Doesn't our knowledge of Latin give us some level of understanding of all the Italian dialects?
They would all be at -3 from Latin as well. I only looked up Veneto-Istriot because I assumed it would be closer.
Allright. It bears saying it here. The Spring Journey to Europe quest started in June 2022. We're in March 2023. I'm purposefully avoiding interacting with Malachi, as he gets on my nerves, for the most part. And I'm not frankly motivated to make lenghty interactions with random mundanes every time we land somewhere. We're extremely far from our goal, and at this point, I'm concerned we'll still be in Spring 1290 looking for our Perfecti in Provence sometime in 2024. Just putting it out there. I wish we could fast-forward the details and focus on the investigation.
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I'm sorry for any part I have to make it slow down. As things got slower and slower, I got worse about checking up on the thread - I sometimes miss a day or two because I don't expect anything to change or progress here.
We are having lots of 'travel' interaction that can be fun in a more active (In person or voice) game, but on a slower posting game makes things take much longer to progress. I admit I stopped expecting this game to progress significantly before we even went onto this adventure (Probably around the time Argentius died.)
As far as Malachi, he's a classic 'crazy faerie child', so I can see why you don't like him.
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Given that I am not a covenant member, there is even less for me to do. I am patient and I do read the posts -- though I often miss days.
In other words, I agree w/ @temprobe that we are going a bit slow, but I was not sure whether that was just the nature of the PbP.
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While I can understand questioning us if he suspects we're spies, this sentence feels very anachronistic to me. As far as I understand it, the modern concept of border security didn't really apply in the middle ages. Passports date mostly from the 15th to 16th century. Even when they were invented, it took several centuries before they became established usage in Europe. Identity documents were not really a thing either. Even nobles from a distant land would probably rely only on heraldry and wax seals, which would be difficult to validate outside their country. You basically could only tell if someone was who he was if you grew up alongside him in the same village. Anyone else you met outside their own town, you pretty much had to rely on what they said to you.
For the most part, in the middle ages, the closest thing to border security would be paying your toll for crossing a bridge or river toll. As far as I know, entering an area outside of a poll station wasn't illegal per se, which is why so much effort was made to place tolling stations in strategic areas that can't be easily avoided (e.g. bridges). Even then, those tolls charged were mostly for the purpose of maintaining the bridge and port infrastructure and were a source of income, not really an identity control exercise. The greatest stop to the one kind of travel which was discouraged (runaway serfs) was in fact their inability to pay tolls to travel overland a great distance. Any travelers who had the ability to pay was welcome to travel - in fact many nobles spent their life constantly moving about, and nobody bothered them much. So did merchants.
Most places probably wouldn't keep any sort of records over who paid their tolls at a gate, although some exceptions may exist, they would be few and rare. Because you didn't want to have to pay a scribe to run the tollkeeping, basically. It was simpler to collect the money and send it to the lord. I find it quite doubtful any guard captain has the resources to question all ships on the island as to whether we came on that ship. Even if he has the ability to do so (all ships on the island are grounded?), I very much doubt there is such a thing as a law preventing a small, private ship from coming ashore on a beach in most places of the world at that place in time. You're thinking about westphalian borders... which weren't a thing until Westphalia, basically. There were more worries over highway bandits and the costs of tolls than whether you had the right to visit the next town. I find it hard to believe Sicily spent so much effort to maintain airtight borders when it waited until the 19th century to have a proper census. Without that, you can't even tell whether someone living in your town was born on the island without gathering witnesses from the town they claim to be born in. If they moved in after their birth... you took them at their word or you didn't. There is no such thing as legitimate traveling or illegitimate traveling in the Middle Ages. You either could pay, or you couldn't. You either could find free hospitality (pilgrimages), or you couldn't. But either way, unless you were a leper, or believed to spread the plague, no one would stop you if you could pay the tolls.
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Ships logs were a feature of travel well before the 11th century, and Sicilly kept port records for commercial reasons back during the years of Norman rule, using money of account where a ship's captain would simply pay or receive the balance before departure. Certainly I would expect better records to be kept during wartime- I would not call it highly effective border security- as the man himself noted it would be trivial to slip in along the northern shore, but if they have a suspect who chose to elude leaving records it would certainly look more suspicious than someone who signed the books at the port of entry.
Of course sending messages and actually checking those log books might take days and whether they are going to go through the effort to actually check them is another matter.
Hi oak. Thanks for replying. Is your thread "motivating re: companions and grogs" related to this game?
Not so far, its more of a general issue- this game so far everything has been of a level of importance that required magi involvement either for logistical reasons or political (for example the Cathar covenfolk needed to see the mage's commitment to helping them, though it probably could have been handled with fewer magi more effectively. That however would be more of the tendency to have "avengers assemble" for every single issue instead of letting individual heros handle things. Also it could have been broken out into individual games- one to handle magvillus, another to go to Sicily, a third to handle the adventurer's guild in Alexandria instead of trying to string everything together into one adventure.
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Finally someone recognises Plasmatoris for the mastermind he really is. He has us all fooled too!
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Someone should buy some original Plasmatoris art pieces while you're on the continent and bring them back so we have a standard to measure the new Plas's progress as an artist.
I think we have enough problems with the law in Sicily that we should avoid bringing a church roof or wall home 
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I admit Plasmi has some ideas to get a hold of the other Plasmi's work.
He'll forget these goals in a few hours.
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@silveroak Did our brief modern-world studies and research tell us anything about how different cities and areas react to magi and mystical things? I don't think so but I wanted to ask.
Also, sorry I was slow on responding this weekend - my brother is in town and my father went through a hospital stay for a bad fall.
No, they did not.
Thoughts with you and yours. Health issues are tough as we all have experienced.
Assuming that at some point the expedition meets up with Luc, I'm brushing up on the character and back story.
@temprobe made a reference in his last post:
Just want to confirm that the person they are seeking isn't Luc himself, right? From what I recall and reviewed in the character thread, Luc has no prior experience with Al Kufra.
Please jog my memory if something adjusted in transit.
That is correct, but Luc is in the area where they would be looking for the part covenant member, as opposed to say somewhere in Provence or Andorra...
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Looks like a two birds with one stone situation forming. Way to go You might as well give them Grand Tribunal vote commitment.
We've now hit the 1 real-time year mark on this adventure, so the likelihood of us getting to a Grand Tribunal point in the story is fairly slim... barring some other weird time-wonky magic.
LOL