Depends on how it is structured. The commune can be seen as an extension of the covenant, and the Oath of the Commune can be written into the Covenant Oath. As far as the Order s concerned, the town people are all covenfolk with certain ennumerated rights and privileges.
A covenant as part of a commune should not prove to be a major problem under heremtic rules it is no worse than the feudal obligations some covenants have as long as we are not committed to use magic on behalf of the commune then we are not breaking the oath.
There is a problem here with the Commune idea. The communes had charters from the senior nobleman of the area (King or Emperor) and paid taxes to them , they just missed out the intermediatery layers and governed their own internal affairs. In Flanders that gives us two choices
1)The King of France he claims power over Flanders but in practice does not at the moment
2) The Count of Flanders as I understand it the two feuding noblewomen we have problems are both claimants to the title of countess of Flanders after the death of their father in the Holy land. So as a commune we would still have a duty to the same people we have problems with. (I could be wrong about the identity of the nobles)
3) The German Emperor I also think claims flanders but getting a charter from him would be very unlikely to be accepted
None of this of course stops us going ahead with the plan as I don't think any of the characters have any knwpledge of mundane laws and customs, Iolar certainly does not .
Obtaining a charter from a noble or some such seems perfectly acceptable to me. That is the same way the fueros of Spain operated. Whom to obtain one from? That is the trick I suppose. We can work that out later I suppose.
I see no problem either except finding a suitable charter issuer .
We need to gather more intelligence about our local nobility then 
I doubt the noble wants to give power to a town. That is why you buy them from a king. If there were an outlaw noble we would be on better ground. If this is a lawful owner of the land then we will be in trouble
I knew I should have gone with my first thought to make a Jerbiton with local ties for this game. The lack of a native speaker is causing us problems.
Does this take place after the Tribunal or before?
As I figure, each magi is entitled to 4 pawns of vis so far with 4 pawns banked ( 12 pawns per year after AoH is taken care of and 5 active Magi).
If this is true then Halvard would like 1 Cr, 1 Pr, 2 He as his payment. He will have to do a vis trade with the Redcap when he/she comes through.
actually, Max owes us 8 pawns, 4 for this year and 4 for last year. I presume this takes place after tribunal, as I am using Roberto's updated stats 
Minus what is needed for AoH, which will bring it down to 2 per.
If this is after the tribunal we should figure out if we won anything and what it is. We could take books or vis as prizes.
I thought that the AotH came out of the covenan't vis stores, not out of our salary. Otherwise, we are just to exceedingly poor to survive and it is a miracle we have lasted these two years.
We have an income of 25 pawns of Vis per year.15 of that goes to Florum every year.
that leaves us 10 for the Aegis of the Hearth and our own use. We are a trifle short of Vis .
Iolar hasn't used any yet of the covenants using only her own vis.
Why are we giving 15 pawns to the Forum every year? That must stop right away.
Perhaps i'm reading it wrong
If we do not do this anymore then we are much better off.
I see I miscalculated. If we do not play the 10p for 100 silver then we are barely above water.
25p - 5 for Florum -7 for AoH = 13p
It will all depend on the silver. We need the 100 silver to make expenses. And we are getting ripped off. HoH:TL pg 87 1 pawn of vis is roughly equivalent to 10 pounds of silver
5 pawns as part of our feudal obligations. Stopping that is possibly a breach of tribunal rules and certainly a declaration of war on Florum.
10 paens traded for 100 pulds of silver . We currently have a surplus of 19 pounds of silver per year without the money from Florum we go bust pretty much instantly.
From thr tournement we can probably gain access to another vis source or two and it would be worth our while to try and discover other local vis sources
I make it 3 pawns of vis available every year from our fixed sources after all outgoings.
If we can find about 100 punds of silver per year we can get another 10 from stopping trading it to Florum. However I have no idea what we could do to make so much money. The pirates are not contirbuting much so we could use them for piracy , or we could have a cunning plan.
Finding more Vis sites would also be useful although under the rule sof the tribunal we could probably not keep them unless they are very close to the covenant or very difficult to access
Is vis debt one of our hooks or is this a Normandy Tribunal thing? If it is only a "possible" breach, then we should just cut them off. What do they do for us? Absolutly nonthing. We were robbed, they did nothing. We are under seige, they do nothing. A feudal obligation is a reciprocating contract. If they do not uphold their end, we are released from ours. Roberto has the Reckless Flaw, he is not concerned with "possible" consequences.
On the other hand, according to Jebrick's calculations, we are better off than we originally thought. If we pay Florum, they owe us service. Now would be a good time to call in that debt.
I agree with Andrew on his calculation.
Here is a question
Since Walter is dead and we got his money chest what changes does this make? Are we no longer repaying this loan or is it owned by someone else now?
We already used that at the beginning of the saga for something else to get the covenant of the ground.
First thing is we need to have Max rule on if we won anything at the tournament. If so then we need to decide what it is. I was angling for a story of the secret society helping Novus Main by "fixing" some events at the tournament so we finished 23rd. That would be a huge help as the reward is 6+6.
Any Vis sources would not help us this year but IIRC, you can trade a prize for quite a bit of raw vis. That could be an option.
It is a Normandy Tribunal thing and they are meeting their obligations it is just that our agreement with them is terribly one sided as a result of the abject weakness of this covnenat during earlier negotiations before our time .
Feudal duty
• At tribunal the magi of Novus Mane must surrender half their sigils to a representative of Florum.
• Every year Novus Mane must supply Florum with five pawns of Vim vis.
• Every five year one magi from Novus Mane must perform a service for Florum. This service may not take longer than a season to perform and not put the magi in harms way. Experimental laboratory research is an exception from this.
Duties of protection
• Florum must not support any tribunal decision that is to the detriment of Novus Mane.
• Florum must not oppose any tribunal decision that benefits Novus Mane. Exception to this is when Florum can claim that the decision is harmful to them.
• Florum is obliged to answer one request from Novus Mane every seven years. This can be refused if the request does either of the following, require the expenditure of vis, interrupt a season or cause unreasonable risk to the magi of Florum. The magi of Florum decides what is an unreasonable risk.
We have 25 pawn income 5 is commited to Florum by treaty the rest is ours to do with as we wish at the moment
we choose to sell 10 to Florum for silver and we cannot financially survive without that silver or some repalcement.
7 goes on the Aegis which is optional (it is very marginal that we can actually cast the Aegis as we only have 8 Vim per year and 5 goes to Florum)
If we want more Vis there are 3 strategies
1)Secure more temporary vis sites via the Tournemant , I will try and put forward what we can get from our tournemant results tonight or tommorrow.
2)Find Vis sites, Local ones or difficult to access ones we may be able to claim permenantly the rest we will get on at least a short term basis
3)Find another soruce of income so we no longer have to sell 10 pawns of Vis per year
4) Reduce our financial expenditure so we can claw back some of that vis . ELiminating some of the tithe or resucing the provisions cost would help
I think that roughly it goes like this for each point of winnings you can get
1 pawn of vis per year until the next tribunal
5 pawns of vis
A number of points of books
The exact numbers are at home.
with the 6+6 we get 6 and distriubute 6 to other new or weak covenants