Tres and his band live in the wilds of Gascony near Bazas. At one point we had stats for him, and perhaps with his backstory those will also find their way to Sub Rosa. (Ben?) Until then, perhaps this description will suffice?
"Tres is a friendly-looking man with sandy brown hair, a bushy moustache, strong hands and a slight paunch. He wears hunter's garb over an Archdeacon's stole and carries an unstrung bow as a walking stick. He usually wears a sword, a quiver of arrows, and even a small buckler, making it apparent upon close inspection that he is not out hunting."
Hope you find it enjoyable and useful (if you have the book already), or at the least tantalising (if you've yet to obtain a copy).
Oh, and on that note I'm still awaiting my complimentary copies (not complaining mind you, it always takes ages to get to Oz) - so if you want to ask anything I'll still be going from memory and various drafts as I don't have the hardcopy to correlate page references...
I really can't wait to see the art (and final layout) - that's a real fun part for me as an author as it's one of the fresh and exciting aspects of seeing the book finally in print when you've just been dealing with assorted text and ODT files and these concepts and images in your head.
I have author copies coming, but I splurged for a 4th copy, which will race my author copies for sometime on Tuesday. I'll be happy give an offline report to my fellow authors when it arrives. I think the only one who might get it before me is Marko.
I'm still waiting for my group's copies. According to the very useful tracking link is has been in transit since the 15th, followed through various US sorting facilities until it mysteriously went off the grid on the 20th. The package may have hitched a ride wshoveling coal on a trans-atlantic tramp steamer where the crooked captain failed to let the poor package out of the coal hold in Europe but continued to Africa or something.
Such tracking methods may be very useful for domestic mail I think. But not overseas.
Really nice unboxing. Loving the maps. Some great artwork from what I could see, too. And plenty of little box-outs, which either means a ton of story seeds or advice to the storyguide on how to do certain things.
I believe this may be an Ars Magica first "unboxing" in fact... a great teaser and promo for the new product.
The art looks great and the layout with all the inserts seems to flow very nicely. I can't wait to read my chapter and the others now it's finally here.
Cheers,
Lachie
PS apologies to Matt Ryan (responsible for the amazing maps) who I mixed up with Mark Lawford (also amazing just not for maps on this supplement). I've fixed this gaff on my blog now - clearly I was over excited. Hopefully he forgives me!
Got my copy this week but had little time to read it so far. Looks good though. One question, to someone: Mount Perditu is presumably the modern Perdido, which is the 3rd highest mountain in the Pyrenees (after the Aneto and Posets - I've climbed those two but not the Perdido - boast). Did the people of the 13C believe Perditu WAS the highest in the range? I can well believe it as in the UK I believe Cairngorm was long thought to be the highest in Scotland, for example.
I think when Marko and I were originally discussing a "Return to Val Negra" story for the Light of Andorra Saga (this is >5 years ago IIRC, even before Provencal was pitched) I was trying to workout where it would sit and I found Mt Perdido on GoogleMaps. The surrounding geography seemed to fit (the approach up a river valley from the south and it the mountain is more easily accessed from Spain than France - in fact it's invisible from France due to the crests behind it), so I assumed this was where the original authors of ArM3 Covenants intended it to be.
I think Marko worked everything else from there so when the opportunity came to shift it into Provencal it seemed like it had always been there.
I really wish I could find my old email archives of all those discussions...
Until then, perhaps this description will suffice?
