It was suggested in the Anno Magica 2024 thread that it might be useful for others to post session recaps of games everybody is playing, so I thought I might share ours.
I'm currently SGing two games of Ars Magica, one set in the Theban Tribunal and another one set in the Roman Tribunal. These will be the recaps from the Theban game. As I don't really have a lot of time, I will be posting only the summaries for each game played, since I already have those written down and only need to translate them.
They are very brief, intended to be just reminders of what happened, akin to a TV series' episode summaries. If anybody is interested in some extra information about any of those games, I will happily expand on them, as time allows, though I'm skeptical as to how interesting this might be to anybody not playing the saga.
I'll be posting one adventure a day, with a new post for each adventure. We have currently played 46 adventures, so this will last for a couple of months. Don't expect long posts about each adventure, though, since I don't have a lot of spare time. But I'll be happy to expand anything you want to know more about.
Finally, a brief introduction to the saga. This is played in person, averaging a 5-6 hour session every four weeks. The initial setting and premise was that of four magi setting up a Covenant in the Theban Tribunal. Two of them are Greek, Hyperides Hylas and Charis, native to the Tribunal. Another one is a Frank magus, Eric d'Ancelin, from the Provençal Tribunal. The final one is a member of the Order of Suleiman from Baghdad, Thubayta Al-Shafiyya, passing as a Sahir from the Iberian Tribunal. Since most people in Thebes are not aware that the Sahir in Iberia have been fully Hermetic for centuries, she's pretending to be a "hedge wizard" with weak non-Hermetic magic and a member of House Ex Miscellanea.
I'll be compiling a "Table of Contents" here with the posts for all the adventures, for easier access:
There are several shared grogs, and each of the four players has both a Magus and a Companion.
The companions at the start of the game are:
Theoclymenus - A criminal from Nicea with faerie blood, actually the son of a noble who harbours a deep hatred of his family, and nobility in general.
Simon Ristopoulos - A priest of the Orthodox Church, who tends to the spiritual needs of the Covenant.
Kostas Allectoros - A merchant with a grudge against another merchant family. His trading business is the main source of income for the Covenant, who are partners in the venture.
Jaelle - A myterious guide from the Middle-East that came to the Covenant with Thubayta.
The Covenant itself is to be founded in Constantinople, and its name will be Ouroboros. As per the requirements of the Tribunal, it has a purpose and a patron. The purpose is to discover a way to fully bring back people from the dead. The patron is a genius locii, the spirit of a regio in the city where there was another Covenant previously, and where Ouroboros will be founded. The previous Covenant, called Ypogeios, was destroyed in mysterious circumstances.
The magi of the Covenant are all young, mostly fresh from apprenticeship.
Hyperides Hylas Verditistes - A Greek Verditius magus from Ingasia, uninterested in the outside world. He is devoted to bringing back his wife from the dead, who was killed during the sack of Constantinople by Franks.
Charis Ex Miscellanistes - A Greek Ex Miscellanea maga from Erebos, of the Pharmacopeian tradition. She's a down-to-earth compassionate healer whose mother was killed by knights suspect of being a witch.
Eric d'Ancelin, follower of Jerbiton - The son of Baron d'Uberre from the Val du Bois (taken from the setting for Mistridge and The StormRider in 3rd Edition). Due to his parentes' ties to a sahira from the Order of Suleyman, he is an accomplice of the infiltration of Thubayta into the Order, though he thinks she has been cast out of the Order of Suleyman.
Thubayta Al-Shafiyya - A sahira from the Order of Suleyman, tasked by her master with infiltrating the Order of Hermes and stealing the secrets of Parma Magica and Spontaneous Magic. She distrusts her master, Salima Al-Abudiyya, and wants to steal her secret technique for moving her soul from one body to a younger one, that apparently makes her immortal. Thubayta is accompanied by her servant Khalila, who doesn't know Thubayta is actually her long-lost sister.
Teodoreto Criamonistes, an arche from the nearby Covenant of Xylynites, commissions the magi to find a false reliquary that is actually an hermetic object that contains a demon, in exchange for sponsoring the foreign magi into joining the Tribunal. With the help of Kostas Allectoros and Theoclymenus they manage to recover it in a race against Andrea Cosini, a Genoese merchant who is also looking for it, and his factotum Lucio Ipatici.
The classic 'this Covenant was destroyed in mysterious circumstances, but we'll do better, I'm sure!' plot, it never disappoints. Thank you for posting these! I believe I have some cheatsheets you made back in the day and it has served me and my players quite well!
It did bring quite some interesting plots, as you'll see. Though the campaign being a sandbox meant that the Covenant didn't have such a strong role in the end, as they got involved in a lot of other stuff. The saga is still running, so there's stuff about the Covenant that's still generating new plots.
Also, thank you for your kind words regarding the cheat sheets. I'm happy you found them useful!
Kostas Allectoros and Eric d'Ancelin investigate the Eiredopoios family, to whom the Venetian merchant Enrico Mauroceni wants to marry his daughter. They do this in exchange for freeing the trading house's ships from being indicted into the war in Damietta. With the help of father Simon and Theoclymenus they discover that Captain Creon Alati, brother-in-law of Lord Eiredopoios, is married to a Nereid, and this prevents his ships from sinking. While there, Eric d'Ancelin meets Hannelora, the daughter of Lord Eiredopoios' brother, who becomes infatuated with him. They tell Mauroceni that nothing seems off about the Eiredopoios family, and he fulfills his side of the deal.
Charis, Hyperides Hylas and Eric d'Ancelin investigate a higher level of the regio in which the covenant is located, accompanied by Theoclymenus. There they face some magical snakes and discover the presence of a mysterious inhabitant of the place. They find some of the personal notes of one of the previous inhabitants of the Covenant, revealing that they had taken some of these magical snakes captive to breed them for vis and studying them. They reach the conclussion that the Covenant was destroyed when attacked by the mother of these magical snakes, a huge multi-headed snake with a large brood.
On a side note, while the bulk of the saga is home-brewed, several of the adventures make use of published material. You will probably recognize the name Hannelora from the second adventure as that of one of the villains from the book Antagonists. The huge snake mentioned in the third adventure is the Waimie, from the same book.
Enrico Mauroceni asks Hyperides Hylas and Thubayta Al-Shafiyya to investigate the presence in Constantinople of an assassin from the Levant. He has received word from Venice that this assassin has come to kill the new Emperor Robert de Courtenay during his coronation. With the help of brother Simon Ristopoullos and Jaelle they stop the murderers, some hashassins that come from muslim lands. They capture one while the other, a sorcerer named Rashid al-Mustajibi, escapes. Meanwhile, brother Simon discovers that Lord Eiredopoios' late father hid an imperial heir in Constantinople years ago, although he died at the hands of the knight Geoffroy de Merry during the fall of the city.
Journey to Thessaloniki February 1221 - Adventure 5
Meanwhile, Eric d'Ancelin and Kostas Allectoros travel by ship to the Tribunal, passing through Thessaloniki, where they meet the pious magae of the Covenant of Oikos tou Eleous. Along the way they have an encounter with some sea faeries who live in the bay in front of the city of Thessaloniki.
The magi of the Covenant attend Tribunal, exchanging various books and participating in Hermetic politics. Eric d'Ancelin joins the secretive League of the Vigilant, run by Hydatius Verditistes. During Tribunal it is discovered that someone, using an enchanted item, altered the memory of magus Georgios Jerbitonistes of his investigation of the disappearance of the late Covenant of Ypogeios. A census of the sigils of all the magi of the Tribunal is carried out to try to find the culprit. When that yields not results, dispatches are appointed to make inquiries in the neighbouring Tribunals, with the magi of Ouroboros volunteering to be the envoys to the Levant Tribunal.
The magus Megamemnon Tytalistes asks Charis, Hyperides Hylas, Eric d'Ancelin and Theoclymenus go to the White Island to find a funeral urn for him, in exchange for some psephos (tokens). After confronting several ghosts, they manage to retrieve the urn and escape. After giving it to Megamemnon, he realizes that it is not the object he was looking for. After paying them the psephos agreed upon, he returns it to them, since it is of no use to him.
Since two of the next three adventures where "reprises" of ones they left unfinished, I'll be posting the briefs for three adventures today.
The first one, "Salvation", is straight out of chapter 6 of the "Hooks" book, though I intertwined it with Hannelora from "Antagonists", to provide a source for her turn to infernalism that was related to the saga. The second one is a return to the regio exploration, which they put on hold until they were more prepared to face the magical snakes, and the third one is the continuation of the first one, Salvation.
You'll notice those last two don't have their own separate adventure numbers, as they were just continuations of adventures that were put "on hold" by the players.
Eric d'Ancelin visits the nearby abandoned monastery of Saint Angelos, alerted by Hydatius Verditistes of possible demonic activity there. Once there, and with the help of Hyperides Hylas , father Simon and Theoclymenus, he discovers the presence of a demon but is unable to defeat it.
Exploring the Regio - Part II July 1221 - Adventure 3b
Charis, Hyperides Hylas and Eric d'Ancelin return to the hidden level of the regio, and finally defeat the snakes with the help of Theoclymenus. After freeing the mysterious inhabitant of the deepest level of the regio, they finally discover that she is a sibyl who is protected by Ypogeius, the genus locii who is the patron spirit of the covenant. They also discover that the maga Evantia, from the covenant of Moero Kepeia in Nicea, made almost yearly visits to the Covenant before it was destroyed, though they do not know why yet.
Eric d'Ancelin returns to the monastery of Saint Angelos accompanied by Hyperides Hylas, Thubayta Al-Shafiyya and father Simon. Working together, they manage to destroy the demon that dwells there. Meanwhile, the covenant receives a visit from young Hannelora, Lord Eiredopoios' niece. She has run away from home, madly in love with Eric d'Ancelin, and has come to Constantinople to be with him. She disappears while looking for them in the vicinity of the monastery, but they finally manage to find her and return her home.
The player who plays the guide Jaelle was unhappy with the character, and so decided to retire her and make a new Companion character. Since Jaelle had been Thubayta's guide to Constantinople, assigned to her by her sahira master Salima, we decided that she would be returning to Salima. And we set up a quick introduction adventure for the new character, a bloodcap redcap from the Novgorod Tribunal named Ivan Volkov.
This was not the first time this player had changed characters, as Jaelle was actually the substitution for an earlier Companion. That was Theon Doukas, a Greek noble in hiding in the Covenant, but that one didn't even see play before being discarded, and so I didn't even mention him in the summaries.
I don't want to be updating the post with the Companion chararacters, so that people who are reading this thread now or in the future get to known about him now, when he was introduced. But I'll include his brief summary here:
Ivan Volkov - A red cap from the Novgorod Tribunal with bloodcap faerie blood, he comes to the Theban Tribunal on the run from a dark slavic deity he crossed paths with in the past, and who is hunting him.
While the other magi are at Saint Angelos, Charis travels with Theoclymenus to the northern coast of the Black Sea to pick up a redcap named Ivan Volkov who is fleeing from some terrible winter faeries, servants of a dark slav god. After rescuing him, Ivan settles in the covenant with them. Meanwhile, Jaelle leaves Cosntantinople heading back to Salima in Baghdad, her job here with Thubayta being done.
Eric d'Ancelin, Charis and Thubayta Al-Shafiyya travel to the Levant Tribunal with Kostas Allectoros, in search of the creator of the enchanted item that altered the memory of magus Georgios. They discover there that the maker of the enchanted item was the maga Lumina, a Verditius who created the item on request and who is now dead. During their stay in Damascus, Thubayta's servant, Khalila, is enslaved while trying to send a message to a contact of hers in Baghdad. They manage to rescue her from slavery, and discover the message is part of her effort to find her missing sister. Thubayta confesses to Charis and Eric d'Ancelin that, unbeknownst to Khalila, she is actually that missing sister, but makes them promise they won't tell her. During the return trip, Kostas leads a convoy of ships that manages to break the blockade of the Nicaean fleet on Constantinople. Upon their arrival in the city they are hailed as heroes by the people of Constantinople and by Emperor Robert de Courtenay.
