If you have an apprentice in the lab exposure experience for yourself can be spent in leadership.
Gabriel cannot train leadership, it is a faerie pretense, not a true ability. He can train in single weapon, brawl, and bow...
Bummer. I saw that he had Faerie Trainer and got my hopes up.
If that was the case, then how would he have had access to Magic Theory before becoming a familiar? The same also applies to Finesse and Order of Hermes Lore...
I see that he has 1165 xp (plus Otter Speak, which I didn't count). Even accounting for the Improved Abilities quality (which only gives 50 xp), that would put him into the Winter season -- the "eldest of beings, ancient creatures with countless years of experience" and "considered extremely wise and powerful".
As written he was a pet of Neptune, and has served as a familiar before. Keep in mind this character is an NPC, even as a familiar, and his primary allegiance will be to Neptune, not the mage he is bonded to, and as such can be as much or more a story element than an asset. The familiar might decide not to assist in the lab if the magus is not living up to his expectations of behavior... if you have read the Dresden files think Bob but with more free will.
He took the virtue Arcane Lore.
You're right that I goofed and his languages are off. He should have Classical Greek 4 and Romaic Greek 5, which are free from being a familiar (along with Latin 4). The other numbers were incorrect, which was totally my fault.
Given that correction, I have him pegged in at 720 points (subtracting 50 for Educated, 50 for Arcane Lore, and 50 for one instance of Improved Abilities). That's right for an Autumn creature, which is what I understood he should be as a Magical Animal Companion. If that's not correct, I can easily drop him down to Summer.
Do we want to detail the exact nature and timing of the covenant vis source? Since my magus is now the tamias, I think knowing when and how much raw vis needs to be harvested would be good. We may have to dispatch one or more magus to go and harvest our sources.
I like the idea of the Vim vis being in a crystal cave right in a strong point of the local aura. But that's just one idea.
The obvious would be:
Aquum: 3 vis in spring and autumn, 4 vis in summer
Rego: 3 vis in spring, 2 in summer
Vim: depends on source, my suggestion would be that the sawdust from Alexander's work (him being touched by magic etc.) manifests vim vis every autumn when the trees the wood comes from would start going dormant. A crystal cave could align with winter easily.
I'd rather not have a vis soirce that depends on a characyer being there, even if it is a storygude character.
Otherwise I'm fine with the Aquam and Rego. What from would they be in and how are they harvested?
I'd say aqquum would be water taken from specific spots at the spring which has a particularly brilliant blue hue.
Rego is a purple hued moss that grows where the water meets the rock of the dam.
Another idea for Vim, perhaps the ancient Mercurian ruins were built as a vis-collector, so vis accumulates in certain areas of the carvings.
If the Aquam vis is in Charmion's spring, she could harvest it and present it to the covenant as part of her role as patron. (She doesn't think of it as doing work for the covenant, she thinks of it as benevolently granting the covenant a gift.) If she doesn't collect it for some reason, it still appears and someone else can harvest it.
I like the idea of Rego being moss where the water meets the dam.
Mercurian etchings I would put at May 15th, the feast day of Mercury.
As far as I've been able to track down, we ended up with three specialists: scribe, illuminator and bookbinder. Each with a score of 5 in the relevant Profession skille. (We should probably add those to the covenant description topic.)
Do we have plans to train them in Magic Theory so that they can make copies of Hermetic texts for the covenant?
We'll have a variety of ways to train them, so that it doesn't take a magus' time. There's my companion Christiphoros, one of the new teachers at the school (Samuel) who is also a Failed Apprentice, and finally there is Anastasia.
In each case, we would need to have the magi negociate (or assign for Anastasia) for one of them to perform the task.
We had that as probable, we have 284 points in books, the remaining 160 pts are technically undefined, we have had a lot of conversation on that though, we had what appears to be a general consensus of 125 points in vis income (10 vim, 10 aquam, 5 rego) unless someone wants to dispute that, I know we had scribe, bookbinder and illuminator as next on the list, getting each of those at level 6 would be another 18 points, which would leave us with 17 points remaining...
I did indicate earlier that a paid for scribe would already have magic theory at a high enough level (1) to be able to copy books.
Last list of covenant build points, excluding the library, was something like that:
So that would be 151 build points, leaving only 9 unallocated points.
If we add a parchment maker, that would be 6 more points. We could simply say that the remaining 3 points are silver and/or vis stocks to round things up.
That looks good to me. Spend the 3 points on silver to get around the issue of money we spent on books for the school.