Doubts about dispeling curses (Beware: spoilers for derpy's saga)

Games Discussion Ars Magica
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First of all, if you are one of derpy's saga players, please leave this thread unless you want to be spoiled on next session.

I'm a beta storyguide in a saga and, during last session, two questions arose that I would like to ask about. I'm putting both questions in spoilers, please excuse the inconvenience.

One of the NPCs, a noble, was cursed by a faerie with the Ritual Power Grant (Major Flaw)(RoP:Faerie, pag. 57), which gave him the flaw "Greater Malediction". In this case, the power was cast in a temporary basis, as the faerie expects to recover her faerie might once the curse has run its course. My question is if this curse can be detected with InVi and dispelled with PeVi. My interpretation is that Ritual powers behave in the same as ritual spells, that is, once cast, they become "natural", so they cannot be detected or dispelled but I am not so sure if this is the same with the temporary version. The power description doesn't say anything and the faerie can choose to cast it in a permanent or temporary manner with no difference in cost or characteristics.

The curses makes the noble sterile with his rightful wife but allows him to have children with any other woman so he has sired some bastards. My question is if it's possible to detect with hermetic magic if a specific couple can have children. For example, if that was possible, such spell would detect that the noble and his wife won't be able to have children though a InCo cast separately on each other would say that both of them are fully fertile. I've revised the Core and Art&Academe and I haven't found any guideline that allows to get this information specifically but I'ld like to confirm this.

Thank you very much in advance

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Part the first - I believe Creo rituals backed by vis change something so it's permanently improved, and has to abide by the normal +/-5 limits on characteristics. A Muto ritual wouldn't count as natural, and Perdo or Rego may or may not do. In this case, a ritual effect to prevent fertility with certain targets sounds like Perdo with a Rego requisite, or maybe pure Rego - wouldn't count as "natural".

Part the second - depends on how widely you interpret the spell Revealed Flaws of the Mortal Flesh on page 130 of the core book - "You are able to find any medical defects in a person or being that you are touching. This provides more, and more specific, information than Physician’s Eye"

This is using the level 5 InCo guideline, and if that's not enough surely the InCo 10 guideline of discerning all information about a body would give you some indication.

I don't know if you have access to Ancient Magic - if you do, there's a whole chapter on fertility magic that may prove relevant.

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You may want/need to use a T:Group with the InCo spell, but limited to 2 people.

An astrological Inception from A&A might work as well "Is N capable of fathering a child with NA?", looks like level 5 base, +0 for current timeframe, +0 for binary answer? (It's not Hermetic Magic, but a magus could certainly do it.)

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Because the Curse can end, it cannot be considered as "natural", it is not part of the noble essence, it is only a temporary flaw. So it can be detected and can be dispelled.

Let's go into the details:
Detecting the curse: it is a powerful effect, so an InVi can detect it. But because it is not hermetic magic, the detection spell can possibly just return "Yep boss, powerful effect on the person" (Intellego Vim guideline "Different spells may be invented to detect Faerie, Divine, or Infernal effects") - so up to you to decide if a basic InVi can detect the effect, or it needs to be a variant tailored for Faerie magic.

To have the equivalent of Sight of Active Magic (returning Form + Technique), it would be reasonable to expect a faerie-tailored variant, and even possibly require the mage to have some basic in Faerie Lore or Faerie Magic to interpret correctly the equivalent Form/Technique/Magnitude & effect informations returned by the spell.

Regarding dispelling, it is clearly stated in the guideline that "Dispel effects of a specific type ..." and the mage needs to have some knowledge of said magic (all in the same paragraph).
What means to have "knowledge of said magic" is left to interpretation of the troupe. Is a level one in Faerie Lore enough ? or level 5 (corresponding to being familiar in most usual topics).

So you have various dials you can use to make the dispelling more or less easy, depending on the story you want to tell (from toughest to easiest):

  • requiring a level 5 in Faerie Lore to invent the proper dispelling spell is reasonable since we talk about a Major Power and a Faerie Lord permanently sacrificing Faerie might to maintain the curse in place,
  • requiring a level 3 in Faerie Lore, but an arcane connection to the Faerie Lord or the place where the curse was perfomed is required (I like this one for the potential story)
  • requiring any level in Faerie Lore, with access to a library with decent Faerie Lore or tractatus specialised in Faerie curse, or in the Court of the Faerie Lord.

Regarding detecting if a couple can bear children, this magic might be entering the domain of Fertility magic (Ancient Magic, p 54 onwards). So integration of such magic is probably out of scope for this adventure (unless a nearby mage would be available for consultation, for a little price...), although building 15 research point to achieve Fertility Lore could be reasonable if there are enough sources of inspiration nearby.
Other alternatives:

  • maybe a mid-wife witch could have some ways to predict that (she might have a form of Fertility Lore herself),
  • some form of Divination (Divination and Augury in the Mysteries p58 onwards), this kind of Mysteries can push the boundary of hermetic theory and allow a glimpse into domain than regular Intellego magic fails (up to your judgement)
  • finally Astronomy and horoscope could also be used for some Intellego effect (Arts & Academe).

Up to you to tailor the difficulty you want to set to perform such task: from simple InCo (but with both partner present, or at least AC to both of them), it is a stretch of what current hermetic magic can do, but YMMV, or any of the other alternatives mentioned above.

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Another relevant question is whether a PeVi removal of the curse will allow the faerie to recover their might, and might it be considered molesting the fae if it does not?

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As far as Intellego Corpus magic goes, there are ways to understand the situation:
Base 4 is likely to be enough to detect whether one is fertile, but insufficient to gauge the compatibility with a specific individual
Base 5 +2 group might be enough to gauge that, however
And Base 10 looking at fertility might say "Fully fertile, but incompatible with his wife" given the nature of the curse.

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I would concur and amplify here, it would take a spell that is designed to detect effects aligned with Faerie by RAW. Most people seem to assume that standard InVi spells can detect anything but this isn't technically accurate. Vim also tends to require knowledge of a given type of magic to design Vim effects that correspond to that category, so designing an effect to detect and analyze Faerie effects at all would at the very least require a decent Faerie Realm Lore score.

Here I think there are multiple potential types. Faerie Might Powers, Faerie Methods & Powers, and Curses as a general category. Possibly others. Substantiating sufficient knowledge for each would be different and individual cases. But in general it is a non-casual feat to have sufficient knowledge of a different magic type to design Vim effects for it in Ars.

I believe that InCo has sufficient ability to achieve this with the right guidelines applied.

Either of the following I believe would work, but the first would require an effect specifically for providing information about fertility.

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There is a lot more options than I thought. In any case, thank you for such a complete answer