Will he be showed as blurred white spot or camera won't register him at all? Let's say 100TA cameraman trying to take photo of 100MA mage. What results will be (exploded camera is ofc excluded)?
Unless the mage is using Body of Air or Invisibility, I think he'd show up on a Daguerreotype. Might some how even out to neutrality, due to equal opposing aptitude on both sides. Consider this; Photographs work by capturing light through a lens and placing it on a square of film, or in the case of Victorian tech, a plate coated in silver nitrate. If the human eye works by doing the same thing as a cameral lens and then sending an electrical impulse facsimile to the brain to be recompiled as an image you recognize as a mage, and the body works by natural physical processes just like a camera does, then the photo should come out fine. The worst thing I can think of happening is a catastrophic failure of the shutter, causing it to not open. But, if that was the case, given opening one's eyes is also a mechanical process, then looking at a mage would be impossible after the first time you successfully blinked (given closing one's eyes is mechanical as well).
Organic mechanical, as opposed to artificial mechanical, seems to be neutral aptitude-wise in Arcanum.
Just stick the mage in a suit of machined plate and hope they don't melt, then the camera would hopefully at least get the suit in focus if nothing else!
Sounds like another convenient loophole. Cameras of that time period could be made using only wood, fabric and glass, and the light sensitive material made to capture the image was an emulsion of silver salts in gelatin over a sheet of glass. The vision of a human relies on physical as well as chemical processes just like taking a photograph, but is far more complex, and involves synthetic compounds like most anything else that allows the proper functioning of organic processes. Though, if they got that anal about writing magick into the game mechanics and story, people would explode in the presence of powerful mages, and not due to a spell. However, given the understanding of the human body during that time, perhaps peoples' general ignorance of those workings would actually keep them safe from self-destructing simply due to everyone's lack of knowledge. People might be organisms, but they can also be considered machines.
The ignorance explanation only makes sense as long as we're talking about sentients. It stops doing so when we notice that machines - obviously lacking any awareness or wisdom - are nonetheless resistant to magick and of tech aptitude. I would myself say that living organisms are nothing more than organic machines and it therefore makes little sense that an automaton is more technological than a human. However, it is something that is clearly a fact within Arcanum's universe. We can't argue with facts, just try to give an explanation to them. Here's one. The existence of the soul is confirmed in Arcanum, significantly differentiating living and non-living matter. A soul is something beyond magick and technology, a thing of divine nature, therefore neutral. If something is animated because of having a soul, it's alive and neutral. If it's animated because of someone's will, it's magickal. If something is soulless, under no magickal influence and yet animated, the animation is fuelled exclusively by the laws of nature, therefore rendering it technological.
Aha, with that additional tidbit it all sortof makes sense. I suppose if the soul is what drives verifiably living things in Arcanum, then the nature of a sentient body is irrelevant when determining how conflicting aptitude would affect it. Does that essentially mean there would be no problem in photographing a mage under the given aptitude of the subject and the photographer, and perhaps a reasonable distance?
I think the possible explanation I provided above would apply before the mind - which can change everything - is considered. Living organisms are by default neutral. The rest is as observed in the game: if a living organism gathers knowledge about the laws of nature, it moves towards the tech end of the aptitude scale; if it is instead inclined to bend the world with its will, it moves towards the magick end.
...Photographs, Muro. Where do the photographs come into play? Is there a piece of lore in the game that you perhaps have discovered (as you seem to know a great deal of game lore) detailing what happens when a technologist tries to photograph a mage? I know there's a written account in-game of a half-orc mercenary who attempted to fire bullets in a strong magickal field only to have them veer off course. The camera doesn't fire anything - it captures light bounced off of the subject. Unless the mage's aura makes it impossible for his image to be captured specifically by technological devices, I still don't think it's an issue beyond both the subject and the photographer having an average aptitude of zero, and it doesn't seem that neutral parties have any difficulty in seeing magickal, neutral, or technological parties, nor do automatons or mechanical spiders have problems seeing mages themselves.
Don't think there is such a piece of lore, no. We could say the light would be magickally charged in such a case. While normally seen when received by a neutral eye, it could be distorted when received by a tech camera. Actually, there is a magick/tech penalty to accuracy in combat. A possible explanation could be that the penalty is at least partly caused by a magickal target being blurred in the eyes of a technologically inclined being.
I would say that Muro's last point about accuracy in combat for a tech character against a magick character hits the nail on the head. I would think that whether you're aiming a camera or aiming a gun against a mage, it ceases to function how it should. In my mind magick interferes with the mechanical processes of the machinery and prevents them from working, so yes I would say that the shutter in the camera would not work. Also chemistry in this game is termed a branch of technology, so who's to say that the photoreduction process used to produce an image would be successful in the presence of a mage either? Mages bend the laws of physics and nature to their own ends, which is why things produced by these means don't work around them; I'm sure one of the Thunderstones says words to this affect. And I know the races of Arcanum can be thought of as biological machines, but ultimately it is the intent to harness what nature provides seems important in determining what is "technological" in Arcanum. So even though the races of Arcanum work mechanically, they are part of nature and hence neutral; but when you have sophisticated processing of what nature provides (herbs for Herbology, metals and metal ore for a variety of the disciplines) that is what makes something technological. As to why some weapons are "neutral", I'd say it's because the technological process used to make such weapons is too rudimentary for a significant techological effect to be imparted on those weapons.
