So…178 pages of Ars Magica goodness. Note that this is a collection of the episodes as originally published. I’ve since gone through and statted out quite a few of these, but those are going to be collected in new little booklets in 2019. So far they are going to be a Dunsany book and a…
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An early description of a giant squid, reimagined as a monster
What follows is the text of a pamphlet published in 1674, probably in London. It is usually called “A Full and True Account of the Strange Monster: or, Wonderful Fish Lately taken in Ireland.” but because I love how different this is to the modern day, indulge my quotation of the full title A true…
Read MoreIt’s late: sorry all. I’m in Australia, we are having a heat wave and my computer isn’t in an air-conditioned room. GFF Jan 2019 is go.
On the necessity of smuggling in House Mercere
I wasn’t going to write in detail about Cornish smuggling, because its golden age is three centuries beyond the game period. If you go onto Wikipedia, as it reads while I write, it says that there was no smuggling before Edward I established customs payments in 1275. That sounds plausible. On a whim I followed…
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Consuming Mystagogue
This episode went live early. Here’s a transcript of the episode as recorded. I may take a second bite at the cherry and write up the mystagogic path for the monthly collation. Why do faeries teach Mysteries? I was reading a story the other day which suggested that it was because it makes the acolyte…
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Caterpillars by E.F Benson
This week another story from E.F. Benson. E.F. Benson has only provided one story for this podcast previously: it was “The Room in the Tower” which provided the revener of Julia Stone. I wanted to share with you a different Benson story that would link into our Cornwall material. It’s been in the public domain…
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Poison maidens
Poison maidens occur in Indian folklore, where they are called visha kanya. They are assassins. Perhaps they are based on a real tradition of women taught to seduce and then poison the men to whom they are sent as gifts, but that seems almost entirely theoretical. In the more developed form, the maidens are raised…
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Dunsany: The Mist
This is a tiny episode, recorded sometime ago when I was doing all the Duunsany material. It’s only about a minute long but it’s his take on the armies of ghosts which we covered in one of the previous books. I remember a Criamon magus putting on the cap of their leader. Now for a…
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2019 Microepisode Week
These transcripts are from the two episodes originally published in the January microepisode week. There was a third episode that week, and it has a separate transcript. Microepisode week is to allows me to use up plot ideas that have been sitting in my notebooks for a while. I’ve noticed that ideas that go out…
Read MoreA simplified combat system for Ars Magica
Ars Magica’s combat system has always been a bit of a problem. The current one doesn’t let a nudist with a sharpened stick dependably defeat a knight, or require that your character’s actions be subsumed into a small tactic unit roll, but there are obvious problems with it, and these make the game difficult to…
Read MoreCornwall: The Cornish Bird Blog
The night after I put the Cornwall gazetteer out as a finished draft, I received a “like” on the blog from a Cornish folklore and photography site, called The Cornish Bird. I’d like to recommend it, because its writer has walked to many of the places described in the gazetteer, and her photographs are great…
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