One of the NPC covenants in my saga is an old winter covenant and one of my planned plot points is that this covenant will eventually fail as the last of the magi die, pass into Twilight or otherwise vanish.
Now, I am wondering how other sagas might handle two elements of this.
First, the vanished magi will naturally leave behind fun things like vis, magic items and texts. Who gets the stuff? Do filli have inheretance rights to their paren's property?
Second, and somewhat more importantly, what happens to the covenfolk of this failed covenant? Figure that this place has been around long enough that many of the covenfolk were born and raised there, probably for multiple generations. What happens to them?
This is a very good idea for a story arch. You can have tactical, exploration stories of trying to get into the senile, paranoid very senior magi's sancta and negotiating the dangers of a decrepit and potentially dangerous covenant. You can also have political, social stories of negotiating and litigating the division of the estate.
I believe that this is mentioned briefly in the Guernicus chapter of HoH: True Lineages. It's my recollection that the filli do have some inheritance rights of personal property.
Not to be too glib, but whatever you want to happen to them... I would imagine that the best ones are recruited by other covenants. They may demand that some of the less desirable members of the covenant accompany them. They may decide hanging out with freaky magi isn't all that great and use it as a chance to escape to the normal world. They may be so warped that they can't function in normal society and beg to be taken in by any covenant. A group of junior magi may come in and attempt to re-establish the covenant and keep the covenfolk. I don't think there is any one size fits all solution here.
I've always thought a magus-less covenant would be interesting. All those scribes, autocrats, and who all that know about the Order. After all, their quality of life might well be better than living out on their own, they might mock up a magus, say it's a long-lost apprentice or something and hope nobody notices....
The accounting in the Rhine Covenant is so shoddy anyway that, if they pledge their fake mage's sigil (by redcap) to another covenant, they might not even need to have a mage ever show up.
After all, magi are often "too busy" to make appearances, and if any visiting redcap is wined and dined well enough, he probably won't notice anything amiss.
The most likely way to get caught is if the shell covenant does something that magi can't do, like pledge fealty to a feudal lord because there's no longer a Flambeau who will toast the lord's armies.
That would work only until they had to renew the magi in their covenant (nobody is gonna believe your magi are 300 years old) but for quite a few decades that can work
Furthermore the covenfolk never can be sure their last magus has gone into twilight temporarily or forever. The older servants may remember a magus who disappeared, his wealth were proportioned after a great hermetic litigation but he appeared after a decade and demanded back his tower and other belongings.
I can even see a covenant that does NOT know that it is mageless. If a sanctum has devices to teleport the food in and the dishes out and maybe has a preprogrammed "send sigil to friend" every X time, I can see the members of the covenant not knowing that the Master has been into final twilight or dead for a decade easily. Unless there is a major crisis they might not even want to molest him if he i/she is a jerk (a lot of magi are)
... is the thought that a covenant becomes 'mageless' and it becomes public knowledge. The denizens have a desire to stay and operate like they always do, but now they have to contend with inheritance seekers, vultures, and other opportunists. Perhaps they nominate a party to attend Tribunal and make a case to be heard. Perhaps they send parties to Order friends of their former masters for help about their legal status, or perhaps to defend them until their status can be ruled upon at Tribunal.
I wonder if a Jerbiton or an Ex-Misc. could 'suddenly' gauntlet a scholar there as a Larta (sp?) Magus?
This is off topic, but Larta do not exist in Fifth Edition. The covenant members or their benefactor would need to find someone with The Gift or significant Supernatural Abilities to get adopted into the Order.
It's my understanding that this topic (the types of non-Gifted magic users that may become members of the Order) is addressed in the introductory chapter of Hedge Magic RE.
... potential for how the members get along in their state of legal limbo while trying to address the problem. Imagine the members becoming all democratic or republic in their decision making on how to proceed. Imagine the anxiety as whole families don't know if they might be attacked by a hermetic vulture at any moment. Perhaps a large contingent leaves in anticipation of trouble before a resolution can present itself.
Imagine that they decide to 'hide' their magical resources in the meantime, to limit any gains available to those who would loot.
I think I'm going to use this in my next game now.
But perhaps a trusted Mercere friend of a fallen covenant Magus could be persuaded to do it 'suddenly' anyway in hopes that it could stand muster just long enough to make other plans.
In our covenant, personal belongings are covenant possessions after the demise. But then we have a long eula as a charter (it started out 10 page, but reached 15 now)
