Another use for that could be for someone who wants it for quick, basic measuring. Might be worth it to make it unlimited uses/day.
Oh, and possibly make it Conc+Item maintains Conc? Downside of not having multiple sets of light, advantage of being able to shift it around as wanted...
I wanted to make it unlimited uses per day. I just didn't have the lab total to do it as a lesser enchanted device.
As far as conc. + item maintains. You're right. That's almost always better than sun for items. I guess I just wanted to see D: sun used as an option for an enchanted item from me for once. Ranulf wouldn't share my desire for balance. I'll switch it.
Now that Ranulf can (when he needs to) see things far away he'll find a way to make use of this new ability.
He'll invent this one at level 30 (he has the lab total do level 35, which would allow wizard's boosted versions of Pillum of Fire to be given expanded range but that would hamper his penetration and he can't cast both boosting spells himself at the same time)
His talisman stall has oodles of open space. Ranulf's talisman also has seven effects instilled in it and it would take years and rooks to replace. I can't imagine Ranulf choosing to undergo an initiation that involves sacrificing his talisman.
I had considered instilling thaumaturgical transformation of plants to iron instead of Shadow of Spring Times Departed for the original version of Ranulf but I figured that it was a whole lot less interesting and it provided nothing new for the reader. The following effect is basically thaumaturgical transformation of plants to iron with an additional three magnitudes added for additional hardness.
I would add only one magnitude. In existing guidelines, "slightly unnatural" properties are at most +1 magnitude, "completely unnatural" ones at most +2 magnitudes. Making something that's hard as bronze into something "significantly harder then the hardest stone" counts, in my opinion, as giving it a "slightly unnatural" property (a "completely unnatural" property would be making it sing, or making it react to gold the way lodestone reacts to iron).
Personally I wouldn't permit this in my sagas, and if your aim is to be very rules compliant I fear you may be skirting the edge of that.
Serfs Parma, but when you cast a formulaic spell you need to have a valid target for the spell at the time of casting, which you must be able to sense or have an arcane connection to. Suppressing the spell doesn't mean you can change the target later unless you include a muto effect. Items can't muto vim on formulaic spells.
While I'd be fine with any spell whose target doesn't change (Pilum of Fire, for example), I'd not permit a spell like Skin of Wax unless you are intending on casting it on someone who was also present for that original beneficial-aura ceremonial casting.
YSMV, of course. Also - sorry to come to this one late. 
Watching ward contains any spell, even if there is no defined target for the spell at the time of casting.
Xavi
Watching Ward is also a ritual, and there's already a whole bunch of discussion on the validity (or not) of that.
So non-ritual spells that use the same guideline as watching ward are limited. The core book specifically tells us that they're limited because the ritual allows a potentially infinite duration.
Rival Magic tells us "hermetic magic currently lacks a way of binding a watching effect and a spell together without a separate ritual, Watching ward, which requires vis" so from the language it seems pretty clear that Hermetic magic can't do fancy triggering actions.
Kid Gloves notes that casting a spell without a valid target is at least sketchy. Xavi notes that watching ward can do it.
It looks to me from the two sources about watching ward in the published material that the ritual nature of the watching ward is necessary to tie the "watching effect" and the spell together and it "supports its potentially infinite duration". You could say that without tieing the watching effect and the spell together you can't get it targeted. It's possible but I don't buy it. I'm going to leave the character as it is for now (barring a convincing argument). I think that requiring someone who both has finesse and magic theory to let a contained spell hit a distant target is balancing enough.
Thaumaturgical Transformation is base 4 that makes the plants as hard as iron. Ranulf would like his talisman to be harder than iron so he adds another magnitude, I figure this should make the talisman as hard as the hardest gemstone. Ranulf would like his talisman to be harder thanthe hardest gemstone so he adds another magnitude. At this point we've got a base 10 spell. But Ranulf is not going to enchant a second MuHe(Te) effect into his talisman this season so he might as well use the rest of his lab total to make the Talisman even more difficult to damage. This is entirely unnecessary but what else is he going to do?
I suppose he could give it six uses per day and then take an extra four days of vacation
What I'm saying is that this extra magnitude (from base 4 to base 5) should already make something that's as hard as iron into something whose hardness is "slightly unnatural", i.e. harder than the hardest gemstone.
It still stands to reason (or at least it does to my method of reasoning) that the higher the effect base level the stronger the final product. A base 15 or base 70 effect could be designed to do the same thing only more so, analogous to the increasing heat of creo ignem spells. Or do you think that there is some maximum hardness that is reached at say base 5 and additional magnitudes have no effect?
I forgot to post it earlier but Ranulf gets one more attunement on his talisman. The +7 protection from storms is from oak, or +10 to harm lycanthropes from silver are nice just because they're so big but I think he's got to go with the +1 bonus to terram from silver just because its so widely applicable (unless he's already taken it I don't have a copy of MoH with me).
I'd say that if you go into "unnatural" hardness territory - making the item harder than pretty much any mundane material - it seems somewhat pointless to make it even harder. I'd try to instill some other very minor but maybe useful power instead of spending those 5 extra levels on hardness.
Now that he's upgraded his Talisman Ranulf is going to put his new animal score to work helping his good friend Artisano.
I considered invisibility and increased soak but Ranulf can cast invisibility already and he has an opening the intangible tunnel with enough capacity to cast veil of invisibility through it. Even with increased soak Artisano is still likely to be squashed with a single hit so there didn't seem to be a great deal of advantage in spending a season for questionable gain there. Ranulf can now teleport to Artisano and when at his side teleport Artisano wherever he's got a line of sight or an arcane connection. This ability to teleport and the, by this point somewhat impractical but still quite cool, combination of unified flames and (dang I forgot the name of the other spell) communication trick make some method of communicating (such as a pair of words of the unbroken silence style effects) not of the highest priority.
Instead Ranulfs Rego animal total is 48 so he can do 24 levels of effects
I haven't though of the three characteristics of each that the other takes on yet. I'll cover it in a later post (and I'm open to ideas).
Personality quirks
Artisano now finds it unsatisfying to use his ignem powers on a particular fire just once. He is always tempted to invoke a second effect.
Ranulf now typically casts a non fatiguing spontaneous spell to heat any object that he sits upon.
( I should really come up with 2 more for each of them but I'm not having great success concocting interesting quirks)
Ranulf can't use pillum of fire to deal with spirits. His Perdo vim lab total for learning spells is 61
Some spells from lab notes then this season. I figure that lab notes for these spells would be among the most commonly available tests in the entire order.
Dreadful Bane of the Fae PeVi 15
Sap the Griffin's Strength (he uses this name from the Phillipus Niger write up in GotF rather than Dragon's Eternal Oblivion from the write up of Eustace in TOME because Ranulf +90 is much closer to being Philipus' contemporary than Eustace's) PeVi 20
Sap the Griffons Strength PeVi 10
Demon's Eternal Oblivion PeVi 15
his casting totals for these spells are
technique 10
form 22
stamina 2
method caster 3
Talisman attunement 4
so 41 + aura and die roll
with an effective penetration skill of 8 he'll probably get penetrations of a bit over 35 with the level 15's, and just over 30 and 40 with the level 10 and 20 spells. He isn't going to be able to hurt a might 50 creature without some sort of arcane connections but if he uses his +2 intelligence score he shouldn't be coming into conflict with might 50 creatures (that's for PC's not NPC's).
This brings me to the last season of his 90th year after apprenticeship.
One aspect of Ranulf is that he uses pillum of fire for attacking opponents and pretty much only pillum of fire. I had thought that this would be the basis of his squabble with his Mater and the reason he had the tormenting master flaw.
Mater: "Apprentice, you spend too much time and energy with pilum of fire learn a different attack spell or you'll never pass your gauntlet"
Snotty Apprentice Ranulf; "PoF is a spell passed down from Flambeau himself, its been used by generations of magi and I don't need anything else."
Ranulf's mentor then sets him up to fight a fire elemental who is immune to pilum of fire as his gauntlet.
Ranulf defeats the elemental by using Pillum of fire (along with patient spell and boreal flames).
Mater: "you didn't pass!"
Snotty Apprentice Ranulf: "looks to me like I did"
Now I abandoned this idea because Ranulf's teacher should have known what spells Snotty Apprentice Ranulf knew, but in my mind this argument shaped many of his choices. So even at 90 years past apprenticeship his combat plan looks like this.
If there is an opponent respond with pilum of fire.
if there are many respond with multicast pillum of fire
if they are beyond voice range use pillum of fire + wizards reach
if there are many opponents beyond voice range use multicast pillum of fire + group wizard's reach
If they have high soak use pillum of fire + wizard's boost
if there are many opponents with high soak use multicast pillum of fire + group wizard's boost
If the target is warded against fire use pillum of fire +the school of the Founder's advocate
If the target has really really high soak use pillum of fire + skin of wax or hide of wax, and possibly wizard's boost it too.
If the target is completely immune to fire use pillum of fire + boreal flames
At this age he can now use the combination of Stockade of infernos + Mindful Talisman and Parade Ground of Conflagrations or the perdo vim might attacking spells but he'd consider them appropriate for special circumstances only.
So following this pattern the next step for Ranulf would be to enchant his talisman with a duration concentration item maintains concentration inteligo effect to detect the casting of pillum of fire, Then spend two seasons enchanting a linked trigger target group version of Boreal flames with a monster penetration score.
But does that actually make sense for the character? His mentor has been gone for over 30 years, who's he having the argument with? Will learning a different attack spell really make him wrong?
I've got several ideas for what he could whip up in one season. I'll post them later. but I'm also eager to hear suggestions (or arguments for sticking with PoF)
his lab totals for Cr and Mu ig are 98 (he could get a +2 modifier for an unusual laboratory schedule to bring it to 100)
His lab total for Rego ignem is 96 (similar spells bonus could bring it over 100)
I'd like to stick to his focus (unnatural fires).
But there isn't much that can be done with a level 5 Muto Herbam that he couldn't do as a non-fatiguing spont. spell,... unless he takes advantage of range personal on the item. 
He could easily keep up the argument with his perception or memory of his mentor.
No. He might want it on a whim, or maybe he gets it as part of an advantageous trade offering(that would also allow him to learn it much faster).
:mrgreen:
A version of boreal flames that turns the POF into a etheral version of itself ("Fires of the Otherworld"?) might be a more fire-related effect that Ranulf might enjoy. It has the usual problem of low damage of the POF, but it is again a "use ignem to do everything" approach 
Another quirk might be to tend to play with nearby fires when distracted. So he might terrify the tavern goers when he starts building fire castles in the hearth and stuff like that.
A dislike for water, or open water expanses (big rivers, the sea...) might also be adequate
Hope that helps!
Cheers,
Xavi
Can Ranulf use PoF to light a single candle , w/o destroying it?