Which would directly contradict the prior paragraph, which hasn't been changed by any errata, and further support the 12/18/36 theory.
Assuming the 9 to be the better option makes it so that a Wealthy person gets dramatically more money for the same amount of work than a Poor person, rather than just the Wealthy person having more time in the year and indirectly permitting a greater income if they put in more time.
Well, I would suggest that you point that out to David Chart as an additional erratum. Either eliminating "for one-quarter of his annual income" or substituting text so that it flows better with the next line.
I agree, it's a contradiction, but the errata clearly states (and your link to the forum discussion doesn't nay what the errata states in any way) that you replace the entire paragraph. I think it leaves it in worse shape to have a wealthy person work another season, earning 36 labor points earning only £5, while a poor person earns 12 and also earns £5. I'd much rather see that someone who is Wealthy who works another season gets £20.
Also, there would be no reason for a Wealthy person to work more, except to accumulate labor points and not material wealth.
It's repeatedly stated that Wealthy only means that the individual has more free time, and is not indicative of greater income; which would be contradicted if a Wealthy person working an extra season got four times as much as a Poor person. Accumulating labor points to eventually buy into the next income bracket is a justifiable goal. Following the 12/18/36 suggestion results in a Wealthy person making less per season than a Poor person that's in the next income bracket higher, which only further shows that the current errata is inferior to the 12/18/36 set up.
Because I forgot to respond to this earlier.
Because not everyone has access to £120 of product. Not everyone has access to a pile of product that wasn't previously in the market, and therefore less likely to be noticed by those enforcing the laws against commodity speculation. I don't think it to be a matter of perfect knowledge for a merchant to know the concept of commodity speculation.
That is true, Wealthy means more free time, to pursue other interests. A Wealthy character has more free time, and he can invest that free time in his business. Investing it in his business, accumulating labor points is a bit different than converting those labor points into material wealth. Interestingly, if he, or anyone of any wealth level, earns labor points in a season for the purposes of converting it to material wealth they lose the labor points, unlike his standard work practices (he gets money and he accumulates labor points). So, Wealthy doesn't mean has more money, it means he has more options. One option is he could have more money because he could choose to invest his free time into selling his services.
I'm not following this statement:
A Wealthy person always makes their income in one season. A Poor person always makes their income over three seasons. They, the wealthy, never earn less per season than the next income bracket. 10 in one season versus 20 in 3, or 20 in one season versues 40 in 3, or 40 in one season versus 100 in three, and so on. Now, the 12/18/36 suggestion, as you call it, just means that if a Wealthy person works another season, he doesn't get as much material wealth out of additional seasons. Which means, he should just accumulate LP until he has 1200 and can jump to the next income band at average wealth...
Then you're wanting a Wealthy person to be better off than a Poor person an income bracket higher than them. You seem to be misunderstanding the math here, because it's the yearly income that means more than seasonal. Let me spell it out for you...
Wealthy Minor = £20 for one seasonErrata = £40 for two seasons, £60 for three seasons (both £20/season)
12/18/36 = £25 for two seasons (£12.5/season), £30 for three seasons (£10/season)
Poor Lesser = £40 for three seasons (£13.33/season)Errata = £53 for four seasons
12/18/36 = £50 for four seasonsDo you not see how the 12/18/36 results in a nice continuum of improvement between the income brackets? The errata creates a major disjoint with legitimate incentives for once you're Wealthy to not spend your Labor Points on improving your business until you skip straight to Wealthy in the next income bracket.
Do you not see that under the original method a Wealthy person who has a minor income level who invests only 5 pounds of silver gets 36 labor points? Considering that a Wealthy individual at minor income essentially earns his 20 mythic pounds could reinvest his entire disposable income back into the business and turn it into [strike]720[/strike] 144 labor points (20 mythic pounds x 36 labor points/ 5 mythic pounds). And he could work another 3 seasons, accumulating another 108 labor points for a total of [strike]828[/strike] 252 labor points. [strike]Do it for another [strike]year[/strike], and all of a sudden he has 1656 labor points which is enough to put him at the next income level, upgrade his Poor to Wealthy (480 labor points) and still have 96 labor points available.[/strike] Do all that for 6.25 years and you have enough to move up an income level and be wealthy in that income level.
Like I said before, this table is best used to determine how much labor points you get for investing extra capital into the business (the section is money and investment). Since Ars Magica blatantly ignores money, most of my games do as well, so whether someone works for another season and gets 20 or 5 mythic pounds is largely irrelevant. What is important though is does it make sense that after two years of hard work, someone who is Wealthy can move to the next income level of wealth faster than they normally could by focusing on building their business (working more seasons and accumulating LPs) simply by investing their disposable income into the business.
Edited to add:
Of course Poor and Average move up to the next income level much more slowly, because their contributions of capital to their labor points are worth much less than a Wealthy person's, which shouldn't be the case, either. The idea is that if you have 9 labor points 1/4 of the average labor output of the average individual for a year equal to 1/4 of mythic pound income you can do much more reasonable calculations to determine how fast one could advance.
All of his disposable income is 144 Labor Points, not 720; because it's 36 Labor Points/£5. That makes your example require six years of never spending disposable income and working four seasons out of the year, which will give them a Miser Reputation of 2 at the minimum (maybe 3, the guidelines aren't clear).
If you treat Labor Points invested directly into the business as experience, and require Labor Points to be spent as you get them (no waiting in queue for years until you decide what to buy with them), then that gets around the issue of the Wealthy miser skipping Poor and Average when he breaks the income bracket by saving his Labor Points to take advantage of the better multiplier. I'm not sure whether the book states that to be the case or not.
Yes, you're correct, I forgot to divide by 5.
6 years. Hmm, nothing wrong with that, either. 
That's not really my point, but was really exemplary of the idea of accumulating labor points as you suggest, albeit at a vastly reduced level than I miscalculated.
The RAW, going by the example of Toby is that labor points are accumulated and spent, as desired, by the player.
Going back to your example, the merchant wishes to enrich himself with the salt given to him by the magi. If the merchant were to take the full £120 and incorporate it into the business you are creating a narrative of an asset that is no longer liquid, the salt might be collateral to letters of credit against other interests, and thus unable to be liquidated when the magi want their money. Whether it is 12/18/36 or 9 (the actual RAW now, as per the errata) labor points being bought by 5 mythic pounds is irrelevant to the matter at hand, how much money can he get back out, when the magi come back asking for it. By your understanding the most he could liquidate in a season is 1/4 of his income level. Even under what I understand the RAW to be, 9 labor points per 5 mythic pounds, a Wealthy person would only be able to liquidate 20 pounds in a season. So, whether it is 5 pounds or 20 pounds, you're still well short of what the magi are expecting. Your answer might be to take a draw, and you could, but keep in mind that the Drawing is designed to take a single item, and while it might be valuable, it may not be anything close to what the magi want, it's not something that they can turn around and "spend" on their expenses. My suggestion, to incorporate the greedy narrative, is to skim a bit more, rather than he try and invest all the salt into his business.
Thanks for this exercise, it's demonstrated why I've had so many problems with City & Guild, reading and understanding it. It's a mess. I certainly don't find that he can put £120 into his business as labor points and be able to liquidate those to repay the £96 that they are expecting the moment that they arrive. Putting anything into the business is a long term investment. Undoing that is difficult and painful, and really doesn't benefit the character in anyway (a greedy character wouldn't do this). He's much better of skimming, saying that, no, sorry, You only realized £90 in sales, not £96.
Prokui's research into going to the Moon is going to hit a snag in Autumn of 1227, which is coming up soon. He investigated a piece of star-metal for Insight, which he'll use to invent an extreme version of Seven League Stride (ReCo 55); when he stabilizes the success, it will give him 7 Warp and send him into Twilight for 7 years (Warp Score 9 will do that); eventually coming back with a Twilight Scar and Flaw. The current decision I'm working with on that is his casting sigil is dramatically magnified and his touch/footsteps leave behind glowing moonlight for a time.
The question is what should it look like to the outside world. Should he just disappear and the party wonders why he isn't answering the door when it's time for the annual Council Meeting? Should there be a gratuitous lab explosion showing off his 'departure', and possibly leave behind a body while in Twilight (and if so, should it transform)? How much of his work should be destroyed if we go with the more destructive Twilight episode?
What about tying the evidence of Twilight to the phases of the moon? Something along the lines of his body gradually appearing and disappearing in sync with the new and full moons.
As of right now, Olrox is still in Neufchâteau as a kind of 'resting grounds' in between wide-area murder. He specifically avoids the Covenant because the Aegis was enhanced the last couple times he tried to enter it and the magi within killed its 'master'; he's a coward at heart, and firmly believes the players are enough of a threat to not be worth the effort.
Meanwhile, the old infernalist was originally a Strigae and was grooming a number of disciples, his lessons obviously cut short. At least one apprentice has some skill, one or two points in Debauchery, Effusion, and Phantasm; and has managed to make a sanctum within the castle have a perfidious infernal aura of 9 by 1228 through discrete rituals, and the rest of the castle is still at 4.
Based on the most recent events, how concerned should the players be in regards to their Oath? As I don't want the Infernal to be overly dominating the campaign, I'm going to avoid adding more threads. Which means no Mulhidun presence or plotting-oriented demons. Any further threat needs to be restricted to what can be brought to bear by the handful of surviving Strigae and the effects from the aura itself. Potential survivors, being human and thus able to exercise patience, can spend time 'underground' to marshal their power and not make an appearance until a decade+ from now.
This is totally a YSMV thing. Having a conversation about what the players want and the direction they want to go is necessary here, because almost everyone who responds to this would have a different answer, and they might even have different answers that are a function of the sagas that they are currently playing or planning. One can almost always come up with a story justification that is reasonable on why they didn't violate the Code or no one found out about the violation or deemed it insignificant in light of other threats and concerns.
The player for Ehren has recently spent the last two in-game years running around with the rough equivalent of seeking donors, but this time trying to find teachers and people willing to attend (or send people to attend) an urban school in Andresina. Rather than doing a bunch of checks and stuff, we just treated his behavior as a business (travel expenses paid by the covenant) until he reached a certain score in the ability we felt comfortable with. The current decision points are whether the covenant will want to build a lecture hall for Ehren's new school (dedicated teaching lab), housing for the students, and how many of the covenfolk could get away with being teachers for a time - Elisabeth is a phenomenal teacher, and Disrun's familiar Lynn is better than Ehren's Q16 teaching score (and can teach up to 40 per season).
As the Storyteller, I need to decide how many teachers Ehren can successfully rope into working for his new school, how skilled they are (and their expected salary), how many students he can get to enroll, cost of tuition he can get away with (£.25/year?, does this include room & board?), etc. From what I can tell, a standard curriculum for an urban school is five years (30xp Artes, 30 Philosophae, 15 Latin). If a student's curriculum is one season of lecture by a teacher, one season of personal study, and two seasons of general exposure from free time...then Ehren (for example) can provide the same level of education in only three years, assuming he acts as a teacher for 30 students one season out of the year (two years if he teaches the same 30 students two seasons out of the year and forces them to give up a season of free time). I'm thinking that Ehren can attract students by offering the same quality of education in only 60% of the usual time frame, so long as he keeps the overall student body small enough.
Setting questions include whether there will/should be issues with the Order for the covenant interfering by funding/supporting Ehren's school (he is covenfolk and without the Gift), whether there's going to be competition for a school of likely 170 students run by independent/unlicensed scholars, if the covenant's overall wealth (they spend £120/year, have 75 people, 21 of which are exceptionally strong soldiers, and semi-control a town of 150) will be attracting mundane attention and threaten Andresina's allod status, what kind of shenanigans should arise from the school, and the general question of whether I'm missing something.
Whelp...we don't need to dig into that rabbit hole of scholastic management any more. Ehren just got smacked by a 13 year old with a triple 1 attack (another player pulled out the One Punch Man theme song). There's potentially going to be some fallout with the kid's family, who are Jewish money changers from the neighboring town, since he was sworded rather thoroughly by a Black Cloak. But the school itself just lost its "dean" & founder after not even two years of operation, so its impetus is gone.
The player of Ehren had previously been considering dropping Joseph Miller due to a lack of interest in the character and events surrounding him. He's unsure of what to make so far, but if I had to guess, it will likely be related to mentalism or human enhancement.