What is this?

 You ask, and I will answer. This is a solo Ars Magica saga, utilizing the excellent solo play rules to be found on the Atlas Games forum. Ars Magica is a tabletop game intended for troupe-style play: players play multiple characters of vastly different power levels and focuses, and share the role of storyguide, who narrates and leads the ongoing story. It is set in Mythic Europe, a fantastical version of the 13th century in which most of what people believed at the time is, in fact, true. Imbalanced humors and bad air lead to disease, demons are responsible for everything from famine to family arguments, and secretive wizards lurk in hidden towers. 

The most powerful of these secret wizards and the center of most Ars sagas are the magi known as the Order of Hermes, a union of wizards spanning Europe and the Mediterranean, founded in the 8th century by a sorcerer named Bonisagus, his apprentice Trianoma, and an eclectic band of hedge wizards collectively known as the Founders. Since then, a lot of stuff has happened—we don’t need to go over it too deeply. Relevant to our story is the establishment of the Levant Tribunal in 802 with the founding of the Urbs Rubra Covenant (a covenant being essentially an estate for magi, a tribunal being a local governing body), its tense peace with the Islamic Order of Solomon, and the roots of Hermetic magic in the Roman Cult of Mercury, which perhaps came from older magics. 

This saga will tell the story of the eponymous Serpent of Siwa, Jabril ex Miscellanea, a Beast Master raised by slithering asps, and his newly-established home in Siwa Oasis, a small stretch of paradise deep within Egypt’s inhospitable western desert. Grogs will play a part, and likely a companion, but there will only ever be one magus in residence at Siwa Oasis.

This is mostly a chronicle for me, but if you enjoy or have questions, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you. Something to note, I am using canon from 4th edition, especially the fact that there is a covenant at the Giza pyramids made up of Ra worshippers associated with House Ex Miscellanea.