Hapushet/CunningAegisOfDaanad

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Cunning Aegis of Daana'd

Cost: 10+ motes (committed)
Target: One touched target, plus one additional target per 5 motes spent

While the actions of the righteous are always condoned by Heaven, every child of Water understands that not all such actions need to be openly displayed. Righteousness itself is the reward, and glory a lesser matter that might interfere with the greater aims of the sorcerer.

This spell, the first of Teresu Gido's spells designed specifically to help him in his interactions with rogue gods, allows a target to mask the nature of his Exaltation, concealing it behind a facade of spirithood. Only Exalts can be the target of this spell, which lasts for five hours. Terrestrial Exalted, by far the most common target (especially as Gido has yet to teach this spell to more than a small handful of disciples), appear to all viewers as elementals of a type associated with their Aspect. Celestial Exalts appear as gods, of a type appropriate to the Exalt's Caste and general personality. Abyssal Exalted appear as powerful ghosts. The target does not change behavior, and his appearance only undergoes minor cosmetic alterations - the primary effect of the spell is to create the unconscious impression of deity. Most importantly, the target's displays of Essence appear to be the Charms and other powers of the spirit or elemental he is mimicking. For the duration of the spell, targets cannot manifest any anima ability, but also produce no anima flare. Effects that produce an anima flare as a side effect fail in their entirety, the ability suppressed by the Aegis' magic. If the target spends enough Peripheral Essence to produce an anima flare, the flare is suppressed - but if the flare would remain beyond the duration of the spell, the anima appears at the spell's end at whatever level of display it would have been at without the spell's interference.

Though this spell does not provide any direct disguise capability, while under the effects of the spell the targets are considered to be operating under the auspices of Heaven (or the Dual Monarchy in the case of Abyssals) - and interfering with them in their course of their business is an offense of equal Severity to the same offense against a true member of the Celestial Bureaucracy. (The bureaucratic tangle caused by this state of affairs has already resulted in the permanent assignment of a Sidereal to Lookshy to investigate the matter.) Moreover, Terrestrial Exalts masquerading as elementals may claim the right of entry to the Elemental Courts due a dignitary of their apparent elemental nature. Though peculiar Charm effects, personal attitudes and behaviors or previous familiarity with the target might provoke suspicion or disbelief among individual spirits, no being with an Essence less than the caster's can pierce this disguise, and even suspicious or disbelieving small gods may still be subject to Censure for attacking the Exalt unless their Essence equals or exceeds the sorcerer's.