Can someone tell me about the Atlanteans? Are these in fact immortal humans from Atlantis? How are the whole thing with age and abilities handled? I'm very curious now, and I can't wait for the book to arrive, especially with you guys talking about it's content here. 
E.
Via some rare regiones, or possibly stepping beyond a regio's boundary (without falling into a lower lever); through creature powers; through magical disasters (i.e. SG fiat). It doesn't look like something you'll do every day.
As Timothy hinted earlier, the first difference with Faerie is that the Magic Realm is objective. I.e. it doesn't change just because you would like it to. Second, it is basically timeless. Not immutable, but things otherwise remain as they are. Characters gain no experience while there.
Now, more descriptively, the chapter puts forth several theories as to what the Magic Realm is and how it may be structured:
So, basically, it gives you some ideas, but defining what's going on there is up to you. It's an "array of interconnected places". The book gives some examples and ideas, but in the end, it really is up to you to fill it with what you need. The various realms in White Wolf's Umbra from Werewolf : The Apocalypse may give you an idea of how it works.
And then, there is the Twilight Void, which may or may not be where magi go in the end. It's the Magic Realm's backstage. From what I get from the rules, going there is pretty much the same kind of experience as Twilight itself: you need Twilight Comprehension rolls to navigate it. Good luck.
They are humanoid creatures of Magic which live in the deeps. They may or may not come from Atlantis: magi are divided on the issue.
For magic character creation, you get an allotment of experience based on what Season your character is designed to be in. That decouples it from its actual "age".
Welcome to the dark side, Darth Fruny.
What is your bidding, my master?
Grrr... And here are 5th edition stats for Lise, just when I'm done running Pact of Pasaquine... CURSE YOU, CURSE YOU ALL! 
BTW, Erik, the Spirit Votary and Spiritual Pact virtues are on page 88.
And now, it is 11PM, so I'm off to bed.
I really like the art in the Magical Animals section. It's unsigned, but must be Grey Thornberry. It looks like his cover art anyway. The drawing of my Black Boar of the Bog is perfect. The dragon reading a book is classic.
It looks like Robert Scott did the art for the Vis section; it is very cool. The Verditus working in his lab filled with salamanders is great and the magus taking the vis-filled heart from the dead dragon is excellent.
I really like the art by Jeff Menges. He didn't do any of my sections, but his work is impressive. It looks like charcoal or pencil. It's quite good. I've taken up drawing recently, and his style is what I aspire to.
Erik: You got Bradley McDevitt for your Realm chapter. I like the composition. He had some good ideas to illustrate your ideas about the Magical Realm. The Magical Characters chapter has a mix of the artists. There is one from Kelley Hensing in there that looks like it could fit in a chapter of one of the other books we worked on...
You'd be surprised. I don't know about Link and Snead, but I happen to maintain communication with people you would think are years out of touch, but they have actually been collecting the new material as fans.
And on the other hand, to Arwan, a lot of these new authors actually go way-way back. I have been trading snide comments with Timothy Fergusen on the Berklist for well over ten years now.
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OK, so this is rumour to the level of heresay, but I think that John Snead was looking for a game that let him model real world medieval magic, and that Ars doesn't quite work for him, because its magic is so clearly modern fantasy. I recall reading some stuff of his about the lost opportunity presented by "The Mysteries". So, in that case, I think its just that he has a particular thing he'd like to do and that there are other ways of exploring that for him. I've never seen any comments by Sarah (or is it Aaron...sorry I can never recall which way the reassignment went. Apologies.)
Also, and I can't talk about it, in detail, but if we just gave you something that was identical, but with more faeries from the east of Mythic Europe, I don't think that would be much of a book. The previous books were great books, but just like the initial Covenants was a revolutionary book in its time, but the new Covenants is a better book, so our goal, IMO, should be to keep pushing forward.
I hope you all get Magic soon, because I see it as a core book. What I mean is that David fixed the muddle between what's faerie and what's magic in the core rules, and that allows us to do interesting things now that we couldn't do before, and you'll see the first expression of that in Magic, and then a responding and elaborating in Faerie.
I think Magic is a great book, although I didn't like it initially. I didn't really get the concept of it and it didn't seem to fit my play style. Now that I've had some time to think about it, I can see that actually, I'm wrong and that Erik, particularly, but the other authors as well have done a heck of a job here of handing out the design elements that have laid under the numbers in previous work.
What I mean by that is, the moment I liked Magic is when I was modding my copy of GalCiv and thought "How would I do a mod kit for Ars Magica?" The answer, basically, is that the mod kit is the Magic book. I also worried that needing to know the Magic rules would be a barrier for new authors, but, contrawise, now I can see that having a book that says "Follow this system and your monsters will be 100% correct." is quite useful for them.
Books that follow Magic are both supported by, and freed up by, this handing out of the underlying mechanics for the game. I think that the next few books are going to be really interesting as we see various authors grapple with that new definition of the game environment, which isn't so much a change as a clarification of where the numbers come from. Also, I hope someone codes up the monster creation mechanics: that would be a deeply cool thing. Although the books stand on their own and are useful on their own, I think Magic might become a bit like True Lineages: optional, but a really good idea.
RoP: Faerie, as one of the books that follows Magic, should be different from the Link and Snead model, becauss it predates Magic. Link and Snead spend an enormous amount of time on a game fiction to try to explain and develop basic concepts that we no longer need to explain or develop. Our framework has been pushed forward. This means we are free to do new things that Link and Snead, as concientious authors wanting to take the reader with them, could not do in the limited space they had.
Also, the research and sources are so much better now. The internet has really changed the way we research books. This too creates changes from the Link and Snead books, because, as a superficial example, non-English sources are a lot easier to access than when they were writing. The study of folklore and fairy tale has moved on a lot. Not just in terms of major collections of national works, but in terms of the re-emergence of long out of print texts. For SoI I had to buy a 1935? copy of "The Pale Mountains" and have it shipped from the US. Now I can find it, and dozens of other small titles like it, either online or in print.
For us, the problem of abundance is qualitatively different to the problems they, as writers, had, to find quality detailled material. We need to deal with that in novel ways that allow us to scale for the sheer volume of folkloristic material people want to incorporate now, and the expectation that Magic sets up that you can model anything in the Realm.
So, to bring this back around to the point, I reread, multiple times, both of the versions of the L&S Faeries book in preparation for writing RoP:F. Personally I prefer the first one, perhaps because the gane fiction's too familiar. Our new work, however, has design considerations which pull it away from what they did, and so, no, it's not just a better iteration of their work. It contains novel elements: indeed to be as good a book for a modern player as their was for a player in the mid 90s, it -must- contain novel elements. In saying this, however, I don't wish to diminish respect for their work, which is very solid writing, that handled some of the mechanical problems they encountered in graceful ways that seem obvious only because we have hindsight.
Small cross-referencing error in "elemental combat" on page 135. There is no "Incapacitation and Exhausted Might" section, the information is in the "Magic Powers" sidebar on page 36.
Also, the second reference on page 135 should also be to Chapter 4.
Will I have need to update the spell list or the shape and materials list?
My new character has the virtue minor magical focus: Oak
Could you give me a hint about the option labeled brawl skill and animated trees. (it's in the index and I'm rather curious)
Yes, there are a few new spells (I'd say ten, tops) and guidelines, and maybe a dozen shape/material bonuses for herbs/things of Virtue.
It's not about new mechanics, in case that's what you were thinking, but a short discussion of what level of Brawl skill to give to animated trees (the topic of the section), depending on whether you want simplicity (3), or want it to depend on the skill of the magus (Finesse) or the stats of the animating spirit.
There are some new combat mechanics though, concerning giants and grappling, a commanding trained groups of animals, constriction attacks (those damned Serpents).
I like the mention on Primal Spirits "Typical Powers: Any, perhaps all". * chuckles *. Also, I must say that after reading some more of the guiding principles for the Magic realm, I must say it makes a lot of sense. Essential Traits are a nice idea. Good job!
It gave me a rather disturbing idea when I saw it: what if the magus was actually using the salamanders as raw material in his forge... "Let's see, I'll take this wee little beastie and start banging on it with my hammer. Maybe I'll get a decent magic sword out of it this time."
Yeay! My copy just arrived ... now to correct the characters in my demo-game ready for GenConUK...
Folks in France and the UK have it but I'm still waiting. 
I've been fortunate enough to get the books early so often that I can't even begin bring myself to feel bad about this book. However I do rather wonder what the hold up is?
Well there are a couple copies up for auction on EBAY and four EBAY stores claim to have it. Since I've been waiting for over a week for one to ship it might be more accurate to say that the stores distributors have told them that they have it. Of course it would be a 250 mile round trip to drive to the nearest city with enough FLGS that I'd have a chance of finding the thing retail .
Hi:
I am Spanish and I had reserved form France, then... are copies or not there?
How many will cost there?
Je te serais très reconnaissant de vous aide.
I ordered my copy from a gaming store in Paris (Jeux Descartes). They get their books from a distributor in the UK. They called to say my book was in on Wednesday last week, which was the day when they received it.
So yes, there are copies. I don't know what the status is on Amazon, though. I just found it amusing that stores would claim to have used copies before the book is even out.
I paid 21.50€, all taxes included.
You are most welcome.
Merci! 
So, only need wait it here in Madrid.
I like it for make better mytic cratures for my games and stories, and because I have players that They would like play like a Magical creature.
Oh, i forgot say other thing, in spetember I´ll go to Provence because I'm going to study a year how Erasmus student there. I hope find players in my College and town.
No game store close, a new saga possibly starting in a month or two, and Amazon is out. I've ordered mine from the Compleat Strategist. I would have picked it up in person if only the NYC Imax had any tickets for Dark Knight available.
As it is,I'll wait for it to get sent to me here in game-storeless central New Jersey.
Vrylakos
