Maze of Mneme
Description: The Maze of Mneme is named for the Boeotian muse of Memory and it concerns itself with memory and the caster's strength of will. It does this through the creation of an mental construct called a Memory Palace. Memory Palaces were the focus of the Method Loci which allowed the ancient Greeks and Romans to memorize massive quantities of information without need of physical notes or books. In essence, a student of the Method Loci would choose a building that they knew particularly well and visualize that place in every detail. Then they would perform a mental walk-through of that site leaving pieces of information at likely and logical locations so that when they walked through again, all the information would be contained in neat little packets that the human mind could understand.
This effect takes that principle and turns it upside-down, reversing the purpose, making the palace into a fortress, a prison or a maze. The new purpose is not to memorize information, but rather to protect the mind from intrusion by creating mental constructs as obstacles to the reading of the mind or the influencing of the will. In combination with the Method Loci, the caster utilizes a number of the more obscure Pythagorean mathematical and ritual practices. The Maze of Mneme is a random construction based upon a mathematical seed (algorithm) known only to the caster, memories are organized like troops for battle and from particularly painful memories the mage can create traps for those who would psychically tread where they do not belong.
The focus of the spell is the caster's birthstone which holds the maze together, buffering and reinforcing the magician's will. While the Maze of Mneme cannot physically injure a invader, it can slow the attacker and could cause psychological harm to a trespasser who erred in a truly significant way. Invaders can suffer loss of willpower, temporary retrograde amnesia, or even confuse the their target's life for their own. This spell is not powerful enough to imprison an attacker, but if constructed in enough detail, a foreign mind could become lost until the spell ends. The caster need not be aware of the transgressor for this spell to take effect, in fact the spell is held within the stone until it is triggered by the gravity of a supernatural mind.
Origin: Ostanes
Instruments: Birthstone / Gemstone
Casting: After lighting a cannabis based incense, the caster holds the birthstone aloft, and chants out in ancient Greek the Pythagorean formulas required to construct the maze. Pythagorean philosophers and worshipers represented numbers graphically rather than symbolically, arraying numbers as dots, also known as psiphi (pebbles), to represent numbers in triangles, squares, rectangles and pentagons. With the proper visualization, the caster constructs the maze from random numbers generated via his mathematical seed and perceived as building materials used to construct each facet of his maze. The spell is keyed to protect the caster alone and must be kept upon his person at all times. Once activated by a foreign intelligence, the maze springs into being around the caster's mind and is populated by the memories he designates as defenders, and his most horrific memories are randomly arrayed as traps for the unwary. The effects of the maze last based on the caster's successes and once triggered it remains active for a limited amount of time. The birthstone can be reused, but can only contain one spell generated maze at a time, nor can the caster have more than one maze enchanted stone, for if a second stone is enchanted it deactivates the first. The caster can however create mazes for other individuals if need be. In terms of system, every success must be divided between the time a maze can exist after activation and how many faux willpower it grants the caster to resist psychic or emotional interrogation.
System: Modus + Corona = difficulty is 5 normally / or with a unique instrument difficulty is (4 + 1) -2 = 3.
Sphere: (Corona •)
Paradox: I leave such horrors to the storyteller.
Inspiration: Art of Memory (Black Hand)
Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mneme / https://remembereverything.org/memory-palace-the-method-of-loci/ / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism#Cosmology
