Two problems with that. Continuous magical effect. And the +3 size for boundary is free, baked into the guideline and doesn't actually affect the final level of the spell.
I think it does. Base 3 spell + 1 touch +4 year = lvl 20 spell. It gets to 35 by adding +3 size. If it is just +1 size then it is lvl 25. But the continuous effect would gain the warping in any case.
It's Base 1, +1 Touch, +4 Year, +4 Bound, +1 size (for a total size of +4, but +3 of that is free from the guideline). Getting the spell up to level five, take Year or Bound (I'll say Year) +4 and add it to the base, for a full first magnitude total. Touch adds 1 magnitude, Boundary adds 4 more, and size adds another one for +6 magnitudes, making the final spell level 35th level.
I see. i read the wrong column when it switched pages on my PDF.
Entirely agree: What matters for the magic and the warping are the form, the target and the Target. In this case, form = Herbam, target = crops, and Target = boundary.
I just realize that this, luckily, implies that the Aegis doesn't warp the covenant by itself. Right after I asked myself the question "My god! Do the Aegis warp the covenants???". Well, in a way, it does, by affecting the Aura, but that's all.
Wonder when the beans are gonna talk back to us 
Taking a small break, dematerialisation is horrible
Finally ready to submit a finance report on covenant expenditures, using the rules from chapter 5 of Covenants! Hooray, you can stop holding your breath now. All feedback and corrections welcome. Since some of these numbers change over time, the calculations below are based on the year 1223.
The first step is to calculate "points of inhabitants". We're living large like a Summer covenant (bonus of 2 to our aging rolls), as are all the covenfolk, so we're using the last two columns of the table on page 63.
7 magi: 70
2 companions: 10
10 specialists: 30
12 craftsmen: 36
47 grogs: 94
41 horses: 31
3 dependents (age 5 and over, not working): 6
58 servants*: 116
41 teamsters*: 82
Total points of inhabitants: 485
- minimums according to Covenants rules
With this number in hand, we can calculate annual expenditures (in pounds of silver per year). While the rules might say to round everything to the nearest whole number, it's precisely as easy for my spreadsheet to round to the nearest tenth (which is to say, keeping all divisions by 2 or 5 or 10 exact).
Buildings: 48.5
Consumables: 97.0; reductions from candlemaker -3.0, cooper -3.5
Provisions: 242.5; reductions from beekeeper -3.0, stablemaster -3.5, vintner -5.0
Wages: 97.0; additional wages (penny per day) for each grog and Gunnar +48.0
Writing materials: 10.0; reduction from percamenarius: -5.0
Laboratories[sup]1[/sup]: 7.5; reductions from Chastity -20%, glassblower -20%, toolsmith -20%
Weapons and armor[sup]2[/sup]: 13.8
Sundries[sup]3[/sup]: 1.0
Tithe to the bishop: 500.0
Total annual expenditures: 1037.3
[sup]1[/sup] This is a tedious calculation based on the Upkeep of each lab and the number of seasons in use; the figure given is for 1223.
[sup]2[/sup] To make things simple, I said that there are 50 expensive weapons, 50 standard weapons, 50 standard shields, and 50 full suits of expensive armor at Mons Electi.
[sup]3[/sup] I didn't list any expenses (or income) from stories. For example, don't Fiona and Marcus gather some gold in 1223.4? I also didn't list any special purchases (gems for enchanted items, for example).
Also, one counterintuitive note to those who have bothered to build an intuition on these rules in the first place. Often we think "hey let's hire a bunch of craftsmen" for reducing expenditures. But because our craftsmen have such a high standard of living, this is not nearly as effective as one might think. If we were to acquire a "common" craftsman with Craft Ability score 6, we essentially break even; if their craft score is less than 6, it even costs us money overall! For "rare" craftsmen, they will save us about 1 pound per year at Craft Ability score 5, or 2 pounds per year at 6, and so on. (The "common" and "rare" categories of craftsmen are defined, vaguely, on page 66 of Covenants.)
Questions that still remain to be answered:
- What is the covenant's annual income - exactly 1000 pounds, or something else? Do we want to incorporate inflation as recommended by Covenants? Do we want this income to fluctuate over the years, randomly or otherwise?
- What are the covenant's silver stocks at the end of 1223?
- Have we yet implemented any magical expenditure reductions or income enhancements?
We've got one of jebrick's magi casting Bountiful Harvest, IIRC, so that's 35 pounds there.
I can't think of anything else. I'm surprised by the info about the Craftsmen, but then I recall reading somewhere that the rules work out to roughly 2pounds/pt of inhabitant. If our craftsman cost 3 points, then yeah.
Note that our Laboratory craftsmen are both reducing Upkeep, and subtract their worth in pounds, though, since they allow us to take certain lab features for free.
Tangent: What did you do for Laborers?
Right, and I've double-checked the vis inventory that it is being cast any year. I guess that's +35 pounds per year to the income, rather than -35 to the expenditures, but yeah.
And we can certainly keep whatever craftsmen we have 
just doesn't seem like we should hire a wave of others for expenditure purposes.
Good question about laborers; I assumed the covenant doesn't have any. I checked just now, and adding laborers again (counterintuitively) increases expenditure rather than decreasing it, thanks to their Summer standard of living.
Only if you maintain the number of Teamsters, but laborers reduces the minimum number of needed teamsters. Check the formula on Cov 64, 3rd column, right above
Arthur was good enough to share his finances spreadsheet on the Laurus Argenti wiki. I haven't completely proofed the thing yet, but you could try throwing your numbers in there to see if it all works out.
It's true that it reduces the number of teamsters somewhat, but I did check it on my spreadsheet. Each additional laborer costs about 0.6 pounds per year on the bottom line.
Fine! Then I say, let then eat cake!
While watching Kristen Dunst.
Okay, not a lot of input about covenant finances. Here's what I propose. If we set the covenant's income at the book's 1000 per year, plus 35 for Bountiful Feast, then it comes out to almost exactly what the expenditures were (about 2% difference). So unless people want to keep track of silver by the pound, why don't we just say that at the moment, our income and expenditure are equal. I can recalculate for every year as things change at the covenant (for example, the appearance of Roberto and 5 new grogs will raise expenses noticeably, as would the reappearance of Marcus), and we can decide what to do about it, with the understanding that it wouldn't be an immediate financial crisis but we should formulate some plan to increase income/reduce expenditure.
But it's whatever people want to do: if the general consensus is towards more detailed accounting, or towards forgetting it altogether, we could adopt any of those attitudes.
Detailed accounting is great 
I'd say we have equal income, maybe even a little more, so that, when we get trouble, everyone is surprised. No one had ever needed to care for finances before.
Fiona would be all like, "Wait...you want me to pay for my new armor?!?" 
But seriously...she is going to need new armor sometime after she gets back from Magic and grew quite a bit. Preferably before Tribunal. (It's probably well beyond "we can just just let it out a bit", but maybe the blacksmith/armorer can take the links from her old armor and reuse them? (She had Full Chain Mail.)
It put's Korvin's story into new light, doesn't it?
My beans talk back to me pretty much every time. badumbish
I'm certainly willing to do detailed finances if people want (its nerdy funness balances out the amount of work it would take). If so, we'd need to decide:
- What is Mons Electi's income, exactly? 1000 pounds per year? Does it vary from year to year, and if so what are the mechanics to determine that? (Obviously story events trump all.)
- How many pounds does Mons Electi have in reserve at the end of 1223?
- What are the sundry expenses (and profits) from all the various stories that go on? (we'll need to keep track as we go)
(By the way, what's the conversion rate again between pounds of silver and the local currency, marks?)
We can go with 1,000 pounds per anum, to start.
Reserves are like 10 pounds, typically. Renault and Apollodorus had a very well managed operation, and it was clear in the original letter, I think, that Apollodorus took the reserves. So when Korvin's story started, there was 500 pounds of reserves, after that, it's like 10 pounds.
A mark is 2/3 of a pound.
IF there are expenses to a story, I'll list it, but otherwise, we'll presume that those costs, by and large, are built into the budget. Alexei going to war may have a cost, though. I'll start detailing costs at the end of stories when I award experience. I may need reminders on stories until I get into a habit.
I have to say that I'm still quite stumped by how little impact all our craftsmen have on our covenant finances. You would think they'd be more effective.