I am quite sure, that the author of HoH:TL p.77 box Greater Ritual Example with his "half a Diameter after sunrise" just had a bad day. And since technicalities around the application of the Curse of Thoth during the Schism War are utterly irrelevant for ArM5 play, nobody noticed this during proofreading.
I'm comfortable letting all of the above stack, as well as letting Might stack with Aegis for any Magical beings inside of one. Magical defenses are generally too weak within 5e.
Ease of penetration is one of those questionable things. I've designed characters who can penetrate with ease on their primary offensive spell and ones who can't. I think the Aegis, though should ensure that a magus is relatively secure in his home. As written, it doesn't do a great job of that.
The notion that people of the middle ages thought the earth was flat is an utter myth, mostly propogated in the 1800's. No one who was educated thought that ever. And comoners that had ever saied or viewed a coast line had direct obervational evidence to the panet's spherical nature.
There were some wackadoddles in Zion Illinois that tried to start a flat-earth cult. It failed because it was obviously stupid. But the math all works, amusingly enough. Zion is a crappy little town and I have bad history there.
There are a lot of myths about how medieval people thought and acted. There are also a lot of myths about what Christians actually believe/believed. For example, religion has never been at war with science. Whackadoodle American Protestants (like in Zion) are the exception.
It's hard to accept that the church never was at war with science when you look at the Roman Inquisitions trials against Galileo Galilei. Granted this was not during the Middle Ages, but his heliocentric world view did challenge the idea of earth being the centre of Gods creation an as such was not tolerated.
I guess they just picked the pieces of science they did like and went medieval on them.
But as you say, on the matter of a flat versus a spherical earth the church never sided with the flat fraction (not that there was much of a flat fraction.
I knew someone was gonna bring up Galileo. I suspect that may have had nore to do with politics than dogma, but I need to re-research that. I do know, however, that he contradicted the then established science of Aristotle (not a Christian btw), and didn't have the math to prove his point. Not long after, though, Copernicus did have the math and there was no contraversy.
I am not Catholic and I am not an apologist. I am a historian (amongst many other things). And I know there were many churchmen involved in the progress of science. Mendle anyone?
If I remember it correctly the main issue was that Galileo claimed that the Bible could not teach us how nature worked, and practicly told the clergy how they should read their holy book. All this in the midst of the counter-reformation. So it's no wonder that the Pope set the Inquisition on him.
But you are correct that it was not nessecarily about the science.
Personally I'm fine with the 2 minute break in Parma. It provides plenty of story options in Wizard War situations.
As for magic defence needing a boost I've never played a saga where the powerlevels have gotten so high that I've felt that the Aegis was just a nuisance when opposing magi where hiding behind it. I guess I might change my views if a magus of mine is attacked while under the protetion of the Aegis and it's of no practical help.
So Copernicus' Commentariolus preceded Galileo's Sidereus Nuntius by about a century. Copernicus' model - completely described in the De revolutionibus orbium coelestium - did significantly simplify astronomic explanations, but quantitatively did not yet match observations better than the established scholastic astronomy. Subsequently, astronomers refined Copernicus' model, and found ways to discuss it without addressing cosmological topics of interest to the Catholic church. Just a few years after the Sidereus Nuntius and the first process of Galilei, Kepler described In his Epitome astronomiae copernicanae a complete and valid mathematical model.
Galileo was a great disputant and divulgator, and represented the European discoveries in Italy. In his position, he could not be as careful as his colleagues: finally some of his statements caught the eye of Florentine Dominicans, who brought them to the attention of the inquisition. The resulting process thus did not substantially hinder scientific progress, but rather condition scientific communication.
Cheers
EDIT: Thinking it over, I imagine a dutiful and successful Bonisagus to work somewhat like Kepler. While a magus disputing like Galileo might be scrutinized by the Quaesitores for meddling. 8)
Perfectly sensible ones, but were they ever used enough to be recognized by others?
Monk's Parma and Noble's Parma have both seen use frequently enough to be in the Berklist Jargon List.
Errr... Too many posts, I won't have the time to read this all
Of course
I was in a hurry, so I took shortcuts. I was thinking about how, when you have a D: Conc item that maintains concentration, you can pick it up at sunrise/sunset in order to avoid it wearing of. This made me think of this, maybe wrongly, but that was my 1st thought.
p28, guardians of graveyards (or something like that) right column.
Note that it doesn't say that you perform the parma ritual in one round. IIRC (serf's parma again), it speaks about maintaining it.
This would imply the possibility of creating your parma (takes 2 minutes) and then, either having it expire/be dispelled (which means you must create it anew) or having to maintain it, which is quicker but may not always be possible.
Thanks, that's what I was thinking about. This looked very similar to me, in that it seems that you can avoid having to "recast" your parma by perpetuating it.
So there we have a god-like Faerie controlling the local environment with its Extended Glamour. "As the Sun bob ups (sic!) and down at the horizon, magi must either allow their Parmae Magicae to fail, or spend every round performing the ritual that maintains the shield. ... This power needs to penetrate magical defenses, but the creature's Might ... ." No frequency is given for the Sun bob ups under the god's Extended Glamour. But a "ritual that maintains the shield" is addressed - and by ArM5 p.85 this takes 2 minutes.
The real issue with this god's power is, that his domain - which limits his Extended Glamour - cannot reach out to the real sun. Hence his Extended Glamour cannot modify astronomical time. This also shows in the need of the Extended Glamour to penetrate the MR of the magi, before the little game with the Parma starts.
But if the Glamour affects the magi, they will react to the Sun bop ups and downs by calculating the time until the next sunrise or sunset. And those trying to maintain their Parmas will find, that between sunrise and sunset, and between sunset and sunrise, there are always exactly 2 minutes. So they have nothing else to do but their rituals.
I agree. It's a nifty effect but inconsistent with the framework of Mythic Europe. Faerie powers are sub-Lunar and the Sun is obviously in a higher sphere. It may feel like sunset, and the magi could be tricked into wasting their time renewing Parma, but the effect of the Parma doesn't actually reset until actual astronomical sunset.
I think it actually works. The god first does Spirit Away (RoP:F p.59 and p.23f) the magus to his lands in Faerie, which "look much like Gaza at dawn". Only there he uses Extended Glamour (RoP:F p.61) to pummel the magus' MR in a very specific way, which looks like time moving fast, but still needs to overcome that MR first. Of course that confuses the magus, and the casual reader as well.
'Monster' descriptions in Ars Magica books are often very brief and to the point. Deconstructing what really happens can take a bit of reading, and looking up the powers referenced.
I'm not sure at all
The 2-minutes ritual is to create the Parma.
This bit speaks of maintaining it in the face of dawn. If you do it and the god stops calling dawn on you, it looks like you're fine.
I don't think so.
How to put it?
Mundane fire isn't resisted by Parma. Magical fire isn't real fire and can be resisted, but if it isn't, it burns just the same.
That power clearly summons dawn in a faerie regio, which, to me, is very appropriate to a God of Dawn. Since it isn't "natural" dawn, it can be resisted, but otherwise, it works just the same, and the power is pretty clear on this: Its only effect is to call dawn. Parma expiring is just a side effect of it
durations, whether of Parma or spells, if based on astronomical events, should not be able to be affected by anything beneath the lunar sphere. The power itself seems to break multiple major limitations inherent in Ars Magica
What I could see happening though is this:
It's about 10 minutes till dawn. So the creature used it's glamour to make it look like dawn. All the magi go about and redo their parma magica. Then it's in it's own regio so it keeps the sun going normally. 8 minutes later all of their Parma's go away. Now it targets them with a big bad ability.
Now, the Magi I would imagine feel their parma ending again, and freak out.. but that's still a 2 hour window. Unless a Magi had some kind of ability to tell perfect time, he would have no way of stopping this kind of attack.
