Sadly, my life is worth more than this thread- to me anyway.

What do you mean? That your wife would kill you if you posted a pic of, well, you know?

Think of it as an actual play thread!

Hell surviving long enough to focus the camera would be a challenge; I'd never make it anywhere near the computer.

And to stay on topic, a little bit more about the mechanics for those PCs in Polaris (although terms like "PC" and "NPC" are pretty much meaningless in a game without a GM, so the book talks about "protagonists", "antagonists" and "secondary characters" instead).

Each one of them has three Value scores which are occasionally used as target numbers for roll-under tests during a conflict: Ice and Light which represent external and inner sources of strength, respectively, as well as Zeal which turns into Weariness once it falls to zero. Both Ice and Light always start at one and may increase with experience, while Zeal always starts at four and will decrease with experience. Once Zeal is replaced with Weariness, the score begins to rise again, and after that (and only after that) the characters may actually die.

The protagonists also have a varying number of Aspects divided into four Themes: Offices (formal positions and titles), Blessings (miscellaneous allies and equipment), Ability (personal talents and skills) and Fate (a catch-all category for just about anything that will be important to the character's destiny). These traits don't have numerical values attached to them, but instead they can be temporarily "exhausted" to continue the conflict negotiation into different directions. Every protagonist begins play with two of them that can be chosen freely, as well as the Office Aspect "Knight of the Order of the Stars", the Blessing Aspect "Starlight Sword" and the Ability Aspect "Lore of Demons." They all also share the same initial Fate Aspect, something that links the characters together, although what that might be is up to the players.

Ars Magica: The Alpha GM alocates GMing responsibilities to the other players. Some options are: giving each player a location to GM, a single episode, a story arc, or some combination of GMing juristiction.
 
Any disputes about medieval authenticity fall under the juristiction of the 'expert' on the subject.
 
Optionaly, the Alpha GM can be replaced by a democracy of the players. In practice it's kinda wierd because as a democracy, you can just vote 'we win'.
 
To remedy that wierdness, there are some optional rules that put limits on how much candy the democracy can vote to bestow upon themselves.