In my Saga I had a demon in female form trying to seduce, entrap and corrupt the player Magus who is currently the Covenant’s Princeps. She got found out earlier than expected but the players were so wary of dealing with her immediately they left her alone and went for backup. Being rather experienced in infiltrating, the demon realised she was rumbled almost immediately and is intent on escaping, but not without seeding trouble on the way out in revenge. Like leaving evidence that the troupe’s Flambeau helped break into the Vis stores.
I gave her a couple of odd abilities. The first is a time saving cheat, in that she can speed up several dozen times and do the work of a couple of hours within a Diameter, but only so long as no mortal eye sees her cheating time. This requires too much of her Might to be used often. She made an exception for revenge.
The other power is she can corrupt documents by re-arranging the written words, in a sort of drag and drop on modern computers.
She had access to the covenant library and got some of the original letters the Princeps wrote that had to be copied to be distributed by Redcap to various Covenants. She re-arranged the words and got rid of excess ones so that letters written by the Princeps hand now convey a different message, in the Princep’s own handwriting.
The troupe has retrieved one of these corrupted missives, and under the Merinita’s very good Second Sight roll they got an impression that shadowy greasy fingers had slid across the vellum smudging words.
However, what should I expect if such a corrupted letter is examined by Hermetic Magic?
What they be able to undo the corrupted letter, by returning the words to their original places?
Basically the players have managed to throw me some curveballs in their ideas, and for something like this I would like to prepare by hearing other people’s screwy ideas.
First take a look at TME p.99 Limitiations of Hermetic Theory wrt to handling written text. Finding the real intentions or shape of a scrambled text requires InMe on the author - to whom the text may still be an AC or not.
Whether the fact of demonic manipulation of a written text can be found out with InVi is another issue, depending on a demon's nature and intentions.
Perhaps I phrased that incorrectly.
I was asking if the physical re-arrangement of the written words could be detected/undone. To demonstrate that the original document was different.
That would also depend on the means of the demon to change the writing. Physical deletion and overwriting would leave traces on the parchment: medieval scribes could detect and track these. See palimpsest.
If it’s parchment, there’s an InAn 5 guideline to “learn the origin, age, and history of something made of animal products”. A level 10 spontaneous Touch, Momentary spell should give the whole game away. Read across for InHe if it’s paper or papyrus.
Interesting. Can it determine that these ink stains (aka words/letter) were once somewhere else on the page?
Every single word was penned by the player magus. The demon has moved the blocks of text around so that the message has a totally different (and more harmful) meaning. I expect that Hermetic Magic should be able to tell that all the writing was produced by the player character (how long does the Arcane Connection need to last?). But can Hermetic Magic tell that the document contents has been re-arranged?
Though I have already said that a good Second Sight roll saw signs of greasy shadowy fingers swiping at individual words.
The spell guideline says that you learn the history so I would interpret that as “what happened to this”, not necessarily as comparative before/after details. Up to troupe opinion, really, but I’d probably allow it with an extra Magnitude or something. Particularly since [at a comparable level] InHe 4 gives “all mundane properties…”; the text before & text after are certainly mundane properties of a sheet of paper.
It would be an interesting question whether CrHe 15 “Restore a manufactured wooden item that has been damaged to the peak of its capabilities” (or equivalent) could restore the text to the original. The rearranged text is certainly a downgrade in capability from the text’s original intent, after all. (Or, it could wipe out all the text leaving blank paper with peak capability to be written on.)
We have a canon spell for this:
A Simple Test for the Completeness of Books
InAn(He) 15
R: Touch, D: Mom, T: Ind
Req: Herbam
This spell allows the magus to check the physical condition and history of a book. It also, through the Herbam requisite, allows the magus to test the quality of the plant-based inks used in its creation.
(Base 5, +1 Touch, +1 requisite)
Source: Covenants, 100
I would say that the history of the book tested by such a spell would include being modified. How much information you want to give is up to troupe approval, and much like Hyalus, extra magnitudes here, or applied sensory magic (T: Vision) would help. With a R: Per, T: Vision spell, I would likely allow the magi to visualize the initial and the altered text (e.g. visualize the history of the change). A clever magi might color-code his sensory input to distinguish old alterations from recent ones. This might be useful with a heavily glossed book where you would have difficulty distinguishing between useful glosses and the demon's work.
I tend to apply the Limit of the Infernal to spells cast on the demon or its active effects. So if the demon had an active spell to corrupt the book, this spell would not detect it, but if it rego crafts the ink, I think that can be detected, yes. Intellego Vim wouldn't detect infernal traces for that spell though. But if they know a book has been tempered through other means, I don't see the problem. As long as the effect is really gone, I don't think the demon has any obfuscation that would block the spell anymore.
Yep. Craft magic would result in a palimpsest indeed, which even a craftsman like a scribe could analyze. The problem is, that this demon's 'time magic' and hence also its remains has not yet been described here. In other words: How much is this demon bound by the laws of creation? Could angels work "time magic'?
The “angel” over St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Mythic Locations has time-related powers. However, what the demon @Ivgreen has appears to be more like Faerie powers to quickly do work… very much like Rego craft magic. But it looks like the specific power to corrupt documents works differently than that; more like physically rearranging the text.
I may have been influenced by stories of a politician justifying actions based on words out of context, as well as stories of AI’s hallucinating legal citations in court cases, when I dreamed up this devilish seducer.
I gave her a couple of powers that make a lie by taking things out of context.
If no mortal bears witness against her she can lie about how long it takes to do a couple of hours of labour (usually only used when her wrath outweighs her sloth).
And the power to take the words in a written document out of context so that false narrative prevails (a process that takes a while to drag and drop the words).
It does remind me a little of the demons that eat knowledge out of books left open. Tiny things with large teeth and noses? How did their power work again? Would they be suitable as a model? I feel as if their damage was irreversible, though, as they were literally breaking the connection between what was on the page and the knowledge that it used to express.