I'd kind of like to know what resources we start with as well.
Whoever is dumping us in a seemingly abandoned covenant would surely provide a kickstart/loan.
Has that avoirdupois-challenged Mercere merchant ripped us off.
I have always found it irksome , that after 15 years of apprenticeship , you have stuff all.
Reasonable , bah! humbug!.
Magi cant be either Wealthy or Poor.
So we should have what the average member of our social class would have.
House variations being noted , e.g. Tremere.
Yes , i understand it isnt an exercise in cost accounting ,
but even something like , you get 2 mythic pounds of silver , or whatever.
(just my early gaming days and the nostalgia for making detailed equipment lists as required by many GMs)
Well, in a standard "design your covenant as part of char gen" campaign, your equipment list gets determined by covenant design, with a build point system that trades power for leverage. Lots of resources, then your magi have a lot of higher ups to deal with. Few resources, more independence. And actually, if you think about it, a freshly promoted journeyman in any field in the middle ages would have squat to his name, except for the social connections he made while apprenticed, and whatever goodwill his master had to offer.
I'm not nearly as interested in "how many mythic silver pieces we have" so much as "what are the tools for wealth acquisition that we have to work with?" This sort of pocket-change accounting will become moot once we have access to vis sources and libraries, especially with two craft-magi and a researcher. The real question then, I think, will become how much time we spend looking into Cuniculus and his cronies, vs time spent forging our own paths.
Totally agree , it wasnt specifically that a i needed a silver piece amount , but a resource base from which to start.
Not having ever been a long-term player for Ars Magica , and when i was , we didnt get to do Covenant design , i forget such fun aspects.
Right. Remember, I'm in the same boat. The sum of my Ars Magica experience might best be described as "frequently fantasized about playing." I can only tell you how I want it to work.
The way I've always played before, so this game may be different, but equipment didn't really matter you could start off with any mundane items you wanted. The only time magi got involved in mundane things were when the companions couldn't handle it or the covenant as a whole needed something, i.e Grogs need armour...can we make it or do we have to go and buy...do we need a blacksmith now...oh right, lets send companion X out to get one.
However I the fact that we've not been asked about any of this means I'm not so certain we'll be in a covenant for quite a while.
Well , the villagers do have to try and purify us with fire first.
There may be no reason to accumulate too much stuff now because we cant take it with us.
In case these questions got lost in the stream of posts from yesterday, ~nudge~
JM, it is also not clear to me if you want us to discover some/all of these answers through RP, or if you feel like they're irrelevant to your preferred play style.
This seems to partially answer 7 and 9, but I'm not 100% certain if it does.
Lots of stuff to write. I'm struggling to keep up. Thank you for your patience. Once we are inside the covenant, my workload is going to decrease.
He says he has to urgently be at a castle, but if you give him the name of the village, he'll promise to visit and here your tales.
Not yet, you'll know whom you need once you know more about Phoenix.
Question not understood. Please rephrase.
Industry has suffered from the Albigensian crusade. Little works. Mills means flour mostly.
There are many displaced people. The Cathars would probably like a safe-haven. Again, wait till Phoenix exploration is over. It's winter - not a good time for building new houses.
Nobody knows details. It is widely assumed that travel magic provided the covenant with all it needed, including a source of income (imagine you can beam stuff around at will in the Middle Ages).
The village Agraves used to do mundane tasks. There seems to be no large force of grogs. The people of Agraves are alive. As for the others, none has been seen in years.
ooc: at Narbonne, you meet so you can arrive together. Jonah may or may not prove a contact later.
Most people of Agraves know that there is a covenant in the hut. They seem not to have been inside. You haven't asked much about them ic.
Not yet. You can but you do not know what you need and what you have got inside.
Thanks for finding the time, JM. I know that a lot of this stuff will become either self-evident or obsolete once inside the covenant, but even having incorrect answers will help me play Viscaria better.
1 & 2 : Check, and thanks.
So, it's 1222 AD, which means books are made from writing material, animal vellum and wood boards, and adhesives. How readily available are these supplies? Is the addition of 6 magi to the pool of literati going to make a noticable impression on that industry? This won't be super-important until we've seen the convenant library, and measured our task of duplicating it, but it is something we would have taken note of while procuring our supplies.
3.2) I really shouldn't have included glass in the same question, since now that I expand it, I realize how different the questions are. Obviously, there's little glass industry outside of Venice and The East in 1220 AD. Viscaria would instead be interested in the quality of supplies available locally to make glass out of.
Related to this are a few mechanical questions. If she's going to have to magic her supplies into existence, does she need to create formulaic ritual spells to do that with, or can she spont them, so long as she pays the vis (or, in Viscaria's case, the fatigue-as-vis from Imbued With Terram Spirit)?
3.3) Oh, and the most basic question: what physical stat does Craft:Glass go with? If there isn't a way for her to work with one of her mental stats, I may have screwed my pooch on the whole craft thing.
I can absolutely hold off on exploring this further, but thank you for giving me a sketch to consider.
True, but we've also fast-forwarded through most of the chances I would have had to ask about them ICly. Again, this answer provides me with enough detail to wait for further info. In particular, I had a thoroughly different impression of Jonah's relationship to the covenant.
