In Ars Magica 5e:
What magical skills do I need in order to make an exact duplicate of myself? Like another me all together. New body. Same mind. Same magical abilities. Have a second mage right there looking at me.
inb4 "it can't be done".
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It depends on the route you want to take- you can use Creo Corpus to create a dead body then reCo to animate it, or learn fertility magic to give birth to a child and then accelerate the aging first with Cro then PeCo. The mind and abilities will be trickier, and depend on what kinds of kludges you are willing to utelize- creating a faerie spirit to inhabit your animated body for example... the slow way of course is to use fertility magic and teach the child everything you know...
An exact copy of the body is easy - just use Creo Corpus.
Exact copy of the mind is much harder. In Ars Magica you cannot create souls with magic, and a mind that does not have a soul connected to it would be different in a least some ways to a mind with a soul.
So you'd either have a soulless copy of yourself - which is thus not an exact duplicate - or you'd need to somehow have both bodies share the same mind.
Looking at the spell Inmost Companion (MuMe) it seems that a variation of it with a Corpus requisite should be able to accomplish the latter: two bodies sharing one mind.
Muto Mentem base 25, requisite corpus. See inmost companion. I've been thinkering with an effect along those lines for my Tytalus character with Persona. Warning - these spells are still at the draft stage, and have not been vetted by my troupe or this forum. The main reasons I haven't finished developping them are lack of a lab total and that they void one of the best advantages of persona which is not having an ongoing effect to detect. I'm purely sharing them because they are pretty much what you're looking for. Just change the Persona part, maybe drop the +1 Part, and you're in business, since your inner mind could look like you.
Practicing the Persona's Field Trip
MuMe 40 (Co)
Range: Per, D: Sun, T: Part
Developed largely to facilitate learning The Persona Manifest, this spell taps on the caster's Persona virtue to manifest the part of his Psyche that contains on of his personalities as a separate body. See The Persona Manifest for game mechanics, and disregard the seasonal rules which would not apply on a Sun duration spell. The main uses of this spell beyond providing a similar spell bonus for researching the higher level spell is being able to be away from the lab without losing lab time, participating in simultaneous meetings or ceremonies (such as Aegis of the Hearth) and being able to have the main personality visit the Persona or vice versa, which provides anecdotal evidence that they are different characters.
The Persona Manifest
MuMe 50 (Co), ritual
Range: Per, D: Year, T: Part
A variation of the spell Inmost Companion, this spell taps on the caster's Persona virtue to manifest the part of his psyche that contains one of his personalities as a separate body. For the purpose of this spell, the caster can manifest his main personality if he is currently in a Persona's role, or he can manifest a Persona if he is in his real identity. On manifesting, the split body appears in thin air the same way it would appear as if the person was summoned from afar using a long-range Rego Corpus spell. The separate body appears disoriented for the round. The caster's magical resistance protects both bodies, as normal. No matter how far apart the two are, the caster's mind effectively controls both bodies. In particular, the caster can see and act with both bodies normally, and both bodies have their own needs. Despite being in two bodies, he is limited in how much spellcasting he can make at any time by his capacity to concentrate, and if both bodies are casting at the same time, the caster must make spellcasting checks using the rules for casting several spells. However the two bodies do not need to maintain the same sleep schedule, and this can be used to more easily focus on the actions of either Persona. If the caster has a Talisman, he is able to draw on the effects of the Talisman that affect him provided either body is in contact with it, since both bodies are an arcane connection the Talisman, and he is in contact with it. He would be unable to use powers invested in the Talisman at a different range on the separate body. If the separate body dies, the separate personality dies in the caster's mind, but the caster survives since only a part of his mind was slain. A slain body remains behind for the duration of the spell, but will rapidly age towards the end of the solar year and eventually disappear as normal. Virtually, the death of a Persona lowers the caster's experience in the ability by his current score * 5, which is enough to lose one point in his Persona score. This is a traumatic experience for the caster, and even if he increases his ability score again, he can never recreate a Persona that is very close in concept to the dead one. The memories shared remain, however. If the main body dies, the caster dies as normal. Warping and Twilight affects the entire magi normally, which can lead to the strange situation of a persona disappearing in twilight despite the lack of apparent spellcasting. Similar to the benefits of Transforming the Mind (HoH: MC p. 93), the caster gains two virtual seasons per year as a side benefit of additional awake time with two bodies. These virtual seasons must be spent by the persona, It is possible to reallocate the seasons between the two bodies, but neither may exceed four seasons in the year without additional magic or mystery. These additional seasons may be lab or learning seasons, with the restriction of being unable to gain a benefit from assisting himself in the lab as an assistant. This spell is tailored for the caster on himself. As such, when used, he does not warp because of a powerful mystical effect, but will gain one warping for continuous effect. While the caster could conceivably - with enough vis - maintain more than two bodies simultaneously, he would be unable to gain more than two virtual seasons as a result of this enchantment.
Base 25, +4 Year, +1 Part)
The verrry tricky thing - at least a BIG Hermetic Breakthrough (HoH:TL p.27) - is duplicaing the soul.
It could be the goal of a highly ambitious saga running for 50 years or more from 1220.
IF you follow in 1220 Averroes and incorporate into your magic, that reason and intellect (A&A p.31) are just shared among all thinking individuals, you just need to duplicate also faith/will and memory.
Duplicating inscribed and procedural memory by HoH:S p.69 is currently not possible by Hermetic magic, but Hermeitc magi do not know, why. Just showing the Order, how to do this, would make a magus likely a new founder.
Finally, fully replicating faith/will by Hermetic magic would require the Divine to bestow enhanced 'freedom of conscience' to beings with souls in the developing 13th century: making faith not Divine grace but human - and the replicating magus' - responsibility.
This all together would make advanced developing Catholic theology of the 13th century - like of 1220s Anthony of Padua and 1250s Thomas Aquinas - and subsequent scholastic philosophy wrong, and thereby might reserve a unique and privileged place in an alternative 13th century of Mythic Europe for an Averroistic Order of Hermes.
You might start such a saga with the Franciscan adventures from sub rosa #20 to #22 and allow Averroistic Jahir al-Ahd and memory-replicating Candidus Norimbergensis some more room to influence the research of your PCs.
As others have said, an exact copy requires a soul, which is the only really tricky part. Let's try to digest this.
- you could bind a faerie, or maybe a demon or a spirit, to pretend. That may or may not satisfy you. There are plenty of traditions which could pull this off.
- the alternative, barring breakthroughs, is a bargain with God. I have no idea why God would want to oblige, but then there is an awful lot of things I don't know about God. I am sure He can duplicate a soul if He sees it fit.
- a breakthrough, or an obscure hedge tradition, might be able to create a soul, if and only if we assume that the Limit of the Divine does not apply. You would have to invent this yourself.
Both option 2 and 3 require you to reconsider what God and the Divine is, and it is likely to have knock-on effects on the cosmology. That means that a universal answer is not possible. You need to relate it to the other cosmological assumptions that you make.
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If you want the ability to create the Gift, thats a worthy challenge for the all time greatests of the Order. Good luck!
You might want to take a look at Ancient Magic p.54: Fertility Magic. It is not exactly what you want but can't hurt either.
A footnote here- overcomin the limit of the soul may require finding a hedge tradition grounded in non-christian theology. The Egyptians and Norse, along with some others, had metaphysical models in which the soul existed in multiple parts (3 for Egypt, 4 in the Norse) which could provide a very rich direction for development of a magical tradition which partially overcomes the limit of the soul.
Interestingly one part of the Norse tradition is a part of the soul which determines shape and form, which can change after death and which magicians can learn to change, which also suggests a bjorner connection, and possibly association with the inner heartbeast. (another piece of the soul in Norse lore connects to a spirit animal...)
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