Roleplaying games from historical research
Here are a few pieces of useful material from Further Legends and Traditions of Cheshire by Frederick Woods, that suit Ars Magica games. Birkenhead Hall The lady of the hall became convinced her husband was having an affair with the maid. After seething for a while, she pushed the maid over the bannisters and fled…
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Robert Herrick’s elegy for willow trees seems to suit a dryad that feeds on, and perhaps relieves, sorrow. I’m interested in her grove as a vis source for a covenant, but for it to work, the magi need the local people to have passionate, tragic affairs. I could see the dryad making wicker crowns that…
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There’s a cryptid found in Longdendale, a mountain pass in the Peak District of England. It’s a slug the size of a horse, with a head that looks like that of a whale. It has at least one eye, which swivels madly in its socket. Boneless makes a grating noise as it travels. It doesn’t…
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One of the annoying things in my Cheshire folklore review is that I keep finding excellent spots for covenants, but little folklore around them to support campaigns. I discovered there’s a mineral found only in a couple of places, called “blue john” and though that it was likely useful as a vis source. Blue John…
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Robert Herrick was sometimes called the last Elizabethan poet. He was hundreds of years later, but his style echoes the Tudor belief in a Merry England filled with bucolic peasants. These two poems follow the idea that faeries are tiny and use pieces of insects to make machinery. Note also that faeries are Christians in…
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The folklore for the Cheshire book is feeling a bit sparse. Leigh Egerton’s Ballads & Legends of Cheshire from 1867 claims that Cheshire lacks folklore because it has no mountains. Cornwall had enough folklore for a book, so I thought this was silliness. That being said, the richest folklore I’ve found has been in Longdendale,…
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Moston Dragon I wanted to wrote up the Moston Dragon as a a monster of the month, but the folklore surrounding it is not detailed enough to extend it past variation on the generic stats given in Realms of power Faerie (page). It is suitable for a combat encounter. The creature’s lair was at Dragon…
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When I originally wrote these monsters up I was considering the chimeras as adulterations which could be seen before the person fades into Twilight. Adulterations are the parts of a person that won’t get through the filter into Criamon’s Pure Land. Some are as a small as a little spirit, while others are….well, enough of…
Read MoreThe core text for Sanctuary of Ice is The White Mountains by Karl Felix Wolff. It entered the public domain recently, so I could record it or do Ars Magic annotations. I’ve been thinking about why I haven’t started work on a 25th anniversary update for Sanctuary, and I’ve decided its because the Magic Realm…
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Petrus Pontium is a bridge troll who has adapted to Venetian custom. He runs a stick-fighting and wrestling school near the canal end of the Merceria. He rarely defends the bridges during official mob-style matches, but will meet challengers for single combat. When fighting or teaching Petrus wears armor, and carries a shield, weaved from…
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Games From Folktales 