So when the raven queen was escaping that prison were the two kids were held there was a scene that held massive implications. From my understanding when the group was escaping the raven queen spread her shadow to each person in the group and they were then protected against divination attempts. But her ward only protect herself and the things near her. Which means the shadow is considered part of herself. The problem arises because the raven can split apart her shadow which was seen in the red guard fight. This should mean that the raven queen could put pieces of her shadow on people she wants to protect from divinations.
But this implication for war are massive. You could create a single super Uber strong ward against divination for one person then if that person gave out a piece of their shadow then you could practically duplicate the ward for anyone without the need for a physical ward to be present on the person.
I mean, even if it does work over great distance (which we don’t know for sure, there is generally loss of efficacy over distance with other output detached spells) she (or at least someone connected to her will) has to actively control the spell of her output-detached shadow familiar, and active continue the spell. She is actively imagining every shape and position her shadow takes on, with precise detail.
In practice, that would mean her stuck in place, focusing on using her shadow to perceive and keeping it on her target, so you still only have one person with the ward on them that can actually do anything at a time and another kinda stuck in one place at any given moment. I don’t think even Siobhan could actively monitor the environment of several people at a distance from herself and keep her shadow on them while also controlling her own body at the same time.
You likely would be better off accomplishing the same thing with binding magic.
Or, you can always obfuscate with the much simpler method that Siobhan used with the ravens that had a bit of her blood.
I always thought that the ward (the one Liza made ) wasn’t involved but it was her shadow familiar that absorbed all the divination rays but I went to check the paragraph and I couldn’t find anything to convince me fully either way because at one point she says:
Chapter 30
Much more palatably, she could keep them within the boundary of her shadow. She’d never tested such a thing, but everything she knew about sympathetic divination, and what Liza had explained about the ward, suggested that it would work
But this could both mean she is using the same principles of the ward or the ward itself
I think Siobhan was using sympathetic magic, to treat the shadow as part of herself, and thus empower the ward that way. Which was clever and seemed to work. But at the same time, it consumes her blood to work, so not a great long term strategy for concealment of a group.
So there’s two types of divination: sympathetic links (which is the blood magic approach) but also an output distanced information spell. Liza explained it this way (in Split Will Training):
My ward shunts aside, reflects, captures, discourages, and devours any non-mundane possibility of information leaking to magical observation.
Magical observation is part of what I expect the shadow familiar can devour, in part because it’s attached to Siobhan, but also because that’s part of what the shadow does. So, I suspect this was what she used when she put the shadow around them. She was using it to devour and obfuscate, as well as connect everyone to her ward.
S. seems to think she’s doing that or something similar:
Her divination-diverting ward had spillover effects into the area around her.
…
Much more palatably, she could keep them within the boundary of her shadow. She’d never tested such a thing, but everything she knew about sympathetic divination, and what Liza had explained about the ward, suggested that it would work.
Theoretically, the shadow familar can extend her ward, but if it can devour the divination rays, well … anyone could use it to block at least some types of divination.
This is very unlikely to be used for several reasons imo. I don’t think you can just give out pieces of your shadow. Every time S’ has done a separated spell its taken her a ton of focus to do it. The only way would be if the shadow had control of the piece.
S’ is very afraid of letting the shadow have control. Splitting her shadow from her is what caused the suspected Aberrant to take control. I highly doubt she will ever do that again. Unless some other things happen to make her trust the shadow.
S’ would likely just pay Liza for other people to get the wards implanted rather then risk losing control again.
S’ ran for the length of a short convo between the red guard and the shadow. The shadow complained that she ran too far.
“Why did you run so far!?” it cried, angry and frightened.
This implies there is distance requirements. It can’t be split too far away.
“Did you consider what might happen to me if I ran out of power before being able to return to you?” “What would have happened if you ran out of the power you absorbed from that beast core while detached from me, inhabiting my shadow?” she asked.
“I would have had to slip into someone else’s shadow,” it said, but Siobhan felt its uncertainty and fear. “I believe I would have had to consume the original shadow to take over. Quite difficult to do with a powerful thaumaturge.”
Siobhan did her best to keep her face from reacting. This, she was sure, was a lie. It had made that up. It had no idea what would happen if it ran out of power away from her, but it didn’t believe it would be anything good.
That implies it needs a power source to be separated. The shadow used a whole beast core just to be separated for the length of 1 short conversation with the red guard.
Siobhan can’t break off pieces of her shadow (yet), and yes doing so seems likely to let That Thing loose again. But, she can extend it, the same way she has multiple times. That does limit the range of the protection, so using her shadow to protect anyone more than a couple of steps away wouldn’t be worth it.
It also seems like Siobhan ran about 1/4 mile away, or that’s my assumption from the description. i also don’t recall if it’s stated how much that beast core had in it, since that would naturally affect how long That Thing could remain in control of her shadow.
I think the thing was that finding those people was tantamount to finding her by proxy, since her shadow was a part of her. In a war scenario, even if the Siobhan-equivalent spread out her shadow along a massive range, at some point, finding her shadow would no longer be the same as finding her, particularly if it’s detached. I don’t think this could really be cheesed in practice.