[Magi of Hermes] Got it, and Questions.

SO, my lovely wife and her cousins fell victim to my incessant text messages and went to grab a copy of Magi or Hermes.

The book looks EVER so good, with lots of useful stuff for saga populating, examples of items & spells and so on, and wizards as they age. Thus far I'm loving it.

Any questions throw my way. The library will likely be dead today and I'll happily answer queries.

NDAs are over!

Vrylakos

As a note: I think the artwork in this book is particularly strong. Each mage is assigned an artist who provides pics of the mage at various stages of their life. The opening picture shows them as newly Gauntleted wizards in the background, and older wizards with familiars, scars, noticeable increase in wealth, etc. in the foreground.

Nicely done!

V

Glad to hear that you're enjoying it. And even more glad to hear the nice things about the artwork. I'm really looking forward to seeing my magi "in the flesh", so to speak.

My current saga features a player who has joined the Mystical Fraternity of Samos, as the player is a mathematics PhD. candidate and fan of medieval academics. He was a bit unsure of what to do with Hermetic Geometry and so on, but Petalichus looks like he will help out in that regard and give him some ideas. Any chance of more info on the Cononites?

I do like seeing how the passage of 45 years or so has granted Petalichus a much grander beard than he had at apprenticeship :wink:

I've only skimmed your Yestin, but he looks like a fun character as well.

I note lots of new guidelines in the book... Very cool!

Maybe one day...

I have to say, I do like Petalichus. I've used him in may saga as a villain and he fits the role perfectly. But the great thing about this book is that there's a dozen other magi that are also going to fit right in.

Just read Alexander of Jerbiton - the explorer of African lands and ruins. Nice Minor Magical Focus with attendant spells to show off utility, as well as some other fun utility spells. Looking at the spells, you can easily see how Alexander operates from day to day as he travels. Moats of scorpions, a spell for easy transport of water while in the desert (and its limitations at a young age), and various other spells to make travel easier and fend off common desert dangers. i like how the grog attendants of Alexander are accounted for by the magus and his spells.

OH, the the Longevity Breakthrough of Aurulentus of Jerbiton: Longevity without Sterility. Aurulentus has a particular long term reason to want to extend his family.

That's a lovely surprise. as is the ability to put graphics on the board, I didn't know that we could do that.

One of my strongest first impressions when I read the original drafts was that I wanted to live in the same covenant as Gwidion, I'm eager to hear you impression of him and naturally I'd love to hear what you think of Ranulf and Lambert as well, (I'm girding myself for people to tell me that they suck,as it's not unlikely that others won't like them at all).

I've read over Gwidion - excellent character and a very vivid image and personality. I note that he didn't take a Longevity Ritual until late in life, not being concerned with appearances or enjoying distractions from his field-work, I imagine. I particularly like the Twilight Scars the wizards in the book develop over time, and Gwidion has some excellent ones.

In my previous saga, Renaldo the Bonisagus managed to make shape and enchant a tree such that his laboratory was within it and the tree could move under his direction. I thought it was a pretty clever thing for him to do, though it stretched the limits of his power at the time. He walked it from the Rhine to Pomerania in the climax of the saga and narrowly avoided a dragon making all of his hard work moot.

However, Gwidion's talisman-tree is a far superior thing! The spells put into it are well thought out, and Gwidion's final goals for his talisman are a really nice personal touch.

The other plants that Gwidion has enchanted are very very cool as well, and their utility is really great. You're right, I'd love to live in a covenant with this mage.

Two things I really liked were the visual of the covenant's Sun Ivy, and the idea of the Single Root System is really cool.

In fact, Gwidion's write up is so cool, I keep on thinking I've found the coolest thing only to find another cool thing.

Excellent job, Saul Roberts.

As a side note, I'm eager to read Lambert as well. I'm interested in seeing some interesting Merinita spells.
I did, on a related note, like Aurulentus' Power from his Mythic Blood. Really appropriate and well-suited to the overall character - I loved the use of the Bloodline target.

I've got another question since you've read Petalicus. What is the target for "To See As Though a Plethron Distant"?

There's a fair bit of explanation and connecting it to Hermetic Geometry and Distance Level that is in the text.

Thank you

Alright, forging ahead in the book in the evenings. Very enjoyable!

Looking over Julia, the weaver maga of Ex Miscellanea, of the Rusticani tradition (Societates p 130-133): it notes she uses a CrAn spell to create wool, and another spell to form the wool into garments.

It seems to me that the garments would disappear after the initial Create Wool spell expired, though as a note she does have Enduring Magic. Still, it seems a lot of effort for, eventually, no effect. Julia does have Craft Magic, but I'm not seeing how this gets around her garment eventually fading away.

I'm noting a few issues with spells having one name in their description. but a slightly different name when mentioned in the character's write up. Fairly easy to figure out what is referred to, however.

I'm just getting to Marcus of Criamon. A very nice character - perhaps a good hermetic "mad scientist" due to the goal of his original research coupled with his Criamon path... and his Giant Blood. A bit scary in a horrific way, to tell the truth, as opposed to the more cliched Criamon nebulosity. What's he's about makes sense to him, and perhaps other Criamon, but to an outsider, he would appear far more suspect. I'm liking the examples of Original Research this book provides.

With regards Lambert of Merinita: I see some really neat spells, like the Opinions of the Masses spell, but I'm unsure how he gets access to Target: Hearing. I'm really excited by the Doorframe of the Wary Steward - there has been some talk of such a thing now that the Jerbiton maga in my game is worrying about assassins.

I'm curious also about the Granary Chest magic item: what is the purpose of the Carpentry of Brass enchantment? Durability? The convenient warehouse effect is also nice to see. I need to see how we tried to achieve the same goal when a 'bag of voluminous size' was enchanted by our Muto specialist in our saga.

More later!

Everyone has access to target hearing it's a magical sense target (p. 113-114) not a Bjornaer sensory magic target (that one is sound)

That's it exactly, he's already put four seasons and gobs of vis into it. He wants to make it durable so his investment isn't wasted. Yet if he makes it a permanent enchantment the chest gets warped and destroyed anyway. Lambert managed to pull off carpentry of brass in a single season with a single pawn of vis. I imagine that this effect is employed during the day when the chest is traveling and at other times when the holder might think that it is in jeopardy but not often invoked at night or when the chest is just resting in a building.

Oh, ok! i'll need to look that one up. Seems to have escaped me!

She doesn't get around it. It is easier to create wool then shape them, than create woollen garments. Two relatively low level spells in case you need them in a hurry (e.g. Bjornaer changing from their heartbeast); and they last the day - or several days, in Julia's case. To be honest, she probably uses the shape wool spell more than the create wool spell.

Mark

Alright. Got it now. It just seemed a lot of space was devoted to this combo of spell and its exact utility was not spelled out. If she were Petalichus, she'd probably be selling those temp garments on the side. :wink:

I don't have the book yet but last night I started to update the spell directory from my drafts. I've got a fair amount of the information from Marc Tauros, Alexander, Ranaulf, and Lambert in (no page numbers and I don't think that I had the final draft of Alexander so I might need to change a bit depending upon Timothy's last round of revisions). I should get the list updated in a few weeks but it occurred to me that we could get it done in a few days if one or two others wanted to take a chapter or two. Any takers?