Cost of demon or dragon bone, teeth, and hearts?

[Dragon Mage]

Hey everyone,

So my group of players have some demon/dragon bones, teeth, blood, and hearts they want to sell. Any idea what the cost of these components?

Thanks and peace,

Dragon Mage.

[Mack]

Not a perfect reference, but p48 of Juicer Uprising says a Dragon Juicer needs a gallon of dragon blood for the initial conversion, and that the conversion cost drops to one-quarter of 3D6x100,000 if the candidate supplies the blood. So one gallon is three-quarters of 3D6x100,000. On average, that works out to 787,500 credits / gallon.

Also p49 states that a re-supply of dragon blood for the Dragon Juicer costs 10,000 to 40,000 credits. Unfortunately, it doesn't state how much blood that is.

[The Beast]

Hey everyone,

So my group of players have some demon/dragon bones, teeth, blood, and hearts they want to sell. Any idea what the cost of these components?

Thanks and peace,

Dragon Mage.

These parts might be listed under the Necromancer OCC in WB4.

[Dragon Mage]

Thanks for the replies. I'll look into both books.

Peace,
Dragon Mage

[Nekira Sudacne]

There are costs in Palladium Fantasy Second Edition, albiet in Gold and not Credits.

[Shark_Force]

as a hidden cost, i would point out that the party will need to find a way to prove that these are *real* demon/dragon bone, teeth, and hearts.

also, i think diabolists might be able to do some things with demon bits, so that might be a place to look for a palladium RPG price for some things.

[Khanibal]

There are costs in Palladium Fantasy Second Edition, albiet in Gold and not Credits.

Doesn't gold got for 1000cr an ounce in Rifts?

[Dragon Mage]

There are costs in Palladium Fantasy Second Edition, albiet in Gold and not Credits.

Doesn't gold got for 1000cr an ounce in Rifts?

Yes it does and thats why I am not going to use the prices in the Fantasy RPG.

I did find the cost of dragon bones: 1000 cr / ounce, dragon teeth: 10,000cr each, dragon blood: 1000 cr per pint. On pg 119 in the original Rifts Conversion book (not the revised one). I still need to find what the cost of the heart would be and the demon bones, etc. I could just use the same prices as the dragon ones. Which I don't have a problem with.

Peace,
Dragon Mage.

[Axelmania]

Demon bones should get real cheap once someone identifies one of the several species which regrows limbs as a natural ability.

[Blue_Lion]

Demon bones should get real cheap once someone identifies one of the several species which regrows limbs as a natural ability.

How do you keep the dead demon parts from disappearing as though they never existed?

[The Beast]

Demon bones should get real cheap once someone identifies one of the several species which regrows limbs as a natural ability.

How do you keep the dead demon parts from disappearing as though they never existed?

Kill them in Hell, duh.

[DD The Shmey]

Hey everyone,

So my group of players have some demon/dragon bones, teeth, blood, and hearts they want to sell. Any idea what the cost of these components?

Thanks and peace,

Dragon Mage.

WB4 Africa has prices for a bunch of dragon and other components listed right after the necromancer spells on page 108. It includes dragon brains, dragon claw, dragon hatchling claw, dragon eye, dragon horn, dragon tail, dragon tongue, dragon wings, dragon hatchling wings.

The real problem is going to be finding the right buyer. I am sure that different buyers will pay vastly different amounts for dragon component.
A necromancer could use a dragon component to give himself supernatural powers via Union with the dead or spells (remember the spell Strength of the Dead gives the necromancer half the MDC that the dragon had during life for only 60ppe).
Alternatively I am sure that dragon components would be valuable to alchemist for use in various potions, and treatments.

On a side note, I can't find any examples of an alchemist OCC printed in my rifts/palladium books (wouldn't be surprised if it is out there), but I imagine them as using the same rules as druid herb magic, and stone magic gem powers, but having a wider selection of ingredients for potion making. WB2 Atlantis talks a lot about alchemist in both the high lord sections and the true Atlantian sections. I need to get myself a copy of the new Atlantian book.

Demon bones should get real cheap once someone identifies one of the several species which regrows limbs as a natural ability.

How do you keep the dead demon parts from disappearing as though they never existed?

Kill them in Hell, duh.

Killing them in hell should work in theory.

Also, Rifter 62 has some official necromatic spells for preservation of remains, and for preserving organic components from supernatural creatures and creatures of magic and turning them into ppe batteries, complete with a table of different components and their ppe values (see page 43 Siphon Component/Talisman spell). The section doesn't specifically talk about these spells being used to prevent the disappearing or rapidly decomposing demonic components, but it seems like a plausible explanation for the existence of body components from demons.

[Blue_Lion]

Demon bones should get real cheap once someone identifies one of the several species which regrows limbs as a natural ability.

How do you keep the dead demon parts from disappearing as though they never existed?

Kill them in Hell, duh.

Wrong plane of existence, hell is the Dyvils, Demons are from a different plane of existence.

[Axelmania]

How do you keep the dead demon parts from disappearing as though they never existed?

Where do you get the idea that severed body parts of demons disappear while they're still living?

[Blue_Lion]

How do you keep the dead demon parts from disappearing as though they never existed?

Where do you get the idea that severed body parts of demons disappear while they're still living?

Where do you get the idea that the severd part of a demon is still alive? ( I would think when severed limbs without magical intervention the part would die and because it is SN dispapear as if it never existed.) Typically to get demon parts escpecially hearts you have to kill the demon as they would not want you just choping off what ever you want.



(Random thoght-what if demon regeneration is dead tissue that died disapearing and reforming. Imagine describing it that way to a player group. You attack choped off hunk of demon fleash that dispears before it hits the ground. You notice a section of demon flesh has returned it is almost seamed like it was not the wound closed/healed but more like suddenly the missing tissue was back where it came from as if it was never missing. player- you mean it regrew. No more like it suddenly just came back all at once.

[Axelmania]

Where do you get the idea that the severd part of a demon is still alive?

That part doesn't matter, demons are explicitly described as vanishing when they (as an entire being) die, not when some part of them dies. Otherwise how would a demon even grow hair or fingernails?

[Blue_Lion]

Where do you get the idea that the severd part of a demon is still alive?

That part doesn't matter, demons are explicitly described as vanishing when they (as an entire being) die, not when some part of them dies. Otherwise how would a demon even grow hair or fingernails?

The hair of a demon and its nails could be alive after all they are inhuman monsters.(I do not recall them described as only vansihing when they die as a whole just when they die.) Do you have a quote that says as a whole?

[Axelmania]

That part doesn't matter, demons are explicitly described as vanishing when they (as an entire being) die, not when some part of them dies. Otherwise how would a demon even grow hair or fingernails?

The hair of a demon and its nails could be alive after all they are inhuman monsters.(I do not recall them described as only vansihing when they die as a whole just when they die.) Do you have a quote that says as a whole?
[/quote]
"They" refers to them as a being, not "parts of them".

[Shark_Force]

honestly, recovering their HP in the sense that their original body somehow all goes back together (or that dead parts simply disappear or wither away to nothing) certainly goes a long way towards explaining why there aren't demon bone farms where they're trapped and every time a limb grows back it gets chopped off. i mean, obviously, that's a horrible thing to do, even to an evil creature, but you gotta figured someone (or many someones) out there are horrible enough to do just that if it means getting filthy rich after only a few days of work.

[Nekira Sudacne]

honestly, recovering their HP in the sense that their original body somehow all goes back together (or that dead parts simply disappear or wither away to nothing) certainly goes a long way towards explaining why there aren't demon bone farms where they're trapped and every time a limb grows back it gets chopped off. i mean, obviously, that's a horrible thing to do, even to an evil creature, but you gotta figured someone (or many someones) out there are horrible enough to do just that if it means getting filthy rich after only a few days of work.

Given most demons can teleport back home at will, catching one for your bone farm is not exactly easy, requiring rare and powerful magic or very very expensive magic items. That said, how do you know there arn't demon bone farms somewhere?

and market forces are still at work. if it was so easy everyone was doing it, the price of demon bones would drop accordingly and so people would stop doing it as keeping the demons would be more expensive than the trouble is worth. Especially as demon bones are pretty worthless to most Rifts mages, the only actual magical use they have in the entire game is for Permanence Wards for Diabolists and Alchemists, both of which are very rare on Rifts earth. And considering Dragon Bone is much easier to obtain and can also be used for the same purpose, the reason that demon bone farms are not more common is not that it's impossible, so much that the market is so neiche that it can't really support an industrial scale operation: you'd just flood the market and crash the value making getting a profit near impossible.

"Thanks bud, but I only need half an ounce of demon bone per ward, and I make those maybe three times a decade, so this femur will set me up for the next thousand years or so, thanks though!"

[Axelmania]

Dragon Bone is much easier to obtain

Is it? They can also teleport, and hatchlings are stronger than many lessers.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Dragon Bone is much easier to obtain

Is it? They can also teleport, and hatchlings are stronger than many lessers.

Sure, but their bodies don't vanish when they die, and they weigh 26 tons or so even as hatchlings. Even if we assume the skeleton is only 10% of their total weight, killing even a hatchling dragon results in 2.6 tons of dragon bone for harvesting. So killing a hatchling dragon may not be precicely trivial, unlike a demon, you ONLY have to worry about killing it, not how to keep it alive while harvesting.

As an added bonus their teleport % is pretty crappy as hatchling and their range is limited to a few miles, which makes tracking them down easier: more than half the time they'll just waste turns trying to teleport and watching their rolls keep failing: I've seen it happen, a hatchling dragon party member gets killed by random bandits because the player keeps flubbing his teleport rolls while the damage keeps racking up. Plus even if they do succeed the 5 mile range means they might not even be out of sight when they reappear if they're in some open terrain.

Plus dragon bone is also much easier to sell, because while Demon Bones only have use for permancy wards, Dragon bones can do that and lots, lots more, so there's a much bigger market for them.

Plus when you factor in the cost to set up a demon farm (all those teleportation restraints are not cheep), you could arm a good dragon-hatchling-hunting squad for much, much less, have an easier time, and generally enjoy higher profit margins.

[DD The Shmey]

How do you keep the dead demon parts from disappearing as though they never existed?

Where do you get the idea that severed body parts of demons disappear while they're still living?

Where do you get the idea that the severd part of a demon is still alive? ( I would think when severed limbs without magical intervention the part would die and because it is SN dispapear as if it never existed.) Typically to get demon parts escpecially hearts you have to kill the demon as they would not want you just choping off what ever you want.



(Random thoght-what if demon regeneration is dead tissue that died disapearing and reforming. Imagine describing it that way to a player group. You attack choped off hunk of demon fleash that dispears before it hits the ground. You notice a section of demon flesh has returned it is almost seamed like it was not the wound closed/healed but more like suddenly the missing tissue was back where it came from as if it was never missing. player- you mean it regrew. No more like it suddenly just came back all at once.

Another random thought, imagine a necromancer who has used his union with the dead to replace his arm with one from a demon, after a few years the demon catches up with the necromancer and demands that his arm is returned because he is unable to bioregenerate his missing arm while it is still materialized.

[Shark_Force]

if demon bone was cheaply available (and given it's a one-time up-front cost that allows you to make as many permanency wards as you like with barely any ongoing cost), it would be world-altering.

and i'm not convinced that dragon hunting is at all easier. lots of people can summon demons and control them, which means you can choose danged near every aspect of that fight; any fight with a dragon is going to involve finding the dragon and potentially fighting them in terrain and circumstances of *their* choice. and you don't exactly need a powerful demon either, so i doubt it's that hard to hunt demons if you really want. but that demon? you can set up your prison in advance, summon a demon, and order it to step inside and lock itself up.

or at least, you can do that if demon bone harvested anywhere in the megaverse works... if you have to harvest it in their native dimension, well, that certainly makes it a lot more risky to say the least.

[DD The Shmey]

... Especially as demon bones are pretty worthless to most Rifts mages, the only actual magical use they have in the entire game is for Permanence Wards for Diabolists and Alchemists, ...

The original rifts conversion book talks briefly about Diabolist. I think that Diabolist is in the Palladium fantasy main book, are Alchemists in that book too? I don't have a copy of it. If not, where can I find them?

[Nekira Sudacne]

... Especially as demon bones are pretty worthless to most Rifts mages, the only actual magical use they have in the entire game is for Permanence Wards for Diabolists and Alchemists, ...

The original rifts conversion book talks briefly about Diabolist. I think that Diabolist is in the Palladium fantasy main book, are Alchemists in that book too? I don't have a copy of it. If not, where can I find them?

Correct, they're both Palladium Fantasy OCC's, though Alchemist is NPC only, as it requires you to have 3 different magic using OCC's before you can even start learning the Alchemist OCC.

[Axelmania]

Perhaps the reason we don't see the mass farming of demons is that their masters have a way of tracking their thefted body parts and getting them back...

Perhaps the reason we don't see the mass farming of dragon hatchlings is that Dragonwright goes around killing people who do that.

you can do that if demon bone harvested anywhere in the megaverse works... if you have to harvest it in their native dimension, well, that certainly makes it a lot more risky to say the least.

I think I found an answer to this quandary. Page 127 of Megaverse in Flames:

A Beast Charm is carved from the forehead horns of a Deevil Beast.
If one is lucky, the horn can be cut during combat
and will not evaporate when the Deevil Beast discorporates.

So we know for sure now: body parts not only will not discorporate when severed, but they will not discorporate if severed prior to killing them! If you kill them first you're out of luck though!

The safest strategy would be to try and reduce them to 0 MDC (put them in a coma) but don't inflict beyond negative PE damage, which is automatic death. The trick is knowing how much damage that is...