Regina Block was a London-based, Jewish, poetess who worked in the 1920s. Strangely, her work is filled with Christian allegory. She also wrote a biography of one of the first Sufi masters who became widely known in London. Her representations of what he believed are relatively accurate compared to some of the stuff that had been available before through the Golden Dawn and those sorts of people. As you know in Ars Magica, sins – particularly cardinal sins – performed by large groups of people simultaneously can rot a hole in the fabric of reality, such that those who are nearby are tempted to, and empowered to, sin themselves. These are called Infernal regiones.
We have a couple of huge operatic level ones in the Far Western Isles of Mythic Europe, where the forces of Hell have already lit their forges to create the weapons they will need for the battle of Armageddon. Generally however our infernal Regios are small and tend to have a single, big figure in them that the characters can confront. What follows is two high-fantasy, infernal regions from the works of Regina Bloch.
They’re useful to us because, with a small stretch, they can be tied to the corruption of House Tytalus.
I’d like to mention a plot hook. When I’ve been doing the Corruption of House Tytalus, I’ve used the Lady of Pain, who’s turned up in earlier episodes. As an alternative you’re about to be introduced to a swine god, and there are two versions given. Moloch and Mars. Moloch is a North African god originally. Mars is the Roman God that you’re imagining, except in Regina Bloch’s cosmology there’s no way that the God of War can be anything but a demon, and therefore he is.
I want to mention Moccus. Moccus is an alternative destroyer of House Tytalus. He was a Celtic, boar-headed god whose cult area was around the mouth of the Seine River in France. He was invoked for all of the sorts of things you associate with fertility gods. He was also considered to be a version of Mercury when the Romans entered the area, which is why he might be suitable as a false Mercury that leads House Tytalus into the Corruption.
Ben Tucker released this through LibriVox.
For the first time in six years I’ve made an error, so I can’t transcribe the material here. Regina Bloch died long enough ago that her writing is in the public domain, but the introduction to her book was written by a more long-lived scholar, so the book is copyright-clamped. Here’s a link for American friends: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102749433.
Games From Folktales 