Good catch. It's a note in the description of a maga in AtD. And it certainly leads a lot of weight to your interpretation!
That said, the text you cite explicitly refers to the Leadworker Virtue in HoH:TL, summarizing it with a number of mistakes/imprecisions. For example, it claims that both kolossoi ("dolls" ... hmmm) and katadesmos tablets yield arcane connections to the restless dead, whereas from the Leadworker description in HoH:TL it seems that only the latter do. So, I would have been much happier if AtD had been either more concise (writing just the text you provide) or more precise (making no mistakes about the rest of the stuff). As it stands, it feels a bit ... iffy. It's like citing as evidence that Poena is the Prima of Tremere a footnote that reads:
"Poena, the Prima of Tremere .." and then continues "... one of the 17 Houses of the Order of Thor, was the sister of Diedne". Uhm.
Don't get me wrong. I do not want to push for my interpretation; I'm just very unhappy about the fact that it's still very unclear. I would have been very happy about a clarification in the errata writing something like "a leadworker can fix an arcane connection to a person, taken from that person's body, by incorporating it into a small lead figurine called a kolossos. Creating the kolossos and fixing the connection into it requires no roll, no vis, and no more than an hour or so".
One thing about the interpretation "leadworkers can fix arcane connections spending 0 time and 0 vis" I really dislike is that it gives a huge incentive for any covenant to have a grog with the leadworker virtue who works as "fixer" for the magi. That's because Leadworker is a accessible to non-hermetic wizards of too, as a Supernatural Virtue (SE, p.122), e.g. to Folk Witches.
"A Leadworker shield grog is so much more than a custos"...
I don't see anything in error in that entry, just things left out. But it is a concise statement written with specifically for Monica and what she uses the Virtue for, so I would not expect it to be complete.
According to the HoH:TL, both can. The methods are different, in that you would have to get something appropriate from the restless dead's body to make a kolossos linked to it. But they both can, given different starting points and methods, yield arcane connections to the restless dead.
As for "dolls," HoH:TL explicitly calls kolossoi "figurines." "Doll" is a synonym for "figurine," and it takes less space, to it is a good choice to stick in a summary with limited space. Meanwhile, you wouldn't want to say "kolossoi" because that would then take further explanation, which would work against saving space.
Yes, though that's a much broader problem since that is true of many Hermetic Virtues. It would have been much better if the statements had been that there are Hedge Virtues just like the Hermetic Virtues, or something like that (need not be "Hedge," though it's fitting and starts with the same letters as "Hermetic"), so that the Hermetic Virtues don't also show up among the Supernatural Virtues. There is quite a bit of access to Hermetic Virtues that seems like it wasn't intended but is allowed due to this Hermetic/Supernatural bit to allow hedge magicians access without giving them Hermetic Virtues.
That's very misleading! And you know it.
Kolossoi do not yield arcane connections to the restless dead. They incorporate pre-existing connections.
It's like saying that having a book yields a book. It's misleading, because it makes you think you get another book, not the book you started with.
The portion of my sentences that you cite is indeed a much broader problem.
The portion that you omitted, and that I pointed out was the problem, is much narrower.
There are not many grog-accessible virtues that make a grog significantly better than a (vanilla) hermetic archmagus at a magic task crucial to hermetic magic.
Imagine a virtue that made grogs much better at developing spells than hermetic magi. Or at enchanting devices.
Now imagine a virtue with an ambiguous wording; with one interpretation that yields the above, and the other that yields a much more balanced situation.
What would you think is the best interpretation?
Again, this is misleading. It's a pity, because I find a lot of value in what you post, but separating the wheat from the chaff is tiresome!
Doll has a similar, but different meaning from figurine. Check out wikidiff.com/figurine/doll (but I suspect you know that already).
That's a good example of why I am saying that the entire note feels imprecise, and I would not trust it to give a definitive answer about a delicate, ambiguous point in the original text.
And the lines saved by using doll instead of figurine would have been zero. It is NOT a good choice to use a word with a different meaning to save FOUR letters, ONCE, when you can easily save more by a somewhat careful rewording of your sentences. Again, I suspect that you know this very well.
But they are also presented as synonyms in dictionaries and thesauruses: thesaurus.com/browse/figurine (for example). I'm not saying they're exactly the same. I'm not saying it's a great choice. But it certainly could be used as a synonym.
Far more importantly, "doll" IS very commonly used as a synonym for "figurine" when talking about something mystical. Consider that we very frequently use the term "voodoo doll" in English for a figurine. Noting that "doll" is a frequently uses synonym for "figurine" when talking about something mystical and that is what is being done here, it really shouldn't seem an odd choice, even if not a preferable choice.
Well, we know I paid more attention than you did when counting. You're emphasizing your mistake. "Doll" was used more than once in that statement. Count again. Each time it's used, that's four letters, so eight letters. However, when typesetting, total letters are not always what is so relevant. I'm not sure what settings Atlas used for kerning, but their sentences appear to use more space more often and rarely if ever making words narrow. I'm pretty sure the a first replacement of "doll" would be fine, pushing "provide" entirely to the next line. That would push "dead" to the next line. That might push all of "their own" to a new line. If that happens, it's pretty assured all of "fix arcane" would move to the next line. Most likely then "ing vis or" would move to the next line, leaving a hyphen on "spend." Now comes the biggie. If "studies" gets split, we have half of it plus "She has" on the last line. Those alone would fit, but if you then add four more characters for the second instance of "doll," you would end up with a new line. Meanwhile, there is no spare line at the end of the box.
So, you tell me: did I count properly and did I consider a possible problem that "doll" might solve? Again, I'm not saying it's an ideal solution. But it could be a solution to what I said it could be.
That's very misleading and you know it. You start with one arcane connection and end up with a different arcane connection. It's misleading because it makes you think when you start with a bunch of papers that make up a book and then bind them you don't get a book.
More specifically: the process takes a finite-duration arcane connection and yields an indefinite arcane connection. Now if we trim down some words, we can still get valid statements: "the process yields an indefinite arcane connection," or even "the process yields an arcane connection." As I said above, it leaves a lot out. But it's not incorrect.
I'm pointing out that I don't think find skewing an interpretation in one direction because someone didn't think through the consequences of also placing Hermetic Virtues within Supernatural Virtues to be a good approach, as we already know that Hermetic/Supernatural choice is causes such problems even with very clearly interpreted Virtues. And, yes, there are other Virtues that can become ridiculous with a Grog, even other ones that can significantly help magi. Certainly not all of them, but there are others.
For the record: I disagree with a lot of what you are saying, callen (I do agree that I missed one occurrence of "doll", but everything else I said stays the same, including the space issues). However, I think we have both made our position relatively clear, and there is not much point discussing this further without additional input. A pity that Timothy Ferguson did not chime in; he could have clarified what he meant with just 1 or 2 lines.