Hah hah hah. Seriously, tomorrow I'm going to the doctor--it looks like I might have an ulcer.
Scott
I spent most of the weekend covering my sick wife and repairing furniture damaged by the movers. I'm a little overwhelmed here.
HOWEVER, this Friday we're leaving for just-over-one-week vacation, and spending most of it at my in-laws' cottage, which is fairly remote. I won't be able to do any unpacking there, and won't have much to do at all, so it'll be an ideal time to catch up on the saga's record-keeping.
Scott
It sounds like you need the break!
I think the key things I need are:
- Confirmation of how xp works for Gregorius in Spring 1228. He's already got (and spent) 6xp from exploring the regio, but then he did two more adventures, to look for Tasia and to hunt the horse. Does he get extra xp, but the season overall is capped at 10? Extra xp with each adventure capped at 10? Something else? Nothing else? What do Alcimus, Fray (largely the same as Gregorius, but with less wandering round east of the Black Sea) and Stephen (no exploring the caverns, less wandering around east of the Black Sea) get?
- Confirmation on how many seasons to advance for.
Other "nice to have" things include:
- Splitting the horses thread off from looking for Tasia.
- Updating the chronology to include the recent adventures.
- An updated map of the covenant caves now that we've explored them more.
Sorry for being MIA--trying to enjoy my vacation. 
- As for the XP's, my initial inclination is to cap it at the normal max for a single adventure--more than 10 points from anything other than books (which generally don't teach the Abilities adventure XP are spent on) is pretty excessive. However, I could perhaps tolerate up to 15 if we assume that the total time spent on his three adventures totally screwed his lab time for the season. What are your thoughts?
- What do you think about number of seasons? Viola could use some downtime, but, you know, Viola has to be dragged kicking and screaming from her lab, and as Alpha SG, I really shouldn't encourage that. That being said, given recent slow movement, I'm OK with up to two years--esp. since we've got some RPing to do concerning what happens over that two years--and we need to recruit more players.
As for the other stuff, let me see how much I can get done tonight.
Scott
Dear God, we've got a big loose thread:
[url]https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/chapter-2e-summer-1228-back-to-the-barrow/9266/1]
The "Back to the Barrow" story never got off the ground, for lack of an SG. Given the already frenetic pace of activity in Spring 1228, I vote we retcon this one to some point in the future.
Scott
10xp for the entire season is probably reasonable (more xp is always nice, but probably hard to justify). He wasn't doing anything with lab time anyway, so that's not that much of a hardship.
Gregorius would also like a reasonable amount of downtime - he needs to work towards being able to bind Alcimus (although it's going to take more than 2 years to get there, even without allowing for distractions - which given Alcimus is going to start aging in one year is a problem). However, that needs to be balanced against threats like the amazons - depending on what happens with Tasia, just sitting and ignoring them for two years seems questionable.
Either retcon its timing, or just handle it entirely in summary? I'm not sure the key problem of not having anyone to run it has gone away, although I suppose it might do when we get new players.
I'm going to say that the trip to the barrow was planned, but interrupted by events--as soon as I can reconstruct a timeline. Ugh, I should have started tackling this earlier in the week.
Scott
Reading for the chronology, I'm seeing now seeing the conversations involving Viola that give you concern. Apparently the northern coast of the Sea of Azov (the only portion that freezes) thaws in early March, which is at the beginning of Spring. It's hard to avoid placing Viola anywhere other than in the regio when Stephen arrives, and when Tasia is discovered to be missing.
HOWEVER...once Viola realizes the story in the regio is going to take some time to play out, it would be quite logical for her to take a trip back to the covenant by Arcadian Travel, to check on things, and then a second trip back to cast the Aegis--assuming of course that she can get the timing right. But would leaving the regio temporarily screw up her synchronization with the course of events there?
Scott
Having read further into the "Tasia Is Missing" thread, I see that Viola was having an ongoing long-distance conversation with Gregorius, and helping to make key decisions. As an aside, I see that not only Theodoric, but also Bogdan and Godzimir, were double-committed.
My next post (or posts) will be my proposed reconciliation of the royally screwed-up continuity. If it meets with no objects, I'll split it off into a thread of its own.
Scott
I'll handwave problems with the synchronization, although they'd probably have been problems in play. Timing getting out for the Aegis would have been tricky, but it looks like you dropped that idea and just stayed out.
Assume that she left right before the "accelerated time" started, and came back at the end, as it would have been tricky for her to have done anything during it - it works more as "and then you looked back at what you'd been doing for the last year" than actually living through the year.
Happy not to take Bogdan and Godzimir with Gregorius, and to ignore the cats. They probably didn't want to go on the boat.
I'm working on the chronology, but it's gonna take a couple more days--I did finish updating Winter 1228.
Maybe we could wrap up the stuff we need to do with Viola's lab, and anything else involving Tasia and the covenant defenses?
Scott
I've posted elsewhere about the covenant defenses. Gregorius would very much like to get a proper debrief of what happened to Tasia (as she wasn't very informative straight after being rescued), or at least to find out what's happened to her, but he'll do that by writing letters rather than trying to chase after her.
For Viola's lab, we can handle getting the song spread in summary, but the final transformation of Halia is going to need to be a story.
OK, have Gregorius write his letters.
Can you start a thread for the lab?
Scott
I'll do the letters over the weekend.
When does Viola want to try to do the lab?
Spring seems like an auspicious time for a new beginning. The party arrives back a month from the end of summer, and Ipek can learn the song in what remains of the season. She then needs to spend time spreading the song. Spring 1229 might work, but would be fairly tight - Spring 1230 would give the song a lot more time to spread, and give Viola the solid period of advancement she wants.
I've now posted a couple of extra letters. Essentially, he's talking to the Tremere (via Boustaphan), Magvillus and attempting to get the Redcaps to deliver a letter to Tasia. This last requires her to be settled somewhere on the Redcap routes for a while, so is by no means a given, but he reckons it's worth a try.
The one problem with spring is that it's when Poseidon is at his most powerful--hence the increase in the aura during that season. Summer might be more appropriate for a mother who already has children--and would make 1219 more feasible.
Scott
Okay - do you want to advance her to Summer 1229, then?
Have you had any more thoughts on how far you want the rest of the characters to advance?
Two years sounds good to me--so through Summer 1230? I don't think we'll need any new players in order to play out the lab story, and so we can do that while we're taking on new people. It might even give them something to do, while they're going through character creation, in the way of playing secondary characters.
I'll update the chronology and the maps as soon as I'm able, but both are hard work. I intend to do them before I update my own characters.
Scott
I've just added an update to the chronology, covering the bulk of the faerie regio story. I'll get to the Tasia drama as soon as I can.
Scott