For maintaining a manor house I doubt we need a "full-time" mason. I know there are cost savings to have one based on the rules in Covenants but it seems very little work most of the time with periods where something needs to be fixed requiring a couple people even if it's laborers helping the skilled mason. If we had more extensive buildings or walls it seems it might be a different issue or if we were further from a town but neither of those things are true.
Taliha is fine with the priest teaching from his church. She's not so sure about the other magi being fine with it but, hopefully, they will bite their tongue to learn the language.
An additional thing I was thinking, if our manor house straddles the boundary of the aura which is just on the hill itself, we may want to place something to mark a boundary that would include all of the house and at least enough of the hill to encompass the Hypogeum for use as our Aegis Boundary. Would a series of purposefully placed marker stones do the trick?
For just maintaining, no, but it is quite plausible to keep extending for the next ten years ... and after ten years even an idling mason is part of the furniture.
You are not going to just write us a book about it? Maybe not, you weren't the good teacher, were you?
Seriously, Marcus happy about taking classes in the Church. He is easy-going enough.
Doesn't the circle walked up during the ritual count as the boundary in itself? Or is that just a legacy interpretation from 3ed?
Not by my reading of the boundary target, I believe it must be a man-made or natural boundary of some sort previous to casting. IIRC, Durenmar uses some boundary stones, which they made larger to capture the tree that gives Perdo Vis within their Aegis.
The hill, and the area of the charter, both make adequate boundaries. It needs to be definable, not physical. Though boundary stones around the edge of the charter area aren't a bad idea anyway.
I don't think a legal charter makes a boundary unless there is a physical boundary marker like "edge of the forest" or a river. I would agree that the hill itself is a suitable boundary but that is a level 6 aura so if the house is partly outside the aura it's partly outside the boundary of an aegis that uses the hill as its boundary.
I'd prefer to make the aegis encompass all of the land grant. Boundary stones seem fine. I don't see a particular problem with it being bigger than the aura, makes it a little harder to cast but it's worth it to have more comprehensive coverage.
Do any of us know Aegis? or can one of us invent one? Low level as it might be, though I guess Ritual minimum is 20. Trying to find a copy of Aegis of the Hearth seems even more iffy w/r/t "keeping a low profile" than buying books or lab equipment.
the priest will teach one season per year- he is otherwise engaged the rest of the time, at a price of 1 MP. His SQ as a teacher is 9 unless you limit the class to 2 students, in which case it goes up to SQ:12 (15 for one student).
Guccio is able to get you both lab texts within a single season at a price of 2 pawns of vis.
by canon there are 3 arts for which there are no roots- for this saga (I rolled this randomly) the three are herbem, terram, and corpus. the reason there are no roots is that there are relatively low level sound summae well enough known that nobody as bothered to write the roots- for herbem this is a level 8 Quality 23 summae which sells for the traditional 8 pawns of vis called "Garden Magic" the other 5 roots he can get you for a total of three pawns of vis. by convention the roots are literally named "the root of all (art)", and these are all 5/15 books except Im which is a 6/21.
The lab equipment can be delivered in the summer. the ship does pass Palermo, the Augustinians are willing to pay 650 MP per pawn.
the voyage can easily find 4 servants (especially if you aren't as picky as some about backgrounds) who speak the required languages. mercenaries abound as well. You are able to find the servants and grogs with nothing more than a 1 pound finders/hiring fee per person (one time cost on top of wages)
We bank the remaining 117p with Guccio, with the instruction to procure more summa for us, primarily Cr/Re/Te. If costs are varying wildly, I will give him options to get other arts first (Me/Co/Mu/Pe/Vi/Ig). When does he think these can be delivered?
Marcus spends 1p Vim for the other lab text.
Further, we spend
£4 to recruit four mercenaries
£4 to recruit two North Italian and two Sardinian maids.
£15 to equip three labs
Leaving us with £627. Can we carry that to the caves on Malta without too much risk and trouble?
yes, plus the 175 pounds from archemedies
meanwhile have you settled on a building layout? You will hae 30 points of inhabitants at this point and presumably want to expand, a typical manor house holds 10 points of inhabitants, this can be multiplied for either quality or size by multiples (either one, and they multiply together) of 2,5,or 10- so a large(x2) superior (x2) manor house can house can house 40 points of inhabitant. Plus of course you have the caves... with 2 sanctums chosen that would house 10 points, perhaps more later...
I think we should go with a large superior manor house. Mundanes in the caves will get warped. If we can bump it to the quality above superior that would be even better, we have the money for it; though maybe we won't be able to find good enough people to build that.
My vote is for a square cloister garden surrounded by two-storey buildings, possibly including the cave entrance in the garden. It should be fairly large in this case. I have no idea how big that is in points, or how big your points would be in square metres or square feet.
Practically, I assume one would build one side at a time, building only the sides needed in the first stage.
The answer is no, we have not decided, and Archimedes and Marcus do not agree.
30 pts = 3 magi x 5 + 4 grogs x 2 + 4 servants x 1 + 1 Julia x 3, I suppose.
I'm on board with the cloistered garden idea. I'd suggest we make a wall to match the grant (but not a fortified wall that might get us into trouble - something that would be a wall merchants would build to prevent theivery, rather than a crenellation) and make one side (or more) of the wall a building. I'm looking at various pictures where the building is built in a square and surrounds the garden, but in our case if the whole square was "building" that's probably way more space than we need, but it can always be expanded later. And we can build "cottages" for above-ground labs.
