The Covenant of Caepernum: Eleutherius of Tremere

I'm going to be pragmatic about it:
One rule says Might 10 is the lower end of the range. It may not be an iron-clad rule, it could be more of a mention of typical range. I mean it doesn't say "Might can never be lower than 10"?
Another source has an example of a Might 5 Jinn, right? But no rules saying this is ok, just na example - which in theory could be a mistake or oversight?

But the important thing is: What does it matter if Might 5 is ok?
Does allowing Might 5 cause an unbalance, are some things going to be too easy or is there something abusive?
I'm afraid I don't know enough of what Eleutherious is doing to judge that.

There's a Rule saying it's okay in another source, HoH:S, which directly contradicts RoP:M.

The main reason it matters is that due to the way Summoning Strength works the Might of the Jinn you're working with is effectively subtracted from your Lab and Casting totals. (For Ungifted Sahir having Might 5 Jinn available is less useful than for Gifted Sahir, as Ungifted Sahir reqauire a Jinn of Might at least equal to the spell they're casting / learning, whereas Gifted sahir can use any jinn.)

It sounds like a balance issue, and I'd always err on the side of caution - and tend to not make things too easy.

But does enforcing a minimum of Might 10 for Jinn cripple the Ungifted Sahir, making their magic too difficult?
Or will allowing Might 5 Jinn make things too easy?

I believe level 5 might Jinn must be acceptable, as tC&tC gives level 5 Naranj examples (which only require a level 5 jinn for an ungifted Sahir to cast through), and also gives the example of Bali' Al-Ard, a faerie might 5 jinni that takes the form of a stallion on page 65. In fact, the description says "He is an example of a potential khadim (servant spirit) of a beginning ungifted sahir with only limited scores in the Solomonic Arts." If the example given by the authors for a beginning sahir is only might 5, then might 5 really should be available.

Obviously this leads to a situation where different sahirs summon wildly different Jinn depending on their strengths and weaknesses - Gifted sahir want weak ones for the lab so they can add a lot of summoning strength to the lab total, but ungifted need strong ones to cast their best spells; everyone who wants spells to penetrate needs the strongest they can summon; people wanting to study from jinn want the highest magnitude they can persuade to stay around for at least a season (and preferably a year); and everyone wants jinni with useful powers - a courier wants Bali' al-Ard's instant travel, but a landowning sahir might want one with powers over soil, an alchemist one with powers over liquids and flames, and an adventurer wants ones with the flexibility of Focus powers to handle things.

Regarding forms - As the 'Afrit in the bottle is an Imaginem Faerie Jinn, Bali' Al-Ard is Animal, Jumayl is Vim, Kharrat is Ignem, Baghl is Terram, and the Ighaq al-Siq (p130) is aquam, it would appear the elemental forms, Vim and Imaginem are all fine. As Herbam genii loci are given in RoP:M, perhaps you could get Herbam jinn with woody forms too.

Funnily enough, the Gifted Sahir gets the greatest advantage from low-might Jinn.
The Ungifted need to cast their effects through a Jinn with a Might score no lower than the level of the effect - the Gifted can make up the difference from their own power.

Learning naranj appears to be almost* strictly harder than learning an Hermetic spell of the same level, because of the requirement to subtract the Might of the jinn. It's not as bad for Gift sahir, but Ungifted sahir appear to need to triple the level of the naranj with their Lab total to invent something from scratch in a single season, or double it if they have a lab text. As Tellus commented, it's Gifted rather than Ungifted sahir who are most affected, as it means they have to subtract 10 from all lab totals rather than 5 (whereas Ungifted sahir are only affected if they're trying to create level 5 effects).

My overall feel is that letting sahir have Might 5 jinn isn't going to make sahir too strong, just reduce their handicap.

*There are a few minor tweaks to this, such as the fact that sahir get to add two characteristics to the lab total rather than just one, are better at working together and can boost their lab total by spending vis at a rate of +2 / pawn, but at the base case they're going to be significantly worse off.

I don't think the existence of level 5 naranj inherently means Might 5 jinn must exist - you can learn and cast them through Might 10 jinn, it's just harder. I agree the existence of Bali' Al-Ard is one of the arguments for Might 5 jinn existing (although I think part of Tellus' argument was that he was a Faerie jinn, and therefore didn't necessarily imply Magic jinn of similar Mights existed).

One of the things I do like about the way the rules play out is that there are good reasons to want jinn with a variety of power levels. Note that you can only study an individual jinn once per subject, though, which reduces the utility of summoning them for a full year.

I think different Realms may tend to have different Forms (albeit with overlap).

Sidestepping the minimum Might question for now (does anyone have any more thoughts / questions?), here is a draft of the stats for the most powerful jinn Eleutherius has learned the a summoning naranj for. Note that there's a good chance that he hasn't actually summoned him at the moment, as he's at the limits of his ability and expensive in vis.

Edit: Added Ruler of Earth to listed powers.

Another Jinn. This was originally going to be a falcon, but the concept mutated a bit during creation.

Will you be collecting the jinn (or at least links to them) in a single post at some point?

I hadn't been specifically planning to, but I agree would make it easier to find things. I suppose really the sensible thing to have done would have been to have an initial "summary" first post, but a bit late for that now. I can edit it in at the bottom.

That would be awesome.

I have been reading a bit about Solomonic Astrology. It is a momentary effect that gives information to the sahir. I don’t see a hermetic guideline that can be used to give false information, and counterspelling it with a Perdo Vim effect exposes the counterspeller. So I thought... what about a spell that gives a penalty to all Solomonic Astrology castings inside an specific structure (a building). Eleutherius could cast it before entering the building and all astrology attempts would get a casting penalty. Bonus points: you could imaging a wise comment from Yoda at that point talking about how dark are the paths of the dark side and how difficult is to see their purpose. I don’t think that sahirs have magic resistance, so even if the spell is taxing, you won’t need a lot of penetration.

What I'd had in mind was the CrVi General guideline on pg 157 of the main book - Create a magical shell which gives false information about the target to Intellego spells with levels less than half its (level plus one magnitude). I'd then had in mind a spell (possibly a ritual like Shell of False Determinations) that could be cast on a target (for example, Eleutherius), that would make any astrological divinations cast towards them give false answers automatically.

Shell of False Determinations seems very open ended, but it feels like you'd have to feed the spell some sort of information about what the false result would actually be. In combination, that suggests that the spell design is open-ended, but at the time of casting you specify what the false information should actually be.

So using the example Naranj that Eleutherius developed, "What is the Nature of [Target]'s Loyalties?" (SoAs 15), a level >= 30 ritual (or a higher level temporary spell) SoFD equivalent could be cast to always return the answer that the target was loyal to the Order of Solomon (and would also work for other SoAs spells in the same vein) - but the same spell could also be cast to provide a different answer to other questions.

There's also some possibilities for the easier guideline to just block spells, although that's probably less useful in most circumstances because magi at least can achieve the same effect via magic resistance.

However, you're right that Perdo Vim spells to give people penalties to casting totals could also be very useful. I think it's more useful for Solomonic Summoning than it is for Astrology (although it's not useless there either), as that way you suddenly find yourself wasting large amounts of vis in failed summonings / finding yourself bargaining with a much smaller bargain modifier than you were expecting.

It's the sort of thing I want to cast on the annual Majlis, but I'd settle for a bayut al-hikma.

The problem is that... as written, that guideline only foils Intellego spells. There is also this in the general text of Vim:

"The guidelines below refer mainly to spells. This is for the sake of brevity, as Vim spells can affect magical effects proceeding from magical items, magical creatures, or demons."

If you can affect creatures' effects, I suppose that you also should be able to foil other things, but with creatures is so easy to discern what is an Intellego effect because the effect is constructed as if it were hermetic. Are all Solomonic Astrology effects assimilable as Intellego effects?

What about Perdo Mentem spells with duration? You could wipe your true allegiances for sun duration and recover them at sunfall. It seems more effective than the Creo Vim shell, that needs to be of very high level to work prperly

I suppose I'd been thinking of an analagous guideline rather than strictly that guideline.

It depends exactly what you mean by "assimilable as Intellego effects" - you might not be able to exactly replicate some of them as a Hermetic spell, but as divination, Solomonic Astrology seems pretty Intellego-y to me. If it helps, Hermetic Divination (pg 59 of The Mysteries: Revised Edition) is explicitly stated to "provide results equivalent to casting Hermetic Intellego spells of any Form".

I think Perdo Mentem spells could cause unintended consequences. It's not entirely clear to me whether loyalty would come back automatically at the end of the spell duration or not; associated memories definitely wouldn't. If he were going down that route, Muto would probably be the better choice (except that then he's loyal to the Suhhar for the duration of the spell, which could cause all sorts of problems). They're also blunt enough that he'd have to apply them selectively, which means there's a high risk he wouldn't have it up at the appropriate time.

It's an interesting question, what happens to the person while his emotions are changed? If his loyalty is changes from OoH to an other organization, you would need to work for the other side while the spel lasted. If his loyalty to OoH was removed for a time, what then? His memories of being part of the Order is still there, so he knows what side he is on - he just doesn't feel anything for or against ir?

It's been a while since I've posted here, but I haven't completely forgotten about the project.

I'm now leaning towards having Eleutherius learn Solomonic Physic during his second period rather than my original plan of Solomonic Travel. The key reason for this is that most of the stuff I want to do with Solomonic Travel is too high level for him to learn easily, so I want to learn more Summoning first. Solomonic Physic is also attractive from a point of view of being vaguely combat capable (and at first glance for the Sahir's longevity stuff, although that can actually be made with any of the main 5 Solomonic Arts).

A few ideas for the next period:

The Market Place's Gossip
CrMe 15
Imparts the trait "Gossip +2" onto the target for the duration (or modify an existing trait by +2) if they fail a roll against EF 6. This spell is designed to be held whilst carrying out a conversation. Note that the personality trait created could be +5 whilst remaining at the same level; however, Eleutherius wanted to keep the effect relatively subtle.
(Base 5 + 1 Eye + 1 Conc)

I'm also considering statting up the following jinn, who has one potentially contentious aspect which I thought I'd run past people:

Rwh Shifa' Alma' (The Spirit of the Healing Waters)
This jinn is the genius locus of a pool noted for its healing powers.

In addition to giving it the Healing ritual power, and probably a Chirurgeon's Healing Touch equivalent and some version of Noncombatent, I'm also considering giving it the Lesser Benediction (minor virtue) the Eider Ducks of Virtue have (pg 60, Mythic Places) - namely, being aligned to Divine auras as well as magical ones. The idea would be that in the past some holy man blessed it for the aid it gave to mankind / him.

I'm trying to work out whether this works for Jinn. My biggest problem is that spirit of a healing pool seems more or less by definition magic, but magic jinn are more or less by definition pagan (or at least, largely ignore Islam). I'm not therefore sure how much sense it makes to have one that's been blessed by a miracle.

No one has said anything, so I've had an initial go at statting out the healing pool jinn.

The inspiration for the character should be fairly obvious, although she's not currently intended to be the spirit of the actual Pool of Bethesda. I'm not entirely sure about the physical manifestation at the moment - I really want her to "manifest" by animating an existing body of water, which would also make the change in its movement when she's meditating fit better.

One thing I've rather belatedly twigged: it's actually relatively easy for even fairly young sahir to summon powerful jinn if they know their true names.

If you have a true name, you can invent a summoning naranj which is only level 5. Casting this should be trivial.

Penetrating with it is slightly less trivial (you need summoning total + Penetration Bonus > Jinn's Might), but still not that hard due to being able to multiply your penetration score by 6 due to knowledge of the true name. You can also spend an extra 15 minutes, a long term fatigue level and take an extra botch die in exchange for a +5 Penetration bonus*.

The fun bit is then successfully making a bargain with the Jinn. That's going to need a total of:

Comm + Bargain + Summoning Total - Jinn's Might vs EF 18 + modifers.

Actually reaching a successful deal with a high Might Jinn (rather than just annoying it by wasting its time) is therefore going to need a lot of modifiers. But hey, accepting a bunch of heavy duties couldn't possibly go wrong, right?

Edit: *Actually, the +5 to penetration might only apply if you're doing the summoning without using a summoning naranj. You can still get a pretty decent penetration fairly easily using the multiplier, though.