I played around with the demo version a little, I don’t know how it distinguishes between Childhood and Later Life. Any additional work you need me to do for you to be satisfied, let me know. I feel a bit guilty for not just using Metacreator from the beginning.
As a pointless aside, the trouble I have remembering how to spell my own damn name gives me a clue as to why it died out.
re: Finesse Crafting - it’s rabbit hole I won’t try to force beyond what you’re comfortable with. Unfortunately, it’s spread across several books; the main 4 being Covenants, Houses of Hermes: Societas, Art and Academe, and City and Guild (oddly, the least of the four). Basically. you replicate crafting with a Per+Finesse roll on the requisite Rego+Form; the EF is the same as for crafting, but with an increase to the EF for using magic and a bonus for familiarity (which is where the +3 for Craft 5 came from )
re: Uillorard’s service - I’m not clear exactly what’s being asked of him. If that’s meant to be, then fine, but if you want to clarify OOC, I’d appreciate it.
You’re quite right: I need to clarify that and I promise to do that… maybe tomorrow. Too tired tonight and slightly too twitchy about the American election result.
In the meantime, could you please give me page references to what you’re thinking of in the various books. Not going to say yes or no yet but I have my suspicions about how badly the spread out nature of the rules can create not previously anticipated interactions and synergies.
Here’s my report on Finesse Crafting. 
The “main” writeup is on Covenants 49, which sets out a baseline of how it works.
Art & Academe expands the uses to some more esoteric ones, on 60 (performing surgery), 66 (preparing ingredients for preservation as an apothecary would), 70 (replicating philosophic formulae), and 132 (replicating art).
City and Guild, upon looking again, doesn’t really add anything regarding magical crafting. Though it goes into more detail on what can be accomplished at different ease factors with crafting generally, mostly on 67-70.
Houses of Hermes: Societates has a section on finesse with combat spells; which is on 29-30 (the School of Vilano) and 35-38. There’s also a section in between that deals with invisibility in combat in more detail, which is useful as it’s very easy for magi to turn invisible. There is also a section on non-combat finesse on 60-62, part of a larger section which goes into useful detail on some other aspects of magic. This is where the finesse bonuses/penalties for familiarity (or lack thereof) come from.
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As I write this, results are not in yet, but leaning toward bad news. Without getting too political, it’s shocking what Rupert Murdoch managed to do to the political landscape in both our countries. Hopefully we can start to recover sometime soon.
When you get taken to the laboratory of the departed Flambeau mage, it is set out with the basic appurtenances of a Laboratory. It is on the first floor and has a large open window facing south towards the sun. No glass but a set of stout shutters that can be closed to keep the place warm. Speaking of keeping warm there is a large fire pit just before the window: this gives +1 to all rolls involving Ignem in this Lab.
It will take you about a season to get it arranged as you like it. It is not currently large or well organised enough to fit out any features that would give bonuses to other laboratory rolls but you could clear out the fire pit to leave space for something you prefer to have in a season but not replace it with something else.
(The Lab has been Refined by one step which was used to put in the Minor Outfitting Virtue:
Superior Heating: The lab has superior facilities for heating, and the snug occupant is never chilly. For example, there is under-floor heating, or several fireplaces. +1 Upkeep, +1 Health, +1 Aesthetics;
+1 Ig.
Also the Refinement gave a +1 Safety rating. There are no Flaws.)
As to the task laid upon you by Julia, you know that the setting out of a laboratory from bare walls and floor to a basic set up takes two seasons by one mage or one season by two. Assuming it can be cleared out, the lab of the departed necromancer would take about as long as this one would to fit up. Julia expects you to demonstrate your ability to work to organise yourself and others and also to provide ‘some token of your ingenuity’. You rather think that she was thinking of an enchantment but once spoken she can’t take the instruction back and an example of Craftsmanship augmented by magical Finesse is appropriate. You might use that opportunity to help improve the labs in some way or at least give the new owners some help in making them more Refined.
My suggestion re: Finesse Crafting would be that Uillorard is able to provide the free lab virtues Flawless Equipment and Flawless Tools (Cov 118) by creating lab equipment for everyone. I would suggest it may take a season to get set up initially for all the labs, but maintenance afterward probably wouldn’t, so other things could come up for him to do (such as enchanting items.)
Edit: Now I see, he’s being asked to help on setup; so I’ll hope the crafting itself won’t take a separate season.
I would say not: you’re using a spell to mimic a craftman’s skills.
However, each type of crafting needed would take a spell roll to create something special and that would risk failure and delay if you wasted the raw materials.
It occurs to me that lab equipment necessarily include several sorts of raw material. I would say that your character would need to craft wood (Herbam) and two sorts of Terram, glass and metal.
Flawless Equipment and Flawless Tools are both Free Virtues so I don’t think they need space prepared for them (if I’m reading the rules right). I would say that for each Laboratory it would be either one or the other not both, given the time constraints.
Is that fair? How do you feel?
Rego Herbam, based on the example in covenants, would be level 10 - base 5 +1 touch +0 mom/ind (doing it spontaneously so he doesn’t need the group target or the flexibility); He’s got Rego 12 + Sta 2 + Aura 3 + Loud Words 1 + Exaggerated Gestures 1; so he’ll successfully cast on a 2+ on the die, which basically means he succeeds as long as he doesn’t botch.
He’s doing everything spontaneously, do you want a bunch of rolls? He’s got 1/100 chance of botching, but he doesn’t have twilight prone, so unless there are extra botch dice he can’t end up in twilight, so it shouldn’t make a huge difference.
One or the other of the virtues makes sense for now; maybe after more time has passed people will be able to get the other one? Or if he focuses on just that rather than lab setup (which provides more benefit to the incumbent magi)?
Everything seems fair. I think his lab-ratness vs adventurousness has been a little overestimated, but that’s fine. Though I do feel a little bad because he could probably be very helpful with the wand trap. I guess that’s why one magus per adventure…
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Your character needs to co-ordinate with the other characters both so that you and they can commit the time to get the labs organised and to decide what sort of inspired work you are going to do for them.
Yes, I will require the rolls: remember the old role-playing rule:
One in a million chances come up nine times out of ten.
I’m totally fine with rolling, just seems like there would have to be hundreds of rolls.
It depends on the sort of materials you want to use in a particular project. I’m not going to impose a roll for every pot but when you use Creo magic to do the job there will be a spell roll for each class of work you want to do to reflect what you have done over the whole project. Let’s see how it goes.