Note that Warding is described as an Accelerated ability, so it is improved as an Art. It will be easy for him to raise it to 15 or even more over time. Expect him to have an Affinity in it, with perhaps Puissant as well. I wouldn't be surprised to see a very high Stamina.
So he could easily start with a Warding total of 20-25 right from the start.
Just so you know. 8)
Ah, yeah - it was the Circle/Ring warding (whatever it's called) that I was referring to. The flaw is that you always have to mark your target, correct? Eh, I'll take a look at it tonight. (If I go that route, he'd probably have some sort of minor magical Imaganem device that temporarily marks what he points it at with his sigil - as otherwise, that's a pretty hefty limitation - essentially being a "touch range only" hermetic flaw.)
I missed that. Well, that makes it more powerful. I'm still not worried though. The other magi can simply use their PM to defend.
OK, took a more deep look into the Columbae Major Supernatural ability, as well as their Major Hermetic flaw. And while I can certainly taste the flavor, the necessity of ALWAYS having to mark your target simply doesn't fit the character concept. Ah, well.
Edit - although I just noticed that my spell list will probably stay the same - would you rather I get rid of the Airy Spirit command/control spells? Conceptually they still work (spirit summoning being the inverse of spirit warding), but you mentioned that you'd prefer not to have that as a central concept.
Are there stats for these spirits someewrhere?
RoP:M, p.103 to 107.
As Arthur pointed out - Airy spirits are essentially spirits that live in the natural world; as opposed to Daiemons, which are instances of a larger spirit that you pull from the Realm of Magic. A genus Loci is an airy spirit, for example: it lives in the location that it represents. Pretty much any "spirit of the tree/mountain/lake" is an airy spirit.
Conceptually, he knows the 2 spells (summon/command) in order to test his wards. In terms of utility, it would likely be used to interact with any local genus loci, and as an alternate way of interviewing witnesses during investigations.(ie, interview the ground upon which a murder occurred, etc.) The information itself probably isn't as useful as what you can get from a human witness, but it can act as a supplement - time of day (maybe), number of feet that passed over it, how heavy they were, and so on.
Later on, he may also get into elementals (probably earth elementals) - mainly for guard duty, if he feels the need and/or actually finds any that have naturally been created.
Are those spells ypur work or are they canonical? I'm asking because I am surprised that it is just one spell and not one for each form (airy spirits of air, of water etc.). Kinda like the wards against fairies.
RoP:M p.111 lists the guidelines used to develop spells affecting airy spirits. It has guidelines for both Form-specific spells and general Vim-based spells affecting airy spirits of a whole Realm.
This is much like the circular wards against fairies, which can use either Form-specific guidelines or the general Vim-based Realm-specific (faerie) guideline.
In a way, you can see most faeries as Airy Spirits of the Faerie Realm.
I need a night to read up on them.
Yeah, I always found this distinction to be interesting - what's the difference between a dryad (farie) and a tree-spirit (magic)? Ultimately, I think the answer is "What's the local aura, and does the spirit inherently care about humanity?" If it's a farie arua and the spirit cares, then it's a Farie. If it's a magical aura and the spirit doesn't care, then it's magical.
I've decideed to okay your airy spirit spells.
Groovy. I've been doing some research in the Stonehenge tribunal, and decided that the character is from Nigrasaxa (as it was the only Covenant that had a bonisagus in it) - which conveniently has a 4th Edition starter kit adventure, including massive personality write-ups and libraries and what-not. (atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/nigrasaxa.pdf).
Convenient backstory ho! I'll see if I can get this formalized tomorrow. (Also, I may change up the spell-list slightly, to have an InVi effect that works with wards - simply because it's thematic and sounds appropriate.)
However, the basic is probably just what I did in my intro: brilliant apprentice, managed to get an integration off, but cheesed enough people off in the process that maybe everyone thought it would be better if he took a few years away from the covenant - and then his paren went into final twilight (which is one of the plot hooks in the starter adventure), which kicked the covenant beehive over; and when the dust settled, St. Avery was at the new location. Note that none of the magi at Nigrasaxa actually hate him - in fact, they're mostly rather fond of him. However, they'd like to be fond of him from across the English Channel for a couple of years. Or decades.
Update:
Moved his spell list around a bit - dropped Intangible Tunnel and Maintain the Demanding spell, and replaced them with an InVi "hear magic" effect. The theory is that this spell is the one that allows him to wander around the countryside, listening for hedge magic to investigate. (In reality, he can only cast it for a few minutes at a time, as it's just at the edge of his casting capability.) Also, I figured that his paren would teach him the spells that he COULDN"T just whip up by himself in a season.
Shifted his Flaws around a bit. Removed Indiscreet (major story), replaced with Honest (minor character), small frame (minor general), and mentor (minor story). "Honest" gave me most of what I wanted out of Indiscreet, and I determined that he was physically slight (although tall), which Small Frame fit. Also, I wanted him to have positive connections with his previous covenant, so I gave him Mentor - in-game, this represents a number of people that he's on good terms with, but in game mechanics, it works just like Mentor does - a group he can call small favors on, but they'll ask small favors of him as well.
Added in his reputation.
Added in his perseonality traits.
So, some questions, based on what I plan on doing:
A. Folk Magic (from TSE, pg. 123) - it's essentially greek folk magic, but it can easily be universalized to any folk magic tradition. It's essentially a minor virtue that allows otherwise non-magical folks to cast minor ceremonial effects, using Realm lore. There's no specific Integratoin here, but based on other Integrations, it would probably end up being a minor integration that allowed a magi to add their Realm(Magic) Lore to Ceremonial castings and lab work; an additional minor integration would allow the magi to add it to Formulaic casting.
B. Second Sight - pretty common, and the Integration is described in HM, pg. 52. Note that this would require 90 Breakthrough points to completely get though, so it's a nice long-term project, but perhaps not one I'd care to start with.
C. Immunity to the Gift - while this is a general virtue, its effect on the Gift could be studied for possible Insight; I mention it because I've got it in St. Avery's backstory that his family has this running via the 1stborn matriarch (ie, his grandmother, mother, eldest sister and his eldest niece all have it - hence why he has such good relationship with his family: they don't collectively hate him.)
D. Fertility magic - or, he could study his own family to try and figure out how Immune to the Gift is being passed down. This would likely grant Insight points into Fertility Magic, via Ancient Magics.
E. dowsing - while Intelligo effects are already integrated, the ranges of Dowsing aren't. This would likely a minor virtue that allows a variable range, based on the success of the spell roll. Or alternately it would allow magi to use a sort of improved spontaneous use of In(form), if they have a sympathetic connection. Note that dowsing doesn't currently fit into Hermetic theory, as it affects things that you can't see. (So basically the "I use a sympathetic connection to find the nearest instance of X" is actually a pretty interesting thing to study.)
F. Visions - an interesting way to study the Limit of the Divine, or at least gain a better understanding of them.
G. Animal Ken - almost completely integrated, except for the lack of Warp that the effect seems to not cause. Possible insight into reducing that.
H. Enchanting Music - can probably be studied for the Hearing Sensory Magic aspect, as well as the whole "play while you cast magic" virtue (whose name escapes me.)
I. Premonitions - another instance of breaking the Limit of Time that's really common, yet no one seems to be studying it.
J. Wilderness sense - likely would Integrate into Hermetic Divination.
In flipping through the Faith & Flame book, it seems as though culturally the Provencal tribunal has a lot of Troubadors. So I'm guessing he found a decent number of Enchanting Musicians in the area. Also, there's a tradition of sponsoring troubadors for a season or two, during the winter.
Therefore, I'd like to propose that his first research project be investigating Enchanting Music both for Performance Magic (Instrument/Singing) and a limited version of Sensory Magic (sound) .
I'm not sure how difficult Performance Magic would be to investigate; it seems pretty low-impact, but it is represented by a minor virtue; I'm thinking 20 points for a Minor Breakthrough (minor breakthroughs are usually 30, but this really is a pretty low-impact ability).
Sensory Magic is discussed in 2 locations; in the Bjorner section of HoH:MC (pg. 27) where it's described as a minor House mystery; a variation is also in the Gruganch section in Hedge Magic (pg. 78), where it describes how the Grugach can set people on fire behind closed doors by shouting at them.
The Grugach version is more powerful, and is explicitly a Hermetic Breakthrough (and requires 60 + 60 Integration points); in contrast, the Bjorner version is presented as the full realization of Sensory magic that the Founders just didn't get around to fully integrating, and isn't presented with any specific Integration requirement. I'm guessing that it would be 45+45 (a major breakthrough) to fully integrate all of Sensory magic; However, he's only going for Sound, so I'd call that a 15 +15 for full integration.
With that in mind, that would call for 50 Integration points over 7 years; assuming ~5 integration points per Insight, that will require 1 or 2 insights per year.
Sources:
What he'd likely do is build up a backlog of insights, by investigating Enchanting Music for a year - on the assumption that some Insights will be similar enough that he can stabilize multiple Insights in the same lab season. (ie, if he gets 2 ReMe effects, he can possibly stabilize both in 1 season, rather than doing them separately.) Once he had those stabilized, he'd go to Duremar, and trade out for Bjorner lab texts, and repeat the process.
I was looking at this spell to put it up on the wiki. I don't think the guideline can work with R:Touch. The example of a similar spell that I can see is from the Tytalus section of HoH:S (p.99), Summon the Spirit of Anger. The spell uses R:Arc and can be cast either with the name of the spirit, or uses an angry person as an arcane connection. Either case, the spirit is targeted through an arcane conneciton. There is simply no point in summoning a spirit that you can touch -- it is already in your presence.
It does work, but you have to be in contact with the spirit so that's risky and limits it's usefulness.
Airy Spirits, I believe, sleep in their physical repositories - as such, you summon an Airy spirit of a tree by touching the tree, or the spirit of a Glen by standing in the middle of the glen. At least, that's my interpretation. Although I suppose they aren't ALWAYS in their repositories - so it may not work all the time.
As such, the spell would be more correctly named "Awaken the Airy Spirit", rather than "Summon the Airy Spirit".
Or alternately, you cast it through an Arcane Tunnel.
To use it in conjunction with a summoning circle, you'd have to have the circle be right next to the repository - so it ends up being a 3-foot teleportation; from one side of your body (the repository) to the other (the circle).
I do agree this is a bit dangerous - mainly if there's an unexpectedly-powerful Airy spirit that he open-ends high on the Summon/Awaken roll, but doesn't have a ward strong enough to hold it.
I guess summoning a spirit that you have to touch to summon is not what kevin had planned. I should have seen this myself.