Yes, I agree. Depends on exactly why you've been Marched and who exactly is most enthusiastic about prosecuting it. Whether or not you still have Hermetic allies is also a question.
If you still have Hermetic allies, then quietly hiding in a friendly covenant (maybe in another Tribunal, but maybe not), with a new lab/sanctum, under an assumed identity may be doable. Risky, of course, for you and your allies. But the magnitude of the risk depends on who's looking for you.
If you don't have Hermetic allies, you'll need to hide somewhere. Remoteness might help, but that need not be physically remote. Hiding in a city, where magi are less likely to go due to the Divine Aura is fine. You may need a new identity and appearance, but only really if you expect to accidentally meet magi who are aware of your marched status. Of course, you need to make sure that your new identity doesn't attract the attention of the Order, or at least attention that is easy to relate back to your original Marched identity.
Whatever you do, the main issue is stray Arcane Connections in the hands of an enthusiastic and competent pursuit. You can never be quite sure that all ACs have been accounted for. Then again, the pursuit may be neither enthusiastic nor competent.
Again, it comes down to who is pursing you, which probably comes down to a question of who you are and why you were Marched.
I was assuming that the magus left no remains, which would excite the paranoia about the death being faked, and leave no convenient check except a ritual spell to summon a ghost that works without remains at the place where the supposed magus died.
If remains were left behind, the approach would instead have been to hit the remains with calmly-cast Intelligo for positive identification. The InCo guideline is level 10 for "all useful information about a body", after all.
Not quite. A Quaesitor, on his own judgment, can unilaterally declare a March against any magus; the Tribunal must review it, but it's hard to un-kill someone who's been Marched.
A March, anywhere but the Theban Tribunal, requires the approval of the Presiding Quaesitor, and generally the Quaesitores respect each other's judgments. So:
-If a magus seeks refuge in another Tribunal, then they're still outcast from the Order and have no legal protections should any magus choose to slay them. If they have powerful friends, that may make the actual slaying of that magus problematic, though, but except in the Rhine Tribunal or another Tribunal where Quaesitores exist at the sufferance of the ruling magi, no Quaesitor will admit them to Tribunal as a voting magus or grant them any rights. Also, interfering with the March is itself a Marchable offense ("the enemies of the Order are my enemies"). On the other hand, it really depends on how much the people who got you Marched care about the whole thing.
-A Regional Tribunal has no authority to March someone who is clearly outside their authority; the Presiding Quaesitor will veto any such thing. If he doesn't, then that would be a Tribunal Story Seed in itself for the Tribunal the Marched magus was in, and in the meantime the magus and his friends will have to defend themselves as best they can against any hunters from outside. My guess is that the Tribunal where he was resident would vote on whether to ratify the March. If they don't ratify it, then it's going to Grand Tribunal, and in the meantime Magvillus is going to want some answers from the Presiding Quaesitor who allowed this mess to happen.
-Thebes doesn't have the Quaesitorial veto, but obviously Transylvania isn't required to abide by Theban decisions, and Transylvania pretty much runs on one-man one-vote (the Tremere Primus is the Man, he gets the Vote). The Theban representative at the next Grand Tribunal had better have an impeccable explanation for this particular brainstorm, or the Grand Tribunal may decide to review the peculiar structure of Thebes' Hermetic Assembly.
-In the highly unlikely event that one Tribunal Marches someone outside their authority, the second Tribunal rejects the first Tribunal's March, and the magi of the first Tribunal decide to kill the magus anyway, then there's clearly a story behind this and the results are up in the air. Will the second Tribunal respond by counter-Marching the first Tribunal's members? Will they sit tight and file a complaint to the next Grand Tribunal? Will the first Tribunal's Presiding Quaesitor still be a Quaesitor, or even alive, once word of this gets to Magvillus? Tune in next week!
Alas, so in your sagas everyone suspects that Flambeau faked his death?
To each his own, but in my sagas most magi are not so paranoid.
And, as I said, if the impersonator believed he was a certain person, so will his ghost.
In any case, note that it's not obvious that everyone leaves a ghost behind.
Well, I assume that means things like "how old is he" or "what diseases he has" etc. - not "is this the body of the maga whom we knew by the name Dominica of Tytalus". You can definitely check that a given body matches a previous "fingerprint", but you need the "fingerprint" in the first place - e.g. by having cast such a spell on that magus in the past. Incidentally, you probably need only a base 5 guideline, since it's a specific detail.
Also, one thing that this thread hasn't said much on is that most Marches are decreed by Quaesitor. So if you have strong Hermetic allies, you might try to wait it out, then appear at the next Tribunal and plead your case. If the March isn't ratified, the Quaesitor is in deep trouble.
You say "paranoid", I say "sane". There's a) an obvious powerful motive for a Marched wizard to fake his death (ending deadly pursuit); b) magic pretty obviously makes it possible to fake (or else it wouldn't get suggested as a tactic); c) a Marched wizard is someone whose actions offended a significant number of people sufficiently enough to convince them it was worth the risks and effort to kill him (or else they wouldn't have tried to get him Marched/gone hunting); and d) nobody sane wants an angry magus out there accumulating power and spending years plotting his revenge (my opinion). So, yeah, in any group of hunting magi, I'd expect the group's exertion of effort to extend to the bother of one ritual spell.
And, sure, I fully expect there are magi who, in fact, believe Flambeau faked his own death. Why do you expect otherwise? Magi don't seem to have any reason to be any less prone to conspiracy theories than any other humans.
And so, for example, you check if the age of the corpse matches the age of the target of the March; remains of someone who died at thirty years old are obviously not the body of a fifty-year-old magus. Even if you take a very narrow view of "all useful information", there's still a lot of things to check.
Can the checks in either case be defeated? Sure. But there are a lot of mistakes to make.
That's a good option. You can also try to appear magically, e.g. by projecting an Imaginem representative or manipulating a body, but that's legally iffy.
While all the points you raise are valid, I think most pursuers will trust their magic to do its job. When they burn someone with their BoAF and his smoldering corpse falls from the sky, they'll assume he's dead. They won't bother checking, because they aren't professionals at this and haven't thought through all the ways a magus might fake his death from their spells.
Which, BTW, means convincingly faking one's death can be rather hard. Your pursuers each have their own magic, and their own sigils, and a Flambeau that freezes you to death isn't going to be convinced by that smoldering corpse.
Tends to be technically difficult too, as Tribunal is "normally" held within an Aegis. So you have to worry about being powerful enough to cast through it.
And if you can and do easily cast spells through the Tribunal's Aegis. Well, that sort of showing off is probably counter-productive, as you are starting to look a bit too powerful and arrogant for everyone else's safety. Kind of makes the case that a pretext should be found to March you for the safety of the Order.
Also relevant, a lot of the times a renounced magus won't get caught in a Flambeau's raging inferno. Because, at least according to canon, most magus-hunting parties aside from dedicated Hoplite groups aren't primarily out to make sure this or that singular potential enemy of the Order is vanquished, they're in it because the renounced magus has spoils that go to the victor, and destroying what are surely the magus's best enchanted items (after all, they're what he chose to take with him, assuming you aren't literally running after a magus bolting out of the room where his Marching was decided) along with the magus in aforementioned raging inferno is not in the best interest of the hunter(s). So faking death actually does need some finesse. (Not the skill called Finesse, I'm talking about- sigh...)
I think of Marching parties kind of like medieval warfare. Knights were highly trained and capable as individuals, but when it comes to war (strategy, logistics, military intelligence and counter intelligence, efficient and coordinated use of different units and arms...) they often were, well, not so professional. Similarly, magi can be extremely powerful and experienced combatants, but they haven't fought fellow magi and don't know how to cooperate in large numbers. (Tremere may be an exception there.) They are trophy-hunters seeking another lion's mane (or talisman...) to hung on their walls, not an army of professional soldiers skillfully executing a battle plan.
Yeah, I always thought of "The Order of Hermes going to war" as being analogous to a bunch of highly-intelligent amateurs with poor social skills trying to implement a beach landing. I think it's a good indicator that the Intangible Assassin chapter of Hermetic Projects is, in many ways, limited: it's what a magus will think of in the first generation of fighting - because the Order doesn't, as a rule, fight other magi.
Or if they do, it's more akin to the "Fighting Styles of the Flambeau" - which are flashy in the individual effects, but more akin to a hunter deciding he wants to hunt the Most Dangerous Game, than a soldier preparing for the battlefield.
One more point- the major draw for magi to go after a marched mage is that they get his stuff if they kill him. If you are marched, immediately get rid of the majority of your stuff and find somewhere to hide, preferably outside the tribunal you were marched in where most magi won't know you were marched or won't care. Have the person you gave your stuff to appeal the march at the next tribunal, and then never look back. When you get to your new covenant assume a new name and claim you have no home covenant or are between covenants and were attacked on the road by whichever group will garner you the most sympathy.
Getting Marched is the single biggest sentence that the Order can inflinct on somebody.
So usually, it does not come as a surprised. The offender is aware of the situation and even if he is not sure of the sentence, he must know that something could go wrong very soon for him. Thus, there are several people amongst the accusers and possibly the defendent that are aware of the dicey situation and I don't see that a March is a complete surprise for everybody. At least half a dozen magus are ready, in the starting block to go for a hunt (or to call allies for the hunt).
It is not like a Wizard's War where the magus has a month to pack and travel very far. As soon as the March is declared, open fire.
So the Marched magus must vanish asap. Allies might delay his ennemies, but they must do that in a subtle way as opposing a March is sentenced by beeing marched yourself.
I don't play it that way. Tribunals are different administrative entities, but it is still a single Order (more like crossing states in the US). Also, it is not like the border were clear cut with a fence or a custom control point. Unless there is a clear geographic feature like a river or a forest, I am sure there are plenty of grey area - which will be only clarified if there is a covenant settling nearby or some dispute over a virtus source.
To come back to the comment, I could see easily a hunting party crossing into another Tribunal (there is no need to ask for a visa or a permission to get into a Tribunal), killed the magus and come back. As long as they did not infringe with any rules, they should have no issues. If during the ensuing fight they endagered some fellow sodales, or deprive them of their power (by accidentally killing a familiar or an apprentice), they will be judge on that infraction alone, but the March should have no impact on the case.
The sticky part is that the Tribunal of refuge might say that they don't consider the magus Marched. It's one Order, but only the Grand Tribunal has jurisdiction over the entire Order.
For example, would the Transylvania Tribunal really be comfortable with a rabble of Novgorod magi pursuing a magus of House Tremere across the Tribunal border? Stonehenge and Loch Leglan (sp?)? Thebes and Transylvania? The Greater Alps and anyone?
I don't think it really matters if the foreign Tribunal hasn't marched the magus. He's been marched by a properly constituted Tribunal, the magi of marching Tribunal (or indeed any Tribunal) are perfectly within their rights to follow through on the March.
Having said that...
Yes, this is a potential issue. I think it just comes down to the specific circumstances, that is: who you are and what you've done to get Marched.
If you've been Marched because you are an insane infernalist (and there is plenty of unambiguous evidence of this), then there are unlikely to be reasonable objections to pursuit and execution across a Tribunal border.
On the other hand, if you have been Marched due to some more nebulous infraction, such as "scrying on the magus Darius", then you might be able to shelter reasonably safely in the covenants of your allies in a foreign Tribunal. Not because the foreign magi can strictly legally protect you, but they can practically shelter/protect you if they don't believe the march is legitimate.
Fleeing to another tribunal certainly isn't automatic, but it can muddy the waters. On the other hand the mages of the new tribunal might just cut you down themselves and then send for your property which they now rightfully own. Especially if you are a raging infernalist etc. Now if you can get to a tribunal which has an impending tribunal meeting or is willing to hear you appeal your being marched, then things get trickier still- if a quesatorus in tribunal A marches a magus, and it is overturned in tribunal B...
... you could wind up with everything tied up in court for a quarter century, longer if it doesn't get resolved at the next grand tribunal...
