Here i am asking for help and ideas from my elders
Starting this weekend and lasting for the whole next week i will be guiding my troup for a travel from Cahors to Bologna and back.
With a stop at Liberatus and Harco, if you have plot ideas i would be glad to hear them.
Here are some details about the characters :
[Magi]
Omnius a dwarf jerbiton who wants to study in the library of Bologna and consult some thelogical masters (about Canaan). I is quite progessiste and hoping to adapt the ways of universities to the order.
[Companion]
Sahr a converted moor scholar with great faith in the church and god.
[Grog]
Anabelle a grog servant with sharp beauty and dull mind.
Some details on the travel :
It will start in spring at the covenant near Cahors, from there they will go to Marseille. They will sail to Pisa and finish the travel by land to Bologna.
I think the travel will take 20 to 30 days followed by 2 seasons in the city and the the travel back with a stop at Harco to find some information about an old and long gone covenant.
I am thinking of an adventure involving the learned magicians and the covenant of literatus in Bologna but i don't know what to insert in the travel.
All of them are new to Ars Magica and i would like to present them with some typical situation to prepare them for the next tribunal.
if your Jerbition Magus does not have the Gentle Gift, you should introduce some sceptical behaviour of mundanes. For example an innkeeper who does not allow them to enter, at least not for a cheap price. Ah and he surely wants the money in advance.
New players should get used to the consequences of the Gift ...
Some other minor obstacles could be:
-tolls
-communication problems (how many languages do the characters speak?)
-bad weather
-pirates? Don't know how common pirates are on your route.
I once osed the lyrics of "summer wine" as a journey adventure. Adapting it to a setting with the fay. Which went like this (in bracketts is that part of the song that parallels the story):
The characters carrying something precious to them (a.k.a. silver spurs) arrived in a small village celebrating a summer festival.
One fay recognices the preciuos thing -vis, book, you name it- and invites one of them to join her drinking summer wine (She saw my silver spurs and said let pass some time. And I will give to you summer wine) Saying: "Strawberries cherries and an faery's kiss in spring. My summer wine is really made from all these things."
When drinking more and more summer wine the character starts experiancing strange feelings and visions.. (My eyes grew heavy and my lips they could not speak I tried to get up but I couldn't find my feet She reassured me with an unfamilliar line And then she gave to me more summer wine)
Next morning the characters wake up and find the entire village gone. No trace of houses or the inhabitants can be found. The Character made drunk with summer wine wakes up with the sun in his eyes since the shack he retired to has vanished. (When I woke up the sun was shining in my eyes)
The precious thing is gone as is all the money (She took my silver spurs a dollar and a dime)
But what is more interesting and challenging is that his head is twice its sice -litterally! (my head felt twice its size)
To regain the treasure, the money and return the poor fellow into a normal human being -well sort of- requires the characters to search out the fay in their regio and perform three tasks for them. In my saga the monk with true faith ended up becoming the faery king and thus slowly transforming their society into something resembling a perfect christian society as he reads the bible to them.
The three tasks given to the Characters should be entertaining and suitable for their abilities. The grog winning back the money, the Companion the book and the magus (if the one transformed) his normal appearance. The tasks may be redicilous like bringing an egg to the faeries that neither touched ground nor plant. Or bringing the kiss of a maiden to the king, or what ever.
