Is it possible to use rego craft to effectively skip the season needed to enrich a thing? The steps themselves seems mundane and not a laboratory activity
I would think the time taken is part of the magical process of enrichment, and say no.
In the same way as if an Initiation says "spend a season travelling to a distant land" you can't just ReCo Teleport yourself to save time.
Except you can- if you have an arcane connection, high enough arts, the right formula, and are willing to take the warping for such a massive spell.
However at minimum I would require a Vim prerequisit, and probably for the Re craft spell to be unique to the type of enrichment being done. Unless they are trying to spont it of course...
I believe Micheal is referring to this
A bonus is granted only if the compo-
nent genuinely costs the character some-
thing. If, for instance, he lives very close
to the “special place” rather than having to
travel far to reach it, then the travel takes
no effort and is invalid. Worse still, if
any component is invalid then the whole
Script is invalidated. Temporary suffering
does not provide a benefit — indeed in
many rites it is just a normal part of the
process
That said depending on the troupe the ac, high enough arts, right formula and such might constitute a valid cost. Warping is probably a non-issue unless the mage is not the caster, as casters always treats their own effects as a weak mystical effect.
That said I am not sure if initiation and enriching is an equal equivalence- one is something that changes your very Essential Nature, the other one is using mundane knowledge and expertise to achieve temporary if supernatural results.
Vim requisite makes complete sense.
In the initiation comparison, obviously you can teleport there. I'm saying that you won't acquire the Virtue because you won't have had the experience. (This isn't a universal rule: for an initiation that said "visit the island where Zeus was born, study its storms", go ahead, get there the easiest way you can.)
But in my analogy the mage undergoing initiation is analogous to the thing being enriched, not the enricher. I think it needs to spend the season on that.
But by that argument, enrichment would still need a season, but you might be able to automate it so that you can do other things with your time. So that might work. However, if a mage is doing that, it probably means it's under a magical effect the entire time, which could disrupt the process.
So: I thought you were asking if magic could enrich instantly or in a few hours. If you're asking if you can make it happen over a season with less work, I think that's a case by case question, not a hard no.
I think it is more fundamental of a question than that which gets into the question of how craft magic actually works.
For example being able to do a month's worth of woodcarving is pretty simple. Being able to season the wood for a month and then carve it is an entirely different process, but we know from modern techniques that it could in fact be done (using dry heat to reduce moisture content) trying to do a month's worth of brewing in a few hours is still more about taking the time to affect change in a material.
I think the biggest argument against allowing craft magic to handle this is that the process is described as "a season of uninterrupted magical operation", which means that it is inherently not a craft. It does not require a lab but otherwise it is like lab work, and as such cannot be rushed with spells- a magus cannot, for example, rush the fixing of an arcane connection with craft magic even though that does not require a lab total.
Admittedly that's more an abstraction than anything.
If we look at some examples of enrichment-
The White Stag’s antlers may be Enriched
by wrapping them in the hide of the Stag un-
der the light of a full moon. For one week,
the bundle must be exposed to the light of
the moon and may not touch the earth. At
the end of the period, anyone holding both
antlers is granted the Wilderness Sense Vir-
tue with an Ability of 3.
The White Stag antlers only take a week, in universe. Mechanically it takes a season however because that's the smallest unit of time for relevant projects on a mechanical level. It's the same reason why making a few simple poems take a season under Art and Acadamae rules, or why experimental philosophy takes seasons for stuff you have labtexts to when in reality much of it can be done in an afternoon.
It's not that different from accelerating the fermentation of grape juice into wine, which is valid craft magic, but I agree that YSMV on whether Rego craft can substitute for Magic Lore instead of craft.
In fairness, keeping something from touching the ground and being under the light of the moon for an entire week will generally take more than a week. I mean you need to have a location where it will not be disturbed and held off the ground for an entire week (so no place where covenfolk might accidentally knock it over, but exposed to moonlight) and there is also the risk of an overcast night ruining your plans.