Cool - but I'm not familiar w/ canon Thebes material. I had envisioned a pan-Order sort of enterprise (and for profit as much as to serve The Order), but if a local tradition exists, so much the better. "tokens"?
Yes, I was talking re The Code (a mage who can't evade mundane laws - pffft!). And there are many ways to skin this particular cat, and leave the family not knowing what to do, or even unaware there is anything to do. (ie, fake a death, change memories, etc etc.)
Since it's "peripheral code" land, it invites Troupe/SG interpretation. It clearly(?) happens on an individual basis occasionally, but for one mage to make it a practice rather than to perform it once for personal reasons is a different matter.
(It may be that he will (eventually) bring about a Tribunal Case and new precedent established one way or the other, but for now we need to figure out where the "starting point" is in the eyes of the Code (which is "theory") and The Order (which is "practice").
So everyone can opine, here are the references that I have.
- Guardians of the Forest (insert p 102)
[style=Times New Roman]
The Slave Trade
[size=120]Prague is home to a large slave market. The word “slave” derives from “slav”... The Church forbids making Christians into slaves. The trade in slaves is controlled by the (corrupt) Knights of the Sword, and is a lucrative source of income... They transport the slaves to Prague and sell them to Jewish merchants, who then transport them to Muslim lands and sell them again...
... a trusted companion of Roznov covenant (see below) uses his Magic Sensitivity to spot and filter out any Gifted children among the slaves. They then find themselves delivered to Coeris, the domus magna of House Tremere in the Transylvanian Tribunal.[/size][/style]
- Then, from the (4th ed) Timeline posted * on these boards...
(* by Erik Tyrrell : Hermetic Timeline - #5 by Erik_Tyrrell )
1188 1327 Provencal: Magus Teslil of Jerbiton finds a Gifted girl and, already having an apprentice of his own, sells her to Magus Gentric of Jerbiton. [WGRE] See 1331 for additional developments.
...
1192 1331 Provencal: Magus Gentric dies. His property is disposed of in the manner of his covenant, and his apprentice taken by Magus Alarmon of Tytalus. [WGRE] See the Provencal Tribunal of 1333 for additional developments.
...
1194 1333 Provencal Tribunal of 1333: Magus Teslil claims that the former apprentice of Magus Gentric, who died 1331, should be granted him, as Gentric had been of his House and he had found the girl to begin with. The Tribunal rules that Teslil, having sold the girl, had given up all claim. [WGRE]
Regarding Magus Teslil, the Tribunal noted its disapproval of selling apprentices, but did not forbid it.
(WGRE = Wizard's Grimoire, Revised Edition)
And that's about it.
Note that The Order does not see taking apprentices "as slaves", and so to be "endangering The Order" that way - if it did, there would be chaos in the Tribunals. The "Slave" info is included to show that Coeris has an active search machine in place full time, not because a particular mage is searching for an apprentice of their own. (Whether or not this is "common knowledge" in The Order may be a different matter.)
Yes and no - I believe all Players should help write - and plan - the Story. Do you, as a Player, think it would make a better story to have this mage try to keep his activities under the table and discrete from his sodales, or to have everything out in the open? If your character wouldn't care either way (and this may depend in part on what we decide on the peripheral code), then that's that, but otherwise...
Which simply uses InVi Base 10 - very straightforward, yep.
Interesting. But if not "magic", then what is it? Mentem? Corpus? None of the above - but then, again, what? Something outside and beyond the 10 Forms?!
To me, The Gift is a bit like vis - it's magic, in its purest, unfettered, rawest form. The negative social aspect is described as "creepiness caused by an unconscious awareness of magic" - or words to that effect. The InVi Guidelines imply that it is magic, or certainly could be, unless "having ones Arts opened" is somehow a change in the magic within a Gifted child that changes it from outside of InVi to within the Guidelines.
Sometimes the Gift is "latent" - but that only means it hasn't done anything overt. Often, it's described as creating "unintentional" magical effects, sometimes none at all. It's certainly variable, that's clear - but at the same time "it" is The Gift, and so has something consistent. (I believe that it's not impossible that The Gift appears later in some children, so a child with no (discernible?) Gift today may have one tomorrow, triggered by some immeasurable variable. Altho', once manifest, it's there for life.)
Iirc, non-Hermetic spellcasters can be detected using those same Guidelines - so, again, we're back to Base 10. (Altho' The Central Rule could certainly be applied "just because".)
Not every spell that has been invented, or even that "is common", is listed in the books. There are many details that the editors/writers simply recognize as more approp to "ysmv", and so do not want to make canon one way or the other. Their omission, however, is not in turn a canon statement that they do not exist.
Well, as I pointed out, the InCo "specific piece of information" seems to cover it, and InMe has clear parallels to InCo, even if not all are listed.
If, otoh, this requires individual research... can do. (Not sure it would be "scandalous", but either way.)