"I'm Benarec. I've sailed to Brittany and back more times that I can count, but I'm getting old and carrying a couple of books for a scholar is easier.
As for silver, once we've settled with that Danish lord, I think we'll be hiring a few lads to help build a house. Hard work to be sure, but paid in silver, if you know someone who's interested."
"Always some young 'um who willing to work a bit fer silver," yells Kleis as he walks away to his flock. "Not many who' be willing to work close t'the death oak. Good luck!"
As the magi go by the village again, they realize that many of the roofs are made of stone tiles, instead of the more usual thatch. Many rain barrels are also visible.
((Do the magi stop and try to meet some of the villagers before they go back into town?))
(Back into town, right?)
(into town !)
(town, yes. we have plenty of time to blunder our social rolls when we are establishing ourselves. No need to develop a reputation before securing lodgings for the night! :mrgreen: ).
The magi who had taken the rowing boat to have a look around make their way back towards the piers. By the time they are back to the warehouse, it is late afternoon, almost time for dinner. The transportation and storage of the supplies is complete, and the women are back from their shopping trip. Bernhard is nowhere to be seen, but the rest of the party is all present and accounted for.
Quercus is quite happy with the day's work. they have found a suitable vis source, a powerful aura and have made an overview that makes clear that Helgeland has the necessary resources to stablish a covenant. They need to secure the area around the tree and make further mystical and mundane investigations of the area, but the first results are promising. The ojnly pitty is that the oak is covered in Perdo vis, something he does not appreciate since it fits poorly with his own magic, but being a Technique vis he is sure that it will be useful for them. Now it is time to rest and prepare for tomorrow.
Landing on the beach he salutes the sailors in the knarr and walks past them. They follow the magi with a wary look in their eyes, ready to jump if the weirdos do anything suspicious. They look at Japik with a better view, but the sight of Pytheas makes one of them raise from his bench and almost go for his knife.
(Anyone wants to take up the narrative in the warehouse?)
Here we are, all private. Would you go arrange us lodgings, now? Prochorus looks impatient.
How long, master? And how many beds? Dietlinde asks softly.
Arrange it however you wish. Or do you have specific demands, sodales?
I don't mind where we are staying and I don't think the sailors care much either as long as they get a roof over their heads and are allowed to drink some ale at the local taverns when they don't have to guard the boats. What about the warehouse we keep our load? Is there some room left there? If there is I can stay there with Hjalmar, Yulia and the sailors. Japik says.
Then tomorrow we must learn more about Lord Knud and the people in the village on the top.
Quercus looks at Fresse slightly disappointed. The grog tends to be quite efficient at finding a place for them to sleep, but seems that this time the stress of the unusual unloading situation has overcome him. He will have to leave him to deal with challenging socuial situations on his own more frequently. Seems that Alice is doing well among the grogs, and he plans to test her in a more challenging environment as well.
I will take a lodging in the good house. Alice will come with me. Fresse will stay here with the grogs tonight. Along this week we can arrange for somewhat better lodgings for some of the grogs if we cannot build our new locale fast enough.
Fresse looks unhappy about that and mildly annoyed, but you are unsure if this is because he will have to sleep in the barn, because his protegee is moving away from him or because Alice is moving away from him AND with Quercus.
((Nothing I can do to advance the thread at this time, it is wholly in your hands... There are basically two topics that need to be discussed. First is sleeping accomodations, which can be broad indications of whether and how the people will be split into groups, so that the mundanes can go shopping for rooms. Second is the plans for the next day. I can have Bernhard join you a bit later to answer questions, but it's really up to your magi to decide how to proceed from here.))
((I thought most of us had already decided on that. Japik, Hjalmar, Yulia and the sailors will sleep in the warehouse if there is room for all. The others seem to want to stay at better lodging house. Or Fresse might join the sailors as well?))
((Very well, Dietlinde leaves with her instructions and return a few hours later. She has arranged for the following lodging for the next week:
((Now, what are the magi's detailed plans for the next day?))
Quercus will go up to the oak with Fresse. there he will sit down, cast a Sight version of detect aura at sun duration (level InVi10). he will cast the spell 4 times, one per Realm of power, resting between castings. I assume they will have different colors or some other differentiating feature. Quercus will rest enough to be fresh between castings and after finishing the overall magical casting. After that, he plans on taking to the sky in sparrowhawk form. Fresse will remain behind with the clothes.
Quercus will fly around the island trying to map the auras of the place. He will pay special attention to the plateau, but the whole island should receive his attention in a day long activity when the sun starts to fall, he will return to the plateau, eat cheese and bread with Fresse and come down to the village to report to the other members of the fledging covenant.
Alice will try to follow Quercus' instructions and get more info on the ruling nobility of the place.
I few thoughts regarding this plan. Let it be clear that I'm not trying to find ways to obstruct it, but I want to insert some caveats and comments.
First about the parameters of the InVi spells:
Neither of these are crippling, although they do mean that such a survey of auras on the island would take much longer than a day.
Then there is the out-of-play implications. I will readily admit that I have not decided in details where there will be mystical auras on the island. The Divine ones are fairly obvious, being centered on churches, monasteries, villages, etc. But even for those I don't have a set list. It gets worse for faerie and magic aura, and I haven't even considered Infernal ones yet. My thought was to introduce them as needed in the saga.
So my thinking is that Quercus' method of surveying would reveal the big obvious auras close to the covenant, but that small or less obvious auras would escape his notice until such a time that he actually gets down close to them. Many auras would also be hidden from his sight when flying above the island -- for example anything under water, in a cave, inside a building, etc. And, simply put, I don't want to have to decide right now where all of them are. 
Note that there is nothing preventing you from mapping out the aura around the oak at this time, including its strength. And auras on Oberland. That I have already decided upon. 
Are you ok with this? I don't want you to feel that I'm obstructing your plans.
I was away from the books at the time and knew I was doing something wrong with the spell design. We can make it base 1 (detect an aura) target Hearing +3, Sun duration +2, so the spell is level 10. Quercus will fly low and make closer passes around. It will take him longer to scan a given area, so that goes well with your "do not scan everything yet because we do not have the island mapped out in detail" comment. He will try to get the major features, so we can go and kick some dirt around if we find magic auras or faerie auras in other places. He will centre his first scans around the plateau, that will be fully scanned, and the surrounding areas. I fully understand the "don't screw your SG" comment, so if you prefer I will only scan for major auras. The first day he will go for 2 realms (magic and whatever you fancy) and the next day for the other 2. I suppose a scanning for 2 realms should be easier to differentiate. We want a basic layout of the auras, but we will miss stuff for sure. But if there is a faerie glade or the free-standing rocks have magic auras, we want to know it. 
((Prochorus will focus on acquiring permission for us to settle on the plateau. Did the mundanes learn anything about this yet - it's the local lord we should ask, right? Do we know where he is or anything about him?))
As long as we understand that Quercus will only be able to detect fairly large auras in this way, I'm good with this. Hearing is quite imprecise and not a very useful sense when flying around, what with the wind and all.
I'll let you know the results as soon as I have a better idea of what the other magi are doing during those days. I'd like to keep things relatively synchronized. 
Is Quercus mapping out the aura around the oak, or is someone else doing that while he is flying around the island?
The women were not able to learn much about that yet. Nor have you met any of Bernhard's contacts yet, for that matter. They may be able to help you a bit on that front. Who will be meeting those contacts? He mentioned that he would introduce you (or a representative for the magi, at least) to them over the next few days. So is Prochorus doing that, or is he sending one of the mundanes to tackle that?
What are the plans for Japik and Pytheas?
If Prochorus together with Bernhard and the grogs takes care of finding out how we can get permission to settle around the tree, then Japik will help Quercus study the area around the tree more thouroughly. If there are several days to fill with activities then he will spend at least one full day in dolphin form getting to know the waters around the island. He and Pytheas might examine the cliff below the tree more thouroughly together.
I guess we should try to handle the business with mundanes as much as we can without magic but if needed Japik's Imaginem and Prochorus Mentem might be a good combination.