Integrating Covenants (cont'd) · Magic

needed to manage a menagerie, but the players will still need to spend covenant build points on specialists (see Staffing, later). Several of the other Residents choices include magical beasts as steeds (Magical Soldiers) or magical animals (Inhuman Residents). Prestige (Minor External Relations Boon) could be a consequence of a magical menagerie at covenant start-up, or a Boon that crops up once the menagerie is established. A covenant with Hermetic Services (Major External Relations Hook) could be bound to provide magical animals to other magi as familiars or vis sources, meaning that maintaining the menagerie is of primary importance. Mystical Allies (Major Surroundings Boon) could provide a source of livestock if the allies are magical animals. Harvesting the herd might, however, affect the ally relationship. A Chase (Minor Surroundings Boon) is a mundane breeding farm that

could serve as a prototype for a magical stud farm, or if combined with another Boon or Hook that allows an aura in the chase, be the actual magical menagerie.

If you are detailing the wealth and poverty of your covenant (pages 56–71), you will need to specify the expenditure cost of the menagerie's animals and handlers. Regular staff cost the same number of expenditure points as Other Covenfolk on the Points of Inhabitants table (page 63), and the overseer specialists count as Specialists. To determine the inhabitants points of each animal, compare it to a horse (1 point). The typical covenant horse is Size +3. For each Size smaller than +3, double the number of animals that cost 1 point. Two Size +2 animals, four Size +1 animals, and eight Size 0 animals all cost 1 point. For larger animals, double the number of points for each Size increase. A Size +4 animal costs 2 points and a Size +5 animal costs 4 points. For carnivores, double the point cost. Keeping a pack of 12 wolves, for example, could cost 3 inhabitants points. A wolf is Size 0. Eight Size 0 herbivores cost 1 point, so four Size 0 carnivores cost 1 point. Thus, 12 1-point carnivorous wolves cost 3 points.

A menagerie could also be used as a realia, a collection of magical examples of typically mundane things (creatures) used for study. Like books, whose author cannot study the book he writes, the collector cannot study the collection. To determine the Quality of the realia, count breeds instead of individual animals, so that a collection of 30 magical horses of 2 breeds counts as a tractatus of Quality 2. A menagerie realia usually provides study only in Magic Lore; however, a collection of several different types of magical animals, all connected to the same Form, could allow study of that Form.

Ars Magica Fifth Edition draws a clear line between the nature of magical and faerie creatures. In essence, magical creatures are perfect examples of a particular group and have no need or concern for human interaction. Faeries, on the other hand, need human interaction for healthy existence, and are made manifest by stories, passions, and recurring events. Yet within this distinction, ArM5 has not officially categorized supernatural creatures, allowing us to decide if a creature is magical or faerie, depending on the motivations and natures of our stories. It is entirely possible that both versions exist, and that within your saga players could find magical and faerie dragons, cats, hippocampuses, eagles, and whales.

Maintaining a menagerie of magical creatures is eminently possible; maintaining a menagerie of faerie creatures is far more difficult. Faeries do not breed. nor can they be bound as familiars by the majority of Hermetic magi. Most faeries are locked within their stories, few of which pertain to menageries. Escaping from a menagerie might be part of a faerie's story, or avoiding capture for one, but the faerie needs to repeat the story to maintain its vitality, meaning that the escape or capture cycle needs to be re-enacted again and again.

Virtue, just as it cannot instill someone with The Gift. Beasts of Virtue can breed, however, and it is the breeder's wish that its inherited Virtues and Flaws will pass on to its offspring. It is not clear to Hermetic magi if Beasts of Virtue are immortal. Like starvation and breathing, some Beasts of Virtue are susceptible to these deprivations, while others are immune. Aging may fall under a similar category, relevant to each Beast of Virtue on a case by case basis.

A second type of magical beasts is Beasts of Legend, which includes the many sorts of creatures associated with the Magic realm. Unlike a Beast of Virtue, which must be a superior version of its mundane brother, a Beast of Legend can be anything: exemplars, perversions, chimeras, and utterly fantastic. The mirmicoleon, catoblepas, leucrota, charadrius, griffon, phoenix, roc, kraken, basilisk, manticore, and dragon are all Beasts of Legend, but so too are the magical lineages of the Founders' cats and the birds of Nephelococcygia. If an animal has Magic Might and is not a Beast of Virtue, it is by default a Beast of Legend.

The least, and most tainted, type of magical beast is Transformed Animals, creatures warped by powerful magic. A Transformed Animal does not have Magic Might, nor will it reproduce a second version of itself. Without Magic Might, it would live in a menagerie only as a curiosity. However, a Transformed Animal offers good practice for staff members, who can learn to deal with a weak magical beast before being charged with the care of a proper magical animal.