[[!toc ]] PCs are new junior members and/or companions of the Schola Pythagoris; an Autumn covenant shading into Winter. I'm using the 4th Ed Stonehenge book as background and mangling (in)appropriately. Senior members are: ------------------- - SoAndSoExJerbiton - the founder; probably an archmage. Old. - ThingyExJerbiton - SoAndSo's first apprentice; Also old. - SomeoneExMercere - Ungifted Redcap and librarian. Other members of as yet undetermined seniority: ----------------------------------------------- - The priest at St Peter's† - The senior rabbi of the Jewry (Cambridge doesn't rate a "Jewish Quarter" but has one of the larger groupings of Jews outside London)† - A natural magician † These two would be available for player characters. Yes, your covenant structure starts to look odd when you have a Jerbiton founder with a dream of harmony. Non-member major covenfolk we're going to need: ----------------------------------------------- - Stewards for the Inn, the Schola, and the Esk holdings - Assistant librarian - Bookbinder - Illuminator - Scribe(s) - Stablemaster - Turb captain - note that some of the turb is going to be deployed in Esk and some as bouncers at the inn. Oh and we're going to want a guard on the portal room of some kind. Oh apparently House Mercere will provide those. We probably want our own though. - A riverboat captain / convoy-leader - See [[Characters/Schola/Covenfolk/Turb]] for Turb details. Are we going to allow women to join the Turb? - … Sites ----- The Schola itself (and a small amount of land around it). This consists of the public areas of the covenant, the library, a couple of labs and a portal room. It lies to the north of the river and would flood in some winters if it weren't for magical interference. The Schola has two teaching rooms, these are labs with the following virtues anf flaws: - Greater Feature (Desks) - Greater Focus (Desks) - Lesser Feature (Lectern) - Spacious - Elementary (Teaching) For a net: -1 Size, +4 Aesthetics, +3 Teaching (Capped), -4 General Quality, -3 Upkeep The covenent controls the Benefice of St Peter's a couple of hundred yards to the northeast of the Schola. An inn on Akeman Street near the village of Landbeach. The inn extends into a faerie regio and labs are available here. A holding in the Esk Valley (in the North of England). This has livestock farming and iron mines. The mines produce a certain amount of Jet as a side effect. Covenent rules require a member to be based here every season. Formerly an elementalist resided here and there is an air lab and an earth lab on site. Presumably the senior magi must live somewhere & their houses must effectively be part of the covenent. The juniors must live somewhere too, but we'll handle that in uptime. Oh my god. How many Aegises are we going to need...? How long does it take to travel from the Schola to: --------------------------------------------------- - St Mary the Great: 20 minutes by foot - The Inn: 3 hours by foot; 1-2 hours by horse - Ely: 8 hours by foot; about 3 by horse - London: ? - Esk: ?? Getting to and from Esk is going to be a pain; our portal might help, but not by much if it does. It looks as if our best bet to get to the Esk Valley is going to be riverboat: - Two days from Cambridge to Wisbech on the Cam and Great Ouse - One day around the Wash (and potentially delays if the weather is bad) - One or two days to Lincoln along the Witham - Two or three days from there to Pickering - One or two days over the moor in wagons. We probably try and get a good night's sleep in Pickering then set out very early to make the trip in a day. If we aim to hit Pickering at the Solstice/Equinox? we can meet the outgoing maga and only have to have the wagons travel once. If we have spare time then a side trip to visit Voluntes could be done here. These figures don't seem to match up with the ones in *Grogs* which is odd; but they're based on actual contemporary sources I found on the internet. I think the kind of boat we're using has a sail for when it's useful and oars/ropes/poles for when it isn't. Probably some kind of Medieval Hulk. WAGging horribly I'm guessing we're probably going to want three to transport one magus and 8 grogs. Lets say each one can take 3-4 passengers and luggage in comfort plus two sailors. Lets give the covenant a spare in case we need to send a major party up north, and for day to day river travel while the convoy is moving. So that just about fits in for the 10-days in a season. Allowing for weather and delays we maybe want to be looking at 2-season shifts at the Esk Valley. Children -------- Approximately [[nine sixteenths|http://www.representingchildhood.pitt.edu/medieval_child.htm]] of live births survived to the age of 10 and in 1250 they had a life expectancy of about 30 more years at that point. Population was growing at an amazing rate (England was in danger of a Malthusian collapse by the time the Black Death hit a century later) so babies were being live-born at about twice the replacement rate - 1 for every 15 people over the age of 10 each year. The covenant pays well (positive LCM) so infant mortality will be below average and mostly below the age of 5 (we can ignore kids below that age. Lets say 25% total infant mortality - actually it's going to work out slightly less than that when we convert to covenant population points), so lets call that 1 for every 20 over 10. Each Year. So a full fifth of the covenant population is going to be between 5 and 10 at any point. Better keep them away from the magi! Actually it isn't because the LCM factor applies to the adults too - meaning they'll live longer. As an aside approxinately 1% of pregnancies are twins (but twin births tend to be bad news in medieval times). Our base poppoint value is two points per normal covenfolk but to allow for the number of specialists and the longer life as mentioned above lets call that 2½ (we'll come back later when we have actual statistics) so that's going to be one kid per 50 population points per year. Before you start drooling over all the potential apprentices then note that under the baseline rate of the gift (about 1/10000) we can expect one gifted child a millennium or so. Even if we assume that conditions are somehow particularly favourable (they probably aren't) that's not going to get better than once a century or so. Mere Supernatural abilities are going to be more common though -- many of them run in families, the covenent is more understanding of strangeness, and the kids are spending less of their time in a strong Dominion aura than most inhabitants of Mythic Europe. Depending on exactly where our covenent population works out one or two teachers would be enough to teach all the covensprogs for two seasons a year between the ages of 5 and 10. This may be a good idea, or two seasons a year might be overegging the cake. One season would be about equivilent to the **Educated** Virtue, the second would add **Privileged Upbringing**. Alternatively we might want to give appropriate children the **Warrior** virtue. (In practice for covenkids I'll just give them the teaching, rather than the virtues). Income ------ If we're going to count teaching as a lesser income source, and allowing that our lesser income sources are likely to be about £60-80 then looking at [[this site|http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html]] and hand waving a bit we want to be teaching about 50 student-seasons a year. Since initially both Jerbitons are going to be teaching a class of about 25 one season a year that works out OK; and any teaching the PCs do will increase the value of that income source respectively. Senior Magi's house ------------------- The Senior Magi live in a two range house (think like the ones with the shops in on Bridge Street north of the river) between St Clement's and the King's Ditch (a little north of where the Maypole is now). The ground floor of the front range has shops -- a large bakery that shares the house's kitchens, a shop of scribing supplies, and an importer (a front for House Mercere). The "ground" floor is actually slightly raised to keep it from flooding and there is a vaulted storage area underneath, about half underground, which floods during the winter. The rear range has the kitchens, sculleries, and so on on the ground floor. The town end of the first floor has a two-storey hall barely large enough to be a hermetic labratory lit by south facing windows over the courtyard and skylights in the roof. The rest of the volume in both ranges is used for sleeping rooms, and the three senior magi each have rooms on the south side for the best lighting when reading. The courtyard is about as deep again as the building, and has street access via an alleyway that is barely wide enough to drive a wagon down. About two dozen of the covenfolk live here as well as the magi.