Covenant
A covenant is a group of allied magi. The word "covenant" refers to the oath of cooperation and/or brotherhood they take together, but also (more commonly) to the group itself. In most covenants, the magi live together and share a magical library[1]. Most covenants also have guards (called grogs) and servants (covenfolk).
A Typical Covenant
The covenant typically houses a handful of magi[1] (one for each player), an at least that many grogs (often more), and about double that number of covenfolk (servants, craftsmen, and so on)[2]. Atypical covenants can be larger or smaller, and the magi might not live together.
Almost every covenant has a shared library as well as laboratory facilities for all members of full magus status. Some atypical covenants have no shared library, with each magus claiming private ownership of books. Some atypical covenants do not have enough laboratory facilities for everyone.
Covenants in the Saga
The covenant plays an important role in most sagas, providing not only a setting for story events but also a common interest for all the magi. It can become a kind of central character in itself: one that outlives any individual player character. The covenant thus provides the "home base" of the characters, and adventures can revolve around its interests. As all characters live there, its interests are the interests of all characters and the interests of the characters form the covenant's interest.
The conditions and facilities of the covenant provide the basic resources for character development - from the contents of the library that the wizards use, to the lavish (or miserable...) living conditions that the covenfolk enjoy. The covenant's abundance or shortage of books, vis, and wealth help define the rate at which character can advance in their Arts and Abilities.
Seasons
Like characters, covenants can progress (or deteriorate) over the course of a Saga. Ars Magica uses the metaphor of seasons to describe a covenant's life cycle, from the instability and rapid growth of Spring through the prosperity of Summer to the decrepitude of Winter.[3]
Kinds of Covenants
- Domus magna
- A domus magna is the headquarters of one of the Houses of Hermes. All domus magnae are House covenants.
- House Covenants
- A minority of covenants consist of magi all from the same House, with some exceptions allowing for specialists from other houses to join or occasionally for social reasons. House Tremere, in particular, has a number of House covenants[4]
- Mixed Covenants
- Most covenants have mixed membership; that is, magi from more than one House. Most players' sagas are based in mixed covenants so the players can create magi from whatever Houses they want.
Example Covenants
Semita Errabunda is the official example covenant from Atlas Games. A PDF file is available on the Atlas Games Ars Magica 5th edition site describing Semita Errabunda. Also near the bottom of that page are multiple PDFs containing 5th Edition statistics for Semita Errabunda's magi, grogs, and covenfolk.
Sabrina's Rest is a free, unofficial sample covenant for Fifth Edition designed by Timothy Ferguson. It is nominally located in the Stonehenge Tribunal.
Four very brief summaries of example covenants can be found in the ArM5 rule book: the spring covenant Vernus (p. 68), the summer covenant Aetas (p. 69), the autumn covenant Autumnus (p. 70), and the Winter covenant Hiems (p. 70).
Triamore: the Covenant at Lucien's Folly is a full-length, 144-page supplement for ArM4 that describes a single covenant in great detail. Mistridge (book) does the same for Second Edition rules. In both cases, the mechanics are somewhat out of date and would need conversion (especially for Mistridge), but the ideas remain quite usable.
[Nigrasaxa] is a free mini-saga for ArM4 that contains a starting covenant that can be used in Fifth Edition with some manual conversion.
You can also find numerous fan-created example covenants in the Regional Tribunal pages:
| Greater Alps | Hibernia | Iberia | Levant | Loch Leglean | Normandy |
| Novgorod | Provençal | Rhine | Rome | Stonehenge | Thebes |
| Transylvania | Alternate Settings | ||||
| Play-by-Post Sagas| | |||||
Designing a Covenant
Designing a covenant is a complex and time-consuming task that may be too challenging for new players. If this is your first Saga, you may be better served to start by finding an existing sample covenant and modifying it as you see fit. This is much less work and lets your troupe get more quickly started telling stories. If, later on, you have new ideas and want to create a covenant of your own, you can simply have the characters' starting covenant fail, break up, or get destroyed, and move the magi to a new covenant of your original design.
Rules for creating a covenant can be found in Chapter 6 of ArM5. The Fifth Edition Covenants supplement adds many more options, Boons and Hooks, ideas, sample characters and items, and so on, and is generally well-regarded, but is not strictly necessary to create a playable covenant.
See Also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ars Magica Fifth Edition, p. 13, "Covenants"
- ↑ Ars Magica Fifth Edition, p. 71, "Baseline"
- ↑ Ars Magica Fifth Edition, p. 68, "Covenant Seasons"
- ↑ Houses of Hermes: True Lineages, p. 115, "Coeris" (inset)
The edit history of this page before August 6, 2010 is archived at Legacy:covenant.