Timothy Ferguson's Blog, page 76

The Vaults of the Order

Last time, I mentioned I was kicking off the November Ars Magica community projects early. Well, the site is up, although the material is not yet in place. If you’re a fan of the game, please consider contributing to The Vaults of the Order. The hope is for 50 submissions, and things you have used before are really welcome provided you haven’t sold them (which is why I’m writing fresh: I’ve flogged most of my items and creatures to Atlas Games.)

My biggest bit yet is that eagle-headed god. It turns out he’s a nephilim, Dagon, the defender of the royal line of Persia, and the catering manager of Hell, depending no which myth you like.

We are planning this over on the Forum, but the basics are that each write-up is based on an OSC scheme image from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We are creating an imaginary museum for the Order.  If you’d prefer to use a creature, then just find something you can tie into its story. The weapon it was defeated with, or a book in which it can be said to have been mentioned. It’s a very open project, and you don’t need to read all of the previous submissions.

Grimgroth Awards and the Hermetic Museum

Thanks to all of the Ars Magica fans who voted for the Grimgroth Awards.

I’d like to thank CJ and his henchpeople for all of the effort involved.

I’d particularly like to congratulate Ben McFarland for the Dragon Abbott. I remember reading the draft of it and thinking “This is brilliant and I have never thought of anything like this.” We then swapped some jokes about Chinese food on the Silk Road, I think.

Going in I knew I was a lock for most improved House, since the two nominated Houses were Criamon and Tremere, so you had a choice of voting for me, or a slightly later version of me. 8)

I’m really happy for Covenants dragged itself up to favourite supplement. I’m surprised, because it was very early in the line, and the line style had not really set back then.

It’s a real honour to be voted Favourite forum poster, and to say thanks, I’d like to unveil the idea I hope everyone will rally around this November (or earlier), as we did for the Vanilla Covenants, and other earlier projects.

I’m a huge fan of Nick Bantock, who did the Griffin and Sabine Trilogies. One of his books, though, I thought perfect for an Ars style rework.  Well, two of his books. I’d like to do an Ars SG version of The Trickster’s Hat, but that’s a digression, my main focus for this is The Museum at Purgatory. In this book, Nick makes up odd backstories for his art pieces, and strings them together with a frame narrative. I thought we should do the same.

Now, here’s the bit where it gets (what I hope is) clever. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has just released 400 000 high quality images of artefacts free for non-commercial use. I’d like each of us to pick one, two or however any you can, and we can generate stories and statistics for each. These can all then be filed in a central blog, which will be an enduring, free, resource for the Ars community. I’m going to cheat and start sooner than November because (ahem) Linda and I are expecting a visit from a Stork of Virtue.

I think we should get a frame narrative together on it, or multiple frame narratives, but that can wait until we start getting material together. Hopefully themes will emerge.

(By coincidence, the photo that’s heading the article I saw on this is the original of a duplicate I photographed in the British Museum, hoping to do something like this, so I’m one up already.)

 

Mirarion : Preface

The Mirarion was a fiction piece I started last year and has stalled due to my health issues. I do hope to get back to it eventually. This was my first shot at a beginning. I think it’s too slow, so you’ll see the proper beginning next week.

***

He asked me what I remembered and I said “Nothing.”

He was a man in middle age, seated opposite me on a chair made of intricately carved wood. I stared at him, trying to understand where I was, and why.  His eyes were brown. His skin was dark. He wore gloves. I could not connect these disparate parts of him together into a deeper meaning that related to myself.

“Absolutely nothing? Do you know my name?” he asked. His teeth were perfectly white, and even, and this struck me as disturbingly unnatural in a man his age.

“You are Toxophilus Viridis of House Mycetias.” He straightened in his chair and looked pleased. He seemed very tall.

“And do you know where you are?”  His hands moved slowly and placatingly as we talked.

“I am in your laboratory.”

He smiled, “Which is where?”  He leaned forward. I know now he was examining my eye movements.

“In Hungary, in Lycaneon.”

“Excellent.” His hands came together in an accidental clap. He looked down at them for a moment and asked “Can you move normally?”

“Have I been ill?” I asked.

“No, no.” he answered, smiling encouragingly, with his unnecessarily excellent teeth. He threw a small leather ball toward me, and I caught it automatically. I realised I am left handed. My hand was so small that it could barely cradle the ball. My fingers were callused, and stained with dark ink. I inferred that I was a child, and able to write. He was not as tall as I had imagined. I was far shorter than he was.

“Why aren’t I worried?” I asked.

“About your memory loss?”

“Yes. I think I should be terrified, but I’m not.”

“Ah, yes. That’s magic, you see. I’m controlling your emotions.”

“Why?” I noted my continued absence of fear. I was unsure precisely why my eyes were serruptitiously roaming his possessions until they light on a pen knife. Something inside of me, noting that I should be feeling fear, had sought a weapon. I concluded that I was the sort of person who feels more comfortable when armed.

He noticed. “Well, for the reason you just mentioned. I’d prefer you weren’t terrified or enraged.” he replied. He lifted the pen knife from the writing desk, and handed it to me, handle first.

“Enraged at you?” I asked, accepting it, without thought, into my left hand. I didn’t feel any particular desire to keep hold of it, so I set it down on the arm of my chair.

“Ah…”

“So you did this to me?” I still didn’t feel anything in patricular, beyond a sort of gentle lassitude.

“Yes.” he answered. “To protect you.” forestalling my obvious question, but leaving me with more.

“From what? How can you protect me by hiding my memory?”

“Erasing, actually. It’ll never come back. It’s a present for you. One you even asked for, although that may suprise you.”

“I don’t understand. I feel like I should be afraid. I feel like I should want to run away.”

“That’s understandable, but unneccessary. You are safe here. Let me ask you a question: when you think of Lycaneon, do you think the people here are safe, or unsafe?”

“Safe, but I don’t know why I think that.”

“If the spell has worked properly, only your biographical memories have been destroyed. You will still recall places, facts, and the ways of doing things, just nothing about yourself.”

“I asked you to do this?”

“Yes, you even wrote a note to yourself to that effect, but since you cannot recognise your own handwriting at the moment, perhaps that should wait for later.”

“Who are you to me?”

“I am your teacher.”

“So, I am an apprentice?”

“Yes.”

“How long have I been your apprentice?”

“About ten minutes.”

“What is my name?”

“Celeres.”

“Was that always my name, or is that an apprentice name?”

“What made you ask?” he tilted his head to the side, examining me.

“It’s Latin. So either I was raised in a covenant or it’s a name chosen by a companion.”

“Ah, good. Yes, it’s a replacement for the name taken from you by my spell.” He relaxed back into his chair.

“I’m newly your apprentice?”

“Yes.”

“So I’m seven?”

“How did you know you were seven?”

“Apprentices at Lycaneon are trained in grammar until they are seven, then taken as apprentices.”

“Oh. That’s rather more than I expected you to remember. It comes close to being biographical.”

“What does taking my memory protect me from?”

“Yourself.  In the next few years the powers of the elements, and of the living and the dead, will be opened to you. It will be tempting to use your powers to make yourself feel better, to enjoy yourself. Many of our kind find it difficult, at this time, not to seek out their parents, and enact revenge.”

“Because mortals hate us?”

“Mortals don’t hate us. There is something in us which gives us the magic, but which scares dogs and curdles milk. Mortals can sense it. They know how dangerous we are, and it makes them distrust us.”

“And so my parents distrusted me?”

“From the day of your birth onward, and their distrust took distressing forms, which are better forgotten. Our cousins, the Tytalus, never forget, and their adolescent magi make sport at the expense of their mortal bloodkin. Such things attract faeries and demons and the attention of the Judges. It is better to forget. It is better to start again.”

He gestured and the lassitude fell away from me. I could feel an ache in the tops of my legs from sitting, for how long I did not know, on the edge of the hard chair. I could feel trepidation, but under that, a sense that something new and interesting was close at hand. He examined my face carefully, although for all I knew he could read my thoughts.

“I am Celeres, an apprentice of the House of Mycetias.”

“You are.” He nodded.

“I see. I am not certain what to do next.”

“You seem to be taking this far better than I expected.” he comments, again trying to reach into my mind through eyes.

“What were you expecting?”

“Well, sulleness, now that the spell controlling your emotions has been lifted.”

“Your other apprentices were sullen?”

“You remember my other apprentices?”

“Yes. You’ve had two.”

“Do you know what they look like?”

“Yes, the older is a man,  and the younger is a woman.”

“Do you know what you look like?”

“No.”

“Interesting. I have a mirror if you wish to look.”

“I am at a loss to know what I want.”

“Then let us begin at the beginning. Are you hungry or thirsty?”

“No, but my legs ache.”

“Then you should rise. Walk with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Immediately? To the courtyard. Eventually to the Tribunal. We must tell the other magi you are my apprentice.”

I rose. I saw my feet were in shoes. They were small. I followed him to the courtyard. I could think of no better thing to do.

On War : Clausewitz and Mythic Europe

I recently finished recording the final volume of On War by Carl von Clausewitz for Librivox. Librivox recordings are legally available for free, and are in the public domain so you can reuse them for other projects. I’m really proud of how it has turned out, and the enormous effort that Linda and I put in during the recording. Thanks also to the support team, my proof listeners, and book co-coordinators. Volume 1 was recorded separately from the later two volumes.

The vast majority of people who follow this blog are roleplayers, and I’d like to suggest Clausewitz to them, particularly the early sections where he discusses the medieval conception of war. In my own abortive attempts at fiction, I’ve been trying to see how the medieval view of war could have affected significant events in the history of Mythic Europe. The key one, which I found amazing until Clausewitz discussed it, was the absolute certainty that medieval generals had that attack was the stronger form of war. If you were not certain of how you should act, then the default should be to throw your forces at the heart of the enemy.

Clausewitz points out that even medieval generals who were saying that attack was the strongest form did not, for the most part, actually act as if this were true.  When an army approached their city skilled generals did not, like the Greek phalanxes of old, abandon their walls and meet the enemy on the plain. This would be the obvious choice if you really did feel that attack were the stronger form. Generals often did ridiculous things, like march their armies up mountains. This was because many generals had very little combat experience and so were dependant on theories in books, one of which was that if you commanded the source of a river, you effectively controlled everything downstream. We may presume that the magi of the Schism War, similarly, sometimes fell into tactical error.

I think the belief that attack was the stronger form possibly led to repeated over-extensions of force, during the Schism War. This might explain how the Tremere were able to destroy the Diedne. If the Diedne were on the attack in their final battle, it makes sense that they could be completely eliminated.  This makes less sense for a siege in which the Tremere are the aggressors.

We have heard that at the Battle of the Tempest, the great Diedne and Mercurian Flambeau rituals were cast at the same time, and os both groups killed the other. This seems unlikely, just in terms of timing. I’d suggest that the Diedne actually won the Tempest, and that the idea that the Flambeau killed them Phyrrically is a later, historical addition. After destroying the main Flambeau force, the Diedne struck out at their enemies, abandoning the safety of the defensive, and were destroyed by a counterstroke from the Tytalus or Tremere.

Belphegor notes

One of the posters over on the Ars board is doing some great stuff with Baal-peor’s mystery cult initiations. Check them out.

A few suggested additions for your saga:

In later demonology Belphegor is the demons of inventiveness, so he’s the one who knows where all of the Original Research is lost.
He may also be the one who causes it to be lost, by attacking people verging on breakthrough.
He’s the Infernal Ambassador to France, so he’s in favour of France being larger.  This is quite important for the French invasion of England early in the reign of the current king. He’s a possible replacement for Argenta, the demonic patroness of the French pirates in Antagonists.
He’s terrified of women, as noted in a folktale recorded by Machiavelli. See this Librivox page for audio and ebook versions of the story, where he’s called Belphagor.

A quick note to spread the word on three vlog posts

I’ve added a few extra vlog posts to my YouTube channel. They are not fantastic, but I’m still learning how the equipment works.

I apologize if you get two Google+ or Facebook notifications about this post (one from WordPress and one from Youtube. I’m going to have that sorted for the next video.

The first is about how I came up with the structure for the Boons and Hooks section of Covenants.

The second is a long and shaky introduction to some of the books on the shelves you can see behind me in the other videos. It’s not great but I learned a lot making it (like how to make titles, cut in background music, and why to use a tripod) I’d say it’s the least impressive in terms of content, and so if you aren’t a bibliophile you are not missing much.

The third video is the inevitable magus/companion/grog/covenant video. I use it to kick off the propaganda series, which is intended for convincing outsiders to give Ars Magica a try.

I’m very pleased to see the cover of “Alliances”, which is the French version of “Covenants”

I’m not sure how much of my stuff made it through the translation process, or if they just wrote from scratch, but the cover of Alliances is floating around the web and it fills me with pride.

I’m not sure what Ludogames’s policy on sharing their graphics is, so if they want me to take this down, I do apologise.

A note on the new vlog

I’m doing some practice vloging, with an Ars Magica sort of theme.

My current plan is to load one of these a week, on Friday, Australian time.

The current plan is

Introduction (which is up)
Cookbook (which is about the writing process for Covenants, and is recorded)

and then some material suggested by commenters.

The first set, which I’m calling “Propaganda” in my notes are the “Why you should play Ars Magica” videos. My goal with them is to do something different than the sort of setting detail which has been unpacked by other people. I’m not going to list the Houses in these. The goal is to hook people enough that they want to try a game.

Propaganda: Castles, wherein I will be comparing Ceoris to Stars Hollow.
Propaganda: Enemies, wherein I will be explaining Lex Luthor in Ars Magic terms.
Propaganda: Companions: Let’s try to build a social companion not based on Venus’s Blessing and Presence!
Propaganda: Failure and Death, wherein I will be comparing American literature unfavourably with British literature, then apologising profusely.

After those, lacking any new comments that spark inspiration, I’m going to discuss the history of House Jerbiton, and the history of House Tremere.  I’m thinking of labelling them “Why you should play a…” so that I can fool around with the playlist features on Youtube.

Oh: update!  I forgot I could embed video:

Is there a better way to model longevity rituals?

Primitive longevity ritual

Longevity rituals are kind of the ugly ducking of the Ars Magic item design process. Initially they used a Creo Corpus total, but that was boring because it meant any sane magus eventually became a Creo Corpus expert. Now it has the odd effect of making most magi look younger than me, and so you get this odd “Twenty-something drama” look to Grand Tribunal, which is not really what we want.  May I offer a counter-suggestion?

We know that Longevity Rituals make people sterile. This was, initially, to force magi to take apprentices as their children, but that doesn’t work at all because most magi have their children well before 35, which is when most take their potions (or do rituals). It’s just a sort of odd, historical feature. That being said, there’s a way to make it work.

Longevity rituals should be, in my opinion, a Exoteric Mystery of the Order.  Let’s run some numbers!

What we are looking for is basically the Unaging Minor Virtue.  Sure, it has some problems, and we could posit that the way to get around those is a Major Virtue, but those are the sort of special things for which you Ascend into the Hall of Heroes, or Become a faerie. Let’s just work with Unaging for now. I assume the Cult Lore of the Order of Hermes is Magic Theory, in this example.

Mystagogue Initiation total = 6 (Presence 0, Magic Theory with specialisation 6, although better is clearly possible.)

Special place and time: there are certain places designed for teaching this virtue, and House Bonisagus controls them: The Womb of the Order, for example, or the covenant which invented modern Longevity rituals in the Alps, and has a titan chained to a slab. +3

Symbolic aptness of the rite: +3. I’m not sure what this is, and they might vary.  Cutting a sheaf of grain?  Let’s assume poetry and move on.

Minor Ordeal +3: The candidate is rendered sterile. (treated as a minor Flaw, but you could also argue that this isn’t much of a Flaw and is instead a Sacrifice)

Unique Quest: +6 The character must go to considerable effort, and face danger, to collect items symbolically suited to his birth and life, so that these can be mystically transformed into part of his spirit during the rite.

So, I was trying to reach 18 and I’m already at 21.  Mission accomplished there.

With another 9 points, I can justify something which not only hides the effects of age, but gives an aging roll modifier (say, a fraction of your highest Art score?).  How can I get my 9?

Well, the way to do it is to suggest that the Longevity Initiation is not the first: the first Initiation is into Parma Magica, and it has as its Ordeal taking the Oath of Hermes, which is effectively a Major Flaw. As the first Initiation after the Parma Initiation, that’s -9. And that, as they say in tennis, is game!

So, we now see the Parma as a Mystery Virtue, followed by Longevity. What other virtues do the Bonisagus cult offer? The way Mysteries work the most efficient way on from here is to have at least two, possibly three, Virtues that lead off from here.  I was thinking Certamen, and discarded it as basically trivial the way the game is now designed. I’d like to suggest that this be a new milestone for taking apprentices.  You don’t need 5 in every art, you need a teaching Virtue from the Bonisagus masters. Well, not need, but you’d perhaps find it desirable? Perhaps the final one lets you write your memoirs skilfully?

Chip in in the comments!

Could the Ancient Olympics have a link to the Normandy Tournament?

I was watching a documentary the other day about the ancient Olympics, and was struck by a few things which seemed useful for Ars Magica play.

The first is that if you had a great bard like Pindar in your service, and you won at the Olympics, he could convince people you were so amazingly skilled that this indicated you were more than mortal. You had the Blood of the Gods.  The odd thing here is that the person Pindar lionised had two sons, and each of them also won at the Olympics. The Blood of the Gods appears, in this case, to have been a genetically transmissible Virtue. So, I’d suggest Pindar is a faerie who has the Grant Virtue power, and can actually give the Blood of the Gods to a person. Much the same way that if a magically-created horse leaves footprints which do not disappear when its spell duration ends, so too even if Pindar were to disappear or withdraw his Virtue from his patrons, his sons would still retain the Blood of the Gods.

A second point I found interesting was that when you were presented with your wreaths, to indicate your victory, you stood before a statue of Zeus and it was believed he looked into your heart and, if you credited your own strength for the victory, he destroyed you with a lightning bolt. That’s a Humble Personality trait check.

So, let’s try here to construct a Mystery Cult Initiation based on winning pankration at the Ancient Olympics:

Let’s assume that the priest handing out the awards is the Mystogogue, and is required to have a positive Presence to have his role. Also, let’s assume the athlete knows enough about the Olympic cult to give an Ability score of 3. So, that gives us a stating score of at least 4. Can we creep up on the 15 required to initiate a minor virtue?

Initiate must travel far to reach a special time and place: +3
Quest: Initiate must defeat the most skilled warriors in the known world in hand-to-hand combat. Entrants specifically agree that if they die, it’s their own fault for entering and demand their next of kin seek no reprisal: +3
Sacrifice of time: The athlete trains for years to enter the event. +1
Sacrifice of wealth: All athletes, and their cities, give lavishly to the gods before the competition, +1

So, that’s +12, which is not quite there in terms of Lesser Virtue Initiation. We could tip it over the top in several ways:

Assuming the priest has a Presence higher than 1. The chief official at the Olympics is presumably excellent.
We can assume the athlete has a higher Cult score.
by adding an Ordeal, for example one which gives a Personality or Story Flaw.
The Troupe may say that there’s a Sympathetic bonus (up to +3)
A Sacrifice may add up to +6, depending on what you destroy on behalf of Zeus.

The interesting question then is, can we work from this older, partial script to the Normandy Tournaments.

The first four elements can, in some sense, be carried over. People need to travel, defeat the cunningest of adversaries, sacrifice time and sacrifice wealth.  People outside the group who are controlling the cult will never be initiated because it requires a Cult lore of at least 1, but let’s see if we can find ways to get a modern version of the games over the barrier for Minor Virtue initiation:

We might again assume the mystogogue, who is presumably from House Tytalus, has a Presence higher than 0. Some of the Leper-magi have huge Presence scores because of the terror their condition evokes.
Were I to suggest that the games are run by and for House Tytalus, and that House Tytalus Lore sufficed as a cult lore, that makes the score markedly easier to reach.
An Ordeal, of course, fixes everything.
A Sympathetic bonus is possible, if the final virtue is suitable.
A sacrifice might also work. Destroying a talisman, for example.

So, there’s a loose structure here that may suggest that the point of the Normandy Tournaments is to prove a Quest for magi on a mystery path.