Mage: The Ascension: I can make you a man

[whswhs]

In my ongoing MtA campaign, set in London in 1905, one of the player characters, a Son of Ether, has come into possession of the bodies of two Progenitors. He's conceived the ambition of turning one of them into a familiar through Science!

What spheres and levels would be appropriate to this project?

Working with a dead body seems to be Matter; working with a freshly dead one with many living cells, or reanimating a dead one, seems to be Life. The whole project seems to call for Prime if the newly created familiar is not to fall apart from inherent unnaturalness. Getting the dead man's soul to stay around as a slave is probably Spirit; creating an artificial mentality to operate the body is probably Mind. For an etherite Forces might be involved in some way or other, but that may not be mandatory; this guy is more a chemist than an electrician.

Any thoughts? Comments? Guesses as to levels required in the various Spheres?

[Anaraxes]

Once something actually dies, it's Matter. The mage could use that to alter the lumps of clay. But even making things like alloys or "fine details" needs Matter 4. Might call for 5 for something an intricate as a living body (and for symmetry with the other Spheres; see below).

In the setting, Life is distinct from Matter in its interaction with the universe, so there's limited scope to what you can do even with Matter 4. Reanimating a corpse isn't a matter of getting all the gears in the right position, even at atomic level, as a real-world reductionist viewpoint would have it. I think Life 5 is canonically the level for creating new Patterns that are alive.

So Matter is pretty much useful only for fixing any gross problems with the clay, like missing parts. Or you could just reanimate it and then heal it with Life.

Since body and mind and soul are different, there's three Patterns needed to create a human. Creating new Patterns of any sort seems to call for Prime 2. That's going to be a necessary adjunct to the other Spheres.

Creating consciousness is Mind 5. Similarly, creating a soul would be Spirit 5. (Even 4 only gets you to "control" of existing spirits.) Similarly, it seems to call for Life 5 to create new life. It's not so much something-out-of-nothing that's the problem (and would be Matter anyway). I agree that Mind alone gives you an artificial intelligence (however you'd like to distinguish that from the natural sort), whereas Spirit alone will let you bind a soul to the body -- but that's of little use if the creation has no Mind.

(It's kind of hard to usefully separate Mind and Spirit. After all, spirits can traditionally talk with mediums, or make plans to achieve their desires, however fixated or warped those might be, and have at least low levels of mind like self-awareness. But they're different Spheres, so let's try to make them both applicable somehow.)

Calling back a specific soul, like the former inhabitant of the body to match the classic D&D resurrection, seems to call for Correspondence -- probably 4, as this is the level that lets you do things like create gates to travel or pocket dimensions.

So:
Life 5 - bring the existing body back to life, of the brain-dead sort of life.
Mind 5 - give the body a mind, preferably after it's alive, or your work will just be wasted
Spirit 5 - give the body a soul, unless you want a soulless automaton, however intelligent it may be.
Prime 2 - create the proper Patterns for each of the above

Matter 5 - optional for reshaping or fixing the body before making it "alive", and thus the province of healing with Life.

[Celjabba]

M20 "how do you do that" suggest life 5, mind 5 and prime 2 to create complex conscious living things. Spirit 5 to add a soul (live 5, prime 2 and spirit 4 to bind a spirit to a flesh puppet instead).
To reanimate a corpse and give it a functionning mind, mind 5, live 4, matter 2 (4 if rotten), prime 2. Add spirit 5 to retrieve the original soul. Live 5 if you want the body to be truly alive, not a reanimated corpse.

While "how do you do that" is amazingly usefull, I will note that it tend to suggest needing many spheres for about anything. Old school Mage would likely not gave bothered with spirit and matter, and used only life 5 (4 with a fresh corpse) and mind 5, + maybe prime 2, can't recall if that was in MtA v1.

I would add some possible variations:

As usual, spirit 4 or 5 could be used to bargain with a spirit to do part of the work and compensate for a missing sphere.

Prime 4 instead of live 5 should work to conjure a body by coalescing quintessence. It wouldn't be truly alive and would dissipate upon death.

Proper use of chemical and/or electrical paraphernalia would probably help making the endeavour (slightly) less vulgar.

[whswhs]

Thank you both.

Considering this further, I'm thinking along these lines:

Per the original 2/e Mage, you can create a living organism out of nothing with Life 3 and Prime 2. However, it appears that you can transform patterns with an appropriate combination of Forces 3, Life 3, and Matter 2, and not bother with Prime. To get up to a human-comparable living organism seems to take Life 5 if you're just making it out of matter; I don't think you need Matter above 2, since the biochemistry seemingly can come from Life.

I might allow Life 4, since the pattern isn't being created de novo, but restored from the remains.

Giving a living organism a human-comparable mind takes Mind 5. It might be possible to get away with Mind 4 if you want something that ls smart enough to obey orders, but not to think or create. Such a being would not have a soul or much of a spirit.

I think that to give it a spirit by awakening the tacit spirit of the corpse would be Spirit 3, and it seems as if it would require a huge number of successes. Finding and binding the spirit of the dead man would be Spirit 4. On the other hand, a Son of Ether might not use Dimensional Science (the techno equivalent of Spirit) but might perhaps use Forces 3 to energize the body. In that case, Prime 2 might be needed to keep the energy flowing; the Spirit approach would not require Prime as far as I can see.

An advanced Matter mage might use Matter 5 to provide a radioactive substance as an energy source for Forces 3.

Or it might be okay to leave the body "robotic" and not bother with anything like Spirit at all.

Does this seem to make any sense?

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by whswhs

To get up to a human-comparable living organism seems to take Life 5 if you're just making it out of matter; I don't think you need Matter above 2, since the biochemistry seemingly can come from Life.

I would say matter 2 if you are working with a fresh (or well-preserved ? ) corpse, matter 4 if there is substantial decay. But that's debatable.
I agree that you can drop the prime requirement if you start with matter instead of conjuring ex-nihilo. Later MtA book seems to add a prime requirement to anything and everything, it is probably excessive.

Originally Posted by whswhs

I might allow Life 4, since the pattern isn't being created de novo, but restored from the remains.

Same.

Originally Posted by whswhs

Giving a living organism a human-comparable mind takes Mind 5. It might be possible to get away with Mind 4 if you want something that is smart enough to obey orders, but not to think or create. Such a being would not have a soul or much of a spirit.

Not sure I would allow that, creating a mind is firmly mind 5.
I would accept mind 4, but 1 success would give you microsoft bob/an average chicken. Get 5 or more success to get to the level of a smart dog / weak AI.

Originally Posted by whswhs

I think that to give it a spirit by awakening the tacit spirit of the corpse would be Spirit 3, and it seems as if it would require a huge number of successes. Finding and binding the spirit of the dead man would be Spirit 4. On the other hand, a Son of Ether might not use Dimensional Science (the techno equivalent of Spirit) but might perhaps use Forces 3 to energize the body. In that case, Prime 2 might be needed to keep the energy flowing; the Spirit approach would not require Prime as far as I can see.

An advanced Matter mage might use Matter 5 to provide a radioactive substance as an energy source for Forces 3.

Or it might be okay to leave the body "robotic" and not bother with anything like Spirit at all.

Does this seem to make any sense?

If a player came to me with that reasoning, I would be ok.
If I had players ... been a while since I managed to get a MtA game running, except a small initiation last years that sadly had to stop too early.

I usually allowed player to get an effect busing a lower rank than required by adding a secondary sphere, and a complimentary skill roll with enough success: if the player was creative and convincing, it was good enough for me.
Adding Forces and a medecine(Frankensteinian Techniques) or science roll could allow for lowering (or even substitue for) one of life, mind, prime or spirit in the above rituals.