Aban ibn Ashraf

[silveroak]

Aban ibn Ashraf

Aban ibn Ashraf is a lithe man whose dark eyes scrutinize his surroundings with a cold intellect. His stern manner exudes authority and something else – an unsettling malice that is difficult to pin down. He always wears either a robe or his red cap of office, but even with these accoutrements it is clear that his head is completely hairless.

Born 1256

Apprenticed 1264

Finished apprenticeship 1279

Born in 1256, Aban grew up in Lucera, an Italian city where Christian conquerors had resettled most of the Muslims of Sicily. His father was a military organizer for King Manfred, so his childhood was spent between the city and army camps, play-drilling with Muslim soldiers’ sons.

As a child, Aban made few friends. When children complained that the blows of his wooden sword had hurt them, he told them to ignore the pain. Only the cruelest children could stomach his habit of cutting up live animals to see how they worked. They told him he was weird, but he didn’t really care.

During the early 1260s, Aban’s father got increasingly worried about the Pope’s plans of deposing Manfred. He managed to organize an apprenticeship with a group of scholars from Piedmont in 1264, whisking Aban to safety just before his entire family was slaughtered by the forces of Charles I of Anjou. Aban has borne a reflexive suspicion of Christians ever since, though he considers such prejudices irrational.

Apprenticing with the redcaps of Harco was hard, but the talented boy was allowed to pursue his (somewhat single-minded) ambitions. By fifteen, Aban was helping to patch up redcaps who had been hurt in their travels. By twenty, he was a better shot with an arbalest than some of the covenant’s soldiers, and was allowed to accompany redcaps on small expeditions.

When Aban finished his apprenticeship in 1279, the redcaps of Harco gave him an unusual graduation gift: they of enrolled him in the famed Schola Medica Salernitana. He studied half of the year at the school and minded his Redcap duties during the other half. The focused Aban was a star pupil, known for the ruthless efficacy of his practice. He later came to teach and conduct research at the institution during his free seasons. His self-experimentation with poisonous theriacs cost him his all of his body hair and his manliness, which did nothing to stop him.

Due to his Arabic mother tongue, Aban mainly served as an intermediary between the Roman and the African and Levant tribunals. Because this sometimes required long-distance travel over difficult terrain, Harco provided him with a flying coracle – a saucer-shaped wooden boat barely large enough to lie down in – and a ring to conceal him in his travels.

Aban later received a second ring that extended his medical talents. Together with his substantial medicus skills, this made Aban popular with the covenfolk along his route. His remedies and magics saved many covenants’ children or elderly whose lives were beneath the notice of the magi ruling them. By this point, Aban’s fame was such that no one asked questions when he requested a magical soporific with an unusual range for use in surgery.

Had someone asked questions, they might have run into Aban’s other vocation – or “hobby”, as he himself thought of it – as an assassin. He secured his first hit by anonymously contacting a Jerbiton magus whose lands Aban knew were targeted by a minor noble. Such “interference” would be admissible under the new code, surely? A few arbalest bolts from the blue solved the magus’ problem, and Aban found a steady stream of side jobs under this line of “necessary interference”, always making sure to contact his prospective employers with notes assembled from letters scribbled by random people, such that the magi never found out who they were really dealing with.

Aban’s murders were not without consequences, however. One angry imam put a geas on the fleeing assassin, threatening terrible divine retribution were he ever to step his foot in a mosque again. In 1289, Aban made his worst mistake yet, and the son of King James II of Aragon saw the assassin stabbing him. At his deathbed, the son described a “hairless Moor”. With the Kings’ agents across the Western and Central Mediterranean, Aban risked being found out and traced back to the Redcaps. He immediately announced his wish to move to the African tribunal to better connect with his family’s cultural roots.

In the Spring of 1290, Aban has just packed his medical supplies, chirurgeon’s tools, and sundry possessions on his coracle and flown to Cairo. He knows his worth but is also desperate to acquire the support of a covenant for medical ingredients, books, and personnel. His first plan of action is to contact the Mercer house, then find the Mercere magus Aetherius, with whom he has had amicable dealings in the past.
Stats

Characteristics:

Int	3	Per	1
Pre	-3	Com	2
Str	1	Sta	1
Dex	2	Quick	1

Size: 0

Age: 33, Height: 168 cm, Weight: 70 kg, Gender: Male

Decrepitude: 0

Warping Score: 0 (0)

Confidence: 1 (3)

Virtues
redcap( +3 major)
puissant crossbow( +1 minor)
improved charactristics( +1 minor)
magic items( +1 minor)
well traveled( +0 free)
puissant medicine( +1 minor)
physician of Salerno( +1 minor)
puissant finesse( +1 minor)
cautious with finesse( +1 minor)

Flaws:
offensive to animals( -1 minor)
disfigured-pock marked skin( -1 minor)
enemies-James II of Aragon( -3 major)
ambituous( -3 major)
eunuch( -1 minor)
lesser malediction-do not enter mosque( -1 minor)

Personality Traits: Cold‑blooded +3, Suspicious of Christians +1, Ambitious +3

Combat:
Dodge: Init: +1, Attack ‑‑, Defense +6, Damage ‑‑

Heavy Arbalest (LoM Web Supplement): Init: 5, Attack 5, Defense 0, Damage 12 (without bonuses, str not added)

Dagger: Init: +1, Attack +8, Defense +5, Damage +4

Fist: Init: +1, Attack +6, Defense +5, Damage +1

Kick: Init: +0, Attack +6, Defense +4, Damage +4

Soak: +1

Fatigue levels: OK, 0, ‑1, ‑3, ‑5, Unconscious

Wound Penalties: ‑1 (1‑5), ‑3 (6‑10), ‑5 (11‑15), Incapacitated (16‑20), Dead (21+)

Abilities:

Arabic	academic usage	5	0
Area Lore: Levant Tribunal	covenants	2	15
Area Lore: The African Tribunal	covenants	2	15
Area Lore: The Roman Tribunal	covenants	3	30
Artes Liberales	astronomy	1	5
Athletics	acrobatics	3	30
Awareness	alertness	2	15
Brawl	Dodge	4	50
Chirurgy	surgery	3	30
Code of Hermes	mundane relations	1	5
Covenant Lore: Harco	personalities	1	5
Crossbows	heavy arbalest	7	75
Etiquette	nobility	1	5
Finesse	magic items	7	75
Folk Ken	magi	2	15
Guile	lying to authorit	3	30
Latin	academic usage	4	50
Leadership	medical assistants	2	15
Medicine	theriacs	7	75
Organization Lore: Order of Hermes	covenant locations	2	15
Philosophiae	natural philosophy	1	5
Ride	staying on the horse	1	5
Stealth	sneak	3	30
Survival	desert	2	15
Swim	not drowning	1	5
Teaching	Medicine	2	15

Theriacs Known:
tonic of gold
Concoction of Litharge and Henbane

[silveroak]

Aban is a redcap who has recently fled from his enemies in the Roman tribunal and is presently seeking a covenant in Africa to take him on. He is a famed medicus and known for his reliable redcap service. What is not known that he has also taken on side jobs of as an assassin. Only “necessary interference”, of course.

[silveroak]

First question I have is why a redcap from the Roman Tribunal has an African name?

[Seon (Seon Tile)]

Here's a first draft of the character, nuts and bolts and all. The numbers are a slightly stylized version of a metacreator printout - tell me if you can't discern something.

The short answer to your question is that Aban grew up lived in this weird internment camp city that the most charitable Fredrik II forced Sicily's Arabs to move into. There is some explanation of it here: Muslim settlement of Lucera - Wikipedia

Aban ibn Ashraf

Aban ibn Ashraf is a lithe man whose dark eyes scrutinize his surroundings with a cold intellect. His stern manner exudes authority and something else – an unsettling malice that is difficult to pin down. He always wears either a robe or his red cap of office, but even with these accoutrements it is clear that his head is completely hairless.

Born 1256

Apprenticed 1264

Finished apprenticeship 1279

Born in 1256, Aban grew up in Lucera, an Italian city where Christian conquerors had resettled most of the Muslims of Sicily. His father was a military organizer for King Manfred, so his childhood was spent between the city and army camps, play-drilling with Muslim soldiers’ sons.

As a child, Aban made few friends. When children complained that the blows of his wooden sword had hurt them, he told them to ignore the pain. Only the cruelest children could stomach his habit of cutting up live animals to see how they worked. They told him he was weird, but he didn’t really care.

During the early 1260s, Aban’s father got increasingly worried about the Pope’s plans of deposing Manfred. He managed to organize an apprenticeship with a group of scholars from Piedmont in 1264, whisking Aban to safety just before his entire family was slaughtered by the forces of Charles I of Anjou. Aban has borne a reflexive suspicion of Christians ever since, though he considers such prejudices irrational.

Apprenticing with the redcaps of Harco was hard, but the talented boy was allowed to pursue his (somewhat single-minded) ambitions. By fifteen, Aban was helping to patch up redcaps who had been hurt in their travels. By twenty, he was a better shot with an arbalest than some of the covenant’s soldiers, and was allowed to accompany redcaps on small expeditions.

When Aban finished his apprenticeship in 1279, the redcaps of Harco gave him an unusual graduation gift: they of enrolled him in the famed Schola Medica Salernitana. He studied half of the year at the school and minded his Redcap duties during the other half. The focused Aban was a star pupil, known for the ruthless efficacy of his practice. He later came to teach and conduct research at the institution during his free seasons. His self-experimentation with poisonous theriacs cost him his all of his body hair and his manliness, which did nothing to stop him.

Due to his Arabic mother tongue, Aban mainly served as an intermediary between the Roman and the African and Levant tribunals. Because this sometimes required long-distance travel over difficult terrain, Harco provided him with a flying coracle – a saucer-shaped wooden boat barely large enough to lie down in – and a ring to conceal him in his travels.

Aban later received a second ring that extended his medical talents. Together with his substantial medicus skills, this made Aban popular with the covenfolk along his route. His remedies and magics saved many covenants’ children or elderly whose lives were beneath the notice of the magi ruling them. By this point, Aban’s fame was such that no one asked questions when he requested a magical soporific with an unusual range for use in surgery.

Had someone asked questions, they might have run into Aban’s other vocation – or “hobby”, as he himself thought of it – as an assassin. He secured his first hit by anonymously contacting a Jerbiton magus whose lands Aban knew were targeted by a minor noble. Such “interference” would be admissible under the new code, surely? A few arbalest bolts from the blue solved the magus’ problem, and Aban found a steady stream of side jobs under this line of “necessary interference”, always making sure to contact his prospective employers with notes assembled from letters scribbled by random people, such that the magi never found out who they were really dealing with.

Aban’s murders were not without consequences, however. One angry imam put a geas on the fleeing assassin, threatening terrible divine retribution were he ever to step his foot in a mosque again. In 1289, Aban made his worst mistake yet, and the son of King James II of Aragon saw the assassin stabbing him. At his deathbed, the son described a “hairless Moor”. With the Kings’ agents across the Western and Central Mediterranean, Aban risked being found out and traced back to the Redcaps. He immediately announced his wish to move to the African tribunal to better connect with his family’s cultural roots.

In the Spring of 1290, Aban has just packed his medical supplies, chirurgeon’s tools, and sundry possessions on his coracle and flown to Cairo. He knows his worth but is also desperate to acquire the support of a covenant for medical ingredients, books, and personnel. His first plan of action is to contact the Mercer house, then find the Mercere magus Aetherius, with whom he has had amicable dealings in the past.

Aban ibn Ashraf

Characteristics: Int +3, Per +1, Pre ‑3, Com +2, Str +1, Sta +1, Dex +2, Qik +1

Size: 0

Age: 34 (34), Height: 168 cm, Weight: 70 kg, Gender: Male

Decrepitude: 0

Warping Score: 0 (0)

Confidence: 1 (3)

Virtues and Flaws:

Redcap (Enchanted Devices: 123/123)

Puissant Crossbows,

Improved Characteristics,

Magic Items,

Well‑Traveled (50/50)*,

Puissant Medicine,

Physician of Salerno (50/50),

Puissant Finesse,

Cautious with Finesse,

Offensive to Animals,

Disfigured (hairless),

Enemies (James II of Aragon),

Ambitious,

Eunuch,

Lesser Malediction (Do not Enter Mosque)

Personality Traits: Cold‑blooded +3, Suspicious of Christians +1, Ambitious +3

Reputations: Physician of Salerno 2

Combat:

Dodge: Init: +1, Attack ‑‑, Defense +6, Damage ‑‑

Heavy Arbalest (LoM Web Supplement): Init: 5, Attack 5, Defense 0, Damage 12 (without bonuses, str not added)

Dagger: Init: +1, Attack +8, Defense +5, Damage +4

Fist: Init: +1, Attack +6, Defense +5, Damage +1

Kick: Init: +0, Attack +6, Defense +4, Damage +4

Soak: +1

Fatigue levels: OK, 0, ‑1, ‑3, ‑5, Unconscious

Wound Penalties: ‑1 (1‑5), ‑3 (6‑10), ‑5 (11‑15), Incapacitated (16‑20), Dead (21+)

Abilities:

Arabic 5 (academic usage),

Area Lore: The African Tribunal 2 (covenants),

Area Lore: Levant Tribunal 2 (covenants),

Area Lore: The Roman Tribunal 3 (covenants),

Artes Liberales 1 (astronomy),

Athletics 3 (acrobatics),

Awareness 2 (alertness),

Crossbows 6+2 (heavy arbalest),

Brawl 4 (Dodge),

Chirurgy 3 (surgery),

Code of Hermes 1 (mundane relations),

Etiquette 1 (nobility),

Finesse 6+2 (magic items),

Folk Ken 2 (magi),

Guile 4 (lying to authority)

Latin 4 (academic usage),

Leadership 2 (medical assistants),

Medicine 6+2 (theriacs),

Covenant Lore: Harco 1 (personalities),

Organization Lore: Order of Hermes 2 (covenant locations),

Philosophiae 1 (natural philosophy),

Ride 1 (staying on the horse),

Stealth 3 (sneak),

Survival 2 (desert),

Swim 1 (not drowning),

Teaching 2 (Medicine)

Equipment:

The Medicus' Scientia ( Vis Capacity: 12 )

Gold Ring

Effect Name: The Guarantor of Convalescence; Effect Level: CrCo 20;

Effect Details: R: Touch, D: Conc, T: Ind,

Frequency: 24/day,

Item Holds Concentration;

Design: Base 4, +1 Conc, +1 Touch;

Gives a patient whom the ring touches in a specific pattern typical of diagnostic procedure a +9 bonus to Recovery rolls from wounds. The ring maintains concentration on the effect until the user ends it.

Effect Name: Shake Off the Malady

Effect Level: CrCo 19;

Effect Details: R: Touch, D: Conc, T: Ind

Frequency: 12/day

Item Holds Concentration

Design: Base 4, +1 Conc, +1 Touch;

Gives a patient whom the ring touches in a specific pattern typical of diagnostic procedure a +9 bonus to Recovery rolls from disease. The ring maintains concentration on the effect until the user ends it.

Total Effect Level: 39

--

A Superior Soporific (Vis Capacity: 6)

Silver Necklace

Effect Name: Lie Still

Effect Level: 25;

Effect Details: R: Voice, D: Conc, T: Ind

Frequency: 24/day,

Item Holds Concentration;

Arts: ReMe 15; Design: Base 4, +1 Conc, +2 Voice;

When held, puts a target within the voice range of the user to sleep and keeps them that way until the user ends the effect. A surgeon who operates on a patient who has been stupefied in this way has a +2 to his surgery roll and rolls 2 fewer botch dice (this can reduce botch dice to zero). [The surgery effect is analogous to the Sporific Sponge, Arts & Academe 78]

Total Effect Level: 25

--

The Concealed Messenger (Vis Capacity: 6)

Silver Ring

Effect Name: Hidden from View;

Effect Level: 30;

Effect Details:

R: Touch, D: Conc, T: Ind

Frequency: 24/day,

Item Holds Concentration;

As the user traces its outlines with the ring, the target becomes completely undetectable to normal sight, regardless of what it does, but still casts a shadow. The item maintains concentration on the spell until the user cancels it.

Arts: PeIm 20;

Design: Base 4, +1 Conc, +1 Touch, +1 changing image, +1 size;

Total Effect Level: 30

--

The Vessel of the Clouds (Vis Capacity: 10 ) [slightly modified from Transforming Mythic Europe 112]

Wooden Coracle

Effect Name: The Flying Coracle;

Effect Level: 29;

Effect Details: R: Per, D: Sun, T: Ind,

Frequency: 2/day,

Trigger: Environmental;

Arts: ReHe 25;

Design: Base 3, +2 Sun, +1 size, +1 unsupported surface, +1 any direction, +1 speed;

Total Effect Level: 29

--

Heavy Arbalest (Load 2)

Dagger

Encumbrance: with arbalest 1

Formulae Known(From Arts & Academe 77-78):

Tonic of Gold ( 5)

Concoction of Litharge and Henbane ( 15)

[silveroak]

The fundamental issue with this background is that redcaps are generally redcaps by blood, not simply an arranged apprenticeship. Exceptions usually involve adoption or marriage into the family.

[Seon (Seon Tile)]

Whoops, yeah, right, the "true lineages" part. Would it work if I rewrote him as having been adopted?

[silveroak]

Probably

[Seon (Seon Tile)]

Here's a rewritten backstory. I mostly changed the one paragraph about his apprenticeship - the new story goes that his father was a single dad, and when he died, Aban was adopted by his father's friend, who was a redcap of Harco. So everything is the same otherwise. I'm going to remove the prejudice towards Christians from the personality traits, as well, because it doesn't have a justification in the backstory now.

Is this better? Can we look at the stats next?

Aban ibn Ashraf

Aban ibn Ashraf is a lithe man whose dark eyes scrutinize his surroundings with a cold intellect. His stern manner exudes authority and something else – an unsettling malice that is difficult to pin down. He always wears either a robe or his red cap of office, but even with these accoutrements it is clear that his head is completely hairless.

Born 1256

Apprenticed 1264

Finished apprenticeship 1279

Born in 1256, Aban grew up in Lucera, an Italian city where Christian conquerors had resettled most of the Muslims of Sicily. His mother had died in labor, and his father was a military organizer for King Manfred. His childhood was spent between the city and army camps, play-drilling with Muslim soldiers’ sons.

As a child, Aban made few friends. When children complained that the blows of his wooden sword had hurt them, he told them to ignore the pain. Only the cruelest children could stomach his habit of cutting up live animals to see how they worked. They told him he was weird, but he didn’t really care.

During the early 1260s, Aban’s father fell ill with an abscess in his mouth, and the local doctors failed to treat him. As his condition worsened, Aban’s father pleaded with his old friend Leonardo, a redcap of Harco, to adopt the boy if necessary. Upon his father’s death, Aban moved to Piedmont and began his apprenticeship.

Apprenticeship was hard, but the talented boy was allowed to pursue his (somewhat single-minded) ambitions. By fifteen, Aban was helping to patch up redcaps who had been hurt in their travels. By twenty, he was a better shot with an arbalest than some of the covenant’s soldiers, and was allowed to accompany redcaps on small expeditions.

When Aban finished his apprenticeship in 1279, the redcaps of Harco gave him an unusual graduation gift: they of enrolled him in the famed Schola Medica Salernitana. He studied half of the year at the school and minded his Redcap duties during the other half. The focused Aban was a star pupil, known for the ruthless efficacy of his practice. He later came to teach and conduct research at the institution during his free seasons. His self-experimentation with poisonous theriacs cost him his all of his body hair and his manliness, which did nothing to stop him.

Due to his Arabic mother tongue, Aban mainly served as an intermediary between the Roman and the African and Levant tribunals. Because this sometimes required long-distance travel over difficult terrain, Harco provided him with a flying coracle – a saucer-shaped wooden boat barely large enough to lie down in – and a ring to conceal him in his travels.

Aban later received a second ring that extended his medical talents. Together with his substantial medicus skills, this made Aban popular with the covenfolk along his route. His remedies and magics saved many covenants’ children or elderly whose lives were beneath the notice of the magi ruling them. By this point, Aban’s fame was such that no one asked questions when he requested a magical soporific with an unusual range for use in surgery.

Had someone asked questions, they might have run into Aban’s other vocation – or “hobby”, as he himself thought of it – as an assassin. He secured his first hit by anonymously contacting a Jerbiton magus whose lands Aban knew were targeted by a minor noble. Such “interference” would be admissible under the new code, surely? A few arbalest bolts from the blue solved the magus’ problem, and Aban found a steady stream of side jobs under this line of “necessary interference”, always making sure to contact his prospective employers with notes assembled from letters scribbled by random people, such that the magi never found out who they were really dealing with.

Aban’s murders were not without consequences, however. One angry imam put a geas on the fleeing assassin, threatening terrible divine retribution were he ever to step his foot in a mosque again. In 1289, Aban made his worst mistake yet, and the son of King James II of Aragon saw the assassin stabbing him. At his deathbed, the son described a “hairless Moor”. With the Kings’ agents across the Western and Central Mediterranean, Aban risked being found out and traced back to the Redcaps. He immediately announced his wish to move to the African tribunal to better connect with his family’s cultural roots.

In the Spring of 1290, Aban has just packed his medical supplies, chirurgeon’s tools, and sundry possessions on his coracle and flown to Cairo. He knows his worth but is also desperate to acquire the support of a covenant for medical ingredients, books, and personnel. His first plan of action is to contact the Mercer house, then find the Mercere magus Aetherius, with whom he has had amicable dealings in the past.

[silveroak]

Simply being hairless would not qualify for disfigured, it would need to be a condition which is more blatant.
You also have 8 points in flaws for 10 points in virtues.
Following the background you should have a prohibition instead of a malediction, The restriction is fairly mild so a relatively severe curse for breaking it will need to be decided upon.

Also with the two formulas costing 5 points each this puts you 5 points over for being age 34

[silveroak]

I think you may be misunderstanding the revised code as well- interference is required to preserve the order, not to preserve the fortunes of individual magi.

[Seon (Seon Tile)]

Whoops, I forgot to mark Enemies and Ambitious as major. Is that it?

You're right about the prohibition, will change it. A severe curse is fine. Do I suggest something or do I? Does the character know what it is?

Again we run into this problem with the points. It seems right to me, but I'm not sure where the problem is.

To begin with, I think the Litharge formula costs 15 points, so actually I should be 15 points over the limit by your calculation. Are we agreed on that? If so, then we need to figure out where that 15 point difference comes from.

By my calculation, I have 740 xp in abilities and 20 in formulae. Are we agreed on that?

Apprenticeship at age 8.

My thinking with the Code was as follows: I considered getting a Dark Secret for the murders, but then I figured if he was endangering the order, it might not be such a fun secret, since revealing it would pretty much end the game. I figured it might be more fun to have a powerful mundane enemy and have the secret be such that revealing it wouldn't get the character crushed by the Order. That's what the stuff about necessary interference is trying to accomplish.

Now that you've pointed it out, I think you're right. Would it work if I rewrote it such that the people Aban assassinated could more plausibly be construed as endangering the order as a whole rather than individual magi?

[silveroak]

Arte and acadame p.70 specifies that all formulae cost 5 xp to learn, regardless of their level.
thus Litharge costs 5, not 15 xp.

I had a miscalculation on medicine, correcting for that I have 740 xp in abilities and 10 xp in formulas, which now puts you at 5 points over age 40, which your timeline puts you at age.

Redcaps gain 15 xp/year as companions of essentially average wealth (2 seasons/year are spoken for)

rewriting the background so that those he murdered were at least arguably a threat to the order would strengthen the character concept.

[temprobe]

Just be careful how you write it is my advice. Murdering the son of a King is certainly plausibly not just mundane interference, but also plausibly endangering of the Order. Kings have a powerful reach. Even with a plausible defense (the son was endangering the order), if your actions move the problem from a king's son to the king himself and his family... I wouldn't necessarily bet a quaesitor / a tribunal will give you a pass. Killing their son might be enough for a King to decide to invade his neighbor if he knows you live there... or start a witch hunt, if he suspects magic. Dark Secret has the advantage that it is presumably not known. Enemies sort of implies your enemy knows who you are, even if he may not where you are... certainly a large bounty on your head isn't beyond the reach of a King. I don't dislike the concept per se, but I'm also cautious about a background that may lead to a quick story death for the character / trouble for the covenant. A scribe who stays at the covenant may get away with it. A redcap who goes to major cities and who interacts with other redcaps with contacts outside of the tribunal, on the other hand... it's doubtful House Mercere won't connect the dots if the King finds your identity and posts a wanted bounty throughout the Kingdom. Would they risk protect you? At the very least, if I was House Mercere, I'd want to know the tribunal won't consider sheltering you to be a crime for the House. Just saying.

[Seon (Seon Tile)]

@silveroak You are right about the formulae, of course. Thanks.

I had somehow gotten the experience calculation completely wrong - I should only have 655 xp altogether rather than 740. I'll have to cut some abilities to fix this. I'll post a better version after a while.

@temprobe Thanks for those great pointers! You are right. I'll try to rewrite it such that he has been murdering people who a) are not so powerful that the Order would take offense at murdering them; and b) are people the order doesn't care about or even approves of murdering; and c) were threatening the Order. Maybe hedgie-hunting? It would still drive home the point about his cold-blooded nature.

[Seon (Seon Tile)]

Here are the fixes abilities. I just knocked down all of the 6's to 5 and guile from 4 to 3. I had 5 xp extra, which I used to buy a score of 1 in Magic lore in anticipation of rewriting to make him a hedgie hunter instead.

Abilities:

Arabic 5 (academic usage),

Area Lore: The African Tribunal 2 (covenants),

Area Lore: Levant Tribunal 2 (covenants),

Area Lore: The Roman Tribunal 3 (covenants),

Artes Liberales 1 (astronomy),

Athletics 3 (acrobatics),

Awareness 2 (alertness),

Crossbows 5+2 (heavy arbalest),

Brawl 4 (Dodge),

Chirurgy 3 (surgery),

Code of Hermes 1 (mundane relations),

Etiquette 1 (nobility),

Finesse 5+2 (magic items),

Folk Ken 2 (magi),

Guile 3 (lying to authority)

Latin 4 (academic usage),

Leadership 2 (medical assistants),

Medicine 5+2 (theriacs),

Magic lore 1 (magical traditions)

Covenant Lore: Harco 1 (personalities),

Organization Lore: Order of Hermes 2 (covenant locations),

Philosophiae 1 (natural philosophy),

Ride 1 (staying on the horse),

Stealth 3 (sneak),

Survival 2 (desert),

Swim 1 (not drowning),

Teaching 2 (Medicine)

[silveroak]

This gives you 645 instead of 655, reminder that the concotion of letharge costs 5, not 15 xp.

[Seon (Seon Tile)]

Here’s the new version. I hope I caught everything this time.

Dropped area lore: roman tribunal from 3 to 2

Removed Magic Lore after all

Increased Finesse 5->6

Switched Lesser Malediction to Fragile Constitution (couldn’t get Prohibition, since it’s a second personality flaw)

Switched Enemies to Dark Secret (assassin)

Switched disfigured:hairless to disfigured:pock-marked skin

Dropped the enchanted item A Superior Soporific (realized I had too many levels of items)

Toyed with the frequencies of the effects in The Medicus’ Scientia to even out the levels.

I wrote a description for Vessel of the Clouds, which I had forgotten to do.

I rewrote the description regarding the assassin’s activities. I reverted to Dark Secret after all, since I couldn’t figure why he would leave Harco because of having killed hedgies. Now the idea is that he has been interfering with mundanes illegally, but without being caught and in a way that benefits and doesn’t greatly endanger the Order. In this way, I figured the Order wouldn’t kill him even if they found out, and it still gave him a reason to flee for fear of being caught.

Aban ibn Ashraf

Aban ibn Ashraf is a lithe man whose dark eyes scrutinize his surroundings with a cold intellect. His stern manner exudes authority and something else – an unsettling malice that is difficult to pin down. He always wears either a robe or his red cap of office, but even with these accoutrements it is clear that his skin is terribly pock-marked.

Born 1256

Apprenticed 1264

Finished apprenticeship 1279

Born in 1256, Aban grew up in Lucera, an Italian city where Christian conquerors had resettled most of the Muslims of Sicily. His mother had died in labor, and his father was a military organizer for King Manfred. His childhood was spent between the city and army camps, play-drilling with Muslim soldiers’ sons.

As a child, Aban made few friends. When children complained that the blows of his wooden sword had hurt them, he told them to ignore the pain. Only the cruelest children could stomach his habit of cutting up live animals to see how they worked. They told him he was weird, but he didn’t really care.

During the early 1260s, Aban’s father fell ill with an abscess in his mouth, and the local doctors failed to treat him. As his condition worsened, Aban’s father pleaded with his old friend Leonardo, a redcap of Harco, to adopt the boy if necessary. Upon his father’s death, Aban moved to Piedmont and began his apprenticeship.

Apprenticeship was hard, but the talented boy was allowed to pursue his (somewhat single-minded) ambitions. By fifteen, Aban was helping to patch up redcaps who had been hurt in their travels. By twenty, he was a better shot with an arbalest than some of the covenant’s soldiers, and was allowed to accompany redcaps on small expeditions.

When Aban finished his apprenticeship in 1279, the redcaps of Harco gave him an unusual graduation gift: they of enrolled him in the famed Schola Medica Salernitana. He studied half of the year at the school and minded his Redcap duties during the other half. The focused Aban was a star pupil, known for the ruthless efficacy of his practice. He later came to teach and conduct research at the institution during his free seasons. His self-experimentation with poisonous theriacs pock-marked his skin, weakened his constitution, and and withered his manliness, which did nothing to stop him.

Due to his Arabic mother tongue, Aban mainly served as an intermediary between the Roman and the African and Levant tribunals. Because this sometimes required long-distance travel over difficult terrain, Harco provided him with a flying coracle – a saucer-shaped wooden boat barely large enough to lie down in – and a ring to conceal him in his travels.

Aban later received a second ring that extended his medical talents. His remedies and magics saved many covenants’ children or elderly whose lives were beneath the notice of the magi ruling them, which made Aban popular with the covenfolk along his route.

Aban’s popularity might have faded somewhat had his patients gotten wind of his other vocation – or “hobby”, as he himself thought of it – as an assassin. Aban felt the magi were often too soft-handed with nobles vying for land, hedge magicians poaching resources, mundanes stirring up revolt, and so on. Whenever he ran into such problems in his travels, he would try to quietly solve them with an arbalest bolt from the blue, a drop of poison, or a dagger in the back.

Since Aban was never caught, his interference did not bring him trouble. Recently, however, a Piedmontese merchant started piecing together details of several murder victims in the area, looking for a common thread. Aban stopped him in his tracks. The incident made him realize, however, that he had left behind too many traces in the Roman Tribunal. The trail to the Order’s doorstep was getting too hot. Aban immediately announced his wish to move to the African tribunal to better connect with his family’s cultural roots.

In the Spring of 1290, Aban has just packed his medical supplies, chirurgeon’s tools, and sundry possessions on his coracle and flown to Cairo. Although he knows his worth, he is also desperate to acquire the support of a covenant for medical ingredients, books, and personnel. His first plan of action is to contact the Mercer house, then find the Mercere magus Aetherius, with whom he has had amicable dealings in the past.

Characteristics: Int +3, Per +1, Pre ‑3, Com +2, Str +1, Sta +1, Dex +2, Qik +1

Size: 0

Age: 34 (34), Height: 168 cm, Weight: 70 kg, Gender: Male

Decrepitude: 0

Warping Score: 0 (0)

Confidence: 1 (3)

Virtues and Flaws:

Redcap (Enchanted Devices: 102/102)

Puissant Crossbows

Improved Characteristics

Magic Items

Well‑Traveled (50/50)

Puissant Medicine

Physician of Salerno (50/50)

Puissant Finesse

Cautious with Finesse

Offensive to Animals

Disfigured (hairless)

Dark Secret *3 (assassin)

Ambitious *3

Eunuch

Fragile Constitution

Personality Traits: Cold‑blooded +3, Authoritarian +1, Ambitious +3

Reputations: Physician of Salerno 2

Combat:

Dodge: Init: +1, Attack ‑‑, Defense +6, Damage ‑‑

Heavy Arbalest (LoM Web Supplement): Init: 5, Attack 5, Defense 0, Damage 12 (without bonuses, str not added)

Dagger: Init: +1, Attack +8, Defense +5, Damage +4

Fist: Init: +1, Attack +6, Defense +5, Damage +1

Kick: Init: +0, Attack +6, Defense +4, Damage +4

Soak: +1

Fatigue levels: OK, 0, ‑1, ‑3, ‑5, Unconscious

Wound Penalties: ‑1 (1‑5), ‑3 (6‑10), ‑5 (11‑15), Incapacitated (16‑20), Dead (21+)

Abilities:

Arabic 5 (academic usage)

Area Lore: The African Tribunal 2 (covenants)

Area Lore: Levant Tribunal 2 (covenants)

Area Lore: The Roman Tribunal 3 (covenants)

Artes Liberales 1 (astronomy)

Athletics 3 (acrobatics)

Awareness 2 (alertness)

Crossbows 5+2 (heavy arbalest)

Brawl 4 (Dodge)

Chirurgy 3 (surgery)

Code of Hermes 1 (mundane relations)

Etiquette 1 (nobility)

Finesse 5+2 (magic items)

Folk Ken 2 (magi)

Guile 3 (lying to authority)

Latin 4 (academic usage)

Leadership 2 (medical assistants)

Medicine 5+2 (theriacs)

Magic lore 1 (magical traditions)

Covenant Lore: Harco 1 (personalities)

Organization Lore: Order of Hermes 2 (covenant locations)

Philosophiae 1 (natural philosophy)

Ride 1 (staying on the horse)

Stealth 3 (sneak)

Survival 2 (desert)

Swim 1 (not drowning)

Teaching 2 (Medicine)

Equipment:

The Medicus' Scientia ( Vis Capacity: 12 )

Gold Ring

Effect Name: The Guarantor of Convalescence

Total Effect Level: CrCo 20

Effect Details: R: Touch, D: Conc, T: Ind

Frequency: 24/day,

Item Holds Concentration;

Design: Base 4, +1 Conc, +1 Touch, +5 levels frequency, +5 levels item concentration

Gives a patient whom the ring touches in a specific pattern typical of diagnostic procedure a +9 bonus to Recovery rolls from wounds. The ring maintains concentration on the effect until the user ends it.

Effect Name: Shake Off the Malady

Total Effect Level: CrCo 21

Effect Details: R: Touch, D: Conc, T: Ind

Frequency: 50/day

Item Holds Concentration

Design: Base 4, +1 Conc, +1 Touch, +6 levels frequency, +5 levels item concentration

Gives a patient whom the ring touches in a specific pattern typical of diagnostic procedure a +9 bonus to Recovery rolls from disease. The ring maintains concentration on the effect until the user ends it.

Total Level of All Effects: 41

--

The Concealed Messenger (Vis Capacity: 6)

Silver Ring

Effect Name: Hidden from View;

Effect Level: 30;

Effect Details:

R: Touch, D: Conc, T: Ind

Frequency: 24/day,

Item Holds Concentration;

As the user traces its outlines with the ring, the target becomes completely undetectable to normal sight, regardless of what it does, but still casts a shadow. The item maintains concentration on the spell until the user cancels it.

Arts: PeIm 20;

Design: Base 4, +1 Conc, +1 Touch, +1 changing image, +1 size, +5 frequency, +5 concentration

Total Effect Level: 30

--

The Vessel of the Clouds (Vis Capacity: 10 ) [slightly modified from Transforming Mythic Europe 112]

Wooden Coracle

Effect Name: The Flying Coracle;

Effect Level: 31

Effect Details: R: Per, D: Sun, T: Ind,

Frequency: 2/day,

Trigger: Environmental;

The boat and all its contents are lifted into the air. By manipulating a small protrusion in its stern, the user may make Intelligence + Finesse rolls to change direction or speed – Ease Factor 6 for walking speed or 15 for the maximum speed of forty miles per hour. The boat can contain a Load of 50, or about two people and some equipment.

Arts: ReHe 25;

Design: Base 3, +2 Sun, +1 size, +1 unsupported surface, +1 any direction, +1 speed, +5 levels trigger, +1 levels frequency

Total Effect Level: 31

--

Heavy Arbalest (Load 2)

Dagger

Encumbrance: with arbalest 1

Formulae Known(From Arts & Academe 77-78):

Tonic of Gold ( 5)

Concoction of Litharge and Henbane ( 15)

Aban ibn Ashraf

Aban ibn Ashraf is a lithe man whose dark eyes scrutinize his surroundings with a cold intellect. His stern manner exudes authority and something else – an unsettling malice that is difficult to pin down. He always wears either a robe or his red cap of office, but even with these accoutrements it is clear that his head is completely hairless.

Born 1256

Apprenticed 1264

Finished apprenticeship 1279

Born in 1256, Aban grew up in Lucera, an Italian city where Christian conquerors had resettled most of the Muslims of Sicily. His mother had died in labor, and his father was a military organizer for King Manfred. His childhood was spent between the city and army camps, play-drilling with Muslim soldiers’ sons.

As a child, Aban made few friends. When children complained that the blows of his wooden sword had hurt them, he told them to ignore the pain. Only the cruelest children could stomach his habit of cutting up live animals to see how they worked. They told him he was weird, but he didn’t really care.

During the early 1260s, Aban’s father fell ill with an abscess in his mouth, and the local doctors failed to treat him. As his condition worsened, Aban’s father pleaded with his old friend Leonardo, a redcap of Harco, to adopt the boy if necessary. Upon his father’s death, Aban moved to Piedmont and began his apprenticeship.

Apprenticeship was hard, but the talented boy was allowed to pursue his (somewhat single-minded) ambitions. By fifteen, Aban was helping to patch up redcaps who had been hurt in their travels. By twenty, he was a better shot with an arbalest than some of the covenant’s soldiers, and was allowed to accompany redcaps on small expeditions.

When Aban finished his apprenticeship in 1279, the redcaps of Harco gave him an unusual graduation gift: they of enrolled him in the famed Schola Medica Salernitana. He studied half of the year at the school and minded his Redcap duties during the other half. The focused Aban was a star pupil, known for the ruthless efficacy of his practice. He later came to teach and conduct research at the institution during his free seasons. His self-experimentation with poisonous theriacs pock-marked his skin, weakened his constitution, and and withered his manliness, which did nothing to stop him.

Due to his Arabic mother tongue, Aban mainly served as an intermediary between the Roman and the African and Levant tribunals. Because this sometimes required long-distance travel over difficult terrain, Harco provided him with a flying coracle – a saucer-shaped wooden boat barely large enough to lie down in – and a ring to conceal him in his travels.

Aban later received a second ring that extended his medical talents. His remedies and magics saved many covenants’ children or elderly whose lives were beneath the notice of the magi ruling them, which made Aban popular with the covenfolk along his route.

Aban’s popularity might have faded somewhat had his patients gotten wind of his other vocation – or “hobby”, as he himself thought of it – as an assassin. Aban felt the magi were often too soft-handed with nobles vying for land, hedge magicians poaching resources, mundanes stirring up revolt, and so on. Whenever he ran into such problems in his travels, he would try to quietly solve them with an arbalest bolt from the blue, a drop of poison, or a dagger in the back.

Since Aban was never caught, his interference did not bring him trouble. Recently, however, a Piedmontese merchant started piecing together details of several murder victims in the area, looking for a common thread. Aban stopped him in his tracks. The incident made him realize, however, that he had left behind too many traces in the Roman Tribunal. The trail to the Order’s doorstep was getting too hot. Aban immediately announced his wish to move to the African tribunal to better connect with his family’s cultural roots.

In the Spring of 1290, Aban has just packed his medical supplies, chirurgeon’s tools, and sundry possessions on his coracle and flown to Cairo. Although he knows his worth, he is also desperate to acquire the support of a covenant for medical ingredients, books, and personnel. His first plan of action is to contact the Mercer house, then find the Mercere magus Aetherius, with whom he has had amicable dealings in the past.

Characteristics: Int +3, Per +1, Pre ‑3, Com +2, Str +1, Sta +1, Dex +2, Qik +1

Size: 0

Age: 34 (34), Height: 168 cm, Weight: 70 kg, Gender: Male

Decrepitude: 0

Warping Score: 0 (0)

Confidence: 1 (3)

Virtues and Flaws:

Redcap (Enchanted Devices: 102/102)

Puissant Crossbows

Improved Characteristics

Magic Items

Well‑Traveled (50/50)

Puissant Medicine

Physician of Salerno (50/50)

Puissant Finesse

Cautious with Finesse

Offensive to Animals

Disfigured (hairless)

Dark Secret *3 (assassin)

Ambitious *3

Eunuch

Fragile Constitution

Personality Traits: Cold‑blooded +3, Suspicious of Christians +1, Ambitious +3

Reputations: Physician of Salerno 2

Combat:

Dodge: Init: +1, Attack ‑‑, Defense +6, Damage ‑‑

Heavy Arbalest (LoM Web Supplement): Init: 5, Attack 5, Defense 0, Damage 12 (without bonuses, str not added)

Dagger: Init: +1, Attack +8, Defense +5, Damage +4

Fist: Init: +1, Attack +6, Defense +5, Damage +1

Kick: Init: +0, Attack +6, Defense +4, Damage +4

Soak: +1

Fatigue levels: OK, 0, ‑1, ‑3, ‑5, Unconscious

Wound Penalties: ‑1 (1‑5), ‑3 (6‑10), ‑5 (11‑15), Incapacitated (16‑20), Dead (21+)

Abilities:

Arabic 5 (academic usage)

Area Lore: The African Tribunal 2 (covenants)

Area Lore: Levant Tribunal 2 (covenants)

Area Lore: The Roman Tribunal 3 (covenants)

Artes Liberales 1 (astronomy)

Athletics 3 (acrobatics)

Awareness 2 (alertness)

Crossbows 5+2 (heavy arbalest)

Brawl 4 (Dodge)

Chirurgy 3 (surgery)

Code of Hermes 1 (mundane relations)

Etiquette 1 (nobility)

Finesse 5+2 (magic items)

Folk Ken 2 (magi)

Guile 3 (lying to authority)

Latin 4 (academic usage)

Leadership 2 (medical assistants)

Medicine 5+2 (theriacs)

Magic lore 1 (magical traditions)

Covenant Lore: Harco 1 (personalities)

Organization Lore: Order of Hermes 2 (covenant locations)

Philosophiae 1 (natural philosophy)

Ride 1 (staying on the horse)

Stealth 3 (sneak)

Survival 2 (desert)

Swim 1 (not drowning)

Teaching 2 (Medicine)

Equipment:

The Medicus' Scientia ( Vis Capacity: 12 )

Gold Ring

Effect Name: The Guarantor of Convalescence

Total Effect Level: CrCo 20

Effect Details: R: Touch, D: Conc, T: Ind

Frequency: 24/day,

Item Holds Concentration;

Design: Base 4, +1 Conc, +1 Touch, +5 levels frequency, +5 levels item concentration

Gives a patient whom the ring touches in a specific pattern typical of diagnostic procedure a +9 bonus to Recovery rolls from wounds. The ring maintains concentration on the effect until the user ends it.

Effect Name: Shake Off the Malady

Total Effect Level: CrCo 21

Effect Details: R: Touch, D: Conc, T: Ind

Frequency: 50/day

Item Holds Concentration

Design: Base 4, +1 Conc, +1 Touch, +6 levels frequency, +5 levels item concentration

Gives a patient whom the ring touches in a specific pattern typical of diagnostic procedure a +9 bonus to Recovery rolls from disease. The ring maintains concentration on the effect until the user ends it.

Total Level of All Effects: 41

--

The Concealed Messenger (Vis Capacity: 6)

Silver Ring

Effect Name: Hidden from View;

Effect Level: 30;

Effect Details:

R: Touch, D: Conc, T: Ind

Frequency: 24/day,

Item Holds Concentration;

As the user traces its outlines with the ring, the target becomes completely undetectable to normal sight, regardless of what it does, but still casts a shadow. The item maintains concentration on the spell until the user cancels it.

Arts: PeIm 20;

Design: Base 4, +1 Conc, +1 Touch, +1 changing image, +1 size, +5 frequency, +5 concentration

Total Effect Level: 30

--

The Vessel of the Clouds (Vis Capacity: 10 ) [slightly modified from Transforming Mythic Europe 112]

Wooden Coracle

Effect Name: The Flying Coracle;

Effect Level: 31

Effect Details: R: Per, D: Sun, T: Ind,

Frequency: 2/day,

Trigger: Environmental;

The boat and all its contents are lifted into the air. By manipulating a small protrusion in its stern, the user may make Intelligence + Finesse rolls to change direction or speed – Ease Factor 6 for walking speed or 15 for the maximum speed of forty miles per hour. The boat can contain a Load of 50, or about two people and some equipment.

Arts: ReHe 25;

Design: Base 3, +2 Sun, +1 size, +1 unsupported surface, +1 any direction, +1 speed, +5 levels trigger, +1 levels frequency

Total Effect Level: 31

--

Heavy Arbalest (Load 2)

Dagger

Encumbrance: with arbalest 1

Formulae Known(From Arts & Academe 77-78):

Tonic of Gold ( 5)

Concoction of Litharge and Henbane ( 15)

[silveroak]

The stats look good, I will review magic items later today

[Seon (Seon Tile)]

Great! I forgot to switch the "suspicious of christians" personality trait -> edited that to "authoritarian +1" now.

[silveroak]

The Medicus' Scientia
a gold ring has a vis capacity of 10, not 12- but can still hold level 20 & 21 effect (can hold up to 50). However only 1 effect can be maintained by the weilder at sunrise/sunset so this device may not work as intended.

The Concealed Messenger
This has a similar weakness regarding sunrise/sunset

The Vessel of the Clouds
unsupported surface is not the same as rising into the air, this will move the boat along a surface but not rising above one.

also the redcaps provide 50 levels at gauntlet and you get +25 for the magic item virtue, for 75 levels of effects, then 11 years at 2 levels/yr gives a total of 99 levels of effect, but you have 102 levels listed.