Roleplaying games from historical research
Living things in Cornwall Herbs: Cornwall has a vast amount of Seaholm and Sampire. Seaholm is candied or made into a syrup. It’s a restorative. Rofa folis? Also has Hyssop, sage, pelamountayne, marjorum, and rosemary. Few Cornish people farm, comparatively: food is imported from Devon and Somerset. Wild fruits include “whurts, strawberries, and raspies.” Orchards provide…
Read MoreWe are almost done with the research phase. After this I want to go through Carew’s 1605 Guide to Cornwall. There is also a book of Scillion folklore. I’m getting to the futility point, though; my sources are quoting either each other or Carew. After that, it’s collating, making plot hooks explicit, and getting art…
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Carew’s Survey of Cornwall is an interesting little book, filled with useful material and much quoted by my more modern sources. It was written in 1605, and the version I’m using, which is copied from Internet Archive, has the linguistic quirks of the time. It uses the f for long s, and has the letters…
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A trophaeum is a monument to military victory. For example, if you killed a hundred enemy warriors and piled their armaments together, that hill would be a trophaeum. I’m struck that in the modern Order, there are no trophaea to the Schism War. It may be that the Guernicus demand for Damnatio Memoriae, which led…
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I’ve boiled down enough of the legends from Cornwall to move forward, but need to add in the mundane politics. This brings into focus Richard, the younger brother of King Henry III, who was effectively the ruler of England at various times, and after making himself the richest guy in England, he literally buys the…
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Polwhele doesn’t give a lot of information here: the chapters are perhaps meant to be read in the context of equivalents from the previous era. This feels like a weak chapter. Time to drop this Polwhele guy and find something a bit more detailed. Agriculture A lot of “in kind” rent is paid: money rents…
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Polwhele says that if a castle existed before the Normans, it’s in his previous book. I’m not saying I now jovially hate him, but he is putting extra weight on the side of the scale that says I need to go back and read his first volume. Honestly I don’t want to, because it’s slightly…
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In the earlier Cornwall posts, I’ve been looking at folklore, but to make a gazetteer I need to grapple with mundane matters like geography, politics and commerce. For this I’m using the History of Cornwall by Polwhele which is ancient, but it’ll do while I’m waiting for something more modern to be delivered. Geographical extent…
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Games From Folktales 