I'll handle the malady. Working on that already.
I'm posting from my phone, so making this short. Need to discuss the age of magi involved, the kinds of magi needed in a colonization/refugee effort and the amount of resources available to the covenant. Concepts should be more or less whole, in that they can accomplish some primary player goal for the concept, with secondary goals to move towards. Don't take a slow burning character that needs lots of development in play, because it will probably be frustrating.
As a starting point for discussion, I've used these rules to approximate the resources mature magi have and how to advance post gauntlet.
https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/house-rules/8670/1
Note, magi get 10 xp per season post gauntlet. If you do lab work for a season, you just drop the 10 xp for that season. Finding a familiar requires a season to search AND a season to bind. Finding an Apprentice requires a season to find the apprentice, and then, of course, the 1 season per year of teaching.
Ignore the tractatus and summae sections in that post, they don't apply.
We can discuss the rules and I'll flesh them out and repost them when I have internet service or enough data on my phone contract, whichever comes first. 