I think the implication of the current rules is that one can't precisely target the fetus at an early enough stage of development to have the sort of dramatic targeted effects that Fertility Magic allows. One can certainly warp the fetus and get weird and unpredictable results. I'm having visions of a Covenant of Dr. Moreau that's trying to make a Fertility breakthrough.
I don't think any of this affects the results of the rabbit or dragon breeding question. My view is that Muto makes temporary but real changes to all mundane features of the target, leaving only a mystical "essential nature" that can only be detected by magic but which will, when the spell expires, cause the target to revert to its original form. If this is true a person transformed into a rabbit should be able to mate with other rabbits and produce normal (or perhaps magically warped) rabbit offspring.
Other posters seem to feel that Muto isn't powerful enough to change a being's reproductive system. I hope I'm not misstating this view. I don't see any basis for this exception to Muto.
From a game balance standpoint, unless the gestation period is less than a month we're talking ritual magic requiring vis. With vis one can Creo a magical being with a whole lot less trouble, so I'm not too concerned about the balance implications.
Thats if you want to target only the child. The child is a part of a mother, thus any spell that affects the mother affects the whole of the mother, including the child. To target only the child requires a higher magnitude. To target the mother, including the unborn child is target Individual at no increase. The quote from Ancient magic says the child is a part of the mother. Reversion will happen when the child is no longer a part of the mother, which is birth.
A separate Muto spell is cast on two Individual targets , such that each individual is male and female respectively of the same species.
Hermetic Magic would be breaking The Limit of Time if it could affect the bodies of possible future offspring.
You can only affect the future by making changes in the present.
Pretty certain this does not mean that you can affect the future of unborn humans to be rabbits ,
if their parents are rabbits and the mother gets pregnant in the present.
While the parents are rabbits , any breeding they do will produce only rabbits , which die as soon as they are born
because the magic sustaining their existence ceases.
Lets take this a step further and transform a human into a fruit tree.
We then propagate that tree asexually.
.
Each seed will be an unborn copy of the parent.
Do they transform into a human foetus , if the spell ends?
We grow hundreds of the seeds to maturity , in under/near Year duration.
When the Muto spell ends on the original human , will we have hundreds of identical humans as well?
Hermetic Magic cannot affect Souls.
If the offspring of humans as rabbits produces rabbits that are transformed humans , with souls ,
then this seems like some kind of violation of God's Plan.
Learned magi and philosophers would probably debate for centuries whether the offspring was soulness or not. Since Hermetic Magic doesn't provide an answer, the issue might never be resolved.
Daring to apply my own logic rather than any quoted sources (I fail at medieval academia, I know), I would house-rule as follows if the situation came up in my own Saga:
The muto effect - for the duration of the effect - is a real change. Thus, if you turn an apple tree into an orange tree then for the duration of the muto spell, any newly grown fruit on the tree are actually oranges. If you harvest them, you have a basket of oranges. They -may- be oranges with the virtue 'apple juice' (which is like faerie blood, but more ... apple'y), but oranges nonetheless.
When you start throwing humans into the mix, the progeny of such are indeed human. They even get souls, because souls are granted by God, not by the interaction of sperma. However, they'd also very likely get a whole raft of flaws too, because their creator (the magus) was toying with things that man was not meant to toy with.
So yep, if your maga -really- wants to MuIg(Co) her hearth fire into a man and get pregnant, I'd say 'you're weird!' Then I'd write up with some stories about a child that spontaneously causes fires and has a bit of a 'want to burn things' streak.
Sure it is, but it can NOT change essential nature. So if you have 2 humans Mutoed into rabbits, you have the essential nature of 2 humans producing offspring.
Normal? Probably not. Offspring, yes.
Say hello to the origin of werewolves and shapeshifters perhaps?
How about turning dragons into rabbits and breeding them. :mrgreen:
one year later
-Oh buggers, we´ve got a plauge of dragons!
Yup, weirdness galore is my general answer as well.
As long as the spell is active, the "orange tree" does produce oranges, even if they´re really apples which will probably turn into some sort of apples at end of spell.
By my argument if you turn dragons into rabbits they breed real rabbits, so all you end up with is a bunch of strange mutant rabbits. I agree with your other point that magic is going to warp the unborn.
It's the opposite argument -- that the offspring revert after the Muto wears off -- that would give you a plague of baby dragons. Ouch.
The idea that the progeny remain unchanged after the muto effect wears off is definitely what I was driving at.
Muto apple tree into orange tree
Wait for oranges to grow on tree (possibly encouraged through use of rego magic)
Harvest oranges
When the muto on the tree wears off, the oranges you harvested stay oranges. Sure, they may be were-apples, turning into apples during the night of the full moon and doing whatever apples do until dawn when they turn back into oranges again... but they're still oranges as they were the offspring of what was, for their entire gestation period, an orange tree.
That said, any apples that were already on the tree when the muto spell was cast are under the muto effect, and would turn back into apples as soon as they are seperated from the spell target - in much the same way that chopping the paw off a wolf that is really a shapeshifted human causes the paw to turn into a hand.
Or at least it does in my saga...
It does unfortunately mean that if you turn dragons into rabbits then breed them while in rabbit-form, all you end up with is a whole lot of rabbits. Freaky fire-breathing scaly rabbits... which then go on to breed and become a complete pest requiring nothing short of a somewhat comedic story to sort out. :mrgreen:
The Essential Nature of the apple tree is violated for the duration of the Muto spell , making it an orange tree.
As long as any fruit is attached to the tree , it is Part of the Individual tree.
When they are picked , they are no longer subject to the spell and become apples.
What was formerly Part of an Individual is now an Individual in its own right.
The spell does not fragment and attach to a picked orange , so it reverts to being an apple.
Muto is not Creo.
It alters an essential nature for the duration of the spell.
The tree may produce oranges , but they would be apples , if the spell were not in effect.
No new essential nature is created , just because the tree grows in the manner of a normal tree of its type.
