I think the closest we have to "craftsmen" is the blacksmith and the short gaggle of Viscaria hanger-ons.
Oh, and I'm not quite sure when I should "fly in" to the conversation between Jamie and Serrano.
The covenant is understaffed and has lost most of its skilled labor, especially with all the new magi to serve. As an example, I spent some time tinkering with the Finances chapter last night, and before the Covenant lost men at Las Navas de Tolosa, they needed 12 servants. This season, they'll need a minimum of 20. So, as a rule of thumb, there is roughly twice as much work that needs to be done as we have people to do it, which is why children are working the docks.
The only skilled labor we have left are the specialists we paid for, and villagers who provide the primary income source, which is why there is a clear decrease in building quality visible throughout the covenant's holdings. The buildings made when they first arrived are high quality stone constructions. Then they lost their stone masons, but had skilled carpenters. Now they don't even have that, and the buildings made within the last 20 years or so have been made by people with low skill.
Viscaria has Craft:Stone and Prof:Architect, albeit at low levels. Serrano has a Stone Cutting Knife and a Enchanted Porter, so cleaning up the buildings and repairing them is certainly possible, and would go quickly if you could get a team together, but getting the labor force up and functional is going to require much RP. On the plus side, real estate is readily available on both sides of the Regio boundary.
Now is a good time 
Have him interrupt the standoff, before Jaime has to spend Confidence points to retain self-control.
Why would an NPC not need to spend Confidence points just like a PC.
I wanna see an Earth Shattering Kaboom!
Wow! Now that's neat! 
EDIT: I asked peregrine, and, after discussion about how he perceived him, well... Let me tell you that we now have a Delusion with a face! Ladies and Gentlemen, let me present you Adorjan, the Scourge of Cygna!
OOC: Sure. Like I said, pick anything you want, so long as it is a magical disaster site.
There was a ton of vim in here when the thing blew, and it sucked out someone's Gift, so a Perdo Ignem effect ongoing would make sense. And the Form Monstrosity will have an effect on the environment eventually, anyway.
Okay, what is the steward's story now? She arrived with Hiems? She is known to them or not?
AWESOME 
I'll think about it
Oh! I forgot!!!
Ok, similar story, but she was away. Say... She had been married, 10 years ago, to another minor noble, but her husband was killed in the reconquista, and his lands seized. With nowhere to go, she went back to her family's old land, knowing that, due to the deal with the magi, she'd always have a place here, only to discover that Jaime was the only one remaining and that her mother, that served as the previous steward, was dead.
Since it's part of the deal, she has the skills and has been groomed for that day most of her youth, she then took her family's traditionnal role.
Hum... And I think I will give her a rebellious teenage girl.
She may have arrived with Hiems, since that's easier: She wrote to Jaime that she was coming back, and he arranged for Hiems to pick her on his way, so that she'd travel safely. So they know a little, but that's all. She was happy to see Gerard again, but that's all.
Any other questions?
In kestrel form at Size -06 , Amos has Str -12!
That Ring better not be very heavy.
This kestrel is the same size as a songbird and as mighty!
Isn't that a redundancy?
I just thought of something. You know, logically that Gift had to go somewhere when it got blown out of Claudia (conservation of energy/mass/mana and what not)...for all we know it might have gotten absorbed by the Vim Vis lying around. What if someone were to research a way to use that vis to give someone the Gift, and maybe apply those principles to others without having to use Gift-embued Vis?
That sounds right up a Bonisagus's alley...perhaps a Bonisagus who needs something better to do with his time than harassing the living daylights out of a certain Bjornaer all the time? glares at Adorjan
(deleted and moved, because this really belongs in the OOC thread and not the Spring IC thread)
Also moved from IC thread.
According to Covenants, the Code of Hermes only allows one sanctum - so you can't mark two labs as your sanctum. So, apparently, your Rightside cottage wouldn't be considered a sanctum.
As I understand things, we established a baseline of 5 labs (The 3 Lannisters, a guest lab, and Piotyr's lab for when he visited frequently), plus we have the remains of Salamandrus's lab. Four of these labs get a Minor Virtue.
Ruins of Salamandrus's lab - Hiems
Lab 1 - Jaime's, Spacious - Used by Jaime
Lab 2 - Cersei
Lab 3 - Tyrion
Lab 4 - Piotyr (frequent visitor)
Lab 5 - Guest lab
That leaves 4 labs left to select from, and 6 magi left to select. As JM is absent, he'll defer to whatever group decision is made for him. Viscaria would rather move into a pre-existing lab than have spend 2 seasons building one, especially if she doesn't have to spend a season Taking It Over, which probably means either the guest lab or Piotyr's lab.
Servus/JM is on extended absence. That leaves 3 labs and 4 magi. Serrano and Cygna both seem to have indicated that they would rather spend 2 seasons building a lab from scratch than move into existing ones.
Though, given her scores in Scribe and Latin, we might consider giving Claudia a lab specializing in texts, so she can scribe and decipher lab texts.
This tangents into another point. We will need someone to act as bSG for Viscaria, before I start designing plotlines to include hidden benefits for her (for example, deciding that Piotyr's lab is hidden underground, with Virtues and Flaws handpicked for her). I've already asked Peregrine to bSG for the Faerie Court related plotlines, since it seems likely that Viscaria will be involved in those.
Five labs sounds right.
And Cygna, having been freshly gauntleted, had been planning on having to build a lab basically from scratch in Riversedge anyway. And, having lived in a murdered woman's quarters before, she'd really rather not have to do that again, especially if the woman had such close ties to other people in the covenant. (Last thing she wants to deal with is, if she had moved into Cersei's sanctum, for Jaime to have a blond moment and wander into her bed by mistake).
Hmmm...a magus may only have one sanctum at a time. Would two buildings connected by a breezeway count as one for the purposes of defining a sanctum? (especially when summer gets here and she realizes that it's about 25° F/14° C warmer than she's used to. For what it's worth, her Code of Hermes roll to know is Int 4 + Code of Hermes 1 + die roll of 5 = 10.
My bad, you're right 
I'll call her sabrina, and flesh her out.
What do you need? If it ain't too time-requiring, I can do it.
It could also be great to establish a lab for Esteban, so he can work on ligatures and formulaes for the magi and grogs alike, and be able to treat people.
In the medium run, Hiem will probably be able to serve as a longevity specialist to people, but by then, having a specialized lab would be great.
In the short term, an answer to the above implied question about picking one of the labs to Item or Terram enhanced in various ways (off the top of my head, Subterranean, and possibly Uneven Floors, I don't recall much else that boosts either of those), and somebody specifically in charge of making sure I don't give her too much special treatment. In the long term, I'll need somebody to run plots for her -- corresponding with other magi, Cult of Samos membership, magi wanting to buy enchanted items from her, etc. But seeing as we haven't even arrived at the first council meeting yet, that'll be a long way off.
There's plenty of space in the Regio, by all accounts, and by my current math on the finances, it is unreal how much spare cash we have to work with -- At last count, doing questionable things with all our magic items, we have a surplus of 116. Surplus of 71 if we don't count the magic items. Before we arrived, Phoenix Covenant was probably operating at an even greater profit. I started to wonder where the Lannisters were spending it all.
Then I remembered that I haven't even started to detail the Almohad Empire angle of this saga. 
Okay. So:
- What are the labs with undefined locations?
- Is there a particular lab Viscaria is interested in?
- If searching for a lab, what would be of interest to her?
He's a Roman agitator! He's been supporting the Almohads, of course!
I really have no idea, personally.
Let's say that Cygna's roll of 10 shows that she can think of contradicting precedents, and that the Code is surprisingly unspecific on this matter, being primarily concerned with the number of mundanely-accessible entrances. She realizes that if she were to wall off the double-lot which both buildings sit on, then she could mark a single front gate as her sanctum and avoid the problem altogether.
I'm thinking that Abdul the Merchant would probably arrive at the covenant about a day or two after each regular council meeting (and,thus, a day or two after the meeting that we're about to have). My reasoning is that this is the time when they would have decided that they need new stuff and would be more willing and able to order. That would give him two or three months to get with his Contacts and track the merchandise down.
He's probably worked with the covenant long enough that he doesn't require the whole payment up front (due to the social effects of the Gift), but not so long that he doesn't want 50% down (just in case they do stiff him this time).