For the Arts covered in the library, I would propose (in the library above):
Art #1 summa L16 Q15 (31 points) --> Creo
Art #2 summa L16 Q15 (31 points) --> Intellego
Art #3 summa L13 Q18 (31 points) --> Aquam
Art #4 summa L13 Q18 (31 points) --> Animal
Art #5 summa L12 Q14 (26 points) --> Vim
Art #6 summa L10 Q15 (25 points) --> Corpus
Art #7 summa L8 Q21 (29 points) --> Imaginem
That's a soft suggestion, however. I picked the topics semi-randomly as stuff that might be useful. Since I'm sure we will try to expand the library aggressively right away, I'm sure any subject that individual magi are interested in will quickly be covered.
Also, with 2 scribes, 2 illuminators and 1 book binder dedicated to the covenant's use (that's aside from the scriptorium income source), we will quickly be able to make copies of our books for trade. That is, as soon as our scribes and illuminators have been trained in Magic Theory.
I am not counting Constantine, but am counting Aureliano of Mercere, who is technically a magus and entitled to a sanctum with lab even if they can't do anything with it (besides optimize it for copying texts or teaching or some such)
If you spend build points on scribes etc. I would assume they are trained at level 1 magic theory. If we recruit them from the scriptorium we will need to train them.
Even quicker to begin making copies of our summae to expand the library.
Our skilled scribes can copy 12 levels of summa per season, so each of them can crank out 3 copies of a L16 summa each year if they do nothing else. (Questions, do they work 4 seasons a year or are they rather abstracted as 2 seasons like most mundanes are? I would suggest that 2 seasons a year makes more sense.)
We may need one of the magi to act as diplomat to trade copies of additional summae to complete our library. I'm sure we'll be able to get a few tractatus from magi interested in studying our exceptional book. We can certainly publicize that while visiting other covenant when arranging trades for other books.
So long as it's dealing with other magi, Orion can do it. If it's dealing with mundane people for mundane texts, we should let our Gentle-gifted magus do that.
I had assumed that our books would be subject to the usual restrictions against making copies for others (I forget the terms the book uses for copyright, since copyright has not been invented yet.)
True enough, they would probably be covered by Cow and Calf Oath. TSE makes no mention of it, but we can probably assume that it does.
The prices mentioned in that paragraph are the Level in pawns for a vain or sound summa, with tractatus usually going for 2 pawns.
Of course, mundane books do not have that problem, so we could start by having our scribes making copies of summae in Artes Liberales, Philosophiae, etc.
It depends on whether the summae were covered by the Cow and Calf Oath. From what I've seen, lower level summae are often not covered by the oath. Remember, imposing the C&C oath reduces their value. That's the good news. The bad news is that without the C&C oath, those summae are more plentiful and therefore worth less in trade.
But yea, we might be forced to write a few ourselves.
BTW, since I have a middling Com with no Good Teacher bonus, what other ways do we have access to in order to up the quality of a book?
At a minimum, lab texts for spells we know should be free from Cow and Calf, once we take the time to write them down legibly for our scribes to make copies.
As for how prevalent Cow and Calf is in Thebes, I think we'll have to let silveroak tell us what kind of environment we will face. It might not be worth it to have 2 scribes and 2 illuminators as specialists if we cannot keep them occupied.
Here's a few mundane books which should be fairly easy to obtain and make copies of. Some of them may need to be translated from Latin (marked by a ):
Artes Liberales
[list]Ars grammatica - Ars minor (L4Q15 summa) by Donatus
[]*Ars grammatica - Ars major (tractatus Q12) by Donatus
*De inventionae (3 tractatus Q14) by Cicero
Categories (tractatus Q12) by Aristotle
On Interpretation (tractatus Q12) by Aristotle
Prior Analytics (tractatus Q12) by Aristotle
Posterior Analytics (tractatus Q12) by Aristotle
On Sophistical Refutations (tractatus Q12) by Aristotle
Medicine
Herbal (L5Q14 summa) by Crateaus
Mythic Herbalism
Herbal (L10Q9 summa) by Crateaus
Philosophiae
Nicomachean Ethics (L6Q12 summa) by Aristotle
Physics (L6Q12 summa) by Aristotle
Metaphysics (2 tractatus Q12) by Aristotle
On the soul (tractatus Q12) by Aristotle
Profession: Apothecary
Herbal (L10Q9 summa) by Crateaus
Theology
Periphyseon (L4Q8 summa) by John Scotius Eriugena
[/*:m][/list:u]
I don't have Art and Academe, so I don't know how books covering multiple Abilities (such as Herbal) are copied.
Also, if we can get our hands on some of the tractatus scribe by Heron (as in Mechanica of Heron), there might be some demand for that. The originals are in Greek.
I looked through Covenants and answered my own question. You get a +1 in Quality each for a summa from having a skilled scribe, a skilled binder, and a skilled illuminator. Unfortunately, you only start with Com + 3 instead of Com + 6. So to get Com + 6 as a base Quality, we'd need the skilled scribe, binder, and illuminator. That might be reason enough to keep them on the payroll. Because I don't think anyone's going to pay a thing for a Quality 3 summa. Quality 6 is low enough (Quality 7 with a resonance).
Do we have any high-Com, Good Teachers in the covenant?
Cow and Calf is very uncommon in Thebes, but because Thebes is linguistically insular (writing in Classic Greek rather than Latin) books are less common, so the price effects balance out. Latin books are much more likely to be covered by cow and calf, but enforcement in Thebes would be spotty- essentially there is a sect of Tytalus magi who declare wizard wars on violators, and if it was translated into Classic Greek (which is not easy) they are even less likely to pursue the issue since it does not affect the market outside of Thebes.
Within Thebes you have the potential to earn a shard if the original author brings a case for not providing attribution or acknowledging them as the original author. Or they could declare wizard war, though of course you could petition a decree of defamation on those grounds as well...
as for the use of the skilled scribe, illustrator, and binder, they are technically only required to have a skill in magic theory (and then only the scribe) when they are copying the book, not when being used to produce an initial book. Also if their workshop total (dex+abillity+workshop bonuses) is over 12 they can give additional bonuses to the quality of the final product. This however would take the kind of investure of development of skill and workshop that would require characters (even grogs) be dedicated to the project rather than simply purchased specialists. If you do not purchase the specialists they will be assumed to be available as part of the costs for writing described in covenants.
Yes, we need one of each to benefit from the full quality of books, but if we don't have a high volume of copying/scribing/illuminating, do we need 2 scribes and 2 illuminators?
Well Omphalos isnt a shabby scribe either 2 (lab texts) though to be entirely fair his better versed in latin because while the thebes tribunal prefers classic greek, the order by and large still uses as its prima lingua. But yea we have a bunch of good teachers in the covvie, though my primary subjects will end up being apprentices.
silveroak suggested spending more points on the library. So, as an intellectual exercise, I tried to pare down the other stuff as best I could., Here's what I came up with:
Library ([strike]274[/strike] 312 points)
[list]
Terram summa L23 Q12 (free from the Exceptional Book boon, on the Art that got the most votes)
[*] Rest TBD
Vis Sources ([strike]125[/strike] 100 points)
10 pawns/year in Vim (50 points) -- exact source to be determined
[strike]10[/strike] 5 pawns/year in Aquam ([strike]50[/strike] 25 points) -- from the spring
5 pawns/year in Rego (25 points) -- from the dam of the aqueduct
[hr][/hr]
I'm not sure that we can squeeze any more out without becoming: (a) vis poor, or (b) unable to maintain the book copying business without raiding our income source.
This has us spending about 70% of our starting points on books. FYI, the unmodified build plan spends about 61% of starting points on books.
I think the real question is what we want to spend our time doing once the covenant is up and running:
I was / would expect us to be working on the first two things you list. I am sure that there will be books we want that we don't have. And getting more vis sources clearly is important.
We have a PC grog ink maker, and do not need to spend points on that. Also there would be no benefit in the first year at least to having the parchment maker above ability 5.
Right now we have 9 "writers" In the covenant (7 magi, an apprentice and a schoolmaster), which puts the maximum benefit at 4.5 lbs of silver. If we add a scribe (likely) that brings maximum benefits to 5 lbs, adding another writer brings max benefit to 5.5 and therefor there would at that time be a benefit to having a parchment maker with an ability of 6. If recruiting new covenfolk is going to be part of our objectives than it certainly would be worth the one point, otherwise it would not be of benefit until someone introduces another character with literary capabilities and does not remove an existing one.
