The InCo from HOHTL is used to determine if a corpus piece (hair, skinshed...) is an AC, for quaesitorial purposes (or Marches. It can of course be used during a WW.)
It uses the "gather specific information", which is : "is this piece AC to someone".
I doubt you could use a variation of that spell (in the InHe form for example) on a clothing made of plant to determine if it is an AC to a person. It isn't an information about the cloth, but about his owner/wearer, which seems outside of the scope of hermetic magic.
So you read the spell as working only on a piece of Corpus that's connected to a Corpus? Possibly a good interpretation. The spell reads:
Maybe that's shorthand for
That would mean the spell is targeted on the physical item, not the arcane connection.
I don't think this follows from either interpretation of the spell
Since the information is coming from the AC itself, it should be irrelevant what that connected thing is.
I would be nice to have a better understanding what an Arcane Connection actually is. Is it a piece of magic like a spell? Or is it simply a property of the the item that holds that connection. And, back to my earlier question, how does a magus who picks up an item know it even is in Arcane Connection before taking it to the lab to fix it? The game has never to my knowledge suggested that magi should use InForm spells before doing this.
The OP was looking at giving people Faerie Sight through a spell. Faerie Sight is a Supernatural Virtue for characters in RoP:F, and in general Hermetic Magic is terrible at trying to grant supernatural virtues. Therefore I don't think you can without having a specialised virtue or original research. Gruagachan, Learned Magicians and Soqotran Myrrh sorcerers may well be able to (although Soqotrans probably don't need to, seeing as the version of Faerie blood found in the Myrrh tribe grants faerie sight).
If a player in a saga I was running wanted to try and get Faerie sight, I'd get them to find an expert on Faerie Lore who can tell you the story of Cherry of Zennor, then go and search for four-leaved clovers, devise a method of enrichment and then apply the ointment and see what happens.
Because it's Intelligo Corpus, not Intelligo Vim. That was my main point. You can gain information from other TeFo's that you can't through InVi - you could read someone's mind to get an activation phrase for a magic item, for example. Getting it through InVi seems like a lab activity, rather than a formulaic guideline. Hence my "you can use other forms" comment.
In that case I disagree with you. The limitation on analyzing magic items is written within the InVi guidelines but reads
without reference to the form of Vim. There's no suggestion, for example, that InHr could be used to analyze the mystical properties of a magic wand. Nor could a magus in the lab substitute InHr for the InVi lab total required, even with higher skill in Hr.
I've found several spell guidelines that manipulate Arcane Connections using the Vi form.
PeVi, in the corebook allows accelerated decay of ACs with no Form requisite for the item containing the AC. Interestingly,
This seems to imply that one targets the physical object, even though the form of the spell is Vim, or alternately that there's an yet-unstated way for the magus to detect and then target the AC itself.
There's a CrVi guideline in Magi of Hermes for prolonging existing ACs, again with no Form requisite. The sample object, a Ribbon on Arcane Preservation on page 113, works on any object, again regardless of physical Form.
So I'm pretty comfortable that Vim is the premier form for working with Arcane Connections. Does the AC itself have enough information for Intellego to reveal the other end of the connection? Unless you want to throw out the text of the spell The Whole from the Part in HoH:TL, it does.
If CrVi, PeVi, and InVi all work on arcane connections, one wonders what can be done with ReVi and MuVi.
No, but you could investigate the wand itself just fine, with regular InHe formulaic magic - ie, determine its length, it's volume, the kind of wood it was made from, how it was crafted, etc. And as we agree, you could determine part of the essential nature of the creator (by porting over the InCo guideline.) But I agree: you wouldn't use InHe as part of the lab activity to research its magical nature. That would require InVi.
I think this may be an argument of semantics - that an AC is what Hermetics call the effect that the essential nature of an object has on magic-cast-at-a-distance. That essential nature isn't, in and of itself, magical (ie, its not a supernatural property), but rather a natural property that magic can use and indirectly affect - in the same way that Rego affects that natural ability of an object to either sink or float. (I believe Essential Nature is considered a General virtue in RoP:M, for example.)
Note that this may very well be a "command magical animal" issue - whereby it really SHOULD be possible to command magical animals with ReVi, but it's not - to my knowledge, that guideline exists only in the ReAn combo.
With that in mind: if "determine Essential Nature" was a guideline in Vim, then I'd be fine with using Vim to formulaically determine whether something was an AC or not. But it doesn't seem to be - rather, that seems to be the bailiwick of the various Forms, currently. But like the "Command magical animal" non-existent guideline, it looks like an easy one to integrate - but it doesn't seem to have been done yet.
(Cue someone pointing out that I'm mis-remembering this, and that ReVi really can command supernatural animals.)
Yes. And there are many things that you can do to Vis (and magic items) with formulaic Vim magic as well. However, investigating their nature requires a lab activity.
It's not just a "are you magical? Y/N" - that's a basic InVi effect whose general guideline affects all magic. And if AC's fell under that description, then again: that's probably something that would have been mentioned by now, as it would cause every "detect traces of magic" spell to ping positive on any number of minor objects.
If this were the case then Vim wouldn't be a (or even the) appropriate form for using the Creo and Perdo techniques on an Arcane Connection, as is demonstrated by the canonical guidelines. I don't think there's logic in arbitrarily deciding that CrVi and PeVi are appropriate for ACs but not InVi. The form of the AC is either Vim or it isn't.
Yes but investigations of magical properties that require lab work rather than InVi also require lab work rather than InWhatever. InHe can tell what sort of wood a wand is made from and similar information about its mundane properties but can't analyze the magic. You seem to be arguing that Intellego spells of forms other than Vim are superior in this regard.
There are holes in the AM guideline list - hence the "you can't command magical animals with Rego Vim" issue. And while the normal response is "you can just port in something from a different TeFo", the point here is that Intelligo'ing an AC really is something that should have been on the list, if it was valid.
InVi doesn't really seem to discriminate in what it can pick up - if it's magical, then it's magical, and you get a positive response. (In looking at the guidelines, they seem to be set up for "detect any magic at this given fidelity"). You can arbitrarily restrict yourself so that you ONLY get a positive response from one type of magic (ie, only looking for the Gift), but that's to avoid a Scrying violation.
Therefore: if you could pick up an AC with Intelligo Vim, you should be able to do it with the guidelines as written in the RAW. But there is no evidence that this is ever a thing: no "hey, at this level of fidelity everything will glow" comments.
Now, the same can be said for detecting the Gift - it's not explicit in the core AM5th that it could be detected, so they explicitly said that it could be in Apprentices and in HoH:S. Which is fine. Good to know. (Previous to my knowing this, I figured InVi could detect it, but at what level? What kind of magic was it considered? As it turns out, base 10.) Where's the similar comment for AC's? As far as I know, there isn't one.
Thus - if you can explicitly detect all forms of magic with X, and Y isn't listed as a form of magic, but if Y is really common and would set off X any time you used it, then it is reasonable to mention that in the description of X. It isn't mentioned. It's like not mentioning that "Air" will set off your Mag1 farie detector. Therefore, that STRONGLY suggests that X cannot detect Y.
Yep. That's explicitly what I'm saying, because that's what seems to be the RAW currently. I agree that there's a hole in InVi when it comes to perceiving Arcane Connections. As you point out, they can be manipulated with Perdo and Creo, but for some reason not the other Techniques.
What would count as a Muto effect on an AC? I don't know - likely shifting it to someone else, actually. (Although maybe not, as an AC deals with a target's essential nature, and changing that breaks a Hermetic Limit.) Sounds interesting - but those guidelines don't seem to exist currently; even less than the "ID AC" guidelines do.
Normally, I would be all for simply saying "sure, port that over from that other guideline; the RAW says you can do that" - except that there seems to be an explicit break between Vim and the other forms. I think it's because Vim is such an over-arcing Form that adding anything to it that the other Forms can do seems to take away even more from what those forms are capable of.
So really, that's my argument: your argument that "it SHOULD be an InVi guideline" is really my point. It's so obvious that it should be that the fact that it isn't is telling (ie, like the Magical animal guideline). That suggests a deliberate hole, rather than simply saving space on printing guideline costs. And the lack of mention anywhere in any InVi guideline (at whatever sufficient fidelity it would take to identify it) again, strongly suggests that the current guidelines don't support it.
But it's obviously a simple fix: have someone do some minor research before your campaign starts, and invent the guideline. I'm fine with it being an InVi effect - I'm just saying that, right now, the rules don't seem to support it as an implied (existing) guideline that simply wasn't written down.
I'm sorry if my reading of the language english is not perfect since it's a second language, but essentially, since the spell is InCo, i understand it as answering the general informative question: "are you a piece of a bigger being".
The magus may have already hope that the bigger being is someone he is expecting to be or he may just be fishing out and hoping to find something in a space where only the desired (maybe unknown) target left it.
(case 1 : you are pursuing magus bob and check for hairs on the ground in his room. Case 2: you are in a room where a hermetic crime has been comitted, and find a drop of blood.)
If the thing answers - and InCo says it would - "yes" (and eventually shows a mental image of that bigger being, that is a human, which the magus uses to says "that's magus bob so okay you may be AC to magus bob"), the hermetic theory says then: "so it may be an arcane connection to that human". But, in my understanding, the item is not answering "I'm an a AC" which he couldn't know.
In our saga, we just try ACs by intangible tunnels.
But a piece could be part of someone, and due to durations, not be an AC. Serf's parma on that one, I do not have my book atm.
I think the easiest way to get a general spell to figure out Arcane Connections is
InIm 5 or 10
R: AC, D: Mom (or Con), T: Ind
This spell shows you an image of whatever lies at the other end of the Arcane Connection.
Base 1, +4 AC, (+1 Con?)
It still doesn't really let you see AC's. But, assuming you can penetrate when there's magic resistance, you'll be able to see what anything is an Arcane Connection to. There will be a problem when an object is an Arcane Connection to multiple things, though; for example, a magus with both a Talisman and a Familiar. Changing Individual to Group would handle this problem.
No problem at all. I find the spell text confusing and I'm a native speaker.
I agree, this is the intent of the spell.
However, this isn't how the spell text describes the mechanism which it uses to achieve that intent.
Taking a closer look:
Does the current Arcane Connection have to be an item of Corpus? The text doesn't say so, but it may be implicit in the InCo nature of the spell. This was how I read your first suggestion. In that case why does the AC have to be to a human? Most pieces of Corpus will be ACs to other Corpus (if they're connections at all) but there's no reason that, say, a bone couldn't be a fixed AC to something else.
Or is it InCo because it provides information on a person, not because it is cast directly on a piece of Corpus. That was my initial understanding, that the spell could be cast on any AC to a person, such as an item of clothing, as long as it was in connection to a human.
This part is important. Unlike the spell Callen posted earlier in this thread, the HoH:TL spell does not use the AC to target someone at the other end. Instead, the Arcane Connection itself is targeted and contains all of the information revealed by the spell.
Objects with multiple ACs seem problematic in many ways. How does the possessor of an object with two ACs choose which one to use when casting arcane ranged magics?
Aegis and ReVi wards work against all creatures of might. Why do you think other ReVi would fail on magical animals? I never gave this issue any thought, so there may be precedents but I can't think of any offhand.
Well, the easiest one (which admittedly is evidence by omission) is Hermetic Projects, pg. 119 - the Magical Menagerie section. For all that it's an entire chapter devoted to "how to magically deal with magical animals", the only Vim spell in there is an InVi "locate magical place". Everything else is Animal (or Herbam, or Mentem), which strongly suggests that Vim is not the form you use on magical animals. (EDIT - oh, Vim is also a non-magnitude-adding requisite for CrAn spells, to create magical animals, as described on pg. 126.)
I agree. I think that in some previous edition there was a statement about how nothing could be an Arcane Connection to two different things (at least at the same time). In fact, the statement "Arcane Connections must be stored carefully, or else they become links to different people or places" from ArM5 seems to suggest the same -- which is in line with the idea that an Arcane Connection to something is still "mystically part" of that something.
The first book that changed this was, I believe Covenants, stating that the Library's catalogue would be an Arcane Connection to each of its books. Which is very bad design, I think. Our troupe simply ignores that, and assume nothing can "arcanely connect" to two things at the same time.
I think that, since an AC to a human body is "mystically part" (ArM5 p.84) of a Corpus target, it makes sense that it would be affected by Corpus even when it is not "intrinsecally" Corpus. Note that this is should apply to other Forms, too -- and not just with the Intelligo Technique.
I thought the first book that allowed for multiple Arcane Connections was the core book. Both of these show bi-directional AC's:
One might have argued that forming the familiar bond causes you to not be able to bind a talisman, preventing such an issue. But the sentence about retaining abilities (not "Abilities," like "target" instead of "Target") crushes that argument, and this is held up later when we do see magi with both talismans and familiars.
So, if you're don't allow anything to be an Arcane Connection to two things at once, what do you do with the talisman bond and the familiar bond?
We read the corebook as saying that a magus has an AC to his talisman, not is an AC to his talisman. This means he can automatically cast R:Arc spells on his talisman, but he can't be used to cast R:Arc spells on his talisman. In other words, let's say your familiar is a rabbit and your talisman a rabbit's foot. Then a R:Arc Perdo Rabbit spell, cast with you as the AC, affects the familiar but not the talisman.
In the end, designing a spell to "detect arcane connections" is a mistake, IMO. Nearly everything is an Arcane Connection to something (if only to the place you found it), and many things are Arcane Connections to many things.
As an example, the core rules suggest air from a specific place as a short term AC. Magi of Hermes suggest the breath you exhale as an AC to you. But that is also air, takes from a specific place. In both cases ignoring the concept of "air as a gas", obviously.
A more tangible (but I believe also more anachronistic) example would be a wedding ring. It is clearly an AC to the person who never takes it off - but it's there as a symbol of the partner. And it could very well be an AC to the partner as well.
that said, I don't think InVi would work. Again, because nearly everything is an Arcane Connection to something, and many things are Arcane Connections to many things.
Arcane Connections seem more magical than Faerie, Hermetics routinely work with ACs, including with Vim magics, and in general Hermetics are supposed to be the premier practitioners of magic-flavored effects. They should be able to do this if Faeries can.