Ask a simple question, Awakened edition

[Kazorh]

You don't need to do creative thaumaturgy to do that, just Sever the Threads or Conceal your Sympathies.

Manually destroying ALL your sympathetic connections seems like a pain, and it doesn't stop people from knowing you exist, so they're going to reform Described connections pretty much instantly while talking about you. If someone knows your name, they can still use sympathetic magic, including scrying.

Or you could do it all. Keep up a shield of Chronos against Time stuff, a ward against Space stuff, and also destroy all your sympathetic connections. This mage criminal doesn't look like he's sparing much effort for his counter-measures.

[totalgit]

"There's a Space 2, Prime 2 thingy that tells you when your spells are being messed with. "

Thanks i knew i remembered reading something like that once, just couldnt remember it.

"You should note too that wards are anchored to locations, there's an AA example of a mobile ward/ban but its duration is Concentration and it's vulgar. So basically, he could throw up this huge ward, sure and then he'd be under self-imposed house arrest (Which had awesome plot implications in Broken Diamond), eventually completely mundane search methods would find him and then unless he's added Bans the Ward would do him absolutely no good at all.

Even with Bans there is almost assuredly a work around."

So yeh as Kazorh implied a creative thaum personal ward is being used, mastery of space and all, the repel spell was looked over when coming up with it. There is also instances of objects being warded in reign of the exarchs and while probably just the writers not reading ward properly does give weight to the possibility of a personal ward.
Another way would be to have a persistant imbued item with an area effect high potency area ward around it which could be movable, the question was to assume he is mobile with a high potency ward what 1 spell could somebody cast that would help the council bring him to justice not pick holes in how the ward works

"There are ways that are safer and take up a lot less effort than creating a giant ward though. Personally if I was a Master of Space I'd just pop bodily into my Oneiros and then use apportation to get what I need from time to time. It's almost like a mini-Golden Road. "

Hmm, so is there any precedent for bodily going into the astral thats not archmastery? I always assumed it required archmastery to physically enter the astral and while it could be handwaved as creative thaum would it not also require mind X to open a portal into somebodys oneiros maybe?

Its one of the annoying parts of Space that a master of space cant apport items without matter, has always seemed really stupid to me. Again not really answering my question, it wasnt how else can Mage X avoid the council

"Manually destroying ALL your sympathetic connections seems like a pain, and it doesn't stop people from knowing you exist, so they're going to reform Described connections pretty much instantly while talking about you. If someone knows your name, they can still use sympathetic magic, including scrying.

Or you could do it all. Keep up a shield of Chronos against Time stuff, a ward against Space stuff, and also destroy all your sympathetic connections. This mage criminal doesn't look like he's sparing much effort for his counter-measures."

Indeed, paranoia (its not as people are after him) means habitual use of sever threads etc. a described connection with rank 3 occultation knowing the real name is a whopping -13 dice penalty.

Assuming one were to find a mage with a rote, stat 4 skill 4 and arcanum 5 thats a only 13 dicepool leaving a chance dice. Assume he could have his stat and skill boosted via mind to 6 or higher and is given either 8 again or rote actions for the entire ritual casting its still probably not enough dice to pierce a stupidly high ward potency.
Max number of rolls is base dicepool of 13, so even 13 rolls of 4-6 dice with rote action doesnt give enough successes.

Maybe sympathetic casting at Mage X isnt they route to go down. Hence why i was asking what other options a council could come up with.

I did think of another one. Knowing that mage X usually has his intelligence boosted with mind magic perhaps a wide enough area effect Sense Consciousness spell convering as much range as possible (we can probably cover an entire city with enough successes) that only registers highly intelligent minds would narrow down the field.
There is a spell that does something similar in tome of mysteries called Supernal sense, it requires space though and wards provide protection for it. My understanding of changing a spell to area affect and casting it where you are was that you didnt need space even if the area effect extends past sensory range? The spell itself is being cast in sensory range its just its area of effect is for miles around you right?
Hence why im confused by the space requirement for supernal sense, maybe because that spell provides constant info on the locations of active magic.

Also casting a spell over an entire city causes other headaches, if the spell is not cloaked then every mage in the citys unseen senses will go off, do they all get the chance to counterspell it?

Ugg

[Joker]

Does anybody else have any other ideas? If the ruling Council are not able to do anything they they will look like complete fools and others might start thinking they can get away with breaking the rules etc etc.

Life mages could use large area scent detecting spells to find him or enchant a few thousand rats or birds to look for him. If a species of vulture can smell a dead body through dense foliage from miles away then a Master of life should be able to smell your mage from a few cityblocks away.
Death mages send lots of ghosts. Did the PC ever do anything that might have anchored a Ghost to him?
Spirit mages can ask and send spirits.
Prime mages can cast large area spell detecting spells to find high powered wards. A potency 50 ward will be like a giant firework to any Prime Master with a good spell of the knowing practice. A prime spell with enhanced area factors cast by a master with several acolytes should be able to cover several blocks or even most of a city to find a specific casters signature or a specific spell.
I don't remember if shield of Chronos protects against Fate spells? A Master of fate could probably walk through the city, throw a coind or something else to decide which direction to go at any street corner and find your Mage by "chance".
Forces master with fate to send a lifefeed to the Master's smartphone each time your PC walks into view of any Camera in the city.
Mind masters know they can't affect him directly (as he is a Master himself), but a large area knowing spell for the PC's image in the minds of sleepers might detect him. If any sleeper ever sees him, the Masters will know instantly. They might also try to find his Oneiros, though that is risky against a Master of Mind.

[totalgit]

Life mages could use large area scent detecting spells to find him or enchant a few thousand rats or birds to look for him. If a species of vulture can smell a dead body through dense foliage from miles away then a Master of life should be able to smell your mage from a few cityblocks away.
Death mages send lots of ghosts. Did the PC ever do anything that might have anchored a Ghost to him?
Spirit mages can ask and send spirits.
Prime mages can cast large area spell detecting spells to find high powered wards. A potency 50 ward will be like a giant firework to any Prime Master with a good spell of the knowing practice. A prime spell with enhanced area factors cast by a master with several acolytes should be able to cover several blocks or even most of a city to find a specific casters signature or a specific spell.
I don't remember if shield of Chronos protects against Fate spells? A Master of fate could probably walk through the city, throw a coind or something else to decide which direction to go at any street corner and find your Mage by "chance".
Forces master with fate to send a lifefeed to the Master's smartphone each time your PC walks into view of any Camera in the city.
Mind masters know they can't affect him directly (as he is a Master himself), but a large area knowing spell for the PC's image in the minds of sleepers might detect him. If any sleeper ever sees him, the Masters will know instantly. They might also try to find his Oneiros, though that is risky against a Master of Mind.

The idea of using animals with life, spirits via spirit and ghosts via death is a possibility, and while it could take weeks or longer depending on the area to search it might eventually pay off.

Predatory spirits with numina similar to Know the Path or Communion with the Land gifts from werewolf would have the best chance i think.
As far as i know ghosts have nothing special other than being able to go just about where ever they want in twilight it might also be hard work for them to search for someone if they cant stray far from anchors but lighten anchor spells and would work along with maybe arming ghosts with spells that'd help with the search.
Animals adding extra eyes/noses etc to the search would also help out, it'd just be a matter of time/effort involved.

So yeh wards themselves are not of the practice of veiling so should show up under prime detections spells, though the example of supernal sense from tome of mysteries suggests otherwise which threw me. As long as you are not using space and then perhaps trying to detect mana possibly with life to detect it in humanoids would narrow the search down.

A friend suggested that a Fate master could throw a dart at a map and find him easily but that seems a bit far fetched to me. The spell gift of fortune can send items to anybody anywhere so fate can surely find people alright but it requires space. I personally would allow it vs sleepers maybe awakened who you wanted to bump into randomly as long as they were not specifically going to any great lengths to hide themselves, fate can only be stretched so far. Bumping into somebody in his pocket realm is also unlikely which is fortunate that said mage hasnt the matter or life to be able to stay inside his pocket realm without breathing equipment for extended periods of time.

Oh and its not my PC, its an others. We have been discussing possible methods of finding him for weeks now and its come down to deciding that with enough time and effort Mages can make anything happen (who knew right?) and that a lot of reasons why something doesnt happen is because of the time/effort and motivation involved, abit like a nuclear stand off in a cold war.

[Dave Brookshaw]

Nah, not a spirit.

Your best bet is a Shade. Have the Consilium put together a team of Moros and summon a supernal entity to find him. Potentially very risky indeed, and using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but when a job's worth doing...

[Mrmdubois]

In the Astral Realms book there's a Space spell that lets you cast Space spells during it's duration to move between layers of the Astral. At mastery you can also cast space spells between the Fallen and the Astral, so yeah you can go bodily to the Astral without being an Archmaster.

[Thorbes]

Actually, no, you can't. That spell just lets you directly enter a layer of the Astral as usual but without the long meditation, so you can just cast the spell and enter a particular Temenos realm. Your body is still behind.

[totalgit]

Nah, not a spirit.

Your best bet is a Shade. Have the Consilium put together a team of Moros and summon a supernal entity to find him. Potentially very risky indeed, and using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but when a job's worth doing...

Forgot all about summoning supernal beings and all the cool stuff in the summoners book though ochema had been discussed had it been the seers problem. Doh. Any particular reason for a shade? Guessing any supernal being, or even royal avatars etc could do the job?

Actually, no, you can't. That spell just lets you directly enter a layer of the Astral as usual but without the long meditation, so you can just cast the spell and enter a particular Temenos realm. Your body is still behind.

Thats what i thought.

[Dave Brookshaw]

Forgot all about summoning supernal beings and all the cool stuff in the summoners book though ochema had been discussed had it been the seers problem. Doh. Any particular reason for a shade? Guessing any supernal being, or even royal avatars etc could do the job?

Sorry. I somehow picked up the notion that the mage they were looking for was a Moros.

A supernal being of whichever path your fugitive is would be best. After that, probably an Angel.

[DahQueenDiva]

This is ridiculously newbie but...
New Question: What the hell is magic? Is it drawing down the supernal, bending reality to your will, using higher truths to alter reality or something different? And are the supernal realms actual realms, or just metaphors?

[Mrmdubois]

Ok, short opinions because I tend to ramble otherwise. A lot.

Magic isn't really knowable. Mages know it exists, they think they kind of get how it works, but magic is just as magical to them as it is to us which is one of the reasons they're so obsessed with finding answers to all their crazy questions. Make up a theory or use a metaphor that seems to accurately describe what's going on.

I don't know if you've been following the devblogs but there's some hints for the Supernal Realms. There are realms in the sense of "not on earth" only because they exist purely in the abstract because they're idealic forms that are too pure to touch the Fallen world at all. It's not like you can just point to a cosmological map though and say, "Here's Supernal Australia." Most of the time Mages are dealing the Supernal World which is kind of like Twilight if you imagine Twilight to be a different frequency of existence rather than a place you go.

[Kazorh]

Is it drawing down the supernal

yes

bending reality to your will

yes

using higher truths to alter reality

yes

or something different?

yes

And are the supernal realms actual realms

no

or just metaphors?

kinda

Edit: On the subject of the Supernal, I reccomend those two blog posts from Dave Brookshaw.

[wyrdhamster]

As my player plans committing murder by magic - is Postcognition ( Time 2 ) needing to touch target to discern it's timeline? Is advanced mages of Time could cast it without the target - like "we know Mr X is gone, let's look for him in timestream"?

[Mrmdubois]

Postcognition requires you to know exactly what time you want to be looking at, Space would be required if you don't have the target whose past you're looking at present. So if you can figure out the last time the target was seen in order to get as close to the time of his disappearance as possible then you can keep casting Postcognition or ritual cast it for a much longer vision until you see what happened to him to make him disappear. Provided of course that the reason he's gone didn't involve a Shield of Chronos or a Time Erasure spell at some point anyways.

[Troy]

As my player plans committing murder by magic - is Postcognition ( Time 2 ) needing to touch target to discern it's timeline? Is advanced mages of Time could cast it without the target - like "we know Mr X is gone, let's look for him in timestream"?

If you know someone that is planning to commit murder, via any means, and they think mages might be investigating it the best advice would be to change his mind. Mages will find you and Time would be the least of your problems. Time 2s Post-Cognition power is a really versatile recording device, but it's little more than that. You cast the spell at a location and can view almost any point in time at that location.