We have also only used 1000 of our 2000 points in librarys and vis sources, and we could easily add a few summae, I made a suggestion on the previous page for an example summae setup.
The most important important ones would be: Parma Magica, Magic Theory, Penetration and Finesse, which could work as 4 level 7 quality 14 summae (38 points each)
Also vis sources still need to be properly sorted, silveroak we mentioned a few ideas and requests for clarification earlier on page 7, would you mind responding to those?
The water on the alters works, however there would be no point in contracting with another covenant, as the vis income would be yours by right of ownership once the Normans gave you the temple. The winter covenant will wind up being a rival (and wouldn't have offered to let you harvest for them for a fee in any case), but otherwise it works out very well.
Claiming a set of vis sources by deals with the Norman invaders could certainly work well, but again there will be rivals- it should be noted that the deals with the Normal invaders will be for use of the land for certain 9vis collecting) ceremonies or the collection of certain herbs, collecting water at certain times, etc. The fine points of these contracts can be ignored for the most part, they were essentially built between the home covenant and their good relationship with the Normans, and you have inherited them, along with some rivalries with those who harvested these resources before the Normans grabbed hold of the land they were on.
With 60 pawns/yr spread around you are going to have some social issues: I would say it adds the hooks Rival (minor) and infamous (minor) which then will need to be balanced with 2 minor boons (or a major boon and another minor hook like gender imbalance or suffrage)
And still leave 1000 points to spend or ignore... If you don't have anything you want to spend them on we can simply act as if they were not there... though personally I would suggest a silver reserve... or some extra lab space and customization would be better than simply throwing the points away...
There are also heaps of enchanted items and lab texts we can start with. Of which I mentioned a few on the previous page, as well as the summae I mentioned.
Sorry about that. I don't always have a lot of time for reading/posting, and I sometimes miss items if a lot happens quickly.
That said, I looked back at the magic items listed ...
I don't have MoH, but the items crawfs listed sound like good ideas, especially the Granary Chest and Shroud of the Healed Body.
A set of Lamps without Flame would be a good idea for the Library and any other flammable areas that require light.
How about a "brick" that we can incorporate into the walls of the covenant to strengthen them against attack?
A bell in the turb quarters enchanted with a T:Room version of Snap of Awakening
A wand of "punching holes in boats" to help get rid of troublesome raiders before they land
I'll add writing up a couple of these items to my "to do" list.
We should spend points on improving labs and having a couple extra labs, assuming the filii will remain with the covenant. We can take the virtues "spacious" or "well-insulated" for 10bp per lab. (Do these need to be balanced with Lab Flaws if we buy them at creation?) "Superior heating" or "lighting" are also available for 10 bp each.
Also, have we talked about Lab Texts yet? I feel like a good complement of level 25 - 45 spell texts would be helpful, like ...
Clouds of Thunderous Might ReAu30 for dealing with storms and boats off the coast
Purification of the Festering Wounds CrCo20
The Severed Limb Made Whole CrCo25
Seven-League Stride ReCo30
Leap of Homecoming ReCo35
BoAF CrIg35
Soothe the Raging Flames PeIg20
Eyes of the Eagle InIm25 (Might also be a good enchanted item for grogs on watch)
Piercing the (Realm) Veil InVi20
Demon's Eternal Oblivion PeVi15 or 20?
A few wards of various kinds at levels 15-25 might also be helpful
Silveroak, I thought of a question or two while working on this:
Wards need to penetrate, yes?
Do casting tablets exist?
That all sounds good, what do you think of my summae suggestions?
For the 4 high level obes as mentioned I think they should be the "core" Hermetic abilities: Parma magica, penetration, finesse and magic theory.
For the 10 lower level ones they should be something like:
Order of Hermes lore
Code of Hermes
Magic lore
Faerie lore
Artes liberals
Lower level finesse, penetration and Parma
And either two more general abilities or just save the points.
This would cost just under 500 points leaving us with 500 left.
Of that I would suggest 50 points in starting cash which is 500 pounds.
50 points in lab texts, which is 250 spell levels, 100 points in enchantments which is 250 levels of enchantments. Then use the remaining 300 points for labs.
keep in mind that some of what is already spent are lab texts- ones suggested by darkwing early on, so if you would rather be rid of them and start a new list we can do that, since he doesn't seem to be maintaining the posting rate, though personally having texts selected by a personage who is no longer with the covenant seems appropriate to the setting...
I'm ok with leaving them as is, we should have varied enough known spells on each of our magi to populate the library with a decent number of texts anyway.
Do we want any offensive items, so apprentices or grogs can wield a little magical firepower? Or is that best left to be made during the 12th century when our magi design some?
Question for the GM: do magic items need to add penetration for hostile auras, or will they work regardless? I ask in case we want to take items into towns with strong divine auras, or if we want to make a magic item of Piercing the Infernal veil so we can explore infernal regiones without getting lost.
They do not need to add penetration to work in hostile auras, but penetration will be modified in those areas. So you can have a -3 penetration which is effectively the same as a 0 penetration on a magical item, unless for some reason the negative number is actually significant- essentially any MR will stop the power but it will still work on the unprotected.
to cover some details we seem to have skipped:
What arts do we want how much of the vis to be in? We've got the concept now of rapid expansion with the Normans taking southern Italy, but what actual arts?
Also what do we want to do with two more points in boons?
Agreed. I like the spread on the ability texts. ***We might one of the "extra" lower level summa on Philosophiae and one on Church Lore/Org Lore: Church, whichever might help us deal with the local powers. (Don't have my books with me at the moment, so I am not sure which one we would want.)
As a side note, might we want someone who is fluent in and can teach Greek or Arabic at the covenant?
I'm good with what we have on the wiki so far. Are we adding the Abilities Summa crawfs and I suggested? Or the enchanted items? I suggested some lab upgrades as well. I guess I'm not sure what is still up for discussion, or how much room we have for more stuff. (I know you want discussion on proposals, but I am having trouble figuring out where the discussions stand. Part of my current difficulty is trying to sort through all the posts in this thread to find what's going on with a particular group of things, like enchanted items or lab texts. I'm sure we'll sort it out; it may help to summarize where we are and what we still have floating.)
Adding 250 levels, and I was thinking of just doing it as what Archimedes listed, change Demon's eternal oblivion to level 10 and remove wards and it's exactly 250 levels. It's a decent list of spells and we also each have our 120 or more levels of spells on our magi.
I really think we should do the summae as the remaining points are sitll enough for whatever we want in terms of lab texts and enchantments, also if you don't feel like spending extra points on the lab texts you listed I'm fine with that, it's not totally necessary.
As for where the discussion stands: We've basically spent 1000 of our points on the arts, vis income and existing lab texts (rounding up a little I think I'm ignoring like 30-50 points) I think we should pursue the summae I suggested and that is 490 points in total leaving us with roughly 500 points, which is where my suggestion of 50 points of cash, 50 points of additional lab texts, 100 points of enchantments and 300 points on labs.
Additionally we have to figure out what we want our vis to be in:
Creo will be the most important to have, based on the geography of Locri it would make sense to have some Aquam, Herbam and Terram, I believe ghosts as a source of corpus was also discussed. Rego or Vim will be necessary for Aegis however that could be reasonably expected to be traded for.
So just as a suggestion of what the numbers could be: 12 Creo, 4 Aquam, 4 Herbam, 8 Terram, 8 Corpus, 8 Rego, 4 Intellego, 4 Perdo, 4 Muto, 4 mentem.
So this spread gives us a little bit of vis for every type of spell while still favouring a few forms and techniques
On the note of enchantments we ahve 250 levels if we go by my suggestion, the combined levels of the enchantments I mentioned a few pages back is 175, which leaves are with 75 points for something like a income enhancing enchantment and a structural improving enchantment:
Brick of Hardened Stone MuTe
Fair warning I don't know the rules for building damage but this spell is based off of the spell "hardness of adamantine" from HoH:S which is a level 25 spell that improves the soak of metal armour. Basic idea is to just improve how much damage the walls of our castle can take before they are significantly damaged/destroyed.
The base effect is level 4, Range is touch (+1), target structure (+3) Duration Sun (+2) Two uses per day and environmental trigger of Sunrise/Sunset so the the effect is constant this adds 4 levels, plus an addition one magnitude for it affect stone. This brings the level up to 39. Will this cause some kind of strange warping effect for the castle?
The other would be an automatic weaving device of some sort that makes cotton cloth out of raw cotton, and potentially we could have another items that makes clothes.
The Invisible Loom (Haven't decided on the name for this)
so the base effect for this would probably be ReHe Level 10 as per ArM5 p138:
So it would likely be something like Range: Touch (+1) Duration: Ring (+2) Target: Circle (+0)
That would then be a level 25 item, it would operate by placing all of the raw cotton in a particular circle, touching the circle with the device or something and then the cotton would be weaved into cloth.
If the Brick of Hardened Stone were designed specifically for the covenant walls, there would not be warping for a powerful effect, but there would be warping for the constant effect. We could get around this by having to activate the Brick. The level would drop to 35 (still needs to be designed for the covenant) and would no longer be a constant effect.
I'm okay with these numbers. We can trade for other flavors, right?
Are we able to extract raw vis from the aura? Or does that have a chance of diminishing the aura? (Personally, I find the diminishing aurae to be rather apocalyptic, and I would prefer not to use those rules.)
Do we need to outline the actual sources for the vis? A couple ideas:
Aquam vis is gathered from a tidal pool a half-day's journey up the coast. The water that remains in the pool at the low tide of the first new moon in Spring contains 4 Aq vis.
Water poured on the altar stone of the ruined temple contains 4 Creo vis in the Spring and 4 Perdo vis in the Autumn (based on an earlier suggestion I made)
If the leaves from a laurel tree growing out of a Roman ruins are woven into a crown on midsummer, they contain 4 Re vis