The Setting

In Ars Magica, there are some aspects of the published setting that are kept deliberately vague, so that it is easy to integrate them into your game. This story is no exception; the broken covenant does not exist in any specific place in Mythic Europe, but it can exist anywhere that you would like to place it. It is important to the story that Calebais has a history in the area, and possesses the regional flavor that matches its surroundings, so it is up to you to weave it into your saga.

There is no way for this adventure to predict how your covenant will be designed, or where the characters will be coming from. You must fill in these details to make this story succeed. To help you adapt the adventure to a suitable location, there follow three examples of what the area surrounding Calebais might look like in three different parts of Europe. If they are convenient enough to your saga, you can use them as they are, or they can serve as templates for you to base the design of other medieval locales.

Each setting describes three places, for use in each of the three different chapters of the story. The first is a small village with an abbey and a nearby forest. The second is deep within that forest, home to faeries and long-dead wizards. The third describes a Cistercian nunnery, the significance of which will not be revealed until much later in the adventure.

Note that none of these potential settings actually existed in the medieval world, though they are obviously inspired by history. They are portraits painted with a broad brush, intended to convey the tone and feeling of the area without perfectly depicting reality. Thus, you may personalize them without fear, changing any part of the image to conform more or less to your vision, and altering the impression they give to match the colors of your saga.

The village of Byneden is situated on the southern coast of Dorset, near the almost perfectly-rounded cove of Lulworth. It is a small group of perhaps twenty families, clustered about a well-established Cistercian abbey that was built in 1149. Behind it, to the north, rise large round hills. Byneden Hill, the largest, is said to be haunted by the ghosts of Roman legions who landed here in ancient times and fell to their deaths, and the path by which the characters must arrive passes between it and a range of several lesser hills to the east, unless they travel by boat and sail into the cove.

Byneden range is thickly forested, and by skirting Byneden Hill and walking along the coast for about an hour, the characters will see in

the distance the higher ground from which Two Crag Hill may be reached. The view into the English Channel from the jagged chalk and limestone cliffs is blue and fair in summer and grey and misty in the winter, but a persistent fog covers the woodlands as characters begin to make their way to the site of the fallen covenant.

In contrast, the Abbey of St. Mary is found in the small village of Crawford, about twenty miles inland from Byneden, north and east. It was constructed near the joining of two rivers, the Tarrant and the Stour. The convent is quite wealthy, established during King Richard's reign, and built of thick stone, with the familiar tall square tower above the church. It is one of the few Cistercian convents in southern England, so it is somewhat isolated but still has a lot of autonomy.

On the Gothic March west of the Rhone River, just north of the Pyrenees and near the border of Burgundy, lies the small village of Bonnedon. It may be found on a temperate plateau about two days' walk from Toulouse, among rolling hills covered with vineyards and valleys swathed in wheat. To the northeast is a wooded area thick with brambles and brush under the twisting, dry trees; at one time the whole village looked very similar, but the Cistercian monks of the abbey have cultivated the land and brought about a near-miraculous change.

The wood has a dry, dusty smell, even in colder months, and quite strangely grows more lush as the characters travel further from the river. The trees are dense and knot together overhead, with their tangled roots sprawled about the earthy wilderness, forcing the characters to climb over and under such wooden barricades as they travel north towards Two Crag Hill.

When the time comes to visit the nuns, the characters will find the Abbey of St. Douceline in the civilized valleys further west, closer to Montauban, near the Dalinnae River. Though established in the heart of the Cistercian Order, the convent is much smaller than one might expect, considering its influence, and the nuns must work hard each year to coerce the brittle ground to meet their needs, since their charter only barely provides them with enough to make their living.

Maulbronn Abbey is located about forty miles west of Stuttgart, in the village of Baden on the northern edge of the Black Forest. It is an impressive structure, with thick, fortified stone walls to separate the monks from the harsh world outside, and finely-

crafted sloped roofs of brown-red rock. The buildings are closeset, conveying a sense of huddled safety within, and while most of the building is only two stories high, it seems extremely tall and narrow.

The land is rugged and wild, mountainous with forbidding peaks and thick woods that encroach upon the dark Salzach valley. By striking out southwest, the characters may follow a series of steep descending trails into the forest, taking care not to lose their step in the hostile, rocky terrain. Two Crag Hill is to the north from the base of the great peak that supports Baden, and all around is the dense, old forest that blocks out the light and dampens sound.

Far to the west, beyond the borders of Swabia, is the convent of Aywieres in Brabant, a great distance from Calebais. It is small and humble, though it will become quite famous as a home to Cistercian saints during the thirteenth century, when word of the holy sisters' visions spreads throughout the Lower Loraine. It is a land of rolling hills and sparse woodland, and the nuns here have a much easier time than the monks at the abbey of Maulbronn.

As long as the characters are located somewhere in Mythic Europe, this story can still fit into the setting without much effort. Monasteries and nunneries may be found almost anywhere, and the Cistercian Rule had become very popular in the early 1200s; many existing abbeys adopted its rigid structure, even as far away as Portugal, Ireland, and Constantinople. The severe, strict piety of the White Monks helps create an interesting contrast with the proud, divisive magi, but if you cannot justify their presence in your setting, Benedictines are found in every corner of the world and are still an acceptable substitute.