And I believe, the answer will be in between: books are the precious things mages cherish the most, so buying or enchanting one or two items exclusively for the library could happen - where mages are assigned to contribute a season of work from time to time for their covenant, that could be one activity. But for the rest of the covenant, grogs can carry torch, lamp and whatnot.
Now these items for the library are less likely to be damaged and could stay in place for decades, if not centuries. They won't appear in such fair because being constantly in use, until the covenant finally slips into Winter, and a distracted, half-senile librarian has to trade them for something he needs more.
Again, I definitely disagree here, particularly because we are talking about an afternoon once, and maybe a few minutes per year afterwards, a tiny fraction of what it takes to cast the Aegis or reraise Parma every day. If you have ever done any housework you know that does not even vaguely begin to hit the "tedious" level. Enchanting magical lamps season after season? That is what I'd find tedious.
The light of multiple torches is not bad at all, particularly if a) you can control the colour b) it's not flickering and c) for medieval standards.
As for the level, one probably wants to cast the effect as a D:Conc effect (so, Level 5, requiring a Creo+Ignem+Stamina+Aura+bonuses total of 25), sustained by a D:Ring version of Maintain the Demanding spell (or the equivalent for spells cast by others).
Now that makes a lot of sense as an enchanted device for the covenant, because it effectively allow any magus to boost by one magnitude the effects of any D:Ring fatigueless spontaneous magic he may want to cast. Something that can "Ring" any first magnitude spell cast by someone else is a Level 10 ReVi enchantment if created with 24 uses/day.
Of course, if another magus is helping you out, and he can manage Level 5 ReVi fatigueless spontaneous magic, there's no need for the enchanted device
That's one reason why you create a magical source of (non-magical) light.
The other reason you don't want magical light carrying visual species to your eyes stopped by your Parma.
Knowing myself, I could not even be bothered to spend the two times two minutes a day casting Parma, unless I really needed to, i.e. I knew I had a specific enemy coming for me or I was about to leave the Aegis of my covenant and even that last one is dubious. Considering how many people today take the shortcut in life in general, I doubt that I would be in the minority.
Torches for lighting is a modern conception of medieval times. You cant get a torch to burn with a clean flame that casts a lot of light and smokes little without petrochemical products. Medieval torches smoked a lot and cast little light, too little to read by certainly.
I am certainly in the "there has to be a lot of items out there camp".
I think @InfinityzeN hit the nail on the head when they said that about 50% of items available will be light sources (I forget where they said it, but feel very certain that it happened). IMO a lot of the rest will be items that either, heal, craft or make something comfortable. A significant fraction, IMO, is likely to be exceedingly specific and even random. Things like a wand that can convert the water in a largish lake into saltwater for diameter duration or make oak furniture rot over a period of Moon, or whatever. Essentially items that a mage once crafted because they needed to solve a very specific problem in a very specific way.
I think a lot of items for sale will be either unidentified or semi-identified (we know that this is a lesser enchanted item with a MuAq effect in the level 15-45 range)
There are a lot of additional factors involved. What is the value of vis? How inconvenient is that daily chore? Most homeowners choose to either mow their own lawn or hire someone else to d it. I bought a robot lawnmower because I'm not as young as I once was and I don't want the recurring expense of hiring someone else to do it. A magi who is lame and doesn't want to climb stairs to cast light spells is more likely to enchant an item that a grog can put in place. Cheaper vis tends towards more enchantments. Some magi just gotta play with enchanting stuff for its own sake as well.
A decade? Alas, anyone who's worked in a modern lab (particularly the unfortunate sod who has to find the funds and foot the bills) will tell you the process takes a single year or even less.
I actually suspect that's the main source of enchantments for sale!
I sort of agree - because of the smoke and the flicker. But note that the CrIg 3 guideline doesn't really create a torch: it creates the light equivalent to torchlight. By comparison, base 1 is the equivalent of moonlight, base 2 is the equivalent of candlelight, and base 4 is the equivalent of light on a cloudy day - which is more than you get in a typical room even during the day. Given that you can certainly read by candlelight (I know I can read a book even by moonlight alone if the sky is clear, the moon is full, and it shines directly on the written page) I'd say that torchlight is intended to be quite sufficient for typical, nighttime indoor illumination.
Ok, I've derailed the thread enough without contributing. My contribution is not meant to be "entertaining" or a source of stories. It's mean to be "realistic": in the sense that the redcap involved is a lone redcap from our covenant, and we really have the following goods/services to offer. In this sense, I'd be curious to see if any of your troupes would agree to a deal - then, I would feel neither too generous nor too stingy by assuming some NPC did the same.
Rufus the lone Redcap
You probably have heard that this jovial Redcap has a strained relationship with his house, as he insists that he will deliver messages, trade etc. on his own terms rather than "jumping when they tell me to jump, if you know what I mean". Here's what he has to offer.
Transportation services. He commands a magic ship that flies as fast as the wind. "Not a Hermes portal, no, but I can still fly from Scotland to Cyprus and back in less than a week!". It can transport people, or bulk goods. He'll move stuff for free to any friendly covenant in the Tribunal or neighbouring ones, as part of his Redcap service, if given a year's notice and one more year to complete the delivery. Shorter lead times and/or more distant destinations (Sogdiana? Sure!) require payment, negotiable and highly variable.
Access to the finest Summa ever written on Creo (it's the Exceptional Book Boon from Covenants, p.20), that his home covenant owns. Any magus can stay at the covenant as a guest and study from the book as long as the guest likes; as a token of gratitude, the guest is supposed to spend a season helping the covenant at some non-dangerous task to be agreed upon. Alternatively, the guest can bring as a gift a sound Art tractatus per season of studying (or an excellent tractatus per two seasons). The gifts will be accepted under a variant of the "Cow and Calf" oath, that allows Rufus covenant to make a new copy of a book but solely to replace an older copy (which must then be destroyed).
Obviously, copying the summa or even just memorizing it is not allowed. Accomodation at, and transportation to and from the covenant are free, and the covenant is well-known for its excellent cuisine.
Votes! If there is any issue on which your covenant would like support at the local of Grand Tribunal, a "convergence of interests" can probably be arranged. Rufus approaches the subject in a very roundabout way, and only offers to trade votes if he's fully convinced (he has a good Folk Ken score) that he's dealing with someone not offended in any way by the practice. If so, the deal terms are the following. He can arrange most motions to be supported or opposed (abstain is also ok) by up to a dozen votes, occasionally more. Some motions can only be supported by fewer votes, sometimes none, due to previous commitments. For every two votes (or fraction thereof) asked and received, three votes will be asked for at some later time (all together, or split between different motions). Rufus understands that not everyone will be able to support everything, so a vote asked can be refused up to three times; each refusal will convert two votes refused or fraction thereof into three more due. On the third refusal, votes due will be paid back with seasons of non-dangerous service, one for every five votes due or fraction thereof (one for every ten from particularly skilled magi, or one for every three from sufficiently skilled apprentices).
Mundane wealth. If a covenant is cash-strapped, income equivalent to a Lesser Source of Income can be arranged. This is completely free, "to foster goodwill between our covenants". If a covenant needs more than that, it can be negotiated. Rufus will not just deliver money: he will deliver those goods that money would have purchased (supplies, lab equipment etc.), avoiding inflation and procurement difficulties.
Mundane books. Rufus' covenant has a large mundane library, including on topics potentially of interest to magi (such as Finesse, Concentration, Magic Theory). He's very happy to trade copies under the variant of Cow and Calf above, for ... anything interesting.
Now, that's what Rufus has to offer. He's also willing to pay Creo vis for interesting supernatural stuff (including enchanted devices, True names, magical beasts, mystical texts, Lab texts with interesting experimentation results, and perhaps servants with supernatural abilities), particularly stuff that is not Hermetic, or at least not "vanilla" Hermetic. He's rumored to have paid no less than three rooks for a strange relic. How much vis can you extract from him for some bauble you have found and have no use for?
Since I play one of the declining magi, let me comment on that. Andreas has painful magic, and needs to make an awful lot of enchanted items to get around in the field, many more than he has the vis for. A lab item is far down the list, way beyond the affordable. I think that just makes the point that magi enchant items for very different reasons. Andreas to compensate for a handicap; Artal (who offered to make the lamps) to boost his lab total; the stereotypical Verditius just to show off.
So why do magi make enchantments to save mundane labour? Well, simply because mundane labour does, as a rule, recruit, train, and manage itself. Of course, if you want to play a well-established and steady-state Summer or Autumn covenant with an end-less supply of mundane labour, well, that's your choice of game style, but if you seriously consider how a group of magi set up a new covenant, the situation is very different.
Making a new source of income without interferring with mundane society is hard.
Recruiting new staff with the Effect of the Gift is hard, and even harder if you need well-trained and well-behaved staff.
Training the autocrat who can manage mundane affairs is non-trivial, and establishing a long-term loyalty that is required is even harder.
There may be a shortage of people in the region, and even people who want to join the magi may be bound in servitude.
In steady state, common labour can probably be replaced with ease, but the loyal managers need care and attention, and the more common labour there is to manage, the more managers you need. Speaking of which, a lot of the common enchantments may be payment for such loyalty. Andreas, for instance, is quite likely to upgrade his items and give the old ones to loyal grogs when he is older and more wealthy. The interesting question is if these items are recycled at tribunal fairs or if they drift into mundane society when covenants fall or covenfolk fall out.
Obviously, this has to depend on the saga, but more importantly, any plausible saga would expect a lot of variation between tribunals and covenants, depending on the supply of labour and of vis and of wealth in general. It is reasonable to expect that there are and have been many covenants with very different priorities compared to the player covenant.
Deeply concentrating on the boiling essences in the cauldron, he suddenly hears the sharp knocking on his door, and the stewardess shouts: «Magus Ring Master; the light went out in the kitchen, and we cannot make supper without it.»
As the magus ignores her, the soon-to-be-turned-into-a-mosquito stewardess goes on:
"Magus Ring Master, call yourself fortunate, it will only take you a minute! Your fellow Magus Lamp Enchanter had to interrupt his year-long-enchantment, and spend a season enchanting new magical lamps, when one of them broke and we could not make supper".
Thus the the twin curses of the Faerie Queen made life miserable for the magi of the Covenant of Supper-cannot-wait-and-redundancy-is-not-an-option.
Redundancy is an option, which is exactly why some magi make a lot of mundane (read redundant) items ...
Another point to mention is that apprentices will often have to make these items from texts. For the magus it is a good investment to take a season to make an itrem of general utility and copy the text for sale, if one is not on the market, and once it is on the market, apprentices can make them easily. If you play a typical 5ed saga with bustling Hermetic trade, I expect this to be very common for generally useful. items up to level 20. Vis poor tribunals may not see it, but for vis rich tribunals, the cost is low and the value significant. Similarly, once the covenant has made one of a useful item, apprentices can make a dozen over a few decades. If there is enough vis. Magus time is not really the limitation, not over the century an Autumn covenant has existed.
Every covenant should have a copy of one score enchantments you apprentice can make by Utilitus of Bonisagus.
