It also occurs to me that if one is adverse to murder (as one should be), it may be possible to use Perdo/Mentem effects - it wouldn't get rid of The Gift, strictly speaking, but might render the targets incapable of using/learning magic.
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The bets way to do this would be for a PeVi focussed Merinita to develop a PeVi spell with target Bloodline, with the effect of destroying the gift. It would be tough, but doable, and finding Philippe le Bel's wife (Jeanne de Navarre) and hitting her with it would circumvent any parma.
Did Phillipe le Bel have any predilection for extramarital affairs, though? The bloodline of the King of France arguably includes all his bastards, depending on how you read it. That said, being Gifted is a fairly strong contraceptive of its-self...
On that line, has the OP considered the shear level of mundane political fuckery likely to result from the Gift running in a major European monarchy? For one, producing an heir might be...interesting given the social effects of the Gift. For two, unless the Gift is tied to the throne rather than the bloodline, I suspect France will see strife before too long. No level of magic is going to help if the entire court and all the dignitaries of surrounding nations loathe the French king on sight.
The PCs could reasonably just sit back and wait for the inevitable assassination/civil war.
Parma maybe, a queen still has MR.
Yeha but the royal MR is not too bad. Also, while ruining the possibility of having gifted children might consist of mundane interference, ruining the gift of a fellow magus of Hermes most definitely would be a marchable crime.
Also, the queen has a known MR, so it would be possible to prepare a magic item which would cast the spell on her, with just the right pen, so that you would not have to walk up to her and risk botching. Like make the ring/brooch/earring of destroying the bloodline's gift (something like speaking while touching the corresponding body part), and have a really trivial activation. Then gift it to her as wedding present and just wait.
The queen has a defined magic resistance from a mechanical perspective, but is that information characters in the setting would know? It's not like magi have a great handle on the divine realm and without having cast spells at the queen there's no way you could tell exactly how much magic resistance she has (if any).
The queen might also have a relic or three on her, which could supercede (or add? I couldn't find if a relic adds to a monarch's divinely granted MR or not) the usual MR.
Or the King/someone could have their Parma extended around her in some circumstances?
Do you mean circumventing Jeanne de Navarre's Parma Magica or any of her descendants' Parma Magica?
Is it known? Aura adds to it, right? So it depends on where she is. And then there is jason72's mention of Relics.
MR from Relics add to that derived from True Faith and Guardian Angel so it seems only fair to assume that it adds to the MR a monarch receives at coronation as well.
Relics explicitly do not stack with each other, however so only the Relic with the greatest Faith applies.
PS. Yes, Aura adds to MR.
Elaterid, yes it is the moment the player let the king act* that, as in the meme thing: "I knew I was fucked up".
From now, history is totally unaccurate.
The king will be on a rampage soon. The Order will not let this pass.
That is what drives the NPC asking the PCs to interfere BEFORE the world goes down the dark route where magic users destroy the mundanes realms and GOD says "ENOUGH".
*to give (if you are interested) more background informations:
I decided that the GIFT was a theft by faeries from the daimon of magic, at the start of humanity. It was given to the first sorcerers, such as the lineage of Circée, Persian magicians, old Egyptians, chinese..., etc.
The protagonoi of magic, being all powerful, has looked for a way to repair this.
It took it (i may say "Her" because she uses the form of a woman called Arcana) long time to find someone who can be the bridge between her and the mundanes.
She found it (it was an old -almost immortal- sorcerer, who has been the main NPC of our alphastoryguide when his saga went on [it ended before mine]) and asked him in exchange for help for his plans [bring Magic and Faerie more close to mundanes than dominion and infernale realms [the divine is different from the dominion]; he was charged to find someone whose gift was very powerful, and from a lineage of one of those first, and to bring it somewhere she would channel a ritual.
The meeting took place in a castle (eagle castle in Switzerland, if you know) and had the excuse of the death of the Dauphin, from the dauphiné in Provence. PCs are on his lands, and one of the companion was sent there for his own reasons. Companions were there.
The "NPC" which was important for the protagonoi is someone who has a long history in my saga. PCs saved her 57 years ago, she was the main antoganonist from their perceived true enemy, she had had her gift damaged by experimentation.
Long story short, the Magi who had a service due to the protanoi of magic had the task of "prevent anyone from leaving the eagle castle".
That was a simple idea, and I intented the players to use magic to prevent NPC to leave and then the PC to play their companions who were inside.
BUT... they went in the castle and prevented anyone from leaving by... speaking to the guards: gentle Gift + mentem magic do wonders.
The protagonoi would have want to correct the mistake, but ... that was not so easy.
The "coconspirator" was intrigued and panicked: he was not sure the gift would go away from anyone, if he didn't interfere.
So he did:
- he wanted to ask the PCs to interfere. When he tried to contact them, they were already inside (see later).
- he warned the Queen Faerie Oriande in Provence that the protagonoi of Magic was going to destroy his pawns of the Order.
- he let the infernalist whom had attacked the order previously know.
So during the years it took for the protagonoi to ready itself, one of the Electors of hell, a faerie queen and an archangel intervened.
They asked that humans had a say in this.
The protagonoi accepted.
So the people inside the castle were chosen for an experiment:
they had basically 4 choices (with a game of sort, cooperating or not between themselves):
- give the gift to any human (faerie proposal)
- let the protagonoi do what it wanted (take back the gift from all humans) (magic proposal)
- erase magic (divine proposal)
- take (maybe more) for themselves (infernal) and whatever for the rest of them [obviously incompatible with the divine way].
Players argued during the play session, but in the end they gathered the magical pearls which were the tool needed to express Choice.
They and the King of France, who was in the castle with his loyal vassals of Dauphiné and Savoy.
All mundanes were sleeping due to the magi acting... except the King who had in his possession pearls of power.
They went to "choose", meeting: a dragon, a "perfect magus" (Merlin like, faerie), and "adventurer magus" (a little bit like a Flambeau) for the infernal and a priest/monk.
They all took the infernal, asking that:
- the king asked that his lineage was gentle gifted.
the pcs asked that: - only people born from a member of the order of hermes
- and those born from 2 parents with gift,
be gifted
and then, from a common understanding, they went with the protoganoi of magic plan.
So from his side, he has a little bit repaired the flaw (the gift went prodigiously down, since the change was a bit retroactive... (like redcaps are now a guernicus thing, not a mercere one since all mercere are gifted, ex miscellanea is very much weakened; TL house are powerful, kids with gift are numerous...).
And an archmagus who was in the castle to witness the legacy of Dauphiné ... took the king as apprentice before anyone could do bad thing to him. He expected to explain why using magic in his position would destroy balance in the mundane world. He had a plan, as a scholar (big one, with like 12 in artes liberales and philosophiae) to convince the king to renounce his intentions of glory from magic and mundane power combined.
But it was in 1283 and two years later, the king dies.
His son, Philippe le bel, was taken apprentice by a Tytalus archmagus. The apprenticeship was NOT the same. It was about "use magic to conquer the world. See where this take you".
And due to another later adventure, some unknown [who were in stasis with the help of the protagonoi of magic center of the magic realm**) magi were let loose, took the scotland queen side, and helped her subdue the king of england with firearms.
And now, France and England/Scotland are going to war. The archmagus of Tytalus is happy: the code will have to change and magi will die if they do not adapt.
The archmagus of Loch Leglean, a long time "ally" of the PCs is happy: a prophecy from the beginning of time is going to arise with the end of the wheel of time... and the new era which will arrive after the Renaissance.
And the Jerbiton NPC archmagus want to prevent this war to go from mundane doing bad stuffs to Kings using magic to do bad stuff, with 4 tribunals (Stonehenge, Lochleglean, Provence [PC] and Normandy) going in a full fledged war ... destroying their sodales in the same time, and breaking the Code.
Hence the "you shall try to erase the gift of the king before it's too late" and not the "kill the king", because if he dies, the Queen of Scotland will just break any opposition, from french nobles.
She has cannons, they do not, not yet.
Our IRL saga started in 2014-2015, and is coming to its end.
** if you have read a bit of SubRosa13, you know who I mean. I do not write here it in case a fellow player read.
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that sounds like an awesome campaign!
Bob
very interesting.
Has the Gift become infernally tainted in your campaign? Considering that your players ended up going with the proposal put forward by the infernal and that they presumably did this in order to (magically) enrich themselves, it seems only logical that all magic practised by those with the Gift become aligned to the infernal.
How has the infernal pact between those 4 players, acting on behalf of all gifted individuals, changed the relation between magic and the divine?