Yes ... in theory. That assumes, of course, that they accept your sovereignty of the island.
I think the thing to remember is, if we annoy enough folks, or even one sufficiently strong person (either Political or Martial Power), there's nothing stopping them from making our lives miserable. And lets say you tell someone they can't make a Covenant somewhere on the island, what's stopping them from turning around and challenging you to Certamen over it? To say nothing of a Wizard's War. We're outside of a Tribunal at the moment with little to no backup here, we need to be smart.
The issue is more that we have leverage than we can take all comers...
I started AM in 3rd ed, Tremere always make me nervous.
Leverage meaning political power of some sort usually. Something we quite literally have none of. Given that we're dependent on other covenants to survive, we're hardly in a place to repulse any sort of... incursion (for lack of a better word).
Not sure where you got Tremere from, but ok. Certamen is very much the standard way to solve disputes in the Order, the Tremere just happen to be good at it. IE leverage.
And on that note, the lore and fluff has changed considerably since 3rd. The Tremere are written far better than the cackling in the corner villains who want to take over everything that they were portrayed as back then. Honestly, going back and reading some of that stuff just makes me cringe.
FWIW, my knowledge of 3E Tremere is slim to none. So my interpretation of them is not informed in any way by how they were in 3E. I'm going by how they're portrayed in 5E.
And for that, I'm eternally grateful. They're far and away my favorite house (which makes me an absolute minority on the forums), and it's a damn shame that so many folks seemingly view them through the lenses of editions past.
Love and hate the Tremere. Certamen makes no sense in the setting to me, yet a highly organised house with defensive, military, and paranoid aspects is the way I think more House would actually be. I'm yet to play one in a serious game and looking forward to it.
Fair enough. See, I love the idea of Certamen. It makes perfect sense that someone came up with a less destructive way for magi to solve their disputes. The mechanics however could stand to be a bit better in my mind (but that's ArM5 in a nutshell). That said, I'm in total agreement with you on the House. I've yet to play one in a PbP game, though I did enjoy the one I played during in person game. Quite frankly, I'd love to see a game centered around a Tremere run covenant, I think it would be quite fun and very different from what we usually see.
My impression of the current Tremere is that they may not intend to take over, but they generally still do. Only now they do it for the greater good instead of personal ambition. Except those who simply cloak ambition in claims of the greater good...
"I wonder if there are any auras that we don't now know about" replies Constantine. "We have had several sweeps of the island and found no new ones. Which is why establishing a presence in each is important. "
"Perhaps this is a job for each of our apprentices to do regularly. Regan can certainly now travel and search himself, albeit slowly. "
Ooc: where was the landing spot? I don't think it was decided.
"Aura's are pretty hard to miss if you use a good InVi spell. We've already claimed the best ones, and swept up the obvious vis sources. If the Tremere establish a covenant on the island they've essentially declared what we're doing legitimate. We want people to come to the island, right?" Artemis is unworried.
"We want people to come on our terms. If the Tremere show up and start challenging the legitimacy of our rule over the island, and try and institute their own order instead, this would be a problem." Meliai responds.
"If forced, the land around the central covenant is large, but not so large that it's not unreasonable for us to claim as one covenant. " (Ooc: I think Magnus made this point earlier)
"It's a disaster to have an uncontrolled foreign covenant here, but we will have a lot influence on that entity too, by virtue of the same rules they might seek to use against us. It cuts both ways, so if we invest our magical resources and time here the argument for protecting our resources is far stronger. "
"If I manifest guardians for each of the auras... of course the question is still how much rule of law will prevail."