Gaining the Gentle Gift

Can anyone recall a cult or other way of gaining the Gentle Gift in play? It would be useful to one character in my saga and it also strikes me as quite a powerful lure to attract members into a cult.

One of the Criamon paths grants the Gentle Gift.

You can make up your own mystery cult. VERY difficult to develop a script that initiates a Major Virtue (particularly one you don't have), but possible.

-K!

You can start out with scripts for Minor Virtue(s) which is/are then lost when initiating the Gentle Gift.

Good point, but using the experimental process would still be required since the virtue initiated by a script cannot be changed. The test for the validity of the script requires a VERY high cult lore score in order to have a sufficiently high script bonus to initiate a Major virtue that is unknown to the mystagogue. Mechanically, and I am away from my books at the moment, one would need to take a Major ordeal in a previous initiation to have even a chance. Getting an origianl script for initiating a Major Virtue could be a saga-defining quest similar to a Major breakthrough in original research.

Interesting thoughts - the mage who has encountered the problem is a Verditius and wants to visit Oculus Septentrionalis to learn boat-building techniques. Creating a new esoteric mystery cult is not really the sort of side-track I suspect he would want to take but, as SG, I may be wrong so it's good to have some thougfhts. The advantage of this forum is that one can enlist the brain-power of a lot of other players. Thanks.

If this is a temporary thing, one could learn Aura of Enobled Presence or related spells. This could cause cost a Warping point or two, and would not eliminate the effect of the Gift BUT would change the person's mind from "He's a suspicious character" to "Oh that one? He's shady, but since he's of the gentry I just gotta keep my head down" or related. Other Creo or Rego Mentem spells could be his friend if he is just visiting (mastered for silent and subtle casting) or simply create related devices that don't require a lot suspicious gestures or key phrases. If I remember correctly, membership in OS is restricted to Gentle Gift, but visitors might be allowed provided they don't cause problems.

Just a thought.

-K!

The Gift Remade
MuVi , Level 40
R: Per , D: Sun , T: Ind
The Caster alters his Gift to make it either Gentle or Blatant.
Choice is made at the time of casting.
If you already have the Blatant Gift , you can choose Standard Gift or Gentle.
Base 30 , +02 Sun

Quite a few people think Muto is the "i can do anything" technique ,
as long as you make the change unnatural enough.
MuCo Level 30: Turn a human into an insubstantial object , page 132
MuMe Level 25: Make a mind or spirit solid , page 150

Intriguing! I guess I have go do some reading! I can see a question revolving around whether affecting the nature of the Gift might run up against the limit of essential nature, but I can see possibilities... Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Use of a spell seems to make it a little too easy to eliminate the adverse effects of the gift. However if it were part of a mage's essential nature then surely a cult initiation could not change it either. So, perhaps a spell IS possible but I reckon this would be a minor breakthrough - by no means impossible but not something that has already been achieved, at least as far as is generally known. Of course, perhaps the infernal can grant the Virtue.

There's actually no guideline to change the nature of a Gift. On the other hand, it certainly does not violate any of the Laws of Magic, so it's atmost* a minor breakthrough. Several non-hermetic traditions can, in fact, provide the same effect.

There are, however, other spells which do alter the nature of the Gift, including the Embrace of Boethius (PeVi 35) which forces a magus to use casting tools for formulaic spells. This suggests that such manipulation is, in fact, possible. It should, however, be more dangerous as the Embrace which, after all, only inflicts what the Core rules consider to be a minor flaw.

Would the gentle gift even be a MuVi? In the case of the Mu(form) examples above, the change is from a known thing to a known thing. Nobody knows exactly what makes a Gift Gentle or Blatant. Is it an individuality, a quirk inherent to each Gift, and thus part of the essential nature of an individual magical soul? In this case MuVi might work, or you might run into the limit of Essential Nature. Does it result from a potency of a part of the Gift, implying that the Gift is composite, not unitary? If so, perhaps the spell should be PeVi. Or is it an accident of how magic radiates from the Gift, in which case ReVi would be appropriate. Perhaps Blantant and Gentle gifts arise from the relative "perfection" of each Gift on a heirarchy of being, in which case a CrVi effect would be needed.

Before anything else, if standard Hermetic magic is to be employed, a breakthrough into the understanding of the Gift, throug InVi, should be nesessary.

Even then, in all of these cases, the spell level would need to be very high, and the risks of experimentation severe. You'd risk destroying the Gift altogether, or turning it into a bird

There are three more obvious, creative and fun ways to go about this, using Mysteries.

There are some ways to self-initate any mystery in an open-ended fashion.

You could try to walk a new path of Nature Lore (see the book on the Rhine Tribunal), which can grant Major Hermetic Virtues (i.e. Twilight Mastery), but only at the cost of a Major Flaw.

At the stroyguide's discretion, a Bjornaer can self-initiate Gentle Gift through his Inner Heartbeast.

My personal preference is always to introduce a story-hook to make it possible, which is always more satisfying than simply playing vis-monkey in a lab. An SG can create a mystery cult which initiates any virtue imaginable, and can make seeking its secret a quest of PCs when they hear of it.

For example, such an initiation-cult would be very useful to Craft Magi or others who live among the people.

So, there could be a semi-hedge cult consisting of Craft Magi anwho initiate virtues like Second Sight, Skinchanger, Lesser purifying touch, craft amulets, ways of the Forest/Town, the Gentle Gift and/or any other virtues especially useful for living amongst and helping mundanes on the fringes of society. This group is as loosely knit association of hedge-magi who only grudgingly belong to the Order of Hermes, utterly contemptuous of its attempt to sever them from their traditional intigration with mundane communities. They are fearful of Qaesitor interference and are very secretive, keeping to themselves and having little to do with the rest of the Order.

Because of their Gentle Gift, their mistrust of other Magi and the subtlety of Craft Magic, they would be very difficult to track down. Hpwever, if a major crisis were to threaten their locales, or if a magus were to manufacture one, they might be forced out of the woodwork, and contact could be made.

My understanding is that Mythic Europe is replete with hidden mystery cults, living and dead, and lost troves of lore waiting to be uncovered by enterprising Magi.

I also like the notion of creating a mystery cult of Diedne, which has found a way to initiate Gentle Gift to help them stay in hiding.

Hermetic Magic does not need the caster to understand a thing , to either create or change it.

All that might be required for The Gift Remade spell is the Me & Co requisites.

Inoffensive to beasts would be perfect for this.

As an alternate way, what about going into the magical realm? Gaining the virtues like this is not at all easy, but there are ways that they can be done.

No, but it must be able to identify its intended effect. For that reason, a Bjornaer cannot adopt a heartbeast of an animal it has never seen, nor a Shapeshifter.

Or, imagine a feral raised magus who didn't understand anything of natural philosophy. He might try to make a rock weightless by using MuTe, when in fact any mutation that still leaves the rock a rock would not eliminate weight. A PeTe spell would be required. Likewise, a MuHe does not bring a tree to full maturity; a CrHe is required.

Unless you can fully describe the effect you want, you can't accomplish it. Unless you can figure out basically what makes a Gift "gentle" or "blatant," you can't invent a spell to grant gentleness or blatancy. If you mistake your target, you could easily end up destroying, mutating or enhancing the gift in the wrong way.

And again, Embrace of Boethius gives 7 warping points. A Gentle gift spelly would need to be at least as dangerous on that level.