So mechanically, unless it is a Supernatural Ability that is being Initiated, all Initiations require an equivalent level Flaw as an Ordeal, yes?
All supernatural stuff requires an ordeal. They are like intiation scripts for unGifted characters.
Some Supernatural Ability Initiations do not require an equal level Flaw for an Ordeal.
Based on what you have just said, however, your ruling on this is: All Initiations must include an equal level Flaw as an Ordeal.
I can live with that as opposed to what I interpreted your initial post on the matter to mean. 
EDIT:
My suggestion on Opening the Gift, is to automatically nuke all the character's Supernatural Abilities if he has his Gift opened. This way we still have the option to join a hedge tradition without having the burden of previous supernatural baggage.
What if you're not picking up a Virtue? For example, what if you have the Gift and a total of -15 in penalties and find someone who can teach you something like Premonitions with a Source Quality of 20? This is, of course, inherently limited since you not only need to get the teacher but it also gets harder the more you improve what you already have as well as the more you learn, unlike initiations which generally get easier. I'm pretty sure this was mentioned above somewhere.
Premonitions is a Virtue. It confers the Supernatural Ability Premonitions
Sorry for the derp
Both Premonitions and Second Sight are Supernatural Abilities tied to Minor Supernatural Virtues.
EDIT: I see, that you found it yourself!
No, it's just like Second Sight.
" PREMONITIONS
...confers the Ability Premonitions..." (p.47)
"PREMONITIONS
...This Ability... (Supernatural)" (p.67)
Even if it weren't, that wouldn't invalidate the question. Insert any appropriate Supernatural Ability.
Edit: I, too, see that you caught it. You don't need those Virtues to have the Supernatural Abilities. You can just learn them.
I "mispoke" and corrected my previous post.
Essentially I believe @Xavi means that the only way our characters are going to get any additional Supernatural Abilities is by getting Virtues through Initiation which will require an equal-level Flaw as an Ordeal
To be clear, this is how I read what Xavi meant in this post.
- Characters with the Gift can no longer get Supernatural Abilities through Teaching, only through Initiating a Virtue
- All Initiations require an equal-level Flaw as an Ordeal
I can see how you read it that way, but Xavi also mentioned separately learning Abilities that make no background sense, and this may well be learning Abilities that do make background sense. And never did Xavi actually address this case, which is why I wanted to gain clarity on it. What happens in the case when there is no Initiation, you're not gaining a Virtue, and the Ability you are learning does make sense?
Separately, how did Xavi get that nice weapon table in there? I suppose I could go reply in that thread, copy the code, and delete the reply. But I'm not in that game and so feel doing the non-existent reply would be in bad form.
Hmm? There are two ways to do it. HTML, like what I did with the table to illustrate the languages in the vicinity of Triamore, or by BBCode.
Thanks. I have a fair amount of coding background (C, C++, Java, and lots of stuff I haven't touched in ages), so knowing which languages to use should solve it quickly for me.
Supernatural abilities are only available if you have the associated supernatural virtue. I had never thought that they could be learned without that. IMS you cannot train a turb of grogs to have second sight, they have to actually have it. That's why they actually require a virtue for starters instead of being general abilities...
Gifted characters can learn them within limits (ArM5 p.63 Supernatural Abilities, p.166 Learning Supernatural Abilities).
Grogs are never Gifted (ArM5 p.17).
If I understand you correctly, you do not need to introduce any house rules here.
Just assert your role as SG, with the right and duty to control existence, availability and stats of all the books, teachers and initiations for Supernatural Virtues. Do especially not accept any teacher NPCs from the many books as existing and available in your saga before you checked them. You did that already for Arduinna.
You gave us your ideas already, how you wish to exercise these rights and duties. It leads nowhere to here and now establish precise rules and numerical limits. They will anyway still change as and if the saga progresses long enough.
For now it is important to get it started and the characters ready.
@MalakhGlitch yes you got it right. I think the saga will be better with that up front. I might be wrong here, and we might correct it in the future, but for starters I feel much more confident with that goalpost there.
Cheers
Xavi
A bit late since I wanted to have Nature Lore magic from the beginning, but I just browsed through Ultima Thule again and the Finnish Wind Wizards are a very easy conversion.