Hmmm...
Palpatines ultimate goal was protection against the REAL "big bad"(s), making the jedi the hyperconservative reactionaries and later treasonous fifth columnists, even if unknowingly.
Supreme personal power was a neat perk. :mrgreen:
He wont be winning any "best personality" contests anytime soon though. OTOH, thats probably true for my own favorites too, admirals Daala and Thrawn. 
I have one more bone to pick about the Sundered Eagle, keeping in mind that I really do think it's a very good book.
I don't like the way the Paulicans are handled (pg. 142). Treating a real-world religion that had hundreds of thousands of adherants and lasted for centuries as an Infernal plot is, well, lame. In addition, the Paulicans were pretty much gone by 1220. By contrast, the Bogomil heresy was still going strong but doesn't seem to be mentioned in the book. If you want Gnostic dualists in 1220, the Bogomils are definitely the way to go.
Maybe the meta issue is that AM5 can't make up its mind whether Gnostics are Divine, Infernal, or something else entirely. So far we have the "good" Cathars in RoP:D and the "bad" Paulicans in the Sundered Eagle, plus the even worse tradition in RoP:I (I don't have the book nearby to recall the name).
Dark Gnostics?
I think you make some very good points - well done for making me reconsider my original point.
Just a few thoughts.
The entire Order of Hermes participated in the murder and theft of non-Hermetic magi, their secrets, vis and sites of power. Tremere took a systematic approach but others were far more famous (Tytalus and Flambeau - as well as Trianoma on occasion).
I don't feel that the Tremere were presented as "Evil" in Sundered Eagle - but they do fill the "traditional" Tremere role of being the baddie, the enemy for the PCs to struggle against. I'd have liked to have seen something in there about more Western magi (such as some Bonisagus and Flambeau) entering into the Tribunal and being the allies of the Tremere for example. Something breaking up the standard trope of black-robed Tremere being sinister and the PCs opposing him.
Timothy presented the Tremere as the solid, stable standard bearers of the Order - where their founder's dubious role in the Domination had been mostly washed away by the trauma of the Schism War and Corruption, and the fact that they are so HELPFUL to other magi, rather than Machiavellian schemer's.
I'd like to see a Tribunal other than Transylvania where the Tremere are a rock solid, mainstream part of the Order. Perhaps Provencal. I can't remember how Stonehenge stacks up - I remember Blackthorn was the main foil of the book though. Perhaps in Ireland it would also be good to see the Tremere as just regular, accepted and liked members of the Order rather than hated and suspected enemies of most of the other magi.
Cheers
Alex
Seconded. I loved what Timothy Ferguson did with the tremere, and would like to see a tribunal where this is recognised.
Not nescessarily formally, although this'd be preferable. They could just as well be presented as the ill-loved ones sacrificing themselves for the greater good, the secret heroes of the book's background that everyone still sees as palpatines, for errors their ancestors commited, not them. But let them be lovable, at least from a player's viewpoint.
True, we did not include many Frankish (western) magi. There are only a tiny handful, and a fallen Frankish covenant. You could certainly add more - perhaps organised groups of magi from the west arrived in the wake of the Fourth Crusade - which would play up the "culture clash" dynamic. Perhaps this mass imigration was a deliberate plot instigated by the evil Tremere... 
It would be interesting to have a saga where the PCs are Latin immigrants to Thebes, and where the local language and customs seem alien to them. Here you could certainly add a darker tone to such local magi, and play up the "righteousness" of the Tremere ambition to cleanse the Tribunal of such pagan/obscure practices. In retrospect it might have been good to mention a few different saga possibilities like this in the book.
Hmm, I do not entirely agree. I think the Tremere chapter allows room for different interpretations. It is directly stated that Tremere magi desire dominance and that this tends to alienate other magi. Add the rather extreme militaristic tendencies and the system of control exercised by senior Tremere, and you have, it seems to me, a House with an image problem! I certainly get the impression that the Tremere see themselves just as you describe, however I think the Order at large does not tend to share this view.
I agree, I think we are due a Tribunal (outside Transylvania) where the Tremere are doing very well for themselves. Although I would again note that (e.g.) in the Rhine, the Tremere are mostly regular and accepted.
Still, there are only 51 Tremere magi in total outside of Transylvania - that's an average of just over 4 per Tribunal! This means that a Tribunal with an anaemic Tremere presence (e.g. as in Normandy) is going to be the most typical case. Both the Rhine and Thebes actually have an above-average number of Tremere magi.
This sounds like a fun saga concept. The players could very easily be portrayed as 'good guys' with this, and it'd definitely be a change of pace to have House Tremere backing you rather than opposing you.
I can't imagine any of the player magi being too popular with House Jerbiton, though.
For the record, by no means am I criticising the book as a whole - just this narrow section. The bits I don't mention are good, solid additions to the corpus of Ars. As an Ars author myself, I sympathise with the process that goes into putting something like this together (albeit I've never contributed to a Tribunal book). It's never easy to satisfy fans, and I must confess that I'm particularly prickly about the Tremere.
Again, I thank you for a considered post - you've certainly made me rethink what I originally thought.
I don't agree that the Tremere have an image problem. At 1220, the Tremere are hardly the most worrisome of Houses. In fact, they stand side by side with the Quaesitors (who've just recently been rocked by the Duresca Scrolls - IIRC, and if they're still canon) and House Bonisagus. Their hierarchy is the most "medieval" of all the Houses - most societies in Mythic Europe are intensely hierarchical: feudalism and the Church for example - certainly Byzantium is as well. Most magi who were brought up in "normal" (non-Hermetic) society would probably think that the Tremere are the most unusually structured House. It's only through the un-medieval eyes of modern people like us, who mostly live in liberal democracies that the Tremere seem like militarists.
Medieval society is a combination of vast subsistence poverty overlaid with brutal militarism in the form of manor-knights, local lords and so on. The "order" of the Tremere would be very welcome and comforting.
The Order at large would probably welcome the fact that the Tremere are coming out of their Schism War shell and starting to re-engage. Afterall, there are big threats from the mysterious Order of Odin and the mysterious Order of Suileman, and the "Shadow Crusade" in Iberia (which is, of course, apocryphal) - and the Tremere's modus operandi from Poena is to be helpful and not cause trouble.
That said, I'd love to see your take on a short saga based on the different possibilities you mention.
You raise an interesting point that the Tremere, in terms of their hierarchy and militarism at least, seem to be less anachronistic than the Order at large. If one were to rewrite the setting from scratch, an egalitarian and democratic Order of Hermes might not be the most plausible choice... Nevertheless, that's the Order we have, and as such I would assume that many magi are happy with this structure and might tend to fear any organisation striving to impose a feudal-type system backed by military power, even if well-intentioned.
In any case, as I say I think you can read somewhat different interpretations of the House, which is probably a good thing!
Hmm, I haven't given it a great deal of thought, but perhaps something like the following (as a very basic outline):
I would set the saga to start with the Fourth Crusade in 1204, or just shortly thereafter. The PC magi would be Latin (i.e. not native to Thebes); Houses Tremere, Guernicus, Flambeau, Verditius, Bonisagus might work well. If at least one of the magi are Quaesitores and/or hoplites: Magvillus has sent a group of magi to "clean up" a Thebes covenant which they have heard to have fallen to Infernal corruption or some such during the chaos of the fall of Byzantine Empire. The PCs should arrive in Thebes and duly do their duty, indeed finding seemingly corrupt Thebes magi in need of "correction". Thereafter, they would found a covenant in the area, finding it to be rich in both vis and chaos, following the direction of their masters in Coeris and Magvillus, to restore order and root out further corruption among the decadent/pagan/misguided Thebes magi. At first, it would certainly seem that their mission is righteous...
At this point you might decide that indeed the mission is righteous and have the focus of the saga be to reform and cleanse Thebes in totality. Alternatively (and in my opinion more interestingly):
Still, as they become established, the magi should discover that not all in Thebes are as corrupted as those who they first encountered. Many seem to be honestly pious and strive to uphold altruistic ideals. Despite some clues, they might struggle to conclusively prove that (e.g.) the Rite of Propitiation is tainted. At the same time, they may begin to suspect that their original mission is not so well-intentioned as first thought... Perhaps the orders from the West begin to look increasingly aggressive and arbitrary, e.g. taking action against seemingly honourable Thebes magi on flimsy charges, seizing magic items or texts "of interest" for Magvillus or Coeris, etc.
Basically, the Hermetic mission turns out to mirror the progress of the Fourth Crusade. If you wanted to, you could play up the analogy even more directly by mirroring specific persons or events. Perhaps the sponsor or paymaster of the mission - the analogue of the Doge of Venice - is a senior Verditius from Verdi. The PCs owe him a huge debt of vis (perhaps in payment for a magical ship?) which they are told to recover from the vis-rich Theban Tribunal. The Primus of Guernicus at Magvillus might be the analogue of the Pope at Rome - he has a legitimate goal but the mission becomes sidetracked and never reaches its true aim. He will withdraw his backing at some point or even send investigators to examine whether the PC magi themselves have strayed from the path. Maybe a helpful local Jerbiton (perhaps he was recently ostracised?) is the analogue of Prince Alexios, seeking allies in his mission to bring down one of the leading Thebes magi or covenants. Then you can figure out some Hermetic equivalent of the siege of Zara (perhaps Ingasia, a rival to Verdi?) and take it from there...
This mostly obviously fits with an Infernal meta-plot, but no reason why it couldn't be Faerie. Perhaps a powerful Faerie agent is seeking to "replay" the events of the Fourth Crusade. (Either of these could be made to jive with certain materials in the Infernal and Faerie chapters of the book.) It would be interesting to see how long (if ever!) the players take to figure out that the Fourth Crusade is being replayed. And if they do, what it means, and who is responsible...
Wow, that's really something. Very cool indeed, great potential. I've never tried a planned saga before, nevre quite got the hang og planning one. But this looks like a fine example.
One thing- is there an intentional discrepancy or retcon between ToH:Rome which describes Imanitosi as the Primus of Verditius (and domus magna is Verdi Covenant) and Sundered Eagle which says the new Primus is Stouritus?
I'm trying to establish if this is a simple re-write of the setting by the authors, a revamp due to edition changes or if its due to ToH:Rome being ostensibly set in 1197 and SE is set in 1220? If so, has this development been foreshadowed or described elsewhere before now? What happened to Imanitosi and how did Stouritus come to be chosen as Primus?
SJE
Isn't it explained in HOHMC? IIRC, Imanitosi went into final twilight in 12XX and Stouritus was nominated but as he wanted to set the main focus on the (greek god ... i can't remember it for now) of the forge rather than the (latin one), he wanted to move the domus magna from Verdi (where latin god seems to have had his forge in the past) to Lemnos (where Greek one had).
Of course, such a change was not tolerated and there is some kind of feud/vendetta situation between the two sides.
Shameless plug...
See what Matt Ryan (author for the fifth edition take on Verditius and one of the Sundered Eagle writers) has to say about the new Domus Magna in Sub Rosa issue six, due out very very shortly.
Plug over.
So I just read the Hermetic structure of the Tribunal and I was wondering if anyone had a solution to the massive book-keeping that it would take to keep track of a long-term saga in Thebes, considering magistrate position shift so quickly and no polites can get a repeat seat at any of the boards.
Unless I'm missing something you'd need a constantly updated list of all polites in the Tribunal, divided into the 4 phyles. Regardless of whether you'd be drawing lots of arbitrarily deciding on who'd get to be magistrate for a 7 year period, you'd need to be a real logothete to keep track of it all!
AFAIK, 5th edition books are not bound by previous editions. Though many aspects are taken over, most of the time.
Probably it's the 23 years off-set.
It is also mentioned in HoH: MC
Any ideas?
Hmmm... Also, I can't seem to find either a suggestion or an actual figure on magi population - is there one anywhere?
Basically, wing it. Unless you maintain a database containing the names, ages, and events that occurred to all magi in your tribunal (not that anyone could ever be as anal to do something like that. ahem 
), then you only need to know the name of an arche and his board whenever the player characters interact with them, or when they sit on the boards themselves.
So you only detail those parts of the system where it intersects with your saga. Next time you need an arche in a particular role, just make sure you don't pick someone who is ineligible.
For a more complex method, make up some cards. Each one can be an index card cut in half, and you'll need one for every magus in the tribunal (I assume about 100 magi per tribunal). Each card has the magus's name and covenant, you can add more details (like house) if you wish. For ease you could pick four colours of card for each phyle to make it easier to sort them. Note you don't actually need a name for every magus; name the ones you know, and give the others placeholder names like "Magus1", "Magus2", or "Thessalian Witch", "Pious and Boring". You can then use these cards to determine actual arche selection every tribunal, exactly as the magi do it themselves; by random draws. If you write on each card when each has served on each board, then once chosen you know their history so can sort them into boards just as the tribunal does. This is basically what I did when testing that the system works (I do something similar for our Loch Leglean tribunal, although there is no complex mechanics for chosing archai!).
The only difficulty is sorting out who has served where before the saga starts. There are 16 archai; I assumed that 14 of the archai from the last tribunal are still around, 12 from the tribunal before that; 9 from the one before that, and 6 from the one before that. You can assign magi based on their age; so those last 6 must be at least 5 tribunals from apprenticeship. These were randomly chosen from those who are known to be old enough, plus the unnamed magi. Once chosen, the minimum age of the magus is noted on the cards of the unnamed magi.
I found this a useful exercise, since it built up the tribunal for me - I had an idea of the age profile in various covenants. It was a bit of work, but not a great deal more than setting up a saga in the first place and deciding on the covenants and their membership. Updating was easy; at each tribunal, just add cards for newly gauntleted magi, and remove the cards of those who have passed on or been ostracised. And the cards will prove a useful reference since you can write notes on them regarding your characters' interactions with them. When you need to know the outcome of a vote you can easily divide the pile into Ayes, Nays, and Neutrals. If you use debate rules to sway the voting, you can shift from one pile to another.
Hope this helps,
Mark
It does help, I quite like the idea of the colored index cards. Unfrortunately I'm the kind of guy who will probably flash out a good deal of those 100 magi, but hopefully it will be worth it.
Thanks!