Wasn't there a hedge tradition or ancient magic that allowed for ritual effects enchantment breakthrough? Can't recall which one... Does the item need to be hermetic at all?
This item does not have to be hermetic, actually. The device is meant to be quite a treasure.
If the effect was created by a powerful magus and is part of the plot, you don't need to be bound by the guidelines. The magus could have reached a breakthrough. (But be aware of the players trying to rediscover this and use the effect to create new things, more complex and potentially more damaging).
In the end you are trying to affect an undetected target (or expand the ways by which you can work on targets detected by Intellego) which I think is something pretty powerful. See that after 20 posts there are several workarounds, but hard to implement and not always extended to a magical item.
If the magus could be a rusticani, or if the item could be commisioned, OneShot's suggestion seems a good way to do it. Note that you need two Major Supernatural Virtues to pull this off, Craft Magic and Summon Animals (both from HoH:S).
It was integration of Folk Witches, but to enchant Rituals as charged items (based on the premise that a healing potion is a charged item with a Ritual CrCo spell). Wouldn't work in this case since it seems that the item must work continuously.
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If you don't care if the item is Hermetic or not, and it is intended to be made by a powerful and nonstandard wizard, then this is fairly straightforward.
Take a look at Lesser Craft Magic (Rival Magic, pg 11) which allows for the crafting of items that use Supernatural Abilities as the basis for their powers.
Then reference the Summon Animals Supernatural Ability (Societates, pg 105) and decide how many rabbits you want it to summon at a time and how many uses etc.
Such an item could be made from say a bone from a magical creature (thus containing vis) and then carved into the desired whistle or flute or what have you.
This would not be a particularly unusual level of ability for more serious "magus" level non-hermetic wizard, though such individuals are not super common in places where the Order holds sway.
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If I understand what all has been said here, I will go with one of two solutions:
- InTe (plus requisites) for detecting the nearest rabbit. Then ReAn to bring the rabbit to the user.
- Craft Magic plus Summon Animals. Ie, the item is from a hedge tradition.
I prefer that the item be created by a hermetic magus (number 1), but that is not necessary for the plot.
You can have an Hermetic magus with the necessary abilities.
A Rusticani (HoH:S p130) with the Summon Animal ability should have no problem creating such a device.
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Can the Rusticani create two effects? One for the rabbit summoning and one to make the rabbit docile? From the rules, it seems as if a Rusticani can only have one effect (Rusticani cannot create invested items).
The problem is that this doesn't necessarily allows you to target the rabbit with the ReAn effect. What range would you use?
- Voice is limited to 50 paces if you use a loud noise.
- Sight targets anything that can be seen, so you would need to give magic vision to the item so that it can see the rabbits through foliage, earth, etc.
- AC obviously requires an Arcane Connection (actually this is the big thing about Summon Animal, it doesn't require an AC to affect the animals targeted).
There are a few possibilities that allow for alternative ranges (Road from Faerie Magic, Line from Hermetic Geometry come to mind) but as far as I can remember, none that seem applicable to the situation. I could be missing something that could be useful.
Maybe you would be better trapping the ghost of a hunter and forcing him to hunt forever. =P
There is nothing that forbids them from creating invested items. It's just that Craft Magic can only do charged or lesser enchanted items.
Couldn't the magus create a second item with another effect through regular means? If he is summoning the rabbits to enter a room he could create an item with Target: Room to prevent the rabbits from escaping, for example. The item could easily be portable, so that it could be installed in another room somewhere else.
In that case I would also note that there are other options for animal detection that would also be under the Form of Animal, if your NPC Magus was more of an Animal specialist. If all you are looking for is to detect animals in a natural environment then you can do that much more easily than say "Hunter's Sense" for example.
Detect Bunnies (And Other Things As Well!)
InAn 5
R: Personal, D: Concentration, T: HearingThis spell allows the caster to "hear" the presence of animals, giving them a mental image of all animals that are close enough that if they were making a loud noise that they the caster could hear the noise. The animals do not need to be making noise to be detected. This allows the caster to "hear" the presence of animals they can not see, as hearing is not normally completely obstructed by intervening objects, though especially dense and/or unbroken obstructions that would obstruct normal hearing may likewise obstruct detection by this magical sense.
(Base 1, +1 Concentration, +3 Hearing)
This spell is designed as a magical sense effect, ArM5 pg 113. This makes the detection of nearby animals relatively trivial. This would not reach too far out into the environment as it is limited as designed to the rough distance at which one can hear things but there is nothing preventing adding on an extra magnitude for amplified sensitivity of the magical sense if you would like to do so. Just convert it over into an item enchantment and your magic whistle should be easy to finish off from there!
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I would imagine that it would be Voice, and as an item the Voice would be the sound of the whistle when blown to activate it. Another trigger of some kind to activate the animal detection effect would be recommended. But this would indeed mean you could only target something within the rough range of Voice. You perhaps could get some extra range by amplifying the noise of the whistle if desired but ultimately this remains a limitation.
You would have to take a walk through the woods until you detected a suitable prey animal and then focus on it when you blew the whistle to summon it.
Heh... In principle, that's what makes the most sense "mythically". It would have certainly worked in ArM3 or earlier editions. The problem is that:
a) while you have the option of making the elements "unnatural" (and a rabbit finding a smell delicious is generally more reasonable than finding a sound delicious) you do not have that option by RAW with pure species and
b) in general, creating "mind controlling" sounds steps just a little too close for my tastes to casting generic effects at Voice range on unsensed targets. I realize it's just a little beyond creating a slightly unnatural Auram effect, but for me that's just within the line and this is just outside.
That said... you can make illusions that act independently (see The Shadow of Human Life). So you could for example have the whistle produce the illusion of a swarm of wasps (affecting only the sense of Touch!) that goes hunting for rabbits, and herds them to where you are. In fact, the same effect could easily keep the rabbits "trapped" and relatively still even though not exactly docile.
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You could make an anamorphic illusion (Societates pg 65) to make an illusion that was especially appealing to rabbits in theory. But it wouldn't control them per se, or reach out and bring in those that were beyond visual range. It would me more like a magical snare trap that would lure in those that passed by.
Hmm, I should not be the one saying it, but Iike this idea! Let's see to what level it adds up.
The Shadow of Human Life is Base 2 (sight & sound), +1 R:Touch (after creation it acts independently), +2 D:Sun, +1 intricacy (because it can articulate words - the same is true for other "human" illusions, but it's not true for animals as in Phantasmal Animal) "+6 Mentem requisite for a very elaborate effect".
The rabbit-hunting phantasmal stinging swarm would be: Base 1 (only one sense, touch) +1 R:Touch +1D:Conc +2T:Group + ... I'd say +4 Animal requisite, for a final effect of CrIm(An) 25.
Why the requisite and why the magnitudes? I think that if you want something that hunts rabbits on its own you should imbue it with some Animal cunning, just like the Shadow of Human Life has a Mentem requisite for "simulated intellect". I think it should be less elaborate than a human "capable of interpreting general orders in new situations" as it only herds rabbits to the whistle's location, so strictly less than +6. At the same time, it is definitely more elaborate than something acting under your direct command (+2). Something in the middle(+4) seems about right. Sanity check: creating a real swarm of wasps that carry out an arbitrary order at the same RDT is Cr(Re)An 30: Base 5, +1 Touch, +1Conc, +2Group, +1Rego. So yes, CrIm(An) 25 feels about right.
Of course, if created as an enchantment you might want to have the device maintain Concentration (while the user picks up the rabbits), bringing the level up to 30, which is a sweet spot for enchanted devices. Or maybe not if instead of a whistle you design the device as a sack (+5 S&M bonus to trap things within): the illusionary wasps can simply herd the rabbits into the open sack, and the effects stops once you close it!
You might also want more than 1 use/day. If you plan +10 levels for Unlimited uses, you can probably replace +1 Conc, +5 Levels to maintains Conc with +1 Diam: very fast wasps (and we're talking about illusionary ones here!) can fly out about 1 mile in Diam, so that's the range from which successive "waves" will herd rabbits in. This would make the device level 35 ("wasting" half a pawn, but that's ok).
I believe that you can accomplish this with the Range Ground from TC&TC, p99.
The target can be affected so long as he/it is touching the same ground that the caster is standing upon. The caster need not be able to see the target. Rivers, mountains and other significant obstacles (although not roads or walls) act as boundaries to this range. Furthermore, the ground must be natural earth. Artificial ground, like floorboards or cobble stones, puts a target out of this Range. Ground is equivalent to Arcane Connection.
As rabbits spend most of their time with their fuzzy toes in contact with the earth, an effect using ground would reach most bunnies in the vicinity, up to the maximum of the chosen target. This would require researching the new range---or somehow learning it from Mazdean casters---but ground isn't campaign breaking, and is eligible to be enchanted into an item.
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The core rulebook does say under voice "magical enhancement of the voice does not increase this range." A hermetic breakthrough to make voice range be allowed to be enhanced by magic or in this case a mundane whistle seems a relative small breakthrough.
The current voice range rules are somewhat contradictory. A silent spell voice range can't be cast further than the caster, so we are saying how far the voice travels has relevance, however, if the magi has a magic bullhorn, whistle, etc, it doesn't affect outside of 50 paces.
It seems something begging for a hermetic breakthrough.
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I wouldn't allow a spell to make a sound / smell irresistible to rabbits, generically - that's literally what sensory magic is for. I would allow a spell imitating, say, the mating call of some species. But that would only be useful for species that have a mating call, but it might only work only in specific seasons of the year, and animals wouldn't be compelled to respond - they would just tend to if they're not otherwise busy trying to attract another mate's attention.
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