One mid spring day Talia takes a break from studying and orders the crew to make the Atta Buoy ready to sail. She's taken on a few new hands from some of the members of Insula Canaria and they could use some shakedown time aboard the ship before they get into the rough North Sea.
She'll order the crew to make sail for Orientali Litore, and once there have them wait for a bit. She'll make her way up to the covenant and present herself, and request an audience with Robin, if he should be available...
A few minutes pass before Godiva arrives to welcome Talia. "I'm sorry, but Robin won't be back until this afternoon. Is this a social call, or is there something I can help you with?" she asks with a smile.
I'm assuming Talia's the captain, at least on this shakedown cruise, and the crew is Eoghann, the five new plebes, and whoever Talia brings from the Whoa Buoy.
"Godiva, you're the soul of grace. Thank you for receiving me unexpectedly. The reason why I'm here, is because I'm looking for a better text on the Art of Rego. We have a rather serviceable text on Vim that we'd like to trade for equal quality and scope of the Art. It's a summa discussing 3rd magnitude Vim magics, and I judge the author to be a most gifted writer from what little I have skimmed of it."
Godiva (who appears to be garbed in a robin's-egg-blue, long, sleeveless gown with gold trim) purses her lips thoughtfully. "I do believe we have a decent text on Rego. If you'd like to take a look at it, we can work out a scribal exchange for the books."
She leads Talia to the tower on the south-easterly corner of the covenant and up the stairs to the library, where she pulls out a text and sets it on the table before Talia.
((It appears to be a tome just slightly less than the one that Talia's offering: a Rego summa of Quality 14/Level 14.))
"If I were to judge a book by its cover, I would say it is a slightly inferior work. Have you anything to sweeten the deal? Otherwise, I can contact the Redcaps or have Ysebrand look for one while he's away."
"What did you have in mind?" she says with a smile. "Feel free to browse, and if you see one you like, we'll see what we can work out."
It's basically a generic starter library, with a book on every art (on average Q15/L15) - the best being Mentem (17/17), the worst being Creo (13/14). There are a few books on mundane and/or arcane subjects, too.
((Don't feel like going through and detailing all their lab texts yet. Let's say that they're basically a Low-ish power covenant, and have a variety of lab texts with a max level of 30. If there's any in particular you're looking for, I'll see if they have them.))
((Not from Orientali Litore. Gee, if only there were somebody Talia knew who had access to information about other covenants and magi who's told her that he might be able to give her some.))
Seeing nothing else of note, "It doesn't appear that there is anything else that would be of interest. Do we have a deal? A trade of the Vim text for your Rego text?" ((Yeah, I know, I just thought it might be here, kind of beneath their nose.))
Godiva thinks for a minute, then nods. "One of us will be by to start copying your text...either me or Actius, if he can be torn away from his own projects."
She smiles. "I take it you will be coming to copy our text yourself, or will you be sending one of your sodales?"
((I'm going to say that it's early enough in Spring that copying can begin in a few days without impacting the Copying total, just because I don't feel like doing the maths.))
((Let's see...the exchange (snipping just to get to the relevant parts, here), went like this:
Basically, it looks like Talia is proposing a straight-up trade of the one copy that Insula Canaria has of their Vim text for the one copy of the only Rego text that Orientali Litore has. What Godiva is doing is very subtly pushing for a copying trade.))
"I would have to consult my covenmates' schedules, but I'm fairly certain that one of us would be able to start within a couple of days. Most likely me."
"I can take you, offer you my unused cottage for the season, while you're there. I think it will take me two seasons to copy this book, however."
Talia's Lab has a +7 Texts specialization due to that ginormous desk. It's a feature and a focus! In any event, this gives her an effective scribe score of 2 (is that copacetic, can she scribe the book, otherwise it's a problem, since no magus can do it, as far as I can tell) and do we have the materials on hand to do it? So she can do 8 levels in a season and takes two seasons to copy the book at the current quality level.
Meta-gaming knowledge: Thomas, who arrives in 1223.4, has Scribe 3 (lab texts) and a Hermetic Reputation for being a scribe (negative reputation from Durenmar for trading seasons of scribal work for the privilege of using the library).