What does it take to "participate" in the Aegis of the Hearth ritual?

They would need to declare a wizard's war on the magus

It is the phrase "... and, indeed, non-Hermetic wizards can participate as well" that leads me to think the ritual spell description was only referring to the Magi of the Covenant, not the Companions (unless they are non-Hermetic wizards) nor the Grogs of the Turb.

My player is also asking, what protection does the AotH provide that prevents an enemy agent sneaking into the Covenant's Aegis with an enchanted device of "kill all the Grogs", that leaves the Magi with no cooks, laundry, or watchmen.

None. It means you should not make enemies of an entire house, Bjornaer, for instance.

When my player first suggested his character was going to find a way of Slaying the Monster, I sent all the players the following message:

... be aware that a significant portion of the Order of Hermes would consider Callum still a valid member under the protections of the Oath of Hermes (clause "I will slay no member..., lest I be slain myself..."). In fact, technically in the view of some he could be considered a member of this Covenant, while the rest of our Magi are not.
And a much larger portion of the Order would consider defending one's sanctum from (percieved) threat/encroachment to be a valid defence if a trial came before Tribunal.

I was trying to subtly suggest there is Hermetic Politics out there, without railroading a plot.

Now I am wondering if I should spend some more time going through all the various clauses of the Hermetic Oath with them, using the Guernicus chapter in the True Lineages book.
Technically "deprivation of magical power" should apply to the player's plan to suppress the Beast's Talisman with the AotH.

Now I am wondering what the Great Beast will do on Midwinter's Day? I have given him the greater Power Master of Vim to reflect the former Mage's Flexible Formulaic Magic, had an interest in metamagic (to show he was just as good as a "Roman" mage, thankyou Oversensitive flaw), and produced more than his share of utility enchantments.
I can almost see the Great Beast showing up to participate in the AotH ritual. But would a Great Beast actually be motivated to do that?

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If your players have been playing Ars for a while, maybe reiterate what you've already said and then consider them warned. Though it sounds like they might be new to the setting, in which case perhaps a Redcap with some knowledge of the Code Might help them understand some of the ramifications... Or a Bjornaer could request Hospitality to commune with this Great Beast and help explain a few things.

By HoH:MC p. 24, Great Beasts should flee all human contact. So a Great Beast doing the opposite might attract a lot of attention by Clan Ilfetu and others (see also HoH:MC p.28f Initiating the Inner Heartbeast).

What about the next Ritual of Twelve Years being held at the covenant with that somewhat approachable Great Beast? Might clever magi still turn it into an asset of their covenant?

I am the player concerned. :slight_smile:

As a player I have some idea, however, it will take a lot for the character to not want him killed. My character is a Jerbition who has a strong belief in the importance of order in society. The peasants work to create the fundamental building blocks of society. The mercantile, artisan and clergy class help to provide a society that is worth living in by providing the finer things and spiritual nourishment. The martial and leadership class have an obligation to provide just leadership and protect the people. He takes that obligation seriously.

In my character's mind, this murderous abomination has lost any right to call himself a magus when he ceased to act like a human being, by letting his anger kill multiple innocent covenant folk. He also looks like a monster. My character doesn't have enough Bjornaer knowledge to think this is anymore than a messed up final twilight or a transformation spell gone horribly wrong. For all I know it may be a kindness to release whatever twisted tormented shred of the magi is left in the monstrous shell.

Every day the covenant folk see the abomination who killed workmates and family members. My characters accepts he can not kill this monster at the moment, but he can not countenance it's continued existence, and will attempt to destroy it at the earliest opportunity. If he does not, what right does he have to be a leader of a covenant?

Due to my character's belief in the correct order of society, I will report the monster to the Stonehenge tribunal, and see what the tribunal say. If they say he is permitted to stay, I may have to get my character to be more political to get the decision changed in a future tribunal ruling.

Easy enough. Create a charged item with powerful PeAn effects. Effects to destroy the talisman would also be good. PeVi maybe
or Perdo whatever is the main material of the item. Invest heavily in pentration in both items.

Declare wizard's war on the abomination and use a spell to deliver the message, so the messenger does not get hurt. If you have allies, they can declare war at the same time.

Have an awesome miniadventure.

Just out of gauntlet, taking on a magic might, I think it was 32, size 4 or 5 monster. I'm not confident of success.

Also, without advice from a tribunal, I wouldn't recognise the abomination had a right to be challenged to a wizard war as he's not a wizard.

If I had the power to kill him, he'd be dead, and I probably would have already created a potential political incident.

I fully support making bad in-character decisions with terrible repercussions for those around me as well as my character but I do feel, as a player, you might want to make sure that the rest of the folks at the table are cool with an action that will have long term effects for the whole covenant and sage, if they aren’t I’d ask my SG to bring something into the story that will let me know IC some of these wider issues, the Bjornaer option I mentioned is probably the better one though you know the character.

Whether or not there is a legal way to kill the Great Beast without breaking the Code, House Bjornaer might be so angry that a mass Wizard’s War is declared- still within the letter of the Code

I overlooked that bit from HoH:MC when designing the monster.
I used the presumption that the Mage's essential nature in the form of Personality flaws would keep it interested in its 'mortal' possessions for a couple of decades before it finally abandoned all its human attachments.

Not that anyone outside of the Covenant knows about the Great Beast. Yet...

Lets return to something a little closer to the original topic.

What protection does the AotH provide that prevents an enemy agent sneaking into the Covenant's Aegis and using an enchanted device of "kill all the Grogs"?

The AotH may give the enchanted device a significantly negative pentration, but does its effect still work?

The key rule is this.

What does «resisted» mean?
The wording is similar in the first paragraph about spells cast against it, and here it says

I read this as every effect cast against the Aegis or anything inside has to penetrate the level of the aegis as if it is an MR (unless the item was inside the aegis at the time of the ritual or whatever else makes the item a member of the Aegis).

If the Aegis does not resist, the target also has a chance to resist on its own merit, but the two MR effects are not added together. One or the other has to suffice on its own to block the effect.

Interesting. That might be the solution.
I will have to crunch some numbers first.

Go back to my post linked to in the OP. I went into some detail on items. There is no clear-cut answer. I addressed stressing different parts of statements and possible results.

I've never considered that a device effect might not work inside a hostile Aegis. IMHO that was one of the strenghts of devices, compared to spells, as a trade-off of costing vis, having fixed Penetration and in generel being less flexible than a spell.
As I thought it, the Penetration of the device - even inside a hostile Aegis - was only relevant if used in targets with a MR of their own. And I actually thought that was a weakness of the Aegis, that it could so easily be circumvented by a device. But is has not been very relevant, since we don't play much magus on magus violence.
But I'd like to hear from Tellus about this

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Interesting thought, that Aegis might have no defence against items.

I am playing a rustic archer magus, embedding his spells in arrows as charged items to be shot at the target. Since, with craft magic, the arrows do not take a season to enchant, this is a very cheap and effective circumvention of the Aegis.

Not that we do much magus on magus violence either, but the idea is ... euh ... interesting.

@Christian_Andersen/anyone else who might care to read through my ramblings:

The problem is exactly how an Aegis would protect against a device inside it?
Because as far as I can tell, the following is simply the rules:

...but then I got myself into a long near-Twilight, contemplating what it means when a device has a negative penetration. As written, the answer is nothing. It still works, as @Christian_Andersen covered above. But should it?
Is it significantly different from using eg a low/no penetration device in an area with eg a Divine Aura?

This is sort of turning into a new thread, about "How Aegis affects spells and devices"

So I'm making a new thread. I'l be back to post a link once I've done this

Edit: https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/how-aegis-of-the-hearth-works/167801