Properties of Hermetic Circles, and Ritual Sorcery Options

[Ancient History]

Okay, let's say you need to hide a Uberpowerful magical object for a little while; so you prepare a Hermetic Circle for ritual sorcery, the rest of the team steals the artifact, and you use Ritual Sorcery to cast an Astral Barrier spell, with the artifact inside the Circle with you, and, after successfully casting the spell, you sustain it.

So, while you sustain the spell, is the Hermetic Circle still active, effectively doubling the amount of astral protection? Or not?

[Raén]

From what I know, the astral barrier has no impact on magic use inside it, but only for magic passing through it. So I would think, if the area of the spell can be totally inside the circle, that the circle is still active, effectively adding its rating for the astral protection.

[Talia Invierno]

Would it be additive? or would each have to be penetrated separately? I'm leaning toward the latter, but I can't think of anything canon to support one way or the other.

[Orient]

It would be hard to have the barriers penetrated separately for Ritual Tracking. What do you tell the player? "You found nothing, but you get the impression that if you tried two more times in the same area, you might have better results."

You could just stack a few low-rating barriers with the knowledge that most Ritualists who succesfully penetrated the first barrier would just assume that the object of their search was elsewhere.

Maybe some sort of stacking rule similar to the Layering Armor rule?

[Talia Invierno]

Actually, I would have left it at "the area still seems to be blocked by something".

[Orient]

That would be far too sensible.