If Viola assisted in the march of a magus then its reasonable that she and her covenmate took some spoils. Just happens that this spoil was an apprentice in training. There is probably leeway for a person who is well into tehir apprenticeship being treated in a different manner to a child who has not really started the real magical teachings. Or Viola was awarded a shap for doing it, but a token for assisting in the march?
I'd agree that taking a partially trained apprentice shouldn't need to go through the standard apprentice presentation - apart from anything else, it would potentially mean a severe disruption in the middle of someone's training.
I'd be inclined to assume any tokens and shards she's got pre-game have been spent/neutralised. Whilst it's not explicitly forbidden (that I can see), I'm not convinced that she could have remained a member of the tribunal whilst living in Iberia, although I suppose it depends a bit whether she'd registered a change of address with the Redcaps (and therefore whether people actually know she hasn't been living in the tribunal). Presumably she's been getting letters?
Presumably. My main concern is that, at her age, it's really time for her to take another apprentice--and if the tribunal is going to be this year, waiting until the next one means pushing that back 7 years. Putting a couple of tokens in her pocket now lets her bid on an apprentice (though we could also get a token each for running the sponsored covenant).
Scott
I suspect any tokens we got for running the covenant would be too late for Viola's purpose - you have to give tokens to the apprentice before the tribunal starts.
Viola might manage to get an apprentice nobody else wants - but of course, there's likely a reason no-one else wants them. About the best Viola can hope for is "nasty strain of faerie blood" (how does she feel about a Judged Unfairly Strong Goblin Blooded child?)
Well, that's a good reason to say she has a token or two left over from earlier.
Anyway, this is part of the reason I don't like the apprentice system. We're in a situation where it's preventing my character from doing the "normal" thing a maga at her stage of life would do in an ArM compaign.
Maybe she can discover the Kitten, and present her as an apprentice. I can't imagine that many magi would want to deal with that mess. But trying to teach Faerie Magic to a creature of the Magic Realm might end badly.
Scott
Whilst I can appreciate that the Theban apprentice approach causes various problems for Viola, those seem like they're IC problems? I'm reluctant to just handwave them away (and you'd have to think about who gave her the tokens for stopping magi interfering with the siege of Constantinople, given a lot of magi in the tribunal were horrorstruck by its fall).
I don't think creatures with Magic Might can take faerie aligned virtues at all, so bringing the kitten into House Merinta is probably impossible.
Whoops, I think I missed this post: the March took place years previous to Viola's claiming the apprentice. He had been become an itinerant priest in the meantime. (Yes, Viola's sole filius is a Christian priest. I'm sure Gregorius finds that fascinating.)
Scott
Yes, they're IC problems--everything we talk about here is an IC problem. OOC, I'm not interested in playing with a setup for the Theban Tribunal that causes me an IC headache without returning any particular measure of enjoyment in exchange. I don't find the canonical Theban Tribunal especially realistic, and it doesn't seem, on its face, like it would be any more fun to play in than any other tribunal (and I picked the tribunal for the saga before I got my hands on Sundered Eagle, and possibly before it was published). I'm happy to compromise and play as close to the canon as we can, but that's to make you guys happy, not because I personally think it's a great idea.
What I'd like is to give my character--IC--the obvious "out" that presents itself for this situation, and say she had a couple of tokens from earlier in her career. Given that she's spent the vast majority of her Hermetic life in Thebes, I don't think that would be unreasonable from either an IC or a game-balance perspective. And it's not even remotely a handwave: she's a middle-aged maga who would have been planning on having to deal with this problem. The Constantinople incident could be a source of tokens, but she might also have performed some other service, and, if it's important, I can figure out the details of that. (Actually, now that I think of it, since I was SGing that story, she wasn't involved--when the magi who were involved fled to Crimea, she was already there.)
Scott
No problem IMO with letting the backstory handwave; tis a game. Let’s play. 
you’ve both done more than enough SG work to be granted huge hand waves and it has no real negative effect on the setting or other characters.
Okay - let's say she has a couple of tokens, then.
OK, thanks. Sorry to be petulant about it, but I've been playing ArM for about 20 years now, and I have yet to get to play an apprentice story (even with Viola's first filius, the saga fell apart right after she claimed him, so the whole story is what I wrote in her advancement log). I really didn't want to wait another few years until we get to the next tribunal.
BTW, in my post above, that should have been "everything we talk about HERE", not "her"--I've corrected it.
Scott
Updating the covenant is hardly a stretch goal.
Looking at the covenant thread, it looks like I've updated everything through Spring, 1228. However, I think Gregorius and Viola have taken vis income through the end of 1229 in their advancement logs. Does that sound right to you? Why don't you go ahead and let me know what vis Gregorius is going to be taking during the fast-forward period?
Scott
OK, I've provisionally updated covenant finances through the end of 1229. However, I'll likely have to revise some lab expenses, and we appear to be taking on at least a couple companion-level characters--so everything is provisional until that's squared away.
Scott
Plan is:
Vis Grant 1228: 1 pawn Rego, 1 pawn Imaginem
Vis Grant 1229: 1 pawn Rego, 1 pawn Animal
(Vis Trade with someone from outside the covenant: Swap 2 pawns Imaginem, 1 pawn Animal for 2 pawns Mentem)
Before I go dig it up the post(s) in question, was that the only trade we had planned?
Scott
The current covenant vis income is 15 pawns, and the member magi share half of the total, which means he's entitled to 4 pawns/year. I know we had some sort of discussion about this earlier--am I missing something? We haven't made Fray a member yet, have we?
Scott
Fray isn’t eligible until Autumn of 1230, as he arrived in autumn 1227, and the charter states that a guest Sancta needs to be setup for 3 years and then the current members vote.
Been playing this game since 2012.
No - Fray should be becoming a member in the next set of stories, but isn't one over the advancement period. However, Tasia is still.
In addition, the aegis is taking up 8 pawns / year on its own currently, so I think we were rounding down rather than up when working out how much vis there was available to be distributed. So we're dividing 6 by 3 to get two pawns each, but softening it by making one of the pawns a Technique.
Basically, membership of the covenant isn't that profitable at this point - part of the reason Gregorius was hoping there'd be info on more vis sources in the notes from the previous covenant.
I think we can declare Tasia's membership suspended at this point--though that probably requires a Council decision. Still, adding Fray is going to get us back to the same problem again.
I think that, at the very least, I can find a way to quickly add the remaining two pawns of vis sources specified in covenant creation.
Scott
I think we can declare Tasia's membership suspended at this point--though that probably requires a Council decision. Still, adding Fray is going to get us back to the same problem again.
I think that, at the very least, I can find a way to quickly add the remaining two pawns of vis sources specified in covenant creation.
Also, didn't we talk at one point about having someone distill Vim vis for the Aegis? Not that that's an extraordinarily productive use of time under the ArM5 rules.
Scott