That's not really a big deal. If you are creating non-ritual sheep at D:Ring (or, smarter: D:Conc boosted to D:Ring with the always-useful D:Ring variant of Maintain the Demanding Spell), you probably want to create them one at a time with T:Ind rather than with T:Group. Unless you are aiming for a truly gigantic herd, it won't take a magus more than a day.
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Again, once the sheep has left the ring, the magic is gone. The sheep is the Target, and if it leaves the Ring, the Ring is considered broken, for that sheep.
Sure. For that single sheep. If you have a herd, it's not a big deal if one steps out of the Ring. If anything, the sight of it dropping dead as soon as it leaves will urge others to stay inside 
A ... suggestion that can be achieved with a ReAn 5 effect too, by the way: Base2, +1Touch, +2Ring, +0 Circle.
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Sure, but then what do you get from the herd? And you'd need a big ring to make it work for a herd, as they will graze the ground so nothing grows there easily. And a big ring will take you time, and with lots of Concentration rolls any of which you might botch, ruining the entire attempt.
Eh? What do you get from the herd? Well, you get mundane milk (after a few days?) and wool (after a few months, certainly at the next shave). I would say you get mundane lambs too.; some people disagree, but I've found no convincing argument against it. Certainly you get the carcass of any sheep that's been in the Circle long enough and fed on mundane foodstuffs.
As for the Circle, no need for it to be that large. Keep it small, and magically harvest mundane grass from the outside.
Yes and no. They are powerful, have resources, they pinted a hell of a lot of money, as they had silver mines in Mistridge, what the used as an excuse to have the money. But it there is a limit. They are quite in good shape military talking, they bringed with them 20 or so grogs + 5 custos + a elite mercenary company with 30 or so warriors belonging to one of the covenant companions is a Mercenary. They needed the soldier force to clean up from nasty faeries the place, thats the other reason they have a very good amount of Vis.
They convinced some native Crete people to join their project, (Crete at this age is Candia kingdom) so they have many people to give work to, but they need to build everything from scratch, they need, to start planting, they have a glassblower that will come soon enought. The problem is that in a near future they may have most of their problems solved, in the expense side. But they do need a good Income source. Thats why we talked about creating animals to boost a Income source. Making plat growth is also good, but as i told there is no magus with a good herbam, less than 8 or 8. (Maybe could be done).
They know they will have huge expenses, they also need to convince the local noble to allow them to stay in there, but they prefer to not let them now they are magi, so that means more money or any sort of item made by magic.
Also, they clasified the things they need to resolve in two categories, magic and mundane. Income can be helped but they feel is mundane. Thay have to tame a magic spider nest next to them in caves. Those spiders do make trouble, there is also a snake problem, and some more stuff I will not type in here, as I told them about this post, so they could join or reado to learn about the interesting things you all are explaining here.
To end, I am very inclined to avoid using circles as a substitute for ritual spells. I do not like how rituals are placed if you really try to avoid them. I do give plenty Vis. When they tame every single Vis source in their area, they should easily be able to gather 45+Vis yearly from sources, probably near 60 is more accurate (they are 5 players each having 1 magus and 1 apprentice fro the time being). In the game time they gather Vis most years they go into adventures, not every one of them but at least 1 of them usually gathers more.
That last paragraph is to let you know that probably rings will not be a sustitute for ritual spells. Only in wards or something very specific may be used. And probably not forever, depending on the situation and so on may be long, and may sustite a ritual, but only if they do work to make it happen, not by casually placing some stone or iron thing in a place, and bam 100m ring no vis expenditure, no concentration problems and so on.
PD: I am really gratefull about every single answer. I wanted to answer every one of you yesterday but I could not send any more answers after the 22nd, as I am a new user in the forum.
Many many thanks for your deep answer. You gave us a hell of a lot of ideas of how to focus on expenses. The point of trying to find a way of getting income is that magus are now focused on magical issues they have. They can use 1 station, 2 station to designing spells or items. You really pointed out about some easy and cheap spells nearly anyone can use or easy magical items, that can be easily done. But for a good help they would need to use magic periodically, and there is no way they can stay in the covenant. They can spend 1 season or at least 2 in the lab creating something and while they create something spend that season casting some minor spells. But they have 0 income. Even if they reduce expenses covenant describes that for each magnitude of the ritual you aproximately reduce some pounds, do not remember the numbers, is it 5?
Even in the case they can reduce costs by casting spells. As I pointed out earlier, they have a many workers that are building houses, but do not have any relevant skill, instead they have farming or animal caring skills. If they summon a bunch of any animal that gives leathers, milk, and meat for example. Or wool, milk hide and meat, you do understand me, they can cut expenses in food, cut some expenses in the clothe side, and also sell some of the excess production easily to make an income. The point is that they needed to be able to summon a hell of a bunch, or by 1 very high cast, or for many standard (100+) casts. As the spell is limited to 1 animal, they are more limited by this option.
They wanted to get to a income source very fast to at least do not burn their savings. With some time, your point of focusing in expenses is as many others mentioned in the post the way to go. Not only you need lower income, but also you create much less inflation, the thing is they are now involved in several adventures, that need to be dealt with fast. So they do not have the time, to form the covenant with some calm.
They purposedly ignored some of the issues they had for some time, now they have to deal with them as they have grown to be real goddamm problems. So their time to do things is very scarce and they need to focus in a hell of a lot of things. They know they have to do something wirth the Income of the. Inventing spells or items is an option but they want to spend the less time posible, and we all in the table watch as it could be done by doing something permanent. Silver for a short period was a way, but they have been too obvious in that route, so they thought to do it in a different way, so that they do not create a new problem while trying to solve the previous ones. Thats why they though of the animal creation route, that is quite similar. In the sense of that you create things from scratch that are "effectively" money, even if it is less, as this animals would be less checked by other magi. Animals do also serve to feed people, some clothing, so reducing some expenses while also being at least a meager income source.
All this said, could you guys think of any other "fast" income source, that can be achieved in a season work. it does not matter if it is not lab work, but working a season you can quitstart a meager income source, that if it can diminish some expenses would be great. Preferably without a money investment in the first place, they are really low on this aspect.
Many thanks to all of you. I will not answer every message, as I learned I had a response limit for a day. Also I am trully sorry if my English is sometimes confusing or sentences are not understood, or if I mix some terms of the spanish edition.
i couldn't read the thread - but searching it I found the word 'salt' missing.
One of the basic ArM5 staples of generating income for a covenant is extracting precious salt by magic out of sea water and then selling it.
Just saying - though of course selling the salt is still interaction with medieval economy and its organization.
To simplify: each magnitude of ritual cut 5 pounds (so 1 pawn = 5 pounds of silver, or 10 with mercurian magic), each magical item can cut 1 pound of expense per 5 level of effect. (from Covenant).
Regarding the specific situation, it really depends on reasonable realistic you want to be.
Realistic ? It is not possible within a single season to generate a large income that will keep running without disrupting the local area business.
Large income means wealthy and/or numerous customers. In an established island, with every villages, towns and cities having their establish business, any new comers flooding the market with any form of goods will change the balance, attract interest if not suspicion, who then become jealous enemies.
When one gets business from somebody else, the other party is loosing money and usually not happy about this change.
Very bad idea to do that just at the doorstep of your covenant.
Moreover, don't forget that even you find a way to generate a steady supply of one or more resources that you can trade, you still need to find enough customer to buy it without collapsing the price.
A better solution, and thankfully you are on a Greek Island, is to ship those goods to another, far away market - Constantinople, the Northern African coast, Spain, France (more precisely their Medieval counterparts). But it takes time, resources (ships, crew, skilled captains and traders) and some risks (wars, pirates, slaves merchants, sea monsters...).
As we say in project management, there is cost efficiency, speed of execution and good risk management. You can only pick two at the best of time
The mages have to manage their expectation, it is unlikely, without some skilled Companions getting involve, that with a single season of work they will be able to set shop and have a wealthy, thriving covenant.
Another source of wealth is dye, particularly the rare purple dye coming from a seashell (murex family). Unless the mages are from the area, it is unlikely that they know the seashell, but if they can secure one (it is a small shell between 10-20 cm), it is easy to invent a spell to have a multitude. Here again, you will hit the issue of flooding the market, attracting the attention of the established players (who are wealthy, resourceful and have plenty of connection since they are established since a very long time).
Ideally, they should find several type of products that are not know in the area, to avoid stepping on established competitors, and preferably transformed products as they are usually more profitable than raw material: instead of trading cereal, can you make beer out of them (answer, many cereals can be turned into beer, but it requires skilled craftsmen).
Good luck, but if you want to keep some level of realism, no fast, sure and straight solution exist.
You can sell Vis directly - House Verditius are happy to buy (HoH: MC, p. 114-115)
I think the point is to adquire some way of earning money, while the other problems, serious ones at least gets solved. The thing is that silver is already a problem, they flooded the market with silver already, and they have been 1 year in the island. But they bought a hell of an lot building materials, stone, and so on to build a town for the nearly 140-160 people they have to take care of, as a result of how the things have turned in the game.
I think that everyone knows, that it won´t be the perfect solution, it may not be long term income source, and they are starting non magical means of Income sources. They have some silk worms, they have silk and magical silk of magical spiders, that they could be use of. They want to be make a good trade depot, as they are perfectky placed to have a good trade empire. The issue is that every single of those ends needs time to grow. And while in the long term they will help them to grow and will probably be enough unless they neglect them or by playing games somethings goes very wrong, they have a money problem now.
It will create some trouble, will be an issue. Yes for sure, you cant create anything from thin air in enough quantity to sustain you o make as a good income source, and try to look like is something normal. It won´t work in most cases. All in all, they would like to avoid most of the problems, while being able to do something. Their good Arts are
Jerbi (social) Mentem 22 Imaginem 16
Tremere (Necro) Corpus 23 mentem 15 Terram 15
Bonisagus (Vim spec) Everything 8+ Rego 13 Vim 15, Terram 15
Bjornaer (Animal) Animal 20+, Muto 12+
Verditius (Me do not contribute much 12 yo younger) Terram 15 (Great magic focus Metals)
Vis sourcers Terram 16, Intellego 8, Vim 10, Corpus 12 (the source is healling Water, that can be used, but lowers the yield that year) yearly
They know they can gather Vis from Magical spiders, but they can´t tame the nest yet, they were planing on working on that end, but other important things have arised. It could be a Vis source, + a way to start a income Source.
Actually they have nearly 40 Corpus Vis pawns and 15 or so Terram Vis pawns, + some more varied vis of different arts and forms as covenant resources, appart from their own vis pawns. I do not know how much and form of those pawns, but I bet they are on the 20+ pawns each + 35+ animal pawns the Bjornaer.
It is said In the covenants book in the page 69 too. You are told that varies between availability and art, but first of all they are in the Theban Tribunal, it is known to be Vis plentyfull, they consider gifting some Vis, for every single thing they usually ask other magi for, + an adquate price, usually in those tokens of the tribunal. They could travel to some Tribunal where Vis could be scarce and trade it. It could solve some money issues, but it looks as a waste, as it is a hell of a lot cheaper Vis wise to earn money by using it to cast rituals, than selling it. All in all you save time.
It´s something that they may opt to.
Let me offer a simple suggestion.
Do not think about "making money". Money is a means, not an end, and it seems in your situation (small local market) it's not working to solve your problems. Your covenant is too big for the local scene. It's a little as if, in the real world, you were the leader of a large country that got wiped out by a natural disaster, and had 400 million people to take care of. Money is necessary, but by no means sufficient. You can't think of securing food, medicines, housing etc. for 400 million people in 3 months just by "spending money". What are you going to do, order 100 million tons of food on Amazon? Buy 40 million houses on Zillow?
Instead, think about your end, which is to obtain the mundane stuff your covenant needs. So, the first thing to ask yourself is: what does the covenant need? Food (including water)? Stone? Wood? Metals? Animal skins? Craftsmen (which craftsmen)? Basic tools (including weapons and workshops)? Lab equipment (at least the mundane stuff)? Make a list and prioritize.
Then ask yourselves: of this list, how much can you obtain directly via the resources you already have (e.g., it seems you have a sizable workforce)? For example, in terms of food, it seems to me you can probably feed everyone using a fraction of your workforce and a little spontaneous magic, assuming you have enough land as it seems to be the case. First and foremost, you need freshwater (super-easy to get from seawater through Hermetic desalinization). Then, you need cereals and vegetables (easy), and some source of protein like fish (easy, since you are by the sea). Some eggs, dairy, oil, salt are not strictly needed, but without them fare is a bit boring. Alcohol and Spices are certainly not needed, but they sure make life much nicer. Think how you can get each of these with generous applications of non-fatiguing spontaneous magic, or with just a few fatiguing (i.e. potentially botchful) spontaneous castings. You can do a lot given the Art scores listed above.
There will be a few things that you can't get immediately and directly. For example, skilled craftsmen. Possibly metal. Some dyes and inks (useful for making books). List them, and do not ask yourself how much they cost, but where can you get them. In modern terms, think of having to buy an assault rifle: it does not cost that much, but you can't buy it on Amazon. Only once you have an idea of where to get the stuff, think of how to "pay" for it. When I say "pay", I do not necessarily mean "pay with money". For example, you generally cannot "buy" craftsmen. But you may have found a young monk with a fantastic talent for illumination. How do you convince him to join your covenant, or at the very least to teach his craft to one of your covenfolk?
Of course, in some cases, the answer will be: some merchant network is willing to provide me with some of the stuff, as long as it makes some profit. In this case, the same merchant network may be willing to barter what you need for other goods it may sell. The crucial issue is that not everything will be accepted as payments, and certainly not in arbitrary quantities. Plus, you may have to do some triangulations: produce good A, barter it for good B using merchant network 1, barter B for what you really need using merchant network 2. Ultimately, it's up to your troupe to decide how complicated this should get, based on the storytelling opportunities it offers. Keep in mind that Hermetic covenants have a unique advantage: the Mercere trading network.
Now, there are some fairly common goods that you may want internally produce a surplus of, and trade. The fundamental idea is that there should be a) a sufficiently broad, accessible market for them (good luck trading in emeralds) and b) they should be relatively easy to store and transport (good luck trading in hay) and c) they should be obviously easy to produce. Some common options:
Salt, by seawater evaporation.
Pearls (not a broad market, but great to barter for other precious materials): magic makes it easy to find them and collect them.
Easy to preserve foodstuff (e.g. fish, but vegetables too, olive oil, wine, flour, honey, nuts, marzipan, and pasta). With a little magic you can probably produce much more than you consume, and Hermetic drying is fast and easy.
Fine wool, linen, cotton, raw or processed. Again, a little spontaneous magic goes a long way.
Metals, raw or processed. Not clear if they are available on your island, or in the surrounding area, but magic makes it incredibly easy to find them, and to extract them.
Silk: if you know it's secret, it's incredibly valuable, and not that hard to produce with the help of a little spontaneous magic. E.g. transform a sheep so that it produces silk instead of wool: your Bjornaer can probably pull this off spontaneously, though fatigue will be necessary. Or, transform some covenfolk so that they will grow silk hair, ideally at a much faster rate than normal - that's just a few MuCo5 effects! There's not a very large market for it, but still...
High quality stone, like marble. Not too easy to transport, but easy enough to quarry in large quantities with spontaneous magic.
Soap, like the famous soap of Aleppo.
Apparently valuable stuff that's just an illusion. Dangerous, but you can easily pull one big sting: offer your clueless mudane merchant network a very valuable cargo, something worth a few years of your provisions, and arrange for some "accident" so it gets lost at sea...
Let me just look at the first one as an example. Salt. One cubic pace of seawater provides about 20Kg of salt. How much that might be worth varies widely, but putting it on par with wheat or maybe a little less (say, half as much) is reasonable. So, three Individuals of sea water provide the equivalent of a bushel of wheat. The merchant network needs to profit too, so, I'd say that you can exchange the salt of 10 Ind for the equivalent of bushel of wheat, or, roughly, salt from ... 500 Ind of seawater for 1 Mythic pound? Something like that - the troupe will have to decide the exact ratio, but you'll note changing it by a factor 2 or even 4 won't change things much. Exercise left for the reader: how much can one of your magi "earn" by spending a single day (8 hours) engaged in non-fatiguing, spontaneous spellcasting extracting salt from seawater? Show your work, including the spells!
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Everything Ezzelino wrote is why a covenant which is poor in mundane currency is generally not a problem.
It's a really good mechanism for getting new players to think of low end spont spells effects (and often be surprised at what can be achieved). If the players go for more middling spells with divide by 2, not divide by 5 sponts, the first time someone botches and gets a warping points, is a good warping intro.
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Just for context, the Hansa League (Lübeck and friends) was largely build on the income from selling fish from the Baltic Sea in the Mediterranean area. At least initially.
... and this business was so busy it lead to serious problems with inflation of silver in the south of England, IIRC.
Those are really good suggestions from @ezzelino
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Welcome to Thebes! I was part of a long saga in Thebes, so allow me to suggest a very convenient way of earning wealth that I didn't see in skimming the answers: Venice.
There are lot of Venetian merchant ships around. It'd be an absolute shame if one of them sank in a sudden unexpected squall, or disappeared in pirate-infested waters. Also, the Jerbiton can likely make a few quiet allies in the area to help conceal or disperse wealth more effectively. But I might be channeling my Hades-sworn Grecian Pirate Captain companion here.
Man, we are a bit off topic, this is fun.
"Eh, this is so below me... but very well."
Orthon is an Arch Magus, who has a non-fatigue ReAq spont of 14 (could actually hit 15 in the Covenant, but the Magic Aura on the coast of our island is only 2) and a Finesse of 12. So he can use a variation of 'Alchemical Separation of Brine' (TME, p.119) with Group. That is ReAq 10, Base 3, +1 Touch, +2 Group.
Per the book, a Base Individual of Aquam is 4,350 gallons of seawater which yields about 147 gallon of salt weighing in at 1,228 pounds. With Group that is 43,500 gallons of seawater to 1,470 gallons of salt weighing in at 12,280 pounds or 6 1/8 ton per casting. The Finesse target is 12+. Non-stressful so he won't be failing or botching the roll. So cast 10 times a minute, 600 times an hour, and 4,800 times in an 8 hour period. That is 29,472 tons of salt.
The issue here is that you need something to separate the sea water into such as tide pools. Otherwise you have to add Part. Since he doesn't have sufficient non-fatiguing capacity to include Part he would have to drop Group which would cut his total production down to 2,947.2 tons of pure salt in 8 hours of work.
Anyone who can non-fatigue a ReAq 4 could use the lower power version. They would produce nearly 3,000 tons of salt. You can calculate how pure it is based only their chance to roll a 12+ on the Finesse roll. Without Part however they would most likely be far lower since they need tide pools or containers to cast the effect on.
So really the limit for most Magi is going to be how fast can their "helpers" separate out portions of sea water for them to cast on and how often they pass the Finesse roll to get pure salt out of it. For enough salt to supply the Covenant and have a few tons to sell you are looking at a day of work for their "helpers" and an hour or so of casting by a Magi with a ReAq total of 20+.
Of course Orthon would never do this personally. Spending a season to enchant a device while he has workers build evaporation pools on the coast would be the way he would go. Using a fraction of his ReAq Lab Total he could build a ReAq Base 3, +1 Touch, Unlimited +10 item and use the rest of his Lab Total to produce other things.
That is the method that would be easiest for anyone to do after a few hours of casting the non-fatiging spont version to build up an initial supply. The workers build up lots of little tide pools that can hold a Base Individual of Aquam (or a touch less) which are filled when the tide comes in and then can be closed. You enchant the item with a number of daily uses equal to (or greater than) the number of pools you have built.
With a Lab Total of 20 you could enchant an item with 50 uses per day which is overkill but if you want it for a salt producing Income Source more than capable. This would allow the Income Source to expand to 50 pools and several hundred workers (collecting and packaging the salt). That would produce 30.7 tons of salt per day (minus the percentage of failed Finesse rolls) which is how much a normal operation of this size could produce in a month.
Finesse is the limiting factor. It almost always is.
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A few threads that touch on wealth creation in some form or other. There is useful stuff in all of them for building up some magically boosted Income Source.
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Part / Size+1 is also 43,500 gallons, no? Same result, no tide pools.
And tide pools are individuals, ReAq 5 with Ind / Size+1.