My troupe's mage with the healing magical focus has come up with a couple of questions I would like group-think on.
Does resolving an Aging Crisis fall under the Healing focus? I am tempted to say No, as it is not exactly a wound, its phrased "resolving" not "healing" in the rules, and there is a magical focus in Aging in the core book.
the mage is looking for an appropriate Familiar. Thinks a unicorn might be the perfect match, for its ability to "heal", though it seems to me that a unicorn is more about "purity" than "healing".
Apart from the Caladrius bird, what other "healing" (potential) Familiars are there?
I would classify it as healing in the same way it would be healing from a disease because Aging crisis is just an abstraction of some age-related health crisis that might cause the death of the person.
It being able to heal itself should fit well enough, the Phoenix for instance for there to be “similar interests” or whatever. I think there is a dog that can heal folks by licking them mentioned in RoP:M but may just be a paragraph and not a stat block. But the best way is probably to just tell your SG that you want to seek rumors of a being that is associated with healing and see what rumors they come up with for the story to find your familiar.
So, the true answer here is that it's going to depend on what your group is comfortable with.
My group interprets magical foci kind of broadly, because it's fun to do so. I would definitely let healing cover an Aging Crisis (since that's a model for diseases and other age related problems). If it's a major focus, I'd probably also extend it to longevity rituals. (Its all creo corpus, after all).
Woops, read your post wrong. Unicorns often heal poison, so I'd go with a corpus affinity that would work great for a healer.
They are mutually exclusive, in that you can only ever have a single magical focus, regardless of source.
I would generally not accept using a Focus for Healing for Longevity Rituals. I do not see these as relevantly similar. I would accept being over ruled by my troupe though.
I can see an overlap between them in dealing with Aging Crisis. But an Aging focus would work for Longevity Rituals, as well as Perdo Corpus and Perdo Animal to age creatures.
IMO healing will help with resolving aging crisis but not longevity rituals. Also have you considered a serpent? Numerous cultures (including our own symbol for medicine) have incorporated snakes as a symbol for the healing arts.
I concur with the interpretation that a healing foci will help with an aging crisis, and I wouldn't allow it to impact a longevity ritual, which would fall squarely under the aging foci.
Depending on whether you classify them as faerie or magical, and if magical, magic human or magic animal, some centaurs could fit very well given the myth of Chiron.
I love that. I had always thought that centaurs were faerie. But that there could two types of centaurs resolves the difference in portrayal between Chiron, and the rambunctious drunken other centaurs.
But now you have me wondering how a magical centaur comes about. Maybe the pregnant mother slept/took shelter in a stable full of magical horses?
I would expect them to be some form of magic kin, breeding true, or else be the result of either a woma mating with a horse of virtue (Cathrine the Great style), a man mating with a mare (at least the childbirth would be easier) or some form of magical transformation in the tradition of the great beasts of bjorner, though of a prior age.
There are certainly Faerie centaurs; you're right about that. There's a good bit about them in RoP:F. But, as you said, there could be both Faerie and Magic.
Interesting. A Bjornaer with a horse heartbeast (and possibly a Healing focus) produces children. A century later the Bjornaer becomes a Great Beast, and one of its descendents being born at that moment becomes part horse out of magical blood sympathy? That might work to produce a "contemporary" Chiron.
But can such a magical, monstrous human become a Familiar?
No, I mean some magical group back in 1200 BCE had something similar to heartbeasts where they turned into hybrid human-horse people and then had children.