In the Normandy Tribunal book is the example of Anacreon ex Miscellanea, the Beggar King of Paris.
He enforces his rule with a ritual spell to make his enforcers very loyal.
How widespread in the Order would this Vis hungry spell be?
How can it be abused?
PS I may have reason to run Darius of Flambeau as a guest appearance soon, so I am trying to think of how to use the Enemies Flaw. If the enemy traded with Anacreon at some point....
Iām not sure why most wizards would cast this as a duration year ritual rather than a duration month non ritual. The risk of botch and the vis cost just seems like a ton of downsides. 7 pawns of vis would be more than the yearly amount of vis that a spring magus gets in a game I run.
Warping and convenience. Meeting everyone individually to renew the spell is likely to become a major distraction for a magi. If done once a moon, it means the renewal day, the spell has failed, which means the magi will deal with reactions to the gift with everyone at the covenant at the same time the artificial loyalty is gone. I suspect the main reason for instilling artificial loyalty is that you either don't want to bother earning / can't otherwise expect the loyalty of your covenfolk. Which means a possible rebellion once a month because the Mentem spell has failed. The way arround that is doing it every new and full moon. Going there, you're now at six days of distraction per season maintaining a single spell.
Alternatively, you can renew the effect on everyone at once, skip the lab distraction time, once a moon during the time you expect the spell to fail, and save the vis. But if you do that, you have to use Structure or group + size - the spell now warps everyone. It can't be designed for everyone in a changing staff, therefore for this single effect, every covenfolk gains 17 warping points per year. Do I need to explain why getting your entire staff to warping 6 in about as many years is a bad thing?
Most magi don't want 6 distraction days per season before stories hit to be able to act like jerks with their staff, and if they make the choice to be jerks anyway, it's better to spend vis once a year than deal with the stories of replacing your covenfolk every 5 years or having your entire staff have an armlong list of supernatural flaws.
Dankmar jumps to mind for that kind of thing, for starters.
Use the month duration to make a group loyal to someone else. Then don't renew it and watch them fall at the full moon...