pokes his head in
Y'all have room for another magus?
If so, are there any concepts/Houses which would fit particularly well in the covenant? I've got a proto-concept knocking around in the back of my head -- a magical beer brewer, based partially on Tim Powers' "Drawing of the Dark", but I'm not married to it by any stretch.
I missed the word come in there... 
I have no objection. You're aware that this is much more of a write your own saga type of thing?
I had that impression, yes, which is why I wasn't interested as much originally. However, please define what you mean by that?
Stories are largely developed by the "player" for the "player." Others can be involved, but they might not add much to what's actually going on, for example Alips will be turning everything she hears/sees over to her cousin at another covenant. They're cousins and lovers. It's a very unhealthy relationship...
Okay, got it. That's pretty much what I thought.
Okay, here's my thought.
Egyptian magus, brewer and alchemist. Obsessed with beer and brewing: believes beer to be a gift from the Gods to man, having all sorts of medicinal and magical properties. He wishes to research ways of brewing beer with magical properties, and is taking the first steps towards developing his own mystery cult. He's moving to the Rhine tribunal to investigate the secrets of the German brewers, as well as to follow up on legends of Charlemagne being a brewer himself and his cup-bearer Gambrinus being a brewer with mystic abilities.
Undecided on House yet. Verditius or Criamon or possibly Merinita would be a decent fit, except for the whole "founding own mystery cult" thing. Bonisagus, Jerbiton, Ex Miscellanea would be possibilities as well.
Opinions? Comments? Thrown fish?
Here's the fish: This should be discussed in the Character creation discussion thread. 
Thbphhhht.
copy/pastes the post
FYCI (For Your Collective Information), I've added the year 1185 to the saga's Activity Log, indicating what Petronius is planning. Considering we're currently playing thread taking place in Summer, Autumn and Winter 1184, I figured 1185 might be coming soon.
On the subject of seasonal activities:
- Archimedes: Do you want me to send another letter from Clement to move things along? Or did you want to write one a replys from Aedituus first? You may also want to add a modification log to your lab's page, to indicate the result of your lab improvement (Refinement +1 and Highly Organized virtue).
- Jonathan: Still waiting to see how you felt Praxiteles' acting as steward would be reflected xp-wise (see here).
- Tellus: Any idea how Titus will spend his Autumn and Winter seasons for 1184?
Ah yes, ofcourse.
Autumn: Study Magic Theory from Fundamental Advances in Magic - no-one else appears to be using it.
Winter: Study Magic Theory from Fundamental Advances in Magic - no-one else appears to be using it.
- if someone else wishes to use it, please tell me
Updated on the activity log.
I'm hoping this is the right place to mention this, but I just found a map of the Holy Roman Empire under the Hohenstaufen, 1138-1254, which includes Italy. Right smack dab in our time frame.
There are two stories that need to be completed in 1184, but some of us are also planning for 1185 already. So I have a few questions:
Should we have a new Chapter for the 1185 Council meeting?
Do we want to play out the meeting, or simply divvy up the vis allotment?
Maybe one of us should be in charge of the vis accounting. We need to have enough for the Aegis. Who was casting this?
Do we need to play out the Mercuralia ritual, or just say that it occurs? What about the other vis sources?
Wow, since I have half a shot at posting this...
I'm just going to take two seasons of exposure for Praxiteles... suitable professional skills, I'll also have hims carve several statues or something...
Patience is virtue - I say let the stories finish (but don't stretch them out forever).
I'd say yes. Keeps the naming and timing consistent.
Either works for me.
I don't see a problem doing that. I don't believe we absolutely need to wait until the stories are concluded before moving forward. Both stories are about getting elements of the library and establishing our magi in some fashion, so the results are known.
Plus, the concept of this saga is that each of us write our own stories, so interactions are relatively limited during the stories. Having thread for the council meetings are good for us to have the magi interact and get to know each other.
We can certainly play out at least part of it. There could be more topics of conversation than simply allocating vis to the magi. Plans for the coming seasons, solving some issues for the covenant, etc. We can each introduce some elements as we like. Of course, some of these may be solved mostly OOC.
I can do it. I've set things up on the wiki so that it's easy to keep track of. I updated the vis page to show what the stores would be at the end of 1184.
EDIT: Petronius would cast the Aegis, since he's Mercurian and knows the ritual. He'll need some help (via Ritual Communion) for full penetration, at least for now.
This I would do mostly OOC, unless someone wants to write a story involving one of the vis sources.
One of the problems I have with being active in this saga, was by design. Praxiteles can't communicate with the other magi very well, which I wanted so that other people put a thumbprint on the saga, it gave ma an excuse to kind of sit back a bit.
Praxiteles is interested in learning Latin, however he cannot learn it from the book (nevermind we don't have one). He needs to have someone teach him Latin. So, I'd like someone to think about whether they would be interested in doing this, and incorporate this into a long term season activity plan. Probably looking at a total of 6-8 seasons of commitment (Praxiteles time). Not all the seasons have to come from the same person, and they can be stretched out over the course of several years.
I've compiled a list of SQs when teaching Praxiteles 1 on 1
Morticia: NA (they don't share a common language)
Petronius: 13
Titus: 15
Aeditius: NA (they don't share a common language)
Alips: 11
For in and out of character reasons, I'd rather it not be Alips, but if that's the only choice, I'd go with it. Praxiteles will reciprocate with teaching of Finesse. And we can either agree to approximate XP, requiring more seasons for Praxiteles to teach (his SQ is only 10), or we can go season for season, even-steven.
There is also Eberhard, our scribe and librarian. He knows Ancient Greek at 4 as well as Low German at 5 (and Latin at 4). He would only have a SQ of 10, but he's not a magus so his time may not be deemed as valuable.
It would be a hard sell to ask Petronius to do it, although in principle he would certainly want to encourage Praxiteles to learn Latin. But at the moment he has little need to improve his Finesse. Perhaps Greek would be a more interest to Petronius, but again Eberhard could also teach him that (and actual Ancient Greek instead of the mundane version). Perhaps some social skills to help him counter-balance his regular Gift. But I have some difficulty seeing Petronius make more than a commitment of 1 season, considering his Driving Goal flaw. Many (if not most) of his seasons for the coming years are slotted for activities ultimately aimed at helping him on his research. Perhaps some other kind of services would be required. That'd need to be discussed by them.
Note that if Praxiteles decides to teach Finesse to someone, he'd be better using the Training method, as then his SQ is 11. (I am assuming that his Puissant Finesse would apply to the SQ calculation.)
BTW, I don't think that the characters would really bargain based on the actual SQ. The difference would need to be at least 5 points to be really noticeable. So any bargaining would be based on seasons.
Finally, if Praxiteles was to spend more time at the covenant and using Latin, he'd be eligible for Practice xp.
He could also hire a mundane Latin tutor in Koblenz. 
(Edits in red)
The reason I suggested this, rather than hiring someone, was to provide some background. If there isn't any interest, then we can handwave it and call it hiring someone.
Practicing a language would be a SQ of 8, and this would presume that everyone at the covenant, including any covenfolk there speak Latin. I don't think that's the case. And to get to 50 would require 7 seasons of nothing but practice. So, yeah, if that's the alternative, practice or hire a teacher, Praxiteles would hire a tutor and be done with it.
A tutor with a SQ of 17 would cost how much for 3 seasons? Shouldn't be that much, because 9 of that comes from the standard +3 and single student bonus. Which leaves 8 to be spread across a mix of Teaching Com and Good Teacher Bonus. A young Good Teacher would make 5 of that, and the Com could be +2 and Teaching could be +1. Or he's not a good teacher, and Com and Teaching total 8, which again isn't all that unreasonable...
Certainly a pound of silver should be more than enough, which is what Praxiteles would request to fund his learning endeavor... 
So, are you "playing" Eberhard? Or is he just background?