Most of Europe is maintained in an agricultural economy, but Cornwall is an exception. It cannot produce enough food to sustain its population. This means that a covenant cannot simply obscure its croplands with magic and make them fertile with rituals. Similarly, if magi just create food using vis, they are creating a militarily-significant strategic commodity. Subsistence questions, like how you are going to feed your people, matter in Cornwall far more than in other parts of Europe.
Plot hooks: creating food
Just because its a bad idea, doesn’t mean no-one is going to do it. A covenant which tips the balance of the food economy in this area might be saved by player characters teaching thgem discretion, or punished by player characters, teaching them humility.
Mining
Cornwall has a wide variety of minerals, some from single mines. If your character wants to make a realia collection of minerals, Cornwall’s a perfect place to do that. It might, however, be that the riches of the earth are so abundant because the creatures from below have been called up too often.
Mining for Tin
“It cannont be of mean price which has found, with it, diamonds, amongst it gold, and within it silver.” – Carew.
Cornwall has been known since ancient times as the source of tin, which is mixed with copper to make bronze. The mines are so important that they have warped Cornish culture. The Cornish use turf and furze (broom) for fuel rather than wood, because it’s needed as mine braces. Their national dish is a miner’s pastry. Their patron saint discovered tin. The mines also produce an unusually broad array of other minerals.
Cassiterite
Cassiterite is the main mineral from which tin is smelted. Its a tin oxide, sometimes described as black sand. Sometimes it forms large, tetrahedral crystals, which are translucent when small, and opaque when thicker. These are called “tin diamonds”. Cassiterite is about 78% tin.
A history of tin mining
Under King John, tin mining in Cornwall made 100 marks a year for the Crown, but in the time of Richard, King of the Romans, its value will be immense. In real history he was said to be able to “spend 100 marks a day for ten years”. The Muslim invasion of Spain stopped tin from being purchased there, and it had yet to be discovered in Germany, so Richard essentially had a monopoly on it. As Lord of the Stanneries, Richard had the right of first purchase on tin. He regularly sold for seven marks tin he’d bought for three. Volumes exported also increased. Superficial mining, “streaming”, continued, but shaft mining became prevalent in the game period, leading to increased extraction.
Mining ore
There are two types of mining: stream and load. First the tinner finds a shoad (a patch of tin on the surface of the ground). Then he either digs a stream (a trench 6 feet deep by three or four wide) or sinks a shaft (four feet long, two feet wide, seven feet deep) then either follows the lode, or sinks a fresh shaft further along his supposed line of the lode.
When a miner fines a lode, he needs to pay a fee to claim it. Most find partners and go shares. The partners choose a captain, who acts as a sort of quartermaster and arranges working times. Carew says the work is so exhausting mostt miners work only four hours on workdays. The basic tool is a pickaxe with a spike on one end, and a mallet on the other for driving in iron wedges. Many spirits in Cornwall use these as weapons.
The lodes may go down to forty or fifty fathoms. Sometimes you can see stars at noon-day if you are that deep. Men go into the mine on a rope that is winched by two other men, and the miner stands in a stirrup on the way down. Miners sometimes only tunnel a foot a week. “Damps” (gases) may “distemper their heads” Carew says that mining wrecks the morals and body of the miner, which can be recovered by changing profession to farming.
Plot hooks
Ancient shafts
There were shaft mines in ancient times: tools have been found made of wood and horn, which are attributed to faeries or the Jewish slaves who were forced to work the mines by the Romans. The buccas, knocking faeries, pretend to be these Jews. See the Faeries section for more details. They sometimes find small, ancient, brass tool fittings, which they call “thunderheads”. These might have tiny spirits of artifice in them.
Astrology
A magus discovers you can see stars during the day if you are in a deep mine, and decides to set up a research site for an astronomical mystery.
Collapses
Eventually, possibly after the game period, the Cornish start following lodes out under the sea. This makes recovery of miners trapped by cave-ins particularly difficult. Can the magi assist if one of their mines fails?
Flood
If a river gets in the way of a stream, then the miners divert it. This is legal, but land holders hate it because it causes flooding on farmland until they divert it back, wrecking crops. What do the magi do if miners put a river across their lands?
Magical mining
Mine shafts are limited to about 10 meters in depth, because groundwater fills the excavations., During the AGe of Steam, pumps were used to dry out the mines, to allow them to be dug deeper. Magi can make simple, cheap pumps with minor Rego magic. This allows them to work mines exhausted by conventional methods. In Roman times the Camel Estuary, Carvossa and Carloggas were significant sites, so they could prove useful when seeking exhausted mineworks.
Tin regrows
People have noticed that if you look over the spoil heaps of mines, you’ll often find valuable tin, apparently missed by the miners who came before. They don’t know their technology is getting better: they think that tin regrows. Magi know that gemstones bred deep in the earth, and some have tried to farm them. Can they develop techniques by growing tin samples?
Tin regrows, because it is linked
Carew mentions a metaphor that the tine is like a river, or a tree, or the veins of a man’s body, with the main lode deep in the earth, and lesser loads spreading out through the land from it. Is this literal? Are these a giant or dragon beneath Cornwall, which is having its veins mined out? This would explain why Cornish people believe tin lodes regrow. Did Lyonesse sink because this thing moved?
Vis source or monsters
Sometimes the tinners dig up trees, which they see as proof of the flood of Noah. Are these a vis source? Do they harbor strange dryads?
Visions
Some people who have dreams which reveal the location of valuable loads. This is a Story Flaw.
Processing ore
After the tin is mined it is carried, in carts or on horseback, to a stamping mill. If the stone is too damp it is dried on a grill before being stamped. Basically the stamping mill is three or five poles, shod in iron, which rise and fall as a waterwheel turns. This grinds the ore down. It’s then sent to a crazing mill, where it is ground through water-powered millstones, to a fine sand.
The tinner then takes the sand away, puts it on sheets of turf, and washes it. The heavier tin stays while the lighter clay washes away. The residue is put in a large wooden dish and panned, much like gold. The heavy residue is called “black tin” and this is split between the partners. Tin is weighed by the gill, topliffe, dish and foote, which are a pint, pottel, (half a gallon), gallon and almost two gallons. A foote weighs about 40 pounds.
The miner takes his tin to a blowing house, where it is melted in a coal fire stoked with watermill powered bellows.Two pounds of black tin give one pound of white tin. It is set in thin, square ingots.
Coynages
Tin is sold at markets called coynages. There are two per year in Cornwall. The merchants and miners tell each other lies to shift the price while they haggle. This is expected, but still shocks some priests. Generally the merchant and the owner of a tinwork start each fair with a big sale. This sets an anchor value for the price.
There’s a type of banking in Cornwall allows a miner to borrow money, but pay the loan back in white tin. As the price of the tin is not known in advance, there’s technically no usury here. The merchant is, legally, a partner. Richard of the Romans had it as a point of honour that he was never an usurer, but he may have partnered with miners.
Plot hooks: Lies
Tin is a commodity trade so if magi can get news that alters the value of tin faster than other people, they can make a great deal of money at a coynage.
Some people, not able to learn news quickly, instead manufacture it. If the characters know a polot to alter the price is afoot, do they cash in, run a counter-con, or report the schemers to the stanneries?
The Stanneries: the legal customs of the tinners
The king appoints the Sherriff of Cornwall, a role which is rapidly turned over. Richard, king of the Romans, is granted the title of “High Sheriff” when he comes of age, but since he’s a child.
Since 1201 the Warden of the Stanneries has had formal criminal and civil jurisdiction over all tin miners, although tradition claimed this far earlier. Tinners cannot be served warrants from other courts, and may not serve them in other courts, excepeting matters of life, limb and land. If a tinner is charged in another court, he may demand that half the jury be other tinners. In 1220, the stanneries claim as tinners everyone who makes tools used by miners, transports or processes tin, or has shares in a mine.
The Warden appoints Stewards, who look after daily business in the local stanneries. There are four in Cornwall.
The Church and the Stanneries
The Stannery courts annoy the church persistently. In real history, eventually this turns rancorous. When tin is discovered on church lands, tinners have the right to seek it, regardless of what the land is being used for. In 1237 the Church tried to get the Crown to rule against miners wrecking their land, and failed. After this, churchmen refused to show up in Stannary courts. In 1391 the Church formally tells everyone in England that it will excommunicate anyone who tries to draw the church in to the Stannary court system.
Other Mining in Cornwall
Copper
Commercial copper mining doesn’t begin, historically, in Cornwall until well after the game period. That being said, there’s copper widely available, particularly for miners using supernatural techniques to prospect and process. Some of the copper in Cornwall has an arborescent (“plant like”) form. Perhaps it is a vis source?.
Copper is found in two main forms in Cornwall. Chalcopyrite, also called “blistered copper” is a sulphide of copper that looks bubbly. It’s the main mineral from which copper is smelted. Some chalcopyrite is 30.5% iron and 34.5% copper, and is deep in the ground, which makes it hard to economically mine. Chalcocite is a mineral that’s about 79% copper, but it is usually found below the water table, which makes it hard to mine. Olivenite is also found in certain places. It’s a green mineral that’s an arsenate of copper. There’s a lot of arsenic in Cornwall if you know where to look.
Gold
Gold is found in Cornwall, but only in tiny nuggets. The largest recorded was six millimetres long. Such tiny amounts of gold are a lucky bonus for people looking for a different metal, but if a magus wanted it particularly they might instead build a device that scours the earth for it.
Plot hook: Torcs
Lunulae (golden torcs) have occasionally been found in Cornwall. Given the paucity of local gold, are these of faerie origin? If a farmer places one around his neck, might he become the vessel for a faerie king, long hidden by those who buried his torc?
Iron
Irons is found in commercial quantities at at least two sites. These are of great interest to the landed nobility of the area, because they allow inexpensive equipping of soldiers, and provide cheap tools to miners of exportable metals.
Lead
Lead is found in the centre and east of Cornwall. It’s dangerous to mine – even the Romans knew it caused madness and death – but it is vital in many industries. Magi could make the process far safer. Thoughts on Hermetic lead mining are found in Tales of Mythic Europe. In Cornwall it is usually found as galena, a sulphide of lead which is soft and silver, or cerussite, a carbonate of lead that creates fragile, white needles.
Silver
Galena, mentioned above, is the most valuable mineral form of silver in Mythic Europe. Not all galena deposits contain silver, but those that do have up to 2% silver, and are easily smelted due to the low melting point of the lead. They sometimes also contain zinc.
Marl stone
A type of marl stone is baked with furze (brushwood) or coal to make lime, which is a fertiliser. Coal is more expensive but makes a whiter lime. Lime is also used to disple demons.
Magnesia alba (Manganese)
This mineral is found on Bodmin Moor. The name comes from Magnesia, in Greece, where both the black, masculine form and the white, feminine form of this mineral are found together. Why, in this far part of the world, the feminine form is found on its own is unclear. Magnesia alba can be used to clarify glass, which may be of interest to magi creating laboratory equipment.
Semiprecious stones
“Diamonds are in many places found cleaving to those rocks out of which the tin is digged; they are polished, squared and pointed by nature.” -Carew. Carew knows these are not “right” diamonds, they are darker and less hard, but says they can fool a lapidary at times, and they get as big as a walnut.
There are pearls found in the seas here, but they are not as large or round as oriental ones.
Agates, topazes, and white coral are also found in Cornwall.
Quarrying
“Rough” (granite) and slate are the core building materials in Cornwall. Wood is far to precious to be used to make houses. Slate, which is slower but surer than rough, when building. There are three types: blue (the best), sage-leaf coloured and gray (the “meanest”). “In substance thin, in colour fair, in weight light, in lasting strong”. The blue type is generally on top as mined, and its found at about the water level.
Kaolinite (china clay) is found in many sites in the north of Cornwall. It’s caused by granite decaying. In the real world this happens as it soaks up water and is warmed by the mild radioactivity decay in granite. Magi can make it happen faster. China clay is used in whitewash, as a white paint, and as a pottery glaze (although this last may not yet be known in Cornwall).
The other common stones are:
- Caracloufe stone, which is black.
- Moorstone, which is used for window and door frames, sparkles at certain angles. As the name suggests, it’s found on Bodmin.
- Pebble stones, which are sea stones that have been tumbled smooth. They are used for paving.
- Pentuan, dug out of sea cliffs and coloured like grey marble.
Plot hooks: Unknown substances
These three substances may be left over from the fall of the Cornish covenant of House Tytalus into corruption, they might not exist in your setting, or they could be natural materials that people have yet to learn how to use safely.
Antimony
This is found in one site in Cornwall, at commercial volume. In the Middle Ages, it is used as a cosmetic, and sometimes as a medicine, but neither of these are common in Britain. The name may mean “monk killer” because it is poisonous, and alchemy was the preserve of the clerical class.
Pitchblende
This mineral, the source of uranium, is found in two places in Cornwall. It’s not recognised as valuable in period, although it would still be fatal, even in small doses. Is it vis left over from the fall of the Tytalus of Cornwall in the Corruption of Sursurm, or is it simple concentrated Perdo vis that kills those who touch it?
Wolfram (Tungsten)
Wolfram isn’t even named in period: it’s first described in the 16th Century by German tin miners. It gets its name from its habit of “devouring” tin: if it is smelted with the tin, it forms a lump in which the tin is still contained. This might pose a problem for the mines of the magi. No-one in Mythic Europe knows that tungsten (a Swedish name, again not known in period) can be used to harden metals, crating superior weapons, armor and tools…unless they do.
Food production
Crops
Few Cornish people farm, comparatively: food is imported from Devon and Somerset. Wild fruits include whorts, strawberries, and raspberries. Orchards provide pears, plums, peareplummes, cherries, mulberries, chestnuts apples, and walnuts. Wine is cheap to import from Europe, and so there is little incentive to make it in Cornwall, despite the limestone soils.
Wheat is the main grain crop, although barley is also raised in certain areas. Sea sand is used to marl the land for tillage,as is a type of seaweed called orewood. Richard of the Romans imported wheat into Cornwall. He had his own ships and merchants, both for imports and exports.
Many herbs are found in Cornwall. Garlic turns up in kitchen gardens. Vast amounts of seaholm and samphire grow here. Seaholm is candied or made into a syrup. It’s a restorative. Samphire grows wild on cliffs and is harvested by brave men on ropes. It can be exported in barrels of seawater, and has a hot, spicy taste. Hyssop, sage, “pelamountayne”, marjoram, and rosemary are also found wild.
The Potato?
Polwhele reports, with some incredulity, that according to Hals, the Cornish have had potatoes since the time of the Normans. In the real world this can’t be true, but it might be true in Mythic Europe. This begs the question: how can this be true?
Animals
The Cornish sheep are an ancient breed, and their wool is so coarse that it is sold as “Cornish hair”. Legally, Cornish people are not required to pay the fees associated with the export of wool, because whatever is coming off their sheep isn’t proper wool. The Cornish claim wool combs were invented locally.
Cornwall has a native breed of cow, small and black, and dairying was known in period. They aren’t much raised in Cornwall, but beef, leather, tallow are not particularly expensive.
Domestic animals include pigs, goats, sheep, cattle, oxen, horses, and dogs. Small Cornish horses also live semi-wild in waste areas. Mules are not used as often as horses in Cornwall. Goats are raised as a forage animals.
Pest animals
Cornwall has a lot of rats: they are its main vermin. It also has martens, squirrels, foxes, badgers, otters, hares, coneys, and deer.
Plot hook: Kiss snakes cautiously
Carew mentions a man who caught a snake and broke out its fangs, so that he could use it to scare ladies. He would kiss it as a joke. Eventually it bit his tongue, either with a regrown tooth or a shard he had failed to remove, and he almost died of a swollen tongue. Magi might be called in to save the man.
Birds
Carew notes a wide variety of domestic birds (doves, geese, ducks, peacocks, and barbary hens.) Wild birds include quails, rails, partridges, pheasants, plovers, snipes, wood cocks and does,
Notes for Bjornaer apprentices
Bird life is significant for native Bjornaer apprentices. Singing birds include linnets, goldfinches, robins, blackbirds, and thrushes. Carew says there are no owls in Cornwall. That seems suspicious.
Plot hooks: bird mucus hibernation
Carew says swallows hibernate in the bottom of quarries and rivers during the winter. He also says barnacles become geese.
Cornish people love hawking and nobles are happy to spend money on keeping mews. They do not follow the Romantic rules about which rank is allowed to use which hawk.
Fishing
Fish are caught by line, spiller (a long line with lots of hooks), spear, netting estuaries, fishtraps, and drag netting. Fish include the dab, plaice, flake, sole, thornback, brit, sprat, whiting scad, chad, shark, cuttle, eel, porpoise, whale. salmon, shoat, and trout. The most commercially-important is the pilchard.
Plot hooks for pilchards
If a character eats pilchards head to tail, rather than tail to head, it damages the fishing for everyone. The mechanism of this is not clear: a merrymaid?
Pilchards seem so inoffensive, but a magus who can use them in swarms like a bee or ant magus: to see everything and have swarms of workers.
If you are loading pilchards in your boat and they make a particular noise, it is a good sign that your catch will be bountiful that day and you should delay going home. The sound is caused, in the real world, by the rupturing of the swim bladders of the fish. The Cornish say the pilchards are “calling for more”. That is either a natural property of pilchards (they are mildly psychic after death) or that’s a piece of subconscious folk magic, or its a cover story for actual folk magic.
There is a person called a “heva” who watches for pilchard schools from the cliffs, and when they spot them, they give out the “hue”, a great shout. They use a system of white sheets draped on bushes to signal the location of the fish to the boats. These sheets are a primitive semaphore. A turb of grogs trained in flags might spark the invention of the Hermetic telegraph.
Plot hook: industry
If scallops, clams and razorfish, as Aristotle says, emerge spontaneously from sand, magi just need water and sand to create batch after batch. They don’t need to breed them, or even care for them beyond a brief growth stage. Between harvests covenants can drain the growth chambers or swap substrate to make batches of different animals. If they toss the sand out and add slime, they can make oysters. Pour away the slime, add particular types of rock, and the covenant can grow barnacles, including the goose barnacle, has a mature form indistinguishable from a bird. Alternatively, the covenant can grow sponges or some types of eel using the same technique.
Plot hooks: weird aquatic vis sources
- Oysters have a “milk” in them in May and June which engenders younger oysters and they don’t taste as good at that time.
- Crabs breed in the shells of cockles, and lobsters in the shells of winkles.
- There are dark nuts found on the shore which are good for women in childbirth.
- Starfish are poisonous, and shaped like stars.
- Carew also mentions a “blobber” saying not to eat it because it is basically living sea muck.
Trade
The main exports are tin and fish. In Roman times there was a lot of alluvial gold and iron, as well.
Markets
The biggest market is at Launceston. In the time of King John paid a fee to be allowed to move their market from Sunday to Thursday. Most other markets in Cornwall are on Saturdays, near churches. There are many weekly markets, with annual fairs. The fair at Mazarion is the fair for Saint Michael’s Mont. The monks keep a tithing barn in Mazarion. A glove on a pole traditionally marks a fair as open, and these gloves are often a faerie artefact or a saintly relic.
The main exports to other lands, sold at the markets, are wool, tin, pewter, and porcelain. The main imports are:
- salt, linen and canvas from Brittany
- fruit from Spain
- wood, charcoal, fish and mantles from Ireland
- wood, charcoal and sea coal from Wales
Plot hooks: Would you like to buy a market?
In real history, Richard of Romans gave borough charters to Bossiney, Tintagel, Camelford, West Looe, Bodmin, Launceston, Liskeard, and Lostwithiel. This allowed each to pay an annual fee to hold markets, run fairs, keep a guidhall, and have a seat at Parliament. Conrwall suddenly gained a small Parliamentary faction and Richard wondered what he’ll do with all of this money.
Shape and Material Bonuses for Cornish Products
Magical items made in Cornwall are likely to be made with local materials, particularly when they are resonant to useful styles of magic. Italicised entries are new to this work. Plain entries were published in the official line.
- Agate: Protection from venom 7, Protection from storms 5, Storms 3
- Boat: Sailing 3
- Brass: Demons, devils and angels 4, Ignem 3, Music 3.
- Bronze: Darkness 5, Terram 3
- Chisel: Shatter stone 2
- Copper: Effect own shape 4, Deftness 3, Passion 2, Sex magic 2
- Electrum: Muto Terram 4, Deception 3, Scrying 3
- Gold: Induce greed 4, Nobility 4, Peace 4, Wealth 4, Heath 2
- Iron: Harm or repel faeries 7, Bonds 3.
- Lead: Wards 4, Hatred 3, Summon and bind ghosts 3, Summon and bind spirits 3
- Mallet: Precision 2
- Milpreve: Recover from snakebite 10, Attract serpents 6, Float on water 6, See through illusions 3, Cure nightmares 2.
- Mirror: Display images 7, See truth 6, Summon and bind ghosts 5, Illusions 2
- Mast: Protection from temptation 2 (useful for maypoles)
- Net: Immobilize 5
- Pearl: Detect and eliminate poison 5
- Pewter: Mending and repair 5, Food and drink 3
- Rope / cord : Binding 4, Strangulation 2
- Sail: Sailing 4
- Sea shell: Sea creatures 3, Sea 2
- Serpent glass ring: Control and ward serpents 6
- Shovel: Move or destroy earth 4
- Silver: Harm lycanthropes 10, Lycanthropes 5, Protect spirits 3, Intellego 2, Terram 1
- Tin: Joviality 4, Weakness 3, Attract faeries 2, Law 1
- Tin “diamond”: Aquam 5 (as per crystal)
- Topaz: Controlling wild beasts 5, Courage 4, Leadership 4, Pride 4, Strength 4
- Tumbled pebble: Prevent change 2
Games From Folktales 