Preparing for Wizards War?

I see.

Suppose then, one week before the end of the War, I cast on him a R:Touch, D:Moon spell (that will then outlast the War by two weeks). The spell penetrates, and takes effect. It's a complex Rego Mentem spell that forces the victim to act in an increasingly cowardly way, so that he initially just flees the War but at the end of the spell (almost two weeks after the end of the War) he just commits suicide instead of facing the terrible world that's out to get him. Really a nasty thing. Since the spell penetrated before the War was over, and I did not touch my opponent after that (so I could not exert any control on the spell), you agree that I'm innocent?

I really think it's the other way round; Flambeau and/or Tytalus (I can't remember) would simply not agree to swear the Oath without the provision of Wizard's War. But I don't think it's really relevant.

Ah, but here we are arguing exactly that: what constitutes operating outside the declared Wizard's War period. I still subscribe to the idea that if the dagger leaves my hand before the War is over, it doesn't matter if it finds the heart one day, one week or one year later: I have not taken hostile action outside the bounds of the War. But it seems we are not getting very far, so I'll just assume there will be different positions about this at the Tribunal.

I think it's fairly evident what I was stating earlier on. If you deem some lethal aftereffects lawful, and others unlawful, the situation degenerates into a very complex mess on which everyone will have different and typically unclear opininions. Which is actually very medieval, and good for stories, mind you.

I think my position has the advantage of utter simplicity: anything that would still hit the opponent if you completely forgot all about his existence the instant the War ended is fine - it can't be considered an action taken after the Wizard War was over. Sure, it makes Wizard Wars scarier but again, that may be a good feature.

I don't think I can convince you. I also do not think you can convince me, because I can't find in your positions the consistency I'd want from a solution in order for it to convince me. So hey, let's disagree :slight_smile: But thanks for the nice discussion.

OK - let me ask you this, then: in boxing, it is permissible to give someone a long-term concussion while fighting them in the ring. However, it is NOT considered permissible to punch them in the face after the bell has rung, even if the punch has started: you are expected to, if you are able to, pull the punch. If you are literally unable to pull it (ie, you were just inches away from his face when the bell rings), then it's not a foul. But if your punch has just barely started in the rotation of your foot and hip, then you can be penalized.

Do you agree with this ruling in Boxing? If so, why or why not?

I would refine this slightly, and just say that effects have to start before the end of the War. I'd be OK with an effect that, say, made your opponent's Sanctum invisible for a Year, as long as the effect started during the Wizard War.

Yes, entirely legitimate.

Yes, the aggressive founders wanted the right to attack people, but others wanted to place limits on aggression...so that the Order could actually function. This is entirely relevant to any question of what the "spirit" of the Wizard War provisions is.

If the primary point of Wizard War is to allow magi to kill each other then some inventiveness about the timing might be tolerated.

If however, the primary point of Wizard War is to protect magi from being killed/maimed/etc outside of a Wizard War, then most magi will be more interested in it being quite clear when the Wizard War is over, and unlikely to be enthusiastic about any clever timing tricks/legal arguments that make this ambigious.

In the book examples you give, the actual, physical harm: that is, the deprivation of magical power, occurred during the Wizard's War. The magi in the regio was just becoming aware of it when he stepped out. Similarly, the harm of aging occurred during the Wizard's War. Additional harm occurred as a consequence of natural aging.

In contrast, the actual, physical harm of the delayed spell did not occur during the Wizard's War - it occurred however many years afterwards. The actual harm of the assassian killing you or the kidnappers stealing your apprentice did not occur during the Wizard's War - it occurred afterwards.

Suppose instead, that one week before the end of the War, I cast against him another terrible spell, that summons the Beast that Hunts at Night and gives it a D:Moon irrevocable order to Hunt a target. The Beast is an evil thing, that tries to draw the Hunt as long as possible, teasing the victim. Only when the spell is about to expire (in this case, two weeks after the War was over) does it attack with a terrible PeCo effect that invariably kills the victim.

Since the victim's MR is tested only at the end of the Moon period and thus almost two weeks after the War's end, according to what you said above, you should condider this spell unlawful. But I fail to see a practical difference compared to the spell above.

To avoid such scenarios, I would personally rule that no: all spell effects must stop on the rising of the Moon that signals the end of the Wizard's War. Up until that point, you can do whatever you want. But after that, you must pull any remaining punches, and stop doing additional harm to your now-ex-foe. Now - were it an INSTANT effect that permanently changed his mind (Perdo Mentem "destroy will to live")? I would rule that you stopped doing damage the moment the spell stopped - and that everything beyond that is a natural consequence of the modified mind.

Similarly, the "stabbing them in the gut one second before the War ends, then letting them bleed out and die right afterwards" - the damage occurred during the War, and thus is covered. The natural conclusion of that damage is that they die soon afterwards. Which you are not responsible for.

In contrast (with the assassians) - no damage occurs during the Wizard's War. Thus you can't claim "oh, the assassians are just the natural consequence of damage that he took during the War". Similarly: the books were not lost during the war, and the apprentice was not kidnapped during the war: therefore, you can't claim that their loss was covered by something that occurred during the war.

I see. Whereas if, instead, you had conjured a little mouse in the library, that subsisted on a piece of cheese until the end of the War, and thereafter on your cowardly opponent's books - completely ruining his library by the time he returned from the regio ... that would have been unlawful (since the damage took place after the end of the war), right?

Well, I"m not quite sure how you'll manage this without some form of Rego Animal "control mouse behavior" effect, but yes. You are under an obligation to stop damaging Wizard's property that isn't yours when not in a Wizard's War. The mouse is yours. It is damaging a Wizard's property. You are not in Wizard's War with that Wizard. Therefore you are guilty of damaging the Wizard's property.

The trick, of course - is proving that a random animal that got into the sanctum is the offending magi's. So unless the mouse has the magi's sigil carved in its forehead, they'll probably get away with it if they keep their mouth shut. But yes - they are responsible for the behavior of that mouse. (EDIT - like any owner of an animal or apprentice is.)

Conclusion: control your summons. You are responsible for their behavior.

You just need to smear cheese onto the pages of the books. It works. People have used it to destroy forensic evidence :smiley:

Sorry I gave that impression. It's not mine. It's just a mouse that was wondering around the covenant of my opponent, kept welllocked* out his library. I just moved the mouse into the library. No magic is active after the War is over.

Nope. The mouse is guilty of damaging my opponent's property. I just let the mouse in (ok, and baited it with the cheese) but I did so while I was still at War with my opponent!

Why am I? I just let a random mouse in.

As I said, I just took a random mouse into my opponent's library during the War.
Ok, and I smeared his books with cheese. But I did it all while I was at War and my opponent had cowardly fleed!
And the Tribunal would condemn me for that and not for burning the library down?

I worry that you are not seeking to understand, but to draw finer and finer distinctions.

That's a good one, no doubt. It would depend on the mood (and sense of humour) of the Tribunal. But since your action (to put mouse-bait on a book) continued to do damage after the war was over, yes, I think there is an argument (if not a slam dunk) that you - via the mice you invited to eat the book - are breaking the code. Not 100%, maybe not even 60/40 - but the argument is there.

Gun and bullet, E.

You shoot an arrow, hiiiiiigh into the air, and walk away. Someone walks into the scene. The arrow lands on their head and kills him.

Did you kill him, or did the arrow?

I say you did. You seem to suggest you did not.

No, E.

You are saying that - that's why you can't find those words in any of my previous posts. :wink:

The action caused the wound - and that's the end of that action.

"The wound" is not the same as a mouse. No "additional damage" is being done, your "action" is over - the target lives or dies, yes, but not because of anything continued that can be attributed to you outside the period of the WW.

This is materially different from leaving poison on a table, which is an attack, "an action", that has not been resolved, or mice that continue to act as a natural progression of your action (which cannot be said of "a wound", which has no volition of its own). And poison, while it has no volition either, is is an act still in motion - no one puts poison "near" someone and says "that's all". Unlike a wound, where that it, in fact, all.

There is no additional "cause" (that is outside the WW) to the cause-and-effect of wounding and dying. If 100% of the action is within the period of the WW, then any later fallout is - probably* - not a matter for Tribunal.

(* I can imagine possible exceptions, that may require a judgement call. And, sorry, no - I won't suggest them to you.) :laughing:

Cause-and-effect can be traced ad absurdum from anything to anything that follows, but it's the ultimate expected result of the action itself - the arrow in flight - that is what counts.

Perhaps that's part of it - reasonable expectation.

I'm actually trying (without much success) to understand your positions. The fact that they are different, and each answers the case made for someone else, doesn't help. But I'm having a lot of fun!

Let's recap, and see if I got it right.

If, during the wizard's war, I smear cheese on my opponent's books, so that a mouse devours them after the end of the wizard's war, I am guilty! Damage continued after the end of the War! (Well, I guess a distinction was made, depending on whether the mouse belongs to me or to someone else).

If, during the wizard's war, I smear poison on my opponent's skin, which opens wounds through which his life slowly bleeds after the end of the wizard's war, I am innocent! The smearing ended before the end of the War!

Right?

(Sorry, cross-edit - will first re-post above...)

So, if you shot the arrow before WW ends, and it hits after - guilty.

But if you shot before, and it hits before, and the target dies after of complications - innocent.

The difference? You may have hoped for the complications, but they are not within your reasonable expectations. The arrow was your action, not the infection weeks later.

Almost.

With the mice, there is a reasonable expectation that the damage will be ongoing well after the initial act - guilty.

With the slow-acting poison, would be sophism to claim that the poison is still "your action" after it has been introduced into the body of the target. (Possible, but I wouldn't buy it. Altho' some Tribunals might question why you chose the "slow acting" part...) The mice are effectively your active agents - the poison, once inside the body of your target, is not the same.

This is materially different than leaving, say, fast-acting poison which is consumed after the WW has ended.

In both poisonings, the target dies at the same time - but it's unacceptable for the actual poisoning - the action - to have occurred after the WW ended.

Me too! :laughing:

Oh, I did all right. But when did I commit my foul murder?
Suppose the guy killed me before the arrow landed on his head (so he got what he deserved, after all).
Did I commit murder before or after I was dead?

That's the whole point. I shoot the arrow before the end of the Wizard's War. The arrow literally leaves my hands before the end of the Wizard's War. Then the War ends. Then the arrow hits. Some time later the guy dies of the wound (yes, it wasn't an instant kill).

Am I guilty of committing murder outside of the framework of the War? In my view no. My action was the shooting. In my view my action ends when I can no longer abort it. After that there are only consequences of my action. When the arrow leaves my hand my action ends. The hit is only a consequence of the action. The death is a consequence of the consequence. The fact that I knew, when I shot the arrow, that it would hit the target after the end of the War just means that I knew a consequence of my action would affect the target after the end of the War.

I fail to see the difference. I really fail to see how the following is reasonable.
During the War, I introduce a mouse into a library that wreaks damage after the War ends. Guilty!
During the War, I introduce a poison into a body that wreaks damage after the War ends. Not guilty!

Gotcha. In that circumstance, what occurred is that you just smeared books with mouse-bait. That ruined them even before the mouse got to them, so the point is somewhat moot. :slight_smile:

However: that point by itself means that the potential for damage after Wizard's War is ongoing. You need to undo your actions so that NO FURTHER DAMAGE occurs. This is why using summons (such as your example with the Hunter, above) or with the mouse are questionable activities: you can't control them, and in particular you can't easily turn them off when the War is over.

What it sounds like you're saying is "this sort of damage isn't easy to turn off! Therefore it's OK to use it in Wizard's War!" My response is, "No: that's why it's NOT OK to use such spells in Wizard's War - and using such uncontrollable spells is a good way to get punished after the fact by the Tribunal."

In this case? Make a reasonable attempt to inform his sodales that you smeared cream cheese all over his library. They may not believe you, or they may not be willing to let you enter their friend's sanctum. But by making a reasonable attempt to undo your actions, you can say you made a reasonable attempt prevent any FURTHER DAMAGE. (You could likely get a Gernicus to accompany you into the Sanctum, to ensure that you only removed your Cream Cheese bait, and nothing more.) Alternately, accept the fact that you may be punished for your actions, and don't use long-term, uncontrollable effects in Wizard's War again.

A similar effect would be "use Perdo Terram to hollow out the area underneath the magus' sanctum, so that in a season or two it collapses." Ignoring the fact that such an attack is an AoE effect, and thus would damage the Covenant (rather than just the magus' stuff), you had a reasonable expectation that the FURTHER DAMAGE would occur after the War was over. Thus, you have a responsibility to fill in the dirt (with a Creo Terram ritual) before anything untoward occurs. Or offer to hire someone to do it and provide the vis, or something like that.

My take on it: If the poison is still in his system, continuing to do damage? You're still liable. Conclusion: don't use poisons that stay in someone's system, continuing to damage them for weeks on end. It's a bad idea for Wizard's War, as there's too much (temporal) splash damage. If you use a poison, make sure it's a fast-acting one that kills them (or does whatever) within the confines of the month.

If the poison is flushed out of their system, but the damage is done, and they end up dying of renal failure? You're not liable. So you don't need to clean up your damage - but you do need to clean up sources of FURTHER DAMAGE.

EDIT - this would be the difference between a poison that does damage-over-time (ie, "a light wound every morning for 3 weeks"), and builds up damage, vs. one that hits you once ("Causes a heavy wound once"), but kills you when you fail to make the recovery roll.

Wizard's War is conscribed by space (you can only attack your target, or his stuff) and time (only within 1 month). All the examples of Wizard's War spells (such as Intangible Assassin) are all spells that have short duration and target only a single magus. There are no area effects, and there are no delayed effects. Personally, I take this as evidence that AoE and Time delay effects are a bad idea in Wizard's War, due to the fact that they break the limitations of time and space imposed by the Code.

The problem with this interpretation, and the reason most magi would immediately turn it down, is that it means you are never safe if you've ever been at wizard's war.

Sanctum blows up at dawn two years later... "Oh, I set up an explosive spell during wizards war so that it would go off when they were unprotected. That's fine right?"

Sanctum blows up at dawn two years later, and it's someone else's sanctum by that point (the old mage moved): "Oh, well I set up an explosive spell in my enemy's sanctum. It's not my fault this other mage was there."

Okay, this thread got bogged down in some boring legal mumbo jumbo. The primary goal is to survive, the secondary goal is to make sure the enemy does not. Worry about legal problems later. I am more interested in strategies and tactics of the battlefield, not the courtroom.

While I agree that the first goal is to survive the War, if I were a mage my second goal would be to avoid getting Marched immediately afterwards. Killing the the enemy seems a distant third :smiley:

I really enjoyed the discussion about the legality of aftereffects; and it's central to the topic because it defines which strategies are viable and which are not. I think it's not too difficult to ignore posts on this if one is not interested.

Well, you could argue that you are never safe anyways. But more importantly, it seems very hard to guarantee that you have no nasty surprises after the War ends, even with the most restrictive interpretations about what you are allowed to do.

I mean, what if your opponent loots your secret vis stash without you noticing, and you only find out a year later when you need the vis against some nasty critter? Or say you surprise your opponent in your sanctum, setting something up. As he shouts "Wait! If you kill me now, you'll never ..." you kill him. But you'll perpetually remain with the doubt that there's some boobytrap hanging there that he might have disarmed after the War ended. And ultimately, the Oath does not really bind dead magi; I expect most villains Marched or killed in a War will have some nasty "vengeance" effect ready to assault their slayers, possibly many years later.

Ah, no, that's very very different. Bystanders are always protected. It's your responsibility to avoid causing grief to others, which is indeed a reason why "delayed effects" are risky, in the same way that shooting an arrow at a far-away target is risky (there's a good chance of hitting an unintended target). Risky, but not (in my opinion) outright forbidden.