Questions about Visitor

[Alicorn]

Doesn't work on animals. (Does work on people turned by sorcery on animals.) Plain speaking neither.

Animals cannot have vassals.

People's bodies belong to them. However, by express authorial fiat, conventional sex acts do not constitute vassalization risk.

Not much would be necessary; swallowing a little blood would mean you'd have to stop chewing.

A detached limb does not count as part of your master and you may harm it.

[DanielH]

Does that last bit apply if the master could reattach the limb, like an Aurum vampire? What if it were still controllable and still have feedback while detached?

[Alicorn]

In those cases you may not harm it.

[Ezra]

Animals in Young Wizards world? Animals that have been Celegormed? Loki birds? A Maia turns you into a bird?

[DanielH]

I assume that the relevant qualifier is people, including YW animals and trees and stars, and Loki birds. I do not know enough about Celegorm or Alicorn’s interpretation of him to guess about that. IIRC if a Vala turns you into an animal you are no longer a person.

[Alicorn]

Personhood is the thing. I lean no on Celegorm's animals being people unless he works on them a LOT.

[ErinFlight]

What is the general view of vassals? I haven't gotten a good sense.
Is it generally viewed as horrifying or is is it just a part of life? How rare/common is it to not be directly under someone else's control (excluding the queen)? How common is mutual name sharing?

[DeAnno]

I had some questions earlier with you that established a food claim was not based on actually having particles of the food present in your body, but simply having consumed it at some point in the past. Upon thinking about it, I find this interesting because that's the opposite of how Name claims work. Name claims work based on states; if you know someone's true name (and at least one of you is a Fairy), then that person is your vassal. Vassalhood in this case doesn't require any extraneous data to determine, it can be known simply by examining the present state of reality. This even extends to forgetting Names; forgetting a Name changes the state, and so the vassalness changes to reflect that. Name claims seem to lack any sort of self-memory.

Food claims do not work this way. To determine if someone is a vassal based on a food claim or not, you need information about what occurred in the past. You cannot examine the state of reality checking for specific particles inside of a person, because once the food claim is made the particles that transmitted it no longer have anything to do with it. This sort of claim has a memory of its own.

There are a lot of other "memory" based effects in food claims too, now that I think about it. Food claims don't work on people you're a vassal of already. Food remembers who it came from to establish a claim, and these claims even can come in different levels of strength. While Names and vassals could be passed off as mere physical law (albeit, very strange physical law), food claims are an entirely different animal, and require both judgement and independent memory for a universe to adjudicate properly.

Just some observations that came to mind. Unsure what they signify, if anything.

[pedromvilar]

What is the general view of vassals? I haven't gotten a good sense.
Is it generally viewed as horrifying or is is it just a part of life? How rare/common is it to not be directly under someone else's control (excluding the queen)? How common is mutual name sharing?

I think master-vassal relationships are the "default" in a way. It's not generally seen as horrifying, it's just how fairies relate to each other. Courts are the default group arrangement, and fairies who don't want masters probably try to spend their time alone and interact very little with others. Don't know how common mutual name sharing is but expect it's fairly common amongst romantically entangled fairies and between same-rank fairies in a court.

[Alicorn]

Pedro is right. Although it is atypical for even romancing fairies to have each other's names without a master on top of the both of them, at least as a matter of design and as a fact that matters to their relationship's content (somebody will have the upper hand).