It takes a village to run a saga.
I'll be heading on another road trip, and will be semi-afk until Feb 20th. If you happen to be attending Capricon (Feb 10th weekend, Chicago, IL) or Wicked Faire (Feb 17th weekend, Somerset, NJ) you should come find me!
Do you want me to takeover Viscaria for the combat if I need to move it along? Since The Fixer is on another continent, he's probably the limiting factor to the pace of combat, except your afk time. I'd like to keep things moving there as much as possible.
One benefit of this, is that Viscaria probably won't have anything untoward happen to her if I'm running her.
Yes please. I posted general tactics and strategy in her combat stats. Vin will just shield-grog for her.
I believe we decided Thera isn't going with, so I don't need to post her combat stats?
Right, she didn't go, just in case it took longer than until sunrise, otherwise she'd have to make her way back the long way...
This will likely drag out a fair bit. Combat does that in pbp. I've tried individualized combats with Alexei twice, I wanted to get a full scale battle going...
Okay, so I was thinking about the Lost Boys thread in the shower a while ago (have I mentioned lately how obsessively geeky I am?) - specifically, the potential problem of getting home.
And it occurred to me that (theoretically, at least) it should, or may, be possible for Fiona to create a Potion of Homecoming. So I thought I'd run it by you and see what you thought. I may be taking one or two liberties with the creation process that may or may not be allowed...so be it.
The Potion of Homecoming, when drunk, instantly transports the victim target to a place chosen when the potion was brewed – an Arcane Connection to the locale is one of the ingredients. As the potion is good until it is imbibed, this requires that the Arcane Connection be fixed before the potion is brewed, which takes a week and costs one pawn of vis.
The effect is Rego Corpus, base level is 35 ("Transport the target instantly to a place to which you have an Arcane Connection). Since it's a potion, the Range becomes Touch (+1), while the Duration and Target remain Momentary and Individual, respectively. The final Spell/Effect Level is thus 40.
Fiona's Lab Total is: Rego 5 + Corpus 14 + Int 1 + Magic Theory (Potions) 7 + Aura 5 + Inventive Genius 3 + Lab Bonus (Superior Equipment) 1 + Lab Bonus (Dedicated Building, Rego) 1 = 37. I have no idea what Paul's intelligence is, or if he's able to help in the lab yet. If she were to Experiment with the potion, that would add 3 + a simple die, to give it 41-50, which would be one or two doses. If she were to use Ulrich (at his current level) for a season, that would add 5, which may result in two or three doses.
I'm not saying I want her to do this...this is just a mental exercise and practice using the charged item creation rules. What do y'all think?
Hunh. That's only three hours away from chez moi. So, except for the fact that I'm working 4am to noon Saturday, I don't have my own car, and am about to be unemployed in two weeks (yay!...um...kinda)...
That, and I really don't think you want to see my cat. Or the box it comes in. 
Hrm, if you weren't working and had a way to get there, I'd invite you to work my booth. I have an extra badge, and need all the help I can get -- I'm in the hallway, not the Dealer's Room, so the hours and security issues will be funky.
Are there any limits on what potions can do? I know they expire quickly. The point would likely cause a point of warping to the imbiber, if it did work.
AFAIK, it would work, yes 
If you create the potion using the Charged Items rules (MRB, p. 96-97) like Fiona does, then I don't believe they expire. And there's nothing in the errata about it (I actually remembered to check this time ) In fact, on page 97, where it describes the forms that Charged Items can take, it specifically mentions arrows and "potions, which have their effect on the person drinking them." I honestly did not have this particular benefit in mind when I came up with the concept, but it makes perfect sense when you look at the legend of Circe in Odyssey.
tl;dr: They don't seem to expire, and Fiona could make a potion for anyone to take with them to use if they need it. And yes, it would cause a point of Warping.
edit: just realized that I forgot to add +1 Magnitude for Increased Size (after all, why make that kind of potion if she can't use it?). So that makes the final level 45, and reduces the number of potions she can make by one.
Well, it took me a little longer to get around to it than I thought it would. And I wound up trying to do it all on my computer. But here's the first draft:
(insert link to craptacular first draft of the coat of arms drawing here)
Still in progress, wanted to know what y'all think. And the Fill "feature" in MSPaint sucks. Not as badly as the OpenOffice Draw (which sucks more than a tornado hooked up to a vacuum cleaner hose). GIMP is the polar opposite of user friendly. So, my options seem to be rather limited.
Well, tell you what? This is quite fine, at least as far as I'm concerned.
Count my vote in!
And the nice thing about the blazon (which, btw, would be: "Vert a mount and semy of mullets Or") is that semy is undefined. So, we can add or subtract stars on the field as we add or lose magi.
Currently, we have ten stars/magi (Alexei, Apollodorus, Fieltarn, Fiona, Isen, Jacques, Jormungand, Korvin, Laetitia, and Onesiphorus).
Once I get it touched up, I'll add it to the Wiki somewhere. So, now we know what the turb has on their tabards .
I like it, if I can offer a suggestion? Is there any kind of symbol that could be put on that suggests or links our Covenant with the Order of Hermes? Something that is arcane seeming perhaps, but needn't be overt? It's a tall order, I don't know much about Heraldry, but there's a somewhat limited amount of accepted symbols correct?
That's it, I do like it, and I also like that it can be changed (the number of stars) yet not change the overall affect of it.
Speaking for Alexei, I've often mentioned his own personal symbol (the hourglass hanging from a spear, much like a lantern from a staff that someone in a town might use), how would he traditionally incorporate the two? Not asking you to do that, to make a symbol, but just to advise how it typically would be done.
The three intertwined snakes that are on the cover of the cover of the main rulebook I seem to recall seeing that it was a symbol of the Order. Perhaps a dragon or wyrm? On the covers of most, if not all, of the Ars books it has a dragon holding a staff to represent the Magic realm (along with the devil for Invernal, the angel for Divine, and the winged jester playing a mandolin for Faerie). We could probably put a dragon on the mount, which would, I think, change the blazon to "Vert, a semy of mullets and on a mount Or a dragon gules" (gules being red).
Personally, I'd like to keep it as simple as possible, because I can't draw worth beans...there's a reason my SCA arms is a single charge.
Normally, in heraldry there's a set number of colours to play with: argent (white), Or (yellow), sable (black), azure (blue), gules (red), purpure (purple), vert (green). Then there's "proper," which means something in it's normal color (dog would normally be brown, say, or a tree brown with green leaves).
To be honest, I'm not sure you can. Anytime you see two coats of arms combined (think the flag of Maryland, say), it typically signifies marriage. What I'm thinking is that we would use the Covenant arms when whomever is on covenant duty or covenant business (e.g. on guard duty), while anyone wearing Alexei's arms would be on Alexei's business.
I'll think about it and see if I can find anything like it. If it were to be done, it would probably be either divided in two vertically ("impaled"), with the covenant's arms to the viewer's left and Alexei's to the right, or quartered with the covenant's on the top left and bottom right with Alexei's in the other two.
Sorry I've been AWOL this weekend. I've had some work stuff blow up on me. I've cleaned up most of the messes, but still have some things to fix.
Welcome back.
I wouldnt' say I'm back. I'm now loading a uhaul with trash to take to the dump. Also, picked up our new floor and the cabinets are coming in tomrorrow.
Oh, and our daughter has a stomach bug. It's been a heckuva weekend.