It is the hedge magic that I so dislike - I'm a Jerbiton at heart an it is FUGLY.
If 2 takes a long time, two sounds best; otherwise three
OK - I'll see if I can write up a number of "random French folk magic integrations" that he'll be studying for the next 7 years, before he settles on one of those two.
I just saw the 1221 economics. Seeing the surplus silver that the covenant has, Cornelius proposes that the covenant organize a feast for the villagers in Chilhac, spending up to the equivalent of 5 pounds. This should help with our relations with them -- I am assuming that they know we are there but don't really know what we are doing, but at least tolerate our presence.
He would further propose using some of the surplus to establish a stockpile of food to help the locals should there be a bad crop, long winter, or whatever other disaster in the future.
Ooh, that's quite the surplus, isn't it. Those seem like fine ideas.
St. Avery recommends hiring a teacher for the local parish, to set up a small parochial school - from what I recall, it's considered OK to teach folks (even children) for a few hours a day, even if they're peasants.
Why? Increasing the potential grog pool. And because St. Avery prefers that he be around people who aren't completely uneducated.
Alright, let's party, make a food depot (protected against rat and such magically).
I assume I can acquire the occitan book I talked about earlier ? No one commented.
There will be a surplus, most likely, but I haven't finished yet because I do not yet know how many labs there will be. They will consume quite a bit of silver. Food for Chilhac will not be costly, though. It costs surprisingly little to make the poor happy.
Cornelius has set up his lab in 1220 and used 1 season, so the cost for that should be 5.75 pounds.
For 1221, he's used it for 2 seasons already, so that will be 1.5 pound. Summer is likely to be spent on the Tribunal, but he hasn't made plans yet for Fall. I think it is unlikely that he will use it in the fall, but if he does that would add another 0.75 pound.
(All the costs are a bit higher than usual because underground labs have +1 to Upkeep.)
Also - St. Avery has 6 summae and 460 level's (100 of his own, plus 360 worth of scribed) spells to trade. However, only ~85 levels of those are book-standard. Note that I'm not planning on having him keep his own Clarified texts, as this is the one opportunity to trade spells at 3x; if needs be, he can clarify them again, later.
Anyway; it looks like he has the following to trade, in terms of spell levels:
Dragon's Eternal Oblivion (10)
Circular Ward vs. Dragons (25)
Breath of Mundane Silence (15)
Summon Airy Spirit (20)
Command Airy Spirit (15)
for Technique summae, I was thinking of getting similarly-low-level Muto, Intelligo, and Creo books - mainly because this is what St. Avery wants. I glanced at everyone else's sheets, and I think Muto was really the only one consistently not really touched by anyone. St. Avery has his original Rego book that he wrote, so that just leaves Perdo as not getting a book this Tribunal.
For Form Summae, I was looking at Terram, Herbam, and Animal - again, because that's what St. Avery is looking at doing integration research with.
Also - would people prefer he write L5/Q11, L6/Q10, or L7/Q9 (-1 quality for quick copying) - those higher-level books last longer, but are hardly better than practicing by yourself. If 2 books can't be studied over 1 season, then the most time-effective is the 6/10 - at 6/9, that puts you at 18 xp for 2 seasons (3 away from lvl 6); the 7/9 puts you at 24 xp for 3 seasons (4xp away from lvl 7); the 5/11 puts you at 10 xp for 1 season (5 xp from lvl 5).
Anyway - in regards to Lab texts: he was going to try to NOT trade for anything that he can whip up on his own in a season, so he's looking for the following:
- Lab text for building an enchanted flying rock sled (lvl 25 ReTe - sort-of discussed in TME, in the travel section) - good to have some form of transportation available.
- Lab Texts for the Porter's Glove and Stone Knife enchantments, from Covenants; they're really nice to have as a general cost-savings around the covenant.
- lvl 40 Maintain the Demanding Spell (reVi), for a Day duration - he needs to empower his InVi effect, and this is what does it. Note that for this one, he would probably try to convince the seller to trade his Sound of the Witch Bells, as it pairs quite nicely with it.
- lvl 20 ritual "Fill the Overflowing Grainery) (CrHe) - the standard "make a whole bunch of wheat, barley, nuts, and berries to feed the covenant and the surrounding countryside for a year.
- Summon the Stone Dome (CrTe(Im) 20?) - Summons a stone dome around the caster, that you can see out of but others can't see into; just a standard generalist spell that's really useful for countermagic, if you learn to fast-cast it.
- ReTe "repair this stone building" craft magic - again, useful to have to build an underground covanent.
Those were the only ones that I was specifically looking at.
Anyway - that leave 255 spell levels left for Emily to copy - does anyone else have clarified lab texts they want her to make 2 or 3 copies of?
Regarding book selection:
I initially thought about asking for Creo or Corpus summae, but I see we have a specialist already in those Arts.
Improving Creo and Corpus will be high on the list of Cornelius' priorities, since he will need a longevity ritual before the next Tribunal meeting. Or he will need to locate someone to invent a LR for him.
At the moment, Bastion is our CrCo specialist with scores of 12 in both Arts. Would he offer to make the rituals for the others? Cornelius hasn't mentioned his magical focus on aging, but he will approach Bastion to teach him about those Arts in the near future. He can offer some teaching on Intellego and Vim in exchange.
I think we should consider Ignem as well in the Forms. This would allow us to craft enchanted items to provide our labs with the Magical Heating and/or Magical Lighting virtues. The first would counterbalance the Health penalty associated with subterranean labs without further increasing Upkeep, amongst other things. We could also look for a lab text to craft an item that grants the Magical Heating virtue to a lab.
Yeah, Corpus, Ignem, and (maybe) Mentem were my other contenders; mainly I left them out because, as you mentioned, other folks already had them. However, your point about "everyone becomes a CrCo specialist after 35" is well-taken.
Note that I would favour L6Q10 books, rather than L5Q11, for meta-game reasons. That way, starting from a score of 0 you can get 2 solid seasons of study from them.
I'm fine with it.
Huh. Can we set up a Teaching lab? ie, one that's relatively Small, but has all the benefits for gaining the Teaching bonus in it? That being said, I'm interpreting "Teaching" as including "teaching from a book", as that's a legit way of teaching in the middle ages.
I think we may want to have an IC thread, as otherwise stuff like this may be lost.
Heh - just realized that both Cornelius and St. Avery are going walkabout in Fall 1220; are they co-ordinating their activities?
Also - do we have a map of known vis sources in the area that are claimed by other Covenents? Or is this something that we need to get from Tribunal?
I'm a bit iffy about starting with a integration spell from Gauntlet.
I wouldn't let it help with books.
The main reason I'm justifying it is that the character is designed from the ground up to pass an Integration roll, and that Bonisagus students actually are expected to do research like this (not this explicitly, but it fits the house.) As such, having a project like this for a Guantlet test is completely in-line with the house and the character. Also, the spell literally either doesn't work, or else requires that a character honestly give up all of their magic they've learned up until that point to become a monk.
Let me be clear again: the spell cannot be cast by St. Avery. He has not given up his sinful ways of hermetic magic, which means the spell doesn't work for him. So in that sense, it has no impact on the game except as a source of Insight for Holy magic...which he's not going to work on.
Which actually just means the character can start out with an obscure spell to trade for a more relevant lab text in Duremar, which he would still have to study for 2 seasons to get anything out of, like any other possible source of Insight. (Lab texts of Insight spells are themselves sources of Insight; you can't just read them and learn the spell - you have to go through the same process the original author did.) It does give him some House Acclaim, and lets me justify his reputation as "up-and-coming researcher". So... 18 points of House Acclaim is the main end-result.
I'm sure that they would talk to each other in order to avoid covering the same ground twice.
I wouldn't worry about sources belonging to other covenants. The closest ones are in the Normandy Tribunal, from what I can see, so they wouldn't be able to claim them in Provence. They might have harvested them anyway, but wouldn't have been able to register them. As for other covenants in Provence, the nearest covenant is the Coebobium, almost 100 miles away and clear outside of the Massif Central. So I really doubt that they would have a claim around here.
We'll simply register the sources as we find them. Should it happen that one of them is already claimed, then we can always negociate with the current owner. They might find it convenient to have us harvest it for them, in exchange for a small fee. Or they might cede it to us in exchange for a favour.
OK, I just looked at the map again - is the covenant like, 5 minutes away from the Tribunal boarder, or something? I can see where chillac is on the Google/Bing map, and key off of Montpilier and Clermont-Ferrand to see where the Tribunal boundary is (in Faith&Flame, pg. 8 ), but it looks to me like it's actually in Normandy.
Specifically, the entire area between Le Puy and Clermont is in the Normandy Tribunal, and that's where Chillac seems to be. I'm guessing it's on the road that connects those two cities, right where it touches the river that flows south out of Clermont.