I am planning a saga where I will start in the "middle" of the "Twelfth Night" and after some time start also the "The Tempest", both of the "Four seasons" sagas. The saga will begin with Azenis sending a letter for the players inviting them to help rebuild the Lux ex Tenebris covenant, i.e., SPOILER ALERT from now on, He already has the Holy Shroud and "warped" it, draining the life of the covenant and its inhabitants. I will use the 5th Edition books for the covenant and characters building and for running the saga.
And now I have in my hands the RoP: The Divine, and as far as I understand it what Azenis is doing, "warping" the Holy shroud, would be impossible and it seems that only people with faith could use a Divine relic and so on in 5th ed.
So any suggestions on how to explain - rule wise - the "warping" and its effects from the Twelfth Night into the 5th Edition?
I am also open to any advice, comments and so on about running the "Twelfth Night" and "The Tempest" in the 5th edition or even about combining them together.
For those curious "Lux ex Tenebris" will be located in a Regio on the Roman temple at Corseul in Brittany (The Lion and the Lily pg 36) with some modifications and also using the rules from "Covenants". The "Tempest" was what destroyed the first "Lux ex Tenebris" built by followers of Tytalus during the Schism War. The "Tempest" created several regiones, one is now the location of the present covenant. Herrick was kept alive in a nearby river or forest (still figuring this out - thinking in he being kept alive by faeries in Brocheliand) and Marlowe is stuck in one "undiscovered" regio.
One possibility is that the evil mage only thinks he got the Holy Shroud. Whereas, in fact, he got either:
a) a faerie artifact, or a faerie posing as an artifact. The Holy Shroud has so many legends about it that its myth attracts faeries in droves. The actual "warping" of the artifact could be simply the faerie changing its role (see RoP:F). Or perhaps the evil mage learnt the faerie wizardry powers of Ware, Weal, and Woe, adapted them to Hermetic Magic (again, see RoP:F) and even though he does not realize it, the function of the Holy Shroud is just that of a prop. In fact, the whole "Shrug off aging onto others" could really be just a variation on Faerie Curse Throwing.
b) an infernal artifact. Questing for a holy artifact to use it for selfish reasons is bound to bring helpful demons to your doorstep. Again, note that "shrug off aging onto others" is specifically a set of guidelines for Incantation+Consumption maleficia.
Your start in the middle of "Twelfth Night" sounds good for me (zhough my group had a longliving trauma due to the exodus from their primary covenant, which was a storytelling occasion for many years).
You don´t want to play "Midsummer Nights Dream" between "Twelfth Night" and "The Tempest"? It´s a good adventure! If you´re not domiciled in the Provence, you need a little work to adapt the adventure, but actually you only need some faeries and a brutish noble, new in the neighbourhood.
Those are great ideas, I can even combine both, like it was a faerie artifact that was corrupted by Azenis and turned into an infernal one... Thanks a lot for those ideas, I will read my RoP: Faeries again and buy the RoP: Infernal to take a look =)
Thanks for the tip, I will take a look at the midsummer nights dream =)