Damhan-Allidh means "The Spider" in Gaelic.
Yeah. Perfect to incite dread 
This remind me of a movie I saw recently. Le Prénom (The First Name). Here's one guy who wants to name his son Adolph, which horrifies his friend. And there's all this great, funny talk about this, where the guy gives out all king of arguments, like "My son will redeem the Adolph name. He'll be so great that people will think of him when saying Adolph". Well, there's a bit of this, too 
Not a bad idea, thanks!
Man, do I feel like a dinosaur
As I have heard the story, there was an early critic of Ars Magica who was very vocal about his dislike of the game, named Dave Nalle. As an homage, the Order of Hermes book mentioned an early enemy of the Order known as Dav'nalleus. This was later developed further into Damhan-Allidh, The Spider. Now, there is something of a tradition in Fifth Edition that people named Dave or David are early opponents of the Order. There's Damhi-Duidas in RoP:I, Dawud Chart in Cradle & Crescent, and there might be others. (These are just the Daves I know, I know.)
Amul, I checked for you. Core book, p10
A Note on the Shadow Wars
A lot of people are incorporating the Shadow Wars and hunting Infernal magi into their backstory. This is cool. I want to make sure we are building from a common base, so I will give my interpretation of events. This is mallable and can be altered to fit your story.
Bare Bones: The Cult of Flaming Shadows is exposed at the Iberian Tribunal of 1207; Karandos battles Rasus in 1208 and suffers severe twilight (and retreats to the Cave of Twisting Shadows);the war continues for several years and the Shadows scatter into hiding; they were not involved at Las Navas, or they were on both sides (not sure yet); the fall of Jafariya is in there somewhere; tribunal of 1214 has the portal & assistance treaty (the portals never get built yet though); Santiago of Flambeau kills Rassus in 1218 (or so he thinks), and the Shadow Wars are pretty well over by then; a few may still remain, so all leads are still followed vigilanty to make sure; Releganta (aka Relegare) escapes Duresca, but is later killed Tconflicting reports, both Octavian of Tremere and Roberto of Flambeau claim credit in seperate encounters and have witnesses); Metron constantly eludes capture but is finally aprehended by the magi of Andorra 5 years ago; Lapho was never seen again after 1207; investigations revealed a few coconspiritors, but not extensive corruption; from what has been ascertained, Rassus knew he was Infernal, and corrupted others with lies and delusions; his followers believed they participated in a Mystery Cult dedicated to a Daimon called the Flaming Shadow; Metron still believes this, that he is the scion of said daimon and has met with it (he believes Rassus was corrupted by Releganta); Metron is known to be a deciever, and had conjured a demon against Inigo and Octavian (the same one he evoked on Trentus years before); Metron opened the Iron Door of Val-Negra and released (what he believed to be) the Flaming Shadow Daimon and trapped the Twilight Ghost of Vancasitium in its stead; Metron is a prisoner at Duresca, the daimon is still loose.
That's everything I can remember in a nutshell, taken from ToH-Iberia, and what occured in previous chapters. Do with it what you will. I wanna keep Metron, but feel free to change the rest. Just remember to coordinate with others using the story. All I wanna keep is Metron and the basic outline from Iberia.
I currently have Pythos getting slowly involved in the conflict from approx 1215-1217, and then have him demon-hunting until 1230. He could be scouring the old hideouts and histories for clues to other potential diabolists, or we could change it to something else.
Keep it the way you have it. I like it, and it fits well 
A possible link: as Rasus knew he was infernal, he could have been part of the same infernal mystery cult that tried to induct Arachné. Some of them are still active in Iberia, but people concentrated on the Shadow Flambeau and missed them entirely.
Coolness 8)
Rassus would come at you with deception. His gig with the magi of Jaferyia was that he falsely painted the Cult of the Flaming Shadow as a mystery cult, one didn't realize the truth until they were in too deep.
Before being exposed, he may have been working on something similar in other areas, maybe trying to create a network of allied cults. But evil always fails at that. This is why there can only be two Sith Lords 
Awesome
Allrighty then...
The Drake Hunt thread should soon be drawing to a close. I apologize for such a long and twisted mission creep. It has some cool moments, but things went way out into left field from what I had originally planned.
For my next trick...
I wanna try something different. Drawing ideas from another game I am in, In the Ruins of Bibracte, I want to run multiple story threads, different things for different layers. Cunningrat and Perigrine are in that game with me, so hopefully they can help me explain.
I would specify a block of time, say three years. There would be three or more storythreads taking place sometime within those three years, and a "sandbox" thread for freestyle roleplaying around the covenant at any point in that block of time (which in turn could lead to other stories). Not every character would be in every story. Just one, two if you are ambitious, or just mill around in the background just roleplaying in one or two.
You wouldn't have to pay attention to every thread. Just the story you are playing a character in. And you would have something to pay attention too, instead of being lost in a story with twenty other players and waiting on the seventh guy to roll dice.
For example, I promised that Ryu could run a "mission-impossible" type story. I wanna play in that as Carmen and just be a PC in my awesome saga for a change . Also, at the end of the month, I want to start a story with Vulcanus and a few other magi concerning the contents of the Vault of Valdarius (you will soon see why, as I am waiting on a certain book to be released). And I also want to give different people the different things that they want to do.
I open the floor to discussion...
waves
I saw the saga mentioned, so I'd pop in and comment. There is a tendency for players to want to involve themselves in every ongoing story in some way. Resist the urge to bring your character(s) into multiple ongoing stories, especially any companions or magi. One of the frequent...complaints is that players find themselves going a bit crazy keeping track of what's where. My intention is for the story to focus on a specific character as the star, and everyone else involved is background. However, there always seems to be a story that develops a life of its own and somehow sucks everyone into it at some point. Enjoy the ride, sometimes it's really fun to watch.
Yeah, that guy 
I do not want to get as complex as that saga. Sometimes it is like fighting a hydra 
But I do want to give characters individual attention instead of having players feel like they are lost in a crowd. And having mixed power levels works out much better (though I must say, Vibria does a good job of keeping up with her elders).
Works for me. I would suggest, however, NOT going the route Bibracte chose, and keeping one thread to one scene. The multiple scenes in threads are confusing as HELL.
Maybe have some threads tagged by time, and some tagged by location, to reduce thread sprawl? Like, say, have a "Council Chamber" thread, or "Guillaume's s00per sekrit sex dungeon" thread, things like that.
Short term, I would like a story in which to involve Fédora. It doesn't even have to be her story, but I wasn't able to hear Vibria's voice until I had played her, and I would like a chance for Fédora to become a little more real for me. She's still Ambitious, but I see her taking it in steps. Working on being in charge of the Mercere house here (somehow, we haven't figured out how yet, but once she starts talking to me, we'll figure something out), then chief redcap of Provençal, then the world muahahahaha!!!
In fairness the mistress thread is a hot mess that very quickly developed a life of its own. It's a story centered around a character and gerg and I involved about everyone. It didn't help that I still had other stories to kick off so players were easily sucked into that story. Threads involving multiple characters and their motivations make for really complicated pbp play, IME. The other story threads are much more linear, too. Oh and Cumhachd got jealous of Apollodorus so I had to do something there. She's such a b!tch.
I was actually talking more about the "general RP" threads. "Ob-la-di, ob-la-dah" for example. Five, six scenes going on at once, with posts intersecting? It's confusing as hell.
In part, I want to capture some of that. There is a high volume of participation over there, and people keep playing even if the SG is absent for a month or two. And even in a singular linear storythread, things can quickly bifrocate if the party splits and splits again. But with all characters artificially jammed in the same story every time, the odds of that happening increase.
But yeah, I wanna do stuff for Fedora and the Redcaps, which would be of no interest to magi or other characters. I wanna give Soloman a chance to shine, prolly doing stuff that other magi would not be interested in. And visa versa, let others do stuff that he would have no interest in. Give people space to do their thing and be creative, a corner of the saga where they can be free to create and create.
And let people play at their own speed. Some people are on line every day, some others only once a week. Your time is your own, this is a game for fun and not a job. Some people only have time to check in once in a while, some people wanna post several times a day. I aim for a structure that can accomodate multiple playing styles, as simple &/or complicated as you want, and where players can be free to interact, roleplay, and develop their story without needing to be guided every step.
I have a solution for that. You can edit a post to change the subject line. For example, up above this box it says "Re: What do we want from this saga?". Now, when I first make the post, I have to leave it unchanged if I want the post to be in that thread, otherwise it creates a new thread. However, after I post this, I can go back and change the subject line as an edit. It will stay in the same thread but have a different title. Say I changed it to "Meanwhile, at the manor...". You would know it is a different scene in the same story. If you clicked "quote" off from that, the reply would say "Re: Meanwhile, at the manor...", but if you clicked the regular Reply button, the post would be titled "RE: What do we Want from this saga".
Alternatively, create additional etc threads, and they can be combined once the yearis complete. This is pretty easy to do for the forum moderator, and it retains the subject of the old thread.