Table Talk - Stealing the Future

As an aside, and not relative to my character - does this also mean that the Sami (aka "Lapps") are Faeries? Or, say, the people from Cathay...

Yes.
The official line from David Chart, Line Editor for Ars Magica, is that Cathy is in the realm of the faeries. So, consistent with that approach, spices and silks and other goods from the Orient are faerie goods.

But this isn't as bad as it would seem, it's just another way of saying that these places are far away, and their customs of those locales differ greatly. Having them be Faerie actually makes it easier, because I can handwave away the language issues that come up in traveling to far off lands. The longer I game, the less interesting it is to focus on language differences as a plot device... Sometimes I will play lip service to it, and tend to pay more attention to it in ME.

Yeah, I always have to be careful that the academic in me doesn't overrule the storyteller. Sometimes, you just have to hand-wave to make sure the character interaction takes center stage, and that's practically the opposite of how you're trained to think. Left to my own devices, I tend to endlessly tinker with stuff like language rules or the interaction between cultural familiarity and etiquette, and that's not conducive to a good story.

I'm having a bit of difficulty finding a way to get into the action. Supposedly, Vanadís was at the Academie all along, but no one noticed her? She would have signed up for Fiona's "social graces" class for sure, and it's also likely she would have been involved in various class room events, one would imagine. Given that all those things are well under way, I'm a touch lost on how to tackle this and actually become part of the story without retconning three months of pbp.

Well, during the Latin year, there wasn't a lot of interaction between the students because most of them couldn't understand each other very well until the end of the year. So during the First year is where all the friendships have been formed. You can presume to have done everything that everyone else has done. You have watched and may even reacted to Ambrose's incorrigible behavior in Fabricus's class.

Perhaps you were in the infirmary when Twigberry called all the other apprentices down, but are feeling better and can jump in for sparring practice, getting out of the run.

And certainly joining the societies is still possible as they haven't progressed all that far along.

Silberluchs, I (Averell) also joined late. Just jump in with posting and we'll pretend you were there the whole time!

Wow...Ambrose is not in for a long career or life. I think he's just parroting things his grandmother or others near him have said, but wow. One of my worries is that we as teachers will be responsible for when he spouts off like that in front of the wrong person.

I don't think he's speaking out of character mind you...just very foolishly.

He is a typical know-it-all.

Oh, I think he'll find a sparring partner in Vanadís. She's not bad at verbal barbs, I imagine.

I wonder how soon he'll want to learn Certamen, and how soon after that he'll regret it? Social skills are so much better at getting even with a mage.

Certamen is possible now. Dueling club, anyone?

It's a Tremere-sponsored school, I expected Certamen to be virtually a given - just not in the first year.

Clement was going to teach it the 3rd semester and have the club next school year. I did not think people could do much with it at this point.

Considering we have very little in the way of arts right now...

I have an idea for a professor character. I take it it'd be best to introduce him at the start of the new college year?

Mind, I have a lot of work ahead of me. His history is mostly written, but a translation to numbers, year by year, is going to take time, especially since I've never had a character more than about 20 years post gauntlet (and this would be about 70).

Jonathan, do you have a rough estimate on how much time I might have to get things sorted?

Easily two to three weeks.

Oh, that's good. I'll start working on it. :slight_smile:

I can't remember if I posted this or not, but I will be gone on vacation from July 17th through the 27th. I'll be on an Alaskan cruise during most of this time, so my Internet access will be slim to none. Please don't wait anything on me.

Which cruise line?
We were on Royal Caribbean for an Alaskan Cruise. We had a pretty good time, although it was with a larger family group and there was an element of herding cats that I could have done without.

We're going on Celebrity.

And we may have some cat herding of our own. We're going with my whole family - my parents, all my siblings, spouses, children, the whole nine yards.

Have a great time.