Chapter Two: Politics

Advancement in a political career depends on the whims of a powerful patron. Many lords wish to hire competent people, but it is difficult for a skilled character lacking social connections to demonstrate merit to potential patrons. A career normally begins with a fortunate birth, either as a noble or in the personal retinue of a great lord.

A character who performs well in a lord's retinue may, if the lord is interested in merit, be granted money, offices, or land. Additional land may be gained by marriage, through war, or by purchase. In time, sufficient land is gathered for the nobles of an area to accept the character, or his descendants, as a regional power. This makes a character a great noble.

In most sagas, each stage of career advancement occurs because of a story event. A character performs beyond the usual expectations of his station, then the lord promotes the character. This is a reward, but also retains the character to provide similar services in the future. The character's example encourages other retainers to strive in the lord's service.

The Gratitude System

For players preferring structured advancement, this chapter suggests the following system. Characters earn Gratitude points when they perform a service to their lord that is beyond that required by their station. These points are then redeemed with higher office, land, or payment in goods.

Gratitude may be earned by exceptional actions that go beyond the usual requirements of the role, like saving the lord from capture in battle or paying the lord's entire ransom. It may also be earned by story events in which the lord sees how useful the character could be if raised to a higher station. A squire who fights bravely on when wounded might make a fine knight. A nobleman who negotiates a lucrative marriage may make a fine chancellor.

Player characters do not usually select how their lords will express Gratitude. Characters with close relationships to friendly lords may do so, and this relationship may be purchased at character creation with the Patron Virtue. Many of the resources lords use to reward followers, like escheated land and heiresses, are only intermittently available. Players may prefer to store Gratitude for larger rewards, but noblemen often prefer smaller, more regular, rewards.

Note that some lords do not give the rewards they should: poverty, covetousness, or political pressure may force them to give a desired reward to a character's rival. The character's Reputation is not affected by minor acts of rebellion against such an ignoble lord.

Many political stories do not provide Gratitude points, and so do not directly lead to the character's advancement. They do, however, provide improved resources by increasing the character's wealth, enlarging the character's retinue, solidifying the character's position in the political hierarchy of his region, or improving the character's Reputation.

A character who is given a higher office gains the Virtues suited to that office, such as Landed Noble, Greater Noble, or Temporal Influence for officers.

A story provides:

0 Gratitude: If the lord attempts to appear just and the nature of the character's service is secret. The nobles of each area keep careful track of who is in favor, and to what degree, and they notice if a reward is not commensurate with known service. If the nobility does not know why public favor was shown, creative gossips will come up with several alternative stories that suit the prevailing mood of the court. Characters who serve secretly can be repaid with money, with minor titles, with heiresses, and by setting up stories that justify the repayment, or the lord and his liege can just brazen out any social opprobrium and accept damaged Reputations.

1 Gratitude: In cases where the story has an outcome that favors the lord, but this was not the character's main focus. Characters accompanying magi can often pick up a point of Gratitude as part of their reward for a story that affects the covenant.
2 Gratitude: If the story has an outcome that strongly favors the lord, and was the character's main focus. Characters accompanying magi can occasionally earn 2 points of Gratitude by cleverly tying what the magi are doing into the needs of their lord.
5 Gratitude: If the story requires the character to complete a feat that will be widely renowned for its difficulty, primarily to serve the needs of the lord. Turning away a great army with a minor host, scaring off a dragon with a clever ruse, or rescuing the lord from the depths of his rival's dungeon would each earn 5 points.

The Projection of Power

Great Nobles have a sphere of influence that can be divided into levels of proximity. The closest bond, which affects the fewest people, is between the lord and his retinue. These are the people he directly employs as part of his household for an extended period of time. This includes his officers, who are servants trusted with a portion of the lord's power in exchange for their loyal service. The next most significant bond is between the magnate and his tenants. These are the lords and knights who hold land from the magnate. They are more autonomous than his household, but cannot risk his displeasure save in times of crisis, when he lacks the power to punish their insolence.

Advancement Requirements Table

See Chapter Three: A Comparison of Titles for more on those positions mentioned here.

Change Requires Cost to Granter

serf to freeman 5 Gratitude Cost of serf

warrior to knight 5 Gratitude Cost of gear (5 pounds minimum)

knight to bacheler Must have the basic Abilities of a Knight, and the Abilities and Personality traits suited to this particular mesnie. Gratitude 5. Ongoing support

bacheler to carissimus Must be a bacheler, Gratitude 5, story event. No cost

bacheler to Landed Noble Gratitude 10, marriage to suitable heiress, or claiming land during war, or being offered land that has returned to the lord. The revenues of the manor

Added manors Gratitude 10, Reputation for loyalty to the lord, land must be available due to the extinction of a line, or war, or assart, or appanage. The revenues of the additional manor or manors

Landed Noble to banneret Sufficient money to hire knights – usually from 5 manors. Nothing

banneret to baron of a minor lord Gaining by any means at least 15 more manors. Reputation of loyalty toward the lord, 10 Gratitude Nothing, except if the manors are the lord's.

minor baron to a lord to baron of the king Must be noticed by the king or his advisors, must be in the service of a lord the king doesn't mind offending, like a rebel or an heir that owes the king. Gratitude 20 and, usually, successful treason against the lord. Nothing.

admiral Access to ships, Leadership 2

butler Profession: Steward 2

chancellor Must be highly literate in the local languages of business and diplomacy, usually has Church Lore.

marshal Leadership 5, Reputation for skill at warfare.

steward Profession: Steward 2

treasurer Profession: Steward 2

appointment as baron Gratitude 10, a suitable marriage, any officer role

appointment as justiciar Story event, substantial baronial role, or church equivalent, plus Loyalty to the dead person and a Reputation of 5 or more.

Appointment as an officer to Greater Baron or higher requires Gratitude 10, Landed Noble (at minimum), Reputation for loyalty to the lord, vacancy in the office, and office-specific traits. Abilities below 2 assume the noble has an oversight role and is aided by a skilled deputy in the practical functions of the office. A noble wishing to skillfully administer the daily business of the office should develop an appropriate Ability score of 5. Making a vassal an officer costs the granter nothing. It does, however, cost the previous holder of the office his status and income, which may lead to a story.
In brief, to move from serf to freeman, or warrior to knight, or knight to bacheler, requires a single story in which the character provides heroic service to his lord, or the gradual accumulation of merit equivalent to this. To move through the middle ranks of knighthood requires two heroic services, five exceptional services, or ten stories with the magi that can be tied to the interest of the lord. These payments, again, require that the lord wishes to reward merit, that he has the desired reward available, and that there is no better claimant in his affinity.

The magnate also has influence over people who are not dependent on him for their livelihood. Powerful magnates usually create coalitions of allies around their demesne lands. This area of influence is called his country, and the people who participate in the alliance are called the magnate's affinity. Significant political figures are carefully watched by other members of the noble class, who do their best to avoid the anger of a magnate. A magnate's reputation can influence the actions of his neighbors without any effort on his part.

Retinue

The retinue of most magnates can be split into four parts: family, military, clerical, and menial. These sections of the household are usually on good terms as a whole, although it is common for individuals in the clerical and military sections of the household to despise each other. The households of lords vary in size based on their wealth, desire for ostentation, and number of children. Speaking loosely, the household of a lord of the manor averages 10, that of a landed knight 16, that of a banneret 24, that of a baron 40, and that of an earl 140. This includes the knightly followers of the lord mentioned in the Military section later, but not their peasant levies.

Family

Nobles are expected to favor their extended families when seeking vassals and household retainers. This is supposed to make a body of retainers more loyal than one composed of strangers. Male relatives are useful for a range of offices, and female relatives may be used to cement alliances through marriage.

Bastards are particularly useful to medieval magnates, because they do not automatically inherit land in most areas. They have no incentive to overthrow their legitimate brother, and are dependent on his goodwill for advancement. Bastard sons, if trained as knights, are sometimes not fostered away, which allows them to grow more familiar with the estate than legitimate children. Bastard daughters are useful for making strong alliances with minor vassals or merchants, as marriage to a lesser noble or commoner does not dishonor them.

A Random Method of Death

To simulate the randomness of age at death in Mythic Europe, which allows paths of inheritance to take unexpected turns, Storyguides may wish to secretly calculate the death age of non-player characters. Assume that any child has a 25% chance of dying of natural causes before adulthood is reached. For characters who are already adults, or children who survive, assume a death age of 6 simple dice + 20 years. In times of widespread war, flip a coin so that half of all adult men die by violence 10 years before the six dice indicate they should. For less-intense wars, instead use a die and grade the odds to suit the lethality of the conflict. Storyguides should note that these rules are harsher than the standard aging rules.

A Random Method of Life

If a character is waiting to inherit, check for the birth of new heirs. For each person between the character and inheritance, assess if they are likely to have a legitimate child in this year. Then roll a die for each, assuming that on average half of them do have a child. Check each child for random age of death.

Story Seed: Finding an Heir

An elderly lord keeps falling ill. His sickness is not lethal, but it takes him longer to recover from each bout. He fears that he will die in the next few years as he weakens, so he dispatches the player characters to find his heir. The boy took the cross, but has not been heard from since he left.
The lord has four daughters, and the lands will be divided among them if the heir is not produced. The husband of one of these daughters sends assassins and saboteurs to shadow the player characters. They strike at the group if they sense weakness, but prefer to let them find the heir, so that they can kill him without forewarning. Even if the heir is bought home, he still needs the protection of the player characters. After all, his brothers-in-law can also claim his land if he dies in accident, or in war. And some may claim that he is not the son at all, but rather an impostor.
The player characters also have a second lead to the identity of the heir's enemy. The illnesses suffered by his father are not natural: they are poisonings, given in a slow series so as not to arouse suspicion. If the characters can catch the servant who administers the poison, they may be able to trap her handler, who can provide the name of the lord responsible.

Designing a Family

Players wishing to generate a family for their characters may freely select any reasonable number of living siblings that they wish, and may select which are bastards. For a random number of legitimate siblings, roll two dice of different colors and halve each result. One die represents the number of male children surviving to adulthood, the other the number of female. Zeros represent no surviving children of that gender. For birth order, assign each child a number and roll randomly until all have a place. Distribute the births of all characters so that they lie within a 12-year span. Male characters older than 21 and female characters older than 18 are almost certainly married or committed to the religious life.

For a random number of bastards, roll a die, halve it, and then add or subtract appropriate Personality traits of the father and mother. Roll birth order for each, comparing to the above siblings, and roll odd or even to determine gender. Bastards created by a straying husband and a woman of lower status are usually known; those from a noble woman who finds a lover are usually hidden among her legitimate children, which may be a source of the Dark Secret Flaw.

Story Seed: Not A Bastard

A monk at a nearby abbey has made a final confession at unction that has alarming consequences. Before he entered the monastery, the monk was a village priest, and he performed a secret marriage for a young, smitten nobleman and his common lover. The young nobleman was later offered a rich marriage, and bigamously married the daughter of a neighboring landholder, acknowledging his children by his first marriage only as bastards. They have been the loyal servants of the "legitimate" line of the family for a generation, and fill many lesser positions in the court of the lord.
Legally, the effect of this confession, which the dying man asked his confessor to make public after a little encouragement, is that the head of the "bastard" line should become the lord, dispossessing his younger half brother. Characters may earn gratitude by negotiating the continuing loyalty of the "bastard" line, by negotiating a smooth transition between the two lineages, or by taking the winning side if the parties seek justice in the courts or on the field of battle. Characters who hush up the confession cannot earn Gratitude points, but may be given other favors.
This story seed may have several different twists, as well. The current lord may be murderously dedicated to keeping the land in his branch of the family for his sons, and try to eliminate the characters who have hushed the matter up, so that the secret remains buried. He might, alternatively, be almost too good, and be glad to give up his land to his wronged brother. The brother, however has a hatred for a neighboring community, and his ascension would pitch the land into war. His player-character vassals must choose between loyalty to their somewhat naive lord and loyalty to their community, which would be ravaged if the war was lost. Finally, the confession itself may be a lie, fostered by a demon or faeries to cause strife.

To see how loyal to the head of the family each sibling is, the player rolls a stress die and then, if the child is a legitimate son, subtracts the number of older sons of military inclination. The result is used to generate a number as per the Arts table on ArM5, page 31. The maximum score is 3 and negative scores are permitted. This score is the son's Loyal Personality Trait. A roll of zero indicates that the child is implacably disloyal to the head of the family.

The subtraction of the birth number of the legitimate sons models the way that families in cultures that practice primogeniture ration economic support to favor the elder sons. It does not apply in those families that are so wealthy that they support all of their sons. Sons of "military inclination" do not include those who are dead, bastards, have joined the Church, have become magi, or are seriously disabled, as these sons do not inherit land. In powerful, wealthy families, the support required to prevent loss of loyalty may include land.

Disloyal sons may remain in the service of their fathers for a long time, waiting for an opportunity to assert their independence. Sons who are not implacably disloyal may become loyal over time as their older brothers die, tying their interests closer to the head of the family's. On the other hand, many nobles feel that heirs are more likely to be disloyal than younger sons, since they have so much to gain by the deaths of their fathers; if this is the case in your campaign, troupes should shuffle these scores between sons to create interesting supporting characters for their stories. A family may be as detailed as the player and troupe prefer. Many troupes like to keep extended families vague, so that new characters can be added as stories require.

Inheritance

In many areas of Mythic Europe, the lands of a father are divided between his sons at death. In those that are influenced by Norman culture, this is seen only as a way of dividing the family's estate into a patch of squabbling petty knights, and so all land goes to the nominated heir. If no heir is nominated, this is the eldest, or the strongest as selected by the dead father's liege. This method keeps the family estate together, but gives younger sons motive to oppose the head of their family in war.

These non-heritable appanage lands are frowned upon by many. They assert that appanages are not usually resumed by the primary line of a family without warfare, and so they are a way of dividing the estate in slow stages. This does occur in some families, but in the majority, war and infant mortality prevent this from occurring. The French royal family has divided its lands somewhat through appanage. In contrast, the English crown has not, since the Conquest, been able to create a cadet branch that has held its land separate for more than two generations.

Four measures are taken to limit fratricide. First, younger brothers and nephews are given choice offices in the retinue of the family’s head. Second, the lands that a father inherited from his father are kept together as demesne, but land gained by conquest or marriage may be split away to endow younger sons. Third, if the lord gains wardship of an heiress, she will be married to a landless son to provide for him. And fourth, sections of the estate called appanages may be given to younger sons for the length of their lifetime only.

These non-heritable appanage lands are frowned upon by many. They assert that appanages are not usually resumed by the primary line of a family without warfare, and so they are a way of dividing the estate in slow stages. This does occur in some families, but in the majority, war and infant mortality prevent this from occurring. The French royal family has divided its lands somewhat through appanage. In contrast, the English crown has not, since the Conquest, been able to create a cadet branch that has held its land separate for more than two generations.

If there is no male heir, the lands of families in many areas are divided between the daughters of the last lord. This prevents his sons-in-law from going to war, and provides lands to the Church through daughters who have taken the veil. This is one factor that prevents nobles having contiguous territories. The average noble family fails to provide a male heir every fourth generation, so this churning of lands is common.

Marriage and Dowries

A player may select the degree of affection in the character's marriage in consultation with the troupe. Arranged matrimony is common for nobles, but many of these become loving marriages. Adultery is considered immoral, but is relatively common among noblemen of high status. The Church has recently ruled that a marriage requires, at minimum, only a spoken intent to marry and a dowry, although it prefers the addition of a priest and two witnesses.

In many areas, the father of the bride must consent to her marriage. This allows him to threaten his daughter, by saying he will approve no man other than his choice. A father does not, however, formally choose the husband of his daughters in any Christian part of Europe. The sacrament of marriage requires voluntary participation.

Marriage may occur at very young ages for the heirs of greater nobles. The average groom of the lower noble class is, however, in his late twenties. This is lower if he has an opportunity to marry well and establish himself financially. Women marry slightly younger than men.

Dowries are an important part of the marriage contract. A dowry is a sum of money or goods paid by the bride's family to the bride upon marriage. Dowries are the usual way for parents to pass wealth intergenerationally to daughters.

In most of Italy and much of France, a husband has the right to invest and manage his wife's dowry, but not spend it. He may be sued for mismanagement, and must be able to give it back to the wife's family if the couple separates. In Italy, if the wife dies before the husband, her dowry must be given to her children or be returned to her parents. In parts of France, the husband may keep much of the dowry. In England, the husband owns all of the goods of the wife, including her body. In all three places, a free woman has the right to use a portion of her husband's property for support, if he predeceases her. For game purposes, assume this is one third of his estate, and that she likely loses this property if she remarries.

Military

The military accompaniment of a nobleman varies with his wealth. Simple knights are accompanied only by one or two servants. Wealthy lords have tails of between eight and ten knights during peacetime, sometimes accompanied by other mounted warriors and infantrymen. These household knights are called the lord's mesnie.

Membership in a lord's mesnie has many advantages. The knights of a nobleman's household are fed, clothed, billeted, and their gear is replaced if it wears out or is lost occasionally in tournaments. As the personal guards of a lord, the mesnie knights profit from their lord's wars. If the lord is powerful, or becomes powerful, his mesnie is often rewarded with offices or lands. Many are rewarded with the lord's largesse.

It is usual for lords to stuff their mesnie with young men from their extended family, or those of their neighbors. Younger sons raised as squires in a lord's court, for example, may lack the resources required to maintain their status. Placement in a mesnie is an excellent station for them. A mesnie filled with younger sons, who lack the prospect of independent inheritance, is preferred by some lords, while others prefer to befriend young heirs.

Size of Dowries

The size of a dowry varies by culture. In some areas it is equivalent to an equal portion of the land that the girl's parents own, when split between their children. In the French sphere, the oldest son and his patrimony are removed from this division, as they receive the inalienable section of land passed down through the family's primary line. This is adjusted downward if the daughter:

Is marrying a groom from a less wealthy family. This is not unusual, because women outnumber men in Mythic Europe.

Is one of few acceptable brides in her economic range.

Is a virgin.

Is more than ten years younger than the groom.

Will receive other goods after marriage. It is illegal in some areas — like

Catalonia, southern France, and much of Italy — to leave bequests to daughters, so dowries in those regions are larger.

Has more siblings than average, since her share of her parents' wealth is smaller.

Has mostly female siblings, since this means her parents need to find more dowries.

Is unlikely to have difficulty obtaining money from the male heir after her father dies.

Will receive the dowry in land or money, rather than other rights.

Conversely, dowries are more generous if any of these statements are untrue. If the bride is exceptional, for example she is an heiress, her husband's family may pay her father or guardian a dower.

A Tale Stolen From the Birth of Robert the Bruce

There are two powerful territories in part of the lord's lands. He is on poor terms with the ruler of one, who feels he has some right to the lordship himself, due to a claim that one of the current lord's ancestors couldn't inherit legally. The other territory currently has no lord, being administered by the widow of the previous holder. The greater lord has the right to select a husband for this woman, and is reserving her as a reward for service.
News reaches the court that the son of the rival ruler was traveling through the country and was seduced by the widow. It has caused a great scandal. The bishop, who is a stern man of God and not given to laxity with regard to matters of fornication, is demanding that the two marry regardless of the objections of their overlord. A character who manages to prevent the lord's rival from consolidating this territory gains 5 Gratitude, and a character who at least gets a fine out of the widow for not choosing who her lord wished earns 2. A character who pushes the marriage forward may gain Gratitude from the rival and the couple, however, and they have become a significant force in their territory.

Mesnie knights are expected to be loyal to their lord above all else, but in practice noblemen understand that knights have common sense. During the recent civil wars in England, the mesnie of the chief marshal showed extreme loyalty by being willing to lose all of their lands and be reduced to penury to follow their lord. This behavior is considered ideal. In practice, a mesnie is expected to desert a lord whose cause is failing. When Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, was provoking the king, his mesnie knights deserted him and this was not considered a shameful thing for them to do, given that their lord was ensuring their annihilation.

A member of the mesnie of a lord is sometimes called a bacheler, or "bachelor." This title is used to demonstrate that the knight has a patron. This means that if the knight is abused, the dishonor can be answered with more than the force of his arm. A knight becomes a bacheler by being offered a place in a mesnie.

Story Seed: Choosing the Lord or Heir

The heirs to many major holdings are permitted to select their own mesnies, but are required to accept the priests foisted on them by their lord or the bishop. In some cases, this makes for a fiercely divided and partisan court. Each participant is required to either favor the current lord, or the heir to the lord. Generally, older characters favor the current lord, who can punish and reward them immediately. Younger courtiers tend to favor the heir, since they know that all they need to do is wait for their lord to die before reprisals against his supporters can begin.
Characters serving a covenant need to play a difficult game of supporting both sides sufficiently that they do not suffer reprisal now or later. One popular strategy, if the ill will between the lord and his son degenerates to war, is to send the head of the family to support the lord, and a younger son to support the heir. The hope is that if the heir wins and the lands of the lord are forfeit, they will be awarded to the younger son for his service. If the lord wins, then the family can just disclaim the younger son, and he can live in exile until the lord dies.
Covenants with tame nobles may need to employ similar stratagems. Covenants may also be asked to shelter younger sons who were sacrificed to lost causes. These characters may have a Dark Secret Flaw, because they are wanted by the current authorities, but they also have a variant of the Heir Virtue, because if they wait sufficiently long they will have a powerful Patron.

The mesnie knights of a lord tend to have the personality traits that the lord admires. In the estates of powerful nobles, there is a select group of friends of the lord, called the mesnie privée, who strongly reflect his tastes. The average mesnie is much like a street gang. It is made up of violent and wealthy young men whose behavior is not effectively restricted by the law, and whose main business is the defense of their territory.

Other flavors of mesnie are unusual, but common enough for a character to be able to seek one that suits his strengths. Mesnies filled with poets or knights interested in theology are common, particularly in the households of landholding women and priests. A character may make an Intelligence + Intrigue roll against an Ease Factor of 6 to recall if the mesnie members of a lord with whom he is interacting have a common feature. A character may make an Intelligence + Intrigue roll against an Ease Factor of 12 to recall or discover the name of a lord who favors a particular skill. Characters with high Intrigue scores will, for a small fee or owed favor, arrange introductions between player characters and either lords whose tastes they suit, or knights who suit their taste.

A carissimus is the captain of a mesnie. A character becomes a carissimus by being the best friend of the lord, or by being so skilled that he is made leader of the mesnie regardless of personality. The carissimus of a powerful lord has great social cachet, and is treated as superior to the other members of the mesnie. It's common for the carissimus of a powerful nobleman to be landed, but to either still live within the household of his lord, or to live close by so that his advice can be easily sought.

Clerical and Menial

The ability to read and write is common in the upper class of Mythic Europe. The work of writing letters is, however, dull and time consuming, so clerks are employed to fulfill this menial task. Most of these clerks are, as their name suggests, priests, but in some parts of Mythic Europe a professional class of estate managers has developed. These men are not clerks in the traditional sense, but they have an education and skill in improving the profit of land. In large estates this section of the household is called the chancery.

The clerical and militant sections of a household have different values, but usually co-operate with some degree of tension. In smaller households, the priests are often the younger brothers of the knights. In larger households, the priests generally have a degree of financial and legal autonomy from the lord. This can create tension with his militant servants who see this as compromising the loyalty of the priests.

Common menial workers will be discussed in greater length in Chapter Six: Manorial Fiefs and Chapter Seven: The Peasantry.

Criminals

Many lords have contact with criminals, and use their services to harm the political interests of their rivals. Richer nobles often have criminals in their exclusive employ. Poorer nobles merely hire criminals for individual tasks. Criminals are particularly useful to female characters, who have little authority in Mythic Europe, but often have money. Players may design criminals using the rules for agents given in the Affinity section later. The rules in this section abstract the criminal, allowing the story to focus on the effect of their actions.

Characters use their Intrigue Ability to hire skilled professionals. If these incidents are played in stories, the criminals use their own Ability scores. If the crimes are resolved without a story, the hiring character rolls Communication + Intrigue and uses the result in place of the proxy's roll, to determine the degree of success. Characters with high Intrigue hire the very best people, and get excellent results. Nobles without Intrigue skills hire a servant who has them. Characters whose proxies are defending against crime — sentries or bodyguards, for example — use their own skills during stories. For non-played events, they may use either their own skills or the Communication + Intrigue of whoever hired them.

Assassination: Most assassinations use the combat rules. The corpse usually appears to be the victim of a violent mugging. Assassination disguised as mugging is usually unsuccessful against nobles, because of their mesnies, but works well against their lesser officers. The assassin generally charges two pounds for this service, for a common person. Nobles can have poor people murdered for free, though regular use of this privilege gives the noble a Reputation for ruthlessness. A few assassins favor methods that are more exotic, such as poisoning. They charge five pounds per attempt, in advance, provided the target will be in a city.

Beatings: Thugs can simply beat a character severely, or humiliate him, to teach him a lesson. This halves the cost of an assassination, if the victim is rich.

Bribes: Bribes vary in size by the wealth of the corrupted official and the magnitude of the favor requested. An easily granted favor costs a week's wages. A favor that would cause serious trouble if discovered costs a month's wages, provided discovery is unlikely. A favor that would cause the character to lose his job, if discovered, costs at least a year's wages, but may cost more. A series of regular favors involves the corrupted official getting a percentage of whatever advantages the briber accrues.

Kidnapping: Kidnappings cost twice as much as assassinations.

Sabotage: Agents can be instructed to perform many varieties of sabotage. They charge a pound, in advance, for each attempt, regardless of success. Sabotage requires a Dexterity + Stealth + stress roll that exceeds the Perception + Awareness + stress roll of the most skilled sentry guarding the facility that the agent seeks to harm. Each added sentry adds 1 to the defender's roll. A discovered saboteur flees using the combat rules to disengage from the sentries, and then hides.

The type of sabotage attempted also adds to the sentry's roll: this reflects the time and difficulty required to inflict damage on the facility.

Type of Sabotage	Sentry's Awareness Bonus	Examples
Defacement	+0	Throwing a bladder of ink at a monument.
Rendezvous	+3	Meeting a spy inside the enemy's area of control for a brief time. This is also the modifier for seducing an enemy's relatives in his own house.
Arson	+6	Lighting a large fire within a fortress or private residence. Prompt attention by sentries can mitigate damage caused by fires.
Burglary	+9	Removing documents, which the agent must search a room for.

Spying: All nobles have spies, and many of them are effectively free. Players are encouraged to design a few colorful informants. Spies within a rival nobleman's household require very large payments for their assistance, sometimes as much as they earn by their legitimate profession. If asked to sabotage operations with which they are legitimately involved, spies often charge far more: some as much as ten years' worth of income per attack. This is because their risk of discovery is very high, and the betrayed parties may not confine themselves to legal methods of redress.

Treachery: A powerful weapon for the dueling noble is treachery. Convincing a vassal to change sides usually costs a great deal of money, so treachery is usual only when two sides are already poorly matched. Some traitors act from principle or from passion, and these are the hardest to dissuade.

Offices

Hereditary vassals are often unreliable, and so sensible magnates invest their powers into officers. An officer is a loyal person to whom the lord lends a portion of his power. That portion of power is usually greater than what is required to fulfill the function of the office, and so offices are sought as prizes. Some noblemen circulate offices through their retainers to limit corruption, and to prevent offices from becoming hereditary. Other nobles, in times of crisis, have allowed their offices to be purchased from them with money or service, and so have lost control of their office bearers.

A character who is ordered to fulfill a mundane task related to his or her employment as an officer will do so. This privilege grants no particular loyalty in the character's underlings, although their loyalty may be selected using Virtues and Flaws at character creation. This means that underlings will not, conventionally, do things that are not in their own self-interest. They will not break the law beyond trivialities, and will not participate in combat, unless that is one of their conventional duties.

Women may be officers. It is traditional for women to be the treasurers or stewards of the husband's holdings in some areas. Senior nobles have female officers more rarely, but there is no bar on women fulfilling those offices that lack military command. In those rare cases where women hold land in their own right, it is even possible for them to lead armies themselves. This is unusual behavior, though, because even kings often leave the command of their forces to marshals schooled in war.

The following offices are described as if they were part of the court of a king, but many great nobles have courts that, in a simplified way, have vassals fulfilling parallel roles. The exact title for a role varies widely. Characters designed as officers need the Temporal Influence Virtue.

Intrigue and the Art of Indirect Action

For Intrigue rolls to uncover information or allies, they must first exist. A character who has led a blameless life is armored against Intrigue. The following Ease Factors, for an Intelligence + Intrigue roll, demonstrate what a character might learn about potential allies, or the harm they may cause by spreading gossip. The noble to be harmed is referred to as the target.
A character using the Intrigue ability in this way must entertain other gossips, hire spies, bribe servants, and threaten people. For Ease factors higher than 6, this takes (3 x Ease) days and costs at least (Ease / 3) pounds. Elaborate plans may cost far more, at the Troupe's discretion.

Ease Factor 3

The stated reason for publicly declared enmity between the target and other nobles.

The target's well-known vices (Reputation 3 or more).

Ease Factor 6

The reason behind public friction between the target and other nobles.

The target's lesser vices (Reputation 1 or more).

The intriguer spreads a rumor, to reduce one of the target's Reputations by 1, but the target knows the intriguer is responsible and can gain the Reputation back with appropriate public actions.

Ease Factor 9

The reason behind private hostility between the target and other nobles.

Small, private vices known to the target's servants.

The lesser vices of a relative or friend of the target (Reputation 1 or more). The intriguer does not choose which relative or friend is vulnerable.

The intriguer spreads a rumor to create a negative Reputation of 1. The target, or the target's friends, may determine the identity of the perpetrator with an Intelligence + Intrigue roll higher than the intriguer's, and may combat the Reputation with appropriate public actions.

Ease Factor 12

The reason behind minor disagreements between the target and other nobles.

What is required to push the private hostility of one of the target's enemies into public enmity.

A Story Flaw, if known by several other people.

Small, private vices of one of the target's friends. The intriguer does not choose which relative or friend is vulnerable.

The intriguer forges evidence of a tawdry nature that creates a negative Reputation of 2. The target, or the target's friends, may determine the identity of the perpetrator with an Intelligence + Intrigue roll higher than the intriguer's. The character may shed the Reputation with appropriate public actions and, if the target can find evidence, the intriguer may gain a poor Reputation instead.

Ease Factor 15

The details of an old grudge, or an old enmity, that has lain forgotten for many years.

What is required to push one of the target's rivals from private friction into public enmity.

A Story Flaw, if known by only a few people but not all of them loyal to the target.

Information that will cause one of the target's friends or relatives to feel wronged by him.

The intriguer forges evidence of a crime, which will cause the character severe trouble. The target, or the target's friends, may determine the identity of the perpetrator with an Intelligence + Intrigue roll higher than the intriguer's. If they can find evidence, the intriguer will face legal reprisal. The target may demonstrate innocence through a story event.

Ease Factor 18

Information about the crimes of the target's ancestors, which rile a descendant of their victim against the target.

What is required to push a defeated enemy of the target back into action.

One of the target's Story Flaws, if known only to a small number of people who are loyal to the target.

Information that will cause one of the target's friends to conspire toward his downfall.

The intriguer forges convincing evidence that makes the target appear to have a Dark Secret, like the Flaw. The target, or his friends, may determine the identity of the person who reveals the Flaw with an Intelligence + Intrigue roll of equal to the intriguer's and prove the secret false, but it is almost impossible to tie the intriguer to the revealer of the flaw, or the forgery (Intelligence + Intrigue roll of 21 or more).

Admiral

In many courts, a permanent force of dedicated warships is a novel idea. Traditionally, kings have simply hired or requisitioned the ships required for warfare. When a king does have a personal fleet, it is maintained by an officer. This officer serves as an aide to whichever nobleman is given charge of a particular campaign in which the fleet is engaged. The term "admiral" is an Arabic one, and is not yet widely used.

Lesser noblemen usually have boats, but rarely use them for naval warfare. The main role of ships in war is to transport supplies that are required to keep armies in the field or, in more limited circumstances, to transport the armies themselves. The medieval ship is equipped with certain weapons for defense against boarders, and in exceptional cases — like the Greek fire of the galleys of Byzantium — to destroy other ships. Ships are not weapons platforms capable of bombardment against coastal positions.

A character who holds the office of admiral can find, provision, crew, and command vessels of war. Their number is commensurate with the power of the character's liege. An admiral is also able to command men who make their livelihood from warships and trading, through a mixture of charm and force.

Butler

Nominally the king's wine steward, the butler is responsible for the feeding of the court. This requires a tremendous amount of money, and the butler is also the officer charged with overseeing those parts of the royal demesne set aside to produce food for the court. A direct parallel of this role is found in lesser courts. A butler, then, commands vast wealth on behalf of the lord, and has the right to nominate prices for things that the court requires, effectively controlling a taxing power used against towns.

Chancellor

The chancellor is, technically, the master of the king's correspondence. Effectively, this makes the chancellor the king's chief advisor on foreign relations and the state of the Church. It is a lucrative and powerful role, because it controls the vacant Church lands within the gift of the king. This role is almost always held by a priest, and in lesser courts it is sometimes combined with the role of personal confessor to the nobleman. It is an unusual chancellor who does not have private agents and criminals at his disposal.

Chamberlain

The chamberlain is responsible for the king's chamber, which in a fuller sense means that he is responsible for wherever the king is staying, much of the king's retinue, and the king's personal possessions. Chamberlains lack the raw power of some of the other officers, but are highly influential, having access to the king far exceeding that of any of the other officers. In many small noble holdings, the lord's wife acts as his chamberlain.

Constable

This term has split in different realms to mean different things. In Britain, it is used indiscriminately for anyone who holds a royal office, so that the castellan of a royal castle may be called its constable. In France, it has a similar wide variety of meanings, but often refers to the leader of the French army, whom English people would call its marshal. The Constable of France is permitted to countermand the orders of the king in battle.

Counselor

It is the duty of all vassals to attend their lord when summoned, and give him advice. This duty is described more fully in a later section. It is recognized, however, that certain persons give more-useful advice than others, and so it is convenient to have them on hand for the lord's select councils. These people assist the lord in governing his territory. If a person is a member of this group, he is called a counselor. This office is often gained with one of the other offices of the royal household, but there are some counselors who are not part of the royal household. Women of political inclination are often members of the councils of their relatives.

Justiciar

The king's primary officer for the enforcement of the law is his justiciar. The enforcement of the law is a lucrative business for most kings, and in many kingdoms this office has proven too mighty for the king to easily control its holders. This has led to the king resuming the title, and creating lesser posts that serve as his aides in selected parts of the realm. The title of justiciar is usually given to the person acting as regent for a king who is a minor or insane. This is sometimes the mother of a child-king, if she is known for her political acumen and she either has the support of most of the nobility or she is considered a useful compromise between rival groups.

Marshal

The marshal is the leader of the king's bodyguard, and by extension, in time of war the leader of the royal army in the field. Marshals also have the responsibility to raise and provision the army. There are marshals in lesser courts, although their role as leader of the army is weaker. The position of marshal rose to prominence in England during the reigns of King John, who was averse to personal supervision of his army in the field, and his infant heir.

Sheriff / Bailie / Sénéchal

These offices have similar roles.

In Saxon England, the sheriffs were the king's loyal representatives in each shire, charged with keeping the peace. After the Norman invasion their role was expanded, to become the king's representative in an area. When the Norman kings needed money the role was corrupted. In 1220, a sheriff is a nobleman who has paid the king a sum of money in exchange for the right to collect all those moneys due the king in a particular shire. If the sheriff is tyrannical then the taxes due will far surpass the payment made, and the sheriff is entitled to the difference.

The sheriff has many sources of money. He acts as magistrate for local matters, and keeps the king's fines, although he is required to pay a third of them to the earl of the shire. It is common for earls to purchase this role. The sheriff also commands the king's local forces, for example the garrisons of castles.

In England, the term "bailiff" refers to all of the king's officers, and is used on a manorial level to designate officers of the manorial lord. In Northern France, a bailie is much like a pre-corruption sheriff. They act as the keepers of the king's law in the domain royal. In southern France, the same role is fulfilled by sénéchaux. In some German speaking areas this role is filled by a vogt, although the parallel is inexact.

By whatever name, these roles are attractive to covenants. A proxy nobleman acting as sheriff provides an income for the covenant with effective legal impunity in temporal affairs. The Quaesitores consider it likely a breach of the Code to outbid other nobles for this role. However, through skilled diplomacy, overt bribery, and occasional threats, it has been possible for covenants to have a great deal of influence over the selection and activities of sheriffs.

Amercements: Money From The Law

Bribes, fines, and taxes provide much of the revenue gathered by the law officers of the kingdom, but a fourth, and lucrative, form of judicial remuneration exists. For many infractions, rather than a fine, the law provides a gruesome and disfiguring punishment. The hands of thieves, as a simple example, are cut off. Amercement occurs when, having found a person guilty, his judge allows that person to throw himself on the court's mercy. In exchange for a fine that is negotiated with the judge, the person is permitted to avoid physical punishment.
Some of the punishments are deliberately horrific to encourage amercements. King Richard's forest law stated that anyone who killed one of his deer was to have his eyes and testicles extracted. Poachers were not, generally, blinded and castrated, since they far preferred to pay amercements.
The most extreme case of amercement occurs when a felon — that is, someone who has performed a capital crime — has found sanctuary in a church and has asked to abjure the realm. In this case, the coroner takes a detailed confession from the felon, makes him take serious oaths on the Bible to not return, and then nominates a port he must walk to, to take ship from the realm. All of the felon's personal goods are forfeit to the crown, and his land falls under royal protection for a year.

Steward

The king's steward is responsible for all of the parts of the court that are not explicitly the responsibility of others. Such a nebulous and useful role is found in every lesser court, although it tends to combine with the roles of butler, chancellor, and chamberlain. The steward, as controller of the king's household, is the leader of the king's household army, but his subordinate the marshal actually leads it in battle. Stewardship is often vested in women, such as the mothers of infant lords, or the wives of lords.

Treasurer

The treasurer of a king is the guardian of the lord's wealth. The exact role the treasurer plays varies by location. He may have a strong legal role, overseeing the collection of rights, or may have a far more limited role, as the master of the castle where the king keeps much of his minted money. The treasury of a kingdom tends to be highly defensible, because loss of the treasury makes it difficult for a king to raise mercenary armies, or keep his feudal retainers in the field longer than their obligated days. Many kings have several treasuries; they may assign separate treasurers to each, or have them supervised by a single officer.

Offices Found Only Near England

The following offices are found only in England, Scotland, and the parts of Ireland and Wales dominated by the English. Britain is such a focus of play for Ars Magica groups, and the play potential of these offices so obvious, that they have been described here. Troupes with sagas in alternative countries can still use the ideas suggested below, because the kings of their own countries reserve the right to appoint vassals to perform any task.

Story Seed: Avoiding the Murdrum

In towns where a body has been found, it is often considered best to circumvent the law of murdrum. If player characters find a body, he has the following choices:
Investigate the murder, and see if the person is a Norman. This is difficult, because many Norman families are effectively English in the 13th century.
Smuggle the body to a desolate place and bury it in secret. This is a crime, and characters must plan carefully to not be seen, or at least to only be seen by characters who also believe it best for the community to avoid the tax. A murder victim in an unhallowed grave may return to haunt his killer, though, and the characters if they were complicit in hiding the crime.
Smuggle the body to another community, and make sure the coroner finds it before the people in the rival village can smuggle it back over the border. This strange sport is undignified, however, and is unlikely to end in a church burial. The ghosts of bodies that have been carted backward and forward over the countryside tend to range widely and be deeply distressed, particularly if pieces of the corpse have been lost in various places.

Coroner

Much as the sheriffs are a curb on the power of the earls, so the coroners are a curb on the power of the sheriffs. The coroner acts as an inspector who binds people for trial and deals with petty cases summarily, depriving the sheriff of some of his revenue. Each shire elects four knights for a period to serve as its coroners. Towns also have coroners, sufficient in number to deal with the royal business of the town. In areas like the Marches, where the judicial rights of the crown have been delegated, coroners are often appointed by the nobleman directly.

Each coroner must be a knight with an income sufficient to support himself. The role of coroner is unpaid, and coroners who take gifts in exchange for their services are punished harshly. Those who offer bribes to the coroners are similarly punished.

The coroner also acts as the king's representative, collecting rights that would otherwise go to the sheriff. These rights include the personal goods of people who have committed suicide, the proceeds of shipwrecks, the flesh or money to the value of any whale or sturgeon caught by fishers, certain articles from buildings that burn down, objects that have killed people (deodands), and valuable objects that have been buried (treasure troves). The coroner is also the person to arrange the process by which a felon in sanctuary quits the realm, in the process confiscating all his land and goods for the king.

The coroners are also the collectors of murdrum. This is the fine levied on a community where a person has been secretly killed, if the members of the community cannot prove the body to be English (or Welsh or Irish, for coroners in the invaded parts of those countries), as opposed to Norman. The fine is high, up to 30 pounds per body, so many towns buy exemption from the law of murdrum through royal charter. They have too many merchants, pilgrims, and sailors visiting them and dying anonymously to leave this to chance.

Forest Warden

The forests of England are all of the areas that have been declared sole hunting preserves of the king. "Forest," in this sense, is a specialized legal term. There are forests that are not wooded, and most woods are not forest. The forest is administered by the forest warden, who has a deputy for each major forest, also called a warden. These roles are noble, but their servants — the rangers and surveyors — are not.

All of the great royal forests contain hunting lodges. Some lodges are small castles, and these are held by a castellan who also acts as the deputy forest warden for the vicinity. A corrupt warden therefore has accommodation, land associated with his office, the fines he collects for breaches of the forest law, as much meat as he can poach, and as much wood as he can sell.

The lands of the office are supposed to provide wages for the warden's retainers, but in many cases those persons pay him for their positions. Rangers extort money from peasants who make use of the wood, or accept bribes to look the other way when poaching and illegal wood collection occur. They also poach game and have all the wood they can use or surreptitiously sell.

Much as the office of coroner was created in response to the corruption of the sheriffs, so a series of offices has been created to deal with the corruption of the wardens. The verderers are unpaid landowners appointed to keep track of the fines taken by the wardens. Every third year, a separate group of four knights called regarders is appointed in each county containing forest to make a census of everything that might harm forest animals. Four more knights of each county, the agistors, guard the king's rights with regard to animals permitted to pasture in the forest.

Vassals

A lord's vassals are theoretically his chief lieutenants. Flaws in the feudal system, however, force many lords to operate through officers, some of whom are traditional vassals, but many of whom are drawn from their mesnies. Lieges are in a state of constant negotiation with their senior vassals, able to utilize their resources fully only through a combination of friendship, charisma, and menace. The fundamental function of vassals is to provide resources to their liege during crises.

Why Bother With Vassals?

Some kings try to minimize the role of their vassals in the politics of the kingdom. A land governed by royal officers, without a hereditary caste of landowners, would be more stable and provide greater revenue to its ruler, they assert. These attempts usually end badly. Regardless of its efficiency, the noble class exists, and when the king is weak, it has the financial and military power to crush the commoners raised as opponents by earlier, stronger kings.

Vassalage Allows Nobles to Express a Common Interest

Initially, in most kingdoms vassalage was voluntary. The great landholders of the kingdom came together and elected their kings. They did this so that a central figure of authority could lead them in war and settle their disputes. This method of selecting kings is failing, though. The current king of England was still a baby when loyalists defeated the army of the barons, who had offered the throne of England to the crown prince of France, forcing them to accept primogeniture on the English throne. Philip Augustus, the current king of France, has not forced the nobles of his kingdom to appoint his son co-king, as Phillip's father did just before dying. Again, primogeniture has been accepted as the proper way for the crown to pass to the next generation.

Vassalage Allows for Huge Transactions

Vassalage allows a noble to pay a supporter with land, while not losing some of the rights associated with that land. When the Normans invaded England and William divided its lands between his retainers, he was paying them the fee expected for their service. Mustering an army and conquering territory is best rewarded with land. This encourages the supporters of a noble to excel themselves in future conflicts.

Vassalage is a Form of Truce

A feudal bond places two powerful men in a relationship to each other. It is considered heinous for either to threaten the other, at least in theory. Either could still cause the other harm, but it would do such damage to the Reputation of the aggressor as to make future political activity difficult. The lord and his vassal, although they have conflicting interests, agree not to directly assail each other.

Vassalage Limits Genocidal Warfare

If a noble invades a neighboring lord, it is rarely possible to carry the war to the extinction of the neighbor's family. The nobility of Europe are too tightly connected by marriage. If an invader kills a sufficient number of heirs to most pieces of land, eventually one or more senior nobles will claim to be the closest relation still alive. This noble will then challenge for the land, particularly if this series of wars has weakened the aggressor. A way around this is to kill the neighbor and then select a claimant from his extended family from whom to accept vassalage. Most significant families have some disaffected cousins suitable for this purpose.

Money

Vassals owe a series of taxes to their lieges. Minor taxes taken as traditional gifts of produce have been commuted to cash in most areas. The largest tax is on inherited land, and is called relief. It varies by kingdom, and in some is not levied. In England, a lord owes approximately one year's income to his liege on the assumption of his title.

Four graces make relief affordable. First, the tax is, in many cases, only levied on manors that existed when the land was originally granted. Estates that have been improved over the generations are, therefore, comparatively affordable. Second, the king and tenants in chief no longer wish to engage in court cases to determine exactly what one year's income is for each property, and so it is capped at five pounds per manor, or 100 pounds for greater barons, regardless of actual income. Third, the liege usually grants five years to pay the debt, and commutes parts of it in exchange for military service, loyalty during rebellion, diplomatic service, or other tasks as suits his whim. Fourth, if a nobleman dies and his lord raises his heir, that heir is not required to pay relief.

A lord is due a series of other taxes, called aids, which are to be used sparingly. Each aid can be any amount because, theoretically, aids are given voluntarily as gifts. A liege who uses aids too often or sets them too high loses the support of his nobles and is unable to collect their money.

Popular aids include payments when the lord is knighting his eldest son, or marrying his eldest daughter the first time, or ransoming his life. Ecclesiastical lords may make a similar demand when first ascending to office. A lord who knights his son before the boy is 15 years old or marries his daughter off before the age of seven is likely to anger his vassals. A payment of one pound per manor is likely, but may be as high as the lord feels he can get away with. Ransom aid may be demanded by a lord who has lost in tourney and owes money from it, but a lord who seeks to collect such money is certain to anger his vassals. Aid is also common when an heir owes relief to a lord.

Warriors

When called to muster for war, vassals are required to provide their lord with the service of one knight for per manor that their fief contained at the time it was originally granted. In some families, which have retained properties for generations, this represents only a fraction of the wealth that the family has available. A character who is rich and well-disposed to his lord may provide additional forces. This is, in turn, rewarded with a greater share of the booty that becomes available if the war is successful.

Assume that a powerful landowner must provide, at minimum, 20 knights when called to war. This may include the landowner himself, but need not unless he is personally instructed to attend. Even if the lord is instructed to come, it is possible for him to avoid this obligation through a series of ruses. Many of the nobles in Europe are subinfeudated to multiple lieges. When these lieges go to war with each other, it is useful to be able to avoid attending battle, while still fulfilling feudal obligations.

Knights are the commonest warriors detailed in feudal obligations, but many vassals are also able to muster large numbers of peasant warriors, called a levy. In England, they are required to have light armor and carry a spear. The levy is most often called when a battle is expected within the same shire, since removing men from farming for an extended period by marching them across the country damages their lord's finances. These men lack the mobility, equipment, and lust for battle of knights, but they have several uses.

Infantry provide an advantage in terms of sheer numbers that is useful in pitched battle. Their formations provide a solid block that archers can shelter behind and cavalry can use when reforming after attacks. At the Battle of Grissors, the spears of the English even turned aside the cavalry charges of the French. Infantry serve as guards for stores and baggage on campaign. They are able to defend territory against those attempting to smuggle food to besieged castles. Infantry are able to hold captured castles, a role in which the mobility of the knight, and the expense of his maintenance, are wasted.

A vassal is required to provide warriors for a number of days per year that varies by kingdom. In England this is 40 days, in Sicily 60. This is rarely long enough to complete a siege, so kings often need to pay their army additional money to extend this service. As an added incentive, once a castle falls after a lengthy siege, the besieging army is allowed to sack it with legal impunity. The same often holds true for towns.

Scutage

Some nobles send money when war is declared, instead of knights. This fine for non-attendance, called scutage, serves the interest of the landholder if he lacks military inclination, and serves the interest of the liege, who can then hire mercenaries or pay his army to remain in the field after its annual service is complete. Many greater nobles are instructed to muster a portion of their forces and give scutage for the rest if a war is likely to be protracted by sieges. They may also be offered a bulk discount on their scutage.

The scutage in England is usually two pounds per knight in 1220. Under King John it was levied every year, regardless of whether there was a war for it to be spent on. Under the current king, the scutage is only levied with the permission of the nobles, and may be lower if only a small force is required. Similarly, if a lesser lord goes to war, he may demand a scutage from his vassals, but it might be a portion of the fee nominally due him.

Advice

The right to ask advice is more significant than it initially appears. It allows a lord to control the movements of his vassals. It also allows the lord to force vassals to make public statements regarding their views on contentious matters.

A vassal asked to attend his liege's court has a duty to attend. Failure to attend — failure to render advice — is a breach of the character's feudal obligations and can be punished by a fine or even seizure of the recalcitrant's lands. A vassal who attends his lord is not permitted to leave without the lord's agreement. Nobles considered potentially rebellious can be forced to show their hand, by refusing summons or by flight from court.

The receipt of advice is a useful tool for building and demonstrating consensus among vassals. As an example, if the liege wishes to annex a neighboring territory, it is useful for him to gather together his vassals and ask their advice. This allows him to gauge the strength of their favor and see who opposes the plan. It also allows potentially tardy or rebellious vassals to see the level of support that the liege has, and measure the likelihood that they will suffer successful reprisal at the hands of more-enthusiastic vassals.

Story Seed: Scutage Raid

The lord that a character is allied to lacks sufficient money to pay his scutage, but he has a plan to make good the shortage. He hates another, more-powerful lord. His plan is to place a group of bandits on the road that his enemy's troops will follow when they are carrying their scutage to the king. His men will then take a little silver for themselves, give the rest to him, and he will use his enemy's money to pay the scutage. This will leave the enemy embarrassed before the king, and will grant the king an excuse to chip a piece off the rival's land. The land won't come to the lord planning all of this, but he doesn't mind. A light blow against his enemy is still a blow. For this to work, the lord needs some men he can trust, like his mesnie, and somewhere for them to work.
The player characters may become aware of this plot at any stage. They may hear rumors of it leaking out of the mesnie. They may find a group of bandits camped near a road who seem to have no intention of attacking passing merchants and wonder what is at the root of their strange behavior. They may intervene in the fight, or find the group switching clothes and carts on covenant land. Or they may be asked by the lord whose money was stolen to seek the thieves.

Advice also allows a liege to weigh the interests of his lords against each other, and balance them according to the usefulness of the individual vassal. As an example, a lord who has an empty benefice may ask which churchman it should be awarded to. The bishop will certainly have an opinion, but so will many noble houses whose younger sons have interests in the Church. Asking advice allows the liege to measure these interests, and reward each noble in turn. It also allows the lord to play favorites.

Wardship of Heirs

An idealized version of the raising of a noble child has him separated from his mother at five, when he joins the service of the ladies of the family's lord's court as a page. This teaches him manners and morals. When he reaches puberty, he is taken as the servant of a particular knight, to act as his squire. The knight mentors him in the arts of war. In some areas, this knight makes him a knight in turn, but in most lands the right to make knights has been withdrawn to the barons, or even the king himself. It is believed that boys who are not fostered are coddled, so they are less-able knights.

An heir is a hostage for the good conduct of his father. It is considered entirely just, by many, to kill such a child if his father rebels. However, it is considered even better to defeat the rebel, put him to death, and then claim wardship of his lands on behalf of his child. The revenues of wardship are not, generally, reserved for the child, going straight into the treasury of the liege until the child turns 21 if male, or marries if female.

If the ward's father dies, the liege has the right to determine who the child will marry. This allows the liege to enmesh the vassal's interests with those of other vassals he knows to be loyal, or to ensure that a problematic estate gets no larger through marriage. The betrothal of a young, landed man is a valuable commodity, for which nobles are willing to offer useful concessions in other areas of dispute.

The landed sons of lesser vassals are prized husbands for the daughters of rich merchants, and the boy's marriage may be sold through a less-than-genteel process that resembles an auction. This is technically illegal in many areas: it's called disparagement. Disparagement also includes marriage to deformed people, or women past childbearing age. The lord's actions are, however, only limited by the array of forces who oppose him, and in this case the heir's immediate family are dead.

Heiresses are even more valuable than heirs. Marriage to an heiress is the fastest way to progress to a higher social status. Heiresses are given to supporters as rewards for their service. They are also the usual way for a lord to grant land to his younger sons, without splitting his patrimony or taking new territory through war. The right to select husbands or brides for the children of enemies is one of the concessions usually demanded after victory in war.

Even a grown heir, returned to his parents, is still valuable to his father's lord. His friends and romantic interests are established in the court of the lord, to whom he may look with greater loyalty than to his own parents. If a vassal rebels, an adult heir loyal to the liege is a formidable weapon, as he is able to divide the loyalty of the vassal's supporters.

Story Seed: A Matter of Hermetic Honor

A lord has betrothed an heiress to the son of a Tytalus magus in exchange for undisclosed services. The Quaesitores are considering that matter, but seem satisfied that his support did not breach the Code. The matter of graver concern is that the heiress' family has made an appeal to the royal court, claiming that the marriage cannot proceed because this would be a disparagement.
House Tytalus wishes to run a case in a mortal court. If successful, this would mean that all children taken as apprentices, in the court's area, were automatically free, although a fine would be due their lords. It would also mean that no magus or apprentice could ever be treated as a villein, and that Hermetic courts would have complete legitimacy as an alternative to mundane or ecclesiastical courts. Magi are divided on whether this constitutes interference, or if it's a simple acknowledgement of the actual way that magi live.

Wardship of Widows

Women, in most cases, are not permitted to rule by themselves in Mythic Europe. A woman not under the protection of her father is under the protection of her husband. A woman who loses the protection of her husband, through his death, often becomes the ward of his lord.

The lord manages the finances of the widow. A widow is entitled to a portion of her husband's estate, fixed at the time of marriage, to maintain herself until her death. This portion, usually a third of his land plus whatever was her dowry, provides useful income for the liege who acts as its administrator. By tradition, it is wrong for a lord to sell the right of wardship over a child or woman.

But this tradition is abused regularly.

The Church takes a dim view of this chaffering about marriage: from its perspective, marriage is a divine mystery freely entered into by consenting individuals. The Church prefers people be married by priests, for the protection of women from exploitation, but it acknowledges that some people are married by custom, which the Church later sanctifies.

Story Seed: Did You Keep The Receipt?

A lord is attempting to claim back the lands of an heiress, because her husband has not paid the fee that was agreed upon for her hand. The local bishop really hates this kind of behavior, although the lord has a case in the royal court and may well succeed. The characters may earn Gratitude from the bishop and couple if they can get the lord to drop his suit, or from the lord by having the couple pay the money they owe. The story can be twisted in several ways: the lord might be lying about the fee, or the couple might have already paid by doing some shameful service to which they cannot admit. For example, the wife may not be the original widow, but instead a maidservant substituted before the wedding. The husband is unwilling to admit this, because he would then lose the widow's lands, but is unwilling to pay for a false widow.

Affinity

Powerful magnates prefer to have a bloc of territory that is friendly to their cause. The center of an affinity — the core lands of a nobleman — is called his caput in England and France. The lands of an affinity are called his country. A noble does not own all of the land in his country, but, in a perfect model of affinity, is allied to and is considered the de facto leader of all of the landholders in this area. In court, an affinity serves as a political faction. New landholders are often expected to join the affinity that surrounds their lands.

Outside the perfect model, it is common for two rival affinities to vie for dominance in an area. This is dangerous, because it is these points, where affinities scrape against each other, that form the fault lines of the realm in times of national crisis. Areas whose affinities are firmly for one or the other side may be raided, but deep raiding, pitched battles, and sieges occur in those lands where affinities mingle.

Players may model the power their character has through affinity in two ways. First, the affinity may be treated as a bonus to the character's Leadership score. This is described in the Affinity Leadership section, later, and in the Raising an Army section of Chapter Eight: Massed Combat. Alternatively, key members of the affinity may be designed as agents, using the section on Control Through Emotional Bonds, also later. Characters within an affinity are usually either great nobles or ecclesiastical landholders. Some lords manage to have towns within their affinities, but this is unusual as most towns value their independence from local interference.

Secular Allies

An ally often has similar resources to the magnate. Alliances remain lucrative because the resources of allies cost little, and making neighbors allies allows characters to focus their attention, money, and time elsewhere.

Public alliances prevent unnecessary wars by making it clear that, should a particular nobleman be attacked, wider conflict is inevitable. In many lands it is illegal for senior nobles to enter into treaties with foreign powers. It is seen as threatening treason. Informal public alliances are, however, common. In many places, alliances between senior noblemen in a realm and the kings of neighboring realms are inevitable, given the entanglement of marriages that bind the upper class of Europe together.

Alliances may be secret. This is common in those cases where a nobleman is being bribed by his liege's neighbor to rebel, or to simply not send his full support in wartime. Detailed charters are still written in these cases and carried between the conspirators by messengers.

Church Allies

A powerful churchman has all of the resources of a secular ally, coupled with his powers as a lord of the Church's land and a representative of the power of the vicar of Christ. Church allies are sought in a variety of ways. The land the Church uses may be held from a lord, or may have been granted by the lord's family. The churchman who uses that land is expected, socially, to demonstrate gratitude for it. Noblemen also seek positions in the Church for their younger sons, and maneuver to have them appointed to vacant offices within their country.

The Church is a major landholder throughout Mythic Europe. Its lands are usually carved from the wild and improved over time, so they do not owe onerous duties to higher lords. The wealth of the Church is of great aid to a lord involved in war, and it is not unusual in major wars for both sides to field knights supported by Church manors, or mercenaries paid with Church aid. Some senior officers of the Church try to force their subordinates to only provide military aid to the side that is "right," but their prohibitions are often ineffective.

The most powerful weapon in the hands of the Church is excommunication. Christians are forbidden any dealing with an excommunicant. He may not receive the services of the Church, which effectively damns him to Hell. In countries where the faith is strong and the nobleman weak, excommunication can serve as a useful excuse allowing vassals to refuse to pay their rents, and even to rebel. In lands where the king is either strong or willing to buy subservience, excommunication has little effect on the daily operation of governance.

Interdiction forbids the services of the Church in all of a nobleman's lands. In some cases this is relaxed in monasteries and nunneries, where services continue, although they are no longer heralded with bells. Interdiction is less effective than it initially appears, because saints ignore it and many of the services of the Church, like baptism and marriage, can be performed without a priest. It does prevent the forgiveness of sins and the proper burial of the dead. Churchmen who use interdiction trivially are held accountable by the representatives of the pope.

A powerful churchman can lend his Reputation to a character's cause, so that disinterested or uninformed parties follow his guidance. Note that the support of the Church does not automatically sway even pious believers if the churchman in question is unexceptional. Many nobles are cynical about the Church's operation, if not its teaching. King John of England, for example, expressed the opinion that he was better off an excommunicant, because it allowed him to retain the funds of seven bishoprics and countless abbeys whose holders died and could not be replaced. Similarly, the Church's idea that work, including warfare as the work of the knightly class, should stop for about a third of the year to celebrate the feasts of obscure saints is considered a sign of the laziness of the holders of clerical office by some.

Story Seeds: Faulty Vassals

The feudal system works on the assumption that if a vassal breaks his oath, he will be punished by God, his lord, or the lord's other vassals. This assumption rarely holds in times of crisis: precisely those times when a liege needs fidelity the most. The feudal system, of itself, contains no mechanism to prevent a vassal from defecting to an enemy of his liege.
In many cases, vassalage is part of a negotiated settlement between two rivals. It allows the new vassal to take time to procure fresh forces before striking at his new liege again. During the build-up of forces, the vassal can pretend to adhere to the will of his lord, particularly if he is summoning mercenaries from outside the area. But the vassal can, with little difficulty, choose not to strike if it seems his lord has realized what may occur. Betraying an overlord after negotiated vassalage is a tactic that can only effectively be used once. It's considered dishonorable, but if it is effective, the survivors of the war will not dare question their new lord's honor.
Most senior nobles have at least one vassal who could be convinced to rebel if circumstances seemed favorable for victory. These include younger brothers, the leaders of cadet branches of the lord's family, vassals forced to bend the knee in war, and opportunists who need no particular justification. These men cannot always be coaxed into taking the field against their lord, but can be used as spies and agents of influence.
A servant of the player characters notices the build up of forces by a vassal. The vassal's lord can then muster his personal forces and look for suitable provocation to make attacking the man honorable, or he can arrange for saboteurs to obstruct the vassal's plans so that he can seek aid from other vassals.

Affinity Leadership

A character may use his Affinity score as a bonus to social Ability rolls that are directly related to his role as a powerful and respected person within a specific region. These rolls affect only nobles, land-holding ecclesiastics, and the senior councilors of towns that do not hold charters from the king.

A character has an Affinity bonus of:

+1 For being a landholding noble of at least banneret stature.
+2 For being the officer or baron of a minor lord.
+3 For being an officer or minor baron of the king.
+4 For being a greater baron.
+5 For being the senior noble beneath the king in the region (count, earl, duke).

Using Intrigue to Aggregate Class Opinion

A character may roll a stress die + Intelligence + Intrigue to feel the political mood of an organization, or the nobles of a region. This roll can only be made in a place where the character is familiar with the ruling class. It represents the character taking time to learn the superficial details of the concerns of the members of the surveyed group, sufficiently well to predict their attitude to an event. For example, a character who has a vacant benefice and wishes to give it to a certain priest can judge how other nobles will feel about it using this roll.

The bonus above is halved (round down) if the area is divided between two warring affinities.

A character who neglects to support his affinity has his bonus reduced. A character supports an affinity by providing its members with offices and largesse. He must also exercise his power within that affinity, so that he is seen doing the things a regional leader must do, like resolving disputes and putting down brigands.

A typical lord spends about 20% of his income on minor offices that favor the members of his affinity. This expense is already calculated into the surplus figures found in Chapter Three: A Comparison of Titles. A character who diverts most of his usual spending to another cause, like a crusade or a covenant, may lose standing in his affinity.

Affinity leadership may be used, for example, in rolls that:

Muster an army from the local minor nobility.
Resolve disputes between local nobles over boundaries, customs, marriages, inheritance, and slights of honor.
Force the local minor nobility to follow a particular line when the lord calls his vassals together for advice.
Encourage lesser lords to take a particular attitude to the Church, such as paying their tithes in full, or in part, or to demand the removal of a corrupt priest.
Referee a local tournament.

Control Through Emotional Bonds

Ars Magica provides a structure of rules in which characters can develop networks of personal influence. These rules have been used in other supplements to model merchant houses and the private agents of magi. Here they are adapted to model the bonds of loyalty between noble allies. In the rules given earlier, characters are assumed to do what is in their interest given the relative power of the two characters and the situation in which they are interacting. The rules in this section are used to model the unexpected interactions between people whose tight emotional bonds make them do things which, superficially, are not in their own interests.

Not all troupes find these rules convenient for the stories they wish to tell. Each troupe should discuss this element of the rules and determine the degree to which they will be guided by the suggestions given here.

Agents

Directly controlled subordinates are referred to as agents in these rules (though not by characters). A person may only control a limited number of subordinates through personal charisma. A character who attempts to control more subordinates than this gradually loses control of his network.

A character may have a number of agents equal to:

2 x (Presence + Intrigue or Leadership – social penalty for the Gift) or 1, whichever is larger.

This total excludes many other characters over whom the principal has influence. It does not include:

Hermetic magi.
Characters with no political role these are free, providing color to the stories but rarely providing resources.
Indirect subordinates. The people who serve an agent are not, themselves, agents.
Characters who act not out of any personal ties to a character, but because of the economic demands of their lives and offices. A mercenary captain who is a hireling, for example, will change sides, flee, or surrender when faced with poor odds of victory. An agent may not, depending on a player's dice rolls. People granted fiefs are hirelings, but they are often designed as agents because they are most needed at the time when a hireling would choose self-preservation at the principal's expense.
The characters of other players, regardless of their social status.

A character with poor Presence or Leadership may control his entire network through a single agent who excels in these attributes. Hermetic magi call these primary agents factors.

Design of Agents

Each agent must have the following handful of statistics defined:

A name.
A Social Status Virtue or Flaw. A character may have an agent who feels the principal is his social inferior, but this is possible only through coercion. For the purpose of dealing with this agent, the character gains the Difficult Underlings Flaw. The agent has a Story Flaw, like Blackmail or Dark Secret, that represents his attempts to shed the control of the principal.
A Bond, which is a Personality Trait that expresses the reason for the agent's attachment to the principal, and its strength.
A list of the resources available to the principal through the agent. These may include Abilities, wealth, social influence, armed forces, or any other thing that makes the agent worth having.

Example: Duke Simon has many vassals. One of them is a young knight called Matthew. Matthew has a manor, so he's a landed knight and has some wealth. He is able to muster for war, and bring a small band of free men armed with spears as his retinue. Matthew is not very loyal to Simon (Loyalty +1), but is married to Simon's cousin and is infatuated with her. (Loves wife +3). Simon and his cousin are on good terms, so it's actually Simon's familial link that provides his control over Matthew.

Duke Simon owns the benefice for the cathedral in his main town. That means he can exclude the bishop from its use. The bishop, Benedict, feels grateful to Simon that his ascension went smoothly (Thankful +1) and is willing to aid Simon using his political influence, but he is a faithful man and will not do things he finds abhorrent.

Acquiring Agents

Some characters have agents at character creation due to Virtues they have selected. These include Social Contacts, Mercenary Captain, Close Family Ties, or Landed Noble. Each of these virtues grants 12 points to spend on the accompanying Agent Recruitment Table for thematically appropriate agents. Each agent must cost at least 1 point, and have a Bond of +1 or more.

Most agents are gained as a result of interaction during stories. Some agents are offered freely by the Storyguide as a reward for players who complete a story. Others must be recruited. Recruitment is a process of wearing down the resistance of the potential agent. The scores on the Agent Recruitment Table represent how difficult it is to draw people under the principal's influence.

The principal must first impress the potential agent, so that the potential agent knows that the offers and threats that the principal makes should be considered seriously. The principal does this by making a forceful and obvious intrusion into the potential agent's life. This can be done by assisting the potential agent, for example by aiding him in a story. It can also be completed through less-pleasant methods, for example a criminal may be beaten and left in an alley or hung by the ankles from a tower for an hour.

Agent Recruitment Table

A potential agent always has a minimum resistance score of 1.

Social Status Resistance Examples

Major Social Virtue 3 Landed Noble*, Magister in Artibus, Redcap

Minor Social Virtue 1 Clerk, Custos, Failed Apprentice, Gentleman/woman, Knight, Mendicant Friar, Mercenary Captain*, Priest, Wise One

Free Social Virtue (except Hermetic Magus) 0 Covenfolk, Craftsman, Merchant, Peasant, Wanderer

Minor Social Flaw –1 Branded Criminal, Outcast, Outlaw Leader*

Major Social Flaw –3 Outlaw, Outsider

\* Must take underlings, see below.

Modifiers

Circumstance Modifier Examples

Major Flaws likely to inconvenience principal –3 Enemies, Feud, Lycanthrope, Plagued By Supernatural Entity

Minor Flaws likely to inconvenience principal –1 Black Sheep, Dark Secret, Dependant, Diabolic Past, Favors, Infamous

Minor Flaw used by player character to dominate agent –6 Hostage (Dependent or True Love), is Blackmailing using Dark Secret, Diabolic Past, or other leverage (Blackmail)*

\* Agent hates principal, which inflicts the Difficult Underlings Flaw for this agent only.

Resources

Resource Modifier Examples

Extraordinary Skill: Main Ability 6 or more +1 n/a

Exceptional Ability: Main Ability 8 or more +3 n/a

Minor General or Supernatural Virtue +1 Gossip, Magic Sensitivity, Protection, Skinchanger, Social Contacts, Temporal Influence

Major General or Supernatural Virtue +3 Entrancement, True Faith, Wealthy

Serves Rival +9 Covenant, nobleman of equal social standing

Underlings +1 Up to half a dozen people, including agents and hirelings

Many underlings +3 Up to two dozen people, including agents and hirelings

Useful Minor Flaw +1 Busybody, Faerie Friend, Magical Animal Companion, Mentor

Has more than three selections from this list +6

Has more than six selections from this list +9

Tasks For Agents Table

Task Persuasion Roll Ease Factor Example

Provide common information that is easily obtained. 3 Relay the theories of gossips concerning the unusual events in the town square.

Provide sensitive information that is difficult to obtain. 6 Discover the address of the bishop's mistress.

Provide secret information known to a select few. 9 Uncover which nobles are members of the Duke's diabolic cabal.

Perform an Easy task (Ease Factor 6 or less). 3 Persuade a merchant to give passage to a magus with the Blatant Gift.

Perform a Hard task (Ease Factor 12 or less). 6 Steal a ring from a lady's finger, unnoticed.

Perform an Impressive Task (Ease Factor 18 or less). 9 Arrange a fatal accident for the prince.

Persuasion Roll Modifiers

Timeframe Modifier

Within a few weeks 0

Within a few days +1

Within one day +3

Personal Risk Modifier Example

None at all (simple die). +0 Deliver a package to a merchant.

Risk of embarrassment or reputation (stress die, 1 botch die). +1 Deliver a prostitute to a merchant.

Risk of injury or imprisonment (stress die, 3 botch dice). +3 Deliver a threat to a rich merchant.

Risk of death (stress die, 5 botch dice). +6 Deliver a threat to a count in his own palace.

A character seeking to impress a potential agent must roll:

a stress die + Presence + Leadership – social penalty for the Gift against an Ease Factor of 6.

Failure indicates this character cannot be impressed until encountered in a different story, when a new roll may be made. A character using a recruiting agent may send him to impress the potential agent, and use the recruiter's scores for the dice roll.

An impressed agent-to-be must then be drawn into the principal's sphere of influence through story events that create a Bond. This is abstracted using experience points. Every time a character gains Adventure Experience, he gains an equal number of Agency Experience points. Agency Experience points are spent to weaken the resistance of potential agents, and to maintain the Bonds of active agents.

The initial resistance of an agent is determined using the Agent Recruitment Table. When assessing the cost of an agent, select only those resources that the agent will use in play in the service of the principal. The Virtues and Flaws of agents do not need to balance each other. A character's resistance is reduced by 1 in exchange for a number of Agency experience points equal to their current resistance. The agent comes into the service of the principal when his or her resistance reaches 0. A new agent has a Bond score of 0.

Using Agents

Characters use their agents by setting tasks. An agent must have the resources and Abilities to complete the task, and a Bond score of at least +1. The player then makes the following roll, to see if the agent attempts to perform the task:

stress die + Communication + (Charm, Intrigue, or Leadership as situationally appropriate) + Bond Strength – social penalty of the Gift vs. an Ease factor on the Tasks for Agents table

If the agent attempts the task, the player makes a roll using the Characteristics and Abilities of the agent against the Ease Factor of the task. Storyguides may prefer to run a brief scene in which the agent fulfills the task.

The most common use for agents is as sources of information. Passive information gathering, which allows the principal to know, after a delay for communication, any specific fact, piece of gossip, or news that the agent knows or can casually ask people about, is not considered a task in these rules. It occurs at the discretion of the principal's player and requires no roll. Actively gathering private information counts as a form of assistance, as described later, and if required more than once per season may cause the agent to lose Bond strength. Troupes may decide that certain agents, such as the professional spies employed by the Church and some merchant houses, don't consider finding information in this way so onerous as to strain their Bond strength.

Agents may also be asked for assistance: that is, they may be asked to expend their time and resources on behalf of the principal. Again, the agent must have Abilities suited to the task and have sufficient free time. A character with a Minor Flaw that consumes his time, or requires him to drop out of public sight, is unable to assist his principal in one quarter of those cases where his services are desirable. A character with a Major Flaw is unavailable half the time.

Maintaining Agents

Valuable agents are often the source of stories. Characters may seek to aid agents who are in legal or financial trouble. If an agent dies, the principal may seek to recover any resources loaned to the agent, and may wish to ensure that the agent has left no written record of their dealings. The strength of the bond that agents have to the principal may wane due to life events, and need reinforcement.

A principal can grant favors to an agent to reinforce their bond. This requires the principal to participate in a story that substantially aids the agent. When the principal earns Adventure experience, he simultaneously earns an equal number of Agency experience points, which are spent to increase the agent's Bond score using the same progression as Abilities (see the Advancement Table, ArM5, page 31).

Money may be used to support an agent, although this is not a very effective mechanism. A character may buy 5 Agency experience points per pound, and spend them as above to increase the bond of characters. This method only works with agents who are not already prosperous, and also fails for those agents who feel that accepting money for service is a crime or sin.

Some agents are maintained through selections made during the covenant creation process. These agents are outside the scope of these rules, although they may still be used to model the principal's relationship to the agents.

Reputation

The ruling class of a kingdom generally contains no more than two dozen families and their dependents. Sharing news of the activities of other members of this small, powerful group is a basic civility. The players of nobles can estimate the overt personality traits, publicly declared interests, and obvious resources of members of their class using Reputation rolls. These rolls are easier if the noble is particularly powerful, famous, or has his demesne nearby.

A Reputation for depravity and ruthlessness can be very useful to a nobleman who wishes to dissuade his neighbors from attacking him. Henry II of England, for example, claimed to be the blood descendant of Satan himself, and encouraged his enemies to believe there was little he would not do to have his will. Alternatively, a reputation as a prudhomme, described later, makes a character more likely to be offered offices by his lord, brides by families seeking talented sons-in-law, and alliances by neighbors.

A Reputation is also of benefit in the early stages of a knight's career. It allows him to stand out from other potential members of a patron's mesnie. A knight who seeks this style of work but lacks the Reputation to secure it may seek fame by entering the tourneying circuit, working as a mercenary, or crusading.

Noble Reputation

This section extends the Reputation Table on page 19 of ArM5, providing a fourth style of Reputation to accompany Local, Hermetic, and Ecclesiastic. Noble Reputation allows members of the landed class to know about each other. For the purpose of these Reputations, the landed class contains every man or woman who holds land, who holds a significant office from a major nobleman, who acts as a major landholder on behalf of the Church, or who may inherit any of these states. There are some obvious overlaps between these types of Reputation, and troupes using these rules should allow characters' players to alter their scores to suit their history in play.

Prudhomme

The prize reputation for a male noble in Mythic Europe is that of prudhomme. A prudhomme is a man considered to have been tested and found sound by other members of his class. A man is a prudhomme if he is noble of blood, handsome, demonstrates prowess, and is of suitable character. The prowess required and the character desired are those considered correct for the work of mounted medieval warriors. In some courts Christian ethics may appeal, but to be a prudhomme to other knights, a man must be willing to do what is necessary to win war. A prudhomme makes war using means that the Church abhors as foul, and he does it well, and with delight.

Story Seed: Genetic Memory

For the true knight, battle is more than a vocation: the need to fight is built into the knight before he is born. In folklore, this love of battle is said to pass in the blood. The sons of knights, raised away from court, are instinctively drawn to weapons or to make their own. In Mythic Europe, supernatural forces answer human desires. Demons and faeries place the tools of violence into the infant hands of knights kept from their birthright. Such children need no instruction in arms: it passes to them in the blood.
Many covenants receive unwanted children, and raise them as custodes. One of the children in the covenant seems to have a mental illness. He is driven to kill small animals, and feels no shock at dreadful injuries suffered by other people. Instead, he is fascinated by the mechanics of their damaged bodies. Characters who interview the boy note that he seems utterly unable to feel sympathy for anyone else. His only strong desire is to kill people and animals. When he is alone and out of the covenant he keeps finding weapons. These are faerie-wrought and left for him by a dark faerie that knows his secret. The boy is a knight, and the lost heir of a noble house.

Improving Noble Reputation

A character first develops a reputation by entering feudal life. The character does this by being born into a noble family, or by becoming the vassal of a landed person. This gives the character a Noble Reputation of 1, with boring content like "son of Lord Corvinius" or "vassal of the Count of Champagne." A character may gain a higher Reputation for doing anything so interesting that it is discussed widely by his or her peers. Being a Crusader touched by a miracle before an army of witnesses, or being caught leading a Black Mass, both add to the character’s Reputation. The flavor of the events alter the content of the Reputation.

Every time a noble spends a season performing great deeds notable to other members of his class, he adds 1 Experience to his reputation. These points are spent using the Abilities table on page 31 of ArM5. Examples include:

Hosting a tournament.
Masterminding a coronation.
Leading a pilgrim group.
Making war.
Going on adventures that lead to personal renown.

Significant events may lead to greater Reputation:

Crusading, or otherwise traveling to a distant country to make war grants 1 experience point per season in addition to the point for being at war.
Knighting a successful squire trained personally grants 1 experience point.
Gaining a noble liege grants 3 experience points.
Gaining a royal liege grants 6 experience points.
Study with a supernatural creature grants experience equal to (the creature's Might score / 5).

There is very little a knight can do to decrease his Reputation. A knight who runs like a child during battle, or who is unable to rescue his paramour from danger, is still interesting enough to be gossiped about; it is merely the content of the Reputation that changes. Characters may use the techniques described on page 167 of the ArM5 core rulebook to modify noble Reputations.

The Advantages of Reputation

A character's Reputation allows the other members of the noble class to judge his interests and intentions. This lets them accommodate him in their plans. A character of strong Reputation need do nothing, but still affects the calculations of personal interest of his neighbors. A fierce Reputation is a potent envoy. Changes in the Reputation of significant characters can sway the fate of thrones, by making key nobles appear unwilling to fight, ill-prepared for war, or arrogant about their skill as a commander of troops.

Reputation Roll Adjustments

Ease Factor Distance

3 Same shire, county, or equivalent

6 Adjoining counties

9 Same kingdom

12 Rival kingdom

Status modifiers – select only one

Modifier Circumstance

+6 A commoner in the service of a noble.

+3 A landholder of status lower than the character making the roll.

0 A landholder of status equivalent to the character making the
roll.

–3 A landholder of status superior to the character making the roll.

–6 A vassal of the character making the roll.

Miscellaneous modifiers – select all appropriate

Modifier Circumstance

+3 A widow who does not hold in her own right, or an heir of a
noble.

+6 An acknowledged lover or bastard.

Reputation is Utterly Vital

It can be difficult for modern players, who are used to board games and computer games, to understand how significant Reputation is to Mythic European nobles. The Reputation of a rival tells a character what a noble wants, what resources he has, and, crucially, what he is willing to do if provoked. Most significant decisions during the outbreak of war are not made based on detailed consultation with powerful individuals; communication is too poor. They are based on an estimate of what others will do in response to a situation, and to a character's actions.

Mythic Europeans, unlike the characters in most board games and computer games, do not usually engage in total war to the annihilation of the foe. It's considered honorable, skillful even, to avoid pitched battle. It's acceptable to retreat from battle and to wait, perhaps for years, before continuing a military campaign. It is wise, and well-respected, to drive a hard bargain in peace negotiations. It is a frequent feature of medieval war that combatants change sides as the fortunes of each cause wax or wane. A rival's Reputation allows a character's player to gain some sense of when that rival is willing to retreat, to negotiate an armistice, or even to change to the player character's side.

Comparing the Reputations of the major nobles on each side of a conflict doesn't just tell a character what each group wants. It allows the character to compare the resources of the two sides, and their determination to achieve particular objectives. Knowledge of these objectives often allows the character to have some idea of where battles are likely to be fought. This understanding that war is limited, and continues only until one side can claim some approximation of what it wants, allows a character to guess when each side will want to discuss peace.

Single actions can seriously affect Reputations, and this can dramatically alter the way that characters are perceived. A king who flees a battle before defeat is certain to lose much more than a single army, because other armies will not follow him into battle.

This does not reduce his Reputation score, but does alter its effect. A less decisive, but more instructive, example is found in the life of William Marshal.

William Marshal's father, John, was holding a castle for the Queen Matilda against the forces of her rival, King Stephen. John asked for a brief truce in Stephen's siege, to consult with Matilda about conditions of surrender. Stephen agreed, provided that John gave him a suitable hostage. John offered his son William, who was three or four at the time.

John promptly went back on his word. He used the truce to re-enforce the castle. Stephen had William loaded into a catapult and threatened to have him pitched over the wall unless John surrendered. John replied that he still had the hammer and anvils with which to make more and better sons. Stephen chose not to kill William, and instead played knights with him for the rest of the afternoon.

As a story event, this alters the Reputation of both parties, and alters their coalitions of supporters. A character obedient to the king because of a hostage now knows that Stephen will not kill him or her, so the character is free to act as he wishes. A character considering changing sides to join Stephen now knows that offering hostages is an insignificant gesture rather than a binding pledge. An enemy facing Stephen in war might be more willing to surrender, seeing that his chances of survival are good. An enemy facing John, however, might choose to carry the fight longer, because John is not concerned by conventional morality. Killing him, or delivering him to Stephen, would earn a great deal of Gratitude. If John was a character's prisoner then the usual ties of honor, like promises not to attempt escape or the offer of sureties, would not hold him, and only a fool would accept his promise of ransom. In neither John nor Stephen's case does the Reputation score fall. The information provided by a successful roll against the Reputation changes, and this alters how characters, including non-player characters, act.

Public Power for Women

Relatively few women hold public power in Mythic Europe. The elaboration of their roles here should not discourage players from selecting exceptional women as their characters. The constraints, and ways to avoid them, listed here are suggested as material for storytelling, not as proscriptions. Troupes should consider carefully how the fun of a historically accurate setting intersects with the fun of playing a character who uses her wits to challenge social conventions.

Players, who are likely most familiar with the English system, should be aware that women have fewer rights in England than in most other parts of Mythic Europe. This is, in part, an effect of the Conquest. The military character of the Norman nobility has not entirely given way to hereditary aristocracy. In areas where landholding is seen as a method of supporting warriors, women have fewer rights, while in those areas where landholding is seen as method of generating money to sustain an army, women have greater rights.

Dressing as a Man

This is the simplest way to ignore social conventions concerning women. There are many folkloric examples of women dressing as men and doing almost anything men do. War or pilgrimage, for example, are easier when pretending to be male. This may become a Dark Secret.

Dressing as a man is not usually a successful strategy for the extended term, though: marriage and fathering children are difficult, if surmountable, obstacles. A woman who dresses as a man and engages in warfare is, however, likely to die young as most men do, so this may not be a concern.

Holding Land

Women can gain control of land in six ways: during absence, through inheritance, via political success, through conquest, in a widow's portion, or as a steward.

Absence

Landholding is intimately tied, in most of Mythic Europe, to providing military service. The male head of most families must be available to fight in campaigns, some of which last for months, or in civil wars, which can sputter along for years. Many nobles leave their wives as their deputies. The value of an educated wife to the military preparedness of her husband has overcome many of the objections concerning the education of women.

Paid Rights: A Free Virtue

Through much of this book, prohibitions against women are discussed. These provisions need to be enforced for them to be effective, and a woman with sufficient wealth can often buy an exclusion from enforcement, or even permission to do something that this book states elsewhere is forbidden. All a woman need do, if she wishes to be a baroness in her own right, is pay the king enough money that he allows it. All a woman need do if she wishes to hold a smaller fief in her own right, and not marry as directed, and not be in wardship, is pay a large enough fine to her guardian.
This is of particular interest to player characters, because their Virtues and Flaws are balanced at the time they start play. This means that if a female character has paid a huge fine for a right before play begins, she does not necessarily have any Flaw representing that fine. She may choose a free Virtue, called Paid Rights, to note that she has paid for the right to do a certain thing that is generally forbidden for women. She may also take a Story Flaw that represents her family's displeasure at this use of her funds, the frustrations of suitors who would take her land by marriage, or other forms of social opprobrium, although this is not required.
There are, however, a few prohibitions that a woman cannot pay a fine to ignore. She cannot pay a fine to do anything that only men are permitted to do in the administrative structure of the Church. It is also difficult for a woman to gain the rank of knight. There are some examples of female knights in folklore, so it is not impossible. But a female knight needs an unusual back story and her player should consider Story Flaws.

Women raised for this task always have Leadership and Profession: Steward scores. They also rapidly develop Ability scores that their husbands have due to the peculiarities of their holdings, allowing them to oversee work, or at least select competent overseers.

In this role of deputy, the woman has the right to spend the income of the husband's territory, and may command his vassals in many matters, including war.

The role that women play in the command of troops varies between the societies of Europe. It is further influenced by the personalities, Reputations, and resources of the lady and her vassals. Women rarely lead troops into battle, but there are many references to noble women holding castles against sieges. During a siege the lady may command troops directly, or may direct their command through a skilled lieutenant.

Many noblewomen maintain networks of agents completely separate from the households of their husbands. A wife may take over her husband's network if he dies or is on campaign. This role, as correspondent and diplomat, is expected of the wives of nobility. A woman who does not socialize is considered a poor supporter of her husband's efforts.

Inheritance

Lands inherited by women are a recognized feature of feudal life. In most kingdoms land goes to sons before daughters, but daughters are given preference over more-distant male relations, like uncles and cousins. Some areas grant all of the land to the eldest son, and the daughter receives it intact if there are no sons. In others, when a paternal line extinguishes in this way, the land is divided between all of the remaining sisters, or their husbands. In a few areas women are permitted to inherit directly, either because the land of a family is divided between all of the siblings who are not already members of the Church, or because the lord is permitted to nominate his heirs and so may choose his daughters.

A woman who rules a fief by inheritance usually retains legal authority in it during her marriage. With the exception of England, where the wife's rights become the husband's, there are many examples of women who married another noble, yet continued to hold her own court, issue charters, and command vassals. In Castile there is at least one example of an odd midpoint, where the bride continued to rule in her own land, with the exception of her dowry, which was transferred to her husband. At the death of an heiress, her lands may be kept by her eldest son if the area practices primogeniture. In areas where the lands of the parents are divided, the separate character of the wife's lands from her husband’s make them an obvious domain for one of her younger sons. Land that a girl's father has added to his ancestral territories may be made available as dowry. Dowries are used, in much of Europe, as a sort of inheritance before the death of the father. Rules for the design of dowries are given in the Family section, earlier.

Political Success

It is rare for anyone, male or female, to be granted land for purely political favors, but it occasionally occurs as a result of stories. A common way for a woman to be granted land is to become the mistress of a powerful nobleman and bear his child. If the woman has suitable abilities, she may be made the child's guardian until he is of age to join his father's household.

Conquest

Some women claim land through invasion, allowing their retinue of knights to settle conquered areas as vassals. This requires loyal retainers and either a friendly monarch or a formidable reputation, as a mercenary captain or disloyal male vassal might try to swear fealty for the land himself. Such women rarely enter combat themselves, but since they are the leaders of their armies, it would be insubordinate to gainsay them if they wished it.

Widow's Portion and Stewardship

In most areas a widow is permitted to retain the use of a portion of her husband's lands for her own use after his death. As a rule of thumb, assume a widow can keep the profit, not income, of a third of her husband's land until she remarries. If the woman was already landed at marriage, and has no adult sons, then she is likely to have complete ownership of her lands returned to her. Widows are extremely common in Mythic Europe.

A Note on Life Expectancy

A key to female landholding is the comparative longevity of women in wartime. Players in sagas designed for female nobles to play a significant role need to consciously cull male non-player characters. The rules for doing this are in the Random Method of Death insert, in the Family section earlier.

Women as Warriors

In most areas there are folktales about particular women who, at some past time, acted in the role of knight. How characters react to contemporary women who attempt the same course varies by culture and by the status of the particular woman. In the Order of Hermes, the philosophy of Plato coupled with the scarcity of The Gift has led to a position of equity. Plato advocated the training of women for all the duties of the state including administration and warfare. Very few women seek military success, but sufficient do for the role to be accepted, to some degree, in most areas. The following examples may guide the generation of background for female nobles who seek military roles.

Dressing as a Man: Margaret of Beverley

Margaret of Beverly was born in the Holy Land: her parents were English pilgrims who commenced their journey while her mother was pregnant. After reaching adulthood and seeing to the education of her younger brother, Margaret decided to revisit Jerusalem. Through terrible luck, she was present when Jerusalem fell to Saladin in 1187.
She pretended to be a man, and took part in the defense of the wall, wearing improvised armor. Margaret was struck by a fragment thrown up by a stone fired from a siege engine, and carried scars for the rest of her life. She was captured, ransomed, and then after a difficult period involving slavery, theft, and rescue, by the grace of the Virgin she was able to arrive in Antioch, in time to participate in the siege there.
After peace was concluded she sailed for England with the English army, departing from Acre. Her other travels, to Rome and Santiago, were almost as adventurous as this first trip. Historically, after her journeys she sought out her younger brother, who had become a monk, and he led her to the contemplative life. She joined a nunnery at Laon, in France, and may live there still in 1220.

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Inheritance

Eleanor attended the Second Crusade with her husband, and was attended by a guard of female knights dressed as Amazons and mounted on white horses. Eleanor's right to lead her troops, as overlord of Aquitaine, was incontestable. The queens of several of the other leaders followed her example. Her behavior was considered scandalous, and led to the Papal Bull forbidding women from taking the cross in the Third Crusade.

Sikelgaita of Sicily: Conquest

A princess of the Lombards, then the wife of the Duke of Apulia and Sicily, Sikelgaita is recorded as having participated in her husband's battles dressed as a knight, and as charging enemies with a spear. In her husband's wars against the Byzantine Empire, she rallied some troops that had fled a battle, sending them back into the fray at the Battle of Dyrrachium. The Norman conquests in Byzantium were lost after the war turned against her family.

Petronilla of Leicester: Absence

Petronilla is recorded as having armed herself as a knight and fought in battles during the reign of Henry II, perhaps due to the absence of her husband. A namesake was active during the wars of John against his barons, and purchased the right to select her own husband. This Petronilla used John's desperation for money to haggle the relatively good price of 4000 marks. The latter Petronilla has only been dead eight years.

Matilda of Tuscany: Political Success

Matilda's parents were allies of the pope, and open rebels against his rival the emperor. Matilda was trained in warfare from an early age. Her tutor was later the commander of her forces and stated he had trained her in lance, pike, axe, and sword. Matilda is widely believed to have ridden into battle from her teenage years.
She was the primary proponent of the pope's cause during the Investiture Controversy, and through a series of marriages, alliances, and wars, she all but destroyed Imperial authority in Northern Italy. Matilda led her armies through a series of wars, crushing Imperial forces so that only a few cities remained under the emperor's banner. She spent her old age dispatching armies to besiege and capture many of these.

In some areas, like France, Castile, and parts of the Holy Roman Empire, a widow may act as her son's guardian. This allows her to administer land on his behalf until he is an adult. Stewardship of lands may need to be purchased from the dead husband's overlord. In many areas the lord has the right to select the stewards for the heirs of vassals, and he may even arrange the marriage of the widow.

Nuns

A third avenue for power, and one much enjoyed by the younger daughters of some lords, is the Church. The role of nunneries is discussed in greater detail in the supplement Realms of Power: The Divine. Nuns are considered wards of the bishop, and brides of Christ. They cannot usually be forced to marry, and are not answerable to their fathers or other local lords. Nuns hold a great deal of land in Mythic Europe, and their estates are not divided by inheritance.

Young women may take temporary vows that allow them to retreat into the life of a nun while events unfold in the secular world. It is possible for a sufficiently influential nobleman to force a woman to leave the nunnery and marry, but this is rare. It is common for the female relatives of a man who has lost a war to retreat into the nunneries, so that they are not at the mercy of the victors.

Attribution Based on the material for Ars Magica, ©1993-2024, licensed by Trident, Inc. d/b/a Atlas Games®, under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license 4.0 ("CC-BY-SA 4.0"). Ars Magica Open License Logo ©2024 Trident, Inc. The Ars Magica Open License Logo, Ars Magica, and Mythic Europe are trademarks of Trident, Inc., and are used with permission. Order of Hermes, Tremere, Doissetep, and Grimgroth are trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB and are used with permission.

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See Also

Chapter Two: Politics

The Gratitude System

The Projection of Power

Advancement Requirements Table

Retinue

Family

A Random Method of Death

A Random Method of Life

Story Seed: Finding an Heir

Designing a Family

Story Seed: Not A Bastard

Inheritance

Marriage and Dowries

Military

Size of Dowries

A Tale Stolen From the Birth of Robert the Bruce

Story Seed: Choosing the Lord or Heir

Clerical and Menial

Criminals

Offices

Intrigue and the Art of Indirect Action

Ease Factor 3

Ease Factor 6

Ease Factor 9

Ease Factor 12

Ease Factor 15

Ease Factor 18

Admiral

Butler

Chancellor

Chamberlain

Constable

Counselor

Justiciar

Marshal

Sheriff / Bailie / Sénéchal

Amercements: Money From The Law

Steward

Treasurer

Offices Found Only Near England

Story Seed: Avoiding the Murdrum

Coroner

Forest Warden

Vassals

Why Bother With Vassals?

Vassalage Allows Nobles to Express a Common Interest

Vassalage Allows for Huge Transactions

Vassalage is a Form of Truce

Vassalage Limits Genocidal Warfare

Money

Warriors

Scutage

Advice

Story Seed: Scutage Raid

Wardship of Heirs

Story Seed: A Matter of Hermetic Honor

Wardship of Widows

Story Seed: Did You Keep The Receipt?

Affinity

Secular Allies

Church Allies

Story Seeds: Faulty Vassals

Affinity Leadership

Using Intrigue to Aggregate Class Opinion

Control Through Emotional Bonds

Agents

Design of Agents

Acquiring Agents

Agent Recruitment Table

Modifiers

Resources

Tasks For Agents Table

Persuasion Roll Modifiers

Using Agents

Maintaining Agents

Reputation

Noble Reputation

Prudhomme

Story Seed: Genetic Memory