Good day,
I'd like your help on the spell that would be used to create an arcane connection from an environment to a given object.
For example, we have a traveling stick that I want to be an arcane connection for a rocky mountain side so that I may later use the stick as an arcane connection to the rocky mountain.
I have ideas but I'd like to hear your first.
Thanks,
William
It's impossible.
Oh, someone is sure to come up with the "Never say NO" DMing truism. But really, what's the point? I think taking a stone from the mountain and using it as an arcane connection to it is colorful. Casting a spell to enchant your stick to do it, isn't.
At any rate, if RAW and such considerations don't bother you, I'd suggest a Rego Vim spell to move some of the "essence" of the mountain to your stick. Without looking at the guidelines I'd iamagine something like Base 5, so with R:Touch (+1), D:Moon (+3), T:Part (+1) we end up with Rego Vim 35.
As another suggestion, stick the stick to the mountain. Let there be a Lab Activity that attunes the item to the place, so that it becomes an arcane connection to it. Make it part of the "fix arcane connection" activity, perhaps?
Bury the stick on the mountainside for several years...
Take a rock from the mountain and turn it into a stick...
affix a rock to the stick...
Id suggest (if possible) making the stick's origin be a tree (or part thereof) which grew on the mountain in question and was killed in a magical storm or was caught in the middle of a battle between two mythical beasts of significant might (two dragons perhaps) and died as a result. Then it would quite justifiably be both an arcane connection and a magical artifact all from the same event.
Interesting mundane ideas. All of which follow the munade ways of establishing an arcane connection.
The ReVi (Base 5) is an avenue but after a bit of head banging on the table, I think that the best hermetic way to create a magically sustained arcane connection is via the CrVi
Using the PeVi guidelines I got the following:
Base 5 Create an momentary AC
Base 10 Create an AC that will degrade after a few minutes
Base 15 Create an AC that will degrade after a few days
Base 20 Create an AC that will degrade after a few weeks
Base 25 Create an AC that will degrade after a few months (Ritual)
Ah... that ReVi spell is coming back in my head... Too many options ...
W
Too complicated.
Id go with my idea if you can just work it into the story of the stick's origin.
If not, well PeVi certainly isnt going to "create" anything let alone an arcane connection. lol 
Does the walking stick already exist?
If not, make one from the branch of a tree that grows on the mountain and then immediately spend a season fixing the arcane connection. While some might inisist it would be an AC to the tree, I would certainly allow it to be a connection to the mountain.
If it does already exist I'd take a stone from the mountain, fix it to become a permanent AC and then install it on the stick.
I just envisioned magi going around mythic europe looking for components for their talismans that are ACs to important places. A branch from a tree near the covenant, a chip of stone from Rome, a piece of thread of gold from a Canterbury (or your local archbishropic) tapestry....
Sounds cool! Will suggest that to my players. They (power muchkins in those issues) will like it for sure.
Xavi
Well the real upswing of collecting things for arcane connections is that long distance travel becomes a doddle.
Why waste a season travelling to important places when you can nip there and back again with a handy ReCo spell (provided of course the magus is sufficiently versed in the relevant Arts to cast the spell or create the device to do it).
I just took the PeVI guidelines from the bood and inversed into CrVi guidelines
The goal is that say the stick is already the Talisman of a traveling magus, he would like to have a magical way of tagging along AC without having to pick-up rocks and sticks along the way.
Using the CrVi gudelines I posted a bit earlier, he can use his talisman to collect AC as he travels.
W
Hmm Your saga is your own to do with what you will but I would say that each Technique+form guidelines are already established as written and not open for mixing and matching to suit bizarre desires.
The very purpose of ACs is that they ARE parts of a location, person or obhect and must therefore be physically obtained, not simply imagined and conjured up ex nihilo.
If your magus already has a talisman then I dont see why he can't simply make the effort to go and obtain whatever AC's he might need. Otherwise you end up with the sort of abuse Lucius is having to deal with.
As you add game time to your belt, you will see that this statement less and less true.
The provided guidelines are just that, guidelines. Not all senarios are taken into account. You will often have to base yourself on guidelines found in other Form/Techniques to extrapolate the Base level of new effects.
Ars Magica is often about bizarre desires... magi aren't afterall regular people.
I agree that everything needs to be game balanced in order to keep the fun alive but stating that you cannot create a magical link in-between two objects to be used as AC using hermetic arts because it is not in the guidelines would kill the Ars magica spirit of my troupe. it limiting your troupe to exactly what is in the books suits your troupe well then by all means, keep it as simple as you can.
W
Perhaps I was a bit too legalistic in tone. I certainly am not against flexible approaches to things, far from it.
On the other hand I think there has to be a solid explanation for willy nilly adoption of "whatever suits my whims" or else why refer to any framework at all, just make up your own system as you go along. That approach is fine if you have a cornucopia of game mechanics in your head but if, like me, you do prefer to remain somewhat (and i mean, somewhat) grounded in this system, then I suggest that there has to be a limitation somewhere.
Just inventing ACs out of thin air without needing to spend the time to obtain relevant materials from the relevant disparate locations or entities is just too D&D for my taste.
Agreed.
That is why I added the following limitations:
Anyhow, I agree that forcing players to find a way to convice the dryad to cut a branch of her tree is more interesting than to simply cast a CrVi spell. still, with the Base level established, the CrVi spell needs to be of level 25 or more to be effective. We aren't talking about fresh out of guntlet mages or spontenaeous magics... It's all about balance
W
Imagine if you will that you commission someone like Hondius and Jansson (although they were centuries later) to paint you a map of the known world. You ask for a really big one. Huge in fact. Something that will cover a third of the wall on the first floor of your Mystic Tower. Since this is the 13th century, the accuracy of maps is based more on descriptions than measurements. I don't know if you've noticed it on older maps, but they often had small drawings representing important landmarks, cities and castles. (Check a picture of the Tabula Islandiae map and take a look at the small picture of a vulcano in the centre.)
If one then uses the rules from covenants about library indexes as arcane connections:
And modify it to functions for some other symbolic representations (like the map), and lo! you have an instant travel map. That might of course be too simple a solution for most folks, me included, but one could easily say that each and every connection would have to be fixed as per the rules for fixing arcane connections:
This would make the process much less convenient, cost a lot more money (having to pay the cartographer for a very long time), demand much more work and dedication, and be a whole lot more fitting, thematically. So even though there are no straight up rules for how it's done, as long as it fits with the theme, and isn't too easy, it should be doable.
But if we stick to the stick (... sorry), then for each area you'd want an Arcane Connection to, you'd carve a symbolic representation.
Afterwards, all you'd have to do would be to fix the connection in your lab.
Personally I'd allow this approach, but since these sorts of things should
require some accuracy, the magus would have to carve the representation himself and also have been to the area in question. I would on the other hand allow it to be a simple representation (the one needing a 9+ to create).
Those were my 2 assses.
PS: Great to be back!! 
Nice solution d31! I think I would also allow such a method for its ingenuity at the very least
To take your map analogy a bit further, I might suggest that the way to ensure true symbolic connection to each country (or locality for smaller maps) would be to obtain the pigment for each (country/locality) from that place. Then to further enhance the connection, commission the cartographer to draw each (country/location) in that place itself.
This would of course necessitate some considerable cost on the part of the commissioning magus or covenant but hey, you get what you pay for .
Have the pigments made from a special arcane recipe which included 1 pawn of Vim vis for each pigment (SG or troupe could determine the mixture ratios and quantities) and you would have suffieicent justification to say that the ACs would last long enough for the map to be completed (a work of several years of full time dedication) so they could then be fixed in the lab.
I like it.
Thanks BoXer, but it seems I have been stupid. Or at least forgetful. This effect is basically described in Ancient Magics, in the Hesperides chapter. Pages 90 and 91.
Silly me... 