I tend to think the behaviour of the order is portrayed a bit childish at times. I started a thread about why magi don’t co-operate, and it got derailed (with me joining the derailment) in to why are magi so ready to kill each other. https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/magi-petulant-man-babies-why/172443/38?u=fishy
If there is some sort of gentleman’s agreement as you mentioned in post 16 and killing is not the intent but could occur by accident, then the penchant to declare Wizard’s War is less mystifying.
Going back to the original question - others’ experiences:
I haven’t actually run a War-To-The-Death since (ahem… pause while I count my grey hairs…) the 90s It went badly. The problems were that a superior mage can squash a weaker mage like a fly, and too much of the planning was based on assumptions or details that were too specific to be shared between PCs and NPCs/SG.
Ever since, I’ve run WWs, if at all, as a continuation of diplomacy by other means. The implicit threat focuses the players’ minds, but the actual matter at stake is the underlying diplomatic disagreement.
It’s perfectly legal to march inside a covenant to slay a wizard war’s target as long as you cause no collateral damage to life and property beyond your target and his property, and aren’t doing other crimes like scrying. If you fire a Pilum of Fire into a cafeteria at your target where multiple magi are sitting, they shouldn’t interfere until one of your spell misfires and they have legal ground to say the covenant or themselves was at risk. If the covenant is a wizard’s tower, and you know your target lives on the third floor, and you can succeed at flying to that third floor and pierce your way into the building without permanently damaging it, despite the presence of an aegis, the covenant you’re merely visiting for the war has no legal recourse, and stopping you with spells or sending in the turb to kill you inside the attacked magi’s sanctum can be prosecuted. It’s a different business altogether to attack an underground sanctum by slaying every grog who says you may not enter, in such a case, you’ve given the entire covenant forfeit immunity. Putting them to sleep to get in… gray area where I, as a magi of the host covenant, wouldn’t be comfortable slinging the first attack spell. Not every covenant has a tenth magnitude Aegis, and a sufficiently well prepared or trained magi may feel he can deal with the penalty to foreign spellcasting from being inside the aegis a given covenant.
Careful there, you are saying that Magi can’t control the boarder of their covenant. They don’t have to let you in just because you declared a WW against one of them. And they don’t have to prove hostile intent, that was already provided by the declaration of WW.
You don’t have to go straight to slinging spells. All it takes is a resident Magi who is not the target of WW to say “you are trespassing, leave”.
Yes, that’s what I’m saying. The code is intentionally dysfunctional for storytelling purposes, and largely enforced through social conventions, social pressure such as voting against someone, certamen and the threat of Wizard’s War. This is the same code where you can pretty much do whatever you want so long as you don’t deal with a demon, impact another magi, or make enough enemies who will vote against you at Tribunal on a given matter. This is the order where:
Kidnapping a Gifted from another covenant whose arts haven’t been fully opened to open them is legal;
The Peripheral Code holds that killing forge-companions and venditores is not “depriving a magus of his magical power” nor “interfering with mundanes”;
We have redcaps to deliver courrier such that mail is protected - because if they were delivered by another mundane, killing said mundane to recover the mail would be legal, and the code only protects against magical scrying, not using mundane means such as killing a courrier and physically opening your mail to spy on you;
We have several Tribunals (Normandy, Hibernia) where raiding the mundane resources of a covenant is legal and protected by the code in some way, but no published Tribunal where that is explicitly illegal as far as I remember.
We have several story seeds and suggestions peppered throughout the books about magi hiding in another’s sanctum being a smart defense, because anyone can legally defend his sanctum from intrusion. This wouldn’t make any sense if stepping inside the walls of another covenant was, by itself, forfeit immunity, and any magi of that covenant could kill an hermetic intruder by the sole virtue of their presence. Sanctum law wouldn’t be needed. Forfeit immunity happens “while committing, preparing to commit, or shortly after committing a crime.” (HoH:TL 45) The list of High Crimes is pretty narrow, and certainly doesn’t include threatening the life of a mere covenfolk. Which leaves debating low crimes. I’ve already explained most published material tends to weigh towards mundane lives not being protected. Even if they are in a given Tribunal, “the response” (to forfeit immunity) “should be proportional” (HoH:TL 46) which will be weighed at a Tribunal. Some Tribunals might deem that killing a turb captain is a low crime, but even in such cases, stopping the low crime shouldn’t be done with lethal force. So no, you can pretty much force your way in another covenant without much fear of being killed by the covenant’s magi. The line you can’t cross include endangering the lives of other magi, endangering property shared with magi uninvolved in that war and endangering hermetic resources such as libraries, vis stocks, covenant buildings. The book is pretty clear that “A combatant is free to enter his opponent’s sanctum and destroy its contents. Any shared property stored there during a Wizard War is considered forfeit.” (HoH:TL 48)
The reality is that breaking a wizard’s leg for trying to enter your covenant unwelcome probably is more liable to being sued if he had to use vis to heal than you can sue the wizard for entering your covenant unwelcome. But if violence happens between a mundane turb and a magi without any event being itself qualified as a crime by another magi, it falls somewhere in a grey zone where either diplomacy to avoid social retribution or the threat of force is likely to mediate the outcome, rather than any given quaesitor. Yes, I think as the setting is written, the average Tribunal is more likely to punish you for interfering with Wizard’s War without a solid case of forfeit immunity than they are to punish the magi stepping inside your property unwelcome, unless you can claim another crime such as scrying or damaging your property. YSMV and while it’s unintuitive for the modern reader, and a difficult mindset to put yourself in, that’s what’s in the books as far as I can tell.
Actually I think you have that wrong. The Magi are incentivized to kill you dead, likely making sure your body is never found. That is the issue with the loosy goosy legal framework, where if the person forcing his way in ends up dead there is really no one to bring charges. And if he is an arse, as described in the original post, then most of the tribunal magi will be glad he is gone.
Less likely than it is today actually. You have to convince all the Magi that they are okay with people forcing into their covenants. The people who vote are the people who would be inconvenienced by allowing this in the future. They would be setting a precedent that their own covenants are not fully under their control, that any other Magi could just enter. You are asking them to vote against their own self interest.
If a magi declared a wizard’s war and disappears, I think it’s reasonable for a Quaesitor to pay the attacked magi’s covenant a visit. I would find it more credible for a magi to disappear for any length of time outside of Wizard’s War without a formal inquiry. But yes, someone could try to make a body disappear and get away with it if the inquiry isn’t thorough enough, or with forged evidence.
Or they would be inconveniencing themselves by binding themselves with more rules than they already have, when they already have politics, certamen and the threat of wizard’s war to keep most other magi civile. There are a lot of things that are explicitly allowable that most reasonable magi should consider against their interest, that magi haven’t apparently prohibited in the setting, like killing a forge companion literally working in your lab as a day job.
It mostly sound to me like you don’t like the “loosy goosy legal framework” which may be reason enough to change it for your game, but doesn’t actually say anything about the setting as written.
For me the arguments of temprobe make more sense as I understand that the rules where writen by old and powerfull mages in ways to keep their privileges and interests over their formers apprentices. The WW is just another tool to make it.
Troy is seeing it from a perspective of equality between peers, so the tone can be interpretaded both ways according to the players whish and tribunal.
There is a saying. A fine does not mean you can’t do something, it just means legal for a price. The illegality of something always depends on enforcement, and the cost to the transgressor.
Either option, trespassing on a covenant means the magi’s protection under the oath is null and void; or the magi is protected by the code until he damages something that is not the war target, may be what is upheld, if and when the case goes to tribunal.
The political clout of the participants, the general feel of the relevant tribunal, the style of the story guide, all of these are critical. Like many things in Ars Majica, I consider the writers deliberately make it a bit vague, to give the story guide a lot of discretion.
To go back to the original post and how to run a wizards war. Deciding which way any tribunal case will likely go if the Wizards War expands beyond the two participants, is important. Allowing the players to have a good idea of the consequences, provided they make the right knowledge rolls, or consult with the expert in the month of preparation, is advisable.
If interfering could come with a cost, it introduces a moral dilemma about supporting their friend. If the magi know they can interfere in certain circumstances with limited risk of consequences and choose not to, the failure to support a member of the covenant may impact internal covenant politics.
Yeah, there's a decent amount of YSMV built into the canon. There's also a lot of local variation that you need to be careful about over-extrapolating from.
Normandy and Hibernia are, by design, deliberately tolerant of open conflict. Transylvania, on the other hand, is way over on the other end; it's directly stated (Against the Dark, p.20) that conflicts that escalate to Wizard's War generally wind up with a Wizards' March. Since the Peripheral Code is almost purely a creature of local Tribunal rulings and local Tribunal enforcement, variation is inevitable.
Similarly, House Verditius has vendetta built into it, and forge-companions and venditores are considered servants of specific Verditius magi, not general covenfolk. That "[m]ost tribunals have ruled that a Verditius magus’s staff is neither covered by the Code of Hermes nor considered mundanes" (HoH: Mystery Cults, 114) means first, that it's not true in all tribunals, and second does not actually say what most tribunals think is the case for normal covenfolk.
Indeed, by the original meaning of "the exception proves the rule" as a principle of legal construction, that such staff is explicitly named as not protected would imply that most covenfolk are protected. I don't think that the passage in question actually bears the weight of such a construction, but that means it doesn't support a generalization as to non-protection either. What the rest of a tribunal tolerates Verditius magi doing to each others' servants is not necessarily a good guide as to what to expect when a Flambeau starts killing members of another covenant's turb even before you consider that each case at tribunal is an exercise in small group politics instead of anything that looks like impersonal judicial procedure.
And that sort of variation is entirely realistic. Real-world medieval law is not particularly strong on universal principles as opposed to supporting local customs and exceptions with highly-specific privileges.
Really what the general population of the Tribunal thinks of the individual Magi (if they think of them at all) is a major factor in how things will go if a charge is made. Because in a lot of ways, Tribunal politics is a popularity contest.
Just how “ornery” the NPC is will make a major difference. How much of the Tribunal has he upset, how much of it has he bullied in attempts to establish dominance.
I agree with the first conclusion is plausible, that it might not be true everywhere (an alternative is that some Tribunals has never ruled on the subject - we don’t know either way). I also agree that it doesn’t say that for all covenfolks aren’t protected, however, on that, see below.
See, the way I read it, for a local Tribunal to have ruled that a forge companion isn’t protected, there needs to have been a Verditius complaining about another Verditius despite the House culture of Feuds. Other magi have no business complaining about a private feud unless they are similarly affected. And I would think that a forge companion, working out of your sanctum, would be considered of higher status than a covenfolk working out of the kitchen or front door and whose skill have 0 impact on laboratory work. So I can’t read the legality of a Verditius killing another’s forge companion as a right Verditius have against each other. If a local Tribunal ruled that a forge companion isn’t protected by the code, I don’t see that as an exception to a general rule - written nowhere - about covenfolk at all. I see that as the most likely example of a covenfolk killed to hit a Tribunal, one with status, one where a magi can claim it impacts his lab results, something that can be said for almost no other covenfolk types. And if that covenfolk giving you a boost to lab total, or handling your vis / money income isn’t protected… I don’t think the guy at the door is.
So, the general rule is, in fact, actually written!
HoH:True Lineages, p.46, under Deprivation of Magical Power states:
Beyond this, a covenant’s mundane resources, including personnel, are also protected to a degree as these are required for study. However, attacks on mundane assets are normally brought as low crimes (see below).
So, if it is literally true that in most tribunals "a Verditius magus’s staff . . . reside in a gray area without legal protection" (as HoH Mystery Cults p.114 says) well, it is clearly an exception to the stated rule that attacks on mundane resources, including personnel, is normally a low crime.
More likely, I suspect, is that attacking a Verditius magus’s forge-companions and venditores is usually a low crime, and thus they are not literally without legal protection -- but such crimes are never prosecuted, because "[t]he participating magi, who would rather wage the vendetta than seek proper legal recourse, do not take these crimes to Tribunal." (HoH: Mystery Cults, p.116). And as HoH: True Lineages (p.56) states, "If no one volunteers to prosecute a low crime, there is no case. It should be noted that if a victim chooses not to pursue a case (high or low), that is their right."
(If a Verditius magus were to take the case to tribunal, it is entirely plausible that House Verditius could try to convince the tribunal to make a specific exception for the forge-companions and venditores.)
i think its worth considering what a covenant actually is. things are viaraible of course, but the default, implied by the core book and covenants, is a hamlet with from one to a small handfull of larger structures that house the magi and their labs. notably this arrangement includes a good amount of area that is nessisarily public. anyway, this whole thread is quite full of peoples house rules being passed off as RAW. thats not surprising because this is an area where the game leaves quite a bit of leeway for groups to make judgement calls, but it would perhaps be more useful to talk about what decisions youve made and why, rather than just claiming that your house rules “correct”
One was delcared by a Flambeau on a Tremere. These were both very straighforward do damage / get mon€y magi who hated each other’s guts. They agreed on a location beforehand, because each wanted a fight. The Tremere was younger by around 15 years and so the underdog, and spent much of the time hiding in the rain and mud of a forest in Bretagne á la Predator, trying to get a drop on the Flambeau.
The Flambeau employed a lot of CrIg and InIg, of course, and some spontaneous CrIm to flush the Tremere out of cover with illusions of himself. The Tremere employed mostly indirect ReTe trying to trap and crush the Flambeau. Both parties used ReCo for mobility and overcoming Wound / Fatigue modifiers. The whole thing was an extended - sometimes physical - skirmish covering nearly 2 days, where each party wore the other down in terms of Fatigue, Wounds and general morale. The Tremere won because another House member clandestinely killed the worn-out Flambeau in a plausible moment via Arcane Connection that looked like it was his work. Otherwise, the Flambeau had the upper hand.
The other was a Tytalus declaring on a Bonisagus. The Bonisagus believed at the time it was to keep him from appearing at a Tribunal. This was partially true, but the Tytalus also wanted to gather ACs and use mind probing spells on the Bonisagus with impunity. She never intended to harm him beyond that.
Tytalus sent a mortal agent to the Tribunal masked with her appearance and voice via Imaginem, and supplied her instructions via Mentem. The Bonisagus went to the Tribunal and tried to infiltrate the Tytalus’s tent to get AC from her. Instead, using an Invested Item, the agent stole some freshly exhaled breath from him and returned it to her mistress, who then bombarded the Bonisagus with Posing the Silent Question spells. The two never actually met in person or dealt damage to one another during the conflict.
Footnote: stealing breath is - in my experience - one of the dirtiest methods of getting AC. You just need to see / perceive movements in the air (a given, in cold weather) and manipulate a tiny wisp of air. Parma doesn’t protect, because it’s no longer under it, and it’s also really difficult to notice. Of course the AC you get this way is short-lived, but you can easily prop it up using Vim.
Let us not forget that duels were socially acceptable in Europe and the US until the 19th Century, sometimes resulting in death, among the upper class. In the middle and working classes, they were just less formal.
Between magi of rough parity, a wizard’s war is probably just a personal matter. It’s when you have a bully arguing with a victim that social convention turns. A magus unwilling to engage may suffer social consequences.
i think it would be interesting for the tremere to have a lot of opinions about this. they have their martial traditions and all and for a long time one of the strongest social forces agsinst dueling was military leadership trying to make their officer corps stop killing eachother(to mixed success at best). i think a version of the game where you remove certamen and then make actually killing your wizard war opponent a high crime in the transylvanian periferal code would be a straightforward way to go about it
It went badly. The problems were that a superior mage can squash a weaker mage like a fly, and too much of the planning was based on assumptions or details that were too specific to be shared between PCs and NPCs/SG.