You're right, sorry - I'd got bits of her backstory muddled with Medusa's in my head. Yes, she used to be a priestess of Poseidon (before Neptune started impersonating him and it all went downhill from there), so she'll have at least some experience with horses.
[OOC: How do you want to do the festival? Is it something you want to develop and play out in-character, in which case I can create a new thread?]
I could take it or leave it. How do you feel about playing it out? Even if we don't do it in detail this time, it could always be a setting for a story in future.
Scott
I don't have strong feeling either way either. My main concern is that the obvious time to do it is only a season after the last adventure, and I'd prefer to have a longer gap. The alternative would be to say that it takes Viola a while to get it put together, and set it in Spring 1232 rather than Spring 1231.
The other key question is are there other things you'd rather do instead?
Crap, I thought I had answered this.
Obviously, Viola would always rather be in the lab, so a long gap is fine for me as a player. As SG, I don’t anticipate anything being hurled at the covenant in the very near term–at least, nothing I’d couldn’t push back if necessary. So maybe you could just do a short paragraph or so summary of the event?
Scott
[Okay, happy to do this in summary.]
In practice, not wanting to deal with the boring details, Viola delegates most of the organisation of the fair to Phocas, the covenant autocrat. Phocas in turn, being busy with running both the covenant and the building work, ends up delegating a lot of it to Damianos the “stablemaster”, who if he isn’t massively experienced in running large events at least has both a lot of experience with horses and a smattering of Kipchak.
Damianos takes to the task with enthusiasm and a certain degree of license. Apparently the covenant is in the market for increasing its own stables, and is interested in buying or breeding from the best of the local horses. The festival therefore takes place at the end of the foaling season in late summer (in early spring the horses are still recovering from food shortages over the winter). In addition to the food provided by the covenant, the event consists largely of endurance horse races - relatively short ones of just a league for the children on yearling horses, up to 5 or 6 leagues for adult riders and horses.
The festival itself has cost the covenant around a pound of extra silver. Following through on Damianos’ expressed interested in buying and breeding the best horses will cost…well, as much as the covenant will let him get away with.
[Not that it matters much, but one-league race would be longer than any current regularly scheduled horse race–and they don’t let horses under 3 run anywhere near that distance. I’m aware of.Yes, I’ve been playing far too much Umamusume lately. 6 or 7 leagues would be a good day’s ride for most horses. CORRECTION: Google tells me that there are endurance races that are much longer–not sure you’d want to have an immature horse tackle something like that, though.]
Viola couldn’t care less about the details, but she’d really like Damianos to explain why the covenant needs to breed its own horses, let alone the best ones money can buy sires and dams for. She’s aware we wanted to field a small cavalry force, but weren’t we recruiting them from the local villages?
At any rate, how does the divine inhabitant of Viola’s regio respond to the festival?
Scott
[OOC: From what I could tell from my own googling (e.g. https://equestrianists.com/updates/mongolian-horses/), steppe horse races are very much endurance focussed. Obviously modern day Mongolia isn't exactly what we're looking at, but sources about Medieval Kipchak races are more limited, and hopefully they're at least vaguely similar.]
Damianos explains in somewhat broken Latin that horses are very important here. The magi are very important, so should own great horses. Buying the best local horses is good, but if Viola could get magical horses that would be more good?
Halia's children are busy making bets on the outcome of the races. Halia herself seems to be watching events with a mix of nostalgia and pain.