The World Outside
Auras
Aura are an important part of the ArsM world, but there are scant few rules of what they feel like, or how to actually deal with them. I am attempting to rectify this situation around about now.
Detecting Auras
This is easy with magic, and farly easy without. Detecting auras by magic is InVi level 5 for the flavour, 10 for flavour and level. Detecting Auras by mundane means requires a Per + Highest Applicable Skill + 1/3 Remaining Applicable Skills, where the skills applicable are Awareness, Magic Sensitivity, Sense Holiness/Unholiness, Faerie Sight, Second Sight. The difficulty is 13 - Aura (-3 if using a skill directly applicable to the flavour of Aura).
Feeling Auras
So, what do Auras feel like? Firstly, they feel different for magi and mundanes, secondly they feel different according to their strength, finally they feel different according to their specific flavour.
Faery Auras
To a mundane a faery aura is very much like being in a dream. It may be beautiful or terrible but things are very much out of your control, and your best bet is to hang on for dear life. To a Magus, a faery aura is like attempting to lucid dream. Things are still strange, but you think you can control them. Of course you may be entirely wrong. Everything in a faery aura seems faintly off in a way you can't put your finger on. One gets the impression that if one looked too closely at, say, the trees in a faery wood, they would reveal themselves not to be trees at all but to be something else trying to look like trees.
Infernal Auras
To a mundane an infernal aura is like being in an abbatoir surrounded by the stench of viscera and the screams of dying cattle. To a Magus it's like being a vegetarian in an abbatoir and finding that the stench of viscera and screams of dying cattle are making you ever so slightly hungry. Things in an infernal aura will seem in some way corrupt or foul. Even beautiful things will have a cruel or decietful beauty. Infernal auras can be subtle, however, as befits the realm of the Prince of Lies.
Magical Auras
To be in a magical aura is like returning home after long absence. It is on the one hand welcoming and comforting, and on the other hand less familiar than it should be, and with an odd feeling that you don't quite belong here any more. To a Magus a magical aura is like returning home in splendour to a land it is your destiny to rule, but still in strong auras there is the faint impression that your time is not just yet. Everything in a magic aura is more so, things become more and more like themselves. Grass is greener, shadows are longer.
Divine Auras
To be in a divine aura is like listening to a beautiful piece of music, be it the elegant pastoral symphonies of a rural church, the haunting lament of a christian graveyard, or the stirring march of a crusading army the divine aura touches the spirit and uplifts the soul. To a Magus, being in a divine aura is like being a musician listening to a beautiful piece of music and realising in that moment that nothing you ever write will be one tenth as wonderful. Things in divine auras lack the exaggerated features of the contents of other auras, rather they hold many subtle qualities which become deeper, more complex and more beautiful the stronger the aura.
Numerology
That is to say, the numbers associated with magic. Very, very broadly it goes by tens. About one person in 10 in Mythic europe has some tangential experience of the supernatural - a level or two in an Arcane knowlege or skill. Roughly one person in 100 has some kind of minor mystical ability, the Sight, Visions, or just being a competent hedge magician. About one person in 1000 has the full blown Gift, most of these will go their entire lives not knowing about it, although many will wind up as potent hedge magicians. Roughly one in 50 will wind up as a member of the Order of Hermes. The odds of being born with the GIft are significantly higher if one or both of your parents are Hermetic Magi. (This, incidentally, follows from a far broader hereditary principle. Pretty much everything runs in the family in Mythic Europe. If your father was a great Blacksmith, you're likely to be a great Blacksmith). Being raised in a strong magical or fairy aura doesn't alter your odds of having the Gift, or of having any other magical talent, but it does improve your odds of making the most of it.
Vis
A number of important things need to be said about vis.
- First and foremost, vis is vis. That is to say the magical rocks from the volcano do not contain Ignem vis, they are Ignem vis. You can crush the rocks to make them more portable and more useful, you can even put the powdered rock in a suspension in oil (you wouldn't want to put it in water after all...) in order to make it more practical, but you can't extract the vis from the rocks any more than you can extract the blood from blood
- Secondly, an important paradigm point. Vis is seldom obvious. By this I mean that rarely if ever does Aquam vis take the form of magic water, rarely does Animal vis take the form of magical animals.
- Thirdly, and to repeat the point from the Grimoire. In order to use vis you must use it. Burn it in a brazier, scatter it, whatever but you have to use it, not just hold it. This, incidentally, is part of the reason that spells which need vis are often rituals.
- Fourthly, vis usually has other properties. Whether it has these propreties because it is vis, or whether it is vis because it has those properties is very much a chicken-egg debate. It is very seldom that you will get vis which has no properties whatsoever beyond merely being vis.