I am interested how other Covenant have solved the within Covenant communication.
Here are our examples and I hope you will find it useful and I am looking forward to see yours.
At the early stage of the Covenant, when a one of the maga had to go outside of the covenant a parchment was separated into two halves. The first remained home at the Covenant and the second part with the travelling maga. At each sunrise and at each sunset written words appeared on both part of the parchment as it the written words travelled across the great distance.
From rules point of view:
- The two parts of the parchments are in natural arcane connection for years (debatable if it's only for months)
- As the mages discussed beforehand, if the time was appropriate for communication, they were to lower their parma, so the following spells didn't have to penetrate.
- Casting a low level ReVi 4 Opening the Intangible Tunnel by holding one part of the parchment they were able to cast a low level spell on the other half (although I doubt this spell can exist in lower then Level 10 spell version)
- With the help of CrIm 4 (Base 1, +1 Touch, +1 Conc, +1 Readable) written words appeared on the other half-parchment
At the later stage, when the Covenant was more ready to invest and build a more beautiful way to communicate with each other:
Within the Covenant's wall a hidden chamber was carved out of the solid rock and no one outside of the Covenant's Inner Circle knew of it's existence. Within the chamber, number of bonfires blazed, but only for a minute or so. Not by chance the number of bonfires equalled the number of maga present. All of them grabbed a handful of flames out of the bonfire before them and while they held small part of the fire around their hands, the Covenant's eldest maga finished her spell and transformed all fires to silver.
Each maga stood before a bonfire shaped silver lump and held silver-turned-flames in their hand. The eldest walked one by one to her sodales and shaped the silver in their hand to a silver amulet and framed it with a similar magical circle as she did before. After every amulet was completed, she shaped each bonfire to a tall human sized mirror.
One by one the magi stepped out of the chamber, holding their own amulet and watched as in the secret chamber had become a new chamber of mirrors. When all the human sized mirrors were completed, the eldest placed an ever-glowing crystal in the middle of the chamber and closed it's walls never to let anybody to enter.
After so many years, when a maga has to leave, she never forgets to take her silver amulet. Whenever the time arise, as discussed with her sodales, in the secret chamber the maga appears in the mirror and however faraway they are, they can speak freely and see each other in the mirrors.
From rules point of view:
- each bonfire and it's part are in arcane connection for years even after the fire was MuIg(Te) to silver
- while inside the chamber's greater circle smaller circles were drawn around the fire-parts and the original bonfire was shaped to a human sized mirror
- casting a ReVi 20 Opening the Intangible Tunnel, while holding the amulet they can cast a touch version of the Haunt of the Living Ghost (ARM5 Core book, p.144) Cr(In)Im 20 and freely speak as they wish. Of course, my troupe's the Imaginem specialist maga still uses the original version.
We have found this method quite easy for all magi to learn the Level 20 spell and avoiding all the problems with losing arcane connections to the covenant or with penetrating your sodales' parma just to speak with him.