One of the advantages of doing fan work, over official work for the line, is that you can include internal contradictions. In the ashcan for the Cornwall material that’s currently out I use the date for the submergence of Lyonesse which is given in the Gesta Romanorum. There is however a piece of folklore that places the submergence far earlier and I can include both in the gazetter because neither is required to be true across all people playing Ars Magica games everywhere. Pick whichever you prefer.
This version is from ScillyLegends. I’ve removed some of the contextual information at the beginning that tries to explain who King Arthur was, because as roleplayers I assume you’re up to speed on that. It begins slightly after the end of the Battle of Slaughterbridge
Plot hooks at the end.
The next evening, a band of warriors was seen urging their weary steeds across the wild heaths that were common in Cornwall. Their course was in the direction of Cassiteris, and of that fair wide tract of country called, in the Cornish tongue, “Lethowsow.” Their numbers were formidable, amounting to several hundreds, but they were in no mood nor condition for resistance, as was shown by their hacked armour, and torn surcoats, and, in many instances, by the blood that welled from their unstaunched wounds. They hurried, for life and death, over the wastes before them. Not a word was spoken. Now and then a straggler fell to the rear from sheer exhaustion, but his absence in the disordered ranks was unmarked. Sometimes they paused for a few minutes at a brook or spring, suffered their horses to take a hasty drink, tightened the saddle-girths, and were gone. Their pace, as may be supposed, was not too quick, but they made some progress, and when, as darkness fell, they drew their reins, and prepared to encamp for the night, it was after thirty miles sped over rough and broken roads. Glory had apparently little to do with that tumultuous disarray. Yet these jaded riders, flying before the face of their pursuer, were all that remained of the chivalry of Britain. Arthur lay dead upon the plain; the banner that had covered his breast, until all was lost, was now borne, torn and bloody, in the van. The survivors of that dreadful day were fleeing for their lives, and Mordred thundered upon their rear.
They arose in the morning, and bouned them again for flight. Veterans as they were, the mere hardship of a rough ride and an unbroken fast was a trifle: they recked little of either. But disgrace and defeat were new and strange evils. These were the true bitterness of death. Nor could they altogether comprehend them, nor believe them as yet to be a sad and stern reality.
They could attribute the dishonour that had tarnished their arms to no particular cause: there was no apparent reason for their fall. The stars in their courses had fought against them, and palsied their stout arms, and made their skill and valour vain. They brooded over these things as they rode on. They did not ponder deeply, for the recent shock had confused and rendered dull their ideas, but thoughts like these floated unconsciously through their brain. Arthur of Britain had gone down, and the best lances in the world were flying for their lives, with a conquering foe in hot chase after them.
The course of these waking visions was interrupted by the notes of a trumpet, which followed them with a prolonged wail through the air. Then it came louder, and yet more loud. They halted for a moment, and looked back. The veteran warriors could not brook to fly. They had submitted to misfortune: they could no longer bear disgrace. As they gazed, the air became radiant with the reflected light of steel, as shields, and morions, and lances, gleamed fitfully from the brow of a distant hill. It was the glimmering of the pursuer’s arms. Should they make a stand and die? Should they condescend to purchase life by a farther retreat? There was the traitor, the murderer of his kinsman and sovereign. Should they not breathe their chargers, and await his coming, and strike one stroke for revenge?
While they paused, gloomy and irresolute, and gazed steadily at the advancing forces, there seemed to come between them a shadowy dimness, that assumed gradually the form of a gigantic figure. It was like a mountain mist, but yet it wore the shape and aspect of humanity. There was a likeness in its awful lineaments, a resemblance to one honoured and long departed, which the aged knights recog- nised at once. It was the awful ghost of Merlin! Like a sullen cloud, but yet instinct with the principle of life, it upreared its huge outlines between the spoilers and their prey, terrible in its indistinctness and with a supernatural and spiritual grandeur, rather felt than seen. It was a gulf between the two parties, impassable as that between the Egyptians and the flying Hebrews, and it troubled the following host, and checked them in their headlong speed.
And so the chase continued. Sullenly the fugitives retired to the refuge they had chosen, and as sullenly did Mordred follow, hating those he had injured, hunting them to the death, and restrained only in his vindictive career by the clouded aspect of that dusky barrier, which he dared not brave.
By the side of the road, not far from the spot where in after days the piety of Athelstan founded the college and church of St. Buryan, there dwelt a holy hermit. In his poor cell one of the knights, whose wounds were mortal, laid down and departed from life. As the hermit knelt and prayed by his body, Mordred rode up. His face was pale as death, and was rendered still more ghastly by a blue livid wound, that traversed his whole forehead, and was lost amid his hair, matted and soaked with blood. He dismounted and entered the hut. The hermit and the dead man were its only tenants, save him. He looked upon the face of the corpse. It was the face of an early comrade of his own. The same blood ran in the veins of each of their mothers. He turned gloomily away and signed the sign of the cross, involuntarily, upon his breast.
The hermit sighed, when he beheld the action. “Alas,” said he to Mordred “thou hast in one day done more evil, than all thy ancestry have ever in their whole lives done of good. The crown of Arthur is upon thy brow, but the brand of Cain is there also. Go on, thou traitor to God and man.” And Mordred smote him angrily with his gauntlet. “Go on,” added the recluse, “thy course is wellnigh done. The shadow of a mighty one is brooding over thee. Go on, and die.” And Mordred mounted his horse and urged it furiously forward. But the animal refused to obey the spur. The power of that dread spirit was before him. It had far more terrors for the charger than bit or steel. The avenging spectre would not give place to man’s wrath.
After a long and ineffectual struggle, the might of the unearthly prevailed. The ghastly chase was resumed, with the same dogged sullenness as before. And now Mordred reached a lofty slope, from which, more clearly than he had hitherto been able to do, he could see his retiring enemies. They were already at a very considerable distance, upon that winding road which then led over the fertile tract of country called in Cornish “Lethowsow,” or, in after-days, “the Lionesse.” They were so far in advance that he could only follow their course by catching, at intervals, the gleaming of their arms. Around him was that fair land, now so long lost and forgotten, from the bosom of which men for ages had dug mineral wealth, upon which were seen no fewer than one hundred and forty stately churches, and whose beauty and fruitfulness have been the theme of many a romantic lay. Broken sunlight floated over its soft glades. It never looked so grandly glorious as on that hour of its fate.
As Mordred pressed on, full of one thought alone, already in imagination hemming in to slaughter, or driving into the waves, his enemies, his attendants and followers began to be sensible of a change in the atmosphere, of a something oppressive and horrible, though he himself perceived it not. Huge battlemented clouds, tinged with lurid red, hung over the horizon. The air became sultry and choking. A tremulous and wavy motion shook the ground at intervals. A low sound, like distant thunder, moaned around. The soldiers of his train drew closer together, awe-struck and terrified. But Mordred heard only the evil voice of his own passions. The war of the elements gave unmistakeable signs of its awaking. But Mordred perceived it not.
At last, amid a silence that might be felt, so dreadful was it, and so dull—that fearful shade, which had hitherto gone before him, and restrained his madness, suddenly itself stopped. It assumed a definite shape. It was the form of Merlin, the Enchanter. But it was even more terrible than Merlin, for it united the unearthly glare of the spectre with the grandeur of the inspired man. Right in Mordred’s path, face to face, did the avenger stand. They remained for a few seconds motionless, frowning upon each other. Neither spake, save with the eye. After those few seconds, the great wizard raised his arm. Then there ensued a confused muttering, a sound, as though the foundations of the great deep were broken up. Soon the voice of the subterranean thunder increased, and the firm soil beneath their feet began to welk and wave, and fissures appeared upon the surface, and the rock swelled like the throes of a labouring sea.
With a wild cry of agony, the band of pursuers became in turn the pursued. They wheeled and rushed away in headlong flight. But it was in vain. The earth, rent in a thousand fragments, in the grasp of that earthquake, upheaved its surface convulsively, gave one brief and conscious pause, and then, at once, sank down for ever beneath the level of the deep. In a moment, a continent was submerged, with all its works of art, and piety, with all its living tribes, with all its passions, and hopes, and fears. The soldiers of Mordred were whirled away in the stream created by that sudden gulf, which even now flows so violently over its prey below.
Last of all, Mordred remained, as it were fascinated and paralyzed, gazing at the phantom with a look in which horror struggled with hate, and which was stamped with scorn and defiance to the end. That morning had dawned upon as bright a scene as ever met the eye. At evening, there was nought from what was then first termed the Land’s-end, to St. Martin’s head, but a howling and boiling wilderness of waves, bearing here and there upon its bosom a fragment from the perished world beneath or a corse tossed upon the billows, over which sea birds wheeled and screamed. The remnant that was preserved reached in safety Cassiteris, called afterwards Silura, and now Scilly.
There the wicked ceased to trouble, and the weary were at rest. In their island home, upon which still the sea encroaches daily, they dwelt securely. From St. Martin’s height, on their arrival, they saw the catastrophe that overwhelmed their enemies, and, dismounting, knelt upon the turf, and thanked God for their deliverance.
They never more sought the Britain of their hope and fame. It would have been a changed and a melancholy home for them. Arthur was in his tomb, at Glastonbury. Guenever was dead. The Round Table was broken and its best knights perished or dispersed. Their work was done. In the Isles of Scilly, thus miraculously severed from the main land, and, as it were set apart for their sakes, they lived, and there they died. In after days their children raised a stately religious house, at Tresco, over their bones. Bat their memory gradually faded away and was forgotten.
Sometimes on a clear day there may be seen the remains of walls or buildings under the sea. Sometimes fishermen bring up relics of other times, and men wonder at them and speculate upon their cause, and use. Strangers make pilgrimages to Scilly, and marvel whether it ever exceeded its present limits. But the account of its isolation is remembered only as a confused dream; it is a mystery, an old world tale; a fragment of which, like a portion of a wreck, floats about, here and there, in the visions of the past. Such is the legend of the Lionesse.
Plot hooks
In Ars Magica there are various virtues that can be passed in the blood: that is they descend through families. If the tiny population of Scilly was bolstered by the sudden arrival of some of the finest knights in Europe could this have kept their blood strong in this relatively isolated community, allowing the characters to have the Blood of Heroes Virtue?
It seems that under Tresco Abbey many of the finest Knights of the Arthurian Court were buried. Some took up a life of monastic devotion/ Have any of these become local saints? Could these local saints assist the characters if they begin to battle Dolores, The Infernal Saint of Sorrow, who kicked off the Corruption of House Tytalus, and who is a resident in the northern part of Cornwall?
More generally if you know the burial place of a local saint doesn’t this mean that you can disinter him to find relics?
It seems like the sort of place one could be passed a sword, elm or surcoat allowing the Magic Item or Heir virtues.
If you were looking to re-establish the lineage of the Knights of the Round Table clearly this is the sort of place where one who was interested in a Merecere-style breeding program might begin.
If you were from the ialand of Oleron in the Normandy Tribunal, which grows fairies in ovens and thinks of itself as the Isle of Avalon, Scilly might allow you to collect the missing pieces from your set of knights.
The Lady of the Lake locked Merlin away in a crystal cave, his soul tormented on a hawthorn bush somewhere under Sailisbury Plain. It seems in this case he is out and about doing things: casting down vast sections of the kingdom. Was that curse the last of his energy or is this a thing that many druid ghosts could do? If that’s the case what can the Order do to make sure that similar creatures aren’t generated in the places where House Diedne fell?
It is said by some Cornish people that Arthur lives in the body of a chough, a type of seabird like a raven, and will one day become incarnate again as a man, to rescue the kingdom in its darkest hour. I’ve suggested in the ashcan that he may be served by a flock of Raven Knights who seemingly take a chough shape. If you were looking for their lair there might be worse places to check than Tresco. After all choughs are blood-stained ravens, folkloristic speaking, but your saga may vary
Games From Folktales 