Hi there! I've just gotten into Ars fairly recently, two friends and I are about to run a proper troupe-style saga together in the Rhine, and I was very interested in making an Ex Misc Orphic mage, one specifically aiming to recreate the mad honey used by ancient oracles and as weapons of psychological warfare with magic. I have a few questions that I was hoping I could get some help with.
--I am planning to make my mage a Bee King: would I be able to have a hive of bees as an animal companion in order to fulfill my True Feeling requirement?
--What Art would I need to work on to create honey using magic? Aquam? Animal?
--Is it possible to make a hive of bees my familiar?
--What target level would it be to target a whole hive? Group?
I, personally, would allow you to bind a hive of bees as a single Animal Companion. But that's up tot he troupe to decide.
Honey is an animal product, so would fall under Animal generally, but permanent creation requires a Creo Ritual using Vis. And you could get a whole lot of honey with that.
Create animal product is base 5, and with Touch and Group you get to level 20, the bare minimum for a Ritual Spell.
This creates up to 10 times a size +1 animal. Or aproximately, 4650 pounds of honey.
I would allow binding an entire hive as a Familiar, but their Might would be low (5-10)
There are rules for swarms of insects, so you can use them to stat them.
To target an entire hive you'll need Group, but it's unlikely to use a size modifier, since it would be up to 4650 pounds of bees, and that's more than enough for most hives.
Oh boy, so I could produce a lot of honey with some vis. Would Imbued with the Spirit of Animal be able to fully remove the vis costs or only reduce it? I'm a bit unclear as to whether or not you can remove all the necessary vis from a spell with Imbued or only a certain portion.
IIRC, you could offset all of the Vis cost with that Virtue, but, it also makes it difficult to have relations with creatures whose Might is aligned with Animal, which would make it harder to form a bond strong enough to get a Familiar.
Imbued with the Spirit of (Form) makes creatures of that Form hate and be afraid of / try to kill you, so the Animal version probably isn't a good idea if you want to bind an animal familiar.
To answer the actual question, it can remove all of the vis costs if you have enough fatigue levels to spend.
I would not make a magus a Bee King as it seriously shortens your potential lifespan giving the character a cap of 100 years old.
I probably would not allow binding a whole swarm/hive/pack as a familiar but I would allow binding the spirit of a hive or pack or other similar grouping of animals assuming the character initiated the Spirit Familiar virtue.
Makes me wonder where medieval lore decided honey came from. I mean sure, bees, but did they understand about nectar? If I make a hive of bees for a month duration the honey should be permanent... the same as the milk a created cow produces from natural grass they eat.
That’s fair on the second one, but couldn’t various mystery initiations (living ghost for example) or even just a fairly strong corpus mage solve the first problem? I mean, it does specifically note that the Bee King dies of a rapid illness at 100. Couldn’t a skilled corpus mage cure your illness? If not, is there a way to get around this besides discussion with the troupe? I’m genuinely curious because I love the Bee King for this character.
Edit: does blood of the bee king have the same death problem?
Discussing anything with your troupe and deciding the virtue works differently is perfectly fine but usually we discuss rules as written and only discuss houserules in light of the rules as written. As written I would never take that virtue for a Magus, if it had the normal aging change that Strong Faerie Blood has then I would definitely take it.
You have a good point, friend, it's a significant downsize, that being said, I'll say that campaigns that last for a century are not everyday campaigns either. Plus the Bee King virtue has fun stuff too.
The minor virtue of Faerie Legacy from RoP:Faerie replaces the benefit from Faerie Blood or Strong Faerie blood with a more powerful version. It's an extra Virtue to take but seems reasonable that it could represent "Bee King + Strong Faerie aging".
I'm a big believer in applying a fair bit of discretion with a character concept. I would say yes to your "can I...?"questions with some caveats.
I've played with hard core min-maxers in the past. A whole group of min-maxers is fine, but if you have 1 guy bend the rules so that they have this overpowered characters who dominates the space, that is a problem. Nothing there seems overpowered, or would have your character dominate the game session.
Others have answered the arts and target level questions, so I shall not repeat those answers.