[ericthered]

Originally Posted by hal

The population size is 279 people excluding your Noble's family. Let's say for the sake of argument, you have 5 in your family. That's about 284 people. At 2% of the population being mageborn, that leaves us with a total of 5.68 mageborn. Let's not split hairs (or people!) and call it 6 mageborn total.

Names            ST    DX    IQ    HT    Magery    Social    Gender    Age    Death    Skill Points
Cathaoir Rodway        10    10    12    10    0    Noble    Male    42.402    74.548    62
Garritt Hazell        9    11    8    10    1    Serf    Male    50.868    56.124    79
Ressie Till        10    12    12    10    0    Serf    Female    42.223    59.373    62
Llenlleawg Symon    9    10    11    9    1    Serf    Male    27.864    34.672    33
Giles Hoar        9    12    10    9    0    Serf    Male    34.821    52.287    47
Janette Rowley        12    9    10    9    0    Freeman    Female    45.095    65.689    68

Quoting this for convenience. These are my mages to spend. Observations about them:

• Cathaoir is nobleman, aged 40, has IQ 12 and magery 0. He's very close to Sir Zeedrick in Age. Fitting him into the household is strange: he occupies the spot you'd expect sir zeedrick to have. We could rebuild Zeedrick with magery, give the magery slot to one of Zeedrick's children, or add a member of the houseful and say he's Zeedick's brother or brother-in-law or bonded mage... and figure out where Cathaoir's family is. As a noble, Cathaoir is likely to be built for combat, and with IQ 12 and 62 points getting a range of spells in usable range won't be too hard.
• Garrit is a 50 year old serf with IQ 8 and Magery 1. His IQ is low, but with 79 points, he certainly knows one or two useful spells at a pretty good level. He's going to be VERY interesting to "spend".
• Ressie is a 42 year old serf with IQ 12 and Magery 0. She'll be limited in her casting time by the need to care for her children, but she's got high IQ and 62 points to spend. I'm kind of curious about her family situation, because if her oldest is 10, she might be finally able to cast full-time.
• Llenlleawg is a 27 year old serf with IQ 11, Magery 1, and HT 9. He's small, sickly, and the youngest of the group. He's as easy to teach magic as either Ressie or Cathaoir, and has magery 1, so can learn those spells. 33 points should be enough to make him useful. With HT 9, he can't cast 10 FP spells... which is mostly relevant for soloing area spells. He's really a stand-out mage... too bad he's going to die in 7 years (not that anyone actually knows that). Probably from his HT 9.
• Giles is a 34 year old serf with IQ 10, Magery 0, and HT 9. He's the least remarkable of the lot, with only average intelligence, no magery 1, and reduced FP. He's probably worth training as a mage on most manors anyway, and I'm glad I have him, because he's a good "baseline" case rather than the wealth of IQ+Magery 12 mages Zeedrick has. his 47 skill points are pretty nice though.
• Janette is a 45 year old freewoman with IQ 10, Magery 0, and HT 9. This is like Giles, except she's a farmer and a woman. And totally ripped (ST 12) It will be interesting to see how she works out. As with Ressie, checking out her family situation is a good idea to see how much she can actually do.

None of these mages are marginal: Gerrit has had time to overcome his slow nature and increase his talents, and Janette and Giles is what everyone else expects to have to work with.

Part of me wants to run the manor 15 years ago before these mages picked up all their experience, just to see what it looks like when you don't have six mages in their prime and make sure they can get to where I think they can.