I don't really get the idea of forcing something unto your players either, but by being outside of a tribunal, they are in some grey area each side can take advantage of.
If some Tremere magus declares certamen over an issue, the defending side can just decline to play that game, and then what are the recourses of the offensive side ? Bring the issue to the next Grand tribunal ...?
On the other hand it is also a really dangerous situation not to be in a tribunal in my opinion, I hope they have some strong political allies in the neighboring tribunals...
I'm not planning on forcing something on the players, I'm discussing what tactics the Tremere would take given this situation. the game, after all, is about overcoming adversity, and understanding the nature of the adversity is the first part.
They exist on the border of three tribunals, and Thebes and Transylvania are already hostile to each other, so playing them against each other is likely to be part of the setting...
Sure enough; True Lineages p49 in the final bit in the box on vagrancy says you can be charged for not having a resident Tribunal or residing in a Tribunal without meeting its residency qualifications.
That said, all they need to do is keep claiming they belong to a different Tribunal and provide some vague kind of evidence and they might keep others off their backs. Transylvania is quite strict in its qualifications in 5th Ed, but if you're on the back of a magical turtle you can use that as your patron and qualify for Theban membership.
On the original topic of the thread, the best strategy I can come up with to bully someone via Certamen, is to offer to be Certamen champion on behalf of everyone who has a conflict with the magus you want to Certamen bully.
This admittedly only works if you are personally a good duelist, or at least a much better duelist than the person you want to bully.
But if you can consistently beat you victim at Certamen you can in essence ensure that they lose every challange they are issued by anyone. If done correctly this will inflict significant losses on the victim but gain comparatively little for the perpetrator, except to show dominance towards the victim.
When setting up a new covenant in new territory, many founding members may well nominally belong to their previous covenant, like any other magus wandering the world for extensive periods of time. This may of course be difficult for apprentices, and impossible for apprentices from the Greater Alps, but likely to be the situation for most new covenants, whether or not there is any doubt about future tribunal affiliation.
IIUC this covenant is not so concerned with qualifying as it is to get the best possible deal with a tribunal, using border disputes for leverage. That situation is also not unheard of.
I don't have any official products for Novgorod, but I have to think covenant membership there would be really easy to qualify for as well. It is entirely possible for the 5th ed greater Alps to have some form of special status for mages who are non-resident mages, since that encourages departure and conservation of resources.
There are two separate issues here for someone in a covenant in disputed territory- the recognition of the covenant by a tribunal and the membership of the magi in a tribunal.
Heck, some vis-hungry tribunals (for example Normandy) you can probably find someone who will list you as being part of their tribunal for a pittance in vis payments.
Would he be able to challenge them? Yes. Would it have legal value? Depends on the Tribunal and the contents of the Charter, and whether the certamen was accepted or challenged. If membership is decided by a vote, you might have to pursue several certamen challenges to change several votes - and I don't see that a covenant has to declare who voted for admission and who voted against in justifying its decision. Also, tribunals that have quaesitors certify charters before approval typically consider covenant charters to be part of the peripheral code. This may not apply equally accross the Order, of course. But for Tribunals that consider charters part of the peripheral code, subject to appeal in front of the Tribunal, I think there is a very strong basis for someone challenging the result of certamen over in front of the Tribunal, since how the decision is made is arguably protected by the code, and this could fall under certamen bullying. Now a Tremere using certamen to avoid being kicked out of a covenant might have better grounds as this is a legitimate dispute, on the contrary, I don't see why a Tremere could argue having a legitimate dispute on his rights to join a covenant unless he can claim something like membership was offered, then withdrawn on a technicality after he kept a promise, or something along those lines...
In this case the argument is that the covenant should be in the Transylvanian tribunal, and all covenants/oppidae in the Translyvanian tribunal must have one Tremere member.
For that to be a valid challenge the tremere in question must then be able to argue that which tribunal a covenant belongs to is not determined by the code and that it is not a free decision on the part of a covenant to chose its tribunal of membership in case there are multiple valid tribunals.
If the right of a covenant to chose is a legal right then you cannot challenge over it. Also who would you challenge to certamen is such a situation? IMO a certamen challenge is one that resolves a dispute between two magi not between a magus and a covenant, or a tribunal and a covenant.
Could a tremere member of the transylvanian tribunal challenge a covenant to certamen over a legal issue? I would argue not, such is for the relevant tribunal to decide. In this case there is no valid tribunal so (again IMO) the right body to decide the issue would be the grand tribunal.
There is a specific situation I could see where there might be grounds for a certamen over this issue. That situation is if there was a tremere member of the covenant already and said tremere decided to challenge another magus over which tribunal to register the covenant in. However there is no such tremere.
In general I think that if a magus from outside of a covenant tries to challenge a magus from a covenant over how to vote in internal covenant matters, then the magus from the covenant is perfectly within their rights to simply say: "this is not a legitimate dispute between us and you have no business trying to interfere in internal covenant affairs" and decline the challenge.
I read the situation slightly different. The covenant does not have a legal right to choose its tribunal. That's a freedom which only arises when several tribunals claim the territory, and none of them have the power or desire or guts to put force behind the claim.
Thus I think @silveroak's case is good. If the peripheral code of Transylvania says the the Black Sea belongs to Transylvania, the Certamen is valid in Transylvania, and the Transylvanian tribunal will uphold it. The question is what does Thebes do (or Novgorod, but they are likely less inclined to care). This is not a question of whether the covenant meets the technical requirements for membership, but whether Thebes claims the territory, and is prepared to defend the claim when it is contested. This is not just a conflict between covenant and Tremere ...
This is complicated by the deviant understanding of what a covenant is in Transylvania. The turtle camp becomes an oppidum, and each resident has to join an existing covenant. That implies, I think, the need -at best- to defeat each and every one of the magi to certamen, to force them to join Transylvanian covenants. If some win and some lose, you can have a long-lasting plot, possibly a little too convolved for RP.
If there is a dispute between Thebes and Transylvania, it is bound for the grand tribunal, and I do not think petty certamen between a few individual magi are going to have much weight.
I agree with much of what you say here. However I still stand by my point that assuming the issue is a territorial dispute between tribunals then it is not to be resolved by certamen between representatives of house tremere and members of the turtle-camp but at best by certamen between representatives of the transylvanian tribunal and representatives of the theban tribunal.
Best here defined as being "most likely to hinge on the outcome of one or more certamen duels".
Why does Novgorod need to care? if the magi of the turtle-camp simply show up for a tribunal gathering in novgorod and ask "hey can we join?" and they get an answer of "yeah sure, do whatever you want". Then suddenly the turtle-camp magi are back in the situation where they can chose which tribunal they want to join.
This argument strikes me as kind of weird. A tribunal cant simply pass legislation into its peripheral code claiming territory that might also be claimed by other tribunals and then say "oh yeah this is an internal matter, nothing to see here, doesnt concern you...".
Sure they will want to claim this but unless they can enforce this claim against other tribunals it holds little weight. It seems to me that tribunal border disputes is a textbook example of a thing where the grand tribunal has to decide on the issue, and as such that regional peripheral codes hold little weight.
It doesn't. You need two tribunals to care. It could be Transylvania and Novgorod instead of Thebes. Yes, Novgorod could absent-mindedly welcome the new covenant to give them a legal basis, but that does not really prevent them from admitting they were wrong if Transylvania claims the territory. They need to care enough to stand by it.
Happens in the real world. Just look at Crimea.
The point is that they can do it as long as nobody objects. If two tribunals claim the territory, then either you have a war, or one side decides to back down. Yes, the Grand Tribunal has a role, and if it comes up in three years, it may well be decisive. If you have to wait 30 years for the next one, the decision is probably going to be based on the de facto situation at that point. An attempt to restore what would have been right 30 years prior is not likely to serve peace and order.
However in my view that changes the situation to one of endurance. As long the the turtle-camp can maintain a de-facto independence from transylvania until the issue is settled, either at grand tribunal or by negotiations between tribunals then they can have the resolution they want. Being on a mobile covenant helps a lot here as they really just have to make themselves scarce whenever representatives of the transylvania tribunal show up to kick in the door and enforce their authority.
Making themselves sufficiently troublesome that they will not be welcome in transylvania may help too but it may also backfire as the transylvanian might simply decide that they are more trouble than their worth and just kill them all.
The ability to defend themselves in actual combat will be useful too.
There is one line of attack, actually proposed in OP.
The magical turtle is a resource which does not obviously belong to the covenant. Especially if the covenant members claim to reside in Thebes or Novgorod, and the Tremere claims it to be native to Transylvania. Maybe the covenant has stolen it from another tribunal/covenant.
That is a cause for Certamen if ever I saw one in this thread.
Speaking of which, if they were to join the Theban tribunal, wouldn't the turtle have to agree to be their patron (unless of course they found a different patron)?
It is intended for a patron to be willing to enter a pact of mutual protection, yes. And the Theban Tribunal is bureaucratic about it, and will take time to go and interview the patron to ensure it is willing. It's unclear whether the verification always existed, as Lamites is listed by a covenant that was presumably destroyed by an unwilling patron, but it sure is done now. Maybe to avoid such situations again. How the Tribunal would go about interviewing a migrating giant sea turtle could prove an interesting story, I suppose.
or more likely an earth elemental walking along the bottom of the black sea whose back protrudes... its head is down there somewhere and who knows what language it speaks, but it's might is high enough to create the covenant aura and if it notices a village on its back it doesn't seem to mind... apparently it doesn't need to breathe...