Roleplaying games from historical research
I recorded a Christmas episode earlier this year, but because of the vagaries of podcast production, it drifted to early December. Here’s a replacement, about the Abbey of Saint Nicholas at Tresco. Nicholas, in local lore, is a fearsome chap : he’s far more similar to the weapon smuggler who turns up in the Narnia…
Read More
The legend which follows comes from “Scilly and its Legends” by Reverend Whitfield. When I originally read it I just gave up and said “No, we obviously aren’t going to be getting anything more of value from the good Reverend.” I was mistaken because, superficially the following story sounds like a simple miracle. Simple miracles…
Read More
I was recently at a jellyfish spawning lab, where I discovered the jellies I’d swum through during my SCUBA lessons were Moon Jellyfish. This led me down a rabbit hole of thought – the largest jellyfish in the world wash up occasionally on the shores of Cornwall. Could a magus take one as a familiar?…
Read More
This is the 200th episode of Games From Folktales, so you’re going to have to indulge me, dear reader. I’m sharing a fiction piece. It’s set in Cornwall and has a creature which is presumably, in Ars Magica terms, an Accuser: that is, a demon who hunts sinners and claims to be sent from God.…
Read More
The main character in this story is Richard of Cornwall, the man who goes on to become the Holy Roman Empero, basically by buying the job using money he gains from banking. In the ashcan for the Cornwall material that’s already been released he gets several pages of material, but this story is one that…
Read More
One of the advantages of doing fan work, over official work for the line, is that you can include internal contradictions. In the ashcan for the Cornwall material that’s currently out I use the date for the submergence of Lyonesse which is given in the Gesta Romanorum. There is however a piece of folklore that…
Read More
Scilly was one of the last holdouts of the Priscillian heresy. It was linked to Manicheanism, sorcery and astrological demons. A covenant of Criamon astrologers disappeared from the islands after a great magical event. These things seem to be connected. Let’s look at the history of the heretical community. In this post, I’ll be using…
Read More
In the Scilly Isles there’s a missing covenant called Stellasper. We know of it only that it was a Criamon clutch, that its name suggests astrology, and that its people vanished together. To supplement the Cornish gazetter, that I produced earlier in the year, I’d like to consider how to expand the saga seeds within…
Read MoreA reconstruction of the medieval Tintagel Castle is on English Heritage’s web page.
Read More
Bottrell was one of the researchers that Robert Hunt used to flesh out his book, so his material has been already fossicked over, at one remove. Bottrell uses a lot more of the local dialect, and his colour text is better than Hunt’s. For example, all the descendants of Jack the Giant are shaggy because…
Read More
Games From Folktales 