I was thinking about how things would be in England

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

In 1066, William upgraded his title from Bastard to Conqueror, concluding the demonstration to the English and the French that no matter their petty rivalries, Vikings are still better. (Or something like that.)

It occurs to me that the Order of Hermes would not have been entirely happy about being bystanders. The magi in the Stonehenge tribunal basically lost the mundane legal claim to all the land they owned. There may well be a grudge going both ways across the English Channel, based on what was negotiated with regard to how much the Hermetics could interfere with the war. Magi with a past in the Normandy Tribunal might even be forbidden to join the Stonehenge Tribunal, by long-standing custom(ie, everyone downvotes their presence at Tribunal).

But it's also been just over a hundred and fifty years since then. How would this disruption have influenced the Stonehenge magi?

Forgive me for the seeming Harry Potter parallelism, but it seems to me like the Order would have needed to largely withdraw and hide from the Norman occupation. I can see five major approaches:

#1: Suborn the new noble owner of the land. Meaning you'd better keep Willy(or his dynasty) from noticing that one of his valued subordinates is acting strange.

#2: Monastic camouflage. If noble women can create nunneries-in-name-only, so can magi. Invites both Infernal and Dominion interference. (Even Divine interference, sometimes.)

#3: Ex Misc ward experts. Set up places where mundanes can't easily intrude on, make it impossible to know there's even a Covenant there. Requires either a ton of effort or original research into something like wardstones that anchor an effect over an entire boundary. Isolates the Covenant, making it easier to slip towards Winter and ruin.

#4: Retreat into regios. Use one of the previous strategies, but either with a lighter touch or with an extra level of security.

#5: Diaspora. There may be a good reason everyone in Hibernia calls foreign magi "english". That's mostly who's shown up in the last 150 years.

Anyway, if substantial numbers of magi retreat into regios, that has the effect of making botches much more likely. Which moves Stonehenge magi that much closer to Twilight. However, it could also encourage them to develop the Virtues of Cautious Sorcerer and Flawless Magic. If those are then taught to the rising generations of magi, it could become a very common package, and that would tend to have the effect of reducing total Twilight exposure. And that means that Stonehenge could very well have an unusually large concentration of magi over 150 years old, with substantial lists of highly-mastered spells. Depending on how isolationist they are, they might not even bother to register as archmagi with the Order at large.

-Albert

2

Not really. Unless you establish your Covenant in a faerie regio.
ArM5 p183: "Auras also affect the number of botch rolls for an attempted supernatural act in a foreign realm."

We house-ruled the other way, because more botches are fun (in a Dwarf Fortress way).

3

I always assumed the Tytalus were behind the invasion. It's the kind of thing they do.

I note that the invasion doesn't teach the most powerful covenant in the vanilla setting, because the invasion doesn't reach Wales. I also thing the DM of Ex Misc, hidden as it is in the swamps, is likely unknown to the Normans.

4

In the 4th editioon supplement the magi just lay low during the invasion, and find settlements afterwards with the people assigned the land where they live. Some Norman covenants also form (like Voluntas and the Eastern coast covenants) but the supplement does not explore much the saxon-norman divide, leaving them as not very important for magi for the most part (I disagree but that is me).

Play whatever way you want. It iwll be right and 100% justifiable.

I like the idea of tytalus magi messing up with the invasion and encouraging it. 8)

5

Or a Tremere meta-ploy.

The thing about Hs. Tytalus is that they're more like cats (who don't trust each other as far as they can hiss), and I'd see this as taking more than one magi - altho' ya never know.

6

I could have sworn that regios, specifically, add botch dice, even if you are aligned with the aura. Is that just from 4th, then? Kinda kills my vision, since I was counting on that to act as a winnowing process.

Ah, well. Time to play up the saxon/norman factionalism, then. Maybe say that a bunch of the weaker Saxon covenants were effectively wiped out as their new Norman overlords took control, and I can still have the survivors largely cut off from mundane contact until they can set up relations with the new nobility. In the meantime, of course, magi emigrating from Normandy to shelter under their victorious relatives' lordship took unscrupulous advantage in claiming mythic resources. Possibly implies a relatively large percentage of Jerbiton, if the incoming Normandy magi were riding the coattails of nobility.

-Albert