>
> On 30/12/2004, at 20:58, Mandos Mitchinson wrote:
>
>>
>> It occoured on a game recently where the opportunity arose to Divinate
>> a recently deceased body.
>>
>> Two possibilities occoured
>>
>> 1. The body is an item and the divination (like DA) will only pick up
>> enchantments that have been placed on it since it was an item and the
>> rest of it's history is lost.
>
> <sobs for the poor apostrophe>
>
>> 2. Divination picks up all enchantments on a thing and so it would get
>> all the enchantments cast on the person while they were alive.
>>
>> I just wondered what the general consensus is on this matter.
>
> I go for 2 myself,
>
I heartily concur and, at the risk of consigning more apostrophes to
punctuation purgatory, will try and justify that, though largely to help
make up own mind.
The ritual description (below) is clear in cases when a item hasn't crossed
any borders between personhood, thinghood, and placehood, and while the
changes death/resurrection brings in status of the aura and any functioning
magic is widely understood (though I've never met anyone who's died and
become a place before) that doesn't imply that it affects the traces that
are left behind.
Death means that the entity is no longer a valid target for most running
spells, hence those fail but don't necessarily vanish retroactively. The
aura reset is a function of the mysterious process of the body and the cloud
of malevolent impulses that cause it to act parting company. DA only
reports current information, so when the aura changes, that gets updated
accordingly.
Incidentally the absence of "soul" (or whatever the elves have instead)
means that a dead body cannot tell you much about the person when they were
alive, such as skills and abilities, and it could be argued that very
indirect magics (I can only think of having the attention of a diety or
somesuch) would also disappear.
However, most collegiate magics have to target though the entity even if
they affect their mind or soul, so there would be as much of record as if
you cast, say Fireproofing on a stick and then snapped it in half. The
spell would fail, but it still leave an imprint.
The only way to disguise that inside rules would appear to be the
application of copious amounts of time (a year should do it) or making the
pieces too small to find in the first place. Come to think of it, that
might be the quick way you turn a person into a place.
Anyway, that's my take on that.
ben
For your reference, from namer Divination:
"By use of this ritual a Namer may determine if an individual, object, or
area is currently, or has been recently, under the effects of magic a spell
by em-ploying
the Ritual of Magic Divination. If the ritual is successful, the nature of
all magic in effect (exact names and Colleges) is revealed to the Namer. If
the magic is of non-college origin general effects are revealed. In the case
of magic that is no longer in effect, for each 5% under the Cast Chance that
the Namer rolled, magic that expired an extra week ago is revealed. For
example if a Namer rolled 12% under
their Cast Chance magic that expired upto two weeks ago would be revealed in
addition to all magic currently in effect."
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