If you get a chance, pm me with your back story. I want to make sure mine matches yours.
Fair enough, though as your companion, I respectfully request you learn (or enchant something with) Bind Wounds. 
It was the familiar bonus that threw me.
Did you retemper the bond?
No... they've only been together for maybe a year.
I looked at it yesterday. An adult griffin has size +3 and might... about 30 I think, but a youth is +2 and about 15, so you might be able to do it if you want. Of course, we'll have to rule whether his growth would be stopped or you'd have to retempter the binding before it breaks, but either way, your choice.
Didn't looked at it, but you're right. Thats because...
Only about 3/4 seasons at most should be advancment.
So assuming a total of 56 seasons, 2 of them being wasted, this means that at least (56/4)-2 = 12 seasons, not 7, should be spent doing something other than advancment.
Ryu, since you've got 2*21 = 42 pawns for these years, I suggest you simply substract 50+XP from your totals, and do some seasons of enchantment instead, that benefit from your focus. For exemple, create an armor with a constant Hardness of Adamantine, that kind of things.
Unless you reforge the link, I doubt you can count the familiar bonus when bonding the familiar the first time, since it isn't bound yet.
Even if you could, one could question whether it could start with MT, but, well, forget it, especially as you didn't munchkin the hell out of it.
Of course they help when they're bound. They're stuck in the lab that whole season anyway, what else are they going to do, play chess with themselves? 
I took that to mean "I prefer it otherwise but you're already finished so whatever." Mark likes to distinguish a divide between "shouldn't" and "can't" 
It makes sense that he would spend more time in the lab, but with no exposure and more importantly no income from items I would be selling, it doesn't make much sense. But the big roadblock there is I am really bad at thinking up effects for enchantments.
I've been assuming that magi gain exposure xp normally for lab seasons. If not, I need to make some significant changes to Vocis. Also, you can devote a season to earning 3 vis of any Form, though I don't think you gain exposure for those seasons.
A season of a Verditius' time is worth far more than 3p.
A season of a Valdarian's time is worth far, far more than that of those Italian blowhards. They don't even have a Terram rune! Losers.
I started him with magic theory to reflect his Transformation. The crystal glade at Durenmar is an inexhaustible tractatus on Magic Theory; you can always study it no matter how high your score, and you can do it as many times as you like.
It was in a sidebar in either GotF or Covenants, I think, and when I read it, I thought it was awesome. Of course, now that I'm looking for it, I can't find it. (Pretty sure it's not in TL because I remember there being something about another great work the Criamon have.)
There it is! Covenants, p 102. "The best known of the Great Works is the Forest of Shining Stone at Durenmar, where Bonisagus's epitome concerning Magic Theory, The Art of Magic, has been etched by later magi into 36 clear crystals, each six feet high." So, not as awesome as I remembered it, but still pretty cool 
Egon was transformed into a magical creature in a place with a high magic aura, where magi have studied magic theory for centuries.
Well, IMO, the familiar helps once it is bound.
Else, I'm not sure you can just take any intelligent magical animal into your lab and use it to enhance your lab total. Nothing stops magi to take a bunch of intelligent magical creatures, befriend or enslave them, teach them MT and have them as lab assistants.
You've probably seen these discussions of the Gift being necessary to help in the lab, with familiars and failed apprentices being among the few exceptions. Familiars, not magical creatures. I tend to rationalize it as the bonding linking familiars to a magus's gift, thus allowing him to do this.
Second, for what it's worth, the familiar bonding lab total, which is explicitly stated out (whereas previous totals are not, like for items), does not include the familiar's intelligence or MT.
So I'd say than yes, the familiar is sitting idly while powerful enchantments are woven about it. You can't both be inside and outside of a room (binding).
I told you, I have no particular problem with you devoting a part of his starting XP to MT, since you're not munchkinizing it. I do, however, have a problem with you then utilizing your familiar's help to your lab total before it is your familiar.
Exactly. Nothing stops you from having as many lab assistants as you can get. Note that the familiar binding total also doesn't explicitly include bonuses from your laboratory, bonuses from your apprentice, or any other aids.
The roadblock in assembling an army of magical animal assistants is teaching them. They take a Might penalty to their learning Quality, and most magi wouldn't consider it a worthwhile investment of time to teach someone that won't be sticking around. If a creature doesn't like you, either because you mistreat it or make excessive and unreasonable demands on its time, it WILL escape. If you're forcing it to work against its will, it will almost certainly try to undermine and sabotage your work.
Regardless, there's no such coercion going on. Vulc and Egon are already friends at the time of the binding, and Egon can take human shape to move around the lab safely.
Please review "Assistance in the Laboratory" in the core rulebook.
Easy quick fix.
Make Vulcanus 4 years older in Hermetic years. Short cycle: 21 pawns of vis, 12 seasons.
Scratch one as usual. Drop one (into the abstract void) and say you opened the bond previously and he just helped you retemper it.
Take ten seasons of just enchantments using your current LT (yes, you get exposure xp in the lab).
If you have trouble, I will be glad to sell you some lab texts on credit 
I don't need his assistance in binding him. I just think it's not okay to arbitrarily ignore published game mechanics because one player doesn't like them.
If you want to house rule against lab assistance from anyone besides your own familiar and your own apprentice, then house rule it for everyone.
Easy killer
Not a big deal and totally can let it slide.
I looked up the rules in the ArM5 core book. The assistant has to be gifted (which he could have had or still have as a Quality if he experienced Transformation).
I think that it was in fourth edition the Gift was not required to help in the lab.
And Covenants allows for numerous tiny bonuses that can be handwaved. Or the aura could have been higher.
In other words, I am fine with it. Just tossing thoughts into the air.
The way I had read it, magical creatures can learn theory because they're inherently magical, while the Gift is what gives them access to Arts, spells, etc.?
Being Gifted would fit the concept well because of how he was transformed into a magical creature, and I thought about going that route because I loved the idea of a familiar who fully expects to be accepted as a full member of the Order on his own merit I changed my mind because, if he has a full Gift, anyone (like say, my mortal enemy) can come along and say "this is my appentice." I'm fairly certain Vulc would win that fight in Tribunal if it came down to it, but I like the bond between magus and familiar to remain sacred.
I played in a game once where my mage was fined by tribunal with familiar loss, and it was a total kick in the nuts. I later bound a more powerful familiar, which was I guess the point, but I never forgave that DM.
That is a kick in the nuts.
What was your crime?
"Got f***ed by a lawyer"
okay. What got you into that situation?
Deus ex machina