Familiars and Twilight

[Archimedes (Peter DeCraene)]

Anyone have ideas about what happens to a familiar when its magus enters twilight? What about final twilight?
Thanks for the collective thinking!

[Berengar]

The worst thing for the familiar is TMK, that the AC to the magus is suppressed.

Cheers

[lvgreen]

@One Shot

The worst thing for the familiar is TMK, that the AC to the magus is suppressed.

Sorry, I don't understand the abbreviation "TMK"
It doesn't appear on Abbreviations used on this forum

[Berengar]

To My Knowledge

Cheers

[darkwing]

I think the familiar stays unaffected by Twilight. In the corebook p89 it says "A maga's body is also unable to perform magic while she is in Twilight" - but doesn't say anything about the familiar bond. The maga's body is unaffected by magic while in Twilight, so the familiar bond can't affect the maga but could still affect the familiar.

Final Twilight - as this is very similar in game terms to death, I would say Final Twilight should sever the familiar bond, and the familiar will be aware it's master is not coming back, and suffer the severe shock that a familiar gets when its master dies.

[Berengar]

@darkwing

Final Twilight - as this is very similar in game terms to death, I would say Final Twilight should sever the familiar bond, and the familiar will be aware it's master is not coming back, and suffer the severe shock that a familiar gets when its master dies.

This can lead to problems with:

@"GotF p.16 box [i

On the Retirement of Magi[/i]"]... the Rhine Tribunal has developed an informal tradition of never fully recognizing the passing of magi into Twilight. There are various euphemisms for Final Twilight and retired magi (most of whom are lost to it) are spoken of in the present tense, especially when their votes are cast. Several other stories of the famous return of longretired Twilight magi have been told in the centuries since.

Certainly the AC with his familiar is always suppressed, if a magus is affected by Twilight. This may be undistinguishable from the severing of that AC at Final Twilight - an uncertainty causing grave fear and anguish to the familiar.

Cheers

[raccoonmask]

My own players never really went for familiars, since they were still exploring and learning the rest of the system (and then getting side-tracked by a mercantile war in Venice). The elder NPC in my campaign had an owl who turned to stone whenever he went into twilight. My psuedo-houserule was that the familiar, as tied in directly with the magus's magical power, were somehow affected by it as well. I left it unexplained how that affects other Hermetic Magi.

[silveroak]

Personally I think the familiar should vanish whenever the magus goes into twilight- and leave it a mystery as to what happen to them beyond the possibility of them returning to find a new master after it is readily apparent the old one is not returning...

[Timothy_Ferguson]

I think the familiars spirit recombines with the Magus. This is why Bjornaer can't have familiars. The familiar is the heartbeat, externalised.

[Berengar]

There is the faerie familiar Mengalaz from ML p.103ff The Faerie Toy Market on Devil’s Lane, plotting to be bound by another magus after the demise of his senile and befuddled master, whose next Twilight is also quite assured to be Final.

Mengalaz has sufficient Magic Theory to know, what common wisdom tells about familiars of magi in Final Twilight: that doesn't keep him from plotting.

Cheers

[Richard_Love]

@Archimedes

Anyone have ideas about what happens to a familiar when its magus enters twilight? What about final twilight?
Thanks for the collective thinking!

I think that the only thing that technically happens is that the Arcane Connection (and probably other aspects of the bond) are interrupted when the magus enters Twilight. I guess you will have to make a judgement on which powers etc., are suspended. This will then resume when the magus leaves Twilight again.

I don't think that Final Twilight should be distinguishable from an "ordinary" Twilight episode by the familiar; except for the fact that it is lasting a long time. It is possible that the familiar will eventually die of sadness / abandonment, but that should be possible for a long Twilight episode too.

I think that (for any Twilight episode) there should also be a chance for the familiar to enter Twilight along with the magus. Especially if they are in physical contact when the magus enters Twilight. But that is just because that makes sense, to me, rather than any particular rule that I know of.