The avenue of a thousand beautiful faces, written handwavily

From HoH:TL, the Criamon path of walking backwards, has this power whereby the Criamon can "draw out" positive qualities from animals or things. The description tells us that it can make a horse swift, a field fertile, or a gemstone beautiful, for example, but not a weapon sharp. Uhm. I fail to see why!
There are (at least) two more things that are not entirely clear to me.

  1. How many qualities do things hold within themselves? Since the power talks about each use of the power drawing out one quality, it seems the power could be used twice on a horse to make it both swift and tireless. But ... how about brave? How about fertile? How about Unaffected by the Gift? Can it make armour (more) resistant? How about (more) unencumbering?

  2. In terms of mechanics, how does one translate all these qualities? Is it just some narrative device with no mechanical effect? Is it always entirely up to the storyguide's whim? Anything?

The virtues in the nature of things, which a magus can draw out with The avenue of a Thousand Beautiful faces and The station of exaltation, are always decided by the SG.

So the 'handwaviness' here is intentional.

There are rough guidelines about that 'higher nature', which the player can expect to come out.

The spiritual perspective of the magus is described on p.70. E. g.

The mechanical effects of The avenue of a Thousand Beautiful faces and The station of exaltation are completely left to the SG. The character would likely use it as a way of providing other people lasting examples of the hidden perfection of the universe.

Cheers

Making a weapon sharp increases its ability to be used for violence, which is inapt action, and therefore is unlikely to count as positive from the spiritual perspective of a 5th edition Criamon.

With regards to a horse - horses which haven't been specially bred to be warhorses are notoriously easy to spook, so "brave" or "unaffected by the gift" are extremely unlikely to be qualities that can be brought out. Unaffected by the Gift, as a virtue from RoP:M, may well be on the borderline of being a magic quality, which this station cannot draw out.

In terms of mechanics - completely up to the SG. No two objects or creatures are the same, so the SG can rule that the qualities that can be drawn out vary with the individual concerned.