All articles filed in Podcast transcripts

In The Ballad of the Harp Weaver, we see a magic item which uses, what in Ars Magica terms is, Drudic magic that allows you to spend life energy instead of vis. This sort of blood magic is also sometimes practiced by Cthonic magicians, but here we just see Fatigue and Wounds poured out to…

This week, two poems linked by the theme of hearts eaten away. I was going to save this for Halloween, but I’m sure something else will appear. The first was recorded for Librivox by Devorah Allen, and could be reskinned from the Miser’s Pot in Realms of Power: Infernal. Stats eventually. For where your treasure…

The Burton version of this story is, in his own words, summarized as “Nardiello is sent three times by his father to buy some wares with an hundred ducats each time. The first time he buyeth a mouse, the next a large crab-louse, and then a cricket, and being expelled by his father for this,…

This is one of my favourite stories in this collection, because it’s obvious a magus with a Hermetic twist is loose in the background, mucking people about. let’s hear Burton’s take on the plot, in his weird mock-Jacobean English: Penta scorneth to wed her brother, and cutting off her hands, sendeth them to him as…

Let’s return to the Burton version of the Pentamerone. His summary of “The Young Slave” is “Lisa is born from a rose-leaf, and dieth through a fairy’s curse; her mother layeth her in a chamber and biddeth her brother not to open the door. But his wife being very jealous, wishing to see what is…

CHAPTER XXXIII: The Shining Line Alveric wandered on, alone of that small company of three without a hope to guide him. For Niv and Zend, who were lately led by the hope of their fantastic quest, no longer yearned for Elfland but were guided now by their plan to hold Alveric back from it. They…

We’ve completed the Pentamerone stories which were published for children in the Victorian period. Seventeen of the stories, however, were taken out as unsuitable. I won’t be recording them, but I’ll be using the Burton translation to summarize their plots and the hooks we can hang on them. Burton’s summary for the what’s now called…

A change of pace on the Venice material – I think that trying to draw all the folklore together, like I did with Cornwall, may be a fool’s errand. I keep heading off into the weeds. My plan is to keep adding the folklore I find, but to try and give the whole thing a…

This week I’m taking time to get the backlog of monsters sorted. As a sort of filler, here’s a poem about a troubadour trying to rescue a maid, by W.S. Gilbert, of musical hall fame. *** A Troubadour he playedWithout a castle wall,Within, a hapless maidResponded to his call.“Oh, willow, woe is me!Alack and well-a-day!If…