A personal project of mine has reached a point where I need to start inventing covenants in Iberia. I’d like to crowdsource possible locations for these covenants.
I’m looking for covenant sites other than those already described in the Iberia book.
Historic or archeological sites preferred! In other words, making up a location out of whole cloth is less useful to me than pointing me to a site with historic significance or attached folklore.
Please give me some links to follow up on, for any historical site you suggest! I like to research!
At some distant point I want to harvest Becquer for plot hooks. It's not great as a covenant site, but the.singing skeletal monks over on Post a Day are Spanish.
Almaden is where most of medieval Europe's mercury comes from. It's a huge source of the mineral cinnabar (Mercury sulphide), used as a red pigment and handily turns into mercury and sulphur dioxide when heated in air. It's potentially a vast source of revenue, possibly a source of vis given mercury's importance to alchemists. If you want your order of Hermes to literally become an order of Mercury, this could be a good site.
I was looking up examples of spur castles when I came across the Alcazar of Segovia. It's built on the site of a Roman fortress, was established as a Spanish fort by 1120 after being taken from the Moors. It becomes a royal residence before 1220 though, so would be deeply problematic for magi to still be on-site. (Plus side - roman ruins and a completely defensible position and the chance to speak to royalty! Minus side - so many mundane politics hooks that you might get marched quickly)
Oldest city in Western Europe, actually. With cool beaches close, because getting a nice tan between lab season and lab season is cool!
Speaking of oldest-in-western-europe stuff, Tartessos allegedly was the oldest civilization in western europe, but for some reason it just banished (I like to think it collapsed into a huge Regio).
Another interesting place is Rio Tinto, literally a red river. It crosses a place called Niebla, Mist (now that's an evocative name, isn't it?), which by the time is the capital of the Taifa of Niebla.
So more potential places where I can easily imagine covenants, pretty much at random, could be: