Remember to include penetration. There's almost certainly going to be at least one Aegis in your way.
This is fair, for my scheme you only care about the server Covenant's aegis for the dial in wands, and this is probably reason enough to put the server outside an aegis, that item is the main scaling cost of the system. As far as client Covenant aegis', these items are ultimately pretty cheap, so probably the magi behind the project can just establish a baseline of whatever penetration they can manage when they first create them(ideally with enough pen to punch through a basic lvl20 aegis), then when they get older they can make stronger versions with more penetration and charge people extra to use them lmao.
1 Like
I wonder if you could do something like this with like, thoughts, using inme/crme etc...I think you might need a ghost or something to be the the intermediate medium
There's an interesting YouTube Video that discusses this:
It points out that the concept of reliable long-distance communication is an incredibly modern one.
Whilst somethings like scrying mirrors exist in the Medieval paradigm, something that is equivalent to a phone or radio might be so outside of medieval thought that it might not work for Hermetic magic at all.
It may be worth asking if this item, even if possible, would make your game lose its sense of "medievalness".
The widespread use of Leap of Homecoming in my own campaign has had similar detrimental effects on our game, as the world feels incredibly small and interconnected.
5 Likes
Looking through my Covenant Enchanted Items thread (I seem to be pointing to that thread a lot lately) will show several items that can be used for long range communication. One of those items is the Slates of Communication which is an even more simplified version.
You activate it and how you move than handle is mirrored on the other, allowing you to write and erase messages. They can be made as an enchanted item and AC item or two enchanted items. The former takes more space but avoids any chance of interference while the later is more compact though can have issues if both are activated at once.
Another type is several ring and sphere pairs (AC to each other) which allow communication between them, actually based off a published item. I just realized I slightly messed up the text in the thread, though it is corrected here [touching the AC rather than being an AC to a person].
The Map of Hermes will show the location of the ring if the sphere is slotted into it. It can also cause a small bell chime to sound from the ring, which lets that person know to activate its power so that communication can take place.
There are a couple of others in the thread, such as ones that cause remote alarms to ring and one that allows remote text to be read. Variations of the former are used as a "door bell" for those who wish to enter our Regio, an alert system to get someone of approrpate rank to meet visitors, and an alarm if some form of attack happens. The later is used to remotely read journals issued to traveling grogs as well as text held by rivals (not Magi).
The text we have AC to include ships logs for all of our trade ships, varies logs for our trading company, and journals given to varies agents (spies and scouts mostly). There are also AC collected subtly for text held by varies mundanes such as the logs of rival trade companies and port masters. And normally a few blank journals with AC that are ready to issue.
1 Like
I tend to agree with you. On the other hand I enjoy the different methods of making Hermetic Zoom and text messaging.
You just know that wizard Twitter is miserable
3 Likes
Check out the Hydraulic Telegraph (Greece, 4th century BC).
If you are willing to look not just at what was established as feasible, but at what was conceivable, the notion that someone could travel to distant places in the blink of an eye - or even be simultaneously at different places - was well established in antiquity.
I'd say the reason why items such as the ones above feel unmythical to me is not the result, but the engineering-combined-with-magic approach.
In other words, the Ars Magica world would not feel unmythical to me, if, say, Bonisagus working with Mercere had created the ability for every magus who'd sworn the Oath to instantaneously know what every other Oath-sworn magus knows and is not actively concealing.
On the other hand, arranging multiple simple magics into a complex device that achieves a completely unrelated function - for example, linking an enchanted effect that creates visual abstract images to another that triggers on those images to suppress a magic that delays a certain explosive effect? That feels utterly unmythical to me.
Please note that there's nothing wrong per se in creating magical photocopying through clever arrangement of simple magic! It can be a lot of fun as a puzzle to solve - it's part of the fun that the more "mechanical" rules of magic of 5th edition can provide. It's just that it does not evoke (at least to me) the feeling of medieval legends.
Reliable long distance communication was not unknown in the ancient world. It had heliographs, lighthouses, signal flags, and numerous other methods to communicate over long distances. What was unknown to the ancient world was long distance person to person communication. The idea of sending a message quickly to a distant city was common. To send it over distances to any individual you want (or any individual on a network) was inconceivable.