Moving Right Along
Okay, the Banquet is over, and if there is anything you want to interject, toss it at the end of the previous thread. It is now a few weeks later, and everyone is about halfway through their seasonal activity. Lets start with roll call, and a Gift for each of you 
Marie Norris
You stood up well to Pietro’s little game. Before he leaves, he privately hands you his personal copy of The Analect’s of Tytalus. Not bound in human skin you weirdo! It is Flap Bound, but it has his personal gloss (House Tytalus Lore Summa; L4, Q10; Flap Bound, Well Scribed, Well Illustrated).
He also tells you this. Antonio did want to help you with your chair. You often have a servant do it, but you wanted a fellow covenant mate to do it, he could tell. He told Antonio before hand not to. He wanted to see what the others would do.
[color=red]The Flambeau respect power and self reliance. Don’t let them coddle you because it means that they feel superior to you, even if they think it is as a noble protector or helper. It was good that Octavius did it. To them, it is an expression of your dominance. In this case, it was the dominance of his gentlemanly obligation to you over what he perceived as my desire to see you prove self reliance. The Tremere are easy to manipulate. Always remember that they are your little brothers. As for me, I do realize the admiration and rumors that members of my old House have for me, how they say I am embedded in some deep complex game. But honestly, I am through with them. This whole split prima thing is the latest example of their insanity. Here, have this. (hands you the book) [color=red] Read my gloss and comments, see if it starts to make sense. There is some good in the old man’s philosophy, I admit that. I seek to take the best of that and teach it to my Flambeau followers. I even started my own Scool of Combat. If it makes you feel better, I have developed a Beloved Rival in House Flambeau. The lineage descended from a Flambeau magus that I defeated in Wizard’s War keep coming after me. So, in a way, it never stops. And the same goes for you. Your worthiness, your status, your power. They will be constantly challenged.
And after he says good bye and Merry Christmas/Happy Saturnalia/Festive Yule/ Happy Hanukkah/Etceteras; he leaves via Leap of Homecoming. He has a magical trunk full of his stuff that leaps ahead of him by command.
Marcellus
You spend most of your time resting and relaxing, spending time with your family. You also have three Griffon Eggs to deal with. The magus that hired you in the first place sends his agent to pick up his egg, bringing with him your agreed upon payment. Before he leaves, Pietro expresses interest in one, and will pay well for it (slightly more that the original magus paid you). What do you choose to do?
Octavius
Antonio talks to you privately about Pietro’s chair game. He says well done, for Pietro was indeed playing a game, trying to see which magi are followers and which are leaders. [color=red]That’s one thing that annoys me about that guy. He is always up to something subtle and indirect. Look, while I am gone I am leaving Inigo in charge. But I want you to look after him. Marcellus is recovering from his injuries (and he has been acting weird lately), so let him rest.
In a way, this is kind of amazing. Only three people in your life have seen you as the responsible leader type of figure you want people to see you as. The first was Karandos and the second was Terrace. Now Antonio has complimented you and given you this responsibility. And it is not just a hollow second-in-charge responsibility. He has given you the key to the Vault of Valdarius just in case of emergency, and if you need anything else, talk to our covenant steward.
And he has further instructions for you. He knows of your field experience with Karandos, and he respects that. Your spell selection is evidence of a strategic and logistic mind. But he thinks you lack offensive power. He wants you to improve on that, either by taking some martial training from one of the custos or spell-training from one of the other magi. He will have Alexandro or Carmen train you (martial or spells, as you choose).
Yes, you are feeling pretty good right now. But in you dreams you see fire, and they are screaming.
Viola
That whole banquet situation was barely tolerable. You wonder if it was worth coming here. But a few weeks later, back at the regio in the tree, your mischievous faerie friend Ian MacNaught has thrown a little surprise party for you with faerie wine (from your casks), and has invited a bunch of small little faerie folk. I will let you research and decide what the nature of the local tiny fae are. But in any case, Ian has them all laughing with his comedy routine imitating and mocking each of the magi of the covenant, taking the shape of each one to play the part, wearing a strange stupid hat in each case. And Constantine the butterfly is there too. Oh, what a happy day in happy tree land 
.
But wait! Something is amiss! A frail little faerie crone has come knocking at your door, asking to be admitted to the party. She is being escorted by Maria the Wise Woman (Fixer’s grog character), because she is so ancient that she cannot walk by herself (an ancient faerie!). They have some wisdom they would like to share.
(We have that weird wiki spell projecting a sub aegis around your tree, so no one can come in without permission, and where Ian got the tokens for these little people from, well, it is best not to ask too many questions)
Decimus
Antonio tells you he will discuss the membership issue in council at the Spring Equinox meeting. He likes you. He remembers you from your childhood when your mistress discovered your gift and took you to Rome. He was much younger then, perhaps around the age you are now. And he is a very likable guy to you, you guys have a good vibe going. He is agreeable to the idea of hosting the Cult of Mercury here, and even to granting you full membership eventually. But you cannot have Rodrigo’s lab. He’ll be back one day. You’ll see.
But in the mean time, your responsibility is organizing the Mercere Quarter of the covenant. Things are slightly in disarray. At your disposal you have a small staff of grogs (a steward, a craftsman, two clerks (scribe/notary), two custos, three servants, and a lackey). Lejla is permanently based here as well, and is charged with assisting you in your duties.
The tasks at hand includes the following…
- House Mercere maintains two Labs here, one for the use of Mercere magi to study and invent, and the other purely for the purpose of vis extraction. You occupy the one lab, and the vis lab has fallen into disuse. Your job is to organize this, perhaps have the vis lab refined and made into the practice lab, while you keep this one? Your call.
- The Pawnbrokers of Mercere maintain a Vis Vault here as well. No trades are made here. The individual broker simply makes exchanges here or puts in a voucher. The accounting and inventory has gotten sloppy.
- In addition to vis, Hose Mercere has stashed a large amount of mundane material wealth in the vault as well.
- Members of House Mercere come and use the facilities here all the time. Mostly Redcaps (Mundane Mercere), but the occasional magus as well. They come to relax &/or engage in official House transactions. Usually it is only one or two, sometimes there is no one visiting. But sometimes the covenant gets overwhelmed by multiple Mercere visitors who drop in unannounced. Sometimes it gets a little unexpectedly overcrowded, and although Andorra is able to provide for them all, House Mercere gets the bill.
- The reason your lab was built off site was that it was built by a crazed former member obsessed with experimentation. When Twilight took him, Rodrigo had it converted into a Lab Text lab for the purpose of visiting Mercere to study the spells and rituals of the Cult of Mercury.
Dimir Tarr
Okay, it is your duty to make sure everyone has at least one cool magic item. You have one I gave you, you made the ring for Inigo, so I am looking for more stuff like that. As I have mentioned before, some of this could be generic junk left over from previous generations. If they need a longsword opened for enchantment and invested with a single spell from the books, let them have it. If they want a vest customed designed for them that adds aurmor, bboosts soak, and changes size when he does, that is a custom item wou will have to make; and you may tell him to make it himself 
. Everyone gets a trinket, like you were Q from James Bond.
Oh, I think you wanted me to remind you that you wanted to talk to someone, but I forget who.
Dragan
Did Dragan make the deadline? I don’t know. As I write this, I am at home sick and disconnected from the inter-webs. I haven’t peaked at the Forums since Thursday. But I am not going to eat your character or make him for you unless you request me to. If you are not posted, then your character is otherwise occupied and not here until he is posted. But he was here briefly. Membership offer is still open. Eventual target number is twelve.
Buttercup & Siccus Same goes for Buttercup and Siccus, though I am looking into replacing them.
Vortigern Sorry, I haven’t memorized your character’s name yet . But anyway, I hope people have helped you figure out your character. This is where I want to start with you.
You wake up. The sun stares down at you. It is midday and you were fast asleep outside lying on your back in a grassy plain in a lush mountain valley. You are not sure where you are, but you vaguely remember where you were. He had you trapped in that cave of ghosts as part of your initiation, but things went wrong. He held you in there far longer that was needed, even after you had acquired your knowledge. Then the crystal container shattered, the spirits escaped. You escaped from the never ending labyrinth, and you remember fire everywhere you went. That thing was lashing out in anger everywhere, but you managed to get away. You wandered lost and confused in circled for who knows how long, then you collapsed. Now that you are awake, you are nowhere near where you where, and you don’t quite remember how you got there to begin with. Furthermore, you don’t know where you are now. Checking your inventory, you had everything you came in with. Curious.
Carmen - Is stewing about the latest turn of events. On the one hand, she is filling an official position for the Antares, which is good for her resume . On the other hand, she is stuck at her home covenant as a non-member, which blows. Before departing, her father asks her to have her or her brother train Octavius for a season.
Lejla I want to drop a few more magic items on you. The Robes and the Ring on your sheet, those are yours to keep. These additional items are to help you fulfill your duties.
-Mercere’s Scale
InVi18 Scales of the Magical Weight (Base 4, +1M Touch, +10L Unlimited Use, +3L Environmental Trigger (placing vis on the scale))
InVi18 Sense the Nature of Vis (Base 4, +1M Touch, +10L Unlimited Use, +3L Environmental Trigger (placing vis on the scale))
ReVi28 Transfer the essence of vis (Base 10 move vis from one object to another, +1M Touch, +10L Unlimited Use, +3L Restricted Use (House Mercere))
-Boots of Jumping and Leaping
InMe30 Mental Link
ReCo28 Gift of Frog’s Legs (Base 10, +1M Touch, +3L Mental Link, +10 Unlimited Use
ReCo28 Traveler’s Jump (5 paces) (Base 10, +1M Touch, +3L Mental Link, +10L Unlimited Use)
ReCo29 Traveler’s Leap (50 paces) (Base 15, +1M Touch, +3L Mental Link, +6L fifty uses a day)
The first item pertains specifically to the duties House Mercere has assigned you and Decimus to take care of. The second item belonged to Rodrigo. They were his Redcap Boots. They were left in the Larder of the Mercere Quarter with a pamphlet explaining how to use them. You also read some notes he left behind, a sort of “manifestoâ€. His original vision for the Mercere Quarter was mainly for the use of mundane Redcaps. The vis lab was an old lab he had converted over for the benefit of magi working with Pawnbrokers. The training lab Decimus occupies was originally built with the purpose of crafting items from texts for the benefit of Redcaps.
Xalbador – Antonio is leaving you in charge. He gives you the key to the Furnace Room of the Eternal Flame. This is important. This flame can never go out. There are a lot of enchantments and rituals of the castle that are ties to this flame; so many so that Antonio has no idea (and in truth, these claims are never tested).
He brings you in, the flame is burning strong and bright. [color=red]Check on it once in a while. It pretty much runs by itself. It has minor prophetic capabilities. It flickers and changes color as a portend effect. Don’t star into it too long. It gets freaky when you do. Most importantly though, the Brand. (Antonio lifts up his shirt to show you his brand). [color=red]Anything burned or branded by the flame has a permanent Arcane Connection between them and the Flame. We don’t do it that way anymore. We give Knights of Seneca brands on wooden tokens nowadays, like the one you received. Anyways, the reason I bring it up is because I will check on the flame once a day with the spell InIg5 Compass of the Vigilant Flame. Not only does it tell me the direction, I have the spell mastered in such a way that I can sense the state of the flame. There is a box of powder over there (points over in the corner). [color=red] I forget what is. Fuego gave it to me, its one of his alchemy concoctions. If there is an emergency, toss some of that powder into the flame. It has an all day effect, I’ll catch it. I usually check on the Flame when I am doing my Parma. Remember, it can never go out. That is so important, there is no way I can emphasize it enough.
After that, he hands you a key to the Vault of Valdarius. That’s where we keep emergency vis stocks, doomsday devices, the true cross, and stuff like that. He tells you to just let the covenfolk run the covenant. That’s what they are here for. These aren’t the ignorant peasants of Mistridge. These are the elite of Andorra. Rely upon the Chamberlain, the Steward, and the Captain. (NOTE: I made Alexandro for our Captain. Who wants to make our Steward and Chamberlain? These are good and juicy roles for a companion )
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