See, Marko, I'm not the only one waiting for it to come out in pdf. 
I am fine if you want to go ahead and put books on the wiki. Make a short note of when and where each was acquired. The Lab Text, collect them together in tomes based on the size ofwhat someone could copy in a season.
As for Provencal, I helped write it and can say story material is soundly based on material of elder editions. It is a progression of history more so than a revision. Also, as I recall, only 3 covenants of Provencal have come up in this saga so far. Bellaquin, Val-Negra, and Aedas Mercuri (Doisetep). And, whatever is written in Faith & Flame, we are awad to 20 years past that. Things change.
So go for it. I can offer suggestions as you go as can others. Help to shape our understanding of Provencal.
Fleur also came from a Provencal covenant called Cannes De Mere, which has not been developed beyond the fact it is coastal and sits atop caves which were exploited for vis in the past and where presumably any cave paintings have already been destroyed, whether by man or nature.
This is great!
And you don't need F&F to play a visit to a covenant, just pick one on the provencal on the wiki, thanks to Trogdor.
Oh yes!
This was a very nice idea in Chargen, the idea of a wizard's Tome.
I'll start a thread for the mini-story, or cover it in this thread? New thread might be best.
- ps. I added Fleur's old covenant into the Andorra wiki for the Provencal Tribunal too.
Story setup: If Lucus can highlight his plan, I'll pick a few destinations and start drafting.
- Lets assume that Lucus travels to approx a dozen covenants across both the Provencal Tribunal in 1239 and Iberian Tribunal in Spring of 1241 (dates ...?), to trade all of the items on the list and that some of these visits were cold calls while others were arranged in advance. We'll cover a few of the "lesser known" covenants. Intending to present style and appearance of the covenants, and a little of the haggle.
- Who is Lucas taking with him? And how is he traveling in each season?
- The Provencal tribunal geography is fairly small, and has some well worn travel routes due to the terrain being more difficult in it's southern reaches. Iberia is comparatively large. Same Qs on travel.
- If you're taking npcs let me know if they're standard-ish grogs, or characters I need to review for odd characteristics.
Probably for the best.
That sounds perfect. He's got the whole season blocked off for that, so it's a total of six months of travel. He'll try and get to as many different covenants as he can.
On the trip to Provencal, he's going alone. That will let him travel between covenants as a falcon and do it more quickly.
Iberia is a little more complicated. Elena, his new apprentice, will be coming along, so they'll be traveling more conventionally. (Though there's a chance they might fly invisibly for some legs of the journey, if that's necessary.) They'll take Lucas's valet, Andre, and his shield grog, Petrus. Horus will also come along. The story for the mundane population, is that he's a merchant traveling with his daughter.
Petrus and Andre are written up on the wiki. Hopefully you won't need their stats.
I'm thinking three covenants: a coastal shire/vinyard style and also a large tower amid some hills in Provencal, then a a lake district of some sort in Ibera. As I don't have F&F - please chime in on the suitability...
- Either use Ara Maxima Nova (a reclusive covenant of Merinita magi, known for excellent wine) for the coastal, or failing that Stella Duris as they both seem to be neutral.
- and then Cirque de Gavernie in Provencal as the tower-ish theme, knowing it is a secondary site to Aedes Mercurii (itself with a Temple to Mercury). Might be some interesting synergy there.
- then something lake-style around Llano in Northern Spain, yet to find a covenant from source material up that way which isn't a major covenant in lore. Happy if I create a small new one?
One more thing I'll need to know before calculating what can be traded in 1241- of the books we purchased how which have cow and calf? Most of the ones we traded were copies of books which did not have cow and calf attached to them...
I had assumed that we imposed cow & calf on all of our trades out and we likely had cow & calf imposed on all of our trades in. That would even things out. I would guess that to the extent we did not impose cow & calf on any of our outgoing trades we could have received some books without cow & calf.
As to whether we did that and if so which books were which, I couldn't say.
As I understand it cow and calf can only be imposed by the original author, given that most of the books we traded are books we acquired through earlier trades which were not protected by cow and calf it would be hard for us to impose cow and calf.
Other covenants may be trading from a similar situation.
Of course in theory a text you can copy would be worth more than a text you cannot...
I did not realize that was a requirement for Cow & Calf. Our copies of Liberi de Creationé and Liberi de Perditu were written by Bonisagus and are covered by Cow & Calf. So I figured later people could impose the requirement.
If it is not imposed on the original document how is it enforced? If I find a copy which is not covered by cow and calf and copy that can the person who imposed cow and calf on the copy we currently have pursue us to stop us from copying that? If multiple people impose cow and calf on the same text then what determines who brings a complaint? Admittedly cow and calf is covered by certamen, Tremere backing, and gentlemans agreements rather than law, but these would seem to be issues.
It also occurs to me that cow and calf is based on an oath, not law, and if someone copies the text who was not bound by the oath- will the Tremere declare certman against Adan?
Reading the text again in Covenants (I don't have the Hibernia sourcebook) it indicates that the oath is that the purchaser will not sell or give the text without the permission of the seller. Depending on how seller and buyer are defined (individual, covenant, etc) this would seem to have a lot of loopholes... I suppose we could add cow and calf to what we have, but in some cases it would be silly (for one thing we have a lot of mundane texts in our sell list)
He's a mundane. He has literally no protection against them, so if they want to kill him, they surely can.
Agreed. There is no need to declare certamen on him, because he is not bound, nor protected by, the oath. If someone wants to kill him, they can.
I admit I did not consider Cow and Calf when I created the original library or the economics rules. I believe Fightmaster may have added the clauses in for our most valuable texts.
So who swore the oath of cow and calf? If Adan copies a protected text and makes a trade, unaware of the oath which binds the covenant (note this is hypothetical for the most part- Adan doesn't trade books, except non magical texts that he sells to Rilcheaux), then what will happen? Will the local Tremere kill him? Will the people who sold the covenant the book ask a Tremere to challenge Carmen to Certamen?
I think the idea is that the magi own the books. Adan would not be able to copy one without at least their tacit approval. Whoever exacted the Cow & Calf oath would probably look upon it as a violation of the oath if the magi allowed a book to be copied by Adan. Essentially he would be considered an agent of the covenant, even if he was copying it 'on his own time.'
It's sort of like the way any good non-disclosure agreement also includes a clause saying that the recipient agrees to safeguard the information. If I can bypass the NDA by having my assistant copy it and publish it on the Internet, then it's not really an effective NDA.
The magi & the covenant are responsible for upholding the cow and calf. Trying to hide behind a scribe is pointless as mundanes are the property and responsibility of the covenant. And the Magi will look beautifully foolish to their peers if they try. Also if another magi injures the covenants scribe they could be charged under the code for damaging covenant property and/or limiting/damaging the covenant's magical resources.
Aside - There is no restriction on adding an additional agreement for these trades which prescribes that they cannot be further copied without the covenant's permission/compensation, it would be just another contract. C&C is the popular contract for books controlled by the author, but another contract could easily be put in place. I think larger libraries would frequently have additional contracts in place for valuable texts where C&C has expired.
1)how does C&C expire?
2) technically there is nothing in C&C about copying, just giving away or trading copies. Keeping an extra copy for security against damage appears to be legitimate.
What season in 1241 will books be being traded again? Also should I make a page for the library at some intermediate point between 1234 and 1241?