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The Trophaeum of Granatum of Tytalus
A trophaeum is a monument to military victory. For example, if you killed a hundred enemy warriors and piled their armaments together, that hill would be a trophaeum. I’m struck that in the modern Order, there are no trophaea to the Schism War. It may be that the Guernicus demand for Damnatio Memoriae, which led…
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Cornwall: Richard of the Romans – early life
I’ve boiled down enough of the legends from Cornwall to move forward, but need to add in the mundane politics. This brings into focus Richard, the younger brother of King Henry III, who was effectively the ruler of England at various times, and after making himself the richest guy in England, he literally buys the…
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Cornwall: Industries
Polwhele doesn’t give a lot of information here: the chapters are perhaps meant to be read in the context of equivalents from the previous era. This feels like a weak chapter. Time to drop this Polwhele guy and find something a bit more detailed. Agriculture A lot of “in kind” rent is paid: money rents…
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Cornwall: Military Architecture
Polwhele says that if a castle existed before the Normans, it’s in his previous book. I’m not saying I now jovially hate him, but he is putting extra weight on the side of the scale that says I need to go back and read his first volume. Honestly I don’t want to, because it’s slightly…
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Cornwall: Defining the boundaries of the project
In the earlier Cornwall posts, I’ve been looking at folklore, but to make a gazetteer I need to grapple with mundane matters like geography, politics and commerce. For this I’m using the History of Cornwall by Polwhele which is ancient, but it’ll do while I’m waiting for something more modern to be delivered. Geographical extent…
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Cornwall: Miscellaneous stories
Hunt just gives up and pours it all into a miscellaneous chapter here at the end. Let’s fossick for plot hooks: The Bells of Forraburry Church There are no bells at Forrburry Church. They were made to rival the local church at Tintagel, and had a speedy voyage to Cornwall. The pilot gave thanks to…
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The Habits of the Witches of Thessaly
There are a couple of theories as to what the witches of Thessaly were getting up to. One, that they were a school of ancient astronomers, run by a woman, called Aglaonike , I prefer. It ties into the Astonomical mysteries of the Order. That’s not what we explore this week. Instead, this is from The Golden Ass by Apuleius. I’ve published it on this blog before, but that was five years ago, so I hope you’ll pardon the repetition. When I was a young man I…fortuned in an evil hour to come to the City Larissa, where while I went up and down to view the streets to seeke some reliefe…
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Cornwall: Romances of the Miners
This is a short chapter, but it contains something terribly valuable to me as a writer: it explains what’s going on with the Jews. This matters a more deeply than may be superficially apparent. When we were writing Ars Magica, we kept looking for places where we could squeeze in black people, gay people, woman…
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Games From Folktales 