Benedict Adamson:
> Alex Ferguson wrote:
> ...
> > but if
> > you were creating a cow 'from scratch', using 'general purpose illusion
> > magic' (if it makes sense to talk of such at all), it seems clear to me
> > that 'fertility' would be something you'd have to set out to 'include'
> > to stand any reasonable change of it actually happening.
> ...
>
>
> It could be argued that there is no 'general purpose illusion magic',
> the Celestial Court being long gone. We're talking about Eurmal
> Tricksters here, who's illusions should always be flawed, preferably in
> some amusing way. Isn't a motif in traditional stories that illusions
> have a flaw? We can't expect Eurmali to carefully and methodically think
> of all the attributes their illusionary cows should possess.
I don't see how that goes to the issue at all. I'm specifically arguing that 'general purpose illusion magic' _would_ be 'flawed', in all likely events, contra Simon who seems to think that 'Illusory cows' will be (or at least will strongly tend to be) 'perfect but temporary cows'. As I commented before (and Simon didn't comment on), his position seems to be somewhat contradicted by the possiblity of "medieval bestiary cows", which don't correspond to a 'real' anything. [Page fault: invalid Platonic Ideal pointer.]
Specifically, let's consider on the one hand a "particularised" Illusion feat that some Eurmal shrine/subcult has, "Create Cow", "Illusory Bovine", or "Glamourous Bull", as you will. Let's further supposed that this has mythic origins with Eurmal playing a trick on Uralda, or having a risqu� run-in with Urox (who is the Heortling god of bulls, anyway? Urox? Barntar? Some son of Uralda?). This to me suggests a sufficiently strong tie to "real cows" that it'd certainly be pretty reasonable to imagine that the transient cattle in question are fertile, etc.
On the other hand, what I mean by 'general purpose illusion magic' would be say some Affinity (or Grimoire, or suspiciously broad Feat) that let you create _any_ illusory form. If you use this to create something that's cow-looking (and if you're sufficiently thorough, cow-smelling, cow-feeling, etc), there's no reason at all to believe that it'd be fertile simply because it _looks_ like a cow. In principle you could still make such an illusion 'real' enough to be fertile and all the rest, but that seems to me to require 'extra effort' beyond the above (or a degree of serendipity): i.e. [ObRules] a higher degree of difficulty in the first instance, or a greater degree of success in the second.
Cheers,
Alex.
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