How about a different approach? Forget about Parma Magica as opposed to forgetting how to do it. Sort of like an amnesiac not knowing they can do something until they try doing it. I like your spell. I'm just trying to think of clever ways to take advantage of it while being able to recover from it. Take a look at Dissolving the Wall of Shields (HoH:S p.70).
I don't think that works, though I'll have to dig to confirm. Creo Vim is an oddball in that sometimes you neither seem to be creating a thing nor improving something, so it's confusing to say the least when considering the Limit of Creation. But there is another method if you're good at Vim. Cast a D: Concentration spell and maintain it indefinitely.
Forgetting that the Parma even exists feels like it would need to destroy a large group of Episodic memories (and is slightly different to Dissolving the Wall of Shields, in that leaves you still knowing you used to be able to work together.
I feel like the closer analogue to Dissolving the Wall of Shields would be erasing the key to the Parma from your mind - you still have all the skills (and can teach it), but you don't know how to unlock them. That's preferable in the sense that he doesn't lose a bunch of xp, but riskier as well, as it's a lot easier for the Suhhar to acquire the remaining information than it is to force someone to co-operate long enough to teach the ability.
Get an enchanted item with Maintaining the Demanding Spell, you mean? That has the advantage (from a story-telling perspective) that there's something for the Suhhar to seek out and destroy. (Can you tell I'm about 50% designing this character as an antagonist for PC sahirs?)
The main thing which makes me think it might be possible as a Creo Vim ritual is the magical shell spells - they're odd, but it is apparently possible to have "magic" as a natural thing created permanently.
I see what you're saying. How about a variant approach. Take a look at Agnosia (HoH:S p.69). Destroy all memories of Parma Magica, but not skill with it. So someone asks you about it, and you truthfully have no idea. You don't remember what it was or anything about it. But you could relearn what it is and then you could use it again. (Hopefully this will work better than my prior attempts.)
Ya, those I see. And they are on items. The level-3 guideline is worded differently as "taint" instead of "create." I'm not sure it's creating anything, nor is it improving anything. But it is Creo Vim. Meanwhile, why should it be possible to permanently put some magic on an item and not permanently put some magic on a person? This is why I said "oddball" and wondering about creating/improving alongside the Limit of Creation. Anyway, as I said, I'm not sure and would have to dig. I just have this gut feeling that it's a little different. I feel like it's along the lines of using Creo Corpus with a ritual and vis to permanently give someone a non-magical +15 to all their Recovery Rolls. Would we allow that?
Rather than destroying the ability he could use muto mentem to change it. Base 4 says make major changes to a person's memory, level 10 says completely rewrite a person's memories.
page 68 of HoH: Societates tells us that hermetic magic can not create procedural memories, like the parma magica ability, but I don't see why it can't change them into false memories, such as some combination of fresh baked bread, enjoyable romantic evenings, and their pater continually harping on how important it is to keep the parma secret.
Or you could implant just a false memory stating that Parma Magica is a virtue that requires a ritual initiation, and that requires bathing in the pure waters at the heart of Coeris to unlock the potential. (Or at Durenmar, or at some other location.) Then anyone trying to unlock the secret also has to break into a House stronghold. Eleutherius could actually believe that initiating into Parma Magica and the Order of Hermes requires you to go to your House Domus Magna.
I want something that he can't easily undo - he'll have enough Perdo Vim that a spontaneous Unravelling the Fabric of Mentem is unlikely to be that hard for him, and if he can be forced to teach Parma, then he can probably also be forced to take easy steps to nullify the thing preventing him from teaching Parma. Things that make him sincerely believe that it's impossible for Parma to be taught without initiation probably work, though, as long as there are safeguards to prevent the next step being "so, I'll pretend to teach them that and there's no risk of it actually endangering the Order".
(Incidentally, I don't think the Suhhar actually have all that much long-duration mind-control magic - but a) he doesn't know that going in, b) there's always the possibility of them finding an appropriate spirit and bargaining with it to do the job and c) there are always less direct methods).
I've been having a think about some of the ways he could get caught (or at least, arouse suspicions) when infiltrating the Suhhar, focussing mainly on the more magical options (rather than just standard "acts oddly" / "says something stupid"). Partially for the Dark Secret, and partially for things for him to develop protections against.
He has magic resistance. This is a big and obvious one - even if he doesn't raise his Parma (which has its own risks), he's still going to have the protection afforded from his Forms (which he can only suppress if he has his Parma up). At some point, someone is going to spot that a spell that should have affected him didn't. Counter measures include suppressing his Parma when he is expecting to have spells cast on him, guessing what they are and faking the effects or (once he knows about them) carrying one of the warding objects that prevent spirits touching or casting spells on him (which presumably includes ones that the Suhhar are chanelling spells through). The Weak Magic Resistance sort of helps here, in that it means his magic resistance is less likely to successfully block something.
Solomonic Astrology may be used to ask inconvenient questions. May be possible to block using Creo Vim shells, but how specifically and after what research?
Solomonic Travel ritual spells effectively give sahir the Second Sight and Magic Sensitivity skills, at a score equal to the magnitude of the spell. The good news is that this will probably kick in relatively rarely (EF 21 - magnitude to detect an active spell, so for Posing the Silent Question, that's EF 17, which is only likely to be possible in a strong positive aura and/or with a high level ritual spell up). The bad news is it's the sort of thing that he's likely to find out the hard way unless he goes for Solomonic Travel early.
If he ever wants to bind a familiar, those bond cords are going to be a problem given all the people with Second Sight. May be possible to block using Creo Vim?
A Jinn he has following him around to help him with his spellcasting notices something it shouldn't have done.
He is actually Gifted, so can exceed the normal limits on unGifted sahirs, and may do so in a way that's obvious. This feels like a first-infiltration problem.
He will already know Sihr, and probably various other stuff, on later identities. Probably dealable with the right backstory (find a reason he already knows Sihr, pretend he doesn't know any of the other Solomonic Arts).
His sigil is a bit more conspicuous than is ideal - after a while, someone may start putting two-and-two together. This may be helped by the fact that for the Suhhar, sigils are effectively linked to jinn rather than sahirs. If the worst comes to the worst he can start using Shroud Magic, but that's a clumsy solution.
Yeah, no reason to target only Jinn with a Mentem spell. And aside from Faerie, you can even have some interactions with mundane relationships also.
I still don't know what would happen with the greater malediction. Sure, you cannot magically force a Jinn to break his bargain, but what happens if that Jinn does not remember it? Not being conscious of the bargain but being forced to fulfil it don't think that it is reasonable.
I think that this forces Jinn out of the bargain and perhaps could have some consequences to them when they start breaking them.
True - I think with other minds it wouldn't necessarily need as high a baseline (it's currently down as a major memory), but that doesn't mean it can't be used on others too. Revised text:
Whilst I agree you could also have fun with the Bargain duration, I think that's outside Eleutherius' main interest (unless your Merinita is interested in exploring it, and wants his help?)
I find this feels contradictory. I can't use magic to make a Jinn break his bargain, but I can use magic to make the Jinn forget the bargain and to create impulses in the Jinn so the Jinn breaks the bargain?
Personally, I would go with something more along the lines of what you sometime see in sci-fi stuff: a robot/cyborg tries to kill someone but cannot because there is a fail-safe in its programming. I would think the Jinn might plan to do something that would break the bargain and would keep finding itself unable to follow through. Being intelligent, the Jinn should realize something is amiss.
However, this doesn't stop the spell from being very useful because even if a Jinn still cannot break the bargain, it's hard for the Jinn to work actively toward the bargain without knowing what it is.
I can sort of see that in the case where a jinn would break a bargain, it might find itself unable to actually do the thing because the Greater Malediction won't let it. What if it needs to positively do something, rather than not do something, though? Worse, what if there are multiple different ways it could fulfil the bargain (but doing nothing will leave it unfulfilled)?
In that case I would play it as agitated to act, just not knowing what to do. It would be a frustrating position to get stuck in. Eventually it would try something that would move it along a valid path.
For his first initiation, he'll probably just end up with the major flaw, as he doesn't know enough to avoid it.
For later initiations, he's going to want to avoid racking up 6 major flaws, because he wants to be able to actually function. This could easily take 20 - 40 pawns of vis, all of one form. Based on the standard advancement rules, he can use a maximum of Magic Theory x 5 pawns of vis a year, so using 40 pawns of vis would require a Magic Theory of 8.
That's actually very doable. It does however make very little sense that he has to pump his magic theory in order to be able to feed more vis into initiations. Do we just handwave it and go with the standard rules?
(Obviously there's also the question of how he explains to the Suhhar where he got the vis from, but I think that's a separate issue).
I don't think so - that would a) be extremely difficult (Solomonic Travel + Magic Lore lab total )/2 >= 2*(Arts: 2 + 5 + 1 + 4+ 5 + 7 + 7 + Second Sight 1 + Persona 2) + Gift already opened 10 = 78, so pretty close to impossible and b) hard to disguise.
I've considered at a later stage trying to find an apprentice (possibly for Aeric rather than him) who's opened to the Solomonic Arts first - that should be more practical, especially if the Hermetic opening is done immediately after the Solomonic one and given the focus in Exotic Magics Pralixians have.
Well, even with Initiation, don't forget you get the prior Ordeal bonus. That's not expected with these Initiations because they're usually for the unGifted, and they don't get a bonus from prior Ordeals.
Ish. To make proper use of that, the Sahir doing the initiation needs to know about it - which he won't if Eleutherius is undercover as a normal ungifted person as per his plan. So I'd expect us to end up in a situation where we're accidentally overstepping the mark (which hopefully won't be too obvious, given Eleutherius' unconscious body is going to be at their mercy for a season), rather than reducing the vis cost.
Congratulations! Who need CrCo to cure someone? Mentem works just fine!
After all, I can take someone who is blind, make him forget that he is blind, and suddenly he can see! Or, maybe your grog's legs have been amputated, but what if he doesn't remember that he cannot walk?
Who needs to fly across a chasm when you can just use PeMe and forget that it's there?
Bound by ropes? PeMe!
This isn't a normal bargain worth its weight in words, but a magically enforced contract. You can forget about it, but like any other aspect of objective reality, it will not forget about you.
That latter stage has a definite period of advancement? It would help to have increased InVi lab total previously. I have to check which is the number that I will have to get by them. Probably a good idea to have a familiar by then.