One of the largest battlefields in Mythic Britain is missing. Could it be hidden with magic like “The Shrouded Glen” to allow a covenant to dwell on a site filled with summonable dead?
Never, before this, were more men in this island slain by the sword’s edge–as books and aged sages confirm–since Angles and Saxons sailed here from the east, sought the Britons over the wide seas, since those warsmiths hammered the Welsh, and earls, eager for glory, overran the land.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Crossley-Holland translation)
Let’s frame the idea historically. The first King of England, on most modern lists, is Athelstan. In 926, having taken control of all of the Anglo-Saxon territories in what’s now southern England, he marches north and takes York, then raids Scotland and Strathclyde. The next year their kings each acknowledge him as overlord. The Welsh are pacified through a series of wars and alliances. He also takes Exeter from the Cornish, at least according to folklore. The material evidence on that one doesn’t stack up. In brief, Athelstan holds everything on the island of Great Britain, in a tenuous way.
A great alliance formed against Athelstan. Its leader is Olaf, king of Dublin, who has a claim to the area about York and is able to raise a lot of Norse-descended soldiers from Northumbria. He marries the daughter of Constantine, the King of Scots, to cement the alliance. Owen, the King of Strathclyde, is a Scottish ally. They mustered, and the two sides make so bloody a battle that for a couple of generations afterward, when people said “the great battle” this was the one they were presumed to mean. We call it the Battle of Brunanburh, after a poem written about it, but it has other names in various English, Welsh, Irish, Norse and Gaelic sources. Some of these sources state that the goal of the alliance was to divide England up, so that it could no longer threaten them. At least one says that the hope is to roll the English back into the sea.
Athelstan crushes the alliance: literally massacring the opposing army to a degree that shocked most of the people who chronicled it. How important his victory was is disputed by modern scholars. Some say it was Pyrrhic, because he was unable to maintain his grip on the Scots, Welsh and Cumbrians, and on his death the King of Dublin pops across and grabs Northumbria before Athelstan’s son can fortify it. Others point out that this is where the borders of England stabilize. I’ve been playing a bit of Crusader Kings 3 recently and there’s this idea of the natural rulers of places: England’s borders come from this battle. Sure, they are mucked about with a bit later, when a bite gets taken out of Scotland. James I tried to move the Welsh border east so that his son gets a bigger Wales to be prince of. Basically, though: this is the bit where people accept roughly where “England” is. It’s the biggest and bloodiest and most important battle until 1066.
So, it seems odd that no-one can agree where it was. Modern scholars have suggested sites from Scotland to Shropshire, because one of the texts says that Athelstan allows the invaders to over-extend by coming deep into his territory. One site which has a bit of public recognition is Bromborough, on the Wirral, near Liverpool. In Ars Magica, however, I like the idea that this is the site of a covenant, and the necromantically-inclined Tremere would find an enormous army of pagan dead extremely useful. The Dubliners are not yet Christians here. If you wanted to keep Blackthorn in Wales, that’s easy enough: even in period there some evidence of Welsh involvement in setting up the alliance, although there doesn’t seem to have been a Welsh contingent at the battle itself.
Games From Folktales 