STATUS
The printer sample box came today! We couldn't wait to show you all the Ars Magica goodness, so we put together a quick unboxing video for you ...

NEW GOOGLE DOC CHARACTER SHEET
Why do we need another character sheet? Because I like to put all my saga stuff into tabs in a single Google Doc, but Google Docs won't take PDFs. :(

Just make your own copy of the Google Doc I put together, and you're all set!
COPY THE GOOGLE DOC CHARACTER SHEET HERE

ARS MAGICA OPEN LICENSE

 -Michelle Nephew
  Ars Magica Definitive Co-Producer

JOHN TALKS ABOUT
SCHOLARSHIP INSPIRING ADVENTURE
I admit, I’m a sucker for medieval scholarship. When a post on BlueSky alerted me to an article by Mohamed Qassiti about the Liber pantegni, a medieval Latin translation of a seminal Arabic work about medicine, I immediately started thinking about how to use this for our family Ars Magica saga. An article by Monica Green about this work and its translator, Constantinus Africanus, gave me more ideas.

The Liber pantegni is a great example of what in Ars Magica rules is a “summa,” a book pulling together knowledge about medicine, surgery, and treatments in one work. It also illustrates the quirks of medieval books: translations of varying qualities, incompleteness, and the physical constraints and mishaps of copying lengthy technical works by hand and carrying them across continents (and sometimes losing many pages to water damage in storms on the sea!).

Here’s what I’m doing with these historical nuggets.

For a baseline of comparison, I’m looking at Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine, as described on page 138 of Art & Academe: Summa Level 6, Quality 8, in its Latin translation (9 in Arabic original). I think this would provides an upper boundary of stats for the Pantegni.

We can describe the basic version of the Liber pantegni, Contantine the African’s Latin translation of Kitāb kāmil aṣ-Ṣināʻa aṭ-Ṭibbiyya by ‘Alī ibn al-‘Abbās al-Majūsī’s, as it might be found in the libraries of monasteries, medical schools, and the Order of Hermes in Mythic Europe, 1220 AD. This Latin work contains all ten books of the Theorica, but only three incomplete books out of ten in the Practica. Based on the contents of those books, it can be used as a summa in the abilities Medicine (Level 4), Craft: Apothecary (Level 2) and Chirurgy (Level 2). Stephen of Antioch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_of_Pisa) had complaints about the completeness and accuracy of Constantine’s translation, so let’s assign it a Quality of 6.

But then, the twist: A “complete” version of Liber pantegni, with all twenty books of Theorica and Practica together, began to circulate long after Constantine’s death. Green wrote, “Exasperatingly, we still can’t pinpoint when and where this last, unknown editor was working. No extant copies of the ‘re-created’ Pantegni Practica have been found that date before the second quarter of the thirteenth century,” which dovetails quite nicely with the canonical year of 1220 for Ars Magica. So...enter the fantasy fiction!

In our Mythic Europe, a monk at the famous Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino, where Constantine the African worked, carries on his legacy. He has finished the great work of his predecessor (though he is too modest to attach his own name). With the full Practica, it now has Medicine Level 5, Apothecary: Craft Level 4, and Chirurgy Level 4. 

Now I need to develop a scenario hook for our family Ars Magica game. Inspired by Mohamed Qassiti's article about the spread of Constantine's translation into the Germanic lands, and with our spring covenant set in the Tyrolean Alps, I imagine the monk from Monte Cassino, bringing a copy of the newly completed Theoretica and Practica together. His destination is the monastery of St. Michael in Hildesheim, where medicine is taught and the incomplete Pategni is already known. His journey would carry him through the Brenner Pass and along the Inn Valley, where our covenant, Silverwatch, is perched.

Throw some trouble his way, give the magi and companions the chance to save the day, and as a reward he may stay long enough to allow them to copy the new manuscript and add it to their own library! For a spring covenant, this rare book would be a precious asset, even though it's not magical. It can be studied for experience points, and copies or access to it would be valuable for trade and diplomacy with the more established communities of the Order of Hermes.

- John Nephew
 Atlas Games Co-Owner

Image: Pantegni pars prima theorica, from National library of the Netherlands, via Wikipedia. The entire manuscript is digitized online, if you're curious!