I do apologise for the delay. I have been quite unwell. Missing transcripts will be added to the blog over the next week.
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Who? by Maurice Level
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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Mythic Venice January
This week an experiment I’ve been participating in #Dungeon23, or the #City23 variant, which is a challenge where people write a dungeon room (or in the city variant a chunk of a city) each day, at about a paragraph length for the entire of 2023. For the dungeon 23 people each month is a level…
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The Wolf of Ironwood by Eleanor Smith-Dampier
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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The Miraculous Draught of Fishes from “Stories of the Rhine” by Erckmann and Chatrian
Back in the satyr episode of the Magonomia Bestiary Kickstarter I mentioned Gabrinus as the creator of beer. In this story, a less powerful Gabrinus, with a touch of faerie, is playing the an ancient game against painters, to steal the fruits of their creativity. Readers at the time would know that schiedam is a…
Read MoreDecember 2022 transcript compilation available
Hi, The transcripts for the end of 2022 are here.
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Cellini and the oddities of medicine
This week we round out the year with our final episode from the life of Benvenuto Cellini. This one is terribly cut about from his entire biography so I can’t thank individual readers. Thank you to everyone who read anything in either of the two volumes and their production teams. It contains each time that…
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The Dong with a Luminous Nose by Edward Lear
We had some Lear last Christmas, so let’s make it a tradition. A new will-o-the-wisp. *** When awful darkness and silence reignOver the great Gromboolian plain,Through the long, long wintry nights; —When the angry breakers roarAs they beat on the rocky shore; —When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heightsOf the Hills of the Chankly Bore:…
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Cellini and the explosive birth of The Perseus
In this episode Cellini gives birth to his masterpiece, the bronze Perseus. It almost kills him and I’d argue that – if it’s because he is a Verditus magus – this process draws on his life energy so that he is in risk of death to get this final piece of work done. I would…
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All Hallows by Walter de la Mare
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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Games From Folktales 