Ask a simple question: Fallen World edition

[Cauthon]

The Runic Yantra requiring [ritual interval] to use has always been wierd to me. Quite aside from Runes already being very limited by their relative ease of disruption, it means you have to draw out new summoning circles and the like every time. A more stereotypical hermetic wizard's magic circle, inlaid into the floors and walls of a room, would be an Environmental Yantra, rather than Runic Yantra, correct?

[KaiserAfini]

The Runic Yantra requiring [ritual interval] to use has always been weird to me. Quite aside from Runes already being very limited by their relative ease of disruption, it means you have to draw out new summoning circles and the like every time. A more stereotypical hermetic wizard's magic circle, inlaid into the floors and walls of a room, would be an Environmental Yantra, rather than Runic Yantra, correct?

Yep, I think it would be either an environmental. Runes have an interesting application, they are a non-concentration yantra that allows you to end an unsafely relinquished spell, which gives a bit more sanity check (as well as a nice bonus). Regarding ease of disruption, it depends, you can use things like ultraviolet paint to make them non-obvious.

[Cauthon]

Yep, I think it would be either an environmental. Runes have an interesting application, they are a non-concentration yantra that allows you to end an unsafely relinquished spell, which gives a bit more sanity check (as well as a nice bonus). Regarding ease of disruption, it depends, you can use things like ultraviolet paint to make them non-obvious.

I mostly find it strange with stuff like tattoo runes. It typically does not take three hours to tattoo a thumb-sized symbol on someone's shoulder, and not being able to re-use that rune is... incongruous? Needlessly limiting? Granted, three hours is a specific Gnosis level, but ten minutes to create a tattoo is also rather unusual.

Come to think of it, could you Imbue a tattoo? Or rather, the ink that forms the tattoo?

[KaiserAfini]

I mostly find it strange with stuff like tattoo runes. It typically does not take three hours to tattoo a thumb-sized symbol on someone's shoulder, and not being able to re-use that rune is... incongruous? Needlessly limiting? Granted, three hours is a specific Gnosis level, but ten minutes to create a tattoo is also rather unusual.

Come to think of it, could you Imbue a tattoo? Or rather, the ink that forms the tattoo?

Page 62 seems to suggest enchanting can be done with tattoos. Imbuing seems to be more permanent, but unlike Grimoires, not detrimental. However, if the imbuer has control of the imbuement, they can detonate them by spending a mana (Signs of Sorcery page 68), causing aggravated or Structure damage. A Seer could use that to create deadman switches, after all, Attainments can't be dispelled, and there is no limit on the range, no even across dimensions.

[orathaic]

The Runic Yantra requiring [ritual interval] to use has always been wierd to me. Quite aside from Runes already being very limited by their relative ease of disruption, it means you have to draw out new summoning circles and the like every time. A more stereotypical hermetic wizard's magic circle, inlaid into the floors and walls of a room, would be an Environmental Yantra, rather than Runic Yantra, correct?

You don't have to make new runes each time. You have to inscribe the runes on the subject of the spell.

So you can have runes for a healing spell tattooed into your cabal mates once. And then heal them with it as many times are you need to.

Summoning circles are completely different, when used to summon supernal beings, and high speech runes as part of an environmental yantra don't take [ritual interval] to setup.

[TakWrote]

I mostly find it strange with stuff like tattoo runes. It typically does not take three hours to tattoo a thumb-sized symbol on someone's shoulder, and not being able to re-use that rune is... incongruous? Needlessly limiting? Granted, three hours is a specific Gnosis level, but ten minutes to create a tattoo is also rather unusual.

Come to think of it, could you Imbue a tattoo? Or rather, the ink that forms the tattoo?

The hard time limits on making a runic yantra have definitely struck me as odd as well. My read is that, like with ritual casting, a low Gnosis mage is going very slowly making sure that every line and every detail is exactly correct. It might even include creating a sketch first, then making the actual rune. A higher Gnosis mage has a much greater intuitive understanding (and probably much more practice) of how to create the Supernal symbols involved and so needs much less time to draw/sketch/tattoo the rune they plan to use.

It's like muscle memory for the soul - a higher Gnosis mage doesn't need to think about each individual component of the Imago as much as a lower Gnosis mage does, so they can do it much more quickly and smoothly.

[Cauthon]

You don't have to make new runes each time. You have to inscribe the runes on the subject of the spell.

So you can have runes for a healing spell tattooed into your cabal mates once. And then heal them with it as many times are you need to.

I was under the impression that you needed to re-scribe the runes each time, based on the response from the last time I asked a similar question, but I may have been taking that interpretation too narrowly.

Summoning circles are completely different, when used to summon supernal beings, and high speech runes as part of an environmental yantra don't take [ritual interval] to setup.

Fair enough, but I meant summoning circles as in a circle that you use to facilitate Goetic/Ghost/Spirit Summons, a focal point for Co-Location/Teleport, or a circle into which your casting of Ex Nihilo deposits its creation. That last is... somewhat impractical, I suppose, but I can think of a few uses.

[Satchel]

The hard time limits on making a runic yantra have definitely struck me as odd as well. My read is that, like with ritual casting, a low Gnosis mage is going very slowly making sure that every line and every detail is exactly correct. It might even include creating a sketch first, then making the actual rune. A higher Gnosis mage has a much greater intuitive understanding (and probably much more practice) of how to create the Supernal symbols involved and so needs much less time to draw/sketch/tattoo the rune they plan to use.

It's like muscle memory for the soul - a higher Gnosis mage doesn't need to think about each individual component of the Imago as much as a lower Gnosis mage does, so they can do it much more quickly and smoothly.

I should also like to add that Runes Yantras are definitely not "a thumb-sized symbol"; their writeup explicitly compares them to the intersection between Concentration — a Yantra that only works on spells that last longer than a turn — and incanting in High Speech — a Yantra that does not allow you to cast the spell in a single turn.

Likewise, Runes are done in High Speech, a "language" whose spellcasting applications are compared to blueprints and whose unformalized manifestations can be found in such diverse forms as animal calls, architecture, and glossolalia. It's fiddly to translate that into the narrative equivalent of Reach effects, spell factors, and other aspects of the spell besides "I'm giving the roll to create this effect two extra dice."

As you correctly observe, ritual interval is used to draw the runes properly; the writeup is plain that you have to do this carefully or else you've made an imperfect description of the spell's Imago in a language that can't be used to tell lies, which is what causes the spell using those runes to end prematurely. You're not going to get that from the High Speech equivalent of just putting the words "healing spell" on somebody's arm.

[TakWrote]

I was under the impression that you needed to re-scribe the runes each time, based on the response from the last time I asked a similar question, but I may have been taking that interpretation too narrowly.
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I asked the same question in the previous "Ask a Simple Question" thread and the answers were uniformly "you can draw the runes whenever".

[Satchel]

I asked the same question in the previous "Ask a Simple Question" thread and the answers were uniformly "you can draw the runes whenever".

Also, as the one who gave the answer in the linked post, I cannot fathom how one gets "you have to draw the runes each time you cast the spell" from "you can't use the Invisible Runes spell to shortcut the need to spend at least your ritual interval scribing a Runes Yantra, because Invisible Runes writes short messages, Runes Yantras are not short messages, and if most Yantra bonuses above a +1 have some form of drawback it's probably not valid to let a Yantra whose drawback ends the spell if the runes are disrupted be made with a spell that lets you Clash any attempts to erase the message (which is also invisible to anyone without Mage Sight)."

[Cauthon]

I asked the same question in the previous "Ask a Simple Question" thread and the answers were uniformly "you can draw the runes whenever".

Yeah, I overcorrected then. Thanks!

[Cauthon]

What kind of effects would you expect Perfecting to have on inks? No bleeding, running, or fading?

[21C Hermit]

What kind of effects would you expect Perfecting to have on inks? No bleeding, running, or fading?

Sounds apt. Some materials simply don't have fancy effects.

Speaking of materials, I wonder if the ink's ingredient matters... likely not, since ink is just Ink symbolically speaking, but someone in-universe is probably Obsessing over that.

[Cauthon]

Sounds apt. Some materials simply don't have fancy effects.

Speaking of materials, I wonder if the ink's ingredient matters... likely not, since ink is just Ink symbolically speaking, but someone in-universe is probably Obsessing over that.

Could be interesting with plant-based inks - they might be subject to the same rules as blood or skin. Cephalopod ink or mineral ink might have other effects, but like you said the symbology of ink is ink. Definitely an interesting Obsession possibility.

[orathaic]

Fair enough, but I meant summoning circles as in a circle that you use to facilitate Goetic/Ghost/Spirit Summons, a focal point for Co-Location/Teleport, or a circle into which your casting of Ex Nihilo deposits its creation. That last is... somewhat impractical, I suppose, but I can think of a few uses.

I think co-locate can use runes like this, arguably with runes on both ends, but I'm not sure.

This is because co-locate is the only one of those spells which has a space as the subject. Teleport rewrites the subject's spatial co-ordinates, so you would need to inscribe the runes on whoever or whatever you were teleporting (for each subject).

Or use them as a +1 environmental bonus, (and not have all the downsides of Runes).

Notable, i have seen discussion of leveraging the 'spell end of runes are broken' downside as an advantage - where you cast an unsafely relinquish the spell, followed by breaking the runes if something goes wrong.