Eleanor d'Aquitaine historically paid a 150-thousand-mark ransom for king Richard of England. In my saga, which starts in the second half of the twelfth century, the PCs will raise that enormous sum for her. But since I'm using the Mythic Pound system, I have no clue about the conversion ratio. Or, rather, I did find that a silver mark was supposed to be 2/3 of a silver pound, but I have some trouble believing that the ransom was a truly astronomical one-hundred-thousand mythic pounds.... Can anyone help me?
Or 45,3 Tonnes of silver. That is quite a large price.
Found this on the net
nndb.com/people/426/000093147/
So it was n outrageous price that puit the finances of the Angevin empire quite on a strain. I guess the large price is because it was assumed it would NOT be paid in full, and so they were trying to get as much they could before hostilities re-initiated, and get the backers of the king angry at him, something very bad when you have a belligerent neighbor. :9
Cheers,
Xavi
A mark was 2/3 of a pound, mentioned in Heirs to Merlin, and also confirmed via some searches: cyberussr.com/hcunn/gold-bri.html.
So 150,000 marks is 100,000 pounds. Yes, it's true!!! It really was that large. However, magically created silver is not all that hard to make.
A spell to create the wealth is CrTe Base 15, R:Touch D:Mom T:Ind, Size +3, 35th Level, Would make a "nugget" of silver of ~50,000 pounds, it would also be ~
Cast it twice and for 14 pawns of vis, the fine is paid. No clue as to your players Arts... I would love the irony of another Tribunal contributing to the silver inflation of England of the period. This might have little effect on the local economy (except alleviating the hardship of onerous taxation), but would have profound impact on the English economy. However, that isn't their Tribunal, is it?
Edit: that's also about 100,000 pounds is ~152 cubic feet of silver by volume. If you were doing strict arithmetic one casting creates about ~65,000 pounds of silver. I shaved it down to 50,000 to reduce the extra silver available.
It really was that huge.
Hence, taxes, hence hatred of King John, who was apparently the only Avegin you could trust to balance a chequebook.
Wow. It really is a lot of money. However, I had not realized that the Tribunal ruling forbidding excessive use of magically created silver only came in force in 1208, due to the fact that "towards the end of the twelfth century, a number of Stonehenge covenants, including Blackthorn, Burnham, and Voluntas, were using large amounts of magically created silver to increase their power and wealth." [HtM,p.116].
A little calculation shows that a Base Individual of Silver is about 30Kg. The ransom is then about one and a half times the gold one can produce with +3 magnitudes -- meaning that you need +4 magnitudes for a total Level of 40 (base 15, +1 Touch, +4 Size), but then you have a lot of silver left beyond that needed for the ransom...
So I'll nudge my PCs into trying to strike a deal with a few other covenants of Stonehenge (including Blackthorn, Burnham, and Voluntas:)) to split the vis cost and the silver 
Yes, that sounds about right: 5 partners, including the PCs. The PCs contribute the time to research the Ritual. The other 4 partners contribute 2 pawns of Terram or Creo vis each (not a lot, it's a very enticing deal). Each keeps one fifth of the total silver, i.e. approximately two hundred thousand silver marks -- a little over a hundred and thirty thousand silver pounds. The PCs can then pay the ransom, and still keep for themselves thirty-something thousand pounds of silver...
I love when I can get history, whether mundane or Hermetic, be the result of the PCs actions!
There's no reason that the spell need create up to the maximum for the size... +4 allows up to a certain size. So the spell could be designed to create exactly enough.
Also, consider alternatives of size/group for min maxing. That +4 size creates a "nugget" of silver that is 100 cubic feet. in size... That's a big hunk of silver to deal with.
And if your players haven't thought about it, by all means, don't suggest it. Sometimes their solutions to problems are much more fun to play out!
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying... if I need a level 40 Ritual to create that much silver, I might as well create as much silver as a Level 40 Ritual can produce, and enjoy the extra...
1000 cubic feet. Yes, pretty large. But you can get coins out of it with really low level, spontaneous Rego magic.
I'm not going to suggest it explicitly. I'm going to set up things so that if they want to pursue this line of raising money, everything will "fall into place" so to speak.
Yes, left the 0 off, it is 1,000.
A character could reasonably design a spell to fulfill a need, and no more than that. I did a rough analysis of Conjuring The Mystic Tower a while back, I think it could be calculated to be much larger.
Would a character create something to the maximum of what is possible, or only enough to be required? I'd say a greedy or avaricious person would go to the limit. Someone else might be more modest.
It seems to me that almost everyone would go to the limit. It's a little like when you go shopping, and there's a buy 2 / get 1 free offer. How many people refuse the free extra?
Why isn't Conjuring the Mystery Tower like that? I think it falls short of the size increment.
It does. Not everybody takes the extras. Magi are so rich already that I can see them goiung for "perfect" more than for bulk
Xavi
Exactly.
I guess the difference is that if you make too much silver, you can simply stash what you don't need right now in a cave, in the basement, or under the mattress.
Whereas a tower that is "too big" isn't so helpful. You can't (easily) stash the extra bits of tower somewhere until needed.
Having it go deeper underground, or be a bit bigger around.
That's just a lot of silver to have hanging around... leads to all kinds of interesting problems... Characters I tend make aren't interested in having those kinds of problems pop up...
Yes.
Not all magi are like that (not even all player character magi are like that). Some blithely walk into these sorts of problems!
I have enough problems to deal with...
In game, its because it was a Mercurian ritual, and Mercurian rituals are suboptimal compared to later Hermetic work.
Out of game, it's either a game balance thing or a "We thought we had it right at the time" thing.
Which is to say, you -could- do a new version of the Tower spell, if you liked, and work through the social issues of replacing a spell written by Bonisagus / Mercere / whomever himself, and that'd be a good story.