A thread for all our random asides, thread derailments, and anything else we want to blather on about 
Somebody totally needs to take Bunicula as a familiar.
Dibs on the minion onions.
BTW, it's funny that the name of the covenant is Isle of Dogs. Laetitia has a pet dog, who has gotten used to her Gift due to copious quantities of bacon.
True story, proposed to my wife with that Patricia Cromwell book. She said it was the worst book she ever read though. 
dreamt of a character focused on women tonight.
All this talk about how to pronounce Aodhan's name reminds me of something.
Languages in historical Europe are an unholy mess. So many dialects and local languages, impossible to keep track of them all – Iberia, for example, had something like two dozen in the middle ages. To me, that kinda gets in the way of things.
So I'm going to simplify things a little bit...or a lot.
Scotland has basically two native tongues. Scottish (a heavily accented combination of English, Norman French, and Gaelic) is predominant in the South. Scots Gaelic holds sway in the Highlands and is the language spoken by the inhabitants of the area.
There are also sizable populations of Flemish- and French-speakers in the burghs.
Ireland speaks Irish Gaelic.
England speaks English (the lower class) and French (nobility and royalty). Wales speaks Welsh.
I would say (using examples of languages from Sundered eagle and Lion and the Lily) that
Irish Gaelic to Scots Gaelic is -1 (So a Irish Gaelic speaker of 5 would have effective 4)
Scots Gaelic to Scottish is -3
Irish gaelic to Scottish is -4
and vis versa.
It might be a good idea for the sg to set a maximum number of xp that can be spent on Parma until 10pg.
Using xp rather than saying Parma 5 leaves room for Puissant and affinity, but it also keeps the power levels closer together.
Makes it easer for the sg.
Are we limiting lab use to invent spells instead of buying with XP. If I want to do a full year in lab, my Mentem lab totals are in the high 30's to 40's that I can invent level 15 nad level 20 spells in a season.
I asked Peregrine about the chargen rules in the GM's Looking for Players thread he had. It's RAW Chargen rules for learning spells. His response is below.
https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/ars-magica-canaries-are-dying-3-6-players/6634/1
EXcept in the RAW, there is the paragraph (p32, 3rd column, 2nd to last paragraph) that says you may want to have your mages learn spells as lab projects instead of xp. So if you take a year for lab, that would be a valid lab project for one season.
I am just seeing what others think?
Leave it as an xp spend. It's simple for the SG. He doesn't have to determine whether lab texts for any particular spell are available. Also keep in certain cases where your LT might be just barely high enough to learn a spell it is actually easier to learn by spending XP.
It's a lot more work if 6 people start throwing out spells as lab projects, because it requires snapshots of characters at the time they learn the spell
Note, these were my reasons for spending xp for spells at chargen for my saga. They may not be Peregrine's.
Edit:changed LAN (DYAC[1]) to lab.
[1] DYAC=Damn You AutoCorrect, I was on the iPad.
Oh, I planned to do all my post gauntlet spells as lab projects. I'll simply do the arts first, so that the lab total doesn't change much. Since we are talking 10pg, this won't imbalance anything. After all, creating items is possible too (rather then spending 30xp to get a lvl 30 item).
I assume that there are no lab texts to learn from and an aura 3 standard lab available.
- arts
- familiar/spells/items
- skills
Lab projects are not an option, it's xp only. That was the single biggest roadblock to why Laetitia couldn't be de-aged and still reasonably be the same character who had investigated the diabolist.
I've revised my opinion about the whole magic-items/familiars/talisman thingie (now that I've actually found the rules). Note, however, that it might be a pain to figure how long you're going to spend on the lab activities and back out the points you're going to lose for going that route.
Isn't that what all women do? 
Not generally a pain: You decide how many YEARS you are spending in lab. so if you are 7 years out of apprenticeship and you are doing 2 lab years: you get 5 years of 30 xp and 8 seasons in the lab. If lab seasons are towards end of advancement, then you don't even need to worry about arts totals.
((For example, my lab seasons were 8 and 10. Nothing in year 8 depended on what I spent xp for in year 9, year 10 all xp is already spent))
I'll just post this here since we're all spread out over the different games. Check out the trailer for Snow White and the Huntsman (one of two Snow White Movies coming out this year). It looks very cool and paints a very dark faerie tale forest as well as a truly powerful wizard (the evil queen). The one with Julia Roberts looks much more like a comedy, this one does not.
You can catch the trailer at the comcast.net site.
Speaking of Companions, is anyone interested in playing a Venditor, we will have 2 Verditius after all.