Hello everyone. I am starting to create a saga set in the early ages of the Order of Hermes, and I am wondering if there are any resources available that I could use.
Of course, there is the chornology available at Ars Magica Chronology - OM v2.22 - Google Docs which is very useful, but there might be other storyguides that had similar ideas.
The current idea is to start with three young magi. At first I thought that we would play in 1220, therefore everything in the rulebook was available, and the choices of the players were one Bjornaer, one Merinita, one Ex Miscellanea. Good news: in the early 9th century, Bjornaer and Merinita were close, and Ex Miscelanea was just founded, which means that it should be possible to have a Covenant with magi of the three houses. Another idea was to have those three magi create their own spring covenant, from scratch. The background story that explains why, is that the covenant they inhabited has been destroyed in 828; they don't know why, but there were a lot of wars at the time and it could be some vengeance against some of their parens (I have not decided yet, it will be one of the main plots of the saga). Because those three magi did not know who to trust, that's why they decided to go to some remote area, and to be on their own (with a few companions and grogs). They will locate their covenant in some place where they will make a deal with magical creatures living in this place (this will be one of the first scenarios). I also decided something else, which I think was more frequent in that time: all three magi are part supernatural creatures: the Bjornaer is a lycanthrope, the Merinita has strong Sidhe blood, the Ex Miscellanae is part Giant. This means that all have personal Vis source, and also should help making that deal with the magical creatures.
I will mainly play with Arm4 rules (because when I started playing Ars Magica they were the most recent) but I am taking pieces from Arm5 (e.g. Houses of Hermes Mystery Cults).
What would be your comments / suggestions?
Between 830 and 865 the main political event seems to be the Sundering of Tremere, and there have been a lot of conflicts with the Rune Wizards. Is there some information about those Rune Wizards in Sub Rosa #16? I was wondering whether my three young magi could have moved to one of the North Frisian islands to make their covenant.
The Rune Wizards are indeed in Hedge Magic: no need to put them into #Sub Rosa again.
But the article contains some rules about playing pagans (also priests) of Baltic, Germanic and Slavic cultures. It also elaborates on the state of Hermetic magic, Abrahamic religions and dominant societies in 865.
If you can read spanish (I know it's a big if) the tribunal book for Iberia, Finis Terrae has a complete timeline from the origins of the Tribunal — Which are the same year the Order was founded and Flambeau travelled to Iberia — and tells you which Covenants were active at that time, and what was the political and hermetic landscape at that time. I don't think I know any other resource that works best for doing a saga in such years.
I can't read Spanish, but I suppose that online translators could help me.
From what I read at Atlas Games | Post, an English translation is planned to "be released under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license", but they don't say when.
I think that the Ars Magica chronology I linked above should be sufficient for me to describe the political landscape to my players. But I have more practical questions, such as "what does a covenant at that time look like?". Indeed, the first covenant that was founded is Durenmar in 754, the next ones after 767 by the founders of the hermetic houses. The covenant where my players have been trained as Hermetic magi is likely to have been founded by previous apprentices of Bjornaer and Quendalon, and a follower of Pralix, around the start of their training, ca 810. One of the practical questions is "what does the library of such a covenant look like in 828?". I guess that the rules for covenants around 1200 are not applicable in this case.
Are there technical descriptions of covenants in Finis Terrae?
My impression is that single House covenants were the norm early in the Order, but not to the point of being all that existed. In Covenants (pg 33), Arae Flaviae is described as being "among the first covenants to consist of magi from more than one House" when it was founded in 780.
The library is likely to be small when it comes to Hermetic texts, I suspect. Not nothing, and there are some books we know existed, but my suspicion is that early in the Order people studied from vis a lot more than they do in 1220.
Books that we know or that may have existed in 828:
Bonisagus' The Art of Magic (Magic Theory)
The works of Elaine of Flambeau, Flambeau's second apprentice. These are listed on page 9 of HoH:Societates, and cover Ignem, Penetration, Magic Theory and Philosphaie. I don't think we know exactly when she wrote them, so it's possible some or all may not yet exist, but given that Flambeau disappeared in 820 she'll at least be a full maga with some experience by 828.
The Analects of Tytalus may exist, but are more likely to still be being complied (pg 73 of HoH:S). Tytalus disappeared in 807, and his successor Hariste started compliling it then and then ordered it published on her deathbed. When her deathbed was we don't know, but she was definitely still around in in 817 when Ex Misc were incorporated into the order and given the noted age gap between Tytalus and Hariste her death was probably quite a lot later.
That said, there were apparently writings by Tytalus himself which should definitely exist by now
Jerbiton wrote diaries, although they're probably not of much interest to most magi
The Travels of Fedoso (a book of esoteric lore sometimes used when teaching apprentices Latin) probably doesn't exist, as it was written by the third Criamon Primus. That said, Criamon died fairly early and it doesn't say how early in his career Fedoso wrote it or how old he was when he became Primus, so you could probably crowbar it in if you wanted it.
Thank you for this nice list of books. I did not know those names, because I am just starting to look at the supplements. I will probably need to start buying a few PDFs.
There might also be some book describing Aegis of the Hearth, which apparently was presented at the Third Tribunal in 799 by Notatus.
I suppose that, to help the expansion of the order, many copies of those books were made in the early decades of the order, and that they were written in a way such that only a mage trained by another member of the order can understand their content. Is there some information on how those books were protected? I would not be suprised if some rituals were cast to protect them against at least fire and water, and maybe also sometimes an Imaginem ritual to hide its contents. But when I looked through an online version of Covenant 5th edition, or at the Covenant of Sabrina's Rest, I don't see any ritual protecting the most important books.
About the use of vis rather than books, I made also the same assumption, because my understanding is that there was more raw vis available in the 9th century than in the 13th century: the human population was smaller, and the Dominion was weaker.
I suspect there are fewer books in that era, but more vis. Also, some of the Hermetic theories of the 13th C. are not formed yet; they are being formed or yet to be formed.
Some of the 13th C. spells do not exist, although Aegis of the Hearth does. I don't think a culture of exchanging spells and lab texts is well established.
It's not clear that there would be more or less vis in the world, but there are probably fewer magi and therefore more vis available, even if there are fewer vis sources known.
In 830 the Order is fairly small and has not gotten comfortable with itself yet. Hedge magic is much more common and hedge magicians are a threat. The Code and Peripheral Code is in early stages. It's a wild and wooly time.
Aegis of the Hearth is plausible, but would be a lab text rather than a tractatus / summa. There might be a mastery text for it, I suppose.
Books on the Arts aren't really of much use to anyone who hasn't had their Arts opened to the Hermetic Arts, and aren't possible to copy accurately without a score in Magic Theory. Books on magic-related abilities are more comprehensible, but usually either not particularly secret (Penetration and Finesse are of uses to many traditions but also usually already known to them) or not that useful (Magic Theory). The big exception is the Parma Magica - that is of use to Gifted non-Hermetics, and is one of the two major sources of the Order's dominance over other traditions. If a covenant has a book on that they should definitely be being careful with it.
There's a little bit on protections for libraries in Covenants (e.g. pg 99, the "Enchanted Space" sidebar, and some of the spells on page 100). A lot of covenants are likely to be primarily worried about Hermetic thieves, though, at which point you want to come up with your own thing which the thief isn't expecting rather than use a standardised approach.
Magic protection would make more sense if the books are secret and you want to keep unique copies. Otherwise the best protection is by redundancy. Copy them before they were out, and keep copies at more than one covenant.
Obviously there would be fewer books, since there were fewer authors. The grand library at Durenmar would even be small enough to be manageable, and the magi too few to make a queue. For a couple of generations, those who need something could stay there to read.
I do not know if the grand library would be open to copy at that time, and whether you would have to submit a text to get access. That. I think, is for you to decide for your setting.
Another curious thing to decide on is the Mercere portals. We know that portals were created from Durenmar to every founders covenant. Before the Schism, there have also been more portals than what we know after, but there were not a lot of Mercere to create them. Maybe every covenant had a portal, maybe not.
The Great Library of Durenmar would definitely have been smaller, but it probably does contain Bonisagus' collection as the seed for it - which is a lot of books, albeit not directly on the Hermetic Arts. True Lineages (pg 5) describes it as:
Bonsiagus begain a passionate search for more magical texts, roaming the Aegean basin and deep into Persia to retrieve many legendary tomes and magical papyri. His early library was immense, including memoirs of Cappadocian wizards, the secret lore of the Chaldeans, Gnostic, Christian, and Jewish mysteries, and even the magical writings of Moses and Solomon.
I was under the impression that because of the expansion of the Dominion, the world is becoming less and less magical during the Middle Ages, but it does not seem to be part of Ars Magica canon.
Is there somewhere some statistics on the average aura of each of the four realms in Mythic Europe 1300?
In my Saga, I will probably consider that around 700 all four realms had similar power, and that the creation of the Order of Hermes will strengthen the Magic Realm and weaken the Faerie Realm, while the expansion of the Catholic church will strengthen the Divine Realm and weaken the Infernal Realm. Then between 1000 and 1250, when the population is growing a lot, the Divine and Infernal Realm will be strengthened and the Magic and Faerie Realms will be weakened. Which means that there is less raw Vis produced.
Indeed. Parma Magica is likely to be the main reason why Hermetic magic has been so successful. I think that I will consider that any hedge magician that wants to learn and use Parma Magica will need to change his/her way of practicing magic, and therefore become an hermetic mage.
It is also because of this threat that I was asking the question about protecting books in covenant libraries. I would not be surprised if many hedge magicians understood that to weaken hermetic magi, destroying their library can be more useful than destroying the fortifications of the covenant. Aegis of the Hearth is probably a very efficient protection against fire spirits attacking the library, but there can be many other creative ways to attack books.
When I last played Ars Magica (almost 20 years ago) our covenant had a CrAn ritual (with a few requisites) that was used to protect all books of the library. But in https://www.atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/SpellIndexbyTechnique.pdf I only see "Repair Cracks and Tears".
I'm not sure that Mercere portals existed in ArM4. There is the "Hermes' Portal" ritual in the core rulebook, but nothing about Redcaps or other mages using them, and nothing about linking Durenmar to other founders covenant. I will consider that portals between covenants were rare or did not exist at the time of my Saga... so it means that it will not be easy for one mage to go to Durenmar library to study books.
My opinion, unsupported by the writers of Ar5: The world existed before the Dominion; and the Dominion 'creation myth' & 'biblical history' is only true inside Dominion Regios. The Dominion is one of three (Magic, Faerie, Dominion) competing supernatural powers; the Infernal is a creation, extension, and tool of the Dominion -- which is why 'biblical history' is true inside 'Infernal' auras.
So the initial growth of the Dominion would be matched by the (introduction of &) expansion of the Infernal as well; the Dominion is absolutely uninterested in 'overcoming' the Infernal until all the other powers have been out-competed. Once that is accomplished, the Infernal will have outlived its' usefulness.
Carryover from a prior edition. You can harvest vis from Divine creatures, and as far as I know there is nothing preventing vis sources in Divine auras or regiones. I don't recall a separate callout for Divine-tainted vis in RoP: the Divine as there is for Infernal-tainted vis in RoP: the Infernal, but there's no reason that the Divine Realm couldn't churn out just as much vis as the other Realms.
There may be some consequences for magi using Divine-tainted vis, of course. But since there's definitely Divine magic, the spread of the Dominion doesn't mean there's less magic around -- just a different flavor of it.
Interesting... I was basing my understanding on ArM4 page 239 which says "Magic is commonly described as a subtle, intangible fluid that flows through the world. Hermetic magi call this substance vis" which I translated into "Vis is the substance of magic and therefore can only appear where there is a magic aura". But indeed, the same ArM4 core rulebook also mentions that "Faerie Areas (...) are places rich in vis" and that "demons often leave behind physical residue in the form of raw vis (...) Demonic vis is frequently tainted with evil".
I don't think that I will be fully aligned with this part of the rulebooks, because I think that magi should prefer using vis coming from the Magic Realm. I will probably consider that other realms don't generate the same vis as the Magic Realm, that they systematically generate a different type of supernatural substance, which is called by hermetic magi "faerie vis" or "demonic vis" or "divine vis".
However, for the same reason that "Two realms may have influence over the same place", one creature could contain multiple types of vis.
I should also probably consider that hermetic magi can manipulate all these substances with the Vim form. It can be extracted from a creature or an object with ReVi. It can be transformed into "real" vis with a MuVi ritual (a level 5 ritual for each category of vis, that transforms up to 6 pawns of it to half the amount of real vis). It can also be used directly in a spell of for creating an object, spontaneously adding Muto and Vim requisites, doubling the number of botch rolls, and slightly changing the effect of the spell to match the specificities of the realm. The "faery magic" ability of Merinita magi should probably be added to the Muto and Vim requisites. I suppose also that faith score makes the use of divine vis easier.
Good point. Hermes Portals had the same role at Mercere Portals, which became a necessary invention when permanent duration rituals were removed from the rules.
There is an extensive network of Hermes Portals in 3ed and 4ed, but you are right that the Durenmar network is a 5ed thing. These maps make a good synopsis of the different editions on this point:
That is quite possible. We know (at least in 5ed) that infernal and faerie vis carry additional risk, and magi may plausibly believe that this is also the case for divine vis. However, it is a fact that Bonisagus' theory was extended to subsume the magic of any realm under the form of Vim, making them theoretically equivalent. The original theory of Bonisagus did not cover this though, so it is safe to assume that it is non-trivial.