Had a bizarre dream that seemed Ars related. Writing it down before I totally forget or misremeber.
A mage (Tytalus?) gives their Apprentice the Gauntlet to prevent someone from being Marched, by Tribunal’s conclusion.
Apprentice spends time trying to work out who is to be Marched, and if Master setup victim, or if they deserve to be Marched. Things got so convoluted and improbable(?) I woke up in confusion and frustration.
At any rate, could an Apprentice be able to act and argue in front of Tribunal?
An apprentice might be Gauntleted to prevent their master from being charged with the low crime of over-keeping (which would not usually result in a March). If such a low crime were charged, things have gone very wrong, the mage has seriously transgressed, and merely releasing the apprentice would probably not solve it.
As to your actual question, an apprentice might be called on to testify at a hearing, or might be allowed to witness a Tribunal meeting, but addressing the body of magi, or arguing a case seems too far.
However, if a Tribunal has code that forbids an apprentice from testifying at a Tribunal, it may be that A Magus might gauntlet his apprentice to allow such testimony, which may clear B Magus.
I think the quaesitors might take a dim view of this, but there’s probably little to be done to prevent it.
It will vary from Tribunal to Tribunal, and House customs are likely to play. I would wager that, in many cases, the apprentice doesn't have the right to speak per se, but as the magi's property, would be allowed to speak either on an explicit authorisation from his parens, or presumed to have that authorization unless the master intervenes (since it would have been poor etiquette for the apprentice to do so without prior authorization, since what he says is essentially the parens' responsibility). I don't think most Tribunals would explicitly ban an apprentice from speaking as a witness or intervening with the parens's approval, but I could see a Tribunal requiring the apprentice to address his parens and the parens to address the Tribunal. The level of formalism at a Tribunal would matter. If a Tribunal requires magi to raise their hands prior to intervening in a case, displaying an hermetic sigil, for example, then an apprentice with a raised hand would be ignored, and the parens might be censored if he speaks out of turn. On the other hand, I've had games where we had great funs with apprentices intervening in a case, and in some cases, these interventions were acknowledged as gauntlets by House Tytalus, if the parens is perceived as having been beaten.
It seems likely that the apprentice of a quaesitor could be present to observe a Tribunal without objection, especially an apprentice close to the gauntlet.
It may be that an apprentice can be questioned at a hearing, but not speak at a Tribunal.
Again depending on the local custom.
The customary and legal positions of non-Magi in/around the Order is distressingly vague.
If the apprentice of a Tytalus is tasked with preventing someone from getting marched they are probably being expected to be negotiating or manipulating votes rather than arguing in front of the tribunal. Although arranging for the person to be killed before they could be marched would also be a solution, or perhaps, depending on how it is worded, having the trial postponed to a future tribunal.
The typical 'Gauntlet this apprentice to prevent a casualty in a March' situation often seems to be 'I am going to be Marched; better Gauntlet my Apprentice to keep them from being hunted as well'. The Apprentice would probably not get to speak at Tribunal; but a newly Gauntleted mage might.
It probably doesn’t apply in your situation but in many Tribunals I would allow an apprentice to speak if they were sponsored by a well respected Inquisitor or Hopilite who was not from their home covenant. In other words, if the apprentice or the apprentice+master can convince someone important that the apprentice has important information and it matters that they are the one telling it then it might be allowed.
The main thing is that 1) under normal circumstances an apprentice would not be allowed to speak, unless they were a Guernica's apprentice and this was their gauntlet, and secondly, the direct route is rarely the one a Titulus mage will be wanting their apprentice to take for their gauntlet.
I might be misremembering, but in the dream I have the impression that the apprentice was the designated proxy of another mage. The voting sigil he carried was probably not his master's. The master wasn't attending due to some decision/obligation of this or a previous Tribunal meeting?
“Clearly, the dream was signaling that the Apprentice is a particular mage, reborn - a venerable magus of another era who went into Final Twilight and found their way back. See! The Apprentice holds the Sigil of the long-lost Archmage!” - A Criamon who is here to Start Some Mess.
IIRC, the Criamon assert that people are reincarnated as themselves in their own bodies in the next repeat of the world; how this jibes with the idea that souls escape in each version I’ve never understood.
Christian and Islamic theology generally rejects reincarnation of the soul in a different body, although there’s bound to be some heretic.
The wider reality in Mythic Europe is left pretty unaddressed, I think.
There was, of course, plenty of room for reincarnation in some pre-christian beliefs. I have made that a secret of Diedne in a campaign before, where Diedne magae were being reincarnated with full knowledge of who they had been.
There’s also a sort-of-reincarnation concept that Plato and pre-Platonic mystery cults were doing some jazz with known as Metempsychosis, which (according to Wikipedia) comes up in Plato’s Republic and Laws, which (according to Ancient Magic, p.41) are available to the Order, presumably relatively easily, though they’re pre-Aristotelian (who didn’t like the idea that souls could mix-and-match from man to monkey, etc) and therefore “discredited”, though that wouldn’t necessarily stop a mage from knowing of the idea, as a pretty easy Philosophiae or Theology roll. Idk how you’d test that sort of thing, although I’d be very interested to see someone try.
Then you have systems like Egyptian mythology where the soul has three parts, one part that goes to the afterlife, one that wanders the earth, and one that either reincarnates or becomes one with the land, depending on which tradition you are talking about.
Trying to test most of these ideas would probably wind up with being marched and hunted by the church in pretty short order though “Okay, I’m going to kill you, but after that…’
“after that?”
“Yes, I’m going to put a mark on your soul, I hope. It won’t actually change your soul, that is beyone the power of magic, but it will help me track it.”
The fun thing is that Holy Magic would probably be the only safe way to go about it, and you’d have to find the very very narrow venn diagram of “people who want to help you learn Holy Magic” and “People who will be chill if you completely upend theology”, and unfortunately the rest of those circles are full of demons disguised as priests, who would probably LOVE to help you “succeed.”
The Tytalus way would be make it challenging by making him save someone, when the apprentice has no authority to speak publicly. Their gauntlets often are multifaceted. So: 1) you have to manipulate testimony through skill and magic; 2) you have to bribe, threaten, or promise to assemble a voting block, with no resources to bribe, threaten, or promise; 3) you have to win the debate, when you are not formally allowed to debate.
Win and you are gauntleted. Lose and the consequences will damage your reputation.