Introduction

Welcome to Tales of Mythic Europe, a collection of short adventures for Ars Magica Fifth Edition. The stories given here cover a wide range of themes, handling demons, faeries, and magic, as well as the more mundane problems arising in Mythic European society. No matter what the interests of your troupe, there's something here for them.

This section provides quick summaries of the stories, without giving away any important details, to help troupes decide which ones they would like to play. If the troupe has multiple storyguides, all can read this section to choose the stories they would like to run, and then only read the details for their own stories.

"The Champion's Portion" takes place in the tumultuous lands of Ireland. A temporary magical path leads player characters from their covenant, no matter where it is, to the province of Ulster, where opposed forces clash for a fortress and a magical resource. The player characters are asked to join as allies to the various factions that desire these goals. But these contests pale in comparison to the one offered by a mystical entity, who promises a great prize — the champion's portion — to the winner of its contests. As mundane and magical conflicts come to a head, the PCs must decide their own course of action.

"The Ship of Desire" is a light-hearted adventure that allows players to explore the motivations and passions of their companion-level characters. The scenario starts with the PCs aboard a sailing ship accompanied by several other passengers; a merchant, a knight, a musician, and a messenger among others. They all seem affable enough and as the journey progresses they become friendlier. But friendliness soon oversteps its boundaries, and the longer the ship sails, the more friendly some of the passengers become. Is this normal behavior for ship-bound travelers or is something foul afoot? Can the PCs dance through the various social entanglements that arise and uncover the cause for these sudden romances?

A magus escapes Faerie after centuries of imprisonment. Friendless and disorientated, he confronts the player characters and then flees into the wilds. Powerful supernatural forces cluster about this man, as nightmare creatures and a crippled goddess of fortune vie for his fate. Can the players guide him to safety, and the freedom to determine his own destiny?

The cash-strapped Knights Hospitaller have turned their hungry eyes on the property of your covenant. How can your covenant retrieve its possessions from the powerful crusading order, without risking its wrath or breaking the Hermetic Code? What lengths will your characters go to in order to retrieve what is rightfully theirs, and can they really trust an old ally?

A visiting Jerbiton mage asks that the PCs assist a nonmage cousin of his with some legal difficulties. The visitor has

his reasons for not attending to this himself, and offers reasonable payment for the favor. Of course, he doesn't necessarily mention all the possible complications. His cousin is a noble widow, who is endeavoring to hold onto her lands and protect her daughters' dowries against legal and other challenges from her neighbors. So the PCs must help her case, deter her neighbors, and maybe see off a few trouble-making ruffians — all within the limits of Hermetic law. There's little in the way of a fixed plot; the PCs simply have to deal with obstacles, come up with plans, and avoid offending powerful figures. The need for subtlety rather than force makes it suitable for use with PCs of almost any power level, including possibly companions or grogs rather than magi.

When a small village comes under the spell of mysterious music, no one knows who is safe. Who will be the next victim? How does the murderer commit his crimes? Will your characters risk their sanity to stop the killings? This scenario demonstrates that even Hermetic magi can participate in murder mysteries, and is suitable for magi and companion characters.

Every century, forgotten stories say, the population of a certain village is slaughtered by the ghosts of Viking raiders. The raid is due, and the story is remembered, but can the player characters lead it to a different ending? In this story, conventions concerning the repercussions of magical violence may be put aside.

The conflicts in small villages can be as bitter as those between great princes, for all that their scale is shorter. When one family rises quickly, resentment festers. Now, the conflicts that have risen between a returned crusader and the family of a village elder seem ready to break out in murder.

Battle Abbey has been expanding its estate into the marsh for generations, with a fair and generous landlord supporting the region. But their work has now struck a new path; one that could bring it into conflict with the Order of Hermes. What's more, there's something hatefilled beneath the marsh, something eager for release and the monks may be about to unearth it. How do the magi contain the threat? What accommodation can they reach with the monks? And where does the corruption within the Abbey start and end?

The rules for designing and playing faeries have been expanded by Realms of Power: Faerie. This insert contains a kernel of those changes, so that people who do not have the faerie supplement can make full use of this book.

Faeries are made up of stray matter held together with mystical rules. Despite this, their physical attacks are not blocked by Magic Resistance, including the Parma Magica.

Faeries cannot break their roles. They would prefer to die, because death is rarely permanent for faeries.

The faeries in this book have Pretenses instead of Abilities. Most faeries cannot learn, so they use faerie glamour to mimic human Abilities. Skill in mimicking a particular Ability is called Pretense. For example, a character with a Single Weapon Ability of 5 or more, when facing a faerie, may make a Perception + Awareness roll against an Ease Factor of 12 – the Ability score the faerie is pretending to have. If successful, the character realizes that the faerie's weapon does not travel through all the space between its strikes and blocks; instead, sometimes it simply appears in the locations where its movements end.

In most scenarios, the difference between Abilities and Pretenses is insignificant. A faerie knight trying to kill a character is still dangerous regardless of whether he is using his sword the way a human would or not. In some scenarios, spotting that a character is using Pretense is a way of detecting its faerie nature. This is significant, for example, in the scenario where the characters are told they will be fighting the ghosts of Vikings, because it tells the player characters that their rivals have powers and vulnerabilities that are different from those that they have prepared for.

Faeries have an innate ability to regenerate damage, retaining only those superficial injuries necessary to make their roles believable. They never suffer fatigue, although

they may pretend to. They are unencumbered by the normal accoutrements of the role they are playing, which are formed from the glamour of the faerie, and increase its Touch range.

Cognizance is the degree to which a faerie knows it is a faerie, and what that means about its relationship to stories. Most of the faeries in these stories have the Cognizant Within Role Free Virtue. This means they are aware of their faerie nature in a limited way. They try to play a role accurately, and cannot break role even if it leads to their deaths. There are some faeries, with the Highly Cognizant Virtue, who are able to adapt their roles to feed on human emotional energy. These are the most dangerous faeries, because they are able to change their roles. Incognizant faeries, conversely, do not even know they are faeries: they follow their roles because they have no potential to understand any other option.

Faerie Sight is the ability to read glamour, the magical rules from which faeries are constructed. Assume that characters with Faerie Sight can see magical things, and tell what other faeries want, just by looking at them.

Faerie Speech allows faeries to pretend to know the language of whomever they are talking to. If the faerie fails to penetrate Magic Resistance the faerie's sounds are gibberish. Faerie speech is a Mentem effect with a Penetration as given below.

Faerie Speech Penetration: the faerie's Might score + Penetration Pretense + aura adjustment

The Penetration Pretense is doubled if the human speaks to the faerie.

Intricacy Points are used in the Realms of Power: Faerie rules during character creation. Ignore them: they aren't significant in play.

A Traditional Ward is a taboo: the faerie may not touch a thing protected by the ward with its glamour. The faerie is likely uncomfortable in the presence of the ward, but is not compelled to flee. The faerie cannot regenerate Might points in the presence of a traditional ward. If forced to touch the ward, the glamour holding the faerie's body together begins to decay. The damage to the faerie's body can be simulated with the Heat and Corrosion rules found on page 181 of the core rulebook. Assume that the object acts as a source of damage with an intensity of +6.

A Sovereign Ward is a powerful taboo. A faerie cannot hurt someone carrying that faerie's sovereign ward. This includes indirect harm like burning down the building the warded person is in, or poisoning the well at which they are likely to drink. Direct contact with a sovereign ward destroys the body of a faerie, removing it from the scenario.

Faerie powers can work in holy places under certain conditions that are too elaborate to describe here. When the story requires a faerie power to work in the Dominion, simply assume it does.