First of all apologies for taking so long to read through the magic section! I have a good handle on it now.
How would you feel about amalgamating a few of your goals? I was thinking something like:
- Acquire a functional Archanotech Laboratory (+1xp)
- Acquire and study Archanotech (ongoing) (+1xp)
- Create new Archanotech (ongoing) (+1xp)
- Study the Webway Gates of Daphion (+3xp)
Vasquez can appear in the downtime thread for sure, so feel free to propose some extra goals after meeting her.
I have an idea already for your factor in the Mejo offices, they'll definitely be keeping an eye out for potential Archanotech (but not being magically trained themselves it might take some time).
Regarding the Codex
I had been working under the assumption that they were something more narrative to use as a macguffin for magical-themed adventure, or at the most maybe your original grimoire. The two issues I can see with your proposal is that
a) a Research Lab takes up 25tons of cargo space on a ship, meaning it would be far less likely to have been overlooked when the Vale was looted by the Kakimedean government after being impounded, and
b) that the installation costs 25k creds. I feel like a dick for bringing this up after Silas just wrangled a gravcar out of the Neogen deal, but that was after a legendary skill check from Vyrner! Of course, if you're willing to pay the cost then maybe we can sort something out as to why such a huge and obviously special facility wasn't stripped when the Vale was taken.
Regarding your Workshop
The biggest problem I can see with combining the two is that the default Workshop requires Power from the ship to function, which is currently maxed out on the Vale. Playing around with the Mass/Power ratio in a hull is the realm of modding (which Damian is more than capable of) and requires extortionate amounts of money and pretech components. There are other options, such as applying the Specialised Mountings mod to the vale's lasers to free up extra power, but that would cost 50,000c separate to the costs of the installations.
I propose a fitting unique to Damian's magitech nature and specialised for the Vale; the Basic Archanotech Workshop (1 power, 2 mass) 25k cost
You won't be able to fit it right now, but later on when you can afford the extra power it will allow the Basic Archanotech Laboratory to double as a Workshop as you wanted, but 5,000c cheaper and 10 tonnes less weight, to represent the overlap of your fields of study.
Regarding your class
If Damian wants to continue having free pick of the arcanist list, he'll need to swap class to Arcanist. Alternatively he can choose a Magister tradition. If none of them work we can maybe come up with a new tradition for him, but I'm not confident enough in my understanding of the Black Sun rules to balance that. I'll look into it more depending on what you want to do.
What are your thoughts?