Advice on initiating a Magical Focus

So call it a dinosaur if it makes you feel better :wink:

Good idea ! In the meanwhile, we had our last session (we have reached the Canary Islands and are currently exploring their fascinating wizard-king society, and about to seek entrance in the Garden of the Hesperides). However, the GM chose to pick Blatant Gift, instead, which I suppose works adequately, too. Nonetheless, your advice will still be quite useful in the future, when the character will eventually be able to initiate other Merinita and Theurgy Mysteries, too. Animae Magic and Glamour definitely are on the future "to-do" list, among other things.

It will also depend on whether the GM will want to send us to other relentless quests for other Ancient Magic stuff, too. So far, we are currently questing for the Coordinates of Ptolemy and the Language of Adam (being persecuted by a mystery cult of rogue hermetic magi that know it and sport the mark of Cain), are traveling in the company of shapeshifted bard wolf from Eden who likely tasted the Fruit of Knowledge, and is the pal of a lost Hermetic Archmage who is assured to have cracked a working method to immortality.

Did you need a major or minor? Vulnerable to folk traditions looks like it would work (HOH:S pg 107)

SG wanted a Major. But thanks for the suggestion nonetheless. :slight_smile: Both Vulnerable Magic (to iron, divine objects or both), Restriction (to iron, already has to divine objects) and Vulnerable to Folk Traditions look like nice ideas for Ordeals for future Traditions. Once completed the revision, the character is done for now Mysteries-wise, unless our quest for Ancient Magic secrets requires us to make some initiation to integrate stuff.

But in the many gametime years to come, I have many other mysteries that I want the character to master 8) :

All of Animae Magic, Glamour, Names of Power, Invocation Magic, Synthemata Magia, Theurgic Spirit Familiar (wouldn't allow the character to pick an animal familiar), Inscription Over the Soul (wouldn't make the character seek immortality without it, unless he is allowed the once-in-lifetime, on-your-feet opportunity, such as a taste of fruits from the two Gardens we are questing for), look quite appropriate, useful, and interesting for the character, plus whatever Virtues necessary to become immortal (I'm still uncertain of which path he would ultimately follow, both Alchemical and Daimonic look appealing, faerie Becoming would destroy the spont focus of the character), so they will be pursued, likely in this order.

Sadly Unstructured Caster makes Hermetic Theurgy and Hermetic Synthemata completely unusable, so they will have to be bypassed if at all possible; differently from Invocation Magic, you can't cast theurgic spirit spell as sponts. :frowning:

Other Mystery Virtues that might be appropriate, useful, and interesting for the character would be Arcadian Travel (if I can eventually make up my mind about it, and provided our likely mastery to come of Ptolemy's Coordinates and Adamic language doesn't fully satisfy all our travel magic needs and he loses interest), Binding the Gift (quite nice to have with Blatant Gift), Summoning (but Animae Magic already gives a mage very substantial summoning abilities, so he might lose interest; it would be a nice complement to deal with magical spirits, too), and the full Ablation, Binding, Commanding set (Ablation and Binding give nice options to make the character immune to aging).

What do you think of my character advancement plan ? Of course, it would also require much study time for massive improvements of Arts and Arcane Abilities to make use of all these Mysteries goodness, but I'm much fond of this character, barring accidents I do plan to lead him all the way to immortality and beyond.

It also depends whether we will eventually pursue other Ancient Magic secrets besides Eden and the Hesperides. I dearly hope so. The secrets of the runes, fertility, defixiones, and hyperboreans are all stuff I'd much like to see in play 8) (SG has houseruled away the Limit of Vis, for simplicity, so Grigori are a no-no, unless he changes the object of the quest). But nonetheless, we are having great fun as Hermetic Indiana Joneses, so kudos to the authors of Ancient Magic (and HoH:MC, and TMRE) :smiley: . I'm quite satisfied with my buyings so far (even if I have to provide all the 5th ed. books so far :frowning:, good thing I may afford to buy backups :wink: )