Deeper into Mercurian Magic

I've got a player delving deeper into the mysteries of the ancient mercurians, and I'm trying to work out what mystery virtues or breakthroughs might be found through such investigation.

What would you guys suggest, other than those suggested for the neo-mercurians?

Note: As the details on the Mercurians are quite limited, other than that everything they do seems to be in the form of rituals, I have decided to state that they're capable of granting temporary powers, as well as delayed spells that they can use later, to grant them some capabilities that could have been combat-relevant.

Mercury was a god of transformation, boundries, travel and communication, merchants, thieves, and the guide of souls to the afterlife. Boundries is utilized in the aegeis, transformation is fairly well covered,and travel is implied by at minimum hermes portal, but the guiding of souls is one which is certainly very little touched upon and likely to have been the most repressed by the order trying to work amongst and as Christians.

Oooh, something necromantic :slight_smile:

That'll be interesting, given as the mercurian is also a) Criamon and b) A nun :slight_smile:

A virtue that's similar to the Ways of the (Blank) Greater Virtue that deals with activities relating to either commerce or travel.

A Criamon nun? That sounds interesting. Is she mystical to the point of verging on heresy?

To see a "real" criamon nun

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_of_Norwich

Bob Dillon

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Well their rituals were about enhancing the fortune of the empire. Perhaps some more ephemeral rituals about increasing the luck of cities on a road network?

You could also consider more powerful rituals i.e. the Fenincul rituals in the True Lineages book for House Quaesitor.

She's decided that magical deities are actually remnants of pre-flood humanity... :stuck_out_tongue:

Ooh, target City, as the Virgilian's have, could easily exist in mercurian terms :slight_smile:

I've considered the possibility of allowing one-shot rituals as a lab activity, to represent something along those lines. Very high power possible, but equally a very high cost in terms of Vis.

In the last (i think) chapter of Mysteries (5th edition) there are quite a few ideas for neomercurians, and you can easily use them for ordinary mercurians as well.

I would think they would have some Target Roads rituals just based on the amount of roads the Romans built. I also wonder if they might not have rituals that would create or strengthen an magic aura.

I'd agree with the psychopomps aspect (Nightwalking anyone?) but when I think of this, I think Expanded Road Magic. Variations of the Illusion parameters eg Duration: While (traveling) or Duration: Journey. Also Target: Company.

I worked some of this out at some stage - I seem to recall a higher level Road Network Target and something about enchanted milestones.

Can't remember if it's an upcoming SubRosa piece, lost in my scratchpad files or even submitted as part of an official supplement and ended up being cut out. To be honest, even if I could confirm the latter, I suspect I couldn't tell you due to NDA. :frowning:

If I find them I might polish them up and repost them on my blog in the Redcap section. Should probably do that with Journey + Company, IIRC I suggested they were known to the Milvi Antiquiti as a Minor Mystery or similar.