Immortal True Love

These emotions are considered carnal, at least by Paul, but that just underlies the physical body as an essential part of the demon's nature.

I was being facetious, but now I wonder if the reason that Bjornaer mysteries are not taught to anyone who has had a familiar bond is because it does modify souls in some way? Vanilla Hermetic magic would not be able to tell.

In pre-christian Norse religion the soul has 5 parts, significantly to this discussion, one part is for an animal spirit which associates with the person and is part of their nature, while another part guides form, and notably frequently changes after death (such that dead people in Norse folk tales come back as oddly colored giants). As such it has always seemed to me intrinsic that a bjornercreates a link between the "form' portion and "animal guide" portion where other magi use the animal guide portion to link to a familiar. Whether this is universally true or just part of bjorner understanding is of course another level removed from RAW, and I have payed it both ways without the players ever realizing the difference.

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The Rhine Tribunal wishes to ask to some Questions of your Magus regarding your contacts in the Order of Odin.... :grinning:

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All contacts with the Order of Odin have been achieved through necromancy, since none of its members have had a proper Christian burial.

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communing with unclean spirits?

It's not my fault vikings don't bathe

Actually, vikings did take baths rather regularly, and typically had better hygiene than the people they attacked.

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And you are going to testify to this before the tribunal?

Reminds me of a scene in my head when a player asked about how demons react to poison:

"You stand accused of trafficking with demons, as evidenced by the spells you have developed for summoning them!"
"But I only summoned them to test how they reacted to poisons!"
"And how did they react?'
"They didn't like the cyanide."
"It hurt them?"
"No, they thought it needed some arsenic for the kick."

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For me I would let a True Love work for whatever story it was needed for, usually due to players having interesting ideas for their characters. Not in Ars Magica but in a Pathfinder campaign the redemption of a Demon Lord came about through True Love . Whatever makes a good story, redemption of a demon in Ars Magica is unlikely but......

When it comes to demons there are the fallen and those who are born demons- by canon both are irredeemable and incapable of virtue because they have already made their choice for evil, but personally I don't see how that applies to a demon who never fell.

Don't have the necessary books with me at the moment. Are Animals of Virtue associated with any of the supernatural realms?

All beings with a Might score belong to one (and only one) of the supernatural realms.
Animals of Virtue belong to the Magic Realm. They are basically "perfect" individuals of their species.

Thanks, it turns out I had been going up a dead end then

OTOH I could very easily see a divine animal being an Animal of a Virtue. In the Sense of virtues and vices.

Divine animals would be a virtuous animal, as opposed to an animal of virtue- an animal of virtue represents the platonic ideal (or close approximation) of the animal, not a reference to virtue in the divine sense.
Problems that come from putting a world together with a la carte options of contradictory philosophies...

Hmm. It helps to follow the development of the term virtue from Socrates to the Church fathers at least: it gives you the different possible meanings of the term in medieval times.
From there you can follow up the Thomistic thought on it.
ArM5 and Hermetic magic terminology on any topic clearly is eclectic at best - for lack of true Hermetic wizards. See HoH:TL p.4ff just for a list of the different influences Bonisagus tried to absorb and digest.

Lack of any true hermetic wizards before the 18th century. Arguably the hermetic order of the Golden dawn are true hermetic wizards, though certainly their magic does not rise to the level of fantasy depictions. Although the real world corpus hermeticum was written by 300 AD and translated into latin in the 15th century...
Hermetica - Wikipedia

With perhaps the exception of a few Seekers (HoH:TL p.15), the corpus hermeticum appears to have no followers in the ArM5 13th century Order of Hermes.
There was a half-hearted try (ArM2 OoH p30f box) to give it a place, but that didn't catch.

There was a half-hearted try (ArM2 OoH p30f box) to give it a place, but that didn't catch.

There was also a whole-hearted try in 4E's The Mysteries, on which the historical Hermetica was a major (perhaps the major) influence, but it didn't catch either.