For the Venice material I’ve hit a couple of additional plot hooks, based on the two most popular masks at Carnivale. The most popular male mask isn’t a character: it’s just a plain white mask, without a mouth. The chin bows forward sufficiently for the person to eat and drink in the mask. The mask’s…
Read MoreExtracts from “The Boy Who Was Apprenticed to an Enchanter”
Padraic Colum was an Irish author who translated the Thousand and One Nights, although his translation is not much used anymore. In his book “The Boy Apprenticed to an Enchanter” he spends some time remixing material from other stories, and making it more palatable for readers of his time. For this episode I’ve extracted three…
Read MoreA poem of demonic oppression: “Mice” by Gerald Bullett
A brief one this time. This poem demonstrates what, in Ars Magica, we’d call oppression. That’s when a demon attaches itself to a victim and removes their sources of joy. It’s a paradigmatic version of clinical depression. Thanks to Anne and the Librivox production team for the recording. *** I see the broken bodies of…
Read MoreThe Geebung Polo Club
It’s the first week of April, so indulge me with this Australian ghost story for your Monster of the Month. Your Librivox reader this time is me from fifteen years ago. Odd how had my voice has changed. A few explanations: Geebung is a fictional place. There is a suburb of Brisbane called Geebung, but…
Read MoreWake Not The Dead by Ernst Raupach
This may well be the longest episode Games From Folktales has hosted. It’s a very early vampire novella with at least one, but perhaps two, monsters of the month. It’s a 19th Century story from Germany and was recorded into the public domain by Louise J Belle. Thanks to Louise and her production team. As…
Read MoreThis Moth Eats Words
The Exeter Book is an Anglo-Saxon collection of puzzle poems. Riddle 47, which I’d like to focus on for this episode is one of the more famous, Thanks to the Saga Thing podcast for reading it on a recent episode about the lacuna in the saga they are following. A moth ate words. I thought…
Read MoreProtected: Venice Draft Zero
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Read MoreAllingham and the Fear of Little Men
I was first taught this poem in primary school. It was in the standard English textbook, to explain what adjectives were. I thought I knew it. I only knew the first and last verses. The child abduction in the middle verses would have caused parental concern. Children getting lost in the bush is one of…
Read MoreExtinct Familiars
We’ve dealt with extinct familiars before in the fanzines, by talking about folklore and its link to fossils, but the idea here is a bit different. There are several species which are living in Mythic Europe and have gone extinct since. These add odd colour to the game without changing the power level. A few…
Read MoreThe Dead Men of Pest from “Poems Original and Translated” by John Herman Merivale
We’ve been getting a heap of useful material out of decadent and romantic poets, so let’s continue. John Merivale was part of Lord Byron’s social circle, and this poem is about a vampiric plague in Pest, which is one of the three cities that merged to form modern Budapest in Hungary. The following recording was…
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