Roleplaying games from historical research
This is your Monster of the Month, and this month I’m cheating. The creature is a vampire and the reader is Newgate Novelist, who’s one of my favourites from LibriVox. I’m including it because this is one of the few English sources I can find for the work of Vasile Alecsandri, who was a Romanian…
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When Maurice Lavelle is discussed people oversimplify by saying he’s France’s answer to Edgar Allan Poe. He’s similar to Poe in that he has atmospheric, spooky stories. In the same way that most of Poe’s stories aren’t suitable for Games From Folktales because they eventually come down to a rational explanation, similarly most of Level’s…
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A quick Librivox recording to give us our monster of the month. We have a werewolf, a witch and a Faustian bargain. I wondered why I’d not seen this one before. Eleanor Smith-Dampier was a translator of Danish sagas, so I thought I’d missed it because it’s from the area to the north of the…
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I’ve been loking forward to reading this for you, because it’s a lovely example of an infernal regio for Ars Magica. Clearly its the work of Architectus from Realms of Power : the Infernal. It also works for Magonomia, but as a particular creature, not a thing that a Realm of Power does as a…
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Now that Andrew has mentioned the Laidly Toad, and shared some art from the forthcoming bestiary, I can talk about the folklore used to design it. The Laidly Toad is the villain from “The Laidly Worm of Spindlestone Heugh” which is a story from the English Borders. I’ve also mixed in a little from a…
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I have COVID. The way my podcast plan is set out, however, I have to do some recording today. I’m recording a couple of episodes which will go live in August. By the time you hear this hopefully I’ve been well for a month. Today I bring you one of the earliest werewolf stories, even…
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Another avatar of our old friend the Infernal Saint of Sorrow. Thanks to Winston Tharp for the recording. Dark as a demon’s dream is one I love—In soul—but oh, how beautiful in form!She glows like Venus throned in joy above,Or on the crimson couch of Evening warmReposing her sweet limbs, her heaving breastUnveiled to him…
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In this brief section, Cellini suffers what may be a miracle for his murders, or it may be a spell effect. Note his travelling companion tries the Miserere, which we’ve discussed in an earlier episode. Thanks to Joyce Martin and her team for the recording. We were one day distant from Lyons, and it was…
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Vast oceans of time ago, I noted an almost-saint for Hermetic magicians. Cyprian was a student who sold his soul for infernal tutoring in spellcasting. He then turned on his tutor, and became a Christian martyr. In Hermetic Europe he became a saint. He’s the St Cyprian of Antioch after whom the church at Valnastium…
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A quick note to congratulate Librivox on its eleventh anniversary, and reaching a milestone. Librivox is a community of volunteers with no budget, offices, or paid staff. In the last eleven years we have recorded 10 000 books into audio format and released them into the public domain. You won’t find modern best-sellers on Librivox,…
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Games From Folktales 