Sorry. I did not want to categorise your thoughts at all, I just wanted to exemplify a wide range of variation.
I don't think we disagree on this point.
Perfect fits is boring and improbable. All the fit I required was that the status quo, at the start of game, has to follow plausibly from the backstories and design of the characters there. The story to be told is a different matter altogether.
Does that fit with the path of the crusader campaign? I think that's the most important consideration, and being far from other covenants the second most important.
The crusader army is first assembled in Lyon in 1209 and goes south. Raymond VI of Toulouse joins the army at St-Gilles (between Nimes and Montepellier). The army then goes west to lay siege to Beziers (a holding of Raimond-Roger Trencavel) and take it iin July 1209. Raimond-Roger flees to Carcassone and the crusader army follows, leaving Beziers in ruins. Carcassone surrenders in August and Raimond-Roger is taken prisoner.
Considering the discrepency of the dates, it is possible that Bentalone fell in some attacks against cathars before the crusade was declared, in which case it may stand outside of that path.
But if we look along the path and ignore the time discrepency, anywhere between Beziers and Carcassone would be fair game, up to the base of the mountains just north of those towns.
That would be my preference, essentially something getting out of hand on the lead up to the Crusade. It would also justify some Flambeau joining the crudaders wanting to avenge a fellow miles or something like that. Said flambeau might only partially be following the general rule of no magic on crusade, and if they are young and seeking to avenge their parens, could be an antagonist for the party.
I hope you don't. Your comments here so far have been useful. I agree that PCs should be individuals rather than a perfect elements of a minmaxed team.
If you have better ideas about what a starter saga should be, please speak up!
The discrepancy goes a bit beyond that, unfortunately. The line in F&F about Bentalone states that the covenant was destroyed by the armies of Simon de Montfort because it was mistaken for a Cathar stronghold and overrun in a surprise attack.
But Simon de Montfort only began leading the crusader army in 1209, after Carcassone has been taken. And by that time the army is only composed of about 30 knights and 500 soldiers. Not enough to launch side attacks.
All combined, I would tend to say that we should shift the date of the destruction of the covenant by a few years, essentially correcting a minor mistake in F&F.
How about 1207 is the last year that anyone heard anything from Bentalone - a redcap collected correspondence from the magi there, one letter asking for help in hiding their resources in case they are attacked, and another asking for advice on dealing with a hypothetical antagonist. For some reason, no redcap visited in 1208 and in 1209 the crusade made it hazardous to travel, and by the time a redcap visited again the covenant was a ruin.
The letters can have been sent to the covenants the new magi were trained at, so they are aware of what may have threatened the place, and what resources may have been hidden. This also acts as a handy way of introducing the Hidden Resources covenant boon if you want.
As far as I can find, the crusade was only called in 1209, so if you want to explain a missing redcap visit, there may be better stories. Maybe a redcap was trapped by faeries, or by wine, or whatever ...
Having most of the PCs come from those covenants would make life easier. But if there is fun to be had by having PCs from elsewhere, let's do that!
Location? I was thinking somewhere around there too, for much of the same reason. Also, this is Mythic Europe, so I think we should be careful to leave the precise location unspecified. It's in a valley around there. Distances to other town and covenants are flexible, depending on plot.
Good idea! I like this. There's both opportunity for direct action against the mage, and making a case at a Tribunal, if the players want to pursue either course.
I think this discrepancy in dates is a Feature, not a Bug. Why did de Montfort attack the covenant? Why put out the story it was to kill Cathars? Why did he want the cover of the papal-approved crusade?
This is one more interesting plot thread for the PCs to possibly engage in. And it could well lead to a repeat visit from de Montfort's army, unless the PCs do something about it.
Except that Simon de Montfort was nowhere near the region in 1207. He'd just come back from the 3rd crusade in the Holy Land to his family estates in Montfort-l'Amaury, near Paris. It is only after his friend and neighbour, the Abbot Guy of Vaux-de-Cernay (who had been sent to preach against the Cathar heresy in Occitania), convinced Simon to join the crusade in 1208 that he gathers a number of fellow barons and travels to Lyon to join the crusader army.
It sounds like Guy of Vaux-de-Cernay (and the church) had a hidden agenda vs Bentalone; the 'Simon de Montfort / crusade against the Cathars' story was a front. So 'what did the church guy have to gain?' seems like a good subject for a story -- or a core plot to weave several other stories around, and make solving the mystery & resolving the underlying conflict a major arc for the new covenant.
Well, then, I come back to the question of where we want Bentalone to be located. Because if it was destroyed before the actual crusade had begun, then it does not have to be in the direct path of the crusader army.
As for the actual reasons the led to its destruction, I think having a few different possibilities might be best. That gives the storyguide a choice and makes it so that the players won't know for sure what happened.
EDIT: If people don't have a strong preference, that I can build a proposal for the location.
I was thinking very much along the same lines, so that sounds good to me. I was thinking we could have the covenant have an income source from a tin mine, so somewhere near the Massif Central is good.
I've added a Google Doc, linked from the original post in this thread, that has a summary of what we've come up with so far. Please feel free to add bits as you have ideas. If you want to add PCs or scenario ideas, please do: it's better to have too many than too few, and we can always have additional story seeds as needed.
If you do add anything, please stick your name at the top as a contributor. Let's work on the assumption that everything we create for this will be released under the same open licence as Ars Magica Definitive.
Not a super scientific comment, but Bentalone sounds a lot more Italian than French, i would imagine something with a name like that to lie on the edge of Italy rather than the centee of France...
It should of course be Occitan. This should help: Dictionnaire de l'occitan médiéval (DOM) . Bentalone could derive from Occitan ventalh or ventar - a good name for a covenant in the mountains.
But in no way let the name of a covenant picked from a book determine your saga!
I don't know if it is because I am on the phone, but I cannot get any definitions for the words.
Bena* also seems like a good root, so something like "ben a leone " (good for lions?) seems like a retro-construction.
To me the suffix -lone (like -lane) is very much the south eastern, whereas -ac (like aurillac or aubrac) is more central. Obviously i have never lived in the southern half of France, so the point of view is from the Northern side of the Seine...
There is no reason to let the name direct the location. Magi move around a lot more than the average medieval citizen, and magi moving from one end of the Provencal tribunal to another, naming their new home according to their native customs, is not a stretch.
The analysis of the name is more interesting enough to give depth to the setting, without a medieval linguist on the team, it is going to be mostly fiction in any event. Modern conventions are not that close to medieval ones anyway.
Open the link I gave on a notebook or such, put in the words I quoted, and you will find their meanings together with lots of further references.
In romance languages 'on' and 'one' as suffixes often denote 'bigger', 'tougher' or such: see e.g. patron/padrone, million/millione, bataillon/battaglione.
So you can derive from ventalha (used as wind fan, French éventail) ventalhon as a big wind fan - e.g. a rock wall deflecting the wind.
Whether the authors of early ArM covenants thought along such lines I cannot tell you, of course.
Quite. Especially if it messes with a saga.
I'm not so convinced about that, nothing about papillon, souillon, goupillon, coullion or goujon strike me as big or tough.
Bentalone sounds most of all like pantalon to me...