Corpus Breakthrough

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Hello,

Following the rules about original discoveries and breakthroughs found in the Bonisagus part of the book True Lineage, I am wondering about this.

I am playing a kind necromancer more about Intellego and Creo than Perdo and bloody sacrifices and so on.

I wanted to work on this project: If you consider than when someone dies, this is a special moment in his life maybe you could cristalize the last sparkle of life in a symbolic part of the dying body like the heart for instance.

After this you could use this dead corpse to extract during the following season some Corpus virtus (a bit like extracting Vim virtus from magical auras). After some research, I have learn that the flesh on a dead body rot in approximately 3 months so it would take one season for the necromancer to extract all the Corpus from the body at the same pace as the flesh rots.

My question is: what kind of breakthrough would this be: Minor( surely not), Major ? Hermetic ?

Also, do you have ideas to make experiments about this ? Some spells to create or enchanted items to create ? What about the Insights ? Do you know some Hedge Wizard that could help on this kind of breakthrough ?

Thank you for your answers, remarks, ideas...

2

I remember something like this being in the old Mistridge suplement.
It was infernally tainted mind you.

3

Getting vis out of a dead body poses some questions. Where is the magic coming from? Ordinary human beings are not magical. There's nothing about life itself which is inherently magic in Ars. In fact, the spark of life, that "sparkle" you mention, is the soul, and is Divine. Vis can be extracted from the corpses of dead Magic Beasts, Magic Spirits, and so on. This is almost exactly what you are describing, but those things all have Magic Might. To get vis out of a mundane corpse would certainly be remarkable, and would transform the Order. If vis, even a little, can be extracted from a corpse, then Mythic Europe will soon have all the vis it could ever need, and magi could easily be blamed for almost any death or tragedy. "The plague is all the fault of those wizards! Everyone knows their powers are fueled by death!"

Perhaps the process only works on characters which were already aligned with the Magic Realm: Gifted and those with Supernatural Abilities tied to Magic. In this idea, the wizard is exploiting that connection to the Magic Realm to pull vis through, or perhaps concentrate vis in the body which previously was too small or diffuse to be gathered or detected. Individuals aligned to Magic are rare, so getting vis from them would have less impact on the Order as a whole.

If the process works by capturing that "special moment", it almost sounds like you are turning the memory of an event into vis. That is, the wizard is capturing someone's experiences of a moment, which would be Mentem, and transforming that experience into vis through Muto magic. The more potent the experience, the more vis there would be. I don't think this idea would work on a corpse though, because there's no memory left in it. Spirits and ghosts have Magic Might, and so already provide vis in this way.

However, if you are transforming someone's soul into vis, well, now we're talking. In the best possible version of this, you would make a breakthrough to violate the Limit of the Soul, and turn the soul into Divine vis. But it's hard to imagine any wizard being able to do this for long without divine, infernal, and Hermetic forces closing in on him. In the less-than-ideal case, the magus thinks he's turning the soul into Divine vis, but it is actually Infernal vis, and the angel that showed him how to do it was actually a demon.

Good luck, and watch out for Quaesitores!

4

Hi,

Mostly what has been said before.

I am usually skeptical about Breakthroughs; the balance of AM is already precarious, to be generous. Most Breakthroughs break that balance, and are therefore suitable only as Act III events for a saga drawing to a close. My opinion, of course. (But therefore true! :slight_smile:/2)

In this case: From the perspective of Corpus, nothing much special happens at death. But from the perspective of Mentem, maybe vis, something special does happen. And if a necromancer is able to make that death special enough, you now have a ghost, from which it is completely possible to extract vis or do all sorts of other things with.

In the normal course of things, though, that spirit (and the vis it represents) either Moves On, dissipates, or otherwise does something normal, which leaves no vis.

So you, as a nice necromancer, want to disrupt the natural course of death (normal for necromancers, nice or nasty.)

Aaaaand.....

How much vis do you intend to wrack from the wretch as it writhes in, um, something worthy?

I bet there's a Diedne hidden somewhere who can provide Insight into how to make a person's last moments very special indeed, in the manner that your character needs.

And I bet that if you succeed, transforming ugly uppity undesirables into piles of shiny vis will become very popular.

Just saying.

Anyway,

Ken

5

It seems to me if you want to get vis from death you would need to make sure the person dies in such a way as to leave a ghost or a transformed human behind (for example, drowned men), then extract the vis from that...