So I've cast this spell many times in several different sagas but I'm just now asking myself: why would you need a separate version of The Inexorable Search (InCo 20) to detect a dead body (as opposed to the spell's living target) using the same InCo guidelines for Tracing the Trail of Death’s Stench?
Maybe I just need more coffee,
Thanks,
Patrick
I supposed it depends on whether a living corpus has a different quality from a dead corpus. There is the obvious (alive vs not), but that brings in Mentem requisites that are nowhere mentioned.
Perhaps this is a debated quirk of Hermetic magic? Perhaps it is a psychological wrinkle of magi - do they specify a corpus vivum in the design, out of habit?
Of course, if you have both, and one works, you answer the question of whether the target is alive.
I believe it has to do with howthe nature of Intellego magic is interpreted at times. A given Intellego effect essentially asks (and tries to answer) a particular question or provide a particular piece of information.
Where is this living person? is a different question (thus effect) from "Where is this corpse?" even though both questions fall under the same Form.
Though I don't think this principle is consistently applied in all canon examples and throughout all Forms, as a general rule it seems a reasonable interpretation of spell designs requiring specificity to be Formulaic.
Formulaic spells perform a task that is a subset of the Guideline that they use. Your MuCo(An) 25 spell allows you to turn into a wolf or a cat or a mule; not into any land animal that you can think of each time you cast it. It's probably a judgment call for the troupe whether a spell for "where is this person?" also covers "where is this person's corpse," but I'm inclined to believe that would need a separate spell... probably of identical Arts and level.
This would be why the Similar Spells bonus references "Closely related effect, at the same Range, Target, and Duration." It's a closely related effect.
Where is this (AC specific) body is the same, living or dead. Where is this animal (AC specific) should work regardless of the species or health.
Is The Body Of The Person I Have An AC To Alive is a different spell.
My usual read is that the spell design is a built-in bias.
People shed skin and hair nearly constantly.
Fingernails and toenails get cut.
Then there is big one where digits or limbs are cut off/amputated.
I have always wondered, if your arcane connection to somebody is say a fingernail clipping and then the finger/hand that AC comes from is chopped off, where does the Arcane Connection point to?
There's not some kind of Hermetic Exclusion Principle for Arcane Connections. How are you using the fingernail clipping? If you use it with the Inexorable Search it points to the living body. If you're using it for "Find the Forlorn Arm" it points to the missing arm/hand.
Strikes me as overly pedantic and inflexible. I would HR a player with the spell can do both.
"This is strange. I sense that Targetus is both here and here."
Of course, if you find the amputated, you have a stronger connection to the amputee.
Notably this is an advantage in at least some cases, you learn that the subject is both alive and their location, or just that they're dead(or have too much magic resistance?) As opposed to just their location