One of the magi in my saga has decided to make his lab larger, however he doesn't want to have the outside of the building expanded on. So he decided to make a muto terem spell that makes the room bigger on the inside but leaves the outside the same size. As far as I can tell it doesn't violate any of the limits so tell me what you think about it.
From Hovel to Mansion
MuTe 35
D: Sun
T: Structure
Range: Touch
Makes the inside of a stone structure larger than it appears on the outside.
The princible argument is Object of Increased Size, If you can make something biger, why can't you just make one demention bigger and leave the rest the same. This spell would of coarse need to be enchanted on a structure or object that effects the structure. This may need to be changed to individual and just increase the size rather than effect a structure. Anyone have any arguments or does this seem posible?
I would think you would need to have a connection to a regio to do that. You would have to have a way to create a regio inside the room. I think there is a mystery that allows that, but I am not near my books.
Indeed, if memory serves, you need the Hermetic Architecture mystery to do this, and it takes a LOT of work, since I think you need to enchant the effect into multiple devices to properly enchant the structure as a whole.
So the magus can do it only if you haven't got TMRE.
As I know the Hermetic limits would allow even creating Gifts or vis. The latter is reduced to vim vis extraction by the rules but if someone is creative enough he can find unusual ways creating other vis.
Why he wants this kind of lab? Simply because of the more space without being noticed?
If you have Covenants see the warping part.
In 3rd edition we had an underground area that was just that. We never thought about it as a regio, but it might have been that by the current rules. It was a doorway leading to a .... wall full of rusty spikes! To enter it you had to run straight for the wall and jump against the spikes. And you found yourself landing (rather ungraciously) into a large underground forested valley with trees et al, and light coming from nowhere. If you tried to dig a passage to find the valley behind the spikes you found nothing (we tried) escept a small hole in the wall with some moss in it. Pitty the aura was a point lower than in the surface of the covenant or we would have settled there, methinks. We used it for agriculture.
If you decide Hermetic Magic can do the effect without a Mystery (and I am starting to think mysteries are being over used... wizards should be able to do cool stuff, after all), or a regio, the end level seems a little low to me. I might add a couple magnitudes for complexity. Base 10 or even 15 feels more right to me.
Part of me thinks concept of the spell you propose is fine. I agree with RARodger that the level seems a little low for the end result.
I disagree with the posters who think it requires a portal to a regio. Yes, that could be a totally different solution to the situation. But I think that idea is based too much on "science fiction" and fantasy-physics. There is no need for that in Mythic Europe and the medieval paradigm. The house is bigger on the inside than on the outside - of course, it's magic!
Another part of me thinks that you're not changing the house, you're changing all the stuff that goes in and out of the house. That would be a massively complex spell or enchantment, as you would need to account for all the forms at once.
For example, Silenus of Bonisagus (in RARodger's game) created a wineskin that can hold a whole barrel of wine. This is a Muto Aquam effect; it affected ("compressed") the wine as it went into the skin, and the effect disappears as the wine gets poured out of the wineskin.
But that was easy; there was only one element/form affected by the enchantment - Aquam. This approach for your house would be outrageously difficult, unless you happened to have a Minor (Major?) Magical Focus in "making things smaller".
Heh. So if you use an effect to compress everything as it enters, the level will probably be high enough to warp everything that passes through the doorway, and further warp it if it spends time in there.
And a magus passing through with magic resistance wouldn't be shrunk, so he'd be a giant inside the house.
The wineskin idea is neat! But I don't think it'll work for a building meant to hold people as well as objects.
I'm not sure what kind of spell would be applied to do this properly, really. There isn't a hermetic form for manipulation of 'space'.
I've looked through the Architecture Mystery and I can't see anything there that prevents Hermetic Magic from doing these kind of stunts through Muto magic to change something unnaturally.
In fact, I'm working a device along these lines myself just using Hermetic magic.
Well, as I mentioned in my earlier post, the main thing that prevents hermetic magic from doing this isn't one of the Limits of Magic...
it's the lack of an applicable form.
The spell would probably be Muto, to change space in an unnatural way. But Muto what? There is no Form for space, normally.
Normally there's no way to do this with the Hermetic Forms. Hermetic Architecture sidesteps this by manipulating the size of a magical regio. Regiones are Vim, and constitute a certain amount of space, so you can target the regio aura with Muto Vim.
However, since hermetic magic lacks any means of manipulating auras directly, the Mystery of Hermetic Architecture is used, as that does allow manipulation of magic auras.
MuIm is far easier but we don't know the magus's goal.
Ejidoth:
So in theory we can create regios with a momentary CrVi spell?
I think Creo would be better because you create that regio not modify it.
Using this principle you should significantly change the world of ArM, too, because other magi probably use similar spells. It would be very easy to hide these magical worlds from mundanes where magi could do any conspicouos magic without being noticed by the Church.
Is it good to the game? Maybe. Maybe not.
Just like destroying the weight of armor in HoH:S it would be the form of the building, you aren’t casting the spell on the space, you are casting it on the building to give it non-standard highly unnatural dimensions. There seem to be several spells that do this sort of thing. PrTe Can destroy weight, but not compromise strength for instance. The architect mystery does something hermetic magic cannot, alter an aura or regio. We are only effecting the building itself (walls, floor, ceiling) and not the space within, the space is a byproduct.
On another note, now that I've looked at Hermetic Architecture the level seems very reasonable, if you can expand an regio by 200 feet with a level 35 spell I don't see why you couldn't increase an objects dimensions in an unnatural way by the same with a similar Mu(Form) Spell. It doesn't seem that it should be much harder than creating a 100 pace high tower to make a 25x25ft structure (Lab sized) twice it's size it's size on the inside, or at least incease it's lab size to the next catagory in covenents. Then add a magnitutde for every size catagory from there.
As to enchantment, There are two ways I've looked at doing this, one is to build a lab around a small building requiring an enchantment of 24-28 pawns to open (Defiantly going to need a Verditius). Or simply create something that attaches to the wall that can effect the whole room/structure. And just think, you could make your lab bigger in a castle without remodleing.
I don't think this works. Weight is a property of an object. The space inside an object is not a property of the material the object is made out of, which is what muto affects. There is no way to affect the material of the building, to dramatically increase the space inside. Sure, you could make the walls thinner, that would give you a little more room, but not much.
It would be cool to have a lab like this, however I don't think it can be built with standard hermetic affects:
And why not? "By useing muto magic a magus can grant or remove properties something cannot naturaly have." (ArM78) I would say the dementions inside a stone room are a proporty of a room, for a room with no space within to fill is not a room. Magic by no means obays the laws of physics or logic. Mind you what the picture proposes is a bit beyond the scope of my post but I don't think it would be imposible. Thats why they call it magic. If it doesn't violate the laws of magic it should work. Besides, I'm useing the basis of old myths of wizards who travled in caravans, and when you walked into the room it was as large as a house, where outside it was just a small room from the outside.
"By using muto magic a magus can grant or remove properties something cannot naturally have." "Space Inside", hollowness, isn't a property of an object. You also can't use perdo to re-fill a hollow object, destroying its "hollowness".
I could be totally off base, but thats what the book leads me to believe. You could stretch "cannot naturally have" quite a bit though. Imagine Changing some ones dimensions into negative numbers... -4 foot tall, -18 inches wide... -6 inches deep.
An interesting way to look at it, werebore. I don't think the designers intended room-size to be a property of a room in this sense, but I don't see why it couldn't be! It makes the world more magical, IMO, I like it. I suggest, however, to treat the inner sze as the Size of the affected building/room.
This may have far-reaching conseuqneces for the setting, though. Then again, if such "extended spaces" result in warping, their application will probably be relatively rare and limited. Especially as warping affects inanimate stuff too. You don't want to discover, upon removing the swords from the compact armory, that they retain a small size.
Another way to go about it might be to warp space itself. In this I think spells based on Hermes Portal might be workable.
Ah, I knew there would be dire ramifications.
Although you couldn't use Perdo this way, you could only degrade things - much like you can't use Perdo to destroy steel to sharpen a sword. I don't think Creo nor Perdo could affect hollowness, not directly. You could use Rego to control the hollowness, though, and Muto to change it to be, perhaps, green? ... At any rate, treating hollowness as a property sure seems to open the door to trouble.
It's still such a nice, pseudo-aristotelian way to think of things that I'm inclined to allow it. I'd probably hand-wave the thing, allowing it when it's cool and disallowing the exploitive effects. Perhaps a hole in the ground isn't a true property of the ground, but a room does have an "inner space" property in its Platonic ideal, and so this property can be affected via Hermetic magic.
They said "cannot naturally have", not "cannot logically have"
If increasing a regio is lvl 35 than I think lvl 40 would be better for this because you change not only the space but also the walls. A Vi requisite is needed. I would allow +1 size increase to the building. Not lab size but general building size. This should be rather an enchantment because of safety issues.
