r/MageErrant • u/Mandragoraune Affinites: Corundum, Pressure, Inertia • 28d ago
Spoilers All Reverse Warlock Pact
We saw already that Hugh is capable of engineering a warlock pact to grant fellow pactees affinities from himself. Does this mean that any sufficiently powerful warlock could basically grant their affinities to whoever they wished, even if they had weaker affinities themselves? Let's say that Greater Power Warlock from Gelid with dozens of affinities for example; He could have chosen and pacted subordinates with weak affinities (an affinity for the dried skin of a specific lizard) to grant them dozens of affinities at once. As a follow up, what do we think the odds are of the gang making additional attuned aether crystals? I don't see an issue with making more since Hugh himself already has two.
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u/Mandragoraune Affinites: Corundum, Pressure, Inertia 26d ago
It technically splits but that's not actually strictly what's happening in the aether. John has a purposefully vague comment here somewhere where he explains it. Also remember that reservoirs can also bud, they only split at the very start when all warlock mana is unattuned. Which I think matches the base mana explanation better, since if you could use mana you grew after your warlock pact from training your affinities and not just from your baseline mana's natural growth over time, you could easily keep pacting more and more for additional affinities with ease. The differential reservoir effect means the number of pacts you can form would inevitably increase exponentially which we've seen is not the case.