"What do you want?"
As characters (for the magi and the companions, and maybe for the grogs if you're feeling real creative), and hopefully as players.
It can be as simple as "To be left alone," as long-term as "I want to live just long enough to see your head on a pike. I want to look up into your lifeless eyes and I will wave at you, like this." Or as grandiose as "I want a rebirth of glory, a renaissance of power, I want it all back, the way that it was."
Halie wants TO KNOW EVERYTHING.
Doesn't care so much about using any knowledge-- she learned from her pater that having knowledge is usually enough, and that you rarely ever need to use the knowledge you've gained.
She'd like to see the Order stabilized in the frontier Tribunals, and wants to ensure that there are no further witch hunts against non-Roman traditions. On a smaller scale, she would like to smooth over relations with her parens, and earn the respect of her peers.
Lucky Wodin Whoreson
I want to feel the sea under my feet.
Life is only worth living if you live hard and play hard. Sitting at a covenant makes you fat and slow. Action - action keeps you alive.
No, I'm neither stupid nor suicidal. But if I listen to my guts, I'll always be were the party is: Fights, babes, drink, and silver!
Aodhan, while incredibly intelligent has ambitions that are not as grand perhaps.
First and foremost, get away from his vindictive and petty master. A new covenant, with an Aegis that his master is not a part of, plus some mutual protection agreements in the charter are what he wants to safeguard himself.
Second he wants to learn some of the inner mysteries of the House. He has learned a decent amount of cult information and wants to put it to use.
Third he wants his name to pass through Hermetic circles as an accomplished magic item inventor. He feels that making Magic Items by commission is actually a very noble calling. Aodhan is very much a capitalist, believing that enlightened self-interest as an economic philosphy will bring more people out of poverty and into prosperity than any other system. Selling items for silver and vis is not greedy...it makes all involved benefit.
Lastly he wants to make his name for a particular invention or discovery. Perhaps codifying the last of the Elder Runes into Hermetic principals or making a new Inner Mystery. Ironically he is not overly impressed or interested in the Veriditian contest, even though it could help meet his other objectives. He finds it mostly to be a useless bit of 'peacockery'. Though he likely could be goaded into trying his hand at it. He also wants the satisfaction of being called upon by others in his House to teach the Mysteries.
Soibhan doesn't want much. She wants fixed arcane connections to most of the nobles of Europe with spells to manipulate them as suits her whim and fancy. She wants time to interrogate the minds of those nobles so that if she manipulates, it seems natural and smooth and doesn't reveal their is magic at work. She wants to create spells to target multiple people through multiple arcane connections at once to give single order to all her puppets in a single casting.
Finally, she wants to be primus of House Bonisagus and Preaco of the grand Tribunal.
Soibhan doesn't want much. She wants fixed arcane connections to most of the nobles of Europe with spells to manipulate them as suits her whim and fancy. She wants time to interrogate the minds of those nobles so that if she manipulates, it seems natural and smooth and doesn't reveal their is magic at work. She wants to create spells to target multiple people through multiple arcane connections at once to give single order to all her puppets in a single casting.
Finally, she wants to be primus of House Bonisagus and Preaco of the grand Tribunal.
It's good to have goals.
Talia's intermediate goal is to put her past behind her, of course, it's chasing after her, to some extent, given her recent turn at Piracy in the English Channel, targeting the ships of Fengheld. Long term, she is trying to come to terms with her gifts, just beginning to understand how badly her master bungled her training. Though he wasn't completely incompetent, he didn't really set her on a path to long term success...or did he? The excessive focus on Ignem during her appretniceship could be considered a huge gift. Pushing her to learn all that she could on the Art of Ignem during that time freed her from the responsibility of having to learn it later, when her interests and talents and magical focus compete for her study time. It may have been the biggest gift she's ever received. Will she realize it?
Short answer: Find problems and fix them. Or at least, get other people to fix them. He's a Do Good'er.
Thomas is the hermetic equivalent of an upper middle class, computer geek, an only child raised in a one-income household, who has suddenly discovered that the world doesn't revolve around him and that Evil hasn't been vanquished yet.
There's two catches to this snotty brat's childhood dreams of winning the world record for Most Nachos Eaten While Watching Showgirls: the first is that he was raised by the hermetic equivalent of the Mormons. The second is that he's too smart not too understand that he has the power to do something about the world he sees around him.
I've designed him to be just past the precipice of change. He has spent his entire life thinking he was safely behind the glass window. Then, about a year ago, he was looking through his glass window at a Faerie Revelrie, and was shocked to see something look back at him. What's more, it yanked him out of the window and into the real world, and has cursed him in such a way that he will never be able to sit behind glass again.
A poorly chosen job at Durenmar coincides neatly with joining a covenant that has a remarkable book, to give him some tools most magi don't think of. Mechanically, I want to spend some time thinking about Intangible Tunnels, Penetration, and new ways to fight evil.
As filius Gregarius, he has basically inherited the same job his pater had, by joining the Path of Seeming. This job is, as near as he can tell, to be the translator and sock-mender for every Criamon who walks by. Which would be really demeaning, if this people didn't earnestly need his help to keep the universe from spiraling down the toilet. Oh, sure, the others of his House might talk grand talks about the Hypostasis and Axis Magica, but at the end of the day, it's about being decent to one another because we've all got souls, yeah?
In the very short term, he's going to arrive at the covenant, discover his curse (and struggle with it), while discovering that the covenant has much bigger problems in the form of Duncan. The discovery that he's not the center of the universe will spur him to action, and he'll start looking for Duncan.
Then, like the old 70s episodes of The Hulk, he'll find people who need help everywhere he looks. And he'll help them, because that's how he was raised.
All this is going to happen against a backdrop of a terrible home life (-6 penalties to interact with his wife), disgrace amongst his religious peers for "choosing" to marry in the first place, and sheer dismissal by the greater Hermetic community. Not to mention all the potential legal troubles he's ripe for.
In a similar vein, Janet is ripe and eager to react to the world of the saga. She's young, naive, full of potential and too stubborn to let herself be beat down. I want her involved in other people's stories and reacting to the setting for a while -- no stories centered on her until the character "finds her feet." The covenant needs a lot of help, and she's got the potential to be any part of that solution -- assuming her demon-fueled pride doesn't end up destroying us all.