Marching of Magi

I also have this thought of an unpopular magus who somehow dies of old age and in their belongings are a number of unused charged items with leap of the homecoming.

Regarding setting up in another tribunal that would depend heavily, I would imagine, on the reason they were marched. For example an English mage marched in Hibernia for interference with the hedge traditions there could probably find it relatively easy to resettle in Normandy. Intertribunal feuds may well exist as well which could allow for such shenanigans. This could even lead to a tribunal asking for its march of a wizard to be confirmed at the grand tribunal in order to force the issue if it is important to them to the point that the won't accept mere exile from their tribunal.

Hibernia does not march; they exile ... altogether a better solution for everybody involved.

(OK, maybe they march in exceptional cases, but if it is that exceptional, I am sure it would be recognised overseas as well.)

Pretty sure if they exile you and you don't leave its the same as being marched. But it was just one example based primarily in the Hibernal tribunal being an outlier on so many points of the code that other tribunals would not agree with.

I stand corrected.

However I would still argue that most marched magi would likely make a break for it and leave, likely as soon as the vote has passed and their marching is inevitable, which gives them all of the time left until the tribunal ends to leave. Yes some magi will fail in their flight but some will also succeed.

I think it is also quite likely that some magi will know beforehand that they have committed a marchable offense and/or read the political climate in the tribunal so that they have a good idea if they will be marched or not. In a situation where a mage knows that they are very likely to be marched at tribunal they probably wont show up and will instead go "on a journey" some time before the tribunal and simply fail to return.

In other words I stand by my original assessment that a large fraction of marched magi will succeed in making a break for it and some of those who do succeed in making a break for it will also succeed in escaping pursuit altogether.

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You definitely have more chances to mount a successful defense and avoid a march if you show up at your trial. Exile, unless you're confident about your ability to hide and having left no arcane connection behind, seems like a grim option for most magi. But yes, if you've done something so grave that you know if you're condemned, it's automatically a march, you're quite likely to avoid the tribunal altogether. I probably wouldn't show up if I knew the crime I'm being prosecuted is killing members of the Order outside of a wizard's war, for example. But I also expect tribunals have ways to detain members of the Order until their trial if the accusation is grave enough that a March is likely.

Somewhat tangential to where this thread is but it seems to me that creating a corpse is relatively simple (getting away with it from magical investigators may require a bit more forethought) so I figure at least one magus over the years has fooled those involved that their body has been incinerated or whatever.

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I love the idea of a mage having a "trap" in their sanctum that just spawns corpses of their every diam, day and night, non stop once activated.

Completely useless but seems amusing. Maybe a little too Richard Sanchez...

I could also see an ongoing hunt for a marched magus who kept using created bodies to escape and buy time so they never realized when they found the real body that he was actually dead.

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After a few times, one would have expected them to catch on maybe, but...