Integrating Covenants
A menagerie could be designed as a covenant, and a covenant could be designed to include aspects that lend themselves to a menagerie. If you are in the position of designing a covenant and wish to include features earmarked for a menagerie, the following suggestions might be useful. All page numbers refer to the Covenants supplement.
Site Boons (page 6) are of primary importance. An Aura (Minor) would allow a section of the covenant grounds to have a higher magical aura, which would be good for magical beast containment. Fantastic Environment (Major) could conceivably contain a specific type of exotic beast. A Regio (Major) could act as an anchor point to a path to the Magic Realm, which some magical beast regularly travels. It could also serve as a hidden nook to keep a menagerie in, available to the magi's guests but away from the prying eyes of mundane visitors. The Major Boon Aura could increase the entire covenant's aura, allowing a menagerie to be placed anywhere within it. A Mystical Portal (Minor) could draw roaming magical beasts. Vast Aura (Minor) is good for stud farms that contain a large number of beasts, granting winter, summer, and spring pastures that all fall under the magical influence of the aura.
Site Hooks are equally valuable (page 9). A Monster (Major) would be an interesting addition to a menagerie if it was a magical beast. A Road (Major) explicitly states that mystical creatures "often turn up at the covenant." While these all won't be magical beasts, some will be. A hidden Regio (Major) would allow access to the covenant that the player characters can't control, perhaps allowing magical creatures to invade at random. Resident Nuisance (Minor) could be magical beasts. Corralling them should be exceptionally difficult. Perhaps they breed at an alarming rate, or have magical means to escape capture. Warping to a Pattern (Minor) would always grant the Minor Supernatural Flaw: (Form) Monstrosity to the covenant's animals, providing a steady supply of Transformed Animals.
Under Fortifications (page 11), a dedicated barn is a free choice, which can be improved or denigrated by additional Fortification Boons and Hooks. Vast and Labyrinthine (Minor Boon) would allow space for a planned but not yet existent menagerie. Outbuildings (Minor Hook) are good spots to place a stud farm, especially if escaping beasts or invading creatures are going to be a focus of the saga.
A covenant with a Right (Minor Resources Boon) to fish a specific stream or hunt a forest might come across magical creatures as it reaps the benefits of the land. The Residents free choices would include all of the types of manpower
becoming involved, some altruistic, some financial, and some insidious. Backers do not have to be storyguide characters; a player character could willingly finance another player character's menagerie, and if the storyguide can encourage such behavior all the better.
Potential backers might be:
- • A magus' parens donates two pawns of vis a year and asks nothing in return.
- • A magus' parens reluctantly gives three pawns of annual vis for ten years, with the agreement to receive two pawns of annual vis for the next twenty years.
- • A Bonisagus magus offers to donate a season of lab work a year in return for the opportunity to experiment on one of the livestock for one season every other year.
- • A Tytalus magus offers ten Mythic Pounds a year to pay for the staff if the menagerie owner agrees to capture every magical hawk he sees (naturally, there is a specific hawk the magus has in mind).
Hermetic Projects
• A Verditius maga offers to make three items of enchantment in return for a magical hedgehog aligned with Terram (a future familiar).
• A Verditius magus offers to make six lesser enchanted items for the menagerie, in return for six magical animals of any type (he only wants them to drain their Magic Might to empower his magic items).
• A Criamon maga offers a large patch of land with a magical aura in the Alps, in return for thirty pawns of vis over fifteen years.
• A Jerbiton magus offers a large patch of land in the Alps, in exchange for a painted picture of the menagerie (the land is plagued by an Infernal beast that the Jerbiton accidentally released).
• A Tremere magus offers a magical wolf protector, in exchange for constant visiting rights (because a menagerie is a new idea, he wants to keep tabs on how powerful the captured beasts become).
• A Mercere redcap offers his assistance
every Spring for ten years, in return for a magical, talking horse (he leaves as soon as he gets his horse).
• A Flambeau magus offers ten pawns of vis annually for ten years, in return for the chance to battle every dragon the menagerie owner finds (he'll start demanding that the owner find him a dragon after the second year).