To be Specific what happens to spells effects when it goes to another hemisphere. In special for season/year duration spells.
I'm wondering about someone affected by a powerful ritual with duration "until the next solstice" traveling south of equator.
Can it be a smart but laborious way to make a spell wear off early? A "covenant ship" aegis will tear off?
In smaller scale can it happens to anyone traveling far away from the original place where the spell was cast?
IMHO if sunset/sunrise spells are affected (by the variable night/day duration cycle) why not season rituals?
To me this says that you can't mess with the spell by jumping between hemispheres and switching summer solstices for winter solstices. The solstices and equinoxes happen on the same days regardless of which side of the equator you are on.
On the other hand if you are literally on the equator standing on the ring of fire is every day an equinox? Ergo you can end a duration in four sunrises?
Note: I started this discussion more for a plot sake, not game mechanics concerns.
"Until next sunrise" can still be used to get an edge over the hermetic system.
Lets turn things more interesting by messing around with time zones and teleportation.
Example:
A clever Tytalus "invites" a Flambeau to a wizard war. As part of it's machinations it travels far east in Novgorod just to wear his parma at dawn and teleport back to Stonehenge, rush to the Flambeau and start a battle minutes before NEXT sunrise when the Flambeau parma will fade out.
A shame if "Next solstice" cannot take in account if it's a winter or summer.
I was planning in use it to either extend or decrease the duration of rituals in six months.
I remember that one: the Aegis will go off as soon as the ship moves, no matter how far you are from the hemisphere or wherever, because Boundary spells are stationary. One Shot quoted the reference from Legends of Hermes in this thread a while ago:
They don't conflict - Parma magica disappears at the next sunrise or sunset, local to wherever you are.
As an example, in Lands of the Nile there's a faerie god who can cause the sun to rise and set in his regio, and can cause the sun to go up and down messing with magi's sun duration spells and parma magica. I believe it triggered a thread of discussion at the time.
If you want to play games with Parma Magica timing, there's the Nyctophylax virtue in the Tremere section of Houses of Hermes: True Lineages for people who have sun duration defined by midday and midnight instead of sunrise/sunset.
Bulinckx asked if a spell that lasted until the next solstice could be made to expire early by jumpig between hemispheres.
I replied that solstices happen on the same day regardless of where on earth you are, and that year duration spells don't discriminate between summer sostace verses winter solstice or even between solstices and equinoxes.
I went on to say speculate that because duration year doesn't discriminate if you stayed exactly on the equator every day might qualify as an equinox and you'd exhaust the spell "early".
TinOB said that a parma that expires at the next sunrise or sunset would likewise be early if the target moved west fast enough to experience multiple sunrises on the same day.
As Darkwing said, we aren't really in conflict. I'm sorry that I wasn't clear enough in my previous post.
It doesn't quite work that way. You're talking about orbiting the sun at the earth-sun L2 Lagrange point. L2 is very close to where the earth's umbra ends, but is actually just beyond it, putting it in the antumbra. That means, if you're right on L2, you'll eternally be under and annular eclipse. You could say you're in constant day if that really has any meaning at that point, but not constant night.
Of course, traveling around the world (flying, running, swimming, etc.) could pull it off assuming you don't have issues dealing with what happens when you go far out to sea.
The equator does experience equinox and solstices as the sun mover north and south over the seasons. There isn't much distinction between "summer" and "winter", and in terms of daylight every day is an equinox (equal day/night) at the equator, but astronomically these are global functions, with the equinox defined as when the sun passes over the equatorial plane.
That would probably put the orbiting magus as far away as the sun, so I doubt it would change the essence of my answer.
And Silveroak's comment isn't heliocentric, as it's phrased with the sun's motion in our sky. As that is our viewpoint, a lot of beginner observational astronomy is still pretty geocentric in language.
I'm not using Newtonian mechanics. I'm paying attention to the mathematics behind the celestial spheres. There is a reason all of the fixed stars are on the same sphere: because they rotate at the same rate. There is a reason the planets are placed on different ones: because they move through the sky at different rates. If you want an orbit to sync with the sun's orbit, then you put the thing on the same celestial sphere (4th) as the sun.
Also, using Newtonian mechanics, the place is not nearly as far away as the sun: it's the earth-sun L2.
That just means the magus couldn't do this orbit, not that the orbit wouldn't be on the same celestial sphere as the sun. If I want to drive my car at mach 1, that doesn't mean sound has to travel closer to 200 km/h, just that I can't drive my car at mach 1. Same logic here. But the magus could fly/run/swim/other to move around the world at the same rate, just not orbit, as I said above.
And just because the movement of TimOB's hypothetical magus - circling the earth aligned to the movement of the sun - can be called orbiting, his magus does neither become a celestial body aligned with a celestial sphere, nor his movement impossible.
The speed of the sun circling the earth is calculable. Magi have the rough size of the world in miles.
To travel in mid-air so that the sun is constantly overhead requires you to move about 3 leagues per minute. Referring to Rego Corpus guidelines, p. 134, this is roughly a level 25 base effect (assuming that "instantly" means 1 second), possibly less. I'll use the 25 level to pick a speed sufficient to the desired result.
So, Circling the World in Unending Day:
25 Base
R: Personal +0
D: Sun +2
T: Ind +0
Level 35
Flings a magus through the air at a high speed, such that they are constantly moving at a speed around the globe of the world that the sun is, to the magus, fixed in place. Since the spell is Sun duration, it will never end, nor will any other Sun duration spell or the magus' Parma Magica. It is suggested the mage begin at a sufficient height to clear any mountain in path, lest they come to an abrupt and probably fatal halt. It is suggested a mage travelling this way should take a sufficient supply of food for however long they wish to not starve to death.
I suppose the corpse of the magus will continue until they cross an eclipse band - although I'm not sure if an eclipse counts as a sunset.
There's probably some miscalculation in the above, and it's essentially pointless, but it's achievable if you have a very good figure for how long it takes to circle the world at your latitude. Probably requires practice, if you can survive the effort.
Just being your covenant's little sunshine, however, doesn't qualify.