Timothy Ferguson's Blog, page 8

Venice Draft 0.1

The Draft Zero version of Mythic Venice has been updated. Structurally the core parts are in place. Now what I’ll be doing is going through and making sure every bit of lore has a clear plot use. Currently it is 53 000 words long, which is about two-thirds the length of one of the standard supplements (I believe).

The main additions this time are:

* Rules for cloak and dagger fighting with stilettos.
* Ghosts who wear the volto (the white mask) and participate in Carnivale
* Coppelians – female automata who wear the moretta (black mask) and participate in Carnivale.
* Birribissi: burning lottery balls as Infernal sprites that serve the Company of Torcello
* The Giocoliere: a juggler demon, source of the lottery balls
* Stats for the Fades (native Venetian faeries)
* Stats for the Wailers (Banshees)
* Stats for the Giant Stone Crocodile plot hook

The way ahead:

I’m pulling the idea of Cicerones. It doesn’t really work with a party playing various characters over decades.

There’s a location I’m working on, the Ospedali Grandi, which will complement the bit on Opera. Basically these are orphanages which teach virtuoso-level musicianship to some of their female charges. This has given me the idea that I might want to do an appendix of companion backgrounds.

The bit where you go through and pile on the plot hooks is the most difficult part, really, because for every good idea you get perhaps a paragraph of text. For example, the theft of Saint Heliodorus gets me five sentences:

“The Ambassadatrix of Torcello cannot remove the last relic on her island so she tries to fool the player characters into taking it. She has her servants impersonate the saint and request translation to Saint Mark’s Square. A heist ensure, with the resistance carefully calibrated to ensure the player characters succeed, but do not suspect. Demons cannot avoid gossip, so eventually the player characters will learn they were tricked. Do they break back into the desecrated cathedral and face sterner resistance this time?”

So, if I wanted to get the draft up to 75 000 words with plot hooks I’d just need 400 of them.

Final sale thoughts

I’ve been saying for some time I’d Kickstart this, but that doesn’t seem financially viable. At minimum for a successful Kickstarter you need great art assets and a professionally produced video. Instead this is probably going to be finished off and made “Pay What You Qant” on Drivethru and itch.co. I’ll personally consider it a success if it eventually nets me AUD3 000. I know that’s not the fashionable 10 cents per word, but it is roughly what Atlas paid me for Sanctuary of Ice in 2003 (unadjusted for inflation) and that seems a reasonable sort of emotional boundary.

Divine Methods and Powers by Angela Black

A welcome to Games From Folktales’s first guest author, Angela Black.

***

In the default conception of Mythic Europe, miracles of Faith are rare. Whether this is for game balance or simply due to our modern sensibilities, it doesn’t exactly fit the medieval mindset on divine intervention. Miracles – while still wondrous – were relatively common to thirteenth century people. Stories about God’s power manifest in the world were abundant and contemporary, rather than being told only of times long past. According to literature of the period, prayers were regularly answered, relics had the power to heal, and many prominent churchmen were attributed miraculous powers during their lives. For example, Anthony of Padua was credited with miraculous immunity to poison as well as delivering sermons in Latin that listeners heard in their native languages; Dominic de Guzman was said to have confronted and prevailed over many demons that had physically manifested as well as changing the weather to avert a storm; and Francis of Assisi was said to have miraculously healed people and even raised the dead! And all these people lived during the default campaign era!

The question arises, then, of how to model this in your Ars Magica campaign. The Realms of Power: Divine supplement already lays out a system for giving religious characters the ability to call upon the power of God, but these Holy Methods and Powers are difficult to learn and difficult to use to any notable effect. So one easy way to make Mythic Europe a little more miraculous is to make these Holy Methods and Powers easier to obtain and use.

According to Realms of Power: Divine p. 47, characters with True Faith can learn the Holy Methods and Powers associated with a given religious tradition, with the proviso that a Storyteller might allow characters without True Faith to be initiated into these powers. This roughly tracks the way many hedge magic traditions work, with Gifted characters able to automatically learn the powers of the tradition and non-Gifted characters requiring initiation into them. But True Faith is rare, and in any case it is difficult to create truly impressive miracles, since the skills associated with the Holy Methods and Powers are not accelerated Abilities. Can they be made more common and more useful?

The first thing that can be done is to eliminate the Confidence and Fatigue investments required of the Invocation and Purity Methods, respectively (see Realms of Power: Divine, pp 46-7). This will allow characters with access to Holy Methods and Powers to use them more frequently, making such miraculous abilities more like Hermetic magic in that respect, playing a larger role in the game.

Another way is to make the Holy Methods and Powers themselves more easily available. This is perhaps the least disruptive way of making these miraculous capabilities more common. If all the Holy Methods and Powers were Minor Virtues, it would be more feasible to give NPCs without True Faith a number of them. This would make the Holy Methods and Powers less rare but still relatively difficult to make impressive use of.

Taking a different tack, a possible “fix” is to keep the Holy Methods and Powers rare, but to make the Abilities for each Method and Power accelerated Abilities. This approach will create powerful clerics in high-fantasy style, regularly capable of throwing out miracles that are on par with Hermetic spells. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but it would make churchmen formidable antagonists for magi!

If that seems too much, it wouldn’t do too much violence to the setting to grant a bonus to characters with True Faith. Characters with True Faith could be granted a bonus of 5 or even 10 times their True Faith score to effect rolls for Holy Methods and Powers. This creates a kind of two-tiered system with religious characters – initiates without True Faith can reliably produce only minor effects, but characters who do have True Faith are powerful indeed.

Finally, for a truly revolutionary approach, consider making it possible to initiate True Faith! This approach requires a bit of a reconceptualization of True Faith. Rather than denoting some ineffable quality, some holiness innate to the character, it would be something like an enhanced ordination, a special status extended to some religious officers. Since characters with True Faith automatically have access to the various Holy Methods and Powers without need for further initiation, this would serve to make True Faith and those holy Abilities both more common.

In my home campaign, in order to make miraculous abilities more common and more powerful, I allow for the initiation of True Faith and I grant a sizeable bonus per point of True Faith to the roll to generate miraculous effects. Many if not most clerics have some small ability to generate miraculous effects, and those who have undergone the more advanced initiation that grants True Faith can often stand toe-to-toe with Hermetic wizards! It moves my game a bit closer to high fantasy than perhaps the designers intended, but I think it reflects the immanence of God and His divine power in the imaginations of the denizens of the thirteenth century.

The Awful Bugaboo by Eugene Field

A bugaboo, or bugbear, is a variant of the faeries that scare parents into seeing to their children. In Realms of Power : Faerie this would be a variant of the ogre Gello. Thanks to Ann and her production team for the recording.

***

THERE was an awful Bugaboo

Whose Eyes were Red and Hair was Blue;

His Teeth were Long and Sharp and white

And he went Prowling ’round at Night.

❦

A little Girl was Tucked in Bed,

A pretty Night Cap on her Head;

Her Mamma heard her Pleading Say,

“Oh, do not Take the Lamp away!”

❦

But Mamma took away the Lamp

And oh, the Room was Dark and Damp;

The little Girl was Scared to Death—

She did not Dare to Draw her Breath.

❦

And all at Once the Bugaboo

Came Rattling down the Chimney Flue;

He Perched upon the little Bed

And scratched the Girl until she bled.

❦

He drank the Blood and Scratched again—

The little Girl cried out in Vain—

He picked Her up and Off he Flew—

This Naughty, Naughty Bugaboo!

❦

So, children, when in Bed to-night,

Don’t let them Take away the Light,

Or else the Awful Bugaboo

May come and Fly away with You!

Magonomia: Historical Witch Trials from “Witch Stories”

Dear listener, this was the least pleasant of the many things I’ve worked through to find you historical material. This book is a summary of witch trials written by an early English antifeminist author. It’s a long litany of people killing aged and neurodivergent women. That being noted there’s material for three episodes here. This first one gives a legend and then the legal framework Magonomia characters are working within. The others, which will be published one per month, have odd demons that would be suitable for Ars Magica.

Thanks to the Librivox readers. I’d suggest the first demon, in “The Witch of Berekely” could be a reskin of any potent False God.

Be aware there’s a period racial epithet in the text.

***

THE WITCH OF BERKELEY.

One of our earliest English witches, so early indeed that she becomes mythical and misty and out of all possible proportion, was the celebrated Witch of Berkeley, who got the reward of her sins in the middle of the ninth century, leaving behind her a tremendous lesson, by which, however, after generations did not much profit. The witch had been rich and the witch had been gay, but the moment of reckoning had to come in the morning; the feast had been noble and well enjoyed, but the terrible account had to be paid when all was over; and the poor witch found her ruddy-cheeked apple, now that the rind was off and eaten, filled with nothing but dust and ashes—which she must digest as best she may. As the moment of her death approached, she called for the monks and the nuns of the neighbouring monasteries, and sent for her children to hear her confession; and then she told them of the compact she had made, and how the Devil was to come for her body as well as her soul. “But,” said she, “sew me in the hide of a stag, then place me in a stone coffin, and fasten in the covering lead and iron. Upon this place another stone, and chain the whole down with heavy chains of iron. Let fifty psalms be sung each night, and fifty masses be said by day, to break the power of the demons. If you can thus keep my body for three nights safe, on the fourth day you may bury it—the Devil will have sought and not found.” The monks and the nuns did as they were desired; and, on the first night, though the demons kept up a loud howling and wailing outside the church, the priests conquered, and the old witch slept undisturbed. On the second night the demons were more fierce and clamorous, and the monks and the nuns told their beads faster and faster; but the fiends were getting more powerful as time went on, and at last broke open the gates of the monastery, in spite of prayer and bolt and bar; and two chains of the coffin burst asunder, but the middle one held firm. On the third night the fiends raged sore and wild. The monastery was shaken to its foundations, and the monks and the nuns almost forgot their paters and their aves in the uproar that drowned their voices and quailed their hearts; but they still went on, until, with an awful crash, and a yell from all the smaller demons about, a Devil, larger and more terrible than any that had come yet, stalked into the church and up to the foot of the altar, where the old woman and her coffin lay. Here he stopped, and bade the witch rise and follow him. Piteously she answered that she could not—she was kept down by the chain in the middle: but the Devil soon settled that difficulty; for he put his foot to the coffin, and broke the iron chain like a bit of burnt thread. Then off flew the covering of lead and iron, and there lay the witch, pale and horrible to see. Slowly she uprose, blue, dead, stark, as she was; and then the Devil took her by the hand, and led her to the door where stood a gigantic black horse, whose back was all studded with iron spikes, and whose nostrils, breathing fire, told of his infernal manger below. The Devil vaulted into the saddle, flung the witch on before him, and off and away they rode—the yells of the clamouring demons, and the shrieks of the tortured soul, sounding for hours, far and wide, in the ears of the monks and the nuns. So here too, in this legend, as in all the rest, the Devil is greater than God, and prayer and penitence inefficacious to redeem iniquity.

EARLY HISTORIC TRIALS.

Coming out from these purely legendary times, we find ourselves on the more solid ground of an actual legal record—the ‘Abbreviatio Placitorum;’ which informs us that in the tenth year of King John’s reign, “Agnes, the wife of Odo the merchant, accused Gideon of sorcery (de sorceria), and she was acquitted by the judgment of the (hot) iron.” This is the earliest historic trial to be found in any legal document in England. Nothing more appears until 1324, when two Coventry men, specially appointed out of twenty-seven implicated, undertook the slaying of the King, Edward II., the two Dispensers his favourites, the Prior of Coventry, his caterer and his steward, because they had oppressed the town, and dealt unrighteously with its inhabitants. These two men went to a famous necromancer then living in Coventry, called Master John of Nottingham, whom, with his servant Robert Marshall of Leicester, they engaged to perform the work required. But Robert Marshall proved faithless, and betrayed his master to the authorities; telling them how they had received a sum of money for the work in hand, with which sum of money they had bought seven pounds of wax and two yards of canvas, to make seven images—six for the six already enumerated, the seventh for one Richard de Lowe, who had done no one any harm, but on whom they wished to try the effect of the spell, as a modern anatomist would try his experiments on cats, or dogs, or rabbits. He told them how he and Master John of Nottingham had been to a ruined house under Shorteley Park, about half a league from Coventry, where they remained at work from the Monday after the Feast of Saint Nicholas to the Saturday after the Feast of Ascension, making these images of wax and canvas by which they were to bewitch their noble enemies to death. And first, to try the potency of the charm, Master John took a long leaden pin, and struck it two inches deep into the forehead of the image representing Richard de Lowe, upon which Richard was found writhing and in great pain, screaming “harrow!” and having no knowledge of any man; and so he languished for some days. Then Master John drew out the leaden pin from the brow, and struck it into the heart of the image, when immediately Richard de Lowe died, as any number of witnesses could testify. The necromancer and his man, and the twenty-seven Coventry men implicated in this bit of sorcery, were tried at common law, and acquitted for want of evidence.

That same year, too, occurred one of the most picturesque trials for witchcraft known: the trial of Dame Alice Kyteler, which Mr. Wright, with so much industry and learning, has exhumed from the dusty old records where it was buried, and set out into the light of present knowledge and apprehension. But Dame Alice was an Irishwoman, and so does not rightly come into a book on English witches; else it would be a pleasant, if sad, labour to tell how she was arrested on the charge of holding nightly conferences with her spirit or familiar, Artisson, who was sometimes a cat, and sometimes a black shaggy dog, and sometimes a black man with two tall black companions, each carrying an iron rod in his hand—to which fiendish Proteus she had sacrificed, in the highway, nine red cocks, and nine peacocks’ eyes; and also for having, between complines and twilight, raked all the filth of Kilkenny streets to the doors of her son-in-law William Outlawe, murmuring to herself—

“To the house of William, my sonne,
Hie all the wealth of Kilkennie towne.”

Of how, too, she blasphemously travestied the holy sacrament, having a wafer with the Devil’s name stamped on it instead of Christ’s; and how she had a pipe of ointment wherewith she greased a staff “upon which she ambolled and gallopped thorough thicke and thin, when and what manner she listed.” But it does not belong to my present subject: nor to tell how one of her accomplices, poor weak Petronilla de Meath, was burnt at Kilkenny, not having strength or courage to resist the monstrous confession forced upon her; but how the other, Basil, escaped, according to the natural law by which the strongest always come off the best. Perhaps the fact that Dame Alice took refuge in England may give her a slight claim to a place in these pages; but the question is doubtful, so we must let her go—as also her son-in-law, William Outlawe, whose strict imprisonment of nine weeks led to no bad result, and, let us hope, cooled his blood, which was a trifle too near to boiling point.

Then we stumble over the threshold of the chamber where Friars Bacon and Bungay are sleeping, while stupid Miles is watching the Brazen Head whose brief solemn words were spoken in vain; going forward just a few paces until we come to the death-beds of Bungay and Vandermast, and Friar Bacon’s clever cheating of the Devil at last. But we are still on the outskirts of legendary land, and must go on to the middle of the fourteenth century before we get a firm hold. About this time the subject of witchcraft occupied much of the attention and thought of the Church, but the priests had not yet quite closed their fingers round it; for in 1371 a man was arrested for sorcery, and “brought before the justices of the King’s Bench, by whom he was acquitted for want of evidence, which shows that it was still looked upon merely as an offence against common law.” It was only when it became the superstition which some men are pleased to call “religion” that it got stained with its deepest dyes. Early in 1406 Henry IV. gave instructions to the Bishop of Norwich to search for the sorcerers, witches, and necromancers reported to be rather rife in that respectable diocese, and if he could not convert them from the evil of their ways, he was to bring them to speedy punishment; and in 1432 the Privy Council ordered to be seized and examined a Franciscan friar of Worcester, by name Thomas Northfield; another friar, John Ashwell; John Virley “a clerk;” and Margery Jourdemaine—the same Margery generally called the Witch of Eye, who, nine years later, was burnt at Smithfield for her complicity in the treasonable practices of Dame Eleanor of Gloucester. In 1441 Dame Eleanor herself was arrested, and “put in holt, for she was suspecte of treason;” and with her the Witch of Eye, who was burnt; and Roger, a clerk “longing to her,” who was placed on a high scaffold against St. Paul’s Cross on the Sunday, and there “arraied like as he should never thrive in his garnementys;” while heaped up round about were all his instruments taken with him, to be showed among the people, and create a proper fear and horror in their mind. The end of poor Roger the clerk was, that he was dragged from the Tower to Tyburn, there hanged, beheaded, and quartered; his head set on London Bridge, and his four quarters sent—one to Hereford, and one to Oxenford, another to York, and the fourth to Cambrigge. As for Dame Eleanor, that proud, dark, unscrupulous heroine of romance, every one knows the story of her disgrace and shame; how she came from London to Westminster, and walked through the streets of the city barefooted and bareheaded, carrying the waxen taper of two pounds’ weight, and doing penance before all the crowd of citizens assembled to see her “on her foot and hoodles;” and how she offered up her taper on the high altar of “Poules;” and when all was done, was sent to Chester prison, “there to byde while she lyveth.”

After her, in 1478, comes “the high and noble princesse Jaquet,” Duchess of Bedford, charged with having, by the aid of “an image of lede, made lyke a man of arms, conteyning the length of a mannes fynger, and broken in the myddes, and made fast with a wyre,” turned the love of King Edward IV. from one Dame Elianor Butteler daughter of the old Earl of Shrewsbury, to whom he was affianced, unto her own child, Elizabeth Grey, sometime wife to Sir John Grey, knight; and in 1483 poor Jane Shore was bound to do penance, walking bareheaded and barefooted, clad only in her kirtle, carrying a wax taper, and acknowledging her sins, because Richard of Gloucester had a withered arm, and wanted to put a few enemies out of the way of that arm and its desires. He employed the same accusation against many of those enemies, but so patently for political motives and without even the semblance of reason, that these attainders can scarcely be set down in any manner to the charge of witchcraft. Then in 1484 came the bull of Innocent VIII., which gave authority to the inquisitors to “convict, imprison, and punish” the unfortunate servants of the Devil, who thus found themselves a mark for every one’s shaft.

In Henry the Eighth’s time treasure-seeking was the most fashionable phase of necromancy. There was Neville of Wolsey’s household, who consulted Wood—gentleman, magician, and treasure-seeker extraordinary—but only for a charm or magic ring which should bring him into favour with his prince, saying that his master the Cardinal had such an one, and he would fain participate; and he did at last get Wood to make him one that would bring him the love of women. Wood could find treasures wherever hidden, and was sure of the philosopher’s stone; nay, he would “chebard” (jeopard) his life but that he could make gold as he listed, and offered to remain in prison till he had accomplished it, “twelve months on silver and twelve and a half on gold.” In this same reign, too, was arrested William Stapleton for sorcery. William was a monk of St. Benet in the Holm, Norfolk, and William loved not his monkish life; so he got out, seeking money to buy his dispensation. And not having the money at hand himself, nor knowing how to get it, he took to treasure-seeking as the easiest manner open to him of making a fortune. But his conjurations and his magic staff only led him to some Roman remains, and nothing more; so he borrowed of a friend instead, then settled in Norfolk, and turned to treasure-seeking again, uselessly; got into intrigues that did him no good; and had three spirits, Andrea Malchus, Inchubus, and Oberion—the last a dumb devil who would not speak, being in the service of my Lord Cardinal.

In 1521 the Duke of Buckingham died on the scaffold, led into some imprudent actions by the predictions of his familiar magician, one friar Hopkins; and Hopkins, to make amends, died broken-hearted shortly after. And there was the Maid of Kent (1534), Elizabeth Barton, who had trances and gave revelations, and was on intimate terms with Mary Magdalen and the Virgin, and who was probably a “sensitive” made use of by the Catholics to try and frighten the King from his marriage with the “gospel eyes;” but poor Elizabeth Barton came to a sad pass with her revelations and trances; and Mary Magdalen, who had given her a letter written in heaven and all of gold, forgot to forewarn or shield her from her cruel and shameful end at Tyburn that cloudy fitful day of April, with the gallows standing out against the flecked sky, and the poor raving nun, half-enthusiast half-impostor, praying bareheaded at its foot—she and her accomplices waiting for the moment to die.

In 1541 we find a nobler name on the scaffold—Lord Hungerford—“beheaded for procuring certain persons to conspire that they might know how long Henry VIII. would live;” and that same year an Act was passed against false prophecies, and another against conjurations, witchcraft, and sorcery, making it felony without benefit of clergy. But six years later Edward VI. abrogated that statute; not for any tenderness to witches, but because with it was bound up a prohibition against pulling down crosses. In 1549 Ket’s rebellion was troublesome; its vigour due partly to the old prophecy repeated through the plains of Norfolk—

“Hob, Dic, and Hic, with Clubs and clouted Shoon,
Shall fill up Duffin-dale with slaughtered Bodies soon.”

And then we come to nothing more until 1559, when Elizabeth “renewed the same article of inquiry for sorcerers,” but punishing the first conviction only with the pillory. The following year eight men were taken up for conjurations and sorcery, and tried at Westminster, where they had to purge themselves by confession, penitence, and a repudiating oath. In 1562 the Earl and Countess of Lennox, Anthony Pool, Anthony Fortescue, and some others, were condemned for treason and meddling with sorcerers; though, indeed, Elizabeth herself was not free from either the superstition or its practice; for did she not patronize Dr. Dee and his “skryer” John Kelly, with his ranting about Madimi in her gown of “changeable sey,” and all the other spirits who came in and out of the “show-stone,” and talked just the same kind of rubbish as spirits talk now in modern circles? But the poor “figure-flinger, with his tin pictures,” was a sorcerer not to be protected, so got tried and condemned—poor figure-flinger!

In 1562, the year of Lady Lennox’s business, a new Act against witchcraft was passed; and in 1589 one Mrs. Deir practised conjuration against the Queen, for which she was tried, but acquitted for want of evidence; but the Queen had excessive anguish in her teeth that year, by night and by day. When Ferdinand Earl of Derby died, about this time, of perpetual and unceasing sickness, a waxen image was found in his chamber stuffed with hair the exact colour of his; which sufficiently accounted for his illness and the mysterious manner of his death, though a Sadducee and sceptic might have whispered of poison, or a physician have spoken of cholera; from which disease indeed, by the minute symptoms so carefully detailed, the poor earl’s death seems to have been—if not from poison, which might have produced the same effects. Still, the accusation of sorcery was so convenient—such a cloak for viler sins! The latter half of Elizabeth’s reign was disgraced by many witch persecutions, for the subject was beginning to attract painful notice now; and, though it was not till James I. had set the smouldering fragments all a-blaze that the worst of the evils were done, still enough was doing now for the philosopher to deplore and the humanitarian to lament. In 1575 many were hanged at Barking; in 1579 three were executed at Chelmsford, four at Abingdon, and two at Cambridge. In 1582 thirteen at St. Osith’s, the evidence against one being that she had been heard to talk to something when alone in her house; while of the other, a woman swore that she looked through her window one day, when she was out, and there “espied a spirite to looke out of a potcharde from under a clothe, the nose thereof being browne like unto a ferret.” In 1585 one was hanged at Tyburn and one at Stanmore; 1589 saw three sent into eternity at Chelmsford; in 1593 we have the witches of Warbois; and two years later (1595) three at Barnet and Brainford; in 1597 several at Derby and Stafford; so that by degrees the thing came to be a notorious matter of social life; and the poor and the aged and the disliked lived in fear and peril, daily increasing. At this time, too, possessions were many and ghosts walked abroad without let or hindrance. Richard Lee saw one at Canterbury (1575), and Master Gaymore and others saw another at Rye two years after. “But,” says Reginald Scot, “certainely some one knave in a white sheet hath cosened and abused many thousands that way, specially when Robin Goodfellow kept such a coile in the Country. For you shall understand that these bugs specially are spied and feared of sicke folke, children, women, and cowards, which, through weaknesse of minde and body, are shaken with vain dreames and continuall fear. The Scythians, being a stout and a warlike nation, as divers writers report, never see any vaine sights, or spirits. It is a common saying, a Lion feareth no bugs. But in our childhood our mothers’ maids have so terrified us with an ugly devil having hornes on his head, fire in his mouth, and a taile at his back, eyes like a bason, fanges like a dog, clawes like a beare, a skinne like a N_r, and a voice roring like a Lion, whereby we start and are afraid when we hear one cry Bough; they have so fraied us with bullbeggars, spirits, urchens, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, fauns, sylens (syrens?), kit with the cansticke, tritons, centaures, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcats, conjurors, nymphes, changelings, incubus, Robin Goodfellow, the spoorn, the mare, the man in the oke, the hell-waine, the firedrake, the puckle, Tom thombe, hob-gobbin, Tom tumbler, boneles, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our own shadowes; insomuch as some never fear the devil, but in a dark night; and then a polled sheep is a perillous beast, and many times is taken for our father’s soul, specially in a churchyard, where a right hardy man heretofore scant durst passe by night, but his haire would stand upright. For right grave writers report, that spirits most often and specially take the shape of women, appearing to monks, &c., and of beasts, dogs, swine, horses, goats, cats, haires, of fowles, as crowes, night owles and shreek owles; but they delight most in the likenesse of snakes and dragons.” All of which “wretched and cowardly infidelity” was rampant in England when good Queen Bess ruled the land—rampant doubly, so that there was no holding in of this furious madness after James I. had got his foot in the stirrup, and was riding a race neck and neck with the Devil.

Annual Report 2024: Time for Summer

You’re getting your annual report early this year. There are some changes coming because of the Anno Magica.

For those not up to speed, Ars Magica is going to enter a new season later in the year, when Atlas Games crowdfunds the Definitive Edition. As part of that project, parts of the Ars Magica system will be released under something like the Share Alike 4.0 license. That frees up all sorts of fan work from needing seek permission before publication. There are already stirrings as the ancient beasts wake. David Chart is working on introductory material on Patreon and the other Ars Magica podcast, Arcane Connection, has returned from Twilight over on Podomatic. I’m not an insider on this process: I usually know substantially less than those of you who, for example, attend the Grand Tribunal convention, so book your tickets. Here’s what’s happening with Games From Folktales.

I’ve offered to pay some of the authors from the Ars Magica fansphere to write articles for GFF. Please don’t pitch me articles yet unless you are one of the authors I’ve contacted, but express interest if you like. In some cases it will be more of a cross-over situation where the audio resides here and the text is on the other author’s website. The nature of the experiment is complicated, but here’s a summary.

Games From Folktales works, currently, because it has a shoestring budget and I don’t charge for my work. Patreons chip in enough to keep the lights on. The downside is that when I’m working on a bigger project, like Magonomia or Venice, GFF sits on the back burner and sometimes goes silent. By asking other authors aboard, some of that workload shifts to them.

My hope is that Games From Folktales becomes a bit more like a fanzine. Most fanzines work on a subscription basis, and that doesn’t seem possible under share alike license. The cost base of the podcast is higher, so I’ll be begging for money harder at the end of each episode. I know people hate that sort of thing, so I’ll keep it short. Games From Folktales has a simpler URL now, gamesfromfolktales.com, which lets me direct people there more easily in other Ars Magica related publications. It removes the ads you used to see on the free site. Similarly there will be some sort of “tip jar” eventually.

The trial will be for two years, because that’s the cheapest way to pay for hosting. Even if all the authors write all of the stuff for this experiment, and I pay them all, and cover the new expenses, it is still covered by the gap that has opened up between what the Patreons, have been putting up and the cost of my hosting, so there’s no chance it will wreck everything. I can scale back to the shoestring budget if this fails.

In case you’d like to try this yourself, here are my numbers. My podcast host charges 5USD a month, my webhost charges 6AUD a month, and my domain registrar charges AUD 1.50, so that’s roughly AUD15. The Patreons currently chip in AUD22 a month, of which Patreon grabs roughly AUD2. The payment for articles, which is USD35 an article, is coming from money that’s been accruing due to the imbalance between the host cost and the Patreon input. I’d been putting it aside to make a Kickstarter for Venice, but I no longer think that’s a viable route. Aside from some I’m keeping for cover art and maps, this is how I’m using it.

At the moment I operate using the permission granted by Atlas Games in a couple of emails from before the podcast started. That explicitly includes permission to make money from the podcast. Now, as I say I’m not an insider, but if I was Atlas, I’d be very tempted to say “All previous permissions are superseded by the Share-Alike license”. That would stop, for example, someone borrowing one of my monsters without attribution and then finding out they’d put a poison pill into their work. I, personally, wouldn’t do anything about it, but it makes the whole thing tidier for everyone if Atlas has all external creators using the same permission.

That means I’ll need to check the Share Alike license to make sure that anything in process meets the new standard. For example, it may be that only 5th edition is covered, and that would mean some rewrites in Venice, because it references the Second Edition book “Order of Hermes”. Similarly if the Tremere name, which is a trademark that I presume is now owned by Paradox, is off the table, the huge dog that the Master of Games sends to say scathing things to the player characters when they displease him is going to need a new name.

There is also the question of what comes next. Until we see the license it’s best, in my opinion, to tidy up Venice then focus on material which is useful for new people. Much of that doesn’t make for good podcasting. As an example, we really need to write a concordance of the monsters which are within the license, but reading out what’s essentially a spreadsheet would be too dry to listen to. GFF will probably do something with the Cheshire and Devon material I’ve collected.

Upcoming episodes that are already scripted or recorded include your usual monster of the month, four accounts of demons from English witch trials, and a series based on the ballads of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The first of the guest authors is Angela Black, whose thoughts on Divine Methods and Powers is slated for 16 May.

Again, a special thanks to the Patreons for making this possible.

Extracts 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 parts. In the first the magician Zabulon takes a fisherman’s son as an apprentice, and demonstrates how to enter the regio in which his castle is kept. In the second, Viviane tricks Merlin into giving up hi job and running away with her. In the third, Eean and Zabulon fight. Merlin tips the balance in Eean’s favour. Zabulon loses his powers once defeated: it seems to be in the nature of magicians that they lose their abilities when they are vanquished. Colum, accidentally, has the same thing happen to his version of Merlin: once he’s fallen for one of Viviane’s tricks, he completely abandons everything to build them a covenant at the far west of the world.

A note on the name Zabulon: I must be missing something. I know the people of Zebulon were a Jewish, Biblical tribe known for being the guys who used boats. I know that it’s the name of the leader of the Dark Others in the Night Watch series. I’ not quite sure where else he appears.

There are three separate Librivox readers for these sections, and I’d like to thank them, and the production team.

The Inaccessible Island

You have heard me so far, O King. Know now that the one to whom I was apprenticed was an Enchanter. His name is Zabulun, and in all the world there are only three Enchanters more powerful than he. The first is Chiron the Centaur, who is half man and half horse, and who taught Achilles and made him the greatest of the princes who had gone against Troy. The second is Hermes Trismegistus, the wise Egyptian. And the third is Merlin the Enchanter, whose home is in an island that is west of your Western Island.

When the night came on, Zabulun took the steering gear into his hands, and he steered the ship by a star that he alone knew. When the morning came we saw on the sea all around us the masts and the spars and the timbers of ships that had come too near the Magnetberg, and that had lost their nails and bolts, and had become loosened timbers on the waters. Those on the ship were greatly afraid, and the captain walked up and down, pulling at his beard. The night came on, and again my master took the steering gear into his own hands and steered the ship by a star that he alone knew of. And when the morning came there were no masts and spars of ships, and no loosened timbers afloat on the waters. The captain laughed and made all on the ship rejoice that they had passed the dangerous neighborhood of the Magnetberg—that mountain of loadstone that drew the iron out of ships as a magnet draws pins on a table.

We came to Urth. The great cargo that was on the ship was for the King of Urth, and it was taken off and sent over the mountain to the King’s city in packs that the sailors carried on their backs. Then the captain gave the ship over to my master to sail it where he would.

He did not come upon the land nor did he look upon the country at all. But when the last pack had been carried off the ship, he said to me:

“You will have to do this, my first command to you. Go on the land. Stay by a pool that is close to the forest. Birds will come down to that pool—birds of the whiteness of swans, but smaller. Set snares and catch some of these birds, not less than four, and bring them to me uninjured.”

And I went on the land and came to the pool that was close to the forest. And there I saw the birds that were of the whiteness of swans, but smaller. I watched them for a while so that I might know their ways. Then I made a crib of rods and set it to catch the birds. One went under the crib, and I pulled the string and caught the first bird. And then, hours afterward, I caught another. And waiting and watching very carefully, I caught a third. The fourth bird was wary, and I feared I should not catch it, for night was coming down and the birds were making flocks to fly away. One remained near the crib, and its neck was stretched toward it. But then it shook its wings, and I thought it was going to fly to the others. It went under the crib. Then I pulled the string and caught the fourth bird.

I brought the birds to the ship and my master gave them grains to feed on. At night we sailed away. My master held the steering gear while it was dark, but when light came he gave it to me to hold. Then he unloosed one of the birds. It flew in the middle distance, winging slowly, and remaining a long time in sight. He told me to hold the course of the ship to the flight of the bird.

At night he took the steering gear again into his hands and held the ship on her course. In the daylight he unloosed another bird and bade me steer by its flight. And this was done for two more days.

The morning after the last of the white birds had been freed my master bade me look out for land. I saw something low upon the water. “It is the Inaccessible Island,” said my master, “where I have my dwelling and my working place.” He steered the ship to where the water flowed swiftly into a great cave that was like a dragon’s mouth. In that cave there was a place for the mooring of ships. The Enchanter moored the ship in its place, and then he took me up the rocky landing place.

There was a flight of great steps leading from the landing place—it was in a cave as I have told you—up to the light of day. There were a thousand wide black steps in that flight. The Enchanter took into his hands the black staff that was shaped as two serpents twisting together, and he took me with him up the stairway.

We came out on a level place and I saw a high castle before me. There was no wall around the castle, and there was no gate to be opened. But when I came near it I found I could take no step onward. I went up, and I went down, and I tried to go onward, but I could not. Then Zabulun the Enchanter said to me:

“Around this castle of mine is a wall of air. No one can see the wall, but no one can pass it. And a bridge of air crosses my wall of air. Come now with me and I will take you over the bridge.”

As the wall of air that went round the Enchanter’s castle was not to be seen, neither was the bridge that went across the wall of air. But I saw my master mounting up and walking across as on a bridge. And although I saw nothing before me nor beneath me, I mounted upon something and walked across something. Following him I went downward and into the courtyard of the castle.

Within that courtyard there was a horse of brass with a giant man of brass upon it, the giant man holding a great bow in his hands. My master said to me, “If one came over the bridge of air without my authority, the arrow of that bow would be loosened, and he who came across the bridge would be slain by this giant man of brass.” We went within the castle. In the hall were benches and tables, and there were statues holding torches in their hands standing by the wall. Also in that hall there was the statue of a woman holding a dart in her hand. When my master came within, the statue that held the dart flung it, and the dart struck a gleaming carbuncle that was in the wall. Lights came into the torches that the statues held, and all the hall was lighted up.

I sat with my master at a table, and the statues moved to us, bringing us wine and fruits. We ate and drank, and afterward a golden figure came to the Enchanter, and, sitting down before him, played a game of chess with him.

The next day my master showed me more of the wonders of the Inaccessible Island. No ships came near, for there was no way to come to that island except by following the birds that were of the whiteness of a swan and that flew always in the middle distance. On this island Zabulun the Enchanter had lived for longer than the lifetimes of many men, studying magic and all the ways of enchantment. And for three years I, Eean, the son of the fisherman of the Western Island, stayed with him, learning such things as were proper for one apprenticed to an Enchanter to know.

***

Merlin and Vivien

A great Enchanter indeed was Merlin. He served with his enchantments the King of the Isle of Britain from the time he was a stripling to the time when he was two score years of age. Then, when he might have passed from being a lesser to being a great Enchanter, Merlin vanished altogether and was seen no more at the court of the King of the Isle of Britain. All the great works he had planned were left undone, all the instruments he had gathered were left unused, all the books he had brought together were left unopened, and the King whom he had served so long was left to whistle for his Enchanter.

If there were one to blame for that it was the daughter of King Dionas. She was young, but she was ungentle. What she saw, that she would have. One day a stranger was passing with her father, and when he looked on her he said, “A young hawk she is, a young hawk that has not yet flown at any prey.” That very day the daughter of King Dionas walked on the plain that was at a distance from her father’s castle. The stranger who had spoken of her to the King was there, and he looked long upon her.

“Who art thou who lookest on me so?” said the child.

“Thou art Nimiane, who art also called Vivien,” said the stranger.

“Yea,” said she, “but who art thou, man?”

“I am called Merlin,” he said, “and I am the Enchanter to the King of the Isle of Britain.”

“Show me thine enchantments,” said Vivien, who feared not to speak to any man.

Now Merlin had looked on all the ladies who were at the court of the King of the Isle of Britain, and on the maidens who were in far countries and distant castles, and besides, the ladies of the times of old had been shown him in his Magic Glass, but never before had he seen any one who seemed so lovely to him as this child. She was bright eyed as a bird. She had a slim body, and pale cheeks, and quick, quick hands. Her hair was red and in thick tangles. “Show me thine enchantments,” she cried to him again.

Merlin bade her come with him and she came. He brought her to a high place, a place that was of rock with rocks piled all about it. On the ground he made magical figures. Then he said magical words. And all the time Vivien, slim Vivien with her tangle of red hair, stood upon the rocks and kept her eyes upon him.

Upon the ground that was all rock Merlin made a garden with roses blowing and clear waters flowing, with birds singing amongst the leaves and fishes swimming in the streams. He made trees grow, too, with honey-tasting fruits upon them.

Vivien went through the garden, plucking the flowers and tasting the fruits that grew there. She turned to Merlin and looked at him again with her bright eyes. “Canst thou make a castle for me?” said she.

Then Merlin made his magical figures and said his magical words over again. The stones that were strewn about everywhere came together and built themselves up into a castle. When the castle rose before them Vivien took Merlin by the hand, and they went through its doorway and up the stairway and into the castle turret. And when they looked from the turret Vivien said, “Would that no one should know of this garden and this castle but thou and I!”

He told her that the castle and the garden would be hidden. Then when they were leaving the garden he put a mist all around, a mist that those who came that way could not see through and were made fearful of venturing into.

And so the castle and the garden were all unknown to men. But Vivien would come, passing through the mist, and going into the garden and up into the turret. At first she would not have Merlin near her. Afterward it came to pass that she would summon him. A bugle hung in the turret of the castle, and she would blow upon it, and he would come and stay by her.

He was two score years of age, and she was five years less than a score. Nevertheless he thought it better to watch her dancing with bright green leaves in her red hair than to know all that would bring him from being a lesser to being a great Enchanter. Of the maidens and great ladies he had seen, some, he told her, were like light, and some were like flowers, and some were like a flame of fire. But she, he said, was like the wind. And he took thought no more for the King of the Isle of Britain, nor for the great work he was to do for him, and he spent his days in watching Vivien, and in listening to Vivien, and in making magic things for Vivien’s delight.

Her father once took her away from the place near where the hidden garden and the hidden castle stood. Vivien was in another country now. And when she went amongst those who were strangers to her she found out that nothing mattered to her except the looks and the words of Merlin. The castle and the garden—she did not think of them, nor of the magic things he had made for her. Her thoughts were only on Merlin, who was so wise and who could do such wonders.

When she came back, and when she met him in the hidden garden, she caught hold of his hands, and she would not let go of them. Nor would she tell Merlin why this change had come over her, and why she would keep close to him now and not apart. At last she said to him, “What ladies and what maidens have you known, O my master Merlin?”

Then Merlin took his Magic Glass into his hands, and in it he showed her all the ladies who were at the court of the King of the Isle of Britain, and he showed her all the lovely maidens who lived in far countries and in distant castles whom he knew. Vivien threw herself on the ground with her face to the rock after she had looked into the glass.

Then afterward she watched him in a way different from the way she had watched him before. What he said and what he did she remembered well. Soon she understood his magic figures and could make them. She came to understand his magic words and to be able to repeat them. And Merlin would say to her, “O my little hawk, fly at this—and this—and this.”

One day as they wandered through a forest Vivien asked him to tell her the mightiest spell that he knew. The Enchanter told it to her. She stood still, with all her quick mind in her face, while he put aside the tangles of her red hair and spoke into her ear.

It was a spell that would hold in a place the one whom it was spoken over. When he had told her he went at her bidding and seated himself under a forest tree. Vivien, laughing, made a magic circle around him and repeated the spell that he had given her. When she did this the Enchanter was enchanted. Merlin stayed under the forest tree, and there he would stay, for he could not move until the spell that was said over him was unsaid by Vivien.

And Vivien danced around him, her red hair shaking, her bright eyes gleaming, her quick hands waving. She called to him, “Merlin, Merlin Enchanter, come to me.” But Merlin, under the forest tree, could not move. She ran through the woods and he could not follow after her. In a while she came back and stood beside him.

Said Merlin to her, “Why have you worked this spell upon me, and why have you left me here so that I cannot move?” She knelt down on the ground beside where he sat.

“O Merlin,” said she, “I would leave you here enchanted, for fear you should leave me and go amongst the maidens and the ladies who are so lovely.” And when she said that her face was so hard that he knew she would hold him there.

But Merlin smiled, and he said to her, “I would stay always where you are, Vivien, blossom of the furze.”

“Nay,” said she, “you would go from me. Why should you not? You have great works to do for the King of the land. And when you see again the ladies and the maidens who are the loveliest in the world you will not come back again to Vivien. I shall hate the castle and the garden that you made for me, and I shall hate every one who will come near me. I shall hold you, Merlin, here, even until the wolves come out at night and devour you and me.”

“I will build a castle for you in an empty country, and no one shall ever be there but you and me,” said Merlin.

“Nay,” said Vivien, “they will search the world for you, Merlin, and when they find you, you will have to go with them.”

Then Merlin, as if it were a magic thing that would please her, brought out his thought about the Island of the White Tower. Away beyond the Western Island, in a sea that is never sailed on, that island lies. Only on Midsummer Day does it come near to the Western Island so that men may see it. There, said Merlin, they might go. Those who would search for him could never come to him there. He told her more and more about the Island of the White Tower, and Vivien listened in delight to all he told her. And when he had sworn he would take her to it she unsaid the spell with which she had bespelled him, and he rose up from where he had been held, and he sprang across the magic figure that was drawn upon the ground. And with Vivien Merlin went through the forest.

The fishermen who cast their nets by the shores of the Western Ocean have this story of Merlin and Vivien. They tell how in a boat of crystal twelve creatures sailed to the Island of the White Tower. And two were Merlin and Vivien, and nine were the nine prime bards of the Isle of Britain who went with Merlin, and one was the tame wolf that was Merlin’s servant. They sailed out upon a Midsummer’s Day, and from that good day to this no hint or hair of the Enchanter has been seen by King nor clown in all the Isle of Britain.

***

How Eean Won His Release from Zabulun the Enchanter

Merlin, with the tame wolf that was his servant beside him, was standing by the White Tower on the morning of that Midsummer Day. And Vivien was upon the tower, singing to her colored birds and looking out over the sea.

Vivien, who played with her colored birds, had still the look of a child in her face. Her hair was no longer in tangles; it was softer than it was once, and it fell softly over her shoulders. Her eyes, for all the child’s look that was in her face, were as if they had seen many things come and change and pass.

Like a King, or like one who had been always near a King, was Merlin the Enchanter. He smiled, and his smile was calm and royal. But one might have said that his eyes were strangely close to each other and that his lips were strangely red.

His beard was long and gray. He wore a white robe with a belt of green leaves around it, and a chaplet of oak leaves was on his head. Vivien was dressed in green, with a golden belt clasped around her, and with green leaves in her soft hair.

So they were standing by and on the tower, Merlin, Vivien, and Merlin’s tame wolf, when the tokens that were from the Atlantes came. Merlin laid his hand upon the wolf, and the wolf gave the howl that was the signal for Eean and Bird-of-Gold to come on the Island of the White Tower. The Enchanter saw them ride their horses into the water. And then another token came to him—the token that one magician sends to another, a Bird of Foam it was, and Zabulun sent it.

Deep were the waters, but great-hearted were the horses of King Manus, the white horse and the red horse, and with Eean and Bird-of-Gold astride of them they swam to the Island of the White Tower. They came to the sloping shore, and the riders helped the horses up to the hard ground. The white and the red horse stood shivering from their plunge into the ocean. Afterward they threw themselves on the grass and lay as still as if they were dead.

Not to the horses, but out to the sea did Eean and Bird-of-Gold look. The black horse with Zabulun astride him was swimming now. Swiftly to the White Tower where they saw Merlin stand they went.

“O, Merlin,” Eean cried, “to you we have come to save us from the Enchanter who has pursued us from one end of the world to the other.”

“From whom have you come, you who have sent such tokens?” said Merlin.

“From Hermes Trismegistus in his secret cell. And Hermes bade us say to you that we have heard from him the answer to the riddle that the Sphinx asks, and that we crossed the desert to come to you, answering the Sphinx.”

“Who is the Magician who pursues you?”

“Zabulun, once a Prince in Babylon, O Merlin.”

“Is it he who pursues you?—Zabulun! I shall have a welcome for Zabulun.”

“Save us, O Merlin, from Zabulun,” Bird-of-Gold cried.

Vivien came down from the tower. “It is Zabulun who comes to our island in chase of these two, my Vivien,” Merlin said. “Now you shall see me match my power with Zabulun’s.”

“A match between magicians, how entertaining it will be!” cried Vivien, clapping her hands.

“O lady, if Zabulun is not baffled it will be death or separation for us,” said Bird-of-Gold to her.

“Merlin will baffle him—you will find that Merlin will baffle him,” said Vivien. “You see, he has done nothing to impress me for an age.”

Now Merlin had sent the tame wolf that was his servant upon an errand, and the wolf at this moment returned leading nine men who wore white robes and who had chaplets of oak leaves upon their brows. These were the nine prime bards of the Isle of Britain who had come to the Island of the White Tower with Merlin, their chief.

They stood as he bade them, four on one side and five on the other, with the Enchanter of the Isle of Britain between them. Merlin bade Eean stand with the four bards. He touched them with his staff, and the row of bards and Eean with them became all as alike as ten peas in a pea pod. And Merlin went to Bird-of-Gold and touched her also, and she became like the lady Vivien exactly.

Now the black horse that bore Zabulun came to the sloping bank of the Island of the White Tower, and Zabulun sprang off his back and drew the black horse up on the bank. The horse breathed mightily, and then like the others lay down on the grass.

With great and sure strides Zabulun came to the White Tower where Merlin stood. “Hail, Merlin,” he cried in a loud voice.

“Hail, Zabulun.”

“You know of an apprentice of mine who has come to your island.”

“Find him, O mighty magician.”

Zabulun looked and saw the ten men who looked exactly alike, and the two women whom one could not tell one from the other. He turned to Merlin then and he said, “What a simple trick you would play upon me! Nine bards you have, and there are ten before us. One of them is Eean, the boy apprenticed to me.”

“Then you will take him, Zabulun.”

It is certain that Merlin did not think that Zabulun would do what he did now. He changed himself into a hound. Running amongst the ten that were there he snuffed at them. By the smell of the horse he had ridden he would find Eean.

But as he ran amongst them Merlin touched each of the ten bards and Eean with them with his staff. They all became pigeons and flew up into the air. One had a feather awry. This was Eean on whom Zabulun had laid a paw just as he was being transformed.

Instantly Zabulun changed himself into a hawk and strove to rise above the flock of pigeons. As he did he saw the one that had a feather awry. Over him he came.

Then Eean, seeing the hawk above him, dropped instantly to the earth. The others flew down with him, crowding around to hide the ruffled feather. They came before the door of Merlin’s house. They flew in and lighted down on the floor while the hawk came sweeping up to the doorway.

Merlin touched the pigeons with his staff and again transformed them. They became ten rings of gold that lay upon the floor. As the hawk flew in and perched on a chair to fix his eyes upon them, the rings of gold rolled into the fire.

Then Zabulun transformed himself into a tongs, and went hunting through the fire for the rings. He picked up one ring and flung it out on the floor, he picked up another ring and flung it out on the floor, and so on, until the ten rings were out of the fire. Merlin touched the rings with his staff, and they were transformed into ten grains of corn. Upon these ten grains Vivien and Bird-of-Gold threw handful after handful of grains of corn.

But now Zabulun changed himself into a cock with strong legs and wide claws and a hungry beak. With his claws he scratched through the heap of grain. With his beak he picked the grains up. Vivien and Bird-of-Gold kept throwing on the floor handful after handful of corn to cover the ten grains.

But the beak of the cock went so fiercely and so hungrily amongst them that only a few grains more than the ten were left upon the floor when Vivien and Bird-of-Gold found out they had no more handfuls to fling. Then it seemed as if the cock with his sharp eye would soon pick out the grain that was Eean.

Then with his staff Merlin touched nine of the grains, leaving one untouched. The one he left untouched was Eean. The nine were changed into weasels, and they faced the cock fiercely. Then was Zabulun startled. Instead of picking at the grain that was Eean he fluttered up from the ground, and went out of the door of the house.

Merlin touched the grain that was left and Eean stood up. Bird-of-Gold clapped her hands for joy on seeing him again. But Eean ran out of the door of the house after the cock that was Zabulun the Enchanter. He snatched up a strong staff as he ran.

Zabulun had changed back into his own form. But now Eean had no fear of him. He ran toward him. And Zabulun took up a staff that was lying there and made to defend himself.

Then began the battle between Eean and Zabulun. Eean struck at Zabulun, and Zabulun struck at Eean, and each defended himself with the staff that he had. They fought their way across the island, from one side to the other. They fought until their staves were broken and until they were covered with bruises. Then they threw away their staves and gripped one another. All around the island they wrestled. Strong were the hands of Zabulun upon Eean, and yet Eean was not thrown by Zabulun. Eean felt his own hands were strong upon Zabulun, and yet he could not throw him. Soon Eean lost sense of everything except two gripping and rocking figures.

They wrestled their way across the island, down to the shore where they had landed and where the three horses of King Manus were lying. They wrestled until the sea water came over their feet. Again things became clear to Eean. He knew that if he could overthrow the Enchanter he would win his freedom from him.

He fastened upon Zabulun a grip that seemed to be stronger than his own life. He heaved with a power that seemed to bring up his last breath. He bent Zabulun over. He brought him down, his head in the water. He flung himself upon the prone Enchanter.

“What would you have of me?” Zabulun said at last.

“Release. Say you have no more mastership in me.”

“I say it. I have no more mastership in you. You have release from me.”

“I let you rise.”

Then Eean took his grip off Zabulun. The Enchanter rose up and took himself out of the water.

So Zabulun was defeated, and so release was given to Eean, The Boy Apprenticed to the Enchanter. Zabulun mounted the black horse that was King Manus’s and had him swim the water. He rode across the plain and over one mountain and another mountain until he came to the castle of King Manus. There he left the horse to neigh for his grooms.

What became of Zabulun afterward is not written in the book that is the History of the Enchanters. Some say that from that Midsummer’s Day he ceased to be named with the great Enchanters. The powers he had gained, they say, shrank from him. Afterward a famous juggler appeared in the world. He used to go into the halls of Kings on festival nights and do marvelous feats with balls and rings and knives, and play music on all manner of instruments, going from King’s castle to King’s castle. That juggler, they say—but they may be mistaken—was Zabulun, once Prince of Babylon, and once master of the Inaccessible Island.

Eean and Bird-of-Gold went within the White Tower, and conversed from noon to dusk with Merlin and the lady Vivien. Before that Midsummer’s Day had passed into darkness, they mounted the white steed and the red steed and had them swim across the waters. When they came to the farther shore they let the horses stand for a while. Then mounting them again they rode over the mountains and across the plains and came again to the castle of King Manus.

A 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 women and men,
Temples of God ruined; I see the claws
Of sinister Fate, from the reach of whose feline paws
Never are safe the bodies of women and men.
Almighty Cat, it sits on the Throne of the World,
With paw outstretched, grinning at us, the mice,
Who play our trivial games of virtue and vice,
And pray—to That which sits on the Throne of the World!
From our beginning till all is over and done,
Unwitting who watches, pursuing our personal ends,
Hither and thither we scamper….The paw descends;
The paw descends and all is over and done.

The 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 that its completely coincidental. That suburb is named after the anglicization of a the name of a particular native fruit in Dharung. Why it is named in Dharug is not clear to me, because that’s an indigenous language from around Sydney. There is a mention of a Campaspe River, and that’s real. It’s northeast of Bendigo. A waddy is a club.. That, again, is in Dharug, but has entered English slang.

***

It was somewhere up the country in a land of rock and scrub,
That they formed an institution called the Geebung Polo Club.
They were long and wiry natives of the rugged mountainside,
And the horse was never saddled that the Geebungs couldn’t ride;
But their style of playing polo was irregular and rash –
They had mighty little science, but a mighty lot of dash:
And they played on mountain ponies that were muscular and strong,
Though their coats were quite unpolished, and their manes and tails were long.
And they used to train those ponies wheeling cattle in the scrub:
They were demons, were the members of the Geebung Polo Club.

It was somewhere down the country, in a city’s smoke and steam,
That a polo club existed, called the Cuff and Collar Team.
As a social institution ’twas a marvellous success,
For the members were distinguished by exclusiveness and dress.
They had natty little ponies that were nice, and smooth, and sleek,
For their cultivated owners only rode ’em once a week.
So they started up the country in pursuit of sport and fame,
For they meant to show the Geebungs how they ought to play the game;
And they took their valets with them – just to give their boots a rub
Ere they started operations on the Geebung Polo Club.

Now my readers can imagine how the contest ebbed and flowed,
When the Geebung boys got going it was time to clear the road;
And the game was so terrific that ere half the time was gone
A spectator’s leg was broken – just from merely looking on.
For they waddied one another till the plain was strewn with dead,
While the score was kept so even that they neither got ahead.
And the Cuff and Collar captain, when he tumbled off to die,
Was the last surviving player – so the game was called a tie.

Then the captain of the Geebungs raised him slowly from the ground,
Though his wounds were mostly mortal, yet he fiercely gazed around;
There was no one to oppose him – all the rest were in a trance,
So he scrambled on his pony for his last expiring chance,
For he meant to make an effort to get victory to his side;
So he struck at goal – and missed it – then he tumbled off and died.

By the old Campaspe River, where the breezes shake the grass,
There’s a row of little gravestones that the stockmen never pass,
For they bear a crude inscription saying, “Stranger, drop a tear,
For the Cuff and Collar players and the Geebung boys lie here.”
And on misty moonlit evenings, while the dingoes howl around,
You can see their shadows flitting down that phantom polo ground;
You can hear the loud collisions as the flying players meet,
And the rattle of the mallets, and the rush of ponies’ feet,
Till the terrified spectator rides like blazes to the pub –
He’s been haunted by the spectres of the Geebung Polo Club.

This 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 that was a marvelous fate,
that the worm, a thief in the dark, should eat
a man’s words — a brilliant statement,
its foundation strong. Not a whit the wiser
was he for having fattened himself on those words.

(George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (eds), The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 3 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936))

There was, in the Fourth Edition version of The Mysteries, a ritual that allowed magi to study by eating books. (Consumption of the Logos, pp.95-6). With sufficient vis, this ritual, a high Muto Mentem total and a lack of devotion to personal safety, a character can engineer one of the swiftest experience mills in the game. At tis simplest, the magus could transform themselves into a giant bookworm, so that the process of eating books is less onerous. Given that the smell of old paper books is caused by the release of vanillin, I imagine they are delicious.

Taking this a step further, a magus can arrange for their familiar to do the actual eating. Let’s imagine a Criamon magus finds a bookworm, enlarges it, and then binds that. For statistics, see the dragons in the Soqotra chapter of Rivals of Hermes. Their physical description is based on an indigenous variety of worm lizard. They are legless and clearly not snakes.

There’s a problem here: In early editions of the game a familiars started with an intelligence equal to one les than the magus, and whatever either partner learned the other automatically knew. So, if you read a book on Hermetic Jurisprudence, you cat would be able to argue with you about it. In 5th edition, familiars start with a base Intelligence of -3, and although they can learn Abilities, they have to put some effort in. They don’t get experience from the books you read, and Jerbiton magi are not ridiculously competent when it comes to walking along the tops of fences. Familiars cannot lean magic, although they can arguably learn Exceptional Abilities.

The way to work around this is to make sure the magus’s mind is in the bookwormwhen it wats the book. Can a magus use the shared senses modification in the silver silver cord, so that the familiar’s experiences are simultaneously granted to the magus? Does this break the ritual because the target is a single mind, not a group? Some magi are able to swap bodies with their familiars, which is as good as a transformation..

If you have a true bookworm, then this leads to other questions based on its life cycle. What happens when the bookworm makes a cocoon out of books? What does it learn when it is reduced to goo and reborn? Can a magus following the Path of the Body skip the Imitiation where they lie in a glass coffin for a season, if they know what it is like to be reduced to soup and reborn?

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