Creatures with might forced into the Aegis

OK, so the players caught a faerie mouse (with might 1), which was part of a group that was breaking the items of the Venetian glassblower that they were trying to recruit for the covenant. They put the mouse in a wooden bucket, tied a lid to it, cast Aegis of Unbreakable Wood on the Bucket, put the bucket in the wagon and then drew a ring of Faerie Warding around the bucket on the bottom of the wagon.

A question came up. What happens if they try to drive the wagon into the area protected by the Aegis of the Hearth? They were a good weeks travel from the covenant, so it never came up, but I have to wonder what happens when the mouse has to stay within the circle and can’t enter into the Aegis and the circle enters the Aegis.

Thoughts?

I'd say that the weakest link is destroyed. In this case, it would be the mouse.

If the restraints were not so strong or the creature more powerful, it could have been the restraints (mundane or magical).

The result would be messy, regardless.

The mouse can't move inside the Aegis, so I would say that the bucket remains out of the aegis. Otherwise supernatural creatures would regularly hide into hay stacks and grain bags to tresspass the Aegis with ease.

Xavi

I agree.

I don't like the idea of the Aegis as a force shield. Never have. Probably never will. I prefer to see it as something much more magical, a force that prevents affected creatures from acting across the boundary. Crossing the boundary counts as acting. The boundary resists the creature's attempt to cross it. Unless it is carried across.

So could creatures exploit that? Sure. Are they likely to? Mostly no. But so what if they do? Either way they're still affected by the power of the Aegis, which makes their lives pretty miserable if they want to use their powers.

But importantly, the rule of cool trumps all other things. So if you want to have the enraged drake breathing fire and have it impact against an invisible dome protecting the covenant, feel free. But similarly, if the magi manage to subdue it and choose to drag it within the aegis for safe keeping, let them have it.

This issue came up in our saga recently too (not faerie mice exactly, but close enough). We jokingly decided that it should release energy explosively when the Aegis meets the Mighted creature being forced inside. The discussion quickly degenerated into plans to firebomb the nearby enemy covenant by putting faerie mice in little wagons and letting them run downhill at the enemy's Aegis....

Inventive...

:laughing:

Ugly, but I agree. Otherwise the faerie (or demon!) prince on a mundane horse could just ride in as if the Aegis were not there.

Well, demons tend to ride inside the eagis anyway. There is a 1-day gap in the Aegis, after all, and you can always ride INSIDE a creature. The later is not 100% RAW IIRC, but we have all read stories about demons or other supernatural beings posessing someone to be able to cross a ward they could not cross otherwise, remaining hidden inside the Host. Not mice, but other creatures might be able to enter your Aegis. They WILL do that if you want to tell a story about that :slight_smile:

We once had a Legend cat (we do not differentiate Magic and Fae realms) break quite some havoc around the covenant. He had the power to cause jealousy. We almost had a civil war until we discovered what was happening. NO demons around here so far, except for the time when we opened a portal to hell in the council chamber, but that is another issue.

Cheers,
Xavi

It's the former that surprises me! I thought the Aegis could be made to last a whole year ("Year" duration...)?

We have always played that the Aegis fails during a few hours in the winter solstice, but that might be us.

Xavi

My understanding is that year duration lasts until the winter solstice in the same way that sun duration lasts until sunrise or sunset, no matter how soon that would be. So, just as you can ambush someone while they are trying to reset their parma, you can ambush a covenant while they are trying to reset their Aegis.

So, the two options I am hearing put forth is a) the mouse gets squished and stops having magical might because it is dead and the dead body comes right in or b) the wagon is stopped by the Aegis, right where the area inside the circle in the wagon that is outside the Aegis is the minimum for what would contain the mouse.

Hmmm. I guess the best way to handle it is to present both options to the Alpha Storyguide and have him decide if the situation comes up. The group prefers to use RAW unless the group makes an explicit exception (such as we did for our Giant Blood Magi who we allowed to cast Corpus spells on himself without having to bump the size category.) Since there is no explicit ruling, it may just be something that the magi wouldn’t know until they tried it.

What if the Mighted Mouse had a Pink Dot on it? :open_mouth:

Aegis , as Parma , does not have a Force effect.
Anything that cannot penetrate , simply stops , taking no damage.

If you wanted to Make a House Rule about unconscious , unresisting creatures ,
then forcing one past an Aegis , not "inviting" it , causes it to lose all Might Points ,
which it cannot regain unless fed vis or taken outside the Aegis.

Alternatively , consider the level of the Aegis as a Damage Value inflicted on the Might Recovery.
Equate Might Score to Stamina for Soak purposes.

c) give it an aegis token. Maybe you can make "container" token that you could put outside the bucket.

Your analogy is actually quite apt. If you time your castings right, with two properly timed Sun spells/day, you can keep an effect constantly active. By the same reasoning, with one properly timed Year spell /year, you can keep an effect constantly active.

Yes, you could disrupt renewal of the effect by attacking at just the right time. But this does not mean that a properly timed attack will find the effect absent, only that it has the potential to make it absent afterwards.

Thats a bit on the "too nasty" side for me. I prefer the variant where as long as you cast "during" the cutoff, it will last until the next one. So if you cast "during" the winter solstice, the spell will last until the end of the next solstice.

My thought as well.

Really, what is there saying that the mouse must have too low Might to not be able to get into the aegis?
Thundermouse coming through! :mrgreen:

I prefer using the level of the aegis as a double negative effect against anything within its boundary.

Note that the winter solstice is just traditional, year duration ends at sunrise of the fourth solstice or equinox. Once that happens, the Aegis stays down until it is recast, which (it the magi wait until it is down to start casting) takes some time. But if a covenant is willing to spend more vis, it is perfectly possible to cast the new Aegis before the old one goes down, even though that means recasting it every three seasons to have total coverage (there are time when two Aegis will be active, which brings no additional benefit that I can see).

As for our mouse, if I were a Storyguide, I would either rule that the mouse dies of shock, or if I thought my players were just being silly abusing the rules, I would count it as formally invited, arrange for it to escape, and a few month later the players would have to deal with a magical mouse infestation in their covenant. Yes, I know, the mouse would normally need to receive a token to be invited, but the Aegis is not well understood, evidently there is another way no one had yet found :wink:

Year Duration lasts until sunrise on the fourth equinox or solstice after its casting.

So it would seem that if you always cast your Aegis on the evening approaching the solstice you would always be covered by the Aegis --- and for a brief period (of a few hours) redundantly covered by two Aegii(what's the plural?).

In fact, as long as you always cast the new Aegis somewhere between the Autumn equinox and Winter Solstice you would be fine. And redundantly covered by two Aegii for up to (almost) 1/4 of the year.

(edit: which is exactly what Halancar suggests above).

Hmm, not really.
Because the first solstice/equinox would be the Winter one.
The second in Spring.
The third in Summer.
And on the Autumn equinox the Aegis fails.

Oops.

Yes, you are completely right. I'm talking rubbish.

For the scheme to work, you need to constantly move back a division when you cast the Aegis.

Aegis One: Cast Winter of Year Zero, Expires Winter of Year One.
Aegis Two: Cast Autumn of Year One, Expires Autum of Year Two, (two Aegii between Year One Autumn-Winter).
Aegus Three: Cast Summer of Year Two, Expires Summer of Year Three (two Aegii between Year Two Summer-Autumn).
Aegis Four: Cast Spring of Year Three, Expires Spring of Year Four (two Aegii between Year Three Spring-Summer).
etc.

Or at least I think that works.