Sanctuary of Ice had had two covenants cut from it, to give troupes space to write their own. Rough drafts of them were produces, and I published them several web pages ago. Shadow of the Moon used a similar system to the Dreamlands supplement for Call of Cthulhu, where each character had two sheets, and they became increasingly disconnected as the version from inside the covenant’s aura became more powerful than the mundane alternative. Labyrinth of Lanes was an urban Bjornaer covenant, made up of the kinds of marginal creatures that no longer fit inside the house with its demand that Heartbeats be noble. As an Australian I’m a bad choice to write this, because, like most of my countryfolk, I admire the resilience of urban species. I can’t see why a Bjornaer couldn’t be a “bin chicken”. To explain, in Australia we do have pigeons, but that niche is also held by something about four times the size that looks like a Sacred Ibis that’s had a rough morning. We put our cities on their wetlands and in response they’ve decided we owe them hot chips. So, to replace Labyrinth, Alvearium.
Alvearium is a covenant I designed for the Greater Alps as the frame story for what eventually became Mythic Europe Magazine. I even had a logo for it and was going to use it instead of “Dames From Folktales” as my URL.
Eventually I decided to make things obvious, and to not use a narrative frame. The magazine wouldn’t be an in-universe document. I wanted, instead, for the magazine to be a simple tool for storyguides. That requires modern English and a layout like a cookbook or instruction manual. There’s a little useful material here though, which I should eventually write up as a complete covenant. Here’s that residue.
Alvearium is Latin for “apiary”. It’s the Mercere covenant for the Alps. It collects the folklore of the Order, collates it, and produces The Book of Places You Must Not Go. That’s an old hook: it’s a list of dangerous places the Mercere keep so that redcaps know what supernatural threats to avoid. Magi from more militant Houses, however, may use The Book as a handy list of dangerous places to test their skills within.
By coincidence after I decided not to finish working on Alvearium, I was listening to an author who read the following text from Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum. Novum Organum is, loosely, what we’d crib from if we wanted a book to stand in for Bonisagus’s The Art of Magic. It’s a very early attempt to create what we now call the scientific method and favours empirical experimentation as a way to increase knowledge, followed by publication and peer acceptance. The piece that’s of main use here is:
“Those who have handled sciences have either been men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant; they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes the middle course; it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy.”
Bacon’s point is that it is not enough to collect knowledge and hoard it (like the ant), nor to create elaborate networks of theory not tested by experience (like the spider) but that testing theory and finding evidence are symbiotic processes. Hermetic magi have always been oddly modern because we like the idea of them have weird laboratories full of glass vials and potential explosions, which is why I say Bacon is a useful model for Bonisagus.
At the core of Alvearium is a character of mine from decades ago, a redcap called Rosa de Marco who leads the covenant. Rosa’s secret is that’s she not human: she a faerie horror that was tempted to give away her hordes of warriors and become the grand-daughter of a Hermetic storyweaver. She’s now an adult, and acts as the collator of the Book. The constant flow of stories through Alvearium, and the incessant need for the Book, grant her so much vitality that it buttresses her against attempts to change her nature further. Small amounts of her previous focus slip through. The covenant’s name, which means “beehive” and its symbol, the gold hexagon, are remnants of what she once was. If annoyed sufficiently she might command swarms of bees without noticing she’s doing it, or even spawn new Apian Warriors. These are Gigeresque monstrosities she once threatened a piece of the Rhineland with. Rosa doesn’t want to become a monster again, and the parts of her that slumber are willing to do terrible things to remain asleep.
Games From Folktales 