Since you can translate X spell levels in a season, does that mean you can spend proportionally less time during said season to translate fewer spell levels? For example, you invent a level 15 spell and can translate 100 levels in a season. Can you take two weeks off that season, with the lab total penalty to invent the spell, and translate said spell during the season?
It's mentioned several times and written fairly explicitly that seasons for learning/work are just an abstraction. The exception is laboratory work, which must align with things astrologically. So splitting non-lab seasons up like this is fine without any lab penalty. However, it would be good to work out what is a reasonable way to divide things over a year with the troupe because record-keeping and experience tracking can become a pain.
For me,
The whole season thing is just an abstraction. Even the explanations about lab work, just coating around a meta-game need to organize downtime.
The problem resolves itself nicely, for me at least, if not for everyone, if this out of game issue is treated as such. If an adventure disrupts a season, let it disrupt a season and assume that the activity can take place in some other season, before or after. If a player needs to craft a LR in a season that the SG plans to utterly disrupt, handle it out of game, because it really is an out of game issue: The NPCs don't just happen to accidentally disrupt that season! There is like, a GM involved, maybe a troupe. It is never an accident that player X has an important season disrupted and player Y does not. Unless "wandering monster dice" are rolled per season, I think this kind of thing is better handled with metagame rules than with "what happens when you lose N days" rules.
Then, issues of "do you get to keep Sabbath" sort of gets folded in. Somehow, real world work manages to keep happening even with all those sabbath-keepers. Of course, if you want to take advantage of some of those tainted virtues, maybe you don't get to keep Sabbath, but that's a tangent....
....ok, tangent. Covenants has rules about losing sleep to boost lab totals, but what about keeping the Sabbath and holidays? There should be a tainted lab modifier for ignoring such things...
Anyway,
Ken
Doesn't lab schedule stuff from Covenants already take keeping the Sabbath into account. I think, Nobles Parma, it even mentions a risk of potential infernal attention if one uses some of the "alternative" schedules.
There's fluff, yes. But nothing like specific like "ignore sabbaths and saints' days to work, and gain +5 Lab Total and whatever you are working on is Tainted...."
Despite what many religions would like you to believe, ignoring the Divine is not an inherently Infernal thing. Just because you don't respect the holidays of any particular monotheistic religion doesn't mean you're invoking Infernal power.
And actually, the whole "not missing days" thing is already factored in. The losing sleep stuff also comes with "and you can only miss this many days, because you're actually already working on some of your usual days off."
LuckyMage beat me to it. Ditto everything LuckyMage said.
I think maine75man was going with the idea that days off (13 or so if you presume 13 weeks per season) are included in the standard lab schedule.
Routines adjust the free time per day, and/or the days off.
Hi,
For a member of Judaism/Christianity/Islam, failing to keep a commandment is not ignoring the Divine but defying the Divine.
God says, "Keep the Sabbath, do no work, not you, not your son, blah, blah, blah, because more blah," and you say "Yeah, yeah, you created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th, but I need to finish my Potion of Power."
But... YMMV. Especially if you want to keep religiosity out of your saga, which certainly appeals to many latter-day people.
Anyway,
Ken
I could certainly see it being an issue for a Holy mage of the appropriate religious tradition, and certainly it might have an impact on the magus soul (or maybe not, it's hard to tell), but since other objects crafted on holy days don't take on a hint of the infernal the way that say a communion wafer buried in a field does, I wouldn't think it would make lab work inherently infernal either.
Hi,
MMVs.
The Sabbath was important back then. This is not obvious today, even among many believing Christians who go to church but also don't forgo Sunday football.
It's, like, right there in the Ten Commandments, taking precedence over murder and adultery, though not idolatry. 
/10
Keeping the Sabbath isn't about being especially holy but about doing the very basics. "Hey, I keep the 10 Commandments so I must be truly a Holy Magus," um no. Just doing the bare minimum.
BTW, there is no commandment "Thou shalt not bury the communion wafer in the dirt of the field." Not in the Christian Bible anywhere.
So performing a big sin (very big sin!) for supernatural ends might as well have a congruent and corresponding supernatural impact. I'm not a fan of inflicting lots of demons, angels or miracles on a saga, but this kind of thing is a nice, low key temptation. Hermetically legal too.
If it is assumed that most magi keep their religion's Sabbath (and it is already assumed that most magi are Christian, so they do have a Sabbath), this gives magi a time when they can meet and chat and socialize, at least to the extent which they are able. It reinforces some of the ideas presenting regarding Dominion and community, if the magus who locks himself in his lab on the Sabbath has also shut himself away from the community of his peers. Hermetically legal, but....
It's one of those things that provides a nice medieval flavor.
But, whatever.
Anyway,
Ken
Worshipping anything other than God is a sin too, in all three major religions, yet pagans are of the Faerie Realm, not Infernal. (And yes, I mean genuine pagans, not the weird post-pagan pagans some Christians were trying to be by taking their "veneration" a little too far.) There isn't even anything directly Infernal about being atheist, though that's a difficult position for any sane person to maintain for long in Mythic Europe. I imagine that most magi are Christian, but of the non-practicing sort.
There's also the more inherent setting fact that, unless it's shared by every single Divine religion including all the minor and heretical side ones (as long as God still provides for them), the majority of rules and customs any religion follows are human mandates rather than God-given ones. If there's even one Divinely sponsored religion that allows working on Sundays, well, there you have it, magi are just ignoring rather than defying the Divine. (On the other hand, murder is called out as wrong by all of them as far as I've gathered, so it's probably Divine mandate-level wrong, ignoring how confusing definitions can be sometimes.)
On the other hand, every divine religion does have a day of prayer and rest, though the day might differ depending upon the faith.
The RAW allows magi who maintain a normal lab schedule sufficient time (ignoring the saints days and celebrations, of which there were many) to observe a holy day on a weekly basis. Even the non-practicing magi probably go to church now and again, to keep up appearances, and the like...
Yes, observing a holy day a week is one potential use for the day off (usually Sunday, both because most magi are at least nominally Christian, and because more social magi can take advantage of it being everybody else's day off). Inventing the rules for Parcheesi is another potential use, as is marvelling at the work your fellow magi have been accomplishing. The real practical purpose of having Sundays off is to avoid burnout from overwork, which in a lab is represented not only by long-term Fatigue but also accelerated Aging and Warping, two things most magi would rather avoid.
All I'm trying to say is that while it's not very observant of magi to work so much, it's not Infernal either.
I take it that observing the Sabbath is independent of the 8 days off you're permitted during a season without a Lab penalty? There are 13 Sundays in a season, and if Sabbath was included, then all Lab Totals for good Christian magi need to be penalized.
Hmm.
The practical reason for keeping Sabbath, in a mythic medieval context, is that God told you to.
Burnout is something that happens to Flambeau after they cast too big an Ignem spell.
Breaking Sabbath is worse than than (a Jew's) eating pork; note which made it into the Ten Commandments and which did not.
If wanton violation of the Sixth Commandment is likely to generate an Infernal Aura, why not the Fourth?
Anyway,
Ken
It's 10 days that you can miss without penalty, they aren't considered days off.
Keep in mind that it says you miss 10 days that the time can be made up by working harder. Which days do you use to work harder? The remaining sabbath days.
@Ovarwa: "Because God told you to" is only a practical reason if you're making an active effort to get into Heaven. Magi, as a general but certainly not all-encompassing rule, tend to make a passive, rather than active, effort; follow the easy stuff, perhaps pray for forgiveness for not bothering with the difficult, time-consuming, or wasteful stuff.
Nice pun.
Which is a relatively worthless comparison, as eating pork doesn't create Infernal auras either, at least not for non-Jews. (It might for Jews, or at least it might make their Divine auras weaker... I haven't looked at the Jewish chapter of RoP:D in a while.)
Mostly because taking Sundays for Sabbath isn't universal among Divine religions, while murder being wrong is. (There's also an argument that the commandments only apply to strengthening Divine auras, and of course there's the usual "non-literal interpretation" argument. The commandments as written, if they applied everywhere to everyone, would give every part of Mythic Europe with a human settlement way stronger Infernal aura than Divine aura...)
@JL: I had assumed based on the text in Covenants that the ten days was referring to the Sundays that magi didn't work, but I suppose that's inaccurate since there are thirteen, rather than ten, Sundays in a season. Hmm.
pork would also affect muslims...
Wow, this topic flew off the rails by the third response! Is that a record?
As to the topic, I'd say probably, though it might not be so fair and proportional.