Chapter 8: Council meeting

"Maybe we should find out. Perhaps the truth is that they need rescue and freeing from her control as much as anyone else. Then again, perhaps there are no minions. Her so called covenant is a bunch of mundane servants and her personal library." Tatiana suggest. The lack of knowledge to plan action is the biggest issue.

My knowledge of the hinterlands of the Novograd tribunal is somewhat limited as you and Ardeth both orginate from that Tribunal you could perhaps find out what her covenants status is , how many mages vote at Tribunal and such matters which should be fairly easy to learn from your paran's

There may surely be a card to play in finding one of her sodales ready to betray constantia. But this'll prove difficult, as they clearly fear her. Seeking help in novgorod may be better, although, since her goals would help that tribunal to encroach on the rhine, I'm not sure they'll help us.

For now, we need to rout out any spies and... Hey... What if we enginered a fall between constantia and one of her sodales? If we could bring constantia to believe one of them is helping us, this might divert her attention and promote dissent.

"It MAY prove difficult? how would you know until you try. I would think they would love a chance to overthrow and destroy the source of fear in their lives. If nothing else, we can marshall a bunch of Votes to perhaps get a minor charge against her at tribunal that if we take it all the way to tribunal vote, will get her marched. Then magi from all over the order will be thrilled to hunt her. You never know until you try. You know nothing about her, her covenant, her weaknesses or anything except that she makes you wet your pants in fear and naysay trying to learn more. Yes, killing spies is one thing but that is trivial until she creates the next one." Tatiana is not going to be cowed by a bully and doesn't fear her. Then again, her parma is strongest against ignem.

You will apologise for calling me a coward or face my wrath. I fear no one.
Mariella is cleary furious.

OCC
Do either of our mages from Novograd know anything about Constantia's covenant? I know the players don't.

In my vision of Novgorod each covenant leader hold their own covenant in quite a strong leash so little knowledge is spread amongst the tribunal. I imagined that Novgorod is a large tribunal with large resources of vis that give magi the opportunity to live in peace if they wish and mind their own business if they so wish. Any magus or maga (Constantia) that wish to command greater power and several magi must use force to do so else the magi they try to dominate just would run of into the wilderness and live happily ever after. (This is my interpretation on how the mundane living condition has shaped the tribunal. Eastern Europe held onto serfdom much longer than western Europe due to the fact that serfs could so easily find a new home if they wished and their where plenty of untamed land) I also imagine that the tribunals power is relatively weak and that the enforcement of the code is much more of a matter of who has the stronger muscle to claim their right that it is a question of law.

"If the words fit? I am not the one afraid to approach the idiot flambeau's covenant to try to cause her covenant to vote her out of their ranks, overthrow her and join with us to defeat her. I am not the one stalling about trying to determine her weak points. You know what you can do if you want to force me to change my words but I do not fear Constanzia and a few more seasons preparation and I will be more than happy to see how strong she really is when four rocks suddenly fly at her to kill and then rise up to fly at her again, over and over and over again. Just need a spell or two to hide a shadow." Tatiana thinks that certamen might bring out the blood and courage in her coven mates if they are not going to turn their efforts against the true enemy.

"You are an arrogant idiot with no concept of magical combat. If you were stupid enougth to try you pathetic little rocks agaisnt me they would fail , any decently trained Flambeau mage would defeat them with ease. Your posturing in the town was mildly amusing , here it is ridiculous one of us here is a trained battle mage and one is a silly girl who should go back to playing with her flowers and string . Constantia would kill you where you stood , apart from the embarrasment to this covenant it would not be problem."
Your schemes and plans may be practical however as is obvious to even a simpleton or Ex Miscallanae maga they require some basis of information to be known before they can be turned from wishes and day dreams to facts. The first thing we will do is contact our ally Rastaven and see what we can trade for from them and what they can tell us about our mutual enemy then we can plan our actions with some information and perhaps with more common sense from our newsest member.
Mariella leaves.

OCC
I considered Certeman but I would be the challanger and so would just lose, making Mariella angrier as there is no way Tatania would except Perdo and that leaves me with at most a 1 pt advantage and she would choose imagonem or Auram and kick my ass, specialists don't challange

Tatiana has a look of amusement on her face as Mariella rants and insult and then walks out rather than face the accusaton. She will need to work up a version of her stone throwing spell to throw pieces of bone, wood and other materials.

OOC since we don't really know each other yet. It would be iffy. yes, I would say pick another for Perdo but It would be interesting what you did pick. So far you have seen me do level 20 spells for PeIm, ReTe, ReCo and level 10 ReMe so which technique could be interesting and questionable. I don't know your form strengths and weaknesses other than you have some vim and corpus. Odds are I would pick Mentem as form. Although I might do corpus because while I know you are like good at it, it is also my strongest form.

Also Mariella does not particularly approve of Certeman amongst covenant members to settle disputes, and accusations of Cowardice are to her very close to grounds for Wizards war, although again Wizards war against a covenant member seems dishonorable.
Also you seem to have a different concept than I have of observation , after a year together in a covenant I assume I know pretty much everything reasonably obvious about fellow magi (rough arts , major flaws and virtues etc ) so I would have thought certeman on that basis and lost as Mariella is badly designed for certeman and even worse you are good at nearly all my secondary arts and not accepting Perdo is obvious

OOC Unless you are blatant about your magic, major flaws would not come up just randomly necessarily. Sure, personality flaws yea. But in a year studying arts and inventing spells, you aren't going to see me casting a many creo, intellego or muto spell amd sponting a lot is wasteful and dangerous (asking for botch). Yeah, you talk about Perdo magic a lot and Tatiana about rego but TAtiana is not going to talk about her weaknesses unless they specifically arise (this is debrief council session after the magistrate affair, not council a year late anyways.) For example, she would likely mention she doesn't like christianity subtly, she would not say that christian holy objects (including consecrated hosts) cause her spells to stop working. After several years, you know what I have been studying and some spells I have to get rough picture but even then, you aren't going know everything.

:imp:

You don't know what you're talking about.
We have little information on that maga, save that she's older than us, more powerful, and actually feared by the magi in her covenant. They know her better than us, so I guess they have good reason to fear her.
What will you do if your rocks bounce on her parma, or she has a ward against stone? What will you do if she incinerates you on the spot?
Maybe her sodales would overthrow her. Maybe not. We don't know them, and some of them may actually support her. Maybe we could win at certamen. What arts would you choose? Rego? What if she's better at it than you?

I'm all for getting rid of the witch, but not rushing blindly to our doom. We need to know her some more, her strengths and weaknesses, and have a decisive strike at her. Be it with Certamen, Politics or Wizard's war, we must fell her in one blow, or else she'll be able to retaliate in full.

(And I actually agree with LadyP about knowledge of sodales: Unless the magus discuss it, it is hard to know. Sponting is not really useful, too, as even a 6-points difference doesn't always make a difference even when fatiguing)

I will bear this in mind

"That is my point. You are making no effort to find out about her, to find out about her covenant, her covenmates and weaknesses, whether they would cooperate in overthrowing her. We need to be going out to discover information about her and go on the offensive, not sit here bemoaning that she is a threat and we should just worry about her existing spies. Why are you against creating our own agents, sending our own spies and visiting on our own since she was so nice to visit us. To not act out of fear that they might not cooperate with us is FEAR and COWARDICE. It can be seen as nothing else." Tatiana says firmly.

"We do not need to fell her in one blow unless you mean that blow must be wizard war or Wizard march? If you do not mean to kill her then she will always be able to retaliate. Killing other wizards is against the spirit of the order we joined. If she is alive, she can act against us openly or subtly and I am not for killing an idiot just because she has a big reputation."

Sigh... :unamused:

We made no effort because we had more precise concerns.
But isn't information gathering and countering her what we were precisely discussing?
It is always easy to criticise after the fact, but insulting us will get you nowhere, save maybe out there. And tell me, oh fearless leader. Should we just ask any member of her covenant "hi guy, would you betray the bitch?". Cause that sure looks like you're proposing. We need to be more cautious than that. More devious. If you think it to be cowardice, then I suggest you go visit the Holy Land and all its dead, courageous heroes.

As per felling her in one blow, you misunderstood me slightly. It certainly applies to Wizard's War, but the blow may be political. Even it just using Certamen, this applies: If we learn she has a weakness in, say, herbam, our first certamen in which we use it must be a winner, or else, she'll just compensate her weakness. What I mean is that our first strike must succeed, and decisively

"Why such extremes? Always Success or failure. Perhaps we visit her covenant and speak to them. We learn how they feel and what they want and perhaps start letter exchanges that build to eventually betraying her and casting her down. We lose nothing by contacting Sodali in the order and seeking exchange and cooperation." Tatiana shakes her head. "As for it must be a winner, unless you kill her in wizard's war, any victory is a temporary one. She will recover and come back with another issue or declare wizard war herself. The only real way to stop her for good is kill her which is against spirit of the code and my own inclinaton, Tribunal defeat ordering her desist or else, or conviction of hermetic crime and march."

"We will have to make the time in the future to progress on this issue. We can perhaps charge her with hermetic crime in Rhine tribunal where we are located with message to queasitors and charge her with depriving us of magical power if she actually takes any action against us. We could try same in Novgorod but they might be less inclined to stop bullying."

We are of a different inclination, then.
When facing an ennemy, especially a more powerful one, I don't like to have him able to strike at my back once I turn it.

We may kill her, or not. But even if we don't, the harsher blow, the better.

Anyway, I'm all for visiting her covenant again, if only so you can understand better who we're up against.