I was perusing the Realms of Power: Faerie book this morning out of a desire to brush up on the nature of the fae. While reading, a question just popped to mind, and thought it might be interesting to share it. Bear in mind this is (for now at least) just a thought experiment, not something that has actually happend in play.
The question: Imagine you get an Arcane Connection to a faerie. Is the Arcane Connection "connecting" to its role, or to the underlying faerie?
This question might seem weird or even moot, but consider this scenario, pulled straight from the book (RoP:F p. 15, near-bottom of third column): a hero fights and kills a (faerie posing as a) giant, and later on the same faerie returns in the guise of its brother seeking revenge. Another example, taken from the book as well (RoP:F p. 48, middle of first column): a hero kills a (faerie posing as a) witch, and the faerie (being incognizant) rebuilds its body into her own daughter, who now seeks sevenge unto the slayer of her mother.
In both scenarios, just pretend that "the hero" was actually a party of player characters and that, in the process of "killing" their antagonist, they acquired an Arcane Connection to their enemy. Now suppose for whatever reason they didn't toss the Arcane Connection aside as soon as they finished the fae, but instead kept it around. And once the new faerie appears, they try to use it as an Arcane Connection to the "new" faerie, suspecting it's actually the old one in a new role.
Would the object in question still work as an Arcane Connection to the faerie in its new role?
In other words, do you think the Arcane Connection was "tied" to the role of the faerie, ending its relevance as soon as said role ended? Or to the underlying faerie playing that role, keeping on being an Arcane Connection to said faerie into its new role?
I'm not really interested in whether magi would actually think to use the Arcane Connection or not, since this could come up with a cognizant faerie instead of some player characters. My curiosity lays solely in whether the Arcane Connection would still be an Arcane Connection or not.