As I see it, she got involved with a kind of mystery cult: while still an apprentice, and chaffing under her parens tutelage, she was approached by a magus that promised to help her acquire power. She got involved, and learned some things, but she was far from a fool, and soon realized something was off. Afraid of both the cult and her master, she avoided them, pretexting her master's tight leash to flee them.
This was 5 years before gauntlet. She has not heard from the cult since, but she figures they might take an interest in her anew and this make her nervous. She knows next to nothing about them, but she knows they are older, of unknown number, and yield both hermetic and non hermetic powers.
Who's her master? The Rusticani are pretty sparse, though of course there's Tres in the Provencal Tribunal, and I think he has trained a couple of apprentices who might be old enough to take fili of their own.
Well, I intend her to be old. Played enough young magi for a lifetime. So tres might do, or another, I don't much care, and he seems kind of a jerk enough 
Amul, she was apprenticed in Laguna Sententia 
I edited her gauntlet sheet, I had missed on the fact that chargen XP was higher than the RAW. This allowed some higher skills, some area and covenant lore, muto, imaginem, and a few spells (through the eyes of the spider, unravelling the fabric of vim, unseen arm).
Hum... And I'll have her be a lesbian. Not very active sexually (it's not the right time), but still.
BTW, does the Fast Caster virtue applies to fast casting? By my reading, it doesn't, but I may be wrong, or marko might have different ideas.
If you're fast-casting a spell in combat, I would think so.
I believe it applies to both normal Initiative and Fast Casting.
And as a note (I don't wanna HR this, so other SGs in this saga can do it how they will): When it comes ro Fast Casting, I view this as an Interrupt in the normal combat sequence. If a wizard is about to cast a spell at you, and you manage to blast him before his IN (or FC roll), then he is toasted and cannot cast the spell. If the IN/FC numbers are the same, then it is simualtaneous. And you can Fast Cast react to nearly any sudden cue: someone carging you or casting a spell, a bird flying from a bust, a flinch or cough, the word "go!", etceteras.
This is NOT a HR, becase any other player running an arc as SG will be allowed to handle action sequences in a manner easiest for them to manage in a PbP setting.
I really feel that to take the special Mercere mastery options, especially the Mutantes ones, you should explain who taught them to you. Does Arachne have a friend or mentor with Mutantum Magic, and/or who belongs to the Cult of Mercury? This is a good opportunity to create more connections to other magi in the Order.
He has a point. Mercurian masterys are easy to slide. Mutantes, hell, everyone wants some of that! But I would normally say it needs a Virtue. But Mercuria suggest a special teacher, which is much more liberal.
I was wondering what you were talking about, since I didn't recall taking any, so I went back and noticed tethered casting on "through the eyes of the spider". Nice catch.
And I happen to agree with you on all points, although, at chargen, I'm not sure I can bring this up like this... I mean, I could always say there was a mutantes at Laguna sententia, but meh. This is just lame, IMO. I'll just scratch it, it's not important.
I'm a little at a loss, though. Where are the enemies coming from? Aren't they also from mercere?
I was gonna have her b part of a 3-persons spring covenant (the one that was destroyed before play begin), along with a guernicus and jerbiton, but, my memory failing me, I can't recall if this mesh well with the other back stories. If you have ideas to have her fit with other back stories, I'm interested.
Oh, and Marco, is the age cap at 35 (as in "suggested development") or 30 (as in "mustering out")?
I don't wanna bind you to an age because I want you to have creative flexability. However, I discourage people from taking it all the way to the cap. That is what happened last time. This time, I am getting a variety of ages, and I really dig that.
Retconing a character from the previous volume putas you at a cap of 30 (because the cap was 20 for a 1220 start date). Carmen was only 12yrs post gauntlet, so now she is 22. Pythos went all the way for 30 I think. Vibria is coming right from gauntlet!
So the cap is whatever you need to create your character. I trust your judgment. Go as young as you can, but don't gyp yourself.
Oh, sorry, I guess I did sort of bring that up out of nowhere, huh? I read it and then mused about it for a while, trying to decide if I should say anything.
I agree that's not a very engaging story, but at least it's better than nothing. You could spin it out from there. The real question is, how important is the mastery option to you? 
Loukas has enemies in House Mercere, specifically traditionalist Redcaps and their allies. He is likely to have an antagonistic relationship with other Mercer Houses, and I imagine that there are specific Redcaps at Harco who really, really dislike him and would love to see him get disciplined, either at Tribunal or in certamen. Let's say two, whoever oversees their defenses, and whoever runs the financial side of things. Let's say the defenses one is a Mercere magus, to make it interesting. Not sure if anyone actually wants him dead yet. Probably not, but if they do, they haven't managed to convince the Prima, though she doesn't like him and we'll say he's received an official warning from her. Other Redcaps are not above keeping his mail from reaching him, spying on him, harrassing him, and so on. They can also do a lot of stuff to him that they can't do to magi (they don't have to be humble, since he's just another Redcap).
How was the covenant destroyed? Maybe this required an investigation? If she has contacts among the Guernici, they may have eventually asked her to work with Pythos and Guillaume. Hmm, I guess we should figure out who is calling the shots for us. Mercuria reports to Doissetep, but it's possible that others in Magvillus could hire us occasionally too, maybe even without her knowledge. I like that idea a lot, as long as they are working with us because they can't do things through proper channels. Like, it involves other Quaesitors, or "Order secrets," or things like that.
I see what you did there
Caught! Like a... uh...
Not much 
I looked at mastery options, none where really useful, and I figured Tethered casting would allow someone else to see through the eyes of the spider, so I went with that, but it's really not important at all 
I'm going with the "mission gone wrong" thing.
Say, Clarisse Jerbitonis and their grogs were slaughtered. Dorika Guernici and Arcachne retreated to the covenant, and made a final stand in which the covenant was leveled, Dorika and most of their grogs killed, and most of Arachné charged items used up. She barely escaped alive.
For now, I have this for the first cycle:
She spends some time in Laguna Sententia, developing her spells, but feeling unwelcome due to her pater's presence. In Summer 1997, she is contacted by Dorika Guernici, and founds a covenant with her and Clarisse Jerbitonis. They are to investigate minor events, both magical and political, and smooth things up before it becomes a problem requiring the attention of senior guernicus magi.
All goes well at first, until, in Winter 1198, while investigating a minor cult, she is grievously stabbed by a man, but not before being recognized by the cult leader, with hints to her diabolic past. She spends the rest of the season recovering, but is shaked by the event.
I want to go with a more mercenary feeling, though, so I may change Dorika to a Tytalus. Like, you've got a problem, so instead of wasting 1+ seasons, you just hire them and they manage it for you.
Thanks for the help, BTW. I don't have much time to think about it all, so it is really appreciated.
I assume it's D: Concentration so you don't get stuck when you want your vision returned. You might choose Imperturbable Casting. I really like that one for D: Concentration stuff and for MuVi/ReVi stuff based on running two spells.
I first read the 35 limit, which was nice with 7*5 cycles on average, and only read later about the 30.
I prefer to do it on 30 years,though, so as Pythos and I have the same age cap. You know me
Yup, you are right, at gauntlet.
But it's not that much of a concern, since she'll have Unraveling spells for all forms, so that's not much of a problem in the long run.
Wrote a few lines about her background pre-gauntlet. Put it into the first post.
I say keep the mastery as it is thematic. You can only do it with that one spell. Say it isn't the same as Mutantes magic in origin. Your parens/lineage invented a mastery with that same effect for use with that specific spell. It is just coincidence hat the effects are identical. And any other magus that learns that spell (say you teach it to one of us or put it into a grimoire) can master that spell that same way (but not other spells).
eh?
I for
So her master was also a Rusticani? Ie, Ex Misc? When in this timeline does the diabolic past happen? Does that diabolism come from her master, or had her master prepared her enough to recognize diabolism when she sees it? If she's coming from Laguna Sententia, then it would certainly make sense if her parens taught her about all sorts of possible dangers she might have to face some day.
At the upper magnitudes that count as High Powered, potentially warp-inducing effects, her limbs should not only grow black but begin to split into additional, vestigial limbs. Twilight scars should, of course, be spider-like.
After all, if she's named Arachne, then she should be fated to turn into a spider.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, but why is she carving spiders out of wood instead of spinning them out of yarn? Well, knitting/crocheting, really, but fiber-craft is really what we want here, don't you think?
I'm sorry, I thought I had this written up somewhere.
Her master is not a diabolist, but he was stingy, and the gift didn't help (he didn't extand his parma much over her). While near the end of her apprenticeship (say, 10 years into it), she was approached by a magus who visited Laguna Sententia regularly (maybe a redcap?), that played into her difficulties with her father, and inducted her into a mystery cult supposed to give her power enough to pass her gauntlet and escape him. It was explained to her that only the youth had the flexibility and open mind needed to fully understand the mysteries, that the standard way in which magic was taught effectively crippled geniuses, making them average. She was, indeed, already affected by this, through her difficulty to cast spontaneous spells. This didn't need to be the case! The cult targeted promising individuals and tried to preserve them through the rigors of apprenticeship, only to later open them to the greatest powers of magic.
She was foolish enough (and subtly influenced magically enough, too) to believe this. So, every now and them, she swept out of the covenant, joined her guide, and was led to a strange regio in which they conducted arcane ceremonies.
After a year or two, though, she began to understand that everything was not right with the cult. Fearful both of them and of her master, she ceased attending meetings, and avoided the foreign magus as much as possible, pretending that her master kept too close for her to slip past him.
She didn't dare denounce the cult, though, for obvious reasons, and the cult let her alone, she doesn't know why but was relieved.
Not necessarily. I see the spider theme more as a batman thing than like a spider-man thing.
I don't want her magic to be spider-aspected, save by choice and design.
Wood, because I can see these delicately carved spiders, but also mannequins and all. And spiders of all sizes.
And I have just as much trouble seeing fiber-spiders.
The Laguna Sententia that we've been working on in the other games has a paranoid level of security and has incredibly few visitors for "security reasons." Of course, I've also used the name "Laguna Sententia" as my covenant of origin in Rhine Gorge and Ad Fons, and in those games it was clearly a different covenant than the one you (Fixer) and I have been fiddling with. Why do you want her apprenticeship there? I'm not seeing the draw to that pre-existing story element (not complaining, just curious).
See, this is where cross-pollinating causes me conceptual frustration. I want to make a bunch of suggestions here, but none of them are important beyond my attachment to Laguna Sententia. So instead of talking, I'm just going to ask questions and listen: Do you have any other details about the cult? Cult Leader? Do we want to tie this in to the Shadow Flambeau? The groups that Pythos was investigating? That Guillaume was hunting? Is that maybe why they left her alone? Where is all this happening on our timeline?
Ah. I had assumed the Warped Magic came from the spider angle, and was looking for more spider theming (hence the suggestion about spinning fabric stuffed toys). Okay, so where does the Warped Magic come from? The diabolic past?