There's been a few threads about arcane connections and a few concerning scrying lately and I seem to remember one of the magi in Magi of Hermes who had a staff that detected scrying. Now, I don't have the book and have only leafed thru it in the store a couple of times so I can't look it up.
I think it was the invisible eye revealed and an additional effect with an linked trigger to give the alarm.
Anyone know the details? Where there any modifications to the spell or was it just a vanilla invisible eye revealed?
Probably best designed with a greater Target (Room, Smell or Hearing), as otherwise the device should only detect if the device itself is spied upon.
Might also want to change duration from Conc to Sun, +4 for constant effect.
How would one go about identifying the offending party?
There is obviously an active spell targeting you or the area you are in so In/Vi seems like the right tool for the job.
According to the guidelines 2 added magnitudes would give information about technique and form, and that further increases in magnitude will yield further information.
Base 4 allows you to detect spells of magnitude 3 or higher, enough to detect most proper scrying spells. Would adding 3 magnitudes be sufficient to detect the sigil?
How about finding out where the spell is cast from?
Some sort of tracking spell to find the location of the offending party.
Detect the scrying. Probably with target Room or Ring depending on how mobile and flexible I wanted the detection to be. And triggering with some sort of alarm.
Use Muto Vim to reverse the spell by turning the target into the caster. Probably far from easy, but if you invested a mirror with the effects you could get a nice view of the caster. This would be scrying, I would guess, but unless severely politically disadvantaged you should get away with it.
A dispel in the same area as #1, triggered by command word.
Very hard - and suddently you are scrying on him! Some tribunals might take offence, even though you're usng his spell!
If you like.
The scrying spell carries the sigil of the caster - this should be easily detectable via InVi.
This also permits for story twists, as said sigil can be disguised...
Yes, but even when using MuVi, it's still cast by the original caster - not you - so the original caster will recieve the information - not you.
You might be able to hi-jack the spell somehow, but that's not easy.
Besides, as for the scrying via his scrying spell...
Imagine if you will; a person pulls a gun on me, but (being an idiot) be stands too close and I can take his gun from him.
If I now use this gun to shoot him, I'll be guilty of murder (according to the laws of this country).
Now, if I 'steal' a person's scrying spell and scry on him, that's perhaps not the same, and yet...?
Yep. A good analogy, I think.
And as I said you would be guilty of scrying. But you would probably be let off the hook using some sort of "self defense" claim. Much as you could probably be in many modern countries.
Now, if you are the unpopular, saracen blooded necromancer who have antagonized most of the tribunal, you have a much smaller chance to get away with such a defense than if you are the Hero of the tribunal and have strong political friends. (Also quite a bit like in your analogy )
Is an active spell an arcane connection to its caster? If it is you could make the detection spell trigger an attack. I would say something like making the scrier glowing intensly green for Moon duration shouldn't be too hard. Or maybe painting black rings around his eyes (like applying ink to a key hole...) Or blast him to kingdom come, but that's less fun...
When the offending spell first has been detected by the Invisible eye revealed I guess dispelling it with a casting of Unravelling the fabric of Intellego (or some other form) of sufficient level should be no problem.
Unfortunately this does not give you much of a clue as to who the offending magi is. Showing up at the next tribunal and challenging the scryer to step forward probably is not going to work. If one could find out where the spell was being cast from would help a lot, detecting the sigil even more so (even though it could be faked).
I guess my fingers just hit the wrong keys. I meant Imagonem.
As to how to find out where the spell was cast form, that's what I'm asking about as well. Is it possible at all without using Muto Vim in an attempt to hi-jack the scrying spell.
Detecting the sigil should be possible with an In/Vi spell, but is it also possible to get an indication of the physical location of the caster?
Specific types of magic does not imply choosing a specific Form. This is more than my opinion based on the guidelines, it is a canonical interpretation of the guidelines. For example, you can choose the specific kind of magic to be shapechanging magic. That won't hit all of Muto, certainly, but it will cover a broad bunch of Forms in a limited way. It will also cover non-Hermetic magic. Scrying magic on the box should be more restricted than shapechanging, so it is probably acceptable as a specific type of magic. You might still need several versions for different realms if you're worried about different realms.
I guess I'm more worried about hermetic scrying than I'm worried about divine scrying.
Some magi might be able to use some fairy magic, but it's still the hermetic type that worries me the most.
Fairly certain it needs to be more limited: the Unravelling spells should technically be Unravelling the Fabric of Hermetic (Form).
I would always require 2 identfiers: tradition and type (type being equivalent to a Hermetic Form).
Thus you'd Unravel Elementalist Fire (or even Ikhwa as-Safa Fire) spells, or Vitkir Thurisaz. Not Shapeshifting, which is much wider.
Shapechanging is an example in canon, which is why I said the interpretation that allows it is not just my opinion. It's in the back of HoH:S, on page 129, named The Heathen Witch Reborn. Sure, you could house-rule it out, but shapeshifting is normally an allowed choice for a specific type of spellcasting.
That's certainly how PeVi reads - tradition and limited scope (if not necessarily "Form"). So Hermetic Shape-changing magic would work, and would cover MuCo, MuAn, and a lot of MuTe and others.
Yep, it's there all right.
The only counter-argument (other than, as you say, simply houseruling it out as aberrant and contrary to the PeVi Guidelines at face value) is to assume that since...
it's under the section on Pralix (who specialize against non-Hermetic spellcasters),
b) the first sentence in the intro to that subsection begins "The Lineage of Pralix has a number of spells that are targeted directly at exotic magic"
iii) it's called "The Heathen Witch Reborn",
lastly) the spell description states "This spell can be used as a template for spells that affect other types of exotic magic" (implying that this spell doesn't work on non-exotic "Hermetic" magic)
...that it in fact does not work on Hermetic shapechanging spells (which would be more in keeping with the PeVi Guidelines).
Yes, that's all "implied", hardly definitive, and any one or two of those could be easily dismissed - but all four combined, as a totality of evidence, are convincing, and that's how I'd rule it, and without a second thought. (But I'm conservative that way.)
Careful with your reasoning there. They've provided only two examples and specifically as examples. Reading those as a way to restrict the guideline is not proper reasoning. It would be like saying "Many persons have animals as pets. For example, some have dogs and some have cats. Therefore it is implied that all pets are mammals." Yet we know that isn't the case.
Going after general categories of spells does work to specifically target exotic magic. You can't build a PeVi spell to take down something specific with which you are unfamiliar. So how to you set up your PeVi arsenal of formulaic spells that will work against any sort of exotic magic you come up against, including ones you haven't faced? You devise spells such as this, which target a type of magic with which you are familiar (via MuCo(An), for example) but also affect certain magics with which you may not be familiar. Build up a bunch of these and you can take down an exotic caster pretty well.
Another way to look at it is that shapechanging and cursing are common to other types of magic, certainly more so than in Hermetic magic. So they're specifically going after what's commonly found in exotic magic.
"Wizard's Icy Grip" doesn't require the magus to grab anyone, let alone touch anyone. There are plenty of spells that are given colorful names that indicate roughly what they do while still not really explaining the spell.
How exactly does saying it does affect exotic magic imply it doesn't affect Hermetic magic? That means exotic shapechanging magic is a subset of the set of things affected by this spell. What are the things affected by this spell? Any shapechanging spells and shapechanging Supernatural Abilities are affected. Are exotic shapechanging spells a subset? Yes, they're shapechanging spells, and it affects "any" shapechanging spell. Are Hermetic shapechanging spells a subset? Well, they are shapechanging spells and it affects "any" shapechanging spell, so yes, they are affected, too. Since it can be used against exotic magics, you could design other such spells that would affect both Hermetic and exotic magics, using this as a template. Thus my suggestion for a version to dispel scrying magic.
I have no problem with my reasoning, thanks for the concern.
Do you really think the authors would put in two irrelevant, randomly chosen examples, that had no further significance to the limits of the term they illustrate than "Pets: dog & cat""? Is that your reasoning? Really?
That would undermine the whole concept of Rules as functional. So get back to us on "reasoning", because I greatly fear that yours is to be found lacking in this instance.
Any one or two of those could individually be easily dismissed - but all four combined, as a totality of evidence, are convincing.
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