Story seed

A story seed is a brief idea for an Ars Magica story that players can create for themselves around a single theme or topic. A story seed may be little more than a suggested starting point, or it may be a more complete outline of how a story could unfold.

In Fifth Edition products, story seeds are usually explicitly labeled and appear in a grey text box (called an "inset") to highlight them. Earlier editions also included story seeds, but often implicitly or inline with the text.