Tales of Power as well. And I fear I will never escape my Berklist reputation.
Iberia and Houses of Hermes are good source books. But as I said, ignore the parenthetical notes that scream (Infernal!). Do understand that I appreciate the culture and etcetera as presented in Societas. It is mainly the history and identity of Flambeau the Founder (aka Reculed Senecas) that I took issue with. In general, I do not favor the "scorched earth" approach to the lore in earlier editions. I also perceived that original material a bit differently than most I suppose. Whereas some saw bloodthirsty barbarians, I saw a warriors code of honor. Not the chivalry concepts from Societas as I find that to be a bit anachronistic. I wrote a piece in the second issue of Sub Rosa that explains my vision. The stuff I did for Faith & Flame was the closest I was able to get to restoring the old story in official cannon.
Grasping the saga as a whole is a Herculean task. It has a history of over 25 years, over a decade on the Forums and one previous collapse and revival. It is better to try and grasp the state of things as they are now. Said state is we are floundering. Or I am at least. There is no metaplot or master story arc. It has ever been a sandbox. The history is slightly mutable. I am always willing to retcon as fits the needs of the current dynamic. But we do have a wiki where most of this stuff got recorded.
http://andorra.wikidot.com/
The other player characters include...
Vibria of Flambeau: dragon blooded, hero of the Transylvanian Dragon Wars, mother of three (?), played by Peregrine of Bjornaer.
Fleur of Bonisagus: researcher, sybarite, pillar of consistency, played by Silveroak
Arachne Ex-Miscellanea: aka the spider, eldest player-character mage, Rustician, spymistress, dedicated to the security and preservation of the Covenant, Pontifix Secundus, played by The Fixer (though Fixer prefers to run stories and rarely is a player).
Roberto of Flambeau: veteran of the Shadow Wars, quintessential Flambeau, renunciate veteran of the Reconquista (when he was an apprentice), adventurer, played by Marko Markoko (me).
The rest are NPCs of undetermined status. Former PC magi.
And Carmen of Flambeau, the Pontifix Maxima. She was originally my character as a player, but I made her just an NPC so I could import Roberto in from another saga.
Oh! Guiverna, played by Peregrine. There is a covenant of "semi-dopplegangers" nearby. More like a "mirror universe" version. The version of Bellaquin I wrote up for Faith & Flame was based on Andorra Covenant. I made a story in this saga based on that. I had let players create the alternate versions of themselves. Of them all, only Guiverna stuck around in the saga. Vibria is descended from a fire breathing dragon, Guiverna is venomous.
It's all in the wiki. Somewhere.
Storylines are a work in progress. What is being kept? What to discard? What new ideas do we want?
The only active story is Dusk of the Flame, involving Robert and being run by Fixer (he does some really awesome slow-burn stories). I want to get something going for the other players, which I have been slow and lazy about. An ideal situation would be a circle, each of us running a story for another.
Really, all of this is a discussion that should be held by the Troupe. Just jump into the Forum and lets us start chatting about potential ideas in the General Tabletalk Thread