I would like Laurel, my slightly bonkers Merinata with the cow familiar, to do some original research along the familiar lines. it suits her as she's bonkers enough to try original research, loves animals, and is a merinata (the house that originally contributed familiars).
What I/ she would like to achieve is beyond current Hermetic limits. She would like to get mundane animals, and make them magical via a ritual/ new mystery. This could revolutionise familiars as magi would only need to find a mundane beast that they would like for a familiar rather than struggle to ever find the magical equivalent. Initial research aims to merely give a creature a mere 5 might (IE: just enough to make the creature magical enough to bind as a familiar).
Please can people advise our troupe on how difficult a breakthrough they would make this?
Could you simply use a combination of the 4 methods of gaining warping to warp a mundane animal up to level 5 so that it gains a minor mystical virtue.. at which point it becomes a magical creature and can be Familiarised?
Would just really need a sequence of highly magical effects cast on it. 75 in total to take it to a warping score of 5.
If you cast 1 a day you'd have your magical animal within a season.
I don't agree that it becomes a magical creature. Becoming a magical creature involves acquiring might. I don't think that supernatural virtues in animals provide might any more than supernatural virtues in humans do.
One place to start with your research might be Creo animal rituals that create magical creatures (look at the guidelines in the core book). Researching a few of these using the research rules should give you the points that you need to develop your breakthrough.
Because Hermetic magic can already use rituals to create magical animals I think that any abilities to change an existing animal into a magical animal should be comparatively easy to pull off (i.e. lower level than creating a magical animal from scratch). On the other hand you're arguably violating the law of essential nature so perhaps it shouldn't be easy. (Could this be a path to immortality for Bjornaer?)
I've had a rethink, and think that a high level CRAN spell could be the way to go with this instead of original research.
In the rulebook, it's a little vague with the guidelines: CRAN 50 is to create a magical animal.
If I wanted to create a versatile spell that could create any magical animal of up to +2 size, would this be a CRAN 50 spell or would it be even higher than this?
Well you have to look at the base size for Animal, which from the last sentence of the introduction to the Animal spell section is listed as +1 (pony sized). So to create a magical animal of plus +2 to +4, 1 magnitude more must be added for size, making a level 50 base into level 55 base. then you must add +1 for touch, +1 for the Vim requisite and +1(at least) for each requisite Form for whatever powers you wish to install. Then you have to have 1 pawn of vis for every magnitude (and fraction thereof) of the final spell level.
Making a magical creature with a momentary Creo Ritual gets verrrrrry expensive very quickly.
You probably would be better off going for a breakthrough and perhaps focus the research on an expansion of the Merenita Nature Mystery "Awakening"(pg 104, HOH:MC), which already offers the possibility of giving a magical creature natural intelligence so that it may either be enchanted or bound as a familiar.
If you seek to enlarge this such that the Merenita initiate could, hereby, also bring forth the natural magic of a suitably exemplary mundane specimen (or infuse such with the natural magic of its environment) then you would have only to modify the initiation script or invent a new Mystery that takes care of infusing mundane animals with Magic Might and learn it in conjunction with the existing Awakening Mystery.
Actually, "Awakening" already allows you to do this. The example given is awakening the leader of a pack of wolves. The creature has to be an exemplary version of the animal in some way, but it acquires a magical might score if it didn't already have one.
It seems that all that is needed is a breakthrough to fully integrate this mystery into Hermetic Theory.
True, I did miss the subtlety of that reference. However, if a mundane beast is chosen, however exemplary of its species it may be, the formula would then focus on a process of imbuing it with natural magic from its environment rather than that of raising any latent natural magic within the beast to the fore. IMO that is.
The way the formula speaks to me in this case would be:
This would, in view, take into account the size of the beast and the aura (normally two distinctly differing formulaic elements for different foci according to the text) in a manner properly reflective of the objective of infusing Magical capacity into a subject.
Example: The leader of a wolf pack at Size -1 (or even an overly large specimen at human size 0) native to a magical forest with an Aura of 4 would generate a target Awakening Lab total of: 25 + (-1 + 4)*5 = 40 or 45 if creature size is 0, which must be equaled or exceeded to succeed. The resulting Awakened wolf would have a might of 20 (aura[4]*5).
I think that proves a reasonable and fair formula for making mundane beasts into Magical ones, IMO.
Indeed, in which case any Magus could then use not only their MT score instead of Nature Lore score but could perform this process (with respect to beasts at any rate) in their labs rather than being forced to perform it in the wilds.
