So, you are a competent Verditius. You have Elder Runes, an effective Philo of 8, an effective Magic Theory of 8. Enchanting your lab? No problem. You did that years ago. Now you are ready to enchant the whole Covenant! How does your previously enchanted lab work into that? Negated? Doubled up? No overlap?
Firsr, describe how you enchant the covenant.
Season one, build "lab" around Covenant. It will be crude, but I don't care about the Lab total, yes? Second season, Open Covenant. As per the Extended Material and Shape Chart (P.97, The Mysteries Revised Edition), I assume it will take 32 or 36 pawns to open (Huge * 1000 to Huge * 10000, Hard Stone). Seems simple enough.
Doable, but not very feasible. That's NOT many pawns for covenant wide enchantments, they'll go quicker than you think. Also you need to worry about warping from living inside your magic item. I think it would be better to make several really cool GEI (Greater Enchanted Items) that can be used when and where they are needed.
Has anyone ever calculated what the upkeep cost of a covenant sized lab might be? I'm AFB.
It's still a cool idea, though!
Sense? Feasible? That's not going to get you the Reputation you so deserve! As to the Warping, I don't think you would get any as long as the enchantment doesn't affect you (I mean, you are "around" a lot of magic, yes, but isn't that covered by the warping you would get for living in an Aura?)
As far as actual sense, maybe I don't want my legacy scattered when I die, as would be the case with "several really cool GEI"?
Have to say, it seems a waste of amount of vis able to invested in the season. I mean someone with 8x8 pawns that they can invest in a season...
I agree with Kuiti Itijin. Any constant effects will end up warping everyone/everything of the appropriate Form in the covenant.
A lab of such large size is going to have a big impact on Safety...
Ah, someone with dreams that large probably has Greater Philosophic Alchemy, so Vis shouldn't be a problem. As to safety, you have a real lab, why would you do anything remotely dangerous in the outside "lab"? (Also, any lunatic at this level should have several Magic Items for the Lab, adding to safety! So probably not as dangerous as you might think.)
You may want to check out Hermetic Architecture in The Mysteries - this allows you to use a regular lab to enchant the covenant.
I could see a Jerbiton ordering this from the Verditius. Want the coolest looking covenant on the continent? How about the five coolest looking covenants on the continent, because yours can change shape, color, architectural style, etc, like you'd pull on a new robe.
The possibilities really are endless, but I think you could still get the same effect from less cumbersome shape/form objects.
Ahh, Kuiti Itijin has it, it's an impact on Upkeep, not on safety. Although, I'd be willing to trade some safety for Upkeep if the players really want it.
The cost of the lab is increased based on size, not safety. It's Upkeep +1 for the Empty flaw, which should be taken for every two points that Size is above occupied Size. A Boundary x10 is 5005003.14 square paces. or 2,355,000 square feet or 4710 standard labs. The Final size of the lab is (2,355,000-1500/500)+5 or 4712. So, the Upkeep costs are: +2356 to the Upkeep score. Which amounts to 11,780 in Upkeep points. To build the lab, you need to come up with 11,780 mythic pawns. To maintain it for a year of standard use requires 1,1780 mythic pawns which is a grand total of 12,958 mythic pounds for the first year of operations.
Or you can split it between Health and Upkeep. 1178-Aging roll modfierier=Upkeep.
Sure. Have at it.
Hehe, wasn't there a recent thread that calculated the coolest covenant possible cost about 2k lbs/year to maintain? And you beat that with a single room!
Something off with those numbers, though. I doubt even Durenmar would need 2 million square feet of covenant. I bet most would get by just fine with 20-30,000, bringing the size (and upkeep) into real number range. Recall that while the lab has to be a single floor, the covenant inside it can be multiple stories tall, assuming the lab is tall enough. I bet this would be even easier to create magically, just need to invent the ritual with extra magnitudes for increased size, then cast with Ritual's Communion.
Also you won't be taking the Empty Flaw that gives -upkeep or health. There's an entire covenant inside it although your SG would no doubt come up with some other V/F besides Empty.
Sure, you would take Empty, since much of the space of the "lab" has nothing to do with the actual lab. The Upkeep modifier reflects the idea that covenfolk are constantly moving stuff around inside of the "lab" interfering with flow of mystical energies during the lab season requiring expensive ingredients to counteract such a situation.
I was planning on doing this in my last saga, though I was not so ambitious. My magus had a focus in vine plants, and conjured himself a large gourd to act as a tower/lab. The plan was to construct a building around it and get it enchanted; it was essentially made of wood, so the vis costs weren't incredibly large and the lab only really takes up the square footage of the ground floor, minus the square footage of the building contained (if your GM is generous).
I think some of ya'll are confused. The plan is not to turn the Covenant into a permanent lab. The only reason for the large "lab" is so that the Structure can be opened. The actual question, "What happens to the previously enchanted rooms" hasn't even been touched.
Yes, I am well aware of Hermetic Architecture, but I find it too hard to bother with, especially since it's unneeded here, and thought it would distract people from my question. Sigh.......
Yes, you could play with the size, but, again, not really an issue, and this avoids ST quibbles about what's part of the Covenant. 36 pawns is pretty much "boundary" (Say, outer walls and everything contained by them. Easy division, but in game terms and in role play terms.)
I don't think most covenants are singular structures... So you'd actually probably have to build individual labs around all the separate parts and enchant separately to cover the whole thing. The most widespread exception would be magic- and/or trade-sustained towers without any surrounding structures, but Hermetic Architecture is much easier to work with in this case.
(Also, a note: by most reasonable readings of the rules, the covenant would not count as part of the lab, so your gigantic lab would have tons of unoccupied space, which in turn lowers the Safety immensely. And before you counter that it's okay as long as you don't do anything risky, that's actually totally untrue; in an unsafe lab, you have to roll every season you do work in there, even work that's normally safe, just to see if you botch. So have fun either spending a decade installing Virtues or knowing that if you roll a 0 your chances of avoiding a botch will be so small that even my scientific calculator just rounds to 0. For all intents and purposes, you have a one in ten chance of botching.)
Well, first, the expanded Form and Material chart in Mysteries formally uses the term "boundary", so I assume that would cover everything in the boundary of the Covenant.
As to Safety, that was covered previously in the thread. Lots of easy "Safety" Magic Items to be made, and you don't need to spend a season "installing" them into your lab. Assuming a ST with an ounce of sense, there's going to be a top out point of "unsafe because empty". You can get a Safety score of zero.
Could we ignore that lab itself for a moment?
Sit down with Covenants for a bit, and you will find that it is trivial, but ends up with certain flaws and likely a large number of 'Empty' flaw-instances.
It is not what the OP was originally asking about, but again it is a fairly trivial problem, so no worries.
How did you enchant you lab in the first place? Technically, whatever you enchant must fit inside you lab, at the time of enchantment.
This can be solved in (at least!) 2 ways:
- Ignore that bit, "a Room is obviously inside itself".
- Build a room inside a room. I did this with one character (an NPC), who build a (slightly) smaller wooden room inside his lab, which he then enchanted to turn into stone and change size. Essentially he had a lab he could gather up and put in a pocket, inspired by Skíðblaðnir.
In the first case, there's potentially a problem, one which I would have prefered to avert earlier. You cannot invest a Room, because you must invest a whole item. to invest simply a single Room in a Structure would (to my mind) be akin to investing part of the blade of a sword, ie one edge of a double-edged sword. This I wouldn't allow either.
Mind you, once you have the lab surrounding your Structure, it should be fairly obvius how that part works.
I would echo this.
Sadly, I'm not buying this. The 'Boundary' reference in the Expanded Table is merely a description (and advice on how many extra magnitudes for size you'd need). I suppose it would be relevant if you decided to enchant the dirt inside a give Boundary, but I don't see how enchanting something big suddently allows you to ignore other fundamental rules of devices.
Do you by any chance remember this thread? And within that thread, perhaps this post?
One of the two examples given of enchanted structures in Mysteries Revised is Trajan's Arena (P.99 Ar Mag. MR, sidebar), and the quote is "An arena is roughly a standard Boundary 100 paces across", so I think Boundary is quite allowable, as is enchanting the dirt within the boundary. As to ignoring other rules of Magic Item Creation, those rules allow one to enchant multiple elements as one, up to a limit of Magic Theory. So I don't see why I wouldn't be allowed to enchant the Covenant boundary, and include the dirt, stone, whatever as one of my elements. To do this gloriously stupid stunt, I, by definition, have to have a high Magic Theory. I should easily be able to cover dirt, stone, another type of stone or two, and two or three types of wood, mortar, and brick, easy, just like I could a staff with a bunch of different gems. (Oh, there's a reason to do this! Make the Covenant my Talisman!)
Wait, you're using that logic to justify the ability to enchant everything?
You'll be enchanting the people too...
Make sure nobody leaves! 
... Or jumps.
EDIT: Although the above is a joke, it does bring up a real point: If any part of the covenant is damaged in a significant way, you risk losing all your work very easily. What's that, some grogs got too rough in wrestling training and put a hole in the wall? Say bye bye to vis, months or years of enchantment, and probably the covenant's most reliable defense. And they're grogs, they'll find a way to reach new levels of incompetence and ruin everything.
An arena is a discrete structure.
A covenant is a collection of buildings, at the very least...