I'm interested in who passed by particular places, and my magus has a deficiency in Intellego. So rather than using straight Intellego effects I thought the walls and floors might be made sentient and then be questioned afterward, rather than using Intellego to query them.
The desired effect is to awaken the earth enough to remember what it sees for the duration, and then allow it to answer. I separated the awakening from the ability to respond as I think it would be becoming too complex as one effect.
So far I have:
... and then to get information from it it must be able to respond...
I can appreciate that the stone will have some difficulty with context of what it sees (and I intend to add suitable text into the effect description), but a little information is better than none. If this concept works, I may invent versions for other things which I'd like to question; lakes, trees, even animals.
I'm trying to find a suitable comparative baseline, but it is tricky, so here goes:
T: Part was used so it can be cast on a larger existing substance, like a stone wall, a road, or underground tunnel and not affect the entire thing.
The Base 4 guideline from Muto Herbam "awaken the consciousness of a plant" is the most similar style spell guideline I could find but it is not a perfect match to the effect, as the earth is arguably "less alive" than plants. Therefore an additional magnitude was added to adjust for a highly unnatural effect.
I also considered the Muto Terram guideline for Level 5 which "changes earth into an animal with requisite" as being very similar to giving earth a human aspect in style.
As it happens the two difficulties match at around effect level 5.
ps - credit: I found a similar Herbam based effect in an old thread and I think it is nifty enough to be written up for use in different ways.
Tales of Mystic Europe has useful stuff:
There is a Tytalus Herbam magus early on that speaks with things (the fairie story), and later in the book there is a crime story that gives examples on what things can perceive.
I like your version of the spells a lot - they feel a lot like magic. Using those spells will be highly problematic though because a magus perceived by your wall can have you persecuted for scrying.
To give ability to speech from a stone, it might be possible to use CrIm instead: you are granting the ability to generate sound species to a stone. Since it has been awoken before, the stone become able to generate sounds in a meaningfull manner.
Probably CrIm(Me) 25/30 (?): Voice of the Mind
Although the target is not gifted with physical organs to make intelligible sounds, the target of the spell becomes able to voice its thoughts. Casting requisit according to the target. The target needs to be sentient and intelligent (cunning is not enough).
Now the tricky question, which language will use the target: language of the spell caster ? language of the lands ? local dialect ?
For pure flavour, I would love to have a castle's brick in Loch Leglean speaks with the thickest of the Scottish accent "Oï Lad !"
"Oï Lad !"