You have an enchanted device/talisman that has a CrIm effect. Let's say it creates an illusion of the interior of a house, item maintains concentration, etc. Is it possible to "rearrange the furniture" and have the device somehow retain the furniture orientation until next you "turn it on"? (through an alteration of the effect, additional enchantments, etc...) let's assume that retrieving it from the magi's mind is not an option and the "state" of the illusion must be retained somehow through the device alone.
You could have a creo men. efffect to store a "thought pattern" which the item would use as the template for the illusion. Going by canon, you could only have the item store it for a month (year duration being a ritual and thus not possible with an item).
reading what i wrote maybe i was not clear. Is it possible to construct an enchanted device that can save the last state of the illusion created, sort of like a saved game if you think of the illusion as a video game. So when you turn it back on the state is at t=n instead of t=0 (where t=n is the time of the last "save" and t=0 being the initial state of the illusion when first created)
I am trying to figure out if any combination of enchantments can enable this type of behavior, creating an artifical "mind" or "memory" for the device using mentem might be one avenue to pursue.
I said conc, item maintains concentration so the device can be turned on/off. If i wanted it to be perpetual it would be significantly easier as I wouldn't need to save the last state.
What i referred to was having a separate effect that does the "saving" which is always "on".
Of course its possible, question is how troublesome you´re willing to get.
One way to do it could be to create a micro copy of the illusion in a rearrangeable material within the item.
Some sort of store/recall picture effect that is always on would probably be easier.
It comes down to how "off" you want the idea, I think. I suggested a "passive" thought storage, Direwolf a more active one. If you need and item that is completely "off" when not on, then I suggest a creo mentem effect as step one. Step two is a muto mentem effect (lv 25) to make step one solid. Step three is a rego (muto) terram (or whatever you made your item out of) to make a real, persistent, non magic copy of your illusion. Your item would be doing a mold on the fly. Depending on how your GM does triggers, you might also need an Intellego effect for the item to "see/feel" the mold.
The enchanted device has a hollow interior chamber (maybe it's an enchanted bread box, for example). Its CrIm effect creates a tiny illusion of the interior of a house inside this hollow chamber; this is a constant effect, and the specifics of it can be changed by the device's wielder concentrating.
The device has another effect, this one ReIm (with requisites?), that causes the interior illusion to appear to be outside the device and properly house-sized. This effect can be triggered by the wielder in some way and has whatever duration you want (item maintains concentration, perhaps); when the effect is ended, the constantly maintained inner CrIm effect is still going. Although it's probably easier for the wielder to "move furniture around" while being able to see this outer illusion, the wielder actually changes the specifics of the inner illusion when doing so.
Hmm - why not let it use a tiny modell inside the device - shaping it with Re(Form) and using a In requisite for the loading. This allows the "memory" to survive a wind of mundane silence.