I have to say, I'm amused by your timing here.
Thought I'd move discussion here to keep the other thread clear.
From what I can tell, this post was the last on the covenant development: Intellego and Warping .
Under that schedule, a Blacksmiths and Carpenters would have been finished by the beginning of 1228. I'm still not completely sure when Fray's arriving (although my best guess is the end of 1228?), but under the proposed schedule we'd have a new infirmary (freeing up another "store-room" in the caves system to be a lab), a mason's workshop and a barracks, but wouldn't have got to building above ground sancta for magi yet. Of course, if magi start arriving and filling up the cave system labs, that'll add to the pressure to get new labs built.
The other point is that I think we have labs automatically set up for the ones that were in existence when Portia cast her rituals, but for any others the standard 2 seasons will need to be put into setting them up.
Does that sound about right?
On a different issue:
Just to check, did Tasia bring these up with her?
OK.
Right. Someone would have to be assigned to set up at least one visitor lab, probably two. Viola can do one of them if you like.
Yes. This being a covenant devoted to hosting visitors, that would be done without question.
Scott
Work overload. I'm going to be only keeping track of the threads I know I'm involved in for a bit. Feel free to PM me if my response time is getting too slow.
The next several weekends, in particular, I'll likely be offline.
Out of town and offline until Tuesday.
Hermetic Projects arrived while I was gone. The section on The Menagerie seems relevant to Patrick's character concept, and the notion of trying to break The Lesser Limits of Warping seems like a much more gradiose reason for him to have that insufferable device than the ones that I initially conceived (which was pretty much, "here's a moral conundrum in a box! Let me poke you with it!").
Does anyone have any thoughts on that?
I though the box was an interesting topic, and thought that it might be the start of some very serious and probably offensive (to some) experimentation if you too it into that direction. Up to the SGs but every magus should have a challenge they cannot achieve. 
Another tangent:
After playing around with Google Maps for a bit, I've discovered that the Tanais Plateau is only about 1000ft, or 3 city blocks, square, not even half a mile. I'd been assuming it was much bigger than that, and am now trying to develop a reasonable understanding of how big the Tanais Necropolis should be - the nearest cemetary to me is Calvary Cemetary in Evanston, IL, and that is approx 5000ft x 1000ft.
Curiously, I am having a very hard time finding information online about how many bodies are buried at any particular Chicago cemetery.
Not having seen Hermetic Projects, I'm pretty blind here. Could you elaborate a little?
Scott
OK, we need to figure out what Discomfort from Iron does. I agree that the word "discomfort" implies this isn't real damage. But I don't think discomfort 12 minutes of pain, either. The main idea is that it's supposed to prevent the maga from using iron tools, though yes, that doesn't mean it doesn't have other consequences.
Scott
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:
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.