Part of what I have to do, with House Tremere a part of the saga, because there are potentially two Tremere, is to decide what the House is doing. I've been doing that. So, I made a ruling about how the House is responding, but that's my job as ASG for this saga. It's not reasonable for you, as a player, to say that the House is doing this or that, because of %reasons%.
There are reasons for apprentices being sent to Transylvania. There are reasons that the House has closed the borders not allowing magi back in (even Tremere, if it wasn't clear before). You can be from Transylvania. You can take an apprentice. You can be from Transylvania AND take an apprentice. That's going to cause some problems (stories). Just know that if you play a Tremere from Transylvania and were ordered to join this covenant that taking your apprentice wasn't what the House leadership was expecting, and you and the apprentice won't be allowed back in.
I did not realize that was part of the game vs what is in AtD. I shall make adjustments but I will need some clarification on what might be allowed for Tremere outside Transylvania.
This happens to me all the time. I work on a concept for a particular saga, and while it works mechanically, I'm not inspired by it. Sometimes I can tweak. Sometimes I have to start from scratch. In nearly all cases of writers block for a character discussing it with the other players helps me work out issues.
I'm not doing anything contrary to Against the Dark. Your stating that the Secretary for Contingencies has a plan to scatter some magi away. That may very well be the case. It might even be the case that he's done that with some apprentices already. Because House Tremere can be heavily compartmentalized, you don't know what the Secretary for Contingencies is doing. The point is that the Prima Tremeris has declared that all apprentices be sent to Transylvania for training, rather than trained by expatriated magi. If you want an apprentice, there's story grist there.
If you were a resident of Transylvania when taking an apprentice, and took the apprentice with you, you're simply following what you believe to be the letter of the law, you took an apprentice in Transylvania, and therefore have satisfied the first part of Poena's declaration, not needing to pay attention to the second part, because when you started you were not an expat. Story grist, nothing more. I'm not going to punish you for taking an apprentice, except to say, you've probably got an unwritten story flaw there.
Also, I'm not saying that your magus is fleeing blindly. You'll have orders, what exactly those orders will look like depends on whether darkwing makes a Tremere and how all of the other characters shape up.
I generally have a concept and a story and the character sheet comes later. Right now I have a character at gauntlet but am missing 4 virtues and 5 flaws which, to me, are hard as I already have the story.
The thing is that I know how to create powerful magi. And Pralicians are among the most powerful of them all. So I can't just come up with a concept because the back of my mind always tells me "But if you take this or that - this will work so nicely with that other".
I will try to make a magus for Arthur's game instead. At least, they are at gauntlet, which makes them so much less powerful.
How many pawns of muto vis do I get per year after gauntlet for the personal source virtue?
I'm not sure I understand this ruling:
Does this mean that if I use 3 pawns to boost a spell, and have the careful caster virtue, the virtue does not remove the extra dice for the vis? Or does it mean that the extra dice are removed, but it can't go below one even with mastery?
I'm not sure yet. I'll also grant some additional vis during development to reflect the virtue.
It means that when using vis, you aren't relaxed, can't be relaxed. The RAW is contradictory, in one plays using vis is stressful and in another place saying you can be relaxed. I'm saying you can't be relaxed. Virtues and Spell Mastery and the Golden Cord reduce botch dice as normal. So, with Cautious Sorcerer, 1 point in Spell Mastery, you can mitigate 4 botch dice in total. And as normal, if you have Cautious Sorcerer without any mastery, you can remove up to 3 botch dice, but must have at least 1 botch die.
Do you want to see a season-per-season account of post-gauntlet character development, or is it enough to do the pg advancement en bloc presuming 40xp per year and accounting for the lost seasons in the end? I would prefer the latter, since it's way less labor intensive.
I'm considering different concepts right now, each of them linked strongly to the concept of the saga I believe :
a magus obsessed with gaining immortality before he's losing his gift (not sure of the method yet, I'm considering the "Guardian of nature"," Becoming" or some other kind of transformation into a magical being from another mystery cult)
A Criamon convinced that the lost of the gift has something to do with the enigma : because of the work of the Criamon time isn't completely circular anymore but because of the "non apt" behaviour of other magi He's not really linear either but in a transition state that causes those symptoms (or something similar he's probably wrong anyway that's not a problem)
A magus ready to give up Hermetic magic to learn Divine magic but finding it hard to convince someone to teach him because he wasn't so pious before and that's having a hard time really becoming pious enough for it to work anyway.
2c: All seem plausiable to me. Seeking immortality is a great in-character response. The divine seems odd but depends on the characters internal motivations, and I don't understand how a divine magus mixes well with typical hermetics - but that might be part of the flavor when we are gathered for survival. Is the Criamon investigating and researching the twists of the enigma for a "solution" or just understanding the purpose?
I'm not wild about the Holy Magic one, in this saga. It's challenging with the number of pagans in Finland at the time, and the crusades raging. It's not impossible, just a more difficult path for the character, which might frustrate the player.
I realise I wasn't very explicit about what I meant :
The character goal isn't often what's really going to happen, and my motivation isn't that of the character which probably led to confusion concerning the holy magic one at least. The path of immortality is easier to make mechanically and I like it for what it can do magically but the roleplay isn't as well defined. On the contrary the Criamon has a very well defined roleplay but I'm not sure what to do with him mechanically. I'm leaning towards the first because the Criamon will probably be a pain in the ass for the others because of his "proselytism" .
If I choose the immortal way, I'll probably choose a Merenita path, probably that of becoming because I also like Animae magic and the normal path is Arcadian travel (very useful) --> Animae magic (the Merenita twist on necromancer, I like them, also you can turn spell into faeries isn't that gorgeous ?) --> Becoming (It seems better that Guardian. Also Guardian of nature makes you immobile which is a major hindrance to go on adventure.
In that case, the path is also interesting because Becoming makes you to wait as long as possible to increase your faerie warping before you undergo the transformation, so instead of making you a lab rat, it leads you to experiment more faery so to go into adventure !
In his (misguided probably) belief, he's already found the solution... That would be to make sure all magus behave aptly before they enter final twilight or else to make sure the die instead. So it would be a character trying to convince other they should behave aptly at least or ideally if he feels they're ready offer to join House Criamon to learn the Enigma. If he fails in convincing them, he will secretly try to murder them when he feels they're too close to final twilight, of course by doing so he would not act aptly and would have to kill himself too before final twilight so he's very reluctant to kill anyway.
concerning the holy magic : sort version, I'll drop it. If you want motivations, see below.
[spoiler]I'll drop the holy magic concept, because indeed It will probably be too challenging and might indeed not mix well with the others but let's explain for the sake of understanding :
the character goal is to learn holy magic, his reasoning is that the disease is God will and that it will be protected that way.
-The player motivation on the other hand is to roleplay the internal conflict between the immediate lost of power from the conversion, and the distant fear of losing his gift. Also roleplaying someone behaving like he's get pious for wrong reasons might be interesting.
-What would probably occur in this case is that he would fail to find teacher, end up self initiating at increase loss for himself (ordeals) only to realize that he's not pious enough for that magic to suit him, so basically he just destroyed his gift himself out of fear of loosing it. That's probably a frustrating concept in itself to begin with.[/spoiler]
Tremere and fae do not often mix ( mainly because the fae are so dark in Transylvania). From HoH:TL(pg131) Few Tremere would accept an apprentice with the Fairy Upbringing flaw. Now the Tremere in question could have sold your character to Votaporix. That is common enough in House Tremere with Gifted children they do not want.
My character is based on being the filla of Archmaga Monica Ierne who is from Ireland. You could tie her in but I seriously doubt she would consider training someone with Fairly Upbringing.
I agree that a Tremere with Fairy upbringing is very unlikely, unless she has a very unique ability I don't see them taking the risk of bringing faerie randomness into their House.