With the Alpine Apprentice saga wrapping up after fifteen sessions and fifteen years for our young tiro, I just wanted to publicly state how deeply indebted I am to Sanctuary of Ice, the Greater Alps Tribunal book, and its author Mr. Ferguson.
Tim has written on his blog that he felt the book was "overwritten," but I and my six players have gamed the hell out of that book. Characters outlined in it -- Athena Alpina, Kentigern, Balbina, and Sebastien -- became the masters to PC apprentices. More NPC masters came from the Alpine Apocrypha -- Diana and Kynthia from the Shadow of the Moon covenant both had ongoing important roles in the saga.
Players engaged with this book in more ways than I can count, but here's a partial list: they were possessed by the demon of the Werfen Ice Caves, they attended the Hermetic Fair, they battled other apprentices during the annual athletic games, they participated in the ritual murder of the Criamon Prima La, they traveled to Terragon Vale and were caught up in the Vanishing Away, they studied together at Icy North, explored the underground catacombs of Sinews of Knowledge, revealed Mircalla as a Nightwalker and saved one of their number from her strange ardour, and tried to reach the Moon from the top of the Tribunal's greatest peak. The calendar of annual events in the Alps gave me, as an SG, a skeletal framework for outlining the campaign. They had plenty of adventures that aren't from that book -- an encounter with St. Nerius, discovering the Cave of Bonisagus, and causing the failure of the Children's Crusade -- but all those adventures also interacted with Sanctuary of Ice when, for example, the apprentices sought refuge in Valnastium, realized the "Terragon Heirs" were actually infernalists in disguise, and so on.
So... Thanks, Tim. I know working on Ars is something of a thankless task. But not today.