Ask a simple question, Awakened edition

[monteparnas]

The main issue happens when asking "absence of what ?" , it seems like it requires other Arcana for context and even then, how is it different from using Unmaking with that Arcanum ?

My understanding is precisely that Vacuum and Absence are precisely just the result of a thorough Unmaking, and defined by the other Arcana, not Death (unless you want to Unmake Death, evidently).

You could add some other effect to ward off the entry of new instances of that Arcana, but otherwise Making Void is just a fallacy, not an actual spell.

That's not to say that the Void so created can't contain its own Mysteries, as you can learn a lot about something by examining complete absence of it, especially if this absence is rare or non-existent in nature. It can have its own weird effects and so on. But isn't a Supernal Symbol.

[orathaic]

It's using Patterning to rewrite the Gnosis potential/Gnosis retention of another mage's soul/soul stone into your own effective Gnosis in the same fashion as teleportation uses Patterning to "rewrite" a subject's physical location.

Given that most things that aren't soul stones and mage souls don't have any direct impact on your Gnosis, probably not.

Ok. I see what this question was answering. (Ie can you graft a spirit into your Gnosis with Patterning of spirit+prime). And i think i agree with Satchel.

However it gets another question, can you graft a Spirit into your soul to gain their (non-gnosis) related power. Possibly Spirit + Death, since you don't have a Spirit normally?

Maybe gain access to 1 numina/influence per potency of the spell? (My thinking here is that you can shape your soul using legacies to gain supernatural abilities... So can you graft other things onto your soul to gain supernatural effects...)

Of course being able to power them with essence may be an issue... But i suppose if you have Spirit 4 gaining essence isn't too hard.

EDIT: and thinking about it, you should he able to find a path in your Onerios to the Anima Mundi related to the spirit you have granted on, and probably be worse as preventing the Anima Mundi from damaging your soul (as your soul has a hole in it that lets the Ecstatic Wind right in)... And also dying from Ecstatic wind is probably way worse (as instead of just being soul shocked, you have a spirit ready to fill up your soul)

Of course if you're going to go the whole way, graft the soul of a werewolf onto your soul, you end up with a bunch of pissed off werewolves...

[orathaic]

Signs of Sorcery provides a bit more information on the topic. Mastigos see abscence as the cessation of self, whereas Thyrsus see it as an absence of life, light and warmth.

The main issue happens when asking "absence of what ?" , it seems like it requires other Arcana for context and even then, how is it different from using Unmaking with that Arcanum ?

I think Death is clear, cold and darkness are not real physical things*, they are absences of heat and light (Forces Arcanum), but Absence is the purview of Death so metaphysically this arcanum can treat them as positive actual things.

Likewise decay is close to an absence of growth, enervation is an absence of energy. Are ghosts an absence of the soul/life? - the twilight 'echos' of buildings are only there as the absence of the original building (are they made of Ectoplasm?)

Everything Death can Make, is an absence (notable the Soul and the Underworld are under the purview of Death but can't be made).

The spell Empty Presence: "The mage destroys the subject’s presence in the world, removing any evidence of her life or existence. " Should probably be a Making practice not Unmaking.

That at least is my understanding of Making Absence. You can't simply Unmake thing in other Arcanum's purview. Unmaking a person (Life) doesn't create a Ghost, but a Making of Death can.

*At least according to our physics.

EDIT: to put this in the form of a question, can you Make the absence of a child in the mind of someone who has never had children (grief), it is touching on the Purview of Mind, but you are allowed to have the same effect coming from two different Arcana...

EDIT2: Or the feeling of an empty chair at a party, like someone is missing.

[orathaic]

Looking at the other purview of Death that i haven't mentioned, can you use endings to end a spell? Like trigger the condition for a conditional duration spell? Can you dispell any spell by Making an ending for it? (Probably the same effect as Supernal Dispellation), i think i recall seeing that somewhere...

[Isator Levi]

Looking at the other purview of Death that i haven't mentioned, can you use endings to end a spell? Like trigger the condition for a conditional duration spell? Can you dispell any spell by Making an ending for it? (Probably the same effect as Supernal Dispellation), i think i recall seeing that somewhere...

First Edition gave ending a spell as part of Death's roster, yes.

[Cauthon]

The Duel Arcane appears to have been simplified, which is nice, but does that mean that the variants like Shadow Chess are now thematic decisions? I liked the idea of some Consilli turning the whole thing into a children's card game.

[21C Hermit]

Looking at the other purview of Death that i haven't mentioned, can you use endings to end a spell? Like trigger the condition for a conditional duration spell? Can you dispell any spell by Making an ending for it? (Probably the same effect as Supernal Dispellation), i think i recall seeing that somewhere...

Signs of Sorcery gives us ‘Death of Magic’ as an example Boon for Angels with the Death Arcanum. Considering how Death is the Inferior Arcanum of the Obrimos, and what other ‘Inferior Arcanum Boons’ look like, I suspect using Death to end spells etc is “Not The Intended Use, but hey it works” approach here.

[21C Hermit]

The Duel Arcane appears to have been simplified, which is nice, but does that mean that the variants like Shadow Chess are now thematic decisions? I liked the idea of some Consilli turning the whole thing into a children's card game.

The default assumption for 1E-2E translation seems to be that, unless it was explicitly axed away or otherwise changed, it’s still there. Just without official mechanical support.

[orathaic]

The question came up on page 430 of this thread about copying or stealing temporal sympathies.

I want to know, could you take or Make a weak temporal sympathy to someone else in the past - 'the subject is vastly different', seems an appropriate level of sympathy to maintain... And is it fair to presume similar impacts that you would expect from spatial sympathies (how they affect emotional connection). So perhaps a temporal sympathy would give a sense of deja vu for things that never happened to you. Or push you towards creating a future/destiny which would be appropriate for your sympathic past (like how shadow names can affect you narratively)?

Can you unmake your own temporal sympathy to you past? (Making any remaining sympathies more significant?) Could you use Perfecting to make yourself more like someone else's past? And use this as a subtle form of identity theft?

Seperately but definitely related, by Unmaking a person's temporal sympathies to their past, can you make them free-er to pursue new aspirations unrelated to their past?

[KaiserAfini]

Using the Transmute Numen, is it possible for ghost engineers to build a high tech boat ? What difficulty category would the materials and alloys be ? Would they need to work the materials into shape or does the Numen already do that for them ?

Similarly, would the ghost of a famous blacksmith be able to use the maximum Rank of Transmute to make perfected metals ? Since they can occur in nature, the should be under its purview, albeit at the highest difficulty (I think alloys are way out of its purview). But it might allow weapons of "meteoric iron" made with lost techniques to suddenly show up. Both could be interesting Mysteries for a Forge Master to pursue.

[Cauthon]

Similarly, would the ghost of a famous blacksmith be able to use the maximum Rank of Transmute to make perfected metals ? Since they can occur in nature, the should be under its purview, albeit at the highest difficulty (I think alloys are way out of its purview). But it might allow weapons of "meteoric iron" made with lost techniques to suddenly show up. Both could be interesting Mysteries for a Forge Master to pursue.

I'd vote that ghosts of Craftsmen can "use themselves up" creating a perfected item. It would have to be a ghost who lingers because of something crafting-related, like an unfinished masterwork or regret over never mastering a family specialty. In the act of fulfilling that Anchor, they pour themselves into the craft to trigger the refinement.

__________

Reading Temporal Sympathy, I can't just take Supernal Fire or Thunderbolt and slap TS on it to recreate Balefire from The Wheel of Time. A Time Disciple can still delete someone from history with Temporal Sympathy and Rend Lifespan though, right?

[Satchel]

Reading Temporal Sympathy, I can't just take Supernal Fire or Thunderbolt and slap TS on it to recreate Balefire from The Wheel of Time. A Time Disciple can still delete someone from history with Temporal Sympathy and Rend Lifespan though, right?

My understanding is that getting Lasting effects out of Temporal Sympathy requires actually engaging with the mechanics for time travel, given that otherwise the exercise amounts to either "this is uncontestably completely broken" or "it is entirely up to the Storyteller what happened in the time between that point in history and the present" with no guidance presented for anything in-between.

"Time spells that call for it" means "Time spells that say you can use Temporal Sympathy." You can do all sorts of stuff on a temporary basis with Rewrite History, but making it a persistent fact that Master Entomologos was eaten by radioactive fire-ants thirty years ago is going to require the legwork of making that actually happen in experienced history for it to be real.

[21C Hermit]

__________

Reading Temporal Sympathy, I can't just take Supernal Fire or Thunderbolt and slap TS on it to recreate Balefire from The Wheel of Time. A Time Disciple can still delete someone from history with Temporal Sympathy and Rend Lifespan though, right?

The Cult of the Doomsday Clock, a Legacy from 1E, does something like that; erasing the reality of the Fallen World, one past event by another. They do that using 'Doomsday Clocks,' a special magical item that creatively combines the Time 4 spell "Erase History" (1E; not in 2E) and other destructive spells (the given example being "Annihilate Matter"). Notably, "Erase History" is only supposed to conceal information - it's the combined destructive spells and its maker & users' Abyssal power that enables this feat.

If you don't want to flirt with the Abyss, an Archmage using what 1E calls Time 7 Excision spells should work. Or a sufficiently powerful Time Artifact.

[Isator Levi]

Notably, "Erase History" is only supposed to conceal information

Yeah, between that and being Lasting, I'd say that spell as written doesn't really translate very well to Second Edition. It's got an effect that belongs to Veiling (or Unmaking), and is out of the usual bounds for what Lasts.

That being said, we do have the Space Unmaking Spell "Quarantine", that can include Mastery of Time to render its subject retroactively non-existent alongside being thrown outside of the universe, removing or reassigning all of its effects for the spell's Duration. It still kind of establishes a precedent for the idea that erasing something from the past requires much greater power than a Disciple.

On a similar note, I think if the Cult of the Doomsday Clock was going to be adapted, I'd say they should make more use of Paradox Anomalies in their history erasure efforts, and the Clocks themselves would be modelled as more direct Artifacts through what we know now about the power of archmastery (and items that can emulate it) rather than moulding together a bunch of other effects.

[Cauthon]

Aye, the Ticktock Men not having frequently used their time-bombs was assumed to be from difficulty in manufacturing. That would imply Quintessence, or at least some Abyssal equivalent.

No balefire then. Probably for the best.