Apprentices become mages, mages that owe you some political support and loyalty in the order which means votes at tribunal for parens, house, origin covenant.
Tremere for example puts pressure on their house members to train apprentices because when their apprentces gauntlet, the older members of the house get more sigils to vote with.
Bonisagus have pressure of house to share their lore and skill and spread the magic by having apprentices.
Just for two examples.
Another reason is ambition. Training an apparentice to gauntlet is one of the ways to get house prestige for Bonisagus or qualify for Archmage status.
A number of sources hint that the average lifespan for an Hermetic Magus is 120 years after gauntlet; meaning about 140-150 years of actual age. For example, the Guernicus chapter in HoH:TL suggests that the population of the house is fairly stable and there's one apprentice every 8 magi. Since apprenticeship lasts 15 years, this means that the average lifespan after apprenticeship is 8 times as long, i.e. 120 years.
There are a number of magi in official products -- in particular Tribunal books -- that are several decades older than that; and of course according to the core book magi older than 200 are "rare but not unheard of". A rough rule of thumb we adopt to assess how old is "old" from a Hermetic perspective is to look at how, in the modern world, we'd consider a person half the age of a Hermetic magus. So a magus 100 years out of apprenticeship -- 120-130 years of actual age -- would be treated like a modern-day person in his early sixties.
How do you model the explosive growth? Not in reasons, but in numbers? Some major events that might have impacted here...
FOUNDING (767): 13 dudes
FIRST 50 years (or so) 767-817)
Apprentices: 1-3 each (25)
Join or die policy: 3 each? (40)
Incorporation of House Diedne (+30?) --> 108 people
WAR AGAINST DAVNALLEUS (814-817): At least 5 casualties, plus dozens of non hermetics. (note, surprisingly there is no mention of the diednes doping ANYTHING during the war against Davnalleus even if the war was in their home turf)
FOUNDING OF ORDO MISCELLANEA (817) and incorporation into the Order: +40 - 75? --> 145-175 people.
180 years of uneventful life with small details. Order grows steadily
THE SUNDERING (848). Effectively, 5 "dead" magi.
ENTER SATAN: THE DOWNFALL OF HOUSE TYTALUS (961). Say, 20 dead people?
SCHISM WAR (1003 - 1012). Say 400 dead? I think the numbers would be much lower, but to play safe.
CONSTANTINOPLE FUN!! (1204): XXX dead magi
SHADOW FLAMBEAU (1200-ish): Skirmish war in Iberia. Several destroyed covenants and magical battles all over the place. Say, 20 dead magi.
Really, your list was great. At present, the about to be gauntleted PC's relationship with their masters is more-or-less undefined. Once we finish our gauntlet trip to calebais and they return, I intend to present the players with the list you wrote, and ask them to choose one or write their own.
A few more came to mind. The first was the aforementioned "passing on my legacy." The same reason magi "waste time" writing books, but in living form.
Social Pressure: Like the above, but because other people think you should be passing your knowledge to the next generation, not because you're on an ego trip. Probably not a great master-apprentice relationship.
To Grow the Covenant: In our saga, there's just so much going on at Semita Errabunda (a Dedicated Covenant) that the senior magi all invested 15 years in their apprentices, in the hopes that they'll stay on as junior magi. The senior magi would really like to have some youngins to respond to villagers' requests for aid, explore lesser mysteries of the regio, find new vis sources in the regio, deal with all the visiting magi and magical, divine, infernal, and fairie entities that keep wandering between the regio levels and/or stopping by as they travel the hidden pathway, etc.
The archtypes will be hugely useful in my campaign. I don't really see it as necessary to expand the list, as I'll be using them more like story seeds. In truth, each situation is probably as unique as the individual.
Wow, wish I had your job. Seemed quite detailed enough. This is gaming, not a think tank writing real-world policy recomendations based on the historical data analysis. I'll study it in detail later, but it looks like you covered the subject well.
About gifted populations - serf's parma, ArM5 says that the gift occurs in 1 in 10,000 individuals, but it seemed unclear as written if that is 1 in 10,000 births or 1 in 10,000 people alive in 1220. Slightly different, given magi lifespans.
Again, serf's parma, but there are about 1200 magi scattered across the 12 tribunals. Anyone have a rough population statistic for that area in 1220? That would give me a # of gifted, which I could divide (after subtracting for 1200 hermetics) into gifted hedge and rival-order wizards, undiscovered gifted individuals, etc.
I'm modelling it as unchecked exponential growth, assuming the average lifespans given in the simulations (which already assume that young magi die of accidents). This is back-of-the-envelope stuff, as I said; I just threw together some maths in Excel.
180 years of natural population growth from a foundation of 145 magi gives you around 800 magi.
795 magi.
Roughly 400 survivors at this point. They begin repopulating. Assuming the lower growth figure of 550% every 200 years, this gives us 2200 magi by 1220ish, which is clearly too high. In order to keep the numbers in line with canon, we have to assume that explosive growth stopped sometime around 1110-1120, and then simply tracked mundane population growth.
Assuming that this stuff didn't halve the Order's population, it's basically insignificant at this point.
The Pre-Schism bit works well, actually. Eerily well.
Regarding the Schism itself, your pulled-from-thin-air "play it safe" figure almost exactly meets my pulled-from-thin-air "make the numbers work" figure, which is fortuitous and suggests that we're on the right track here.
In the "modern day", the order is definitely at resource equilibrium. There's no way around it - natural explosive growth can't happen here without massive inflation of the number of magi. If it occurred in the early 12th century, as my numbers suggest, then the current oldest generation of archmagi were the last free-range apprentices. Since then, every apprentice has been precious, fought for and argued over, and then either doted on lovingly, or exploited mercilessly.
Which is quite playable, thinking about it.
If I don't fact check the world, then it's going to run on flawed assumptions. If it runs on flawed assumptions, then it's going to play oddly.
Besides, this is easy mode. I've had to bend L5R over and spank the stupid out of it; Ars Magica is a model of coherency and scholarship in comparison.
The second test, however, is whether my analysis actually works in the real world; and it's that test where most think tank documents fall short.
It's wikipdiea, take it with a grain of salt... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography
70-100 million people in Europe in the game period, during a period of population boom, but probably in the leveling off portion of that boom.
Just wanted to say, love this comment as well as "Constantinople Fun" which made me genuinely LOL. I keeo mentioning the 4th crusade, to occasional interest, and occasional groans of "enough history already!" from my troupe. Little do they know that the history is foreshadowing. Their little regio is tucked away in southern france. They've so far managed to stay out of the cathar crusade with a "don't ask don't tell" but that political house of cards will fall eventually.
(Note, I'm doing quick, back-of-the-envelope estimates. It could be calculated better if the estimates are acceptable, but I don't want to put in the time unless they're acceptable.) Well, lets say the average magus lives 120 years post gauntlet and trains (or join-or-die) an average of 3 apprentices for the earlier years. (Notice I dropped that significantly from what you had for the Founders.) If we start with 160 (middle of your suggested spread) in 817, then after 180 years we end up with close to 1000 magi. Let's lose about 40% (your 400) to the Schism War, leaving about 600 magi. Now let's drop the apprentice rate to 1.5 to reflect fewer outsiders to recruit since many groups have already been assimilated or destroyed. So we'll start at 600 and run this for 210 years. After 210 years we're very close to what we should get, the approximately 1228 current members.
Certainly there are lots of numbers to be tweaked. But that the numbers can work out reasonably without having anything really excessive is nice.
I ran a game set in Toulouse. The magi got very annoyed at the Albigensian Crusade tearing their stuff up.
Your numbers are good, but note that 1.5 apprentices per magus is low. They're going to be unhappy, especially the ones who want to expand in Tremere fashion.
Putting together the various other archetypes which people have suggested:
Xavi suggested the magical bloodline archetype: Having a student to pass on what you know. Similarly, humboldtscott suggested the passing on the legacy archetype. Both of these would probably use the same growth rates as my Wulfenbach: the apprentice is selected with great care, and taught demandingly but well.
ladyphoenix suggested the Ambition and Social Pressure archetypes. As she points out, different houses have apprentices for different reasons. Her Ambition and Tremere-style growth rates can probably be modelled using my Walder Frey archetype (multiple apprentices over time, taking care over each one); the Bonisagus one would use something closer to the Accessoriser, with an apprentice taken once one has some power, to show that you intend to pass it on. (The number below is an average of the two).
humboldtscott also mentioned the Grow the Covenant archetype, where a group of magi will all take apprentices at once. The way apprentices are looking pretty rare in my count right now, I would say that this might have been an archetype further back in history, but no longer - 4 or 5 suitable apprentices all being available, all at once, just when you want them, isn't really something that occurs in the modern age. Respectfully, humboldtscott, I'm going to leave this one out of my calculations for those reasons. I like it but I don't think it fits the world.
If we assume that all the archetypes
Abraham: 0.4
Accessoriser: 0.9
Ambition: 3
Apprentice Factory: 5.3
Atoner: 1
Doubler: 1.6
Magical Bloodline: 0.8
Passing the Legacy: 0.8
Social Pressure: 2
Walder Frey: 3
Wolverine: 0
Wulfenbach: 0.8
Assuming an equal split between all these archetypical parens types, this gives us an average of... 1.6. Which matches Chris's numbers very nicely.
Drum roll please. I think we have a solution.
With the number of roughly 60 million giving us 6,000 Gifted, it would appear that 1 in 5 Gifted are Hermetic. Which suggests that Intelligence and The Gift correlate extremely strongly, since there's no way that 1 in 5 people have a maxed-out Int if it's normally distributed. Even if we assume that Hermetics are twice as common because they live, on average, far longer than other Gifted traditions, that's still only 1 in 10.
To be honest, that fits my growing perception of the Order as having already maximised in size, and already having the mechanism for locating and acquiring every suitable apprentice in Christendom. It's nice when all the data points in the same direction.
Something else I wanted to mention - Xavi, Chris and I all work on numbers which assume that the Schism War was apocalyptic in proportion. 40-50% population loss would probably result in something like 20% of all covenants being abandoned, and the surviving ones being depopulated significantly. Lots of wonderful, slightly glowing ruins lying around, many of which would not have been repopulated (nobody knows they're there, or nobody wants to go there).
If before the schism war, Diedne was about 1/3 of the order, THat would explain a 40%-50% loss. Some houses lost less and some houses lost more in the war. I would say Jerbiton, Criamon, Verditius and Bonisagus had a lot fewer casualties than say Tytalus, Flambeau, Ex Misc, Tremere, Guernicus and obviously Diedne.
Not sure how Bjornaer and Merinta faired in the war. They could have hidden out and not taken part or they could have gotten caught up.
Bjornaer and merinita retreated. IIRC Njornaer did some covert ops in favor of diedne unider the idea that "onece the other non roman house is gone, we are next". ExMisc joined in the fray against the diednes according to old non canonical examples, specially in Scotland, but dunno where they will stand in 5th.
If diedne was so big maybe we should redo the numbers and make casualties amount to 50-60%
I remember someone saying that the Diedne were big, but I have difficulty believing a number as big as "half of the order by itself." However, I doubt we're going to get reliable numbers; I have argued elsewhere, and I hope persuasively, that I do not want canon information on the Diedne.
Therefore.
If it's as high as 60%, losing only one house becomes odd. How the Guernicus, being a True Lineage and a tiny one at that, being stuck in the middle of the fighting, survived is a little puzzling, but then real life always strains credibility a little bit too.
On the other hand, if it was as high as 60%, then we could go for a massive Marshall Plan-style postwar rebuilding, pushing all the houses back up to more reasonable numbers again. Which is hinted at in the books, especially the Tremere book.
(I suspect that, at this very moment, David Chart is looking at the numbers we're bashing here, then looking at his Super Secret Compendium Of All Canon Yet To Come, and laughing at our naivety. Either that or we're terrifying him.)
I agree it would be at best a rare case and not worth including in your calculations. Besides this motivation, each of these magi had their own personal reasons that fit into the suggested archtypes anyway. These are presently undefined; I'm going to let they players of these newly-gauntleted apprentices define their masters motivations somewhat.
The way I sold this all-too-convenient situation in my setting is that the covenant has the "dedicated" boon, so they potentially have the "pick of the litter" of new apprentices, as they get support from other covenants. Its in provenecal tribunal, for which I have no published books, so I don't have things defined the way say sundered eagle does for theban apprentices, and thus feel more license without adjusting the "canon" setting.
One of the senior (npc) magi is a Bonisagus, so he could take an apprentice from someone else. Another is an ex-misc; he brought in a gifted individual from outside (a distant cousin of the witches of thessaly) and gave her more of a crash-apprenticeship. The third is criamon, the fourth verdetius, and the fifth is an ungifted mythic companion redcap.
The criamon, ex-misc, and Boni are all pc's and are passing gauntlet at the same time. The redcap passed gauntlet a few years ago, and the gurnecus apprentice (an npc) started apprenticeship 5 years later than the others and failed out after 5 years, 5 years. So while there was a concerted effort, it took some time and effort to find suitable apprentices, and they didn't all find them in the same year.
Just this year, they have founded their first new gifted individual in 10 years. The redcap has been spending his two seasons for the last few years doing his usual redcap work, but also looking for gifted children in his travels through the Provenecal and Iberian Tribunal. This has freed up his former master from having to perform this task. He still hasn't found any suitably gifted children in Provenecal, but did find one in Iberia. This child is being closely guarded in the covenant while he is taught latin and arts liberalis. As yet, he hasn't been "claimed" as an apprentice.
I imagine that a lot of established covenants have this sort of arrangement, whether de jure or simply traditional. (In the 13th century, the line between the two blurs.) It might be another reason why the Greater Alps and Rhine tribunals restrict the founding of new covenants.
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the paucity of apprentices creates good story. It stops being a situation of "I will give this child a Hermetic education, for that is the greatest gift anyone can bestow" and becomes closer to "this child will be taught magic, by me or by another; the question is, how willingly will he come?"
Some story seeds that jump out at me:
A Tremere master is instructed to take another apprentice despite already having one and being too busy. When he protests, he's told, "If she doesn't get trained by us, another House will pick her up. Better an ally than a potential enemy. Do it." The two apprentices become close, and eventually become lovers. Decades later, with both now respected members of the House themselves, their relationship ends in acrimony and they begin plotting one another's downfall.
A Trianoma mage tours covenants, asking people about their apprentices and making notes on them in order to create an "a la carte" menu for his Bonisagus colleagues.
A Redcap commissions a magic item: A device which will locate the nearest Gifted person not protected by the Parma (to avoid accusations of scrying), in order to sell them to the highest bidder.
Two Verditius, involved in a long-running and enjoyable vendetta, begin purchasing Gifted children for training, trying to outdo one another on their extravagance.
A magus's new apprentice goes missing in a faerie forest, and despite a thorough search, cannot be found. Some time later, a Merinita at a nearby covenant has an unusually bright new apprentice themselves. The matter ends up at Tribunal, but what can be proven?
A Tytalus maga starts encouraging other wizards to cease taking apprentices, since "the child will be trained anyway; look to your own development rather than another's". Thanks to her oratory and disputation skills, she persuades many magi, including some scions of magical lineages that others would be worried to see die out.
An Ex Miscellanea master, the last of his particular tradition, is searching desperately for someone to carry on their ways. Eventually, with all other avenues exhausted, the Infernal offers a seemingly perfect apprentice...
A Jerbiton magus, faced with an apprentice with only mediocre intelligence, decides to open the Arts and then teach only artistic skills rather than magic. The debate rages - does this constitute legal teaching? Does this violate the apprentice's rights?
A Guernicus mage, tasked with finding an apprentice as part of the strict one-in-eight system in that house, is long unable to locate a suitable candidate. Then, suddenly, one is found, much to everyone's relief. Although that last Quaesitorial investigation did end very suddenly...
Following his master's death, a Flambeau knight errant embarks upon a great quest, ranging across Christendom... to find the family from which he was abducted at a young age and traded to a distant magus to serve as a surrogate child.
After a long session of riddles, a well-travelled magus from a large Autumn covenant converts to house Criamon to seek the enigma. In order to rid himself of distractions, he casts aside his travelling notes... including a long and well-researched list of Gifted children in the region which he was keeping tabs on, in order to sell off to other magi when they reached a mature age. This list, together with his other possessions, is given to his sodales at a covenant council. The scramble begins.
An elderly Bjornaer has been seeking an apprentice for some time. Eventually she finds one... but his temperament is badly matched to hers. While she should pass him to others who will train him better, she's waited too long for this chance and isn't going to give it up.
