im new to modding DF and wanted to try this one out how do we know if it is added in correctly where does the mana forge show up at is it in regular work shops?

Some notes on my thinking:

I thought it was a fun quirk to make the base unit of mana, for dwarfs, be a stone. This means you can make it into bricks and create walls or bridges out of mana, or fashion it into furniture as well. It's essentially an economic stone you can summon, which has some special ability to be turned into mythril (metal) or manaweave (cloth) too.

In a practical sense, it gives you something more valuable to do with totems, as well as a way to dispose of low-quality figurines. The basic idea is that by sacrificing life (totems) or representations of life (figurines), mana can be created.

There is also a mana pollution mechanic, which causes a degree of debilitation for those poor dwarfs who are involved the mana industry (wood burning labor). I'll be tweaking this a bit, since Syndrome gives me a huge amount of customization about the sort of "mana irradiation" effect I want to achieve. So far it's a bit easier than what I want to ultimately get.

Welcome to my Mana mod! I'll be making updates to balance the mana pollution system, but otherwise I think most of what I want in the Core is here. This is one I've been working on for a while, and finally decided it was solid enough to make available.

Other Civ Compatibility

You can extend this to other civilizations fairly easily. Check the file called "entity_add_rituals" included within, and copy the SELECT_ENTITY portion for any civs you want to add these recipes to.