, and from April to July theoretically ran on Tuesday nights. Ithink we only managed four sessions; various events and a cheap drinks night and over active social life plus Ian being busy a lot and Jon being away on conference conspired against us, and I was finding it hard going to run. The notes on the covenant are pretty thorough however, and may be of use to someone else running Ars Magica. I have a vague plan to return to this, but it will be next year now as I am completely taken up with Changeling Three Crowns and Beyond the Mountains of Madness for Cthulhu, and am also looking to start work soon. Anyway, hope it amuses you - the players generated their covenant as follows...

St. Georges Day, 23rd April 1210

The Covenant Dominae Paganus welcomes it’s Magi with a feast and celebration. Magi choose laboratories, rooms and meet the grogs. The Covenant was established Hugh by of Jerbiton, a new Magi as of the Initiatory Tribunial of Caer Gadu held at Blackthorn under the Black Mountains in 1209, and he has worked closely with Byron of Merenita and Gideon of Tytalus to design the Covenant, which is expected to dominate the vast Brecklands of Suffolk and Norfolk, a gorse covered heath which extends between Kings Lynn and the coastal villages of Norfolk in the north, the great monastery at Bury St Edmunds in the south, the vast marshes known as the fens in the West and Silly Suffolk and Norfolk in the East. Silly incidentally is a corruption of the Saxon word selig or Holy; the highly populated rural areas of Suffolk and Norfolk have hundreds of churches and the Dominion is strong here.

Mundane Politics

The Dominion would be even stronger were it not for the Interdict. In 1204 the Archbishop of Canterbury Hubert Walter died, and King John, the Bishops and the monks of Canterbury squabbled over who was to be his sucessor. The Pope eventually appointed on 17th June 1207 Stephen Langton, a sixty year old Englishman who had spent most of his life at the capital of King John’s greatest enemy, Phillipe Augustus, King of France. Langton was a Professor at Paris university which he helped found, and to King John he was an impossible choice. John sent the monks of Canterbury in to exile and refused to allow Langton, now Archbishop and Cardinal, to enter England.

The Pope responded by placing England under the Interdict;

"no ecclesiatical office to be celebrated except the baptism of infants and the confession of the dying"

and all the Churches closed. Many in Britain believe this is a sure sign of the imminent end of the world; mass is not sung, marriages can not be held and funerals can not occur in consecrated ground. It is a positive blessing to Magi, for it reduces the Dominion aura severely making magic easier. The King has now widened the rift by confiscating vast tracts of Church land and Church treasure; their owners may avoid the loss by paying hefty fines. His latest money making tactic is to arrest all parish priests mistresses, and hold them in jail till a ransom is paid; an amusing way of poking fun at the Church, and an amazingly profitable way to make money as vast numbers of ransoms are being paid, one priest having to ransom six different mistresses!

Hermetic Politics

The Dominion is too strong for mages to normally attempt to create a Covenant in East Anglia, but of the nine English Covenants which make up the Tribunial of Caer Gadu three are now in Anglia. Firstly, there is you, Dominae Paganus. Secondly, there is Covenant Fen Tyger, an ex-Miscellanea dominated covenant somwehere west of Ely, whose representative at the tribunial, Rud, seemed completely disinterested in your plans but nodded assent when it came to the vote for the new covenant. Finally there is Schola Pythagoranis, an academic covenat dominated by House Jerbiton that meets at Cambridge and seemed supportive of your plans.

The Covenant

ReVi20 Aegis of the Hearth              ReVi20 Watching Ward      ReVi20 Waiting Spell

PeVi30 Demon’s Eternal Oblivion     PeVi30 Disenchant             MuVi15 Gather the Essence of the Beast

MuVi25 Wizards Communion           InVi5 Scales of the Magical Weight

InVi5  Sense the Nature of Vis          InVi15 The Invisible Eye Revealed

 
MuTe5 Edge of the Razor       PeTe10 Rusted Decay of the Ten Score Years

ReTe10 The Unseen Porter      MuTe10 The Crystal Dart    ReTe5 Unseen Arm