My PC's covenant is very far out of the way from the Mundane world deep in a regio. They have done several adventures to get the resources to purchase slaves (For an adventure, they had a choice and decided to go to Cairo, and have found special regios around the Pyramids and Sphnix) and supplies for the covenant. Of course, now I'm wondering, what do they need? They literally need to get:
1.) Peasants for farms
2.) Tradesmen to maintain the covenant and make food
3.) Tradesmen to make the books/lab equipment
4.) Food/livestock to actually feed the covenfolk until the farming and animal husbandry gets going.
I think some of the base trades in the Covenants book are a good start, but:
5.) What should the farmer and sheperd/tradesmen ratio be?
6.) What kind of livestock is best to purchase? From what research I've done, sheep, chickens and cows are probably suitable to the covenant's terrain. (Grassland & forest)
Edited to add: The Regio itself is in Malta, and directly accessible (at least by those with second sight) from Gozo. Even selling things will be very difficult for the PCs.
What kind of magic are you using to increase productivity or save time on labour?
80% farmers to 20% tradesmen at a rough guesstimate. Farmers can be shepherds.
Sheep would be most cost effecive , afaik , but can you sell wool if you are in an egyptian climate?
What about transport to markets where it will sell?
I did read (somewhere) that you don't usually milk sheep that are used primarily for wool.
Wool makes more money than meat.
Got a market for eggs ?
Goats can be used for meat , milk or fibre (angora).
You got forest , make space for an orchard or provide timber for shipbuilding.
Ravenscroft, I clarified my initial post a bit. Thanks for your suggestions. I think the PC's will primarily be making money in chunks for their archeological discoveries and bartering for ancient books from Dragons they have encountered.
Vulcan's Favour
CrTe 29
R: Per , D: Sun , T: Ind
Pen +0 , Constant Effect
Constantly repairs the enchanted item , extending the item's life and returning it to usefulness.
The item always seems brand new.
(Base 15 , +2 Sun , +1 2/day , +3 environmental trigger: sunrise/sunset)
Consider getting items including this effect , and for other Forms , such as Herbam.
Will cut down on the need for tradesmen and replacing some lab equipment.
Lets take a modern example: mass-produced art. It took Escher lots of artistic talent to create the original, but then any monkey can mass-produce copies.
The enchanted item could be a work of war, a masterpiece. Once the Form is set, Vulcan's Favour only has to keep it as is without applying any intelligence to its work. If it wasn't Constant, then it would have to remember the Form and return to it and maybe you'd need Finesse.
For me, Finesse is required when you are changing the Form of the object, not when you resist changes.
That's convincing. I was thinking of repairing breakages rather than constantly preventing serious damage. If the item was nonetheless smashed I think repairing it would be more akin to creating a new item.
Except that curing does require finesse when done according to the detailed rules in A&A. It's only the older more abstract cure spells that work without it. Admittedly A&A is Rego rather than Creo, but craft magic makes no distinctions between the two so I'm not sure how you'd read one in.
Why are the details that important? I'd find a nice, out of the way village that hardly ever talks to the outside world and kidnap all of them. 1. It'll be a while before anyone notices and 2. You know they're self sufficient.
Also, the Covenants book has a nifty pair of pages on "Cost saving" (66-67) which goes over how many people you need to reduce costs (read: imports) to 0.
If you need more detail than that, google "medieval demographics." You'll get a few rpg-ready links in the first page, as well as some more scholarly articles.
The "curings" are the Chirurgy guidelines , basically Surgery as ReCo Craft Magic.
This is not the same as "older more abstract cure spells".
Those CrCo spells do not require Finesse rolls , regardless of being in the core rules , before A&A was written.
The A&A distinction is requiring separate spell guidelines for curing disease , not just healing a wounded body.
~10-1. If the regio is good for farming and/or minor magic is used to improve it, ~5-1.
If you use major magic to improve farming results and the regio is excellent for farming you can get down to possibly below 2-1.
If you have pretty much open options for the regio, then orchards might be preferable as a main focus as it requires less manpower if the climate and terrain are good. Creating "magic greenhouses" could also allow you to have perfect results just about all the time.
Chickens for eggs and cows for milk should probably be the starting point.
If the climate and terrain of the regio is suitable, magically supported wineyards could be a superior longterm source of income(a far more reliable income than archeology finds and book especially).
If the forest part is large enough or productive enough, then good timber is always in demand in the area.
And as always, as you´re on an island(or at least the regio entry is) and magic is great for building ships better and faster, that´s another way to use the timber.
I set up the rules using the Covenants book in a spreadsheet, and have found that according to the RAW, I only need about 1/3 of a covenant to be provision tradesmen and labourers to have no provisions costs. Still not sure how realistic that is.
Craft Magic is Rego, not Creo. In fact, all the way through Covenants it is called Rego Craft Magic, just to be clear.
Creo doesn't need Finesse to make something functional out of thin air, but HoH: S (Jerbiton chapter) has Ease Factors for Finesse rolls to make items of aesthetic worth with Creo.
The fiber you collect from goats is called cashmere, unless you have an angora goat in which case it's called . . . mohair. Angora fiber comes from angora rabbits. (My wife does a lot of handspinning)
Goats can also be used as light draft animals, and in some places this was fairly common. This level of farm management is probably beyond the scope of the covenant but if they can't get more traditional draft animals and don't want to rely solely on people it is an effective option.
For something really exotic , what about Shatoosh made from the down hair of the Tibetan antelope?
Leaving aside finding Tibetan antelope (gained at great expense from along the Silk Road).
Hermetic magic would be the only practical way to get the fibre , without killing the animal to do so.
Import some actual specialist weavers or have a high Finesse score with Puissant and a Major Essential Virtue (RoP: Magic , page 43).
Is this really the correct interpretation? HoH:S seems pretty clear that "When creating artificial objects the same level of Finesse is required as when using Rego to create them from raw materials" (p.60).
I like your interpretation better than mine but am still surprised.
Wasn't it related to the fact that artificial things are not platonic form in the magical realm but construct by the magi, hence the finesse roll when creating them from thin air, while creating natural thing always succeed but can be better if you do a good finesse roll?
My thoughts:
"Hey, this stuff sounds cool. I wonder if I can get some from Jo-Ann's Fabrics? What? It's illegal? RAVENSCROOOOOFT!!!"
I have to admit, though, I've spent a lot of time wondering what auras cover Asia. I'm pretty sure Buddhism is Divine, or at least can be. I have the horrible feeling this is some taboo topic, though, because I can't find anything in the archives on it.
I think there is little discussion because there is little evidence to base that discussion on. There's been some discussion of Cathars, a subject with more to work with, but it's hard for the topic to gain much traction: both sides (Cathars are supported by the Dominion or they aren't) can site a handful of precedents but there's nothing definitive to push the discussion in one direction or the other, it just languishes..
With Asian religion there's even less to go with. I could see Buddhism having a strong bias towards Magic but I think you could have a Divine element as well. Hinduism is trickier, in my opinion. Many of the gods would seem to fall in to the Magic or Faerie domains but I wouldn't discount a Divine element here either. I can't speculate on Chinese religions.
But I suppose at this point I'm getting off topic, woops.
