Finally - Magically created food without vis?

Salvete Sodales!

Last week I finally got my copy of Art & Academe (living in Europe causes some days of delay, but then the current Dollar-Euro ratio makes up for this). There are some things worth discussing about, but the part that surprised me the most was the one about the creation of 'worms' with non-ritual Rego magic. Is this a (partial) solution for covenants to produce food magically? Sure, probably nobody wants to eat lice or leeches, but what about frogs and eels? They are at least in some cultures considered as proper food these days, and I would be surprised if they were not in the mid ages. Surely this can't replace all foodstuff, but it would decrease the cost for surplies significantly. Is this correct, or did I miss anything?

Vale,
Alexios ex Miscellanea

If this is correct, then the resulting worms/eels/whatever could also be fed to other creatures, who are then used as food. So it would be possible to create large herds of animals with little or no investment in raw vis.

Note that if it is similarly possible to grow food faster by non-Ritual magic, this can be exploited in a similar manner - take a few grains of wheat, use CrHe to make them grow into fully plants in a day, harvest saving aside the initial amount, and repeat.

Worms, flies and similar vermin are spontaneously generated. I.e. they are the result of a naturally occurring process within the matter from which they spring much like humans produce hair as a waste product of the internal processes of the body. As such, they are governed by Rego.

You already could produce fruit by using non-ritual ReHe. All that was needed was a plant capable of producing the fruit naturally. It is covered by the same guidelines that allow you to cause a plant to bloom out of season.

What you can't do is grow plants from seeds as this is covered by Creo (nor can you produce the seeds themselves so any fruit you produced with the above Rego magics would be seedless :smiley: ).

So, you can produce food magically, but you are limited in variety and need to have a mature plant to target with your magics.

Note that you probably can't cause a plant to produce multiple harvests of grains since the grain is produced at the end of the plants life cycle (and would therefore require Creo again).

In a similar way, the covenant in our saga has an abundant supply of high quality wool from only a few, much put upon, sheep...

There is (at least) one problem with this. We are currently debating what kind of warping effect this will have on the poor sheep... Similarly any plants constantly whacked upside the head (metaphorically speaking) with high level ReHe spells will also start to be warped by the experience... :frowning:

Despite the drawbacks, this can be very useful. My mage loves his oranges in winter... :wink:

Just remember, the things spontaneously produced are considered vermin. This might limit what people are willing to eat or feed to animals that they intend to eat...

Sit vis vobiscum,

ShopKeepJon

Magi not being subject to Magic warping isn't as great as some might put it. Ah, the hilarious effects one can get from ingesting warped matter for years on end...