Ars magica 5 game - Hiddenhall

Well, my character is done mechanically, though I would like to hear some more of that background too. Currently I have a hyper optimistic Tytalus Magi with a leaning towards storms and lightning, with some Mentem to round him out. I do have some plans for his backstory as well...any preference on how I deliver you my character sheet?

The date to start the saga is 1210. Scotland is under the rule of William 1st en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_England
The main languages spoken in Edinburgh are Lowland Scots (English with a heavy Scots accent) French because of the friendship between Scotland and France and some few barbaric types from up north would speak Gaelic.

Just send me a character sheet in a pm.

Well, I sent my sheet. Are we building companions as well?

Oh well my search just sayed me that the main language trough the mIddle Ages in Scotland was Gaelic looks like I was misslead.
Anyway I keep Gaelic a motherlanguage for my char as it work best with his background.
Btw. wasn't france only the language of the nobility at this time?

Edit: Ohh and are we realy go into Lowland Scots as a seperat Language and not just as language speciality of English? Because then we might have to split Langues d'oïl (as french called at this time) into 12 different languages .
Edit2: Could you give me the Language penaltys betwean the different languages we use in this setting?
As we have at last English, France, Gaelic, Lowland Scots, Hebrew, Latin, Greek and probably some more if we have sailors and other less educated travler geting to our tavern.
The reason why I ask this is that it might bether to have a language at 6 or 7 with the right speciality then to have 2 or even 3 languages at last if the penalties are just -1 or -2.

Regarding language, here's an interesting link with a nice map:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... s_language

Edinburgh is right in that little area that has been speaking Old English (which then became Scots) since the 9th century.

acording this I would say this Lowland Scots as spoken by the peasants and townfolk is maybe
-1 to the normal english what would actual mean its just a dialect not its own language
-2 Dutch
-2 low German (english to low german is -3 acording to GotF and acording to this wiki there even more influnces of low german to this english dialect )
-2 French
-3 or -4 to Gaelic
but the administration is in French and Gaelic and not in Lowland Scots

I would have put the French and Gaelic lower, in fact I would have said no intelligibility at all. Lowland Scots, Dutch and English are Germanic Languages and diverged from Old Saxon only a couple of centuries before, but French is a Romance language and Gaelic a Celtic language, the common roots are much too far away for intelligibility. Any influence is limited to loan words, and you'll never get past a functional 1 with them no matter how good you get in the other language.

As I'm no linguist I could only use what was writen in the wiki and from what you just say I interpeted it wrong.
But anyway I find the informations of the ArM5 books I have laking a loot when it comes down to the Living Languages, theyr relation with each other and especial how it affects the learning of a language when you already know of a similiar language.

I've found this link to be very helpful for figuring languages
scooterville.org/ars/charact ... uages.html
It not only lists the languages, but also their rough relation to each other.

You can also find the same article around the web as a PDF.

Interesting link you have here.
Its a bit different from the official infos of GotF where Yiddish and Bavarian are just specialisations of High German and Frisian is a specialisation of Low German.

Well, when you get right to it there is no universally agreed definition of the difference between a dialect and a separate language, and our knowledge of 13th century languages is limited to begin with. And that article is from way before GotF.

Your right, but in general I think what on this page is more like the absolut upper limit on languages and every language not listet there is probably just a dialect of a other language listed there.
At last given that GotF reduced the number of languages already by 3 and Gaelic probably also just 1 language in the gamesystem where you just have pick one of the 3 dialect specialisations.

It's a good way to run things. The links between German, Old English, Dutch and Lallands (Lowland Scots) are clear, with Lallands having some similarities to Norse (Vikings all round Scotland and the isles). Scots Gaelic is completely different, being closer to Welsh and Irish Gaelic than any other languages. But yes, the royal court in Scotland and thus most of officialdom use Latin and/or Gaelic on documents.

Sent you my character sheet for the magi. Should I assemble grogs and a companion too?

I personal want to wait till the mages got public bevore I design a Companion to make him in a way that his background work together with at last one of the other players mages.

Makes sense. I sort of want to make a familiar companion... everyone needs a magic cat. Plus it might not be planning on stealing parma and distributing it to all the other magic animals. And even if it does at least a few of those guys won't share it with their pet hedgies.

Well, given I'm making a Tytalus magi, we prefer dogs to cat.

I could do a wolf?

I'm making a Mercere, and we do like magical cats (white ones by preference, although tortoise cats are appropriate for Scotland). But I'm not starting the game with a familiar, so you'd have to become one later in game.