Justin Howe's Blog, page 9

Orlando Furiso, Canto XII

Yeehaw!

Back to them knights doing knightly stuff and messing the sweet honey iced tea up! Last canto was a bit of a bust. This Canto? It’s aight.

To start that rascally old sorcerer Atlante has devised a new trick to stop all them knightly battle boys: the Knight Motel. Think of it like a roach motel except it’s a castle and it casts an illusion (usually a damsel in distress) on passing knights to trap them within. Sadly Atlante didn’t coat the floors in glue, but instead provided foo...

Orlando Furioso, Canto XI

Knights: 5+ (Ruggiero, Orlando, Bradamante, Oberto King of Ireland, Bireno the bastard who did Olimpia dirty, and probably a bunch of unnamed Irish knights)

Damsels: 2 (Angelica and Olimpia)

Monsters: 3 (the hippogriff (it gets tired of Ruggiero and flies off to deus ex machina elsewhere), the Orc (RIP), and a giant (defeats Bradamante)

Swords: 1 (Orlando’s Durindana)

Horses: unknown and unnamed

Wizards: ? (a couple mentioned in passing)

In this canto nothing much happens t...

Deadbolts Map

A map made in Hexkit using one of Highland Paranormal Society’s kits.

Here’s the map to the Into the Odd game I’m running. Their base is the little domed house at the center of the map and the circles in the cube icons are artifacts that they have been tasked to find. Other icons are various things they have encountered or stumbled across. It’s science-fantasy and riffing on all of these:

Electric BastionlandNumeneraThose Who Came BeforeWeird NorthGolgothaIron Sleet: The PrimogenitorAnna...

Orlando Furioso, Canto X

Knights in this Canto: 100s (Ruggiero, Astolfo, Bireno, Rinaldo, a few 100 English knights with names like Harold, Herman, or Godfrey, but including Zirbeno and Lurcanio from Cantos 5 and 6)

Damsels in this Canto: 12? (Alcina, 3 unnamed sorceresses, Olimpia, Logistilla, four sorceresses loyal to Logistilla, Melissa, Angelica)

Monsters in this Canto: The Hippogriff that is not at all a private jet plane, the Orc that is not at all meant in the Tolkien sense, but in the Orca sense.

…...

Orlando Furioso, Canto IX

Knights introduced in this canto: 3 (Bireno the Prince of Zealand, Arbante the Prince of Friesland, Cimosco the King of Friesland)

Damsels introduced in this canto: 2 (an as yet unnamed Irish Princess and Olimpia the Princess of Holland).

Horses introduced in the canto: 1 (Brigliador the Horse)

Last canto Ariosto promised more Orlando and this canto he delivered. It’s all Orlando all the time except for those times when he meets someone who gives forth some quest-related exposition...

Orlando Furioso, Canto VIII

This Canto is a whirlwind of plate spinning. Ariosto has a lot of character to keep in rotation, and sometimes, True Believers, I can even hear Stan Lee coming through the prose. 

This Canto gives us more of the same except maybe more so. 

Ariosto is tying up some story lines while laying the groundwork for others. And as always, he introduces a half-dozen new characters into the plot. So buckle on your swords and let’s go!

I could’ve sworn the last canto ended with Melissa about t...

Orlando Furioso, Canto VII

This canto starts with a bang but ends with a whimper. It also introduces a new character! Well, sort of. It actually names a character we met before. But all that in time. For now, let’s look at Ruggiero setting off for his duel with Erifilla. It’s good stuff. Erifilla makes a grand entrance being both Princess Mononoke and Prince Gaynor the Damned.

“For a mount a horse she does not choose,

But sits astride a wolf, alert and keen,

Upon the richest saddle ever seen.”

They charge each ...

An Into the Odd Character’s Tale As Depicted in Tokens

I’m playing in an Into the Odd/Electric Bastion game. It’s fun, but has required some rejiggering of my escapist expectations. With D&D or Blades in the Dark you generally play someone with panache from the start. That’s not the case so much with Into the Odd as the below will show.

To start we made two characters and picked the one I liked the most. One of the options was an out of work animal tamer and I thought it would be fun to play as the shepherd kid accosted by the players in the gam...

Orlando Furioso, Canto VI

You have to love Gustave Dore. His illustrations for Orlando Furioso are great. Anyways, The Iliad/Odyssey vibes come fast in this Canto.

We start with moralizing about Polinesso and how justice finds evil ones and punishes them. Before long we return to the mysterious knight who arrived to defend Ginerva. It turns out he is Ariodante, Ginerva’s lover long-believed dead. But wait how could this be? Did that traveler lie who said he saw Ariodante fling himself off a cliff? 

No. Not quit...

Orlando Furioso, Canto V

Prepare yourself!

In Canto V we meet the greatest young knight in all of Italy and his name is Ariodante. And, boom, like that Ariosto drops an author self-insert character! Truly this is a work of fan fiction. I might start doing this myself.

Which sounds the most modest: Justemingway, Justespeare, F. Scott Justgerald? But I get ahead of myself.

Last canto we ended with Rinaldo rescuing a damsel from some ruffians while on his way to rescue a different damsel. In this Canto, the r...