I llke the idea of a noble in alliance with the covenant. It also provides a couple of story seeds. What happens when the rival of the new owner makes their own bid for the castle (legal or military)? What happens when the owner decides to assert his independence a bit more and take more of the tax money.
As for the aura, the standard solution is to have the covenant's aura in a regio on the site of the castle, such as through the caves. Perhaps the regio could also connect to the nearby mine?
I'd have a tendency to stay away from regiones for the covenant. They have their own mechanics and peculiarities that should be introduced in one of the stories, instead of being commonplace. This is a starting pack, after all. The covenant is not supposed to be optimized and representative of a "normal" covenant. And most covenants aren't set in a regio -- at least not initially.
I would rather be in favour of having some sort of mystical anchor that explains the presence of the aura in a specific part of the castle. Maybe the burial place or remains of a powerful creature, or a confluence of winds, or even a nesting place for magical birds just below the castle.
EDIT: In fact, the magical birds would fit nicely with the shape of the castle, as well as the name "Bentalone", that someone mentioned has a possible root related to wind.
Same here
It goes a step further: the heraldic symbol for the house of Berard de Montalet is a white wing on a red background. So a cave that was once the dwelling place of a giant albino eagle or whatever would fit on multiple levels (althoguh I still find the Cult of Saint Pantaleon to be my favourite).
Fair enough. But also, most covenants are in isolated places, away from mundanes. I'm not keen on the original covenant being sited in an actively-used mundane castle, let alone one that's currently being rebuilt by mundanes.
Perhaps the castle was always the covenant and covenant-folk, and there was a treaty between the covenant and the local lord that formalised that separation? Now the covenant is being refounded, that treaty is reactivated. It protects the covenant from interference, but places some obligations on the covenant in return. That could be the payment of a certain amount of tax from the mine, or services to the lord once a year, or something.
There's also something about how the covenant brings in workers to rebuild the buildings and fortifications. Perhaps that could be the backdrop for a scenario, perhaps the Flambeau villain sending someone to infiltrate or sabotage the covenant?
Perhaps magical birds have always lived in and around the two towers being given to the covenant. This could help explain a some magical aura and the families connection to the covenant.
I like it although for a starter saga I would tend to lean away from that tight of a connection between a mundane noble and a covenant. I like to keep the non-interference with mundane politics as more of a central idea and living with a mundane lord screams that these magi are favoring him.
This still hits a gray area in the Code (magi having vassal obligations to a mundane lord) but I think I care more about that than most new players would so as a starter idea its fine.
Does the house of Bernard de Montalet have more than one castle? I wouldn't want to deprive them of their only (historical) home but if they did perhaps there could be a historic charter showing that Charlemagne gave the site to a group of scholars (or some other group) in perpetuity. The covenant could then be the group (whether actively seeking to be the continuation or recreation of the group or merely using it as a legal fiction). They could informally pay off de Montalet without being officially vasals.
That's always the trouble with castles. Historically, you can't really own one if you're not a noble, and if you live there you must have some sort of relationship with the noble.
Here we have the problem twice, because there was a change of mundane ownership between the original covenant and the new one. Unless the ownership doesn't change. Perhaps we have the original owner (or his family) coming back to ChĂąteau de Montalet after Simon de Monfort's death?
If we want to minimize the interaction with the mundane inhabitants of the castle, then caves under the castle would be a way to handle that without resorting to a regio. But it also sets a certain tone to the saga that I find less desirable for a starter saga -- the magi are always hiding their comings and goings from the mundanes.
That's why I proposed that they could live under the guise of "scholars" who could interact with the other inhabitants of the castle, with only restriction of not being blatant about them being magi. It also keep them at some distance from the financial aspects of a covenant, since their income would be provided for by the castle's owner.
Now, there are several ways to keep the interactions with mundanes to a lower level. First, the contruction crew may have been provided by the sponsoring covenants, so that they know that the "scolars" are in fact magi. Second, Arnaud may not live there. (Although him coming for a visit may make for a good story.)
Geneanet tells us that Arnaud II de BĂ©rard de Montalet was lord of Montalet for a long time (1199-1270). So he was young when he set fire to the castle. He had 2 children : his heir Guillaume (born 1230) and a daughter (no name or date of birth available). The old age offers the possibility that the covenant might provide him with a longevity ritual at some point.
EDIT: In the saga, the fire that destroyed the castle may not have been set by Arnaud himself, but may have been the result of a magical trap triggered by the assailants when they invaded the sanctum of one of the original magi of Bentalone.
My vote is to drop the idea of the covenant being in Montalet castle. It's a lovely idea, but it adds a lot of complication to the setting and pushes things towards a particular style of game (lots of interactions with the mundanes and politicking with nobles).
Instead, we should have the covenant as some manor-type complex further away from large settlements.
Can we realistically do that and still follow the blurp from F&F?
Bentalone (1106â1207): A summer covenant destroyed during the crusade by the armies of Simon de Montfort when the castle they inhabited was mistaken for a Cathar stronghold and overrun in a surprise attack.
The covenant still needs to have a castle, and be located along the path of the crusade. It cannot be in a regio (or just an isolated place) where the army could not have attacked and destroyed it.
Not all castles are created equal, a summoned wizard tower and two longhouses surrounded by a palisade and a moat can be seen as a castle...
Sure, it can, but the tower would be large enough to host labs. To mundanes, that's a large tower. Large enough to draw attention. And if the crusading army saw it as "a Cathar stronghold", then certainly the mundane lords before that would have noticed it too.
The summoned wizard's tower is canonically large enough tonhost a mage's lab per floor. The mage can sleep in "normal" houses next to it.
But I agree while the Berard de Montalet sound interesting, it probably is best to split them from the Covenant. That being said, they could have been, as a family, the historic owners of the area where he Covenant is based, with their return to rebuild being a mundane parralel to the Covenant's rebirth, as a mise en abĂźme of a kind. So some kind of agreement or understanding would need to be found with him.
That's basically what I was offering as ways to keep the mundane parts low-key...
Another possibility would be that the reborn covenant is not set up in the castle, but rather at a location not too far from it. That would allow it to draw less attention. One of the important vis sources might still be at the castle (related to the bird theme), so the covenant would still have to interact with the castle's inhabitant occasionally.
If the original covenant was in the castle and the backstory implies that's why someone arranged for it to get destroyed -- too much meddling with the mundanes but not quite Marched yet (maybe a Tytalus scheme?) -- that's a good way to reinforce to new players that they'll have to be careful about how they deal with the mundanes. And if they still need to interact with the Montalets for reasons, it's an incentive for them to have some sort of accomodation that the Quaesitoris (or Tytalus cabal) would find acceptable.
Drawing on some background from Faith and Flame, how about this backstory?
Bentalone was a rival of the Bellaquin covenant. It occupies a small fortress in a valley near Alés, on the lands of the de Montalet estates. The original site of Bellaquin was destroyed around 1199 (same year as the death of Arnault I Bérard de Montalet ); Bentalone was behind this? Note that there seems to be lots of shuffling around of titles within the family and with the bishop of Uzés around 1199-1202, which could well lead to Bentalone getting land independent of any lord.
That only lasted a few years and Bentalone was destroyed in 1206; perhaps Bellaquin was involved here?
In 1220, Arnault II BĂ©rard is probably in his late twenties and is making moves to reclaim the land owned by Bentalone. This move explains why it's being re-founded now: a presence there may keep Arnault II from just taking the land unopposed.
The sponsoring covenants are Coenobium and Ostal des Exiles. They both have their own reasons for the alliance, mainly to influence the other covenant.
The Bentalone site still has a Magic aura, and some kind of affinity for Auram and Animal; it's the source of the bird-wing symbol of the Berard family.
For what's worth: one possible etymology of "Bentalone" might be "Pentolone" (big pot, cauldron in Italian). The two sound similar enough to be easily confused when the latter is pronounced with the "right" accent. The "cauldron" might be some specific natural feature of the area, or it might refer to some ancient mystical object from which the local Aura originates. Alternatively, the original convenant might have been a "melting pot" of magi from many disparate origins, and the name might come from a joke on that.
Pushing towards a particular style of game is a good thing. The objective for a starter set is not to provide a generic setting, but a concrete example from which to learn. Not choosing a particular play style makes the example bland and less inspiring, and thus pedagogically inferior.
If your point is that you want to choose a different style, that's a fair one to make, and one to settle very early in the process.
I think @Arthur asks the right question, if a remote location is compatible with the F&F backstory of Bentalone. In the interest of progress towards a useable starter set, I think some of us should reap the benefits of the work that @Arthur has put in, and detail Bentalone in the castle. Then somebody else may complete a different covenant in a remote location, which is probably no less assumes a particular play style, but not the same play style.
What I am trying to say is that compromise should be used very sparingly. Better stories arise from bold choices explored to the bitter end, even if the choices are arbitrary. Less work may be required to detail two different settings than merging them into one compromise.
Possibly true. But in this case, the play style is one of dealing with mundane working-class and politicking with nobles. Neither of those are distinctive Ars Magica activities, and neither will have much appeal to most RPG gamers.
The idea of basing the saga in the seat of the de Montalet estate was a good one, but one that I don't fits the brief of a starting saga that gives a good introduction to a typical Ars Magica game.
Hence, we go back to the idea that the covenant is like most other covenants, in a place that is somewhat remote from large settlements, where the magical aura is strong.
On the contrary, they are. A key benefit of the historical setting is to play human beings closely modelled on real word people, and the long-term game makes this particularly worthwhile, because people and communities evolve over time and give long term consequences to actions. Thus Ars Magica makes mundane interaction a lot more interesting than many other, and most definitely the most classic, fantasy games. I have met enough people who value exactly this feature of Ars Magica to seriously doubt your assessment of «most RPG gamers» or a «typical Ars Magica game».
You may or may not be right, but please, present it as your take and not as the obvious choice.
BTW. There is no contradiction between good auras and nearby settlements. Markets, churches, and castles cover at least a four mile radius (day return by cart), and maybe ten (day return on horseback), and the dominion does not extend that far. You can always design a plausible aura in the region.
Would anyone want to split off and develop a more mundane-centred starter pack based on @Arthur 's research?
Not to derail the thread but I have to laugh a little at this. Those are two of the reasons I like Ars Magica!
How about the following: the new covenant is at the same site as the destroyed castle of Montalet, but in a regio layer? Montalet/Bentalone ruins are located in a +1 Magical Aura. The covenant is in a +3 Regio, where Bentalone/Montalet still stands, albeit seriously damaged. PCs know that there is a +5 Regio layer too, where Bentalone/Montalet appears in its full glory, but ... with some caveat. Maybe the original inhabitants are still there as powerful ghosts?
In this way, you automatically get a ''remote'' site, which should be the Ars Magica default, but you also get interaction with mundanes if, and only if, you wish.