Sounds like a great plan for your game.
I'd take your ideas and see if I could harmonize them completely with the research or mystery mechanics, but I've been know to suffer from a bit of crunch-o-phillia. Doing so probably won't add a whole lot to your game.
Latest report -
Players have had a few sessions under their belts. First was to look at True love as a gift from the Creator/Dominion to his children. So, inspired by the Song of Solomon/Song of Songs, they set-off from a sunny and pleasant greek island to the Levant attempting to track down the inspiration for the text with the text "my beloved is mine and I am my beloved." Starting in Jersuelum, they spoke with all manner of rabbi, monphsyste (sp) and other scholars of the time regarding the the inspiration of Solomon's song of songs and his relation to the "Queen of Sheba." Have some minor spirit summoning with the help of a kindly jewish spirit master, instruction from fairly anceint criamon mages near Petra on the nature of love, they set off to far Ethopia seeking the blood line and history of the Solomonic(?)-Sheba relation. They also discover the Kebra Nagast (but no Ark of the Covenant for those familar with story). After several fairly interesting adventures across the Red Sea, Saba, Shibam and Yemen, they enter Ethiopia. Whereupon these meet with the very descendants of the couple and more writings from that ancient time and related correspondence. Using the best of their hermetic analysis they discover some Solomanic(?) divinely inspired magery. After much refining and rejoicing, they journey north again to sunny Zante. So after several years, they are onto something to be experimented upon. Near as the players are interpretting this bond (or more familar hermetic expression "chord") is divinely inspired. To link it with the more familar hermetic magic they'll need to translate it enter Bonisagus' framework, expand the framework or cast that framework asside and focus on the supernatural/dominion area. Right now, the players are inclined to look to the latter.
Next for review comes the philosophy Empedocles where love and strife are seen as attracting and repelling forces that mingle with the classical elements (fire, earth...) that form the world. A minor exploration of Venus Victrix may be considered along with the various greco-Roman mythic figures.
Finally they are looking into the songs and poetry of the Troubadors and will be preparing a journey to senior covenant of Jerbitron.
Awesome, Kallie!
Great to hear of your progress, and it especially warms my heart to read of anything related to Ethiopia!! I love that place -I lived there for a while 8 years ago- and its history in particular, and I always wanted to go back there. But I haven't, not even in my mind by making an Ars story, even though it is so obviously a great place for ME tales.
I still particularly recall an early morning before sunrise climbing one of the mountains overlooking Lalibela to reach one of the secluded rock monestaries for their morning service at 6 am. I was supposed to have gone with 2-3 others but they were to lazy after to little sleep and too much Tej (honeywine), but going their solo became an experience of a life time. Sitting in that monestary lightheaded from the steep climb and the oxygen-sparse air I almost felt as a genuine Indy when I was invited to join their ceremony sitting in a corner watching the wizzened old monks by the light of the thin tallow candles. And as they progressed with the ceremony they passed me all these old old objects to hold and to see. Some of them books and codexes with the most beautiful Ethiopian illuminations, some of them might very well have been medieval (they had that feel or at least I eluded myself to think so), even if I could not decipher the writing in Ge'ez letters. Now I'm rambling - but I just came to remember how that place affected my and how I really want to return to Ethiopia. Someday..
Don't you just love the Kebra Negast? That story of how Solomon gets his Queen Sheba by the use of salty food and a water barrel is just... magnificent! And of how Menelik leaves the court of Solomon and the first of all the sons have to follow him, and the plot they device concerning the Ark.