Covenant Rules Site

Site

This cluster of Boons and Hooks reflects the physical location of the covenant. Troupes that desire a covenant only as a place where their characters can rehabilitate between arduous quests should select sparingly in this section. Players wanting to focus their stories around the daily lives of their characters, on the other hand, are encouraged to select many Minor Site Hooks.

Major Site Boons

• Aura: The aura of a limited area of the covenant increases by one point. It is only worth taking this if the aura of the whole covenant is already 5, as this then allows the covenfolk to live and work mostly outside the level 6 (or higher) aura, and thus avoid Warping. The magical space is likely delineated in some way: for example, one covenant has an irremovable monolith at the center of its magical space. The stone is not native to the area, and has been carved in elaborate and erotic shapes, but there is no memory, even within the stone, of how it came to mark its space, or if its presence is necessary to its mystical strength.
• Conscious Space: The covenant lies in a symbolically embodied place. It is incarnate in a self-aware, friendly figure. For example, there are several Merinita covenants that are ruled, in a mystical sense, by a faerie noble who is aware of disturbances to the natural order of the territory. Most such nobles sense these disturbances through sympathetic pains that they feel, which they have learned to interpret in order to identify damage of certain types, and in particular locations, but some can see from the eyes of the animals in the aura, feel what the grass feels, or have similar exotic senses. For example, a sea mist haunts a spring covenant off the coast. It is able to communicate by constructing pale images, which alert the magi to potential problems. Some covenfolk claim that, recently, the sea mist’s shadow has taken human shape. Some suggest the mist is the ghost of a drowned girl — a bride of the Selkie king.
• Fantastic Environment: This Boon is only suited to high-fantasy sagas. The covenant is in an environment where only constant magical intervention can sustain human life. A covenant under the sea, or floating in a lake of lava under the Earth, is in a fantastic environment. A covenant in Arcadia is also in a fantastic environment. Covenants set in these environments usually have little difficulty with mundane humans: invasion is nearly impossible. There are no neighboring nobles or churchmen, and spies are almost unheard of.
• Immunity: Within the covenant’s aura, all people and objects are immune to a form of damage, influence, or Flaw. If players designing characters pair their Flaws to this immunity, it becomes a Major Hook. Their Flaw helps define the covenant’s culture. For example, if the Immunity prevents lycanthropic transformations, then the covenant will be home to a large number of recovering werewolves. The characters will go on missions to track down suspected werewolves. They face persecution if discovered.
• Natural Fortress: This covenant is all but unassailable because of peculiar geography that limits attackers to a single line of advance. A covenant in Scotland, for example, is sited on a headland that has sea cliffs on three sides. Only a curtain wall and a stout gatehouse are needed to retain it. Covenants in similarly defensible positions should take this Boon, which includes the defensive works used to secure the single direction of possible mundane attack.
• Regio: The covenant is located in a magical regio that only native guides can safely navigate. The labyrinth of the regio may take many forms, though its precise nature must be described. The Redcaps, who collect such knowledge, report twisting causeways, tangled woodland paths, convoluted sewers, or paths trod through sunset clouds. To fail to follow the path is often to return to the mortal world, but in many covenants false paths lead to prisons, over cliffs, or into the lairs of monsters.
• Time Dilation or Contraction: The covenant resides in a place, usually a regio, where time does not run at the rate usual to Mythic Europe. Dilated time allows the magi to live for longer periods, from the perspective of outsiders, but they develop only slowly compared to those living at the standard rate. Contracted time, on the other hand, allows the members of the covenant to study faster, and develop their covenant more swiftly, than the rest of Mythic Europe, although to outsiders they appear to age rapidly. In some regiones, the time difference is unnoticed until the visitor leaves, when age fades from them, or comes crushing down. In others, they age in local time. Vis sources within the regio usually refresh in mundane time. A handful of mildly time-contracted regiones have sources that replenish in local time. This is paid for separately in covenant creation, by paying for the vis that the source yields in a mundane year rather than a local year. The Redcaps have been searching avidly for quick regiones that replenish in local time, but have never confirmed their existence. Settlements in regiones with dilated or contracted time are rare, but known. The Quaesitores have occasionally used prison regiones that rapidly contract time, and, on at least one occasion, trapped a group of suspects in a profoundly contracted regio while their innocence was determined. The covenant with the largest dilation is a tiny chapter house in the mountains, where each day is a real-world month. The Criamon magus who lives within it believes calamitous times are near, and wishes to see the future of the Order, acting as a living repository of its history. The greatest contraction occurs in a covenant that House Tytalus founded during the Schism War to allow its younger magi to become hardened. This covenant also has only a single magus, who serves for a year of the local time, which is oneseventh of a normal year. Its population has lived for dozens of generations since the Schism, and their culture has become baroque and self-referential.

Minor Site Boons

• Aura: The magic aura of the covenant increases by one point. The players may take this Boon up to seven times, for a covenant in any magic aura up to ten. All the covenfolk must live within the aura.
• Difficult Access: The covenant’s geographical surroundings make it difficult to assault. This Boon is suitable for covenants in mountain passes, on coastal islands that require boats to reach, or in deserts. A sufficiently prepared mortal warlord can overcome the defenses, but finds it expensive and troublesome.
• Healthy Feature: The covenant hosts a fresh breeze from the sea, a healing well, or some other feature that increases the life expectancy of its people markedly. Inhabitants with access to this feature have a +1 bonus on their aging rolls. This Boon may be taken up to three times. It is a source for the Healthy Location bonus given on the Aging Table in ArM5, page 170.
• Hostile Environment: The covenant lies far from human settlements in an environment unsuited to human life. Examples include a covenant above the tree line on a mountain or in a vast cavern deep under the Earth.
• Immunity: Within the covenant’s aura, all people and objects are immune to a specified form of damage or influence, as per the Virtue. For example, Marco, a Redcap who claims at times to have been defrocked, states that House Jerbiton and the Brotherhood of Saint Lazarus maintain a leprosarium in such an aura. Its covenfolk lead long and healthy lives, so long as they do not leave. Upon departing, however, the ravages of the illness, suspended but not cured, descend upon them in an instant, their bodies withering and their skin sloughing away.
• Mystical Portal: The covenant controls a mystical gateway, such as a Mercere Portal, a gateway to Arcadia, or the entrance to a well-understood regio with friendly inhabitants. House Merintia, some say, controls so many portals to Arcadia that they have lost count of them, but fortunately, they say, they know of a portal that leads to the grave of Janus, god of doorways. The ghost of the dead titanic god visits those who sleep on his grave, and he pours wisdom into each ear simultaneously. Awaking, they know which doorway to seek, and where, and how to navigate its passage. Each magus may only dream on the grave of Janus once: to sleep there further is to slip into an endlessly recurring yesterday.
• Regio: The covenant is located in a magical regio that can be entered in many ways. The covenant may take measures to limit entry into the regio, but these are never perfect. Marco, a Redcap fond of late nights and large wineskins, reports that there is a regio in a certain city that can be entered from the steps of any building, within the city, that contains bricks stolen from the ancient mithraeum, by any woman with a red ribbon in her hair, and any man in pursuit of such a woman. It is perhaps fortunate that the Archimaga Tisiphone, a beauty renowned for her ability to evoke artistic talent in men, lives within the regio, and wears a red ribbon at all times, except when bathing. For the convenience of visitors, she usually bathes between one and two of an afternoon, so they know not to seek her in those hours.
• Seclusion: The covenant is in a very remote location, and gets few visitors. This Boon cannot be taken in conjunction with the Road or Urban Hooks, and may be inappropriate for other Hooks as well. Redcaps still come to the covenant; this Boon simply restricts the number of random visitors.
• Unnatural Law: Within the covenant’s aura, a series of natural laws are suspended. For example, in the Covenant of the Castle of Fees, glass is as durable and hard as iron, and is used as a building material and armament. In the Covenant of the Solemn Scholars, children are able to fly until they lose their virginity. This Boon is suitable for covenants that want to play against genre. For example, there is a covenant powered by wonderful machines copied from the works of Heron of Alexandria. These steam rotators permit the covenant to manufacture many other wondrous devices, which fail to work if taken from the covenant. It also allows the troupe to strongly contrast the home of the magi to the mundane world.
• Vast Aura: The covenant’s aura fills an enormous area, perhaps up to five miles across. Belinda, a Redcap who has gone further east than any other, says that at the very fringes of the Order lies just such a vast aura, and that therein lies a magical city. Wise old magi rule it. They claim their ancestors knew Trianoma, but had not heard of the Order before Belinda’s visit. Belinda has not returned: the Unnatural Law of the place permits outsiders to stay for only a single night, and only then at the cost of falling in love with a local, glimpsed in the avenues of palm fronds. No visitor may ever return, and no native who departs survives the melancholy.
• Vivid Environment: The covenant’s site is extremely pleasant. This may be an effect of the Warping of the aura, an unknown supernatural influence, or a beautiful, natural feature. The beauty of the covenant’s surroundings makes it easier for the covenant to recruit new inhabitants. It provides bonuses for the calculations given in the Governance chapter. The Covenant of Valnastium, a mountain valley, is a place of such beauty now. The magi of Jerbiton, however, claim that this was not always the case. They say that given the choice of the faerie bower Rosegarten or Valnastium, Jerbiton chose the uglier valley. Had he chosen the beauty of the Rosegarten, he would have been content with its splendors. Valnastium was made beautiful with his own devices and desires, and so exceeds the ephemeral beauty of Arcadia.

Major Site Hooks

• Constantly Mobile: This covenant moves constantly. For example, the Covenant of Crisp Winds lives on a flotilla of ships, which follows a route around the Mediterranean to collect vis and trade goods at auspicious times. If the covenant were to cease moving, it would lose its income.
• Highly Mutable: The contents of the covenant’s aura, with the exception of the human beings, whose souls provide them protection from this effect, are highly mutable. The method of mutation varies between sites, and is difficult for the magi to predict or control. For example, Marco, a Redcap known for telling lies, states that there is a covenant in a regio that mirrors the dreams of the people of a city he will not name. If the city suffers a fire, then the covenant also suffers a fire. If a ship of exotic merchants land and many people dream of England, the weather becomes icy and annoying. If a passion play is performed, many phantasms with the shape of demons (but not their nature) rampage through the covenant, unblocked by the Aegis (for they have no Might). The magi stay there because the area within the Aegis remains much the same functionally, although its appearance changes from a Norman town to a Jewish ghetto to what people think an Arabic trading quarter must look like, and they find these insights into the human mind fascinating.
• Magical Disaster: Long ago, this was the site of a mystical tragedy. Many supernatural forces in the area press the local magi to cease work here, lest they repeat the mistakes of the past. Other forces encourage them, promising that — this time — all will be well. Some say that Durenmar is such a site.
• Missing Aura: The characters have settled in an area where they lack the most fundamental tool required to study their Art, a magical aura. Stories focus on how they better their situation, and how the covenant remains together when there is such a strong temptation for some magi to leave. Marco, widely considered a charlatan, claims to have met a faerie king who held the aura of the fallen Covenant of the Redbreasted Warriors in a wine bottle. He said that he would invite to dinner any magus who could meet his five challenges, and allow them to choose their menu from his entire demesne, including, presumably, the bottle. Marco, cowardly, refused to meet his challenges and, fed only on pea gruel and water, fled the king’s hall by night.
• Monster: A powerful mystical creature lives inside the covenant. The creature can be aligned with any realm, and is too powerful for the player characters to defeat at the beginning of the campaign. Monsters are often large, and many are wily, but the Redcap Marco, who collected many strange tales, once remarked that a covenant had lost a tower to loveliness. When the maga Pallas passed away her lover, a nymph of unmatched beauty, began to mourn her immediately. Her grief was so great, and her attractiveness so intense, that it is said that whoever sees the inconsolable maiden falls immediately in love with her, and so refuses to disturb her mourning. The tower has gone unused for sixty years.
• Road: The covenant is on an important mystical trail of some kind, so that mystical creatures, from one or more realms, often turn up at the covenant. A most unfortunate covenant lies near the Chapel That Cannot Sleep. The chapel lies on an ancient battlefield, and was raised on the dun that surmounted the fallen. A mythic road, a right of way, sometimes appears when the corpse of a murdered man is carried to a graveyard, and in this case as each body was carried to the site, it created a road. A vast number of roads now leads to the Chapel, stretching out for miles in the direction of the pursuit of the foot soldiers of the losing side. All manner of metaphysical detritus washes up at the Chapel, and disturbs the sleeping dead.
• Regio: There is a regio on the covenant site, although the covenant is not in it. The regio has inhabitants who occasionally come out and cause problems. This Hook may be Unknown. If the regio is not magical, that counts as an additional Minor Hook. A convoluted Wizard’s War once arose from such a regio. Knowing it to be full of untamed sprites, a magus encircled the regio with a trellis of roses, grown thick then turned to iron. It was the nature of the regio to send forth the secret desires of members of the covenant, and so the childhood love of another magus, or a faerie of her shape, was killed upon the thorns. The second magus did not declare war because his love had died. Rather, he did so because he believed that the death of the one he loved most was what the first magus most desired, and that the regio had granted it to him.
• Urban: The covenant is in a city. The vast majority of the inhabitants are not part of the covenant, and the covenant does not rule the city.

Minor Site Hooks

• Corrupt Area: A section of the covenant has an Infernal aura, probably because of a terrible sin committed there. This acts as a seed for the corruption of the covenant, unless the characters discover the nature of the event and put things right. This Hook may be Unknown.
• Cursed: The covenant is the victim of a supernatural curse powerful enough to ignore its Aegis of the Hearth. This should gravely concern the magi, because it indicates they have a supernatural enemy with both the desire and ability to harm them. This Hook may be Unknown. Most curses of this type are not fatal. For example, magi from one covenant refused the hospitality of a faerie crone, and now suffer fatal burns if they taste wine, as it turns into green vitriol. The crone, fair-minded, warned the magi of the curse, so it has killed only one magus. New to Normandy, and not skilled in French, he foolishly ordered the coq au vin.
• Evil Custom: Some of the mystical features of the covenant’s site are maintained through ritual acts that are evil, but of so long a tradition that most people in the area are aware of them, and so simply avoid being suitable victims. Many evil customs involve murder, but some simply require the imprisonment of a certain person for a time, the humiliation of a class of people, or sins of gross indulgence. This Hook may be Unknown.
• Erratically Mobile: This covenant regularly moves, but its movements are erratic, and are interspersed with periods where the covenant settles in an area for a season. An example is a covenant of magi who have decided to follow the trade roads into Asia, traveling during summer and staying in major cities each winter. They have no name for themselves and lack any common property other than the coffee pot they bought in Aleppo from a Redcap who happened to pass by and learn their story.
• Faerie Aura: The covenant has a faerie, rather than a magical, aura. The faeries most familiar with the site are very interested in what the magi are doing, and consider any attempt to block their access to the site, by Aegis of the Hearth, for example, insulting. There is a covenant in Ireland that has been built on a faerie hurling pitch. This game, which involves two large teams attempting to abduct a ball using clubs, is all but a war. The Courts of Summer and Winter in the area play it twice a year, and always seem surprised by the result. Given that the only other option is a pitched battle against the faeries on their covenant site twice a year, the magi allow the game to spill through their buildings, but have installed stout doors on their sancta. If the game is not played, it is said, then summer will never end in the crops of autumn, or winter will never bloom into spring.
• Flickering Aura: If the magi fail to perform a relatively simple task each year, the covenant’s aura declines by one point for the rest of the year. Flickering auras are usually the result of a traumatic mystical event that scars the spirit of a place. Magi who find ways to symbolically relive or repair the event can prevent their aura flickering. This is important, because flickering auras do not appear to deepen over time the way that auras in other covenants do. This Hook may be Unknown. A particular covenant washes its walls each year in milk to prevent its aura from failing. The magi have no idea why, or even if, this is necessary, but it has been done since before the Schism War and dire, if painfully unspecific, warnings surround the practice.
• Haunted: Ghosts, perhaps of former magi, haunt the covenant. Most ghosts want to finish their worldly business before they pass away. The magi may wish to assist them. This Hook may be Unknown.
• Mutable: The fabric of reality alters within the covenant in ways that unGifted humans find simple. For example, the covenant incarnates their passions as guides and mentors, or beautiful songs can change the time of day, the color of cloth, and the attractiveness of the singer.
• Poorly Defensible: The covenant’s founders placed it in a site that is overlooked by a cliff, can be flooded by diverting a river, or is otherwise not suited to a conventional siege defense. The magi need to retain good relations with their neighbors, at least until they remedy their defenses. There is a covenant that made a deal with a nobleman in which they provided him with a longevity ritual, and in exchange, he granted them six acres of land. The cunning nobleman gave the covenant a lengthy strip of rocky beach. Stubborn and unwilling to allow themselves to be shamed, the magi reclaimed sixty hectares of land, surrounding it with a massive dike. The people within the dike are fatalistic, and each family keeps a rowboat in the roof cavity of their house. Most male children are named Noah, for luck.
• Regio With Unexpected Entries: The covenant is located in a magical regio, but it can be entered in many ways. The covenfolk remain unaware of many of these, discovering them only when an unfortunate person or creature stumbles upon the covenant. This Hook may be Unknown. The Dogrose School is particularly notorious for the ease with which it can be found. The School hides behind a city, and draws Gifted children to itself, by possessing their toys with an urge to sneak out on moonlit nights and walk odd streets, drawing their little masters away. House Bonisagus long ago claimed the Dogrose School for its own. Its members teach the little pupils Latin and a bit of Magic Theory before sending them to other masters. Sometimes the toys bring other, more difficult, visitors.
• Regio: There is a regio on the covenant site, although the covenant does not lie within it. The magi do not know everything that is in the regio. If the regio is not magical, that counts as an additional Minor Hook. This Hook can still be taken if the covenant is in a regio; in that case, it simply refers to a second regio.
• Resident Nuisance: A minor mystical creature, or group of creatures, resides in the covenant. Their activities are no more harmful than minor vandalism, but cause waste, expense, and arguments. The magi could defeat and destroy these creatures, but it would take time and effort better directed elsewhere. This Hook may be Unknown. A Redcap named Marco, who has been unable to locate his trousers on several occasions, reports that in one covenant, the grogs claim that a maiden appears to them in the depth of the night watch, carrying a mug of hot toddy. When they drink it, they fall unconscious, and are usually found naked in a barn. The magi have tried to hunt this faerie, but the grogs have proved almost entirely unhelpful. The ruler of the covenant believes the maiden is actually a prank played by generations of apprentices, abused by slothful grogs.
• Road: The covenant is on an important mundane road, river, or sea route, so that people often turn up at the covenant, bringing or causing stories.
• Warping to a Pattern: The Warping suffered by people, animals, and structures within the covenant is not random or restricted to a single motif. Rather, a discernible theme runs through the distortions. Characters familiar with the history of the site, the dreams of its founders, the epics of the ancients, and the folklore of the Order can sometimes explain the evolving theme, which is often a repetition of something that has been experienced before. It is said that the site of the Covenant of the Monkey’s Reed has not forgotten its history. Located on a floating island, which moves about its lake, the aura is slowly twisting the people and structures of the covenant into an ancient Egyptian village. The rulers of the village were a priestly caste that worshiped the god Thoth. Many magi of Monkey’s Reed wish to see what these ancient magicians looked like, reflected in the covenant’s aura, but there is a problem: the site replaces the memories of those it distorts, so that they gradually lose themselves in their new roles. Magi of House Bonisagus hope to convince the Archimagus Apollodarus — whose beloved died accidentally in a fire that he created — that he should accept the loss of memory as a balm and become High Priest of the Temple that, even now, can be seen forming in the brickwork of the gatehouse.
• Weak Aura: Subtract one point from the covenant’s Magic aura. Most young magi would not wish to settle in an area with a poor aura, so each should consider the story potential of their reasons for settling such a substandard site.
• Uncontrolled Portal: As per the “Mystical Portal” Boon, except that the portal is not under the covenant’s control. This Hook may be Unknown. Many covenants have a portal that they do not control, but the harried magi near Granada certainly have the largest. The Pillars of Hercules, the islands that stand at the western edge of the known world, are thought to contain gateways to Arcadia and the Magical realm. This would explain why all manner of odd things dwell there. The magi of Granada have set themselves a task: to monitor the gate for creatures that might harm Europe. They are attempting to have a Tribunal recognize them as a dedicated covenant — see the Boon of the same name — but many magi point out that Granada has every reason to monitor the portal regardless of support.
• Unhealthy Environment: The covenant’s members suffer a dramatically reduced lifespan due to an environmental factor at the covenant’s site. All people regularly exposed to the environmental factor suffer a –1 penalty to their Aging rolls. This Hook may be taken up to three times, but does not affect those who have Hermetic longevity enchantments. This condition is a Hook because these environmental problems are often reparable with magic or labor. For example, a covenant where people suffer the miasmatic effects of a nearby swamp can ameliorate this effect in several ways. Cutting channels to a nearby river, or a magical effect, could drain the swamp. The miasma might be destroyed with magic. It might be rendered ineffective by planting of an orchard of sweetly flowering trees as a defensive perimeter. Deeply noxious environmental conditions might have mystical defenders, like bog trolls, which would have to be dealt with before the Hook itself could be eliminated. This Boon may be Unknown, but becomes known as an increasing number of covenfolk feel its effects.
• Urban: The covenant is in a small market town. Many of the inhabitants are not part of the covenant, and the covenant does not rule the town. Many Spring covenants in cities lack a Magical aura, and should take the Missing Aura Hook. Older covenants usually have an aura, because they have workspaces out in the countries, have a regio that contains their laboratories, or have created caverns deep below the city where an aura has grown up due to their magical practices.