Yes, I am seeing the same about the Lotharingian tribunal: if you weaken the tribunals and hermetic houses it loses a lot of its punch. Still, the tribunals can work, I think. I will probably change it so that the struggle is between more dynamic covenants and the Rhine voting system, that they see as consteaining. Vis rights rarely reaches the arena of tribunal debates. it is regional, not house-affiliated. The Normmandy covenants (florum, spiders palace and the requies aeterna) will be pushing because according to their tribunal all vis must be brought together and shared, and they do not want that. But I am still deciding if this will be an important factor or not.
In any case the Order is around, just not the house/domus magna-dominated landscape (or not so much) and most stuff will be more local in scope. Regarding the Tremeres will be spirit masters centering on the dead, while the tytalus line centers in natural spirits. The Tremeres will have a wide presence, since they consider everything dealing with the dead to be their area. this puts them at odds with the Donatores, that want to have the dead pass away.
INTERESTED PLAYERS:
Plot_device: Elementalist (+mechanics of heron?).
MalakhGlitch. True Merinita. Forest paths and Nature Lore related magics. Plan B: Breton Gruagach
Darkwing: Witch or vitki (gruagach and learned magicians as secondary).
DeedNay: Learned Magician. Plan B: Vitki.
OneShot: Ars Notoria.
I have no idea of what Ars Notoria does. Will need to check. However, I prefer more morally-tained characters that can go any way they please than pure good or bad characters. So if Ars Nortoria implies that you are somewhat holy I might not like it much. (Mind you, I am talking withkout having read the rules in ROP:Divine, but I have this nagging feeling from my reading of that book a long time ago)
There are some educated guys that will find appeal in the library, and other more outdoors characters that are likely to be more tied to the Ardennes forest. Nice. Will make for an interesting council.
I will probably change Triamore to have a more detached NPC than Daria La Gris, so that the PC have way more agency in how things work out. She will probably remain at the court of Frederick. I myself will look towards an isolationist bookish character, probably an Augustan Brotherhood guy, because I have no idea on what they can do and want to check it. Or maybe a touched by realm mason appalled at what the covenant looks like.
Weak at the start, yes, but a lot of people have complained that the higher levels of Nature Lore are overpowered. I am also considering taking Summoning (animals and/or Magic creatures) or Storm Wizard stuff.
Summoning animals sounds cool. An animal master is a cool hedgie staple
What path do you plan on walking? I assume that the nature lore will be Ardennes Forest Lore, right?
Design-wise, your character sounds like a variant of folk witch. Animal summoning, animal ken, commanding animals (just made that up) and skinchanger, for example?
I can see the natural magicians, elementalists and the like looking in horror as a pack of wild animals enter the council chamber and step all over their beloved expensive carpet.
Actually commanding animals does exist in RoP:I, and no I won't be going down that road.
Are we supposed to be locals? If so, then Ardennes would be my "home region" (and would have a genius loci) otherwise I might have to come from another area.
A Folk Witch variant is also possible along the vein of the Sorginak (F&F) and I can switch the Nature Mysteries (Awakening, Wilding, and Guardian of Nature) back to being mystery initiations.
You can be local and associate with (or oppose) the learned guys in the ruinous castle out of convenience. There will be a pair of short foundational scenes for sure.
Ars Notoria (RoP:TD p.97ff) makes you profit from being a good and diligent Christian for sure - but it does not take away your Virtues if you fail. You some time will get a Patron Angel, who is as demanding as an ArM5 p.43 Guardian Angel. Committing a Mortal Sin reduces your Recitation Score considerably: that is as bad as it comes.
The scholar I imagine is certainly not holy, but at least compassionate and/or optimistic (i. e. trusting in god). Also: "Because of its lofty aim, the Church views Ars Notoria as operating within God’s will, unlike the Hermetic Arts whose status is debated by theologians." So he doesn't have to hide it - but he can take it upon his conscience to keep silent about other practitioners of magic, or to help them.
Huh. I just realized that if you take the mechanics behind Vigilio and its rites and apply it to the original concept of Mercurian Magic in The Tempest it is actually possible to emulate a type of mercurian magic.
I recall that when I read Rival magic, the the Bortherhoood struck me as the most Roman of all the traditions I had read so far, yup.
right now I am struggling to define what to make of the official orde rof hermes. If I just leave the covenants as they are and change membership to a hidgepodge of tradiotons, or if we atomize it into a lot more small covenants. And in either case, what do we do with Durenmar when we have no investigative central house for the OoH. Or maybe we still do and they are trying to get that common magic theory, and failing so far... Given the disparate traditions of the new Order, the library of durenmar is somewhat less important, and suddenly triamore's library might be more important...
I am now tempted to create a variant of the Augustan Brotherhood crossed with Neo-Mercurians, Nature Lore and Nature Mysteries.
There could be more "covenants" since Folk Witches will have covens and Gruagachan will form communites, etc.
Durenmar and the various Domus Magna can be sealed or lost areas like Val Negra, which can make recovery of Bonisagus' Hermetic Theory a whole saga in itself.
I would think that Fenicil's Collection would be the most interesting.
Do away with it? It might have disappeared with all its magic a decade or two after a truely disastrous Schism War. If remains are still around, I pity you for deciding piecemeal what to do with all the covenants, magi, factions and plots.
You might make Bonisagus, his House and Durenmar the legend of a golden age lost, with no way to retrieve it so far. Durenmar might look just like Branugurix now.
That is an option. i like the covenants, though. It puts some order around
Still, we are more likely to be dealing with our vecinity more than Roznov, Crintera or Durenmar, so yeah, we can be done with them.
Plan B is that the schism war was truly apocalyptic and someone managed a ritual that weaponized Parma magica and the Aegis as a sympathetic connection and made your Parma and Aegis burn you alive or something like that. Would explain why most covenants are not around.
However, if there is no Order, there is no Code... And I prefer a Code to be around as a source of stories. Maybe we need a second founding made by the redcaps, the only remaining house with some significant membership remaining.
I will come back to you, but it might be that one of the ideas of Antagonists (the OoH becoming a branch of the Church answerable to the Pope (like a military order based in covenants), or some other stuff like that) can be a reality. I have to reread that part.
The more I think about it, the more complicated the setting becomes
What about some Irish missionaries from Connacht came after the Schism War and helped the poor, destitute magical cousins from the continent reorganize along the lines of Ireland with the Treaty of Cnoc Maol Réidh revoked? They did it after the Western Roman Empire collapsed as well!
What makes sense to me is that the big strategically important covenants got nuked, and the sympathetic ritual you mentioned earlier wiped out all the libraries. All the competent magi (summer+) died in battle, so at the end of the war the Diedne were wiped out, snd all that was left of the order were very young magi, and the less important covenants. The libraries were gone so they couldn't grow into powerful magi very easily, and the old masters of theory were gone, so to keep the order alive they expanded to hedge traditions.
Still leaves us with a fairly similar Order landscape politically, just the absence of the really powerful covenants, and Certamen. Which IMO makes politics more interesting.
It took some 250 years from the founding of the Order of Hermes to the end of the Schism War. And over 200 years have passed since then.
So something must have prevented the Order from resurging during those 200 years. A new, more defensive and careful form of organization of the magic practitioners? A change in the world's Magic caused by the Schism War? There may be other reasons. But we still need to decide upon one such reason: the simpler the better.
Making Parma and Aegis impossible to work or support could be the change in the world's Magic I addressed above, and level the playing field for the hedgies. But it also would make covenants a thing of the past, I fear: the Gifted would not support and trust each other any more.
If the hedgies we talk about have the Parma and were within the Order, that keeps them alive - though these hedgies had the same, if not worse, casualties. But what about another 200 years to reestablish Hermetic magic? The surviving young magi remembered it, and might have reestablished it while they grew older.
What would the hedgies in the Order do during that time? Invent a competing Hedge Theory, style Ádamh Brathair? That would make the world complicated to run for Xavi..
Basically I was thinking the Order brought in hedge traditions within 10-15 years of the end of the schism war, and they got Parma and full legal equality.
Ther is a trick that wa spilled before. Pralix had the gruagachan in one battle forget Pictish. That almost whipped out their tradition. Maybe someone pulled the same move on Hermetics (or diednes) and the spell went out of control whipping out the knowledge of magic (magic theory and the arts) from the hermetics? Or everybody was transported to the magic realm? Who knows. Maybe we will explore that.
In any case hermetic magic was not recovered. Some remnants (a failed apprentice?) Must have been around to spread Parma Magica and revive the Order in another, lesser format.
One shot convinced me that having magi under the thumb of the Pope is a Really Bad Idea (TM) so I am removing that.
from Connacht came after the Schism War and helped the poor, destitute magical cousins from the continent reorganize along the lines of Ireland with the Treaty of Cnoc Maol Réidh revoked? They did it after the Western Roman Empire collapsed as well!