I'll initiate a new thread where information that has been gathered by your grogs/covenfolk about the village will be presented. This may take a few more days, as I will try to close the existing thread for the most part -- I'll few better if you start that meeting with all the information you could get.
Don't let that prevent you all from discussing whether the magi will go themselves to meet the village elders, or send servants to represent them. 
OK, open topics so far
1. COUNCIL OF OBER
Current roleplay thread. Looking forweard to it even if it was stoped dead for several days due to my lack of involvement. Will try to avoid that. Sorry folks. This seems important towars establishing our presence in the island, and well, it might be a srong knit community of potential covenfolk already in place 
Or eternal enemies if we play it wrong :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
2. PYTHEAS
Seems that we have a lacking member 
Halancar has not been in the forum for months now. Hope all is OK for him, but we should consider if Pytheas is still a character. Maybe Arthur wants to consider him a NPC, or open up a vacancy for a new player? We are still fairly early in the story, so a new player/character(s) should be easy to fit in.
I vote for Pytheas to disappear mysteriously while exploring, so we open up a hook for the covenant while at the same time it would allow him to return if Halancar shows up again. This would avoid the inconsistencies that simply dropping the character might cause. How about that?
Introducing a new player is OK for me, but leave it to Arthur and the rest of you
3. PERMISSION TO SETTLE
Seems we have it... partially. I thought we would roleplay that scene with the Danish lord, but is OK as it is We will still need to settle for something better in the future, so we have ample options to roleplay that. Maybe Alice can play a role here since she is the daughter of a knight, after all...
4. EXPLORATION
We need to keep up with that. I am specially keen on talking with the oak tree (might require a Wizard's Communion) and discover more stuff about the vis source. The underground villages sound really interesting as well, and we should explore the detected auras to check for vis sources.
5. SETTLEMENT
We have permission, but no settlement so far. The council seems like the first milestone for that. Any ideas you have on how to proceed.
Anything I am missing.
Indeed, this will be the thread that determines how the village treats the covenant.
For a little while I will be handling Pytheas as an NPC, but will find a reason for him to go away or disappear. I favour the former, but may change my mind if inspirations strikes. I will also be concluding his "Vis Walkabout" thread in the next couple of days.
As for introducing new players, I want to wait at least until things have progressed a little.
I was a bit puzzled at first by the mention of underground villages, until I realized that you were probably talking about the sunken ruins all around the island. 
Yeah, underwater, not underground, even if they are buried under mud 
Spanish speaker posting on a rush strikes again (TM). 
Ok about Pytheas
Yes the underwater ruins sounds very interesting and Japik will take up exploration of those. It might take some Aquam and Terram magic to reveal what they hide though. Areas that Japik is not particularly strong in.
Regarding permission to settle I think we need to get as friendly as we can with the villagers on the Oberland and prove to them that they will benefit from having us around, probably not by showing off magic but if they are superstitious we might be able to use that. Making their life a little better.
Hopefully we get permission to build some settlement around the oak and even better if the villagers can provide us with some muscle and craftmanship perhaps.
The question is, who will speak for us? Pytheas is ruled out both because Halancar is absent and his Blatant Gift. I guess the other three of us are equally suited, but perhaps Prochorus has most experience with social contacts?
Yeah, none of us is exactly suave, but Prochorus perhaps fits the bill best.
Agreed. We are dodgy at best.
We can agree to provide them with some stuff that might be difficult for them to get, like firewood (long trek from the base of the cliff) in brief, as well as job opportunities building the covenant's buildings and staffing it afterwards, if they want to.
OK, important stuff we have gathered so far in the conversation:
Yes that sounds like good ideas. Especially asking about the Oberlanders needs and wants.
Are you sure about the other magi part, though? Where did you get that from?
I will be away most of this week and won't be able to post until Sunday.
A pair of pictures I took in the vikings exhibit in the maritime museum of Barcelona. Sorry for the quality, my phone is not the best camera around and illumination was low, so I had to use flash to take these:
Out ship
A comparison of viking-style ships by size. The current ships in the north are still fairly similar to those. Ours is the second from the top; the first one is a fishing smack (so similar to our smaller boat). the other 2 are warships.
Nice!
I am watching the VIkings series. The acting is quite bad in general, and the battles look nothing like how viking battles were supposed to be, and it is basically centered around smashing things up, but there are 2 things that can be interesting for PoF saga: the weather and the settlements. This climate and hard life is what Heligoland is likely to be, and the series shows it fairly well IMO.
Just FYI
I was approached over the weekend by a new player about joining the saga. He is an experienced player and quite familiar with PbP, but fairly new to Ars.
What I suggested to him was to take control of Pytheas for the moment. That will let him get a feeling of the saga, and eventually he will be creating his own magus and introduce him (and have Pytheas leave).
Welcome aboard, Trogdor!
Hello all. I'm looking forward to participating in this saga.
Hi!
BTW, for making up my permanent character, are there any particular build rules I should be aware of? It looks like everyone is either just post-gauntlet or at most a few years post-gauntlet. Is that right?
Check out the House Rules and the initial announcement of the saga. I suggest that you read the whole thread of the announcement, as some questions were asked along the way and the process was informative.
Another suggestion would be not to begin creating a magus just yet. Get familiar with the saga first, its tone and its dynamics, before settling down on a concept. Then we can start discussing it in say, a month's time? Having played a little will help you avoid some pitfalls in character creation.
I'm so fluid in character creation that I tend to toss something on the page, then mutate it as I learn more. So really, I'm looking at trying to paint a picture with a broad brush and then refine it over the course of the next month or so.
BTW, I've finished catching up mostly to where the action is right now.