How much combat there will be is, almost entirely, decided by you guys. I tend to present issues that don't inherently limit you guys' options as players in how to deal with them. So in other words, whether the game is extremely high-combat or whether you all collectively only get into three or four meaningful battles throughout the whole saga (meaningful meaning I might occasionally also throw in something your shield grogs can easily repel just to set the scene for a story) is mostly going to be determined by your own choices. Do you want to try to come to a peaceful agreement with the angered dragon? Could you perhaps use magic or even just mundane strongly-scented things to hurt the noses of the magical wolves harrying the covenant's herds? If you want the Faerie giant's books that he stole from another Hermetic magus a century ago, can you use your Intellego to find a way to sneak in instead of walking up and killing him? Stuff like that. How much or how little you fight is up to you; I just set the scene, remember the rules, and roll any opposed dice.
Theban, huh? Heh, I almost want to avoid it, just because I was hoping to tell a few stories about the Church getting fussy due to the whole women's superiority and possibly-converted-Christians being enslaved issues. But then, it only really makes sense for this covenant lifestyle to work if some people in the area can actually accept things working that way, so maybe Thebes is actually good. I'll look into it more.
As for the gender thing bringing hatred, well, this actually doesn't seem to be the case too often on these boards, but I'm very conditioned to expect other people to get really easily offended by the subject matter of roleplaying settings that aren't "everybody is in happy wonderful equality land, and if they aren't the entire plot must focus around directly opposing the injustice because we can't in any way let setting adversity stand!" In hindsight, maybe I've just been cursed with picky oversensitive players, but whatever.
Don't worry about the English thing. When I said "instant messenger," that wasn't for the whole game, I just meant that we might use those for combats if you guys want, which you probably won't have to worry about getting involved in much since you're interested in a low-combat saga (as, in fact, I am as well, though I won't take the combat choice away from the other players).