A magus owns property which does not fall under the jurisdiction of any temporal rulers, which is separate from the covenant.
Then the area this property is in starts to be consolidated by a secular ruler, who has already established himself as king over all the surrounding lands, as well as having their claim acknowledged by the Pope.
If you had a character voting in the tribunal as to what constitutes interference with mundanes, what would you see as the ideal response, and what would you see as the limits for an acceptable response?
I think that the key provision for figuring out how the other magi would vote on it is "and thereby bring ruin upon my sodalies". The tribunal that decides these cases is not concerned with fine points of law, they're concerned with nobility getting mixed up in their business. I can imagine a magus who too easily concedes to the noble's wishes brought up for interference with the mundanes by setting a precedent that mundane rights trump hermetic rights and thus bringing ruin upon their sodalies just as easily as I can imagine the same magi brought up for interference by defending his land in too blatant a manner and thereby inviting retribution.
The ideal response would involve the problem going away and none of the magi ever hearing about it again. Use of Mentem spells seems like a practical way to accomplish this, as do hiring competent lawyers or making the right bribes.
The limits to an acceptable response are anything that would have negative repercussions to another member of the order. It doesn't even need to be violent, If the second cousin of this secular ruler comes to a different covenant seeking legal redress for wrongs, then your property owning magus has screwed up.
That's how I see it anyway.
I'm kind of with Eric here. The ideal response is one that makes the problem go away with no consequences to any magi. (What was that Peripheral Code ruling, that cleared a magus of 'interference with mundanes' because the magus left no witnesses alive?)
Now, this varies a lot with Tribunal. It would vary even more with who is bringing the case against the character in question, how much pull the plaintiff has in the Tribunal, and what the prosecuting Quaesitor thinks of the situation. Hermetic Justice isn't terribly just.
I agree too: the "right" solution is that which minimizes problems for your sodales. The "right" solution can include horrific and extremely violent solutions. If you curse the king and his entire bloodline in a horrid way that strikes fear in the hearts of the entire realm, while at the same time making clear that such a fate is reserved for those, and only those, who mess with magi ...
Great! The tribunal will probably congratulate you!
There's one caveat. If you have enemies at the Tribunal, any "iffy" action on your part will be used as a pretext to prosecute you. Of course, even if you don't do anything wrong, or even if you don't do anything at all, being sufficiently unpopular guarantees that some reason to prosecute you will be found anyways.
So. Make you sure your actions benefit (or at least do not harm) your sodales, treating the Code as a rough "howto"... and stay popular. That's all.
Hi,
The role of the Code in AM is similar to that of the setup for Paranoia. I could refer to Storyteller games (Vampire, etc), but these came later than AM and Paranoia came first.
Mutants are illegal and must be killed, but you are a mutant. Secret conspiracies are illegal, but you belong to one. Etc.
In AM, it is pretty much impossible to run a covenant without technically running afoul of the Code. Every part of Europe is claimed by someone, so just by existing you interfere, either because you did not get permission or because you did. Faeries always want to involve you in stories, and your interaction with them can be construed as molestation. Demons will try and tempt you, and you cannot detect a demon, so the moment you have interacted with them, you have "trafficked," even if that interaction is DEO: There's canonical precedent for that. "Thereby bring ruin upon my sodales" is utterly subjective, in terms of how much ruin is ruin enough: You ruined my day is ruin, after all.
The structure exists to create conflict and stories, because the situation is impossible. No matter what you do as a magus, or do not do, you have committed treason against your friend, the Computer! I mean, you have broken the Code. And all is well, if you can convince the Computer that you didn't commit treason, but some other magus is to blame.
Crude? No more so than "you always have a shortage of vis, which is good, because it lets us tell stories about getting more vis."
Anyway,
Ken