Well met Soldales. I hope this message finds you well.
Our covenant has recently acquired a lab text for an intriguing spell, Gathering the Essence of the Beast. Needless to say, we are quite excited with our acquisition as it will aid us greatly when seeking vis to add to our covenant stores. The lab text, however, has sparked a discussion in our covenant whether this spell works for all source of vis, or if variants of the spell are required. For example, would GtEotB pull pawns of vis from a group of magical plants? Would GtEotB pull the vis that manifests in Uluru every fall? And, as a last example, what of vis in the air at a mountain top?
Some Soldales believe that the notes from the original lab text were more detailed than they needed to be (and who among us has not been guilty of that a time or two) and the spell works to gather vis in any situation. Others feel that the nature of the vessel for the vis is relevant. Amongst these people, there is dissent as to what constitutes different vessels. And, a small minority argue that the form of the vis is important; the majority of us feel that the research of these individuals is greatly flawed.
So we turn to more established covenants and ask for the grace of your wisdom. What has your research into this most wondrous lab text revealed?
Ah! This is a spoell that has a raging debate (it emerges from time to time) in the famous florilogiums of house Bonisagus. It seems it might be tied to the particularities of the magic of the caster, since diverging (and absolute at the same time!) answers exists in this.
The casters in our covenant have experimented with it as well. So far the lab text we have and the reinvention that it has allowed us to make, only allows for the transfer of vis from the whole bast into a certain bit of the same beast. If the vis was contained in a series of flowers we have not been able to concentrate it into a single flower, for example. However, we have been able to transfer all the vis in the mane of a lion of virtue into one of its tooth. We also find it easier to transfer vis between related things, so the Rego vis in the mane of the lion is much more easily transfered to its tongue (the source of its mighty roar of leadership) than to its tail that has no Rego correspondences. In our case, transferring it to the tail or another non-aligned container has sometimes caused the loss of some of the precious essence in the process. Finally, we have noticed that the size of the container tends to be about a pace in size for each rook of vis we want to put in it. Later refinement in the lab can reduce that size, but fieldwork is no able to ruduce such size for the vis being stored, being raw and full of imperfections still.
Feel free to stop by Lumen Australis if you ever travel around the Tribunal of Mann and we can discuss it with more calm and with a bottle of good Spanish wine.