Spirit magic rules queries

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

I'm playing around with spirit magic ideas and have two queries.

  1. We have the canonical minor virtue of commanding spirits in Legend of Hermes (one of Fortunatas mysteries). Would this apply to a spell to summon a spirit. I mean you are effectively commanding a spirit to come to you. But on the other hand, the spell guidelines have command and summon as two different things. Would you allow it to apply to wards against spirits (commanding them not to pass), bindings (commanding them to stay put) or would you define this much more restrictively? Could it go the other way and apply to almost any rego spell affecting a spirit (since magically you are controlling it in some way).

  2. HoH:S under the Tytalus section has the spell Coerce the spirit of anger and the summon the spirit of anger. These spells do exactly what it says on the tin. This implies you'd need a different spell to summon/coerce a spirit of lust, then another for duty, and so on and on. My impression from the main guidelines in TMRE though is that a single spell of Rego Vim should be able to command any magic realm aligned spirit (with obviously a similar spell to summon them). Which is correct? The titanoi version implies a spell for every different type of spirit and is useless when your spirit master encounters a spirit of a different type, whereas the TMRE version seems more as intended. Can anyone shed some light here?

2
  1. I'd say summoning isn't the same as commanding. This is supported by stuff like the Goetic Arts separating the two.
    2.) The spells used by Tytalus in the example are ReMe, not ReVi, which seems to require more specific spells - i.e. it's suboptimal but Tytalus Mentem specialists are probably more common than Vim specialists.
3

I hadn't even clocked that the Titanoi spells were mentem. Good catch although I believe the point still stands, albeit modified. Are the titanoi capable of creating a general ReMe spell to control intelligent insubstantial spirits, or do they need a spell for rage spirits, another for lust spirits, another for duty spirits, etc?

4

Hard to say. They definitely need a spell specifically for ghosts (precedence), and mentem magic seems to be specific to emotions - you need a different spell to affect rage, another to affect joy, etcetera, rather than a single spell to inflict any emotion you would want. So mentem spells to affect spirits of emotions end up having to be as specific.

5

My take on it would be that you can absolutely create a more general spell - but it's then (more) difficult to apply it specifically - either you get potluck as to exactly what emotion you summon the spirit of, or at best you need a finesse roll.

That's more of a problem for summoning spells than controlling spells.