I always assumed it was like touching a hot stove. Singes the fingers a little, and you pull your hand back. I've never thought about what would happen if you were forced into contact with it, manacled in iron, etc.
Ever seen the TV show "Supernatural?" Something like holy water for demons. Burning, sizzling noise, generates steam, but leaves no lasting damage. Incapacitates for a round or two for small quantities, more for larger.
Is Discomfort from Iron even described anywhere? I can't find it.
Scott
It's not a standard flaw (at least as far as I could tell - I did spend a bit of time looking through various places that might have it (RoP:F, the Merinita section of HoH:MC)). As far as I can tell, it's basically just a particular type of lesser malediction, for which the full description of the effect is "The effects of the curse should be about as bad as other minor General flaws." I'm assuming it was a custom flaw for the mystery cult, in the same way Potent Spontaneous Magic is a custom virtue (albeit essentially just being 50% of Diedne magic).
The closest I could find was the traditional ward in RoP:F, so I basically just took that and altered it slightly for humans and the flavour text.
I could have sworn it came out of a book, but maybe it was something left over from the 4th-edition version of Viola. The difference between this and a Traditional Ward is that, where the Ward is something (probably something uncommon) that you'd use to keep the faerie away, this is, rather, something that prevents the character from using tools. It therefore doesn't have to be as directly harmful in order to prove inconvenient, but iron is a good bit more common than most of the things that would serve as Traditional Wards.
Scott
That's harder to do than I first imagined. Here are some pieces of thoughts, some fully formed, others less so:
Establishing a menagerie of creatures from Beyond The Known World would add to the prestige of the covenant and generally fit within its mission statement. The book gives a lot of thought into the details of such matters that are worth considering for me as a player, but little of that value is in rules.
Because maintaining a magical menagerie would require mundane employees skilled in Magic Lore(handling animals), the Trough of Alteration's warped creatures provide good training for this.
There is an inset specifically on giving animals Warping Points, hoping to get a useful set of flaws, but that the Warping does not breed true (not part of the creature's essential nature -- one of the major Limits). However, learning to direct the nature of the Warping would challenge The Lesser Limit of Warping, which could be done with a Hermetic Breakthrough (60 points, so nothing we'd likely ever see come up in play, but that could be part of his project).
On a smaller scale, learning to enchant a creature while it is still in the egg would be a Minor Breakthrough. There is another inset about ways to approach this.
-- All of this is pretty moot, except the stuff about Warped Animals being good training in Magic Lore for mundanes. Patrick has another year of studying to make his Longevity Potion, and then he'll need to start capturing and taming magical beasts before any of it really comes up.
Did I ever see Lab Totals on this? Or tell you what you learned? My search-fu fails me. I'm almost positive that I told you about the Pe source, but that Viola found the sub-optimal method of obtaining vis from it.
It is very confusing, not knowing where we are in the timeline.
Is there any reason why we can't say that all the Chapter 2 threads are happening in 1228.Spring? Viola's is a season-long activity, but the others are all intended to be Distractions, and so can happen in bits and pieces all around the season, right?
If we so agreed, is there anything we still need answers on? We've discussed the progress on establishing the site, everybody's activities are all up to date? We're still trying to figure out what to do with the Trough, I think. There were some good suggestions in this thread: Inflicting Warping
You told me she could fix the statue by rededicating the temple; part of the point of her journey is to get information on whether it would be be better to dedicate it to Neptune or Poseidon. I don't recall your telling me anything about the vis source yet.
Viola's trip would probably be in late 1226 or early 1227, since she wants to gather info before proceeding further with the temple. Otherwise, yes, we can assume the same season.
Scott
It all sounds like interesting ideas to me.
Scott
OK, I think I found the origin of the Discomfort from Iron Flaw: there's a Minor Discomfort from Iron as a -2 Flaw (that is, in between a Minor and a Major in ArM5 terms) in the "ArM3.5" book Faeries (it was one of two books released by White Wolf for ArM4 before ArM4 was actually published). It explicitly caused discomfort, not harm, and resulted in a -3 to use any iron weapon or tool, and the loss of 2 Fatigue levels when using iron armor. There was also a -3 Flaw (that is, a Major Flaw in ArM5 terms) Vulnerability to Iron, which, while not doing actual damage, made it impossible to use an iron tool or wear iron armor (which is closer to Salutor's interpretation).
My apologies for dragging in material from earlier editions, but it's sometimes hard to avoid that when converting characters.
Scott
Not going to be able to post for a few days.
OK, we can wait. 
Is everything OK?
Scott
Apologies, I'm back now.
Good. 
Apologies, the forums have not been sending me post notifications, and I've been traveling a lot.
It's OK--it's not the first time that's happened to someone.
Scott
I would like to reserve some of the Hidden Resources for this faerie-regio marketplace. I will not be immediately disclosing what all of those build points will be spent on, but I would like to ask for some input on the following:
Trivia: I found the records of an archeological dig conducted by Russians at the graveyards of Tanais, and eventually found an English translation of those notes. Everything that I've put into the graveyards was inspired by those notes.
You may have as much as you want. 
Scott
These stories are going very slowly. Can we start some non-linear threads? I am eager to start a chapter where we continue exploring the mystery of the watery caves beneath us.
That's ready on my end--I just need one or more of the magi to take the initiative.
Scott
If we're sticking with a linear timeline, then I can't take up the investigation until the current story arc is complete.
Do you object to starting an additional thread that happens at some future point?