It could be either and still amount to the same thing. Either way, it's not going to be precisely what's in the Hook description.
Scott
No opinions on magical travel, familiar advancement, or Viola's Virtues?
Scott
Not particularly! I feel strongly that a familiar should never be a character's bitch, but as far as mechanics go, I'm not too particular, since I think that potential abuses should be mitigated through roleplay.
Roleplay works best as a limit when there's an in-character reason for a character to limit herself, and guidelines help make sure everyone's on the same page.
Scott
Viola is a storyguide character. She is certainly more powerful than a normal character with her spontaneous spell powers but it's nice to have someone there for emergency situaions. From your Andorra playing style, I know she's not going to "steal the show". So I've got no worries whatever her stats may be in detail.
For that matter, I want to tone her down to ArM5 legal--not necessarily get rid of the sponting Virtues, but start her with 10 V's and F's, rather than 13. You're right though that she tends to hide in the lab, and avoid interaction with other human beings.
Scott
Money thoughts:
According to covenants (which btw names the spells differently), p. 122, our labs must be maintained. We'll need lots of money because these wonderful labs cost 6 times as much as normal labs in maintenance. On the other hand, we can save ourselves some money spent on grogs - Aetos birds can help.
Portia, you may want to master those rituals: Getting Mastery 1 reduces botch dice to 0 (from 9 - golden cord)
See the discussion above: Portia has a Moon spell that prevents wreckage, thereby reducing Upkeep, at the cost of +1 Warring.
Scott
I would be pretty cool with a flock of trained magical birds in lieu of standard grogs.
How would that work exactly, especially when we're around mundanes? I can see how they could be used in combat, but how could they physically protect a maga?
Scott
I think we need at least some standard grogs to do things like cook and clean for us.
Are we bringing grogs with us, or expecting in the most part to acquire them from a local population?
I think there would still be some need for grogs. Birds would be great for keeping watch, but they woudl be quite limited when time comes for reacting to threats, guard magi when going to mundane places, set up camps, and even fighting underlings while the magi take care of the big guns.
The covenant could have a cadre of experienced grogs, and then train additional ones from local population.
I think the dedicating Tribunal would want us to be up and running as soon as possible, and therefore make sure we started with a reasonably sufficient number of grogs, though that wouldn't preclude recruiting more.
Any more thoughts on starting location? Cliffs along the sea were mentioned. If we did that, probably the best location would be somewhere on the northeast shore of the Black Sea--that could arguably be in either Novgorod or Thebes territory. A lot of it I think is mountainous and sparsely settled, but the coastal towns tend to have a heavy Greek influence (plus an Italian influence after the 4th Crusade). Particularly notable on the east coast of the Sea is Colchis (modern-day Georgia), which was purportedly the location of the Golden Fleece that Jason and the Argonauts captured.
Scott
I'm happy with "bring your own grogs".
Do we want Mongol invasions? First contact with the Mongols and Georgia was apparently late 1220, and the country was then invaded and subjugated over the next 25 years. Leaving aside that issue, I'm happy with the north-east coast of the Black Sea as a location.
If we are going for the southeastern part of Novgorod, here's a bit of historical and social info.
A quick check on Google maps and Wikipedia shows me that the area is modern-day Ukraine. This corresponds with to the state of Kiev (or Kievan Rus), but it did not include the lands near the Black Sea, which was controlled by Turkish nomadic tribes, more specifically the Kipchaks.
The local language of the state of Kiev was Kievan Rus (one of the East Slavic languages). Ukrainian as a disctinct language appears later. To simplify, I would suggest that we call the local language Rus. When written, the alphabet used is Cyrillic.
The Kipchaks spoke a dialect of Turkish. They were Christians until the 12th and 13th century, when Islam began to take firm root. They were involved in conflicts with Kievan Rus, and sacked Kiev in 1203. They were finally crushed by the Mongols in 1241.
I'm way ahead of you. 
My first online saga, the one Viola is originally from, was set in southern Crimea--that little patch in the Crimean Mountains was actually at the time inhabited by Goths left behind after the other Goths moved westward. By the 13th century, the Rus had conducted one extensive raid on the north shore of the Black Sea (indeed, their leader at the time was inspired to convert to Christianity while on this raid), but didn't maintain control of the region, though there is some historical evidence that at least some Russian/Slavic/Rus-speaking population was left behind on the southern shore of Crimea. There's also a population of Alans on that southern shore.
The towns in the area are culturally Greek, but it's not uncommon to find many languages spoken in any of them. There are also a couple of predominantly Italian (at the time called "Latin") outposts. The plains (and just the plains--most of the nomadic tribes coming out of Central Asia never managed to overrun mountainous areas) are inhabited by Kipchaks or the related Cumans (both of which, collectively, the Rus referred to as "Polevtsy"). I know on the Crimean Plateau it's the Cumans, but I don't know what territory is Kipchak and what Cuman, though their territory goes quite a long way to the east (far past the Caspian Sea, before the Mongols arrive). The Caucasus--that is, the mountainous area to the east of the Black Sea, that is, between it and the Caspian, is another matter entirely. It's inhabited by many small groups.
The Mongols are going to be an issue no matter what if we're on the eastern fringes of the Order (unless we're far south, down in the Levant). That might make things interesting, though being in the mountains would help.
Scott
While the glassware is going to be cheap, there are a lot of other things one can add to a lab that cost out the yin-yang....
Therefore, we ought to be thinking about how much Wealth this covenant is going to have.
Scott
I vote for a place that is within a day's travel from the Crimean city of Chersonisos.
This provides us with plenty of history (Byzantine Empire until 1204 then Empire of Trebizond, then Mongols, then Genoese - if history progresses as it did in my world).
We'd have contact to civilization through that port (which was a trading outpost). We could become either shipwrights, or traders, or fishermen to provide us an income. We might own "shares" in the town's businesses - and become kind of a local cosa nostra - it is good for business to have us as a partner because our businesses succeed while others fail - magically.
Alternatively, we could create our own little port village in the area, trade, build ships, fish, or support piracy. I do like the idea of contact to Christianity. I find it hard to imagine/play life in the Cuman steppe - I know too little about these people.
Keep in mind that Chersonesus (modern-day Sevastopol) is literally within about 15 miles of the Crimean steppe.
Scott
That's different. We don't have to roleplay the locals since they are NPCs. We can play the western magi/companions who have no clue about the locals to begin with - which is easy for us. It requires you as the sg to flesh out the barbarians of course.