I took over the unicorn and basilisk after another author had to step aside from this project, and initially I wrote them both closely tied to folklore. The unicorn needed a serious rework after I’d finished it. I didn’t get past our sensitivity reader because I was working the “virginity” angle as a plot hook.
Unicorn
To me it seemed like a worthwhile connection. Elizabeth makes a lot of political capital out of her virginity. She’s constantly offering to consider marriage to foreign nobles, and then moving on. For American readers, the first English colony in your country was named Virginia in a complement to her. It could have been Gloriana, but no. I live in a state called Queensland in Australia. No, though, they went with Virginia. Similarly the first European-descended baby in the colony was Virginia Dare. She’s got a Wikipedia page and shows up in your art. I first heard about her when I was a twentysomething listening to Tori Amos. Some of the Americans reading this know Dare’s name, but don’t know how weird that is. Other colonial governors didn’t deliberately name their grandkids to flatter the monarch, let alone her virginity.
I’m Australian. What was the name of the first white baby in Australia? We don’t know. No-one made a fuss about it and as I’ve aged, different answers have emerged from historians scraping ideas out of period accounts. The name that I was told might be right, when I was an undergraduate, doesn’t even appear on the lists anymore. The name that was the consensus for a while after that, Rebecca Small, was discredited when someone noticed she was, in the the period account, the first “free-born” baby. Most historians believe there were approximately twenty babies born to convict mothers before her. We have no idea who most of them were.
The dark horse in this historical puzzle is Seebaer van Nieuwelant, who was born to a woman on a Dutch whaling vessel before New South Wales was settled. The problem is his name literally means “Seaborn in the New Land”, so was he born on ship, or on Dirk Hartog Island? We don’t know, and regardless, he’s not named after Queen Victoria’s hymen. I’m only mentioning him because I think his name’s perfect for a selkie.
So, a plot hook was cut. It mentions that Elizabeth had a guardian who tried to sexually abuse her into marriage. This was Thomas Seymour, a perfect villain for games in which King Edward or Queen Jane survive. He was the brother of Jane Seymour (previous Queen and mother of King Edward). After Henry VIII died he married Katherine Parr, Henry’s final wife. She was one of the richest women in the kingdom and Elizabeth’s formal guardian. Thomas’s brother, yet another Edward, was effectively regent for the prince. He thought his brother was a worm and tried to get him to go away with an enormous bribe. A barony and the Admiralty worked for a while, but eventually Thomas became his nephew’s favourite relative.
Thomas waged several campaigns to marry Elizabeth. There was, at this point, no strong claim that she would ever become Queen. King Edward would, it was hoped, have children. Henry VIII’s will removed his daughters from the line of succession. King Edward, likewise, pushed the crown to his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, so that his Catholic, legally illegitimate, sister would be excluded. There is a chance, though, that he though he might be king.
Remember that at this stage, our modern belief that the husband of the Queen is just some random guy wasn’t certain then. Skipping Jane, the next regnant Queen, Mary, gave the title of King to her husband, Phillip of Spain. Similarly, the first regnant queen after Elizabeth, Mary, was co-ruler with her husband King William. Our modern certainty that the queen’s husband is just a guy comes, I believe, from Queen-Empress Victoria telling everyone it was so.
Elizabeth held Thomas off with legions of maids, shrew politics, and cutting letters
Here’s the hook:
The Virginity Test
Monarchs maintain menageries of odd creatures as a show of opulence and influence. England’s is in the Tower of London. A friendly non-player wishes to give a unicorn to Her Majesty. To ensure they gain the maximum social cachet they want to present it as a surprise gift at court. As an alternative, the Spanish ambassador may bring it as a gift. This is a dreadfully bad idea. characters may be sent to steal or surreptitiously kill a unicorn that the intelligence services have heard is to be presented to Her Majesty. Poison won’t work, so the characters will need to find a different, but equally discrete, way of killing or removing the animal.
If the unicorn refuses to put its head on the Virgin Queen’s lap, then her statements to foreign princes that she might be available for marriage no longer carry weight. Her story that she is “married to the realm” is damaged. Catholic rumours that she is living adulterously with Lord Darnley are furthered. If she refuses to face the test of the unicorn, that is interpreted as a confession. Even if Elizabeth is not having a relationship with Darnley, she may want to refuse the test, because rumours insist one of her early guardians attempted to force her into marriage by molesting her.
Satyrs
Similarly, there was a plot hook cut from satyrs because there was a theme of sexual violence to it. Eventually the satyrs were completely reworked as fauns, creatures from Industrial Era folklore. The idea that the reason you don’t see satyrs anymore is because trooping faeries have hunted them to extinction is from Lamia by John Keats, a Romantic poet from the 19th Century. The part I’m referencing is:
Upon a time, before the faery broods
Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,
Before King Oberon’s bright diadem,
Sceptre, and mantle, clasp’d with dewy gem,
Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns
From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip’d lawns,
The ever-smitten Hermes empty left
His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft:
Here’s the hook:
Peace with Titania
Titania’s hatred of satyrs is based on her knowing most of the women in Ovid’s Metamorphoses which is filled with gods and mystical beings either raping women or women fleeing attempted rape until they are transformed into trees and animals, which isn’t acknowledged as harm. She’s not correct that all satyrs behave like this: each silenus has raised his sons differently and the tribes who have survived are those who are cautious of interacting with humans.
Titania’s hatred of satyrs is a prejudice she formed thousands of years ago on the other side of the continent. If the player characters can convince her local satyrs are not the same as the ancient tribes, her policy to them can change. The satyrs she remembers were riotous mobs of Dionysius worshippers accompanied by drug-frenzied humans. The player characters might convince her that satyrs have a place in her court. Some could serve as counsellors, warriors or musicians in exchange for her protection for the rest of their tribe. The player characters might, instead, demonstrate that the satyrs are insignificant, compared to the other enemies which could be faced.
The character we moved toward is The Piper At The Gates of Dawn, which comes from The Wind in the Willows. As a setup to this extract, a young otter named Portly has gone missing, so Rat and Mole paddle upriver to look for him. Rat begins to hear an ethereal music within the sounds of nature. Ars Magica players will spot the regio right away. The reader for this extract is Cori Samuels, who released it into the public domain via Librivox. Thanks to Cori and her production team.
***
“It’s gone!” sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. “So beautiful and strange and new! Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever. No! There it is again!” he cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound.
“Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,” he said presently. “O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.”
The Mole, greatly wondering, obeyed. “I hear nothing myself,” he said, “but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers.”
The Rat never answered, if indeed he heard. Rapt, transported, trembling, he was possessed in all his senses by this new divine thing that caught up his helpless soul and swung and dandled it, a powerless but happy infant in a strong sustaining grasp.
In silence Mole rowed steadily, and soon they came to a point where the river divided, a long backwater branching off to one side. With a slight movement of his head Rat, who had long dropped the rudder-lines, directed the rower to take the backwater. The creeping tide of light gained and gained, and now they could see the colour of the flowers that gemmed the water’s edge.
“Clearer and nearer still,” cried the Rat joyously. “Now you must surely hear it! Ah—at last—I see you do!”
Breathless and transfixed, the Mole stopped rowing as the liquid run of that glad piping broke on him like a wave, caught him up, and possessed him utterly. He saw the tears on his comrade’s cheeks, and bowed his head and understood. For a space they hung there, brushed by the purple loosestrife that fringed the bank; then the clear imperious summons that marched hand-in-hand with the intoxicating melody imposed its will on Mole, and mechanically he bent to his oars again. And the light grew steadily stronger, but no birds sang as they were wont to do at the approach of dawn; and but for the heavenly music all was marvellously still.
On either side of them, as they glided onwards, the rich meadow-grass seemed that morning of a freshness and a greenness unsurpassable. Never had they noticed the roses so vivid, the willow-herb so riotous, the meadow-sweet so odorous and pervading. Then the murmur of the approaching weir began to hold the air, and they felt a consciousness that they were nearing the end, whatever it might be, that surely awaited their expedition.
A wide half-circle of foam and glinting lights and shining shoulders of green water, the great weir closed the backwater from bank to bank, troubled all the quiet surface with twirling eddies and floating foam-streaks, and deadened all other sounds with its solemn and soothing rumble. In midmost of the stream, embraced in the weir’s shimmering arm-spread, a small island lay anchored, fringed close with willow and silver birch and alder. Reserved, shy, but full of significance, it hid whatever it might hold behind a veil, keeping it till the hour should come, and, with the hour, those who were called and chosen.
Slowly, but with no doubt or hesitation whatever, and in something of a solemn expectancy, the two animals passed through the broken, tumultuous water and moored their boat at the flowery margin of the island. In silence they landed, and pushed through the blossom and scented herbage and undergrowth that led up to the level ground, till they stood on a little lawn of a marvellous green, set round with Nature’s own orchard-trees—crab-apple, wild cherry, and sloe.
“This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,” whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. “Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!”
Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror—indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy—but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend, and saw him at his side, cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.
Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humorously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
“Rat!” he found breath to whisper, shaking. “Are you afraid?”
“Afraid?” murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. “Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet—and yet—O, Mole, I am afraid!”
Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.
Sudden and magnificent, the sun’s broad golden disc showed itself over the horizon facing them; and the first rays, shooting across the level water-meadows, took the animals full in the eyes and dazzled them. When they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished, and the air was full of the carol of birds that hailed the dawn.
As they stared blankly, in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realised all they had seen and all they had lost, a capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water, tossed the aspens, shook the dewy roses, and blew lightly and caressingly in their faces; and with its soft touch came instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and light-hearted as before.
Mole rubbed his eyes and stared at Rat, who was looking about him in a puzzled sort of way. “I beg your pardon; what did you say, Rat?” he asked.
“I think I was only remarking,” said Rat slowly, “that this was the right sort of place, and that here, if anywhere, we should find him. And look! Why, there he is, the little fellow!” And with a cry of delight he ran towards the slumbering Portly.
But Mole stood still a moment, held in thought. As one wakened suddenly from a beautiful dream, who struggles to recall it, and can recapture nothing but a dim sense of the beauty of it, the beauty! Till that, too, fades away in its turn, and the dreamer bitterly accepts the hard, cold waking and all its penalties; so Mole, after struggling with his memory for a brief space, shook his head sadly and followed the Rat.
Portly woke up with a joyous squeak, and wriggled with pleasure at the sight of his father’s friends, who had played with him so often in past days. In a moment, however, his face grew blank, and he fell to hunting round in a circle with pleading whine. As a child that has fallen happily asleep in its nurse’s arms, and wakes to find itself alone and laid in a strange place, and searches corners and cupboards, and runs from room to room, despair growing silently in its heart, even so Portly searched the island and searched, dogged and unwearying, till at last the black moment came for giving it up, and sitting down and crying bitterly.
The Mole ran quickly to comfort the little animal; but Rat, lingering, looked long and doubtfully at certain hoof-marks deep in the sward.
“Some—great—animal—has been here,” he murmured slowly and thoughtfully; and stood musing, musing; his mind strangely stirred.
“Come along, Rat!” called the Mole. “Think of poor Otter, waiting up there by the ford!”
Portly had soon been comforted by the promise of a treat—a jaunt on the river in Mr. Rat’s real boat; and the two animals conducted him to the water’s side, placed him securely between them in the bottom of the boat, and paddled off down the backwater. The sun was fully up by now, and hot on them, birds sang lustily and without restraint, and flowers smiled and nodded from either bank, but somehow—so thought the animals—with less of richness and blaze of colour than they seemed to remember seeing quite recently somewhere—they wondered where.
The main river reached again, they turned the boat’s head upstream, towards the point where they knew their friend was keeping his lonely vigil. As they drew near the familiar ford, the Mole took the boat in to the bank, and they lifted Portly out and set him on his legs on the tow-path, gave him his marching orders and a friendly farewell pat on the back, and shoved out into mid-stream. They watched the little animal as he waddled along the path contentedly and with importance; watched him till they saw his muzzle suddenly lift and his waddle break into a clumsy amble as he quickened his pace with shrill whines and wriggles of recognition. Looking up the river, they could see Otter start up, tense and rigid, from out of the shallows where he crouched in dumb patience, and could hear his amazed and joyous bark as he bounded up through the osiers on to the path. Then the Mole, with a strong pull on one oar, swung the boat round and let the full stream bear them down again whither it would, their quest now happily ended.
“I feel strangely tired, Rat,” said the Mole, leaning wearily over his oars, as the boat drifted. “It’s being up all night, you’ll say, perhaps; but that’s nothing. We do as much half the nights of the week, at this time of the year. No; I feel as if I had been through something very exciting and rather terrible, and it was just over; and yet nothing particular has happened.”
“Or something very surprising and splendid and beautiful,” murmured the Rat, leaning back and closing his eyes. “I feel just as you do, Mole; simply dead tired, though not body-tired. It’s lucky we’ve got the stream with us, to take us home. Isn’t it jolly to feel the sun again, soaking into one’s bones! And hark to the wind playing in the reeds!”
“It’s like music—far-away music,” said the Mole, nodding drowsily.
“So I was thinking,” murmured the Rat, dreamful and languid. “Dance-music—the lilting sort that runs on without a stop—but with words in it, too—it passes into words and out of them again—I catch them at intervals—then it is dance-music once more, and then nothing but the reeds’ soft thin whispering.”
“You hear better than I,” said the Mole sadly. “I cannot catch the words.”
“Let me try and give you them,” said the Rat softly, his eyes still closed. “Now it is turning into words again—faint but clear—Lest the awe should dwell—And turn your frolic to fret—You shall look on my power at the helping hour—But then you shall forget! Now the reeds take it up—forget, forget, they sigh, and it dies away in a rustle and a whisper. Then the voice returns—
“Lest limbs be reddened and rent—I spring the trap that is set—As I loose the snare you may glimpse me there—For surely you shall forget! Row nearer, Mole, nearer to the reeds! It is hard to catch, and grows each minute fainter.
“Helper and healer, I cheer—Small waifs in the woodland wet—Strays I find in it, wounds I bind in it—Bidding them all forget! Nearer, Mole, nearer! No, it is no good; the song has died away into reed-talk.”
“But what do the words mean?” asked the wondering Mole.
“That I do not know,” said the Rat simply. “I passed them on to you as they reached me. Ah! now they return again, and this time full and clear! This time, at last, it is the real, the unmistakable thing, simple—passionate—perfect—”
“Well, let’s have it, then,” said the Mole, after he had waited patiently for a few minutes, half-dozing in the hot sun.
But no answer came. He looked, and understood the silence. With a smile of much happiness on his face, and something of a listening look still lingering there, the weary Rat was fast asleep.
Games From Folktales 