I am running a campaign for a group of Ars Magica newbies, and one of them is playing a tremere.
Do people have any cool "one-shot" story ideas for what the local exarch would get them to do?
I have so far:
Train a turb.
Get a certain preist appointed to the local benfice.
Recover a McGuffin (but I am totally drawing a blank on what) for a long term Tremere plan.
For context the covenant is quite poor, set in Cambridge and stereotypically they joined just before the last maga went into final twilight, so they can discover how the system works. I need to balance this person's story with the others so for a one off nothing too complex, but more detailed ideas can be seeded now so I want those as well!
Gather arcane connections to odd stuff (locations, people, items...). They can often be trivia, or quite hard (sneak into a certain sanctum and get an arcane connection to there, and if possible an arcane connection to the owner), then fix a few of them.
Analyse visited Covenants, report their magi detailing their aims and current activities and draw assault plans, just in case.
In general, set up resources (physicial and immaterial) and gather information.
Set up resource locations for use by the vexillations
Report rumors of Gifted children
Stablish good relations with local mundane factotums. If he does it well, he will get bigger fish to fry later on.
Write a tractatus on something.
Keep an eye on certain people that interest the tremeres.
Align the interests of his own covenant to the interests of the tremere, guiding their intentions in the same direction as what interests the tremeres. Do that in a way that endures the welfare of the covenant so they are willing accomplices.
The tasks would usually be suitable for the magus' specialties:
Escort a valuable mundane from point A to point B.
Find something that was stolen.
Discover what happened to a mundane/caravan/creature.
Collect a secret vis source for the House (perhaps under the nose of another covenant).
Oversee and guard a group of mundanes as they perform a task for the House (build a bridge, clear a road) under some sort of threat (faerie forest, mundane war). This can be done openly, or may require some level of secrecy.
"Neutralize" a reported threat (and perhaps find out that it was misidentified)
Hunt down and harvest something from a creature but leave it alive (renewable ressource)
Hunt down and capture a creature for the experiments of another magus (maybe not member of the House)
Explore a location that may be useful to the House (a site to establish a covenant or chapter house)
Clear out and deliminate an area for a military exercice, making sure no "civilian" is nearby
Assist a senior Tremere in arbitrating a military exercice
Test out a new military doctrine or equipment (e.g. an enchanted item) to see how well it works in real-life conditions (e.g. underwater operations, winter conditions)
Sometimes the task can be longer term and more complex, requiring the young Tremere to do stuff in some areas that he has neglected so far. For example, he may need to learn a spell outside of his specialties before he can perform the task, before X seasons have passed (this may first require him to improve the relevant Arts before he can learn the spell, or perhaps secure a lab text from someone else).
Make sure the tasks you're giving them are commiserate to the sort of support they can expect from the house. Some things from my game (assuming the tremere every year could ask for a Q10 or Q12 training source, which was good in my game).
Open an item for enchantment. We're mass producing Staves of Awesomeness. We'll reimburse you the vis.
Travel to the shipwreck near your covenant and scavenge up as many ghost ACs as you can get. you don't need to bind the ghosts, just find us ACs and we'll do the rest.
Make sure this letter gets delivered to the Duke's cousin. He's had an interest in scholarly education for his son and we can... provide a good teacher.
We need a minor faerie people-eater in this barony to be destroyed without our known Tremere to do it. We want the locals to feel we are protecting them from such minor threats. Make it look like there was a local highwayman instead, we don't want them knowing a faerie slipped through our defenses.
After a certain point, the Tremere player started doing their own 'missions' without being asked, and sent the results to their Exarch. Only once a Tribunal or so were they asked to do specific tasks, once they started doing things on their own. The key for this was that most of the time, the tasks could be done as adventures (which gave xp rewards) or wouldn't take the entire season (or both). This way the Tremere player doesn't have a time-xp penalty for being his house. Instead, he has a plot-adventure tax.
