That does raise a good question, How do all the magi get to Delos for Tribunal meetings? Some will teleport, to be sure, But most won't. How do the rest get there? By boat, we assume. How do they find Delos? It's a small island, but still pretty big by person standards, and I don't expect it moves very fast. I guess I was just assuming that the tribunal authorities (or someone with a nautical bent - Favonius magi, I'm looking at you) provided the necessary details to find it. Then, as I suggested, there are probably a bunch of ships that ferry multiple magi to the island.
We can certainly use our last 20 BP to get an Herbam vis source, if you like. The limit on the vis source may represent that they only harvest a few trees a year.
Just don't flaunt it to Diantha that you're cutting down trees. It'll probably upset her. 
How about:
[size=150]The Old Growth of Therma[/size]
The oldest trees in the regio have been absorbing magic for a long time. This has warped some of them in interesting ways and others in useful ways. Some few have also been infused with vis. The covenant believes that it can safely harvest 4 pawns of Herbam vis without threatening the health of the forest.
Production: 1 He vis/season
That still leaves us short of Vim vis for our Aegis. But I'm sure we can work that out over time.
BTW, I've taken to calling the regio "Therma" for lack of another name. Anyone should feel free to suggest another.
Also, do we have any thoughts on a name for the covenant? Thessaloniki Covenant is a bit bland. We could keep Oikos tou Eleous (House of Mercy), since a number of us are focused on healing. But something else might be appropriate. Also, how much of the history of Oikos tou Eleous are we keeping? It's fine by me if we've fought some diabolists in the past decades. That seems like something we'd do.
Looks good. Rounds out what we need. Therma is an excellent name for the regio.
I'm OK with Oikos tou Eleous, and that we've fought diabolists. We do need to make the covenant a bit older, have it founded at least by 1140 (80 years ago.) Poenitens has been here for almost his entire career.
Well then, that puts an end to our BPs for vis sources. We just need to spend 10 more BPs on enchanted items and figure out the distribution of our vis reserves.
I think we can easily extend the life of the covenant backwards a while. Zacharias has been there a while too. Though I figure he did his apprenticeship elsewhere, so maybe not as long as Poenitens.
So, on the subject of vis reserves, I figured we ought to base it on our vis sources and what we'd have surpluses of. With that in mid, here's a proposal:
Cr: 10
CrIg: 4
Pe: 4
Re: 9
Aq: 4
Co: 21
He: 11
Ig: 6
Im: 8
Me: 6
Te: 3
Vi: 10
TOTAL: 98 (=100 BP because of the CrIg vis costing half again)
I just tossed numbers down and evened them out because it would seem odd if our reserves just happened to be all divisible by 5 or something.
As an alternative, we could take some reserves for things we don't produce, with the idea that we keep some of that around, just in case.
What do people think?
So, it's a quiet Friday at home and I was thinking of enchanted items. I wanted to figure something that would have helped with our fight against diabolists. Unfortunately, 25 levels won;t do much with a general spell that needs penetration. So, how about this?
Cross of Cleansing the Verminous VIs
ReVi 25
R: Touch, D: Mom, T: Ind
This silver cross is used to make vis of Infernal provenance safe for use by a Hermetic magus. It transfers the vis from its original physical form into a item of the user's choosing, which is touched to the original vis. This item must be of sufficient shape and material (ArM5, page 97) to be able to contain the vis transferred into it. However, this item does not operate quite how the magi think that it does: vis which is heavily corrupted by the Infernal still contains a measure of its taint. Vis prava becomes vis sordida, vis sordida becomes vis infesta, and only vis infesta becomes normal vis (see Chapter 1 of RoP:I - The Infernal Realm, Infernal Vis). Because this is a device, it has no chance of botching so there is no added risk from handling infernal vis.
(Base 10, +1M Touch, +10 unlimited use)
BP Cost: 10
With a arcane connection at hand a terram - intellego magus can cast a spell to find the direction with little error if I remember it right.
So we've got vis sources nailed down, and enchanted items nearly so. How do we want to work lab texts? We have 1000 levels of lab texts to work with. Do we want to specifically enumerate those? I know someone gave a link to the most common spells for covenants. I remember looking into that, and we could easily fill up 1000 levels with just those spells. And that's not counting lab texts for devices, which I know two of us would be interested in. Of course there are far, far fewer devices made up than spells, so it might be harder to get enough of them to be worthwhile.
I would say we at last have the lab text for our starting magic items no matter how useful they are for our mages.
I can agree with that.
As you can see from the wiki, I went and named all the books (except for Poenitens' books - I didn't want to be presumptuous). I just think it's more interesting to say that I spend a season studying To Know the Unknowable than to say I spend as season studying an In summa.
I also assumed that all of our (very good) summae were covered by cow & calf. If people disagree with that, we should discuss the subject.
I'll take care of my books shortly. On another note, my tractatus in Philosophae is in Modern Greek, because his specialty in Latin only refers to Hermetic usage.
for lab text I would like to have a Holy Magic Re Co 35 The leap of Homecoming. Or is that already to high in level?
Also my character will probably only join the covenant at the Age of 39 what still means he have his lab there for over 30 years but he was away as lot because of the ambassador work.
On a side note wouldn't a significa and a great work have the same quality for both holy magic user as well as normal hermetic magic user?
I personal don't think the thematic difference that show in written sources would matter for this 2 ways.
My assumption would be that holy magic texts are probably not covered by cow and calf. Those who use holy magic are likely more concerned with spreading their knowledge then making sure they get every last pawn of vis from the sales.
Beyond that I think there are some holes in cow and calf large enough to drive an elephant through- mostly in terms of third party actors.
Idea for the (Holy) Intellego Suma:
Mirror to the Past
The Mirror of the Past is a sub regio of our covenant regio that can entered by 10 rounds of backwards walking in a circle at normal walking speed.
When Paulos was doing a actual physical circle meditation to repair a item he suddenly found him self in this strange regio.
He saw there scenes like he was standing direct there. And Paulos think they must be from different places of the past as he saw i.e. a fight of humans against 2 elphants in a Colosseum.
From how humans holding items and weapons he deducted that the scenes are shown as if in a mirror.
So far he didn't find out how to control what will showed as next because as soon he move a foot he might end at a complet different place and time or also could just move at the current scenery.
Only when he did complet stay still with his feet he remain for sure at the same scene.
When he droped something on the ground he found out no matter how much he moved around he was still stay at the same place.
Over the time he realised that he complet lost the felling for the time and he didn't get hungry or thirsty. Also it became clear to him that the regio have a slight unaligned divine aura.
The most interesting part was that trough the time he spend there he impoved his ability in intellego magic.
Because he couldn't find out how to leave the regio in a normal way he teleported to his lab.
Back in our regio his body suddenly became weak. And from the grog wondering where he was he learned that he was away for nearly a full season.
So far no one from our covenant have set a foot in this regio afterwards.
Mechanical the regio work as Intellego great work
Because one don't need to sleep, eat or drink in this regio and once the scene change its a whole different time of the day the body lose all feeling for time.
Also the time run different in this regio so there is no time advance for study there despite one need no sleep.
Once returned to our Regio or the normal world the visitor get 1 long therm fatigue level per month he was away.
As mentioned our covenant so far don't know how to exit the regio so one need a Teleport like the leap of homecoming to leave. (or some other magic that allow to move between regio levels)
The place where Paulos was the whole time had a Divine aura of 3.
I also would like to use my second minor boon for Hidden Resources linked to this sub regio.
Where are the rules on great works? I'd like to review them before I finalize my comments.
I will say that on it's face it seems like having a time dilating regio level is an overly good benefit for the price of a summa. But I'll reserve final judgement until I reread the rules on great works.
That seems a bit beyond what we have for our normal regio. Does a great work really allow such time dilation? That seems a really large advantage for just the price of a summa.
Did we ever decide on teleporting through regio levels? Is that even possible? I know the rules don't take a firm stance on it. What are the rules for our regio?
Remember that a minor boon of Hidden Resources taken as a personal boon is only worth 1/5 of a regular boon. So it would only give 50 BP worth of hidden resources.
Okay, I found the description of Great Works. Those seem limited to created items. A naturally occurring phenomenon does not seem to qualify as a great work.
Every mention of great works states or implies that they are created items.
It seems to me that if you wanted a naturally occurring phenomenon to be a source of knowledge, you should buy it as a significato.
I'll further add, that doing anything more than making it a simple hidden regio level goes far beyond what is intended by a significato. I'd probably be willing to say that it could just be a sub-layer of our existing regio. After all, we paid for the Regio boon and a regio may have multiple levels. But once you start tossing time dilation into the mix, that's far, far beyond a summa, a great work, or a signifciato. Time Dilation or Contraction for a regio is a major covenant boon. Having that be a side effect of a summa (or summa equivalent) is a little too much in my mind.
My idea was actual that it was build in the regio by a magic group that predates the Order of Hermes (maybe the Grigori) and works for Hermetic and Holly Mage as Intellego Great Work.
Also I wanted to build it a bit strange without game changing effects. The time spend in the Regio should actual shorter then the passed time outside but with no effect on aging and so.
Still if you don't like this idea its a bit sad but I don't insist on this idea to make the Holy Magic Intellego suma full ussable for the other magus.
Edit: ... but even without the strangeness I think I like the idea that we have a great work left from the Grigori in our regio or in a sub regio. The problem I face right now is that it then probably should work for 3 Arts (Intellego, Mentem, Imaginem) instead of just 1 and how it should look. (Beside a Mentem Suma isn't really that useful with my current plans.)
But using the 50 BP from Hidden Resources would be still enough to build a 2nd good Art Suma and a Tractatus that are current in ruins / not accessible.
Ah, so it would be a work of human making. That was not entirely clear.
I don't dislike the idea of a Grigori artifact that acts as Great Work. I just want to make sure that the play balance works out and that it follows the rules of summae and great works. My main concerns are:
- I'm not certain that teleportation will work through the regio barriers. Maybe it will; maybe it won't. We have to decide that.
- I dislike the idea that the great work is a trap unless you have a teleport spell. You shouldn't be able to get stuck while reading a summa or examining a great work, in my opinion.
- I want to ensure that any time dilation that the desired regio provides is purely window dressing and doesn't give an advantage over a standard summa. In particular, it ought to take a full season to study the great work. And there shouldn't be a way to abuse the regio level to gain any benefit from time dilation.
It seems to me that the easiest way to get around all of these concerns would be say that the Grigori artifact is in a hidden level of the regio, but get rid of the idea that you're trapped there unless you have a teleport spell and get rid of the time dilation in the regio level. Are those features part of the core of the concept? I would imagine that simply having a great work that it takes a season to properly observe would be sufficient. Why do you feel it needs to be a dimensional trap? And why does it have to have time dilation?
As I said, I think the idea of having a Grigori artifact as a Great Work is a fine one. I'd just prefer it wasn't overly complicated.