One thing I might have missed though, is it confirmed that decay of vis is a mystery?
Re-reading the original pitch seems like it's more in the context of most easily accessible sources having been already secured by previous magi.
If the troupe wants it to be a mystery that needs to be investigated, I can make it so.
Scheming Merenita manipulated by their dark faery friends into siphoning magic from their hidden faery regio seems more fun than simple magi surpopulation.
If Arthur does not allow V&F from the Societates book ExMiscellanea are a losing horse, so I would simply remove them as an interesting option.
I would go Tremere. "Vexilation of the new covenant". Vanilla magi for everybody. Problem is that we cannot have magical focuses, and that sucks.
I would go with "try to replace the Order", though. Allow the other houses to die out (with some help from the Tremeres) and then take over it with the Order of Luperca, Join tremere or die.
Although I am not part of this campaign, I will just pitch an idea regarding House Guernicus.
Depending on how much is enforced the rule of a single House Covenant, Quaesitores from other House could be accepted allowing a more diversified covenant. Maybe Quaesitores from other house must take the Hermetic Prestige virtue as a proof that House Guernicus consider them as trusted candidates for their covenant project.
It is more likely that someone/something is taking out the magi with travel magic.
Oh, those conniving Merinita! When we get our hands on them...
@jebrick , what do you think of the various overall saga goals? Right now we have three for some sort of investigation and trying to restore/reshape the Order, and one for totally overhauling the Order (and no investigation?) from the other four of us.
Order of Luperca seems fun but It seems more like 4th Edition Tremere to me, they tried and failed, unless we're playing before the sundering. Thatâs why keeping the order and slowly align it to the need of House Tremere seems more likely to me if I understand the Tremere philosophy from "Against the Dark" correctly. Our saga may vary though.
Trying to modify the behavior of magi into what Tremere find suitable seems more plausible to me, and leads to a wider range of stories : those more action/combat inclined can play this way, occasionally "helping" stubborn opponents to sadly go into final twilight or die of accident in their lab.
But they can't go "full retard" because more politically inclined magus oppose them from the inside and demand that they stop wasting useful ressources (aka magi from other Houses).
Wouldn't work within the parameters of this saga. All PC magi are just out of Gauntlet. Outside of House Guernicus, one only becomes a Quaesitor after decades of demonstrating their sound judgment and impartiality. Can't have done that already if you are just out of Gauntlet.
However, if the troupe was to decide to go with a Guernicus covenant, not all of the magi need to be Intellego specialists. I have nothing against some of the players picking specialist roles within the House for their magus, such as a Guernicus Hoplite, a Terram specialist, a mercurian, etc. In an Order where inter-House relationships are strained, I can definitively see some House trying to de-specialize in order to be more self-reliant.
Since it seems likely based on the preferences so far that we'll do a lot of investigating of these mysterious losses as well as trying to resurrect/restructure the Order, I'd like to suggest how I see things vis-a-vis these magi.
We're fresh-from-gauntlet magi. That makes us more like idealistic or pessimistic youths than parens and arch-magus codgers. So why us? It doesn't make much sense to me that a House with these goals would send us on this mission. If the house wants it done, they'll use more experienced magi, maybe with us as back-up. If we are in House Tremere, we are underlings to someone doing this, probably split up between a few superiors as needed. But if the codgers have just sort of given in to and accepted the new situation, then we upstarts might be doing this of our own volition simply because we are idealistic/pessimistic youths. Our superiors have gotten rid of our pestering by sending us off to secure some resources and build our own covenant. But now we've got a covenant that can work together to pursue our plans with youthful energy.
I like the idea of youngling grouping together and being given a covenant partly because itâs a way to get rid of them. A low ressources environnement probably means the elder still expect some returns. Itâs interesting because It means we could be more radical than the majority of the House weâre from, or have a similar goal but advocating more radical methods.
Its not the only reason that could explain young magi banding together it could mean that :
- we were trained specially for the mission at hand
- that the likelihood of success is so low they donât want to commit too much ressources
- that the mission requires secrecy and new magi have no « record »
But again I like Callenâs idea.
I will be honest with myself and agree that I am already reaching my limit on campaigns right now. I am in 7 right now (3 Ars, 1 harry potter ravenclaw, 1 las vegas heist, 1 D&D and 1 LOTR). I am not giving the proper attention to some of them either 
So after some discussion with myself I decided to drop from this now before it starts. Have fun guys. Sorry about the drop. It looks like fun but I'd better stay out for the time being.
Well, down one puts us in SG's target size. That now puts us at 3 votes for investigation and restoring (with potential alteration) the Order. Not sure on jebrick's vote. But it does look like our direction is more clear.
In addition to what Bitter and I said about my youthful optimism/pessimism approach, I like that it would let us be more in control of our destinies as players. We might have some patrons in those who like where we're headed with things, but not a whole house of bosses who sent us on a mission.
Thanks for letting us know and have fun with your other games! 
To the troupe, darkwing had contacted me privately regarding the saga, and I've let him know that we have an opening.
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I absolutely agree with the youthful idealism, but I also don't think the Order would rest on its laurels waiting for whatever comes next; I think the usual plot in these kinds of situations is that Order's investigations don't bring many results, and it's through unassuming youthful innovation that the truth is found.
Youthful idealism sounds good. (I'm not bothered if people want to have superiors, because Mentor story flaws or personality flaws of feeling dutybound to the House are interesting).
I think most Houses offer a big enough spread of roles we can easily find 5 different ways to express ourselves without getting in each other's way.
@darkwing I take it, from your last sentence that youâre rather flexible on House choice ?
@VanSilke & @callen are leaning towards Guernicus but @jebrick find them boring
@jebrick would prefer Tremere but @callen find it least attractive
ExMiscellanea lost Its appeal due to the constrain on virtues.
Verditus seems to appeal mostly to jebrick.
Bjornaer & Crimon are my least Favorite.
That leaves Bonisagus & Flambeau.
I like the idea of investigating the murder/disappearance of Merinita. If we show our house is superior on the way then so be it.
I can do either one.
After the more recent discussion, I think I'm leaning most toward Bonisagus. I feel like investigating vis drying up is more along the research Bonisagus line than along the Guernicas line. Meanwhile, restoring the Order seems very much aligned with Trianoma's lineage. Additionally, House Bonisagus is even more open to flexibility than most of the others because of the generically useful House Virtue. Puissant Ability doesn't block a Focus, use up one of two Puissant Arts, etc.