology that the most common villains are either forces of nature or barbarism. They often stand out for their wantonness and their lack of that all-important Greek virtue: self-control. Hence the large number of theriomorphic villains: the minotaur, centaurs, and so on. (And note how the centaurs were often depicted as practically the ancient equivalent of a bikie gang: they raided towns, got stinking drunk, raped women, and so on.) The Greeks loved writing about monsters for the same reason. The hydra, the Nemean lion, the Stymphalian birds, the chimaera, the list goes on. (The Roman tradition of beast hunts is similar. Why did the Romans so love seeing trained gladiators kill exotic monsters in the arena? Because it demonstrates their mastery over the chaotic, primordial forces of nature.) Human villains are similarly barbarous. The Amazons are a good example; they pervert the cosmic order the Hellenic city-states represented by inverting gender relations. Other barbaroiare pretty much as 100thlurker states. Without a city-state - without an ordered community - they're barely even people.

When this tangent got started, I talked a lot about Greek heroism being selfish. That's not preciselytrue, but it is worth emphasising that Greek heroes are not altruistic in the same way we think most modern heroes should be. (There's actually a huge amount of variety in modern heroes as well, but - I think deriving from Abrahamic traditions - there's almost always the assumption that a true hero is selfless and compassionate.) Greek heroes have a very strong sense of civic responsibility. The community is order. The polis is what gives you your identity. You can change polis, but you can't abandon the way of life it represents without becoming a slave or a barbarian or an animal. Greek heroes thus value their social standing very highly. You'll notice in a lot of Greek myths that the heroes go out of their way to respect mechanisms of social status or reputation.

(Examples: It never even seems to occur to Herakles that he could just tells Eurystheus of Tiryns to stuff off and not do the Twelve Labours. The labours are an act of public penance for murdering his family. Their completion and formal absolution by the monarch is a requirement for his participation in society. Or for another example, after Medea murdered Absyrtus, Jason is compelled to visit Circe in order to be publicly absolved of guilt. Antigone, in the play of the same name, is motivated by concern for the honour and reputation of her family. There are lots more.)

Explaining the difference between this behaviour and what we might think of as modern or Christian altruism isn't easy, but I would speculate that it's because the Christian tradition always had a stronger counter-cultural aspect. So did Judaism, to be fair, and it is striking how counter-cultural most of the Hebrew scriptures are. The prophets are speaking againstIsrael more often than not, and when you filter in the huge amount of exilic literature, that tradition is often speaking from a perspective of oppression. Meanwhile Christianity's early years are marked by a struggle for identity, against the background of surrounding pagan cultures. There were no Christian cities or nations during its formative years; just small circles of believers trying to stick together. Therefore one of the dominant themes of early Christian literature (notably most of the NT epistles) is the need for Christians to support and love one another, in order to survive. "Please don't fight. Try and forgive one another. Be peaceful." While eventually the great heresies arose and Christians took more aggressive, even martial approaches, the key formative years of the tradition gave it this more low-key approach. And of course from the Jewish background you got a tendency to downplay the individual, and to embrace humility before God.

So how can I put this... in the Judeo-Christian tradition there's a deep-seated suspicion of the powerful, rooted in experiences of oppression. Compare what I just said about the Greek ruler on the model of Zeus, whether he be king or tyrant, to biblical suspicion of kings. Israel paid tribute to and was conquered by foreign kings often enough that they were more inclined to view militarily powerful and glorious figures as dangerous. You can't trust powerful people. A scholar I know recently described the OT to me as an extended cosmic protest against chaos, and an affirmation of order in the midst of it, but where the Greeks saw cosmic order reflected and embodied in political order, the Judeo-Christian tendency was to see order as something a bit more subtle and subversive. For them God was more likely to work against states than through them. It's a bit of an inversion, really, right up to the early Christians ironically crowning an executed barefoot preacher 'King of the Jews'. On the whole, the point is that the dominant Greek cultural experience of the warrior-hero was a positive one. He defended the community, founded the city, and brought order. The Judeo-Christian experience was quite different. There are certainly Jewish warrior-heroes (Joshua, Gideon, David, etc.), but I think they were on the whole much more hesitant to make them the highest objects of praise. Not after the fall of Jerusalem, at any rate.

Arguably, then, Greek mythology tends to take the perspective of the strong, while Judeo-Christian thought tended to take the perspective of the weak. (That occasionally ended up in very weird places, once Christians had become the strong. See: Christian justifications for feudal hierarchy, or increasingly convoluted attempts to pretend that colonialism is done for the sake of the conquered.) The Christian shift had to do with humility, the need for reciprocal charity and love, and a mild paranoia about people with power.

To properly understand the Judaeo-Christian religion you have to contrast it with the religious complexes which existed at the same time and place.

The pagan mythologies of the ANE-East Med region existed, among other functions, to legitimise city-state and empire tyrants. Therefore the gods seized the world through bloodshed, as the ruler's ancestors had seized their throne; the gods treated humans as slaves, as the rulers did; and best of all, the king was descended from the gods and thus a sort of god himself. Being a god he was naturally entitled to all the women he fancied, to kill anybody who disagreed with him, and so on. You can see this behaviour in Zeus who spent a lot of time raping women in various forms - because he was basically a mortal king scaled up, and kings did that in the pagan world. The gods also personified natural forces and celestial objects such as the wind, sea, sun, moon, stars, planet Jupiter, planet Venus etc..., so one would pray to the gods in hope they brought the rain.

The Egyptians took this concept very far indeed - because Pharaoh was a god, he could not lose a battle, and so monuments were built to defeats and stalemates; people were also erased from history or attempted to if inconvenient (naturally this was tricky if they had built lots of monuments beforehand). But in the ANE it was very much the same throughout the region. The court histories, chronicles and even epic poems from the Ancient Near East are all (save those in a certain book, and I think you know what it is) invariably some form of royal propaganda lionising the monarch, his bloodline, or his patron god.

The pagan view of humanity was also very low. Humans, apart from the aforementioned divine monarch, were literally slaves of the gods built to provide them with incense and burnt sacrifices (basically the original purpose of humanity in Exalted) and therefore pretty much worthless (although some like landholders, priests, and aristocrats, were better than others). Because of this view some appalling atrocities were committed:
 
As the person running Sakuragame for @horngeek I can say it's been an interesting challenge. Some stuff ports over well, other stuff does not, and I naturally find myself feeling kind of torn in places over decisions I have made and what to do with them going forwards.

Yuzuki, Sakura's lover, is an excellent example. I am constantly feeling like she's a bit too much of a secondary character for a Celestial exalt but in a solo game I need to be careful about upping her involvement because it runs a serious risk of 'and then the GM talked to himself for twenty minutes'.

On one amusing side note - if you were reading these logs and wondering 'man how I wonder what Maugan's planning notes look like', do not worry. The answer is I don't have any planning notes and 90% of the big character defining moments in this were improvised by me entirely on the spot.

Man, in my half of that game trade, I'm improvising during the session at least part of the time. I really need to start putting together planning notes myself...

I do get what you're saying about Yuzuki, though- hopefully, as the next arc comes into play, she might get more stuff to do on her own, even if it's largely off-screen. Sakura's going to be relying on Yuzuki to *do stuff* a fair bit, after all.

On that note, session 13 of The Sword of Amaterasu is now up! This chapter is... only half the length of previous sessions, partially because that fight was fairly intensive mechanically, and I'm going to explain why.

So, Sakura has two martial arts on her sheet (you're not getting to see the sheet at least until after I get back from holidays, sorry)- Single Point Shining Into The Void, and a 3e rewrite of Even Blade Style by @Crumplepunch. These two Styles synergise quite well together. I started off with Awakening Eye, and after winning the Initiative roll-off (because Awakening Eye is bullshit and frankly needs a nerf, but it's a solo game so I feel more free to be bullshit) got to activate Single Point Form reflexively, which rolls the sword in on an additional Initiative track. The sword, however, went after Shoju.

(No, the sword cannot use Awakening Eye to boost that initiative roll. I asked Maugan out of curiosity, and he said it's already powerful enough. He's frankly completely right. :p)

And then he activated Scorpion Form- Maugan put together a refluff of Snake Style as a sword style, basically. Yes, pure mortals can use Martial Arts Charms in Sakuragame (ask Maugan if you want a mechanical explanation of how they pay for the Charms). And... so, the sword took -3 penalties, because it's going after Shoju.

Now, Single Point allows you to apply your Aim bonuses to the sword, and that's what I did, but despite that, the sword wasn't doing so hot the first round and I was a teensy bit concerned. I didn't want to keep it around as a free source of initiative, so after his first Withering attack, I shrugged and put a raw-roll, no Charms attack on the sword before switching to Even Blade. My plan was to then start Clash attacking Shoju, using the bonus Even Blade form gives to that. I even described the attack in such a way so I could activate Even Blade reflexively.

And then the attack worked perfectly and put the sword track ahead of both Shoju and Sakura's own Initiative track, and I abandoned that plan. :V The next attack by the sword Crashed Shoju, and then I put a full Excellency into a Decisive attack. I also activated a Single Point Charm called Fatal Stroke Flash.

Fatal Stroke Flash adds the difference between your initiative and your opponent's to your Decisive raw damage. The sword was at 23, Shoju was at -1. I threw 47 dice worth of raw damage at him. This maaaaaaay have been excessive. Fatal Stroke Flash could certainly do with a dice cap.

But yeah, there was a fair bit of OOC going on this session, and unlike Kerisgame, we don't have OOC in the same channel as IC. So low-wordcount compared to everything else, but I don't mind that, this fight was *hella* fun and involved a fair bit of tactical thinking and adjusting to circumstances.

And with that session, we're coming close to the end of this story arc- it's not quite done with, next session will be the last one of this story arc...

Just as I'm about to go on a three-week trip to Japan. So, next session in October. :p
 
Fatal Stroke Flash adds the difference between your initiative and your opponent's to your Decisive raw damage. The sword was at 23, Shoju was at -1. I threw 47 dice worth of raw damage at him. This maaaaaaay have been excessive. Fatal Stroke Flash could certainly do with a dice cap.

But yeah, there was a fair bit of OOC going on this session, and unlike Kerisgame, we don't have OOC in the same channel as IC. So low-wordcount compared to everything else, but I don't mind that, this fight was *hella* fun and involved a fair bit of tactical thinking and adjusting to circumstances.

And with that session, we're coming close to the end of this story arc- it's not quite done with, next session will be the last one of this story arc...

Just as I'm about to go on a three-week trip to Japan. So, next session in October. :p
I always cap the damage boost at 10 because of exactly this. Single Point is genuinely broken, sadly :(
 
I mean it fits Sakura perfectly and I legit love the aesthetics, but yeah, Fatal Stroke Flash in particular should probably be capped at 10 or so.
the whole style is bonkers. My other preferred houserule is the Form Charm doubles onslaught penalties on your enemy and gives you +1 parry. Which is actually in line with the rest of the Forms rather than standing head and shoulders above as the single best MA Charm in the game.
 
the whole style is bonkers. My other preferred houserule is the Form Charm doubles onslaught penalties on your enemy and gives you +1 parry. Which is actually in line with the rest of the Forms rather than standing head and shoulders above as the single best MA Charm in the game.

Mmm. I'd probably be more hesitant to take it- or Awakening Eye- in a non-Solo game, for the exact reasons you speak of. The other possible thing you could do as a Single Point form charm is always let you count as having taken an Aim action on your attacks instead of doubling onslaught penalties.

Also I almost forgot- but courtesy of @Renu, this picture is basically Sakura during that fight.

 
Mmm. I'd probably be more hesitant to take it- or Awakening Eye- in a non-Solo game, for the exact reasons you speak of. The other possible thing you could do as a Single Point form charm is always let you count as having taken an Aim action on your attacks instead of doubling onslaught penalties.

Also I almost forgot- but courtesy of @Renu, this picture is basically Sakura during that fight.

Yeah, I'd be down with that too. And yeah, it's not an issue in a solo game. I just remember Single Point was a source of frustration in the first Ex3 game I ran, and a source of annoyance for me in general just because of how insanely, ridiculously superior to every other style it is. If I wanna be the world's strongest martial artist, I gotta go Single Point. I gotta.

it'd sting less if I didn't dislike iajutsu as an aesthetic so much, admittedly >_>

on a more positive note that is some badass fanart! Shiny shiny!
 
it'd sting less if I didn't dislike iajutsu as an aesthetic so much, admittedly >_>

u wot m8 >:C

(nah, it's good- if you don't like it, you don't like it, but I really do :p)

And yeah Renu does good stuff. He's also drawn what Sakura's look is... well, at this point, *definitely* going to be going into the next arc. I had an inkling something like the events of the past two sessions were coming for a *while*, let me just say.

 
From the stygian depths, the screams of the damned cry out in haunted whispers: lethalityyyyy

look

my enduring opinion about 3e is that it improves on 2e rules-wise in most areas

I never said that it eliminated problems entirely or didn't have flaws of its own :V

(realtalk I'd probably use something less ridiculous in a non-solo game, if only because Single Point adding another initiative track *does* add to the complexity of fights. I also feel the need to note that in 2e Shoju would probably have been splattered over the landscape much sooner)
 
I actually just straight up ban Single Point because that Form Charm is just that ridiculous :V

It's caused me no end of massive frustration, especially since the character who used it is also a general with a magicced up Dragon Horse and never goes into the battlefield without it or her supernaturally empowered soldiers.

And I'm expected to come up with combat encounters that challenge her with all these.

Did I mention her player is also my co-GM who is my main mechanics guy? He more or less helped me design the combat encounters for the game but I refuse to let him design his own solo combat encounters cause that's just weird.

No joke, we're using a fanwrite up for lesser scaled Siddie Martial Arts and the first real fight she had to test it out in full she was getting her ass kicked five ways to sunday to the point she was at her -2's, then she popped Single Point Form and basically reversed the fight almost immediately.

That was sorta when I realized the style needed to go.

(Yes he and I have had some heated debates over certain design choices for 3e :V )
 
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So what kind of impact in 2nd Age Creation do the Yozi's/Primordial's have on culture in everyone's headcanons? Personally I like the image of blacksmiths putting up a sign with the symbol of Autocthon on it in front of their forge and not really knowing why they chose it, it just seems 'smithlike' and heartless people being accused of having 'hearts of sand' (fickle, arbitrary and cruel, making Cecelyne so proud!) while if you took the curses thrown at tyrants (of the 'in private company mutter it and spit to the side' variety) from every culture and society in Creation and somehow successfully arranged those thousands of syllables you'd have the true name of SWLWiHN.
 
And you missed my point, are modern houses all built exclusively using the most advanced technology availiable for which primitive societies have no equivalent? Or do they use hammers nails hinges and wood that has been existant in some form for millenia?

Just because something is from the first age doesnt make it esoteric hypertexh requiring the most advanced technology of the age, not everything today is the large hadron collider or a fusion experiment.
Modern houses are built with wood grown under semi-controlled conditions, cut to standard widths and lengths and often treated with preservative chemicals in what Exalted 2e would call atelier-manses. Hinges and other metal fittings are similarly standardized, and often shipped from halfway around the world due to marginal cost differences. Nails are often driven with hand-held pneumatic 'guns' rather than hammered in by muscle power, and that only works because the nails are a very precisely defined standard size. Workers reach high places on the outside of buildings by standing in a little basket at the end of a robotic arm, instead of needing to either build and tear down scaffolding or break out the mountaineering equipment. Paints have been developed that resist various sorts of environmental damage, but require astonishingly complex chemical industries to produce - yet another type of atelier-manse. Microwave ovens. Air conditioning. Clothes-washing machines. Flush toilets. Drywall! If you were out in the woods with nothing but a hatchet, and you wanted to make a four foot by eight foot sheet of drywall from scratch, where would you even start? C'mon, it's just gypsum dust sandwiched between paper. Simple concept, surprisingly tricky execution.

And all that's just for houses, some of the most basic amenities folks in the developed world have a hard time imagining life without. You want something like a jet aircraft, that means you need electronic controls, which means you need microprocessors, which means you need a clean room to keep everybody's dandruff off the microlithography machine - meaning, essentially, a factory-cathedral.
 
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