What happens when a 9 year old takes a longevity potion?
or to put it another way:
There was a potion, brewed from the sap of a magic tree, which was guarded by a goddess, who I ate, whilst transformed into a dragon.
And we drank it.
Now our three senior mages are all 9 years old.
We don't know whether the effects are permanent or not. Some of the mages hope they are, some aren't so sure.
But my question is:
We all still have longevity potions active on us. What are the mechanics here? Will we ever actually get any older?
At 9 years old, you don't do an aging roll, you just age. But the longevity potion will prevent that. So I imagine we'd still do an aging roll, just to see if the potions break.
But at 9 years old, living a comfortable life as a rich mage in a nice covenant, and with a very good longevity potion.. we're unlikely to even have our age apparently increase by a year?
In 3 or 4 decades time, when we're now adding 3 or 4 to the aging rolls, we might start to get slight aging, but until then..? Are we 9 for the forseeable future?
Ryce Magesla.. Godslayer, aged nine and one quarter
As the GM responsible for this turn of events, may i just say "ahahahaha"
I can't hep but imagine the three senior magi in our saga as really cute little 9 year old kids. Our surly, scarred spaniard (ala Johnny trega), creepy necromancer and womanising manipulator all as 9 year olds, it just too mucn fun.
My take on the question raised by Ryce is thusly.
Since all three magi have active longevity potions, which the faerie brew did nothing to disturb, the three magi will all age as follows.
They age until they hit 35, at which point they start rolling as per usual but using their new age (i.e. 35 rather than the 100 that they will be closer to by then).
My reasoning is thus. The longevity potion holds back te ravages of aging, but aging, much like with corpus only becomes a negative issue once you get to 35 (i.e. when you start rolling). Up until then it is more accurately termed maturation.
Hence the magi wil mature then age normally.
This is a significant boon for the magi as it effectively gives them 30 odd years of free time with no aging effects and then they get the reduced aging rolls until the get older.
All assuming of course that the potion isn't temporary. Which it might well be. Only my notes and i really know (bwahaha).
You have gone a bit off the beaten track here, so who knows what will happen?
That said, I would expect a Longevity Ritual to prevent aging, not maturation. It could be argued that since the LR uses the Art of Creo, and Creo is about making thing "better," an LR makes you "better." Now to the medieval mind, I believe an adult body is "better" than a child's body because it is stronger, more capable. It is also the seat of a mature mind, which is also better and more capable than a child's.
Mechanically, an LR affects an aging roll and you only age in ArM5 after physical age 35. Therefore I would say your encounter with bizarre magic has bought you a 26-year respite from aging rolls. But you'll mature normally over the next decade or so.
Let's hope your storyguide agrees with me.
Also, I would point out that you have just broken one of the Hermetic Limits by actually making yourself younger. Maybe some mad Bonisagus out there wants to dissect you to figure out how you did it.
A very interesting situation! First a question of clarification (completely irrelevant to the following but I'm curious) - what power did this to you? What realm was it?
Okay, several thoughts spring to my mind. First of all - is it a permanent effect or does it have a duration? This has impact on many things: whether it can be dispelled, whether you take continued warping, how you'll react to other people with MR and possibly how the effect of other magic might interact (such as a longevity potion). I know you don't know this yet, but it has a bearing on the answers.
As for the longevity potion (given that it doenst conflict with any running effect of the thing that made you young...) I suggest that you do not make aging rolls at all - why should you untill you reach 36? The interesting aspect is that Creo seems to accelerate aging until you are mature and decelerate when yoou've reached maturity - according to the Creo Corpus guidelines, the description of Creo and the involvement of Creo in a longevity potion. In that way, if you want the potions to have a recordable effect I would suggest having the 'youngster' grown up a bit faster.
Since age beyond maturity is seen as the onset of perdo and diminishing of creo I dont think the potions will 'fail a roll' untill you've passed maturity and actually starts to roll (the creo of the potion working to postpone the perdo of age).
Now there are some very interesting concepts I'd love to hear how you chose to address - what does it mean to be a child? Is it merely a question of body size or how does mental maturity play a role? Will the characters be 'childish' or will they simply be adults in miniature bodies? Will they have an interest in getting mature as fast as possible or do they relish the fact that they are you - either just to play (poor poor grogs.. with magic wielding kids) or do they want to take advantage of years of study while young? And how do they cope with their little bodies - recalling that characteristics are diminished in children and is this physical as well as mentally?
But I wonder if I missed something - what realm is the effect? Oh yes it says magic tree - for a sec I was wondering how that bonisagus might react if the source was infernal or divine....
The extra years of life are a nice bonus, if the effect is permanent. And it'll certainly be fun to play.
My concern though, is that my main offensive technique against magic users is to turn into my heartbeast (bear) and rip them to shreds.
When I tried this last night.. I turned into a cute little bear cub. Not quite the angry ball of fur and claws I intended!
I suspect my heartbeast will be full size by the time I reach 16, but that's 7 years away. Which for an npc mage might be ok, 7 years in the lab sounds like bliss. But we're got an ancient evil risen in Scotland and preparing to unleash his armies and destroy the Order any time now, and an infernal mage preparing to unleash hell on earth and send his armies against the order. Both these enemies have particular grudges against our covenant. So hoping for the next 7 years to be incident free seems a little optimistic.
I know one of my Sodalis is considering looking up a spell to age himself 10 years so he can be at his physical peak right now.. I am encouraging him to do this in the hope that the '9 year old' potion is only a temporary effect and when he re-ages, the extra ten years stick and he's suddenly 82
My other concern is that in search of gifted kids I fathered scores of children.. I'm a little worried now that they may come round and bully me.
Ryce Magesla.. Godslayer, aged nine and one quarter
The tree is a magical tree; the potion was made by a fae. So which realm it is from is questionable.
My 72 YO battle scarred nutter flambeau hoplite is over the moon that he is physically aged 9 again... other than he is a melee fighter at heart and can't hit people as hard any more. He did indeed look a lot like Danny Trejo in my head, but now he just looks wrong...
Is it beyond the hermetic limit to age someone with a spell? My current thinking is that a spell that adds 10 years to your life will make Santiago 19 and fit as a fiddle (yet he has 72 years of experience) which is simply fantastic...
Only worry there is that, if the effect isn't permanent, you age yourself by ten years and then it wears off and you're 82 not 72!
Santiago Ex Flambeau, Hoplite
Favourite food: jelly and ice cream
Given the mentalities of our two mages.. I'm not sure regressing mentally to childhood would be too noticeable to the outside world.. other than that we'd have an excuse for acting like kids now
Sodalis Ryce, if you consider the current Prima of House Criamon (according to HoH: MC she is 40+ years but has body of a teenager), you will realize that it is perfectly possible that your longevity potion will slow your aging a great deal. If a young person is under effects of Longevity Ritual, he rolls aging rolls each year, but the maximum result he can roll is nine. Therefore, if the effect of faerie potion is permanent, you will be a kid for a long while. Also, you won't be able to you Bane of Decrepit Body on yourself, since it won't work on children of age sixteen or less. Have a happy second childhood... Sodalis Hopolite.
If I recall the description in the Criamon section right, it's more likely the botched potion she was given (which was experimental) inflicted Unaging on her, or she used one of the advanced Criamon paths.
Here's what I would do: make the aging rolls every year, applying aging modifiers as normal, but only to determine whether their apparent age increases or not that year. There can't be any "negative" result until they hit 35.
That can also be done for people with an aging modifier due to faerie blood.
Faerie Blood clearly indicates aging starts at 50, so it might be a good idea, to do so.
However, if all three of you are the players... it's not really critical. Though you might want to enforce the lost characteristics rules and perhaps more. If you're the only players, just roll with it, not like you're getting an advantage over each other.
Another possibility is that the rejuvenation is just cosmetic: They could make aging rolls based on their real age, with apparent increases in age being done to their 9-years old body: Maybe they look like kids, but, in truth, their essential nature of senile old farts isn't affected
You misrecall. Her master thinks children are more likely to be able to use the Enigma, so he deliberately gave her a potion early. It wasn't botched or experimental.
She has used her small size as an Ordeal, yes, but that wasn't the point when her master gave it to her.
Great idea!
