Can hermetic magic determine if there is an arcane connection in existance for a thing? i.e that the thing is incomplete....
W
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I don't recall any. But if you have a thing, you can find out if it's an arcane connection to something else you see in sight, or what was the whole before it got separated.
You can detect if something is an AC by fairly simple magic but there is no method to determine if AC exist to a given Subject.
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Given how easily an AC can be established the safe bet is yes there is an AC to the object. Whether anyone with magical skill has possession of the AC is a much trickier proposition.
I was thinking of an effect that would see the missing parts of the things essential nature and monitor connection degradation which would distinguish between normal decay and fixed connections
I.e if looking at a wall, it would show the parts that just fell onto the ground and the brick stolen for scrying.
All missing parts would slowly fade as AC degrades but should the brick be fixed as an AC, it would show the missing part as strongly tied to the essential nature of the wall
W
There's no guideline to do this. So I'd imagine it would require Original Research to create.
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Maybe Eyes of Theseus in Against the Dark would provide some inspiration.
Things doesn't have to be missing for an Arcane Connection to exist.
A shirt you have worn or a letter you have written are both ACs to you.
Also, while a brick might be an AC to the wall it came from, the wall is not an AC to the brick, and therefore the wall can not help you get any information about the brick after it has left the wall.
Thirdly, a things essential nature is normally not at all affected by some part of the thing going missing.
So, if you lose a few strands of hair, your essential nature will not change at all from this.
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Ahh ... tricky (and common) question. One could argue that the level 20 InTe guideline "Learn the magical properties of an object" covers it: having (still-active) arcane connections somewhere can well be considered a magical property of an object, even though what or where those connections are seems definitely a property of those things, not of the main object.
Do note that according to A&A p. 74 "Who was the cause of the death of a person" is a question about a property of that person so I think it can be argued that "does this object have active arcane connections" senses something about the object. Then again, some (most?) troupes disagree. I strongly suspect this is left intentionally vague in the ArM5 rules so that every troupe can decide for itself.
Even if your troupe does not want to allow such an effect, it seems quite reasonable that magic can detect whether an arcane connection is being used - or has been - actively used to magically target something. Note that no such guideline is explicitly written for InVi, but neither is it explicitly written for detecting the Technique and Form of a spell. Yet Sight of the Active Magics detects (at the cost of two extra magnitudes) Technique and Form of active magics; so it seems extremely reasonable that using any of the "Detect Magic" guidelines with an extra magnitude can tell you whether such a magic is affecting/has affected the target through some arcane connection ... and possibly even show that connection (which is a property of the spell, after all).
Of course, if something is an arcane connection to an object, and it's within your sensing range, you can definitely target it with the aforementioned InTe 20 effect (or perhaps some lower-base InVi effect) to tell that it actually is an arcane connection, and to what - that's a magical property of the AC, after all.
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An interesting tangent question/thought is whether an InVi spell being maintained upon an object could detect an arcane connection to that object being fixed- does that affect the target object in some way that is detectable? Obviously a spell cast through an arcane connection at the target could be detected...
Guidelines states "Further increases in level will yield further information, depending on the design of the specific spell."
D:Sun could certainly be discovered that way since it needs to exist until the spell ends, same thing for T:Room (continuous) which needs to stay active. OTOH it's ambiguous if the delivery system leaves traces once the spell is installed. In that case, T:Room (at cast) and T:Group would be indistinguishable.
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The possibility of doing so is mentioned in (for example) Hedge Magic: Revised - because runic enchantments don't appear magical to Intellego Vim spells, but do act as Arcane Connections to the rune wizard, you can use Intellego Corpus to discover that the object is an Arcane Connection to a human body. The fact that such a roundabout method has to be used* makes me think a simple Intellego Vim does not canonically reveal Arcane Connections (though your saga may vary!).
(asterisk): Why would you even attempt an Intellego Corpus spell on a carved bit of rock? Presumably in this case you suspect a runic enchantment, know how such things work, and are checking to make sure.
EDIT: apparently I misunderstood the one-way nature of Arcane Connections, so this does not answer the question, see below
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You are answering the wrong question. The one you answered, determining if something is an AC, is fairly simple and covered in multiple published examples.
The question asked is not if you can figure out if something is an AC, but if you can figure out if a given Subject has any AC pointed towards them.
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Related question- given how easily Arcane connections form what would it take for something to have no arcane connections to it?
I may be confusing my mechanics but doesn't it amount to the same thing? Unless a spell is actively being pushed through the AC? I have understood an AC to be a two way issue, such that A being an AC to B amounts to B being an AC for A
An immutable physical object like a heavenly body would presumable qualify but be protected by the Lunar limit anyway. Or just a regular object enchanted never to lose contact with any of its parts - I can imagine a paranoid magus casting a spell to ensure he will not shed hair or (if they exist in your setting) skin cells.
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No. If A is an AC to B, then B will in most cases NOT be an AC to A. (There are a couple of special cases where an Arcane Connection works both ways, but they are exceptions.)
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Ah, ok. That... doesn't make intuitive sense to me, which is probably why I missed that (crucial) mechanical detail when reading the text!
Typically (but not always) an Arcane Connection is something that used to be a part of the thing it is an AC to.
So a lock of your hair is an AC to you since it used to be part of you, but you weren't a part of the lock of hair, and thus isn't an AC to it.
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Yes, I was reading it more like in the "Lord D'Arcy" mysteries, where the Law of Sympathetic Connection means two things that used to be one have a connection to each other. Such is the way of accidental house-ruling, I guess.
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