Mental Illusions

Salve Sodales,

Quaesitor Helios Excelcis, in the year, did have the misfortune of being caught by a spell woven by the witches of Vezay as the sun set. Subsequently, he fathered a child by this folk witch. This caused him to interpret the Code in a somewhat looser way than he was accustomed to, and when the child was born, the young witch who was the mother showed the child unto Helios as had been agreed, and then returned to her forest home to raise the child as a witch, never to be seen by Helios again.

Except Quaesitor Helios Excelcis is not having any of that.

This entire issue, if you excuse the unintended pun, has put Helios through a mental wringer. He wanted to burn the witches for the indignity they exposed him to and their failure to see merit in joining the Order, yet cringed at the thought of slaying the mother of his child.

Now that he has been told that the Gift manifests in all children conceived by the Witches in this way, he has other plans.

It is now 1228 AD. He wants to test his young daughter's acumen by posing her various riddles and puzzles that only she can see, as if she had entered a strange world of questions, tests, and mystery. After he gauges whether his child is worthy of his attention, he may steal her from her mother the Witch, and take her as an apprentice at some point in the future, or find her a Hermetic Master best able to instruct her if she shows any quirks to her Gift.

MY question, at this point: illusions only one person can see - Creo Mentem or Creo Imaginem?

PS: I love Ars Magica, especially this most recent Saga, now in it's second year, that I'm using a "story seed jambalaya" approach with. Never have I gotten so much use out of so many books in a game's line...

Vrylakos

1 Like

I believe for single-person illusions you actually have both options:

You can shoot species directly at the person's sense organs so that others don't detect them. In this case, Creo Imaginem. The rules for this are detailed in Houses of Hermes: Societates, in the Jerbiton chapter.

Or you can create sensory species directly in a subject's common sense, thereby causing them to have the delusion that they are seeing something that isn't there. This is detailed in the Creo Mentem Guidelines sidebar in the Philosophiae chapter of Art & Academe.

I think the Creo Mentem one works out to being a magnitude or so more difficult, for what that's worth.