Logistics of the covenant of Xylinites

[Mummel (Colby)]

I've been reading through the The Sundered Eagle (Thebes Tribunal book) in preparation for my first campaign and the covenant Xylinites caught my eye.

There's something very off about it, though. It seems like a bizarre mess of a place. In fact it feels like the description flip-flops constantly on whether the magi here are hermits mostly unknown to the local monks or actually a part of the monastic community here. Does anyone else find it hard to wrap your head around?

Xylinites is in a cistern underneath a monastery in Constantinople. The monastery has an orphanage on its grounds. Its description seems to flip-flop on how much the monastery understands of the covenant's activities.

Magi used to teach at the orphanage, and only after did they set up a covenant there. I imagine there was an agreement between the orphanage and the magi on this, we teach here and you let us live here. In 1220 covenfolk still teach at the orphanage and I assume there's some reason why they feel a need to do so (the Criamon clutch is "reliant" on them).

But then two things come up that clash a bit:

Visitors come and go as they always do in Orthodox monasteries, and the staff has little to do with the monks, and less with the hermits (the magi). So covenant life can continue, but for how long?

At least sixteen years, apparently, so it doesn't sound like the situation is meant to be unstable.

It's implied that the Criamon clutch is doing it's best to not draw attention, with the monastery assuming they're some sort of Christian hermits. ...And yet some of the staff and some of the orphans are Covenfolk:

A small staff of grogs conducts the mundane business of the covenant. They wear elaborate Byzantine robes denoting their rank and office. Tutors wear grey, orphans blue, and domestic staff black.

Some of the orphanage's staff are are really working for the magi downstairs. For sixteen years, no one else has worked out that the three frog-man hermits living in their basement, which they use as a storage space, are not exactly good Christians, or they've chosen not to care. At least the Jerbiton magi came across like normal people and directly contributed to the monastery. Now, rather than being the tutors themselves, the tutors work for the magi in some capacity.

How has this continued for sixteen years without the clutch getting kicked out or falling apart? How does it pay anyone?

The tutors could be getting paid by the monestary, functioning as income for the clutch. In that case, they could just cut out the middleman, getting all of the money for themselves rather than trying to support these hermits in a cistern. On the other hand the clutch could be paying them, providing the monestary with tutors so that the magi can stick around. But then how is the clutch supporting itself?

Of the three magi in the clutch, one really is probably living in the cistern. The orphans whisper of "mad hermits" so surely one of them lives down there, but then this guy is also addressed as "Brother" which could be a Criamon thing but could imply that he's one of the monks also. One is actually the guy doing all the castrating for the orphanage. This could have been a source of income, but that income has mostly dried up in the Latin Empire. The third is (or was) an apprentice, one of the orphans, he's 21 now and probably leaving at some point.

[Heaven_s_Thunder_Ham (Heaven's Thunder Hammer)]

Huh, this an interesting question and I don’t have the time so I used CHATGPT.

CHATGPT: Yeah — on a first read, Xylinites does feel like it’s describing two incompatible covenants at once: “unknown hermits in a basement” and “an institution with uniforms, staff, tutors, and orphans.” The clean way to make it make sense in 1220 Constantinople is to treat the monastery complex as three overlapping communities with different levels of knowledge (and to remember that a lavra is already designed to accommodate semi-eremitic weirdness).

What the text is really implying (even when it phrases it clumsily) is:

1. The monks / abbot (Dominion-side)
   They know “holy hermits” are somewhere on the grounds / in the old cistern, and they’re content to let that be true because it fits Orthodox expectations about ascetics and recluses. A lavra is literally a monastery-form built around semi-hermits in cells, so “there are recluses we don’t bother” is culturally normal.

2. The orphanage & its lay operation (mundane, not-monk workforce)
   The orphanage/school is attached to the monastery, but it does not have to be run day-to-day by the choir monks. Byzantine monasteries commonly relied on administrative officers and hired laymen to manage property and practical affairs; the monastery’s internal liturgical life and its “business arms” can be socially separate.
   More broadly, Constantinople has a long tradition of orphan care as an institution with managers, staff, and a school component.

3. The covenant (Magic-side), using intermediaries
   The line you quoted about “visitors come and go… staff has little to do with the monks, and less with the hermits” is best read as: most people on site don’t interact with the hermits at all, and the people who do are a small, controlled subset (the intermediaries).

So the “uniformed tutors / orphans / staff” detail doesn’t mean the monks are in on it. It means the orphanage operation (which already needs non-monk labor) is the perfect place to embed covenfolk who can cover for the Criamon.

A coherent day-to-day model that survives 16 years

Here’s the version that makes the most sense at-the-table:

• Public cover story: “There are a few extreme ascetics (‘holy hermits’) who live in seclusion near/under the storehouses. Don’t bother them.”
  That’s very “lavra-compatible” behavior.

• Practical access control: The entrances to the cistern are from locked rooms in the orphanage/guesthouse buildings. That means the gatekeepers are not the monks; it’s whoever holds keys for those rooms (schoolmaster, stewards, selected tutors).

• Social separation does the heavy lifting: Pilgrims/visitors see the church, refectory, guest areas. They do not get tours of locked storerooms and flooded cistern stairs. “People come and go” doesn’t automatically mean “people scrutinize the plumbing.”

• Why no one “figures it out”:
  Most people’s mental model is already “monastery = layers of restricted space + strange holy people.” The boys whispering about “mad hermits” is exactly what you’d expect when there’s a forbidden, spooky zone.

• Why it’s stable for 16 years:
  The sack/Latin occupation is a huge stabilizer for weird arrangements. Institutional oversight is disrupted, the city is poorer, staffing is thinner, and everyone has bigger problems. A “precarious afterlife” can absolutely last a decade and a half — and the book is basically waving a flag that it might not last another decade unless the troupe decides it does.

How does it pay anyone?

The book doesn’t give you a covenant accounting sheet, so you’re supposed to plug it into Ars Magica’s normal covenant-economy assumptions. Plausible income streams that fit the setting and the text:

1. Orphanage/school endowment + salaries
   Byzantine orphan care is historically tied to endowed institutions and administrative offices; even if this orphanage is monastic, it’s believable that it has dedicated revenues and paid staff.
   That makes “tutors are paid” the simplest mundane cashflow.

2. Lay management and “business arms” of the monastery
   If the monastery uses stewards and hired laymen for estates and operations, then “our tutors aren’t monks” is normal, and “some of those lay workers are secretly covenfolk” becomes easy to sustain.

3. Legacy resources from the Jerbiton era
   A 130-year-old covenant embedded in an imperial-facing institution plausibly has reserves: books, favors, a few hidden valuables, and the mundane infrastructure to keep going even after a disaster. (This is especially “Jerbiton in Constantinople.”)

4. Services + patronage via intermediaries
   Even if eunuch-demand dropped under the Latins, “specialist medical services,” discreet favors, and donations from pious nobles/nunneries are a very believable trickle — and crucially, those transactions can be conducted by companions (who don’t trigger the Gift problem).

“Why not cut out the middleman?”

Because the “middleman” isn’t just taking a cut — they are the reason the arrangement is socially legible.

• The monastery can justify lay tutors and odd recluses.

• It cannot justify “three blatantly un-Christian sorcerers running a private lab complex under the orphanage.”

• The intermediaries make the whole thing presentable, keep keys controlled, manage gossip, and prevent direct contact with a Blatantly Gifted Criamon who would otherwise get denounced in a week.

The “Brother” thing isn’t a contradiction

In an Orthodox environment “Brother” is a perfectly natural title for monks and for holy recluses attached to a monastic setting — and Criamon also like fraternal language. So that detail is ambiguously useful on purpose: it supports the cover story and the internal cult tone at the same time.

If you want it to feel less like a mess in play, pick one of these truths

Choose one and lean into it; it will snap the vibe into focus:

1. The abbot knows (and approves): the clutch is tolerated as “holy fools” because they bring money/protection.

2. The abbot suspects (and fears scandal): he hates it, but the monastery’s position is too fragile to fight another internal war.

3. The abbot is ignorant (keys are the choke point): one steward/schoolmaster quietly runs interference; everyone else is kept compartmentalized.

Any of those makes “16 years” feel completely believable — and turns the “for how long?” line into an actual story lever instead of an inconsistency.