Can you cast a Crystal Dart through an Intangible Tunnel?
Sorry if the question has been answered elsewhere, I made a quick search in the forum and didn’t find anything. I also read the Hermetic Assassin chapter in Hermetic Projects, with no luck.
There's nothing in those books apparently preventing it, but on the other hand, sending real, solid matter down the tunnel seems a bit weird to me. (Also, the Target of the spell not being the same as the target of the Arcane Connection makes me doubt). This use of the tunnel had never come up in my saga and now I'm in doubt...
It's technically not sending the dart down the tunnel. It's sending the magic down the tunnel, which then creates the dart at the far end with preexisting momentum and direction.
Oh, I see. I understand now, thanks. Just a side question: in order to cast this, should the earth (if any) around the target be perceived by the attacker with some additional spell, since the tunnel does not grant any senses and only "connects" with the original target, and not the terrain surrounding him?
This is one of those situations where magic can get really tricky.
Once again I must really recommend Hermetic Projects[sup]1[/sup], especially p. 79-80.
Bulletpoint 5 from the top, first column of p. 79 tells us that
It goes on to discuss groups and Rooms/Structures and Boundaries.
The off-shot of this - and I'm not at all certain I'm right in this - appears to be that the Crystal Dart cannot be cast at a target through the tunnel, because it is Muto and (as mentioned above) targets the dirt near the person you wish to harm. Unless your Arcane Connection (and Intangible Tunnel) is not to an individual person, but to the Room itself, since you should then be able to affect the dirt on the floor, I think. Maybe.
Please tell me if I end up sounding too much like a hired shill.
To be precise, the caster must be able to magically and separately affect the earth close to the target, which he wishes to hit with the Crystal Dart.
This will usually require an Arcane Connection to this earth as well, and either a second tunnel or a very specific - like specially designed, researched and invented - way to use the primary tunnel to target the earth around its Target is needed. Crystal Dart just isn't a good spell to cast through Intangible Tunnels.
Interestingly, using a spell to scry through said tunnel (an intelego imaginem, targeted on the other end, troupe discretion) should be enough for you to now 'perceive' the dirt at the far end.
But the dirt, to be affected by the Crystal Dart has to be the target of the Intangible Tunnel. Tellus' point still stands, it has to target the original (small "t") target of the tunnel.
This also brings up the same question regarding attacks like our favorite CrIg ones. There are quite a few cases where the target isn't the Target. If the target is the Target, the tunnel works. But the real question is if the tunnel works when the target isn't the Target.
On the other hand, a Creo attack doesn't require you to affect something other than the Target of the tunnel. You are basically creating the Target of your attack spell on the Target of your tunnel.
Sure, I don't see why not if you are using an area-of-effect spell targeted at the Target of the tunnel.
Of course, you wouldn't know whether his friends are there with him, unless you cast a scrying spell first -- which gives the target an opportunity to realize that someone may be about to cast another spell at him through a Tunnel, and perhaps cast something back through it (if he's paranoid enough about such things).
Perhapes looking at a slightly simpler spell might make a difference. What about a spell like Wielding the Invisible Sling. Because of the way both spells always hit and how magic resistance works don't both spells really have two little "t" targets. The I/individual Te T/target and the target it's tossed at. Compare it to Sling of Vilano which really has only one target the thing hurled not that which is hurled at.
