Unusual selections from a magical library
September 17, 2023, 12:04:48 AM
Unusual selections from a magical library
By Jubal
Whilst digging through the lost libraries of the depths of Exilian, I decided to note down a selection of the most intriguing magical texts, to give you all some more ideas about what might lurk at the heart of any magical libraries, wizards' towers, or other such spaces that you may be creating for your TTRPGs, computer games, fantasy fiction, or similar. As such, here are twelve magical texts that you might come across. Read on... though, as ever, remember that knowledge can be a dangerous thing!
The Aumanac
If read normally, is just a series of folk tales: but it can be read in a different way (back to front, in columns, every other line: it's a hidden text puzzle) and if this is done the Aumanac bonds with the reader, its covers forming a breastplate, the pages a robe and cloak, and the metal corner caps transforming into a helm. The Aumanac armour does not have a terribly high armour value but works more by providing beneficial effects (forcing opponents to fail or re-try attacks, permitting the hero to try again when they fail at something) and also meaning deus ex machina events happen to the hero a lot: it is, in fact, literal plot armour.
The Holy Laws Of Meryten
A set of laws devised to govern magic by some gods at the dawn of time: these were long since forgotten but are mostly technically still in force, meaning that a user who has properly read the book has the opportunity to resist almost preternaturally well or even produce a full counterspell any time they are targeted by a magical attack, as long as they can come up with a plausible sounding novel loophole or legal technicality that makes the action illegal. The book can only be properly memorised by one person at a time, because the lawyer who wrote it all down didn't want anyone stealing his business.
The Good Little Bullywug
A children's tale about a sad little bullywug (that is, a frog person, for those who do not know D&D monster lore). She wants to be a princess but turns out to actually just be a bullywug after all. The tale appears unimportant, but if a hero expresses sympathy for the bullywug and hugs or gives a kiss to the book, the bullywug will be summoned. She is neutral good, really really wants to help the heroes, and mostly has the stats of a bullywug, but is *completely indestructible by any means* - she could be lost by e.g. being portaled away, but no attacks or environmental hazards will ever affect her. She will also leave the party if they do too many evil deeds, because, well, she's literally a children's book character and doesn't want to be disappointed by you.
The Volumomanteion
A tabletop-game only option. Pick another book from nearby the gaming table (not a rulebook, ideally a novel). The user of the Oracle should roll d100, and count pages and pick a sentence depending on the phases of the moon:
- Crescent moon: Count from the back, first sentence on the page
- Waxing moon: Count from the front, last sentence on the page
- Full moon: Count from the front, first sentence on the page
- Waning moon: Count from the back, last sentence on the page
The reader then becomes the agent of this prophecy: they get a small penalty, at the GM's discretion, until they can reasonably argue that they have fulfilled the spirit of their selected sentence, at which point they get a small permanent bonus.
The Periplus, Commesian the Navigator
Often wrongly assumed to be the periplus (travel account) "of" Commesian, but actually Commesian transformed himself into a book to better record his voyages, which encompassed everywhere on the prime material plane. Commesian did so hundreds of years ago, but this means he can basically be used as a historial hitch-hiker's guide who can reveal the locations of lost treasure, cities, etc, often in the form of slightly annoying reminiscences about how everything was better when he was young. The book is sentient, but only talks if provided with incentives either by threatening its fabric or by coaxing it with offers of travel and stories of what the world is like now.
A History of Swords
This is a book that rewrites itself to be the history of whatever sword the reader is actually carrying and/or any swords in the room. Could reveal who was killed with them, those people's life stories, any magic item secrets, etc. It may reveal things about non-sword weapons but will be incredibly rude about their inferiority due to them not being swords.
The Prophecies of Ceraphai
The Prophecies is not, in fact, a book that may tell heroes prophecies about themselves: rather, it's a magical book that seeks to make the reader an agent of prophecy, and will open itself to pages relating to areas, families, or that it senses the heroes may be near. The prophecies will not always be happy ones, but the heroes can loophole them and the writing is often such to allow for this.
A prophecy being fulfilled will cause the book to replace that page with some information of use to the fulfiller – be that a small bit of local wisdom, the location of nearby treasure, or similar. Pointedly failing to fulfil a prophecy or refusing to, conversely, will cause the page to be filled with a minor curse, explosive runes, or similar.
Six example prophecies
1 - The last heir of (family) must admit their true love before the month ends
Note: This isn't necessarily a matchmaking task! Finding what they already love, in any sense of that term, and getting them to admit it should count. Though matchmaking might also work.
2 - The ruler of (place) is fated to die before the month ends
Note: actually easily loopholed by finding someone already on their deathbed and temporarily making them the ruler until the end of the month.
3 - There shall be no king/mayor/duke upon the throne of x hereafter
Note: just persuade them to change the titulature! Though having a revolution also works.
4 - Their bones shall be broken, their flesh burned, their home shall lie empty in the dark.
Note: bones and flesh can be purchased by the prophesy-holder at all good local butchers, thus becoming theirs. Their home doesn't have to be emptied for more than a night.
5 – Only when a sapling planted this year touches the roof of the tallest tower will the city be safe from the plague.
Note: the prophecy never states that the sapling's roots still need to be in the ground. Behold, a way to include plot-critical flowerpots and roof climbing into your fantasy worlds.
6 – The lovers shall never be allowed to marry without bringing bad luck to all the fishermen of the area, unless they dance their marriage dance upon the sea-floor.
Note: I don't have a good way to rule this one, but it is a really good way for someone who took control water or waterbreathing spells to have a moment to shine. Also, a scene where the heroes have to let the lovers keep dancing while fighting off an evil overlord's angry fish-men/drowned dead/giant doom nautilus might have something to it.
The Three Walled Castle
A children's book. When opened to a certain page and sung the right nursery rhymes the book opens out into a tiny castle full of little fey spirits who are excessively and bizarrely chivalric. The castle only has three walls, and takes up approximately a 4ft (1.2 metre) square. The inhabitants are tiny (7-10cm), equipped variously as knights, archers, and royals, and number around twenty: they are very persuadable to take on anything that can be made to sound like a chivalric enough task, but conversely will refuse to help with anything that sounds unchivalrous.
The Heresiarch
This book contains details of hundreds of lost heresies and minor gods whose cults were wiped out by various inquisitions and similar. Not all the gods in it are evil, but all of them are chaotic or otherwise opposed to the usual ordering of society. At least, that's a first impression. Heroes reading this book will actually tend to find more and more heresies or ideas that speak to their particular frustrations with the social order they find themselves in, as the book tries to give them the information and ideas to break out of those bonds or strictures - for better or for worse, as the book is an agent of heresy for its own sake.
The Doomscroll
When unrolled, the Doomscroll is always full of tiny annal entries containing the worst things happening in the world. This is useful for discerning what the heroes need to be doing in an up to the minute way, but there is a catch. It may cause temporary penalties to intellect and wisdom to use, and those who know of its existence, especially its mysterious original author, can manipulate it to show what they want the heroes to see.
Tapputi's Laboratory
Mostly an alchemy guide, but opening a hidden part of the book's cover correctly lets you into the extradimensional laboratory, which is a small dungeon-style adventure themed around potions and alchemy that needs clearing. If this is done, Tapputi's ghost will be found at the centre of the laboratory and will provide useful advice on potions beyond those which can normally be created by mortal kindreds.
The Nestognomeicon
The pages of this book are quite loose. All of them contain terribly done pictures of gnomes. If one falls out, a gnome is spawned. Note that the book is around 350 pages long so if all of them fall out at once there may be some issues.
The gnomes from the Nestognomeicon have entirely beetle-black eyes, a preternatural sense for where paintings, metal items, and mechanisms are, and a tendency to hoarding behaviour: they speak their own clicking and guttural language unknown to those around them. In general they will attempt to find a suitably safe, small space and busily start hoarding items that are precious to them there. They are otherwise, well, gnomes.
The lost librarians of Exilian hope you found these texts interesting and enlightening, and remind you that under no circumstances are readers allowed into the Forbidden Shelves of the site archives. Have you seen anything similar to these books in stories or campaigns, or do you have any entries to add? Do say, and let us know what you might do with these texts and ideas, in the thread below!
Exilian Chain Writing - 2023: complete story!
August 23, 2023, 05:16:52 PM
Chain Writing 2023: The Complete Story
By Seven Wonderful Chain Writers (edited by Spritelady)
Our chain writing tale is now complete, and I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who took part (who are more than welcome to lay claim to their writing below, or leave it a mystery!). I really appreciate everyone's time and effort, and especially that everyone managed to return their writing well before the deadlines!
I think we have a really interesting story, and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts. So without further ado, our fantasy tale...
There was time to spare, for once, but that night's journey was still uneasy.
Following her companion, the stocky little woman crept through unlit passageways with a level of quiet, slow purpose more usually reserved for snails than people. Light was not an option. Talking was not an option. Breathing was just about acceptable, as long as she held the imagined death-stare of a librarian in her mind to ensure, with withering glances, that she kept the noise down.
She adjusted her pince-nez and re-pinned a stray grey braid as she walked: there was no need for haste, and keeping her hands quietly busy helped with the nerves. The route was cool, even airy, but a nervous sweat still moistened her hands.
It took another hour of twists, turns, circles – some passages only opened if one went round a loop twice, or shut certain routes once every 20 minutes – but with her guide ahead of her, these were merely rituals rather than problems. She just had to be quiet enough not to attract undue attention: and as she'd never been good at attracting attention when it was frankly more than due, this was just fine.
At last, she gingerly stretched her legs down a ladder – this place felt built for someone at least half a foot taller, if built was even the correct term. There was light, finally: the woman and her guide saw each other, curiosity and fear mingled between them, for the first time. They had arrived.
"We can speak now. The guardians will not detect us here." Her companion said.
The woman's eyes widened as it threw back its hood. They had not known each other long, but she still found the appearance strange. Her guide was a birdlike creature, covered in crimson feathers. It had a curved, blue beak and tiny black eyes. Eyes that were fixated on what lay before them.
Dim green light was emanating from an immense golden cube in the middle of the cavernous room they found themselves in. Its sides were alive with glittering ornate glyphs which held unknown meaning. On each side of the cube were set four huge doors, each inlaid with a fist sized, glowing emerald.
Finally, she had found it. It was the device! She shuddered, thinking of the amazing and terrible things that could be done with it.
"Was it you that sent me the message about this?" The woman asked apprehensively, finally tearing her gaze away from the device.
"Yes, Briyya'' It said. Its beaked mouth was clumsy with her name. "You are the one who can operate it."
It was a statement, not a question. She had spent many years in the unseen corners of bookshops and libraries reading endless texts in the hopes of finding any mention of this mythical item. Her persistence had not been in vain. Nobody knew it better than her.
She gave a reluctant nod.
She pressed her left hand firmly against one of the emeralds. It was cold to the touch, yet glowing with heat. A wave of relaxation and a surge of energy hit her at the same time.
She said the words that she had practised a thousand times, her hand on a pomelo pressed against the kitchen wall. Hesitant at first, then louder, then chanting.
With her other hand on the door, she pushed. It gave way, not hinging but straight inward, as if carving a tunnel through solid gold. With her first step into the cube the pain started. Not nearly as bad as the scriptures had led her to believe. Her second step made her falter a little, but she knew she had to press on.
By now the pain was intense. Looking back she saw how far she had gone, the entrance a speck of light. It was excruciating, like being ripped apart, skin burning, blood boiling, bones twisting. She pushed on, her hand still on the emerald. No, in it. Past it. She entered the emerald, became it, its infinite reflections were her own, until finally she was reborn, stepping out all four sides of the cube.
Looking over one shoulder, then the other, she saw herselves. She was her body, cold but strong. She was her spirit, burning and free. She was her blood, flowing beautifully. She was her bones, crackling with power.
"Time to get to work," she said in unison.
*
Arrakam watched the human disappear into darkness and allowed himself a sigh of relief. He had worked for centuries to reach this point: hiding in the shadows of the human cities above; learning their language; stealing the materials he needed for his forgeries. "Scriptures" they called them, gullible creatures! He needed them no more: the Host - his Host - would soon emerge. He hoped there would be time for a little conversation with someone he respected.
At that moment, he heard footsteps in the corridor above him; he recognised them even after a millennium of separation. His sister Arrasai flung herself down the ladder and landed crouching, feathers erect and talons outstretched. Her eyes found his.
"Arrakam," she breathed, "What have you done?"
"It's good to see you too, sister," he replied, "I have released us from our imprisonment."
"You have broken our oath!"
"Not so. Our purpose is to protect the Dako from misuse by our own kind."
Arrasai hesitated for a moment, then approached the door. The light from the Dako was growing brighter by the minute, but the doorway remained shrouded in darkness.
"You put a human inside," she said, turning to face him again. "You know its brain can't cope."
"They were once little more than animals," he replied, "But they have grown to embrace power, even as we fear it. This will suffice."
"What happened to you, Arrakam?" she asked with a quivering voice. "You're barely anything like the Xellian I remember. You think I haven't heard of everything you've been doing?"
A sneer crossed Arrakam's face.
"What does it even matter? You come to lecture me, and call me oathbreaker? You think I enjoy this? Do you think that lowly of me? I am simply willing to do what must be done, even if it means not playing by their stupid rules anymore."
"So, it's all about trickery to you?"
"No, no... I detest trickery. But if we ourselves are to suffer deception, our hands are no longer tied. I'm sick of these false moral shackles. "
"If you'd prefer shackles of the iron variety, that can be arranged," Arrasai hissed. "Imprisonment would be a merciful sentence for your crimes."
Arrakam ruffled his feathers in impatience.
"The threat of punishment hasn't deterred me during my centuries of planning. Why should it stay my talons now, on the brink of victory? If you want to report me to the guardians, go fetch them and leave me to my work."
Arrasai sprang forward, her beak clicking in an aggressive battle cry. Arrakam widened his stance and prepared to ward off his sister's attack. They both noticed the changing light from the Dako at the same moment and stopped to stare.
The Host was emerging.
*
Briyya's many hands were a blur as they tapped the glyphs in a complex, rapid pattern. The interior of the cube flashed with thousands of faces, hummed with thousands of voices speaking a cacophony of dead languages she did not know. Yet Briyya could understand the meaning of the words in a corner of her consciousness which no longer belonged, entirely, to her.
Briyya was an elder by human standards, but she sensed the presence of much older minds swirling inside the Dako. The wisdom, prowess, and charisma of untold generations were preserved here, waiting to be channelled into a living vessel.
"Who shall I try on first?" she mused. But this was merely a rhetorical question, for one voice called to her louder than all the others. She knew who she must become.
Briyya now knew what the Dako was: knowledge. An archive with infinite revolutionary minds. She recognized some of them: Secundus the Silent, Beyonce. And the one who called to her: Seraphina, the librarian who'd protected the library of Xenaxos with her fiery blade. Briyya was a fan.
She spread her arms in the thick nothingness that surrounded her and whispered, "Seraphina, come to me," until she felt a slow dislodging of her mind. They were ready.
*
The two Xellians were peering at the figure emerging from the blinding light. "You are going to be in so much trouble," Arrasai hissed, whacking her brother's arm with a feathery slap.
"Be silent," Arrakam said, "and observe- we shall be free." She narrowed her beady eyes at him.
"You're allowed to act out at this age, but this is too much. You swore to mum a millennium ago that you would stop this!" Arrakam now turned to her, irritably. Just because he was going through puberty, people thought they could boss him around.
"You do not know what I have to endure-"
"High school isn't fun for anyone, Arrakam! We're not imprisoned, you-"
Before they could continue the family argument that had started 2000 years ago, they were interrupted by someone clearing their throat.
"The Host," Arrakam breathed. He spun around to meet his saviour- and froze.
There was an old lady. With Briyya's pince-nez. And a flaming letter opener.
"Hello. I am Seraphina. Is there a bathroom around? I haven't had a bladder in some time," she said calmly. Arrakam blinked.
"You are the Host?"
"The host? This is certainly not my home. Who's that behind you?"
"Are you here to incinerate my enemies? And... get me out of school?" the birdling tried. Arrasai was suppressing laughter. Seraphina straightened her back.
"No, I thought I might continue my research with Briyya. Or perhaps... bake a cake." Arrakam buried his talons in his legs, pulling out feathers in the rage rising inside him.
"Are you alright, son? Perhaps some tea?" Seraphina asked.
"You have got to be f*cking kidding me!" Arrakam screeched.
Three Accidents in Andalucía
March 26, 2023, 01:44:52 PM
Three Accidents in Andalucía
By rbuxton
My brother arrived in Spain in January 2020 and, with one thing and another, it was three years before I managed to visit him. By then he was living in Madrid and I used that as a start point for a three week tour of Andalucía, the southernmost of mainland Spain's "autonomous communities" (they are very autonomous, by the way). I was partly drawn to this region by its mild winter weather, but mainly by its promise of history, culture and mountains. The title of this article is not entirely honest: my first two stops, and my first "accident", were actually in the central province of Castilla-La Mancha.
Humans were living permanently in caves in Andalucía from at least 25 000 years ago. The area was then colonised by Phoenicians, Romans, Visigoths, Moors (Arabs and Berbers) and the Christian Kingdoms which would become modern Spain. In the 1st century AD a Jewish community – the Sephardim – settled in the area and experienced varying degrees of persecution until they were violently expelled in about the 14th century. Although they contain art and architecture from many of these different eras, the cities of the region do not feel like monuments to racial and religious harmony. The dominance of one group would come abruptly to an end and the conquerors would make their own mark on top of the old – quite literally, in places like Granada. Geographically Andalucía is fairly mountainous with several national parks and its dramatic coastline includes the Costa del Sol. There are some fertile river valleys to the west but to the east it borders a desert – the only one in Europe.
Many of Andalucía's cities have an "old city" area which is clearly defined: on a hill in Toledo, an island in Cádiz. In Cordoba, however, it goes on forever, and the buildings there were noticeably lower and the narrow streets less gloomy as a result. Getting lost in these areas is part of the sightseeing experience, and the main buildings of interest sometimes spring out at you without warning. I saw a number of open-topped tour buses and wondered about their efficacy: a big bus in these places is about as useful as in, say, Venice. "There's the roof of the cathedral... about a mile away, and the palace next to it... you'll have to walk that bit."
Madrid
On my first day in Spain's capital I saw the cathedral and palace then took the metro to the Buen Retiro Park. I walked through it, past the lake and monument to King Alfonso XII, to the Reina Sofia art gallery. This is home to Pablo Picasso's Guernica, a vast black and white painting depicting the 1937 Nazi bombing of the eponymous town. Next I went to the Temple of Debod, an ancient Egyptian temple gifted to Spain in 1968. It was moved piece by piece to a hilltop in the city centre, where it has a commanding view over parks and the distant mountains. My brother took me into those mountains the following day, to Navacerrada, where a ski resort looks down over a reservoir. We followed a river valley up to the remnants of the snowline, where the path got slippery underfoot. Huge vultures wheeled around us, riding the air currents with hardly a beat of their wings.
In between the days out, tapas and live music I tried to plan my next stop. I was dismayed to see that a train journey to Seville would be expensive and take up most of a day. Much better to take a bus for €5 to a city just south of Madrid.
Toledo
Perched on a rock and surrounded on three sides by the Tagus river gorge, Toledo is spectacular. The city is famous – as anyone who's seen the film Highlander will know – for its steel making, and the souvenir shops are packed with swords. I dragged myself up the slope alongside its 16th century walls towards a hostel with a sunny roof terrace. I visited the complex of the Santa Fe convent, a series of buildings which was variously used as a Moorish palace, Castillian castle, base for a knightly order, nunnery, girls' school and now eclectic modern art gallery. The following day I took a bus to a viewpoint on the far side of the gorge, walked back across a Roman bridge and took in the synagogue, alcázar (castle) and cathedral. The latter was one of the most incredible buildings I've ever been in; a highlight was its three metre high gold and silver monstrance.
Now to my first "accident": sitting down to a meal of pasta and tomato soup (I'd misread the tin) at the hostel I heard drumming. I was aware that February was carnival month in much of Andalucía and thought my arrival might have coincided with a rehearsal. I was wrong: the main parade was that evening and it wound through the city streets and down, down, down to the river. I felt like the happiest tourist alive as I followed the dancers, musicians, fishermen and weeping clowns/kings/queens. The noise was sometimes deafening and the sense of community contagious. Only the pigeons, startled off distant balconies, seemed perturbed.
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Accident the First- being swept up in Toledo's carnival. Great for your correspondent, less so for the local columbidae.
Granada
A dramatic bus ride through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada took me to Granada, medieval seat of the Nasrid dynasty. I had come to see the Alhambra: essentially a city on a hill of its own consisting of palaces, castles and gardens with some of the best preserved buildings of their kind in the world. I spent a lot of time gazing at views of and from it, and had booked a four hour guided tour well in advance. Wandering the labyrinth of beautifully plastered rooms and courtyards was very special. My guide pointed to some interesting features of Islamic architecture: fountains, for example, are always small to provide a peaceful murmur of water, unlike the thundering status symbols of European aristocracy. Islamic buildings are usually plain and unadorned on the exterior so, when the Christians conquered the Alhambra, they slapped their own richly decorated palace in the middle of it. When Sultan Boabdil, weakened by infighting in his own court, surrendered Granada the centuries of Moorish rule in the Iberian Peninsula were over. This was in 1492, the same year Columbus set sail on his fateful voyage across the Atlantic.
Málaga
The warm weather of coastal Málaga was a relief after the time spent in the mountains, and helped me get over a cold. The city's reputation as a mere party destination for British sunseekers is undeserved – though there's certainly a large amount of Sangria available. I explored its waterfront and Roman and medieval buildings, many of which are clustered around a steep, pine-covered hill which affords brilliant panoramas of the city. The cathedral (affectionately known as the "One-armed Lady" since the second of its two towers was never finished) was lit up beautifully every evening by the setting sun. From Málaga I did a day trip to the Nerja caves, a huge network of chambers with artwork dating back 42 000 years. Tourists cannot visit these light-sensitive paintings but it's still worth seeing the extraordinary speleothems (the general term for cave mineral formations) which include a 32-metre high column. There was plenty of information about the area on a "nature walk" above the caves, which I extended towards a beach for a freezing cold 30-second swim.
Andalucía Day was fast approaching and I asked Pedro, the receptionist, if this would affect long distance public transport. "I don't know," he said, like everybody else, "But you know you should go to my home town. You will see something very folk, it's not for the tourists. Do the pilgrimage to Santa Fe, it's maybe one hour. There will be music. I have to work". Unsure of what I was letting myself in for I took a train into the Sierra del Gibralmora. Santa Fe turned out to be a sharp rocky outcrop above the town of Pizarra and the four-hour round trip had great views back to the coast. I returned to find the streets of the town had been closed to vehicles and there were horses everywhere. People drinking beer on horseback, chatting on horseback, watching the musicians and Flamenco dancers on horseback. I, meanwhile, was making an ass of myself trying to order street food in my faltering Spanish – it was clear there weren't many tourists around. I returned to the hostel, grinning at my accidental good fortune, and showed Pedro my videos. "Hey," he cried, "That's my house!"
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Accident the Second - an unexpected trip to Santa Fe where your correspondent found himself lacking the apparently obligatory horse.
Sevilla
I only had a day in the fourth largest city in Spain so I spent most of it exploring on foot. It was nice to stand by the river and imagine Columbus setting sail all those years ago. The city is home to the third-largest cathedral in Christendom which, unfortunately, seemed to have the third-largest queue as well, and it was the same with the alcázar. I don't feel I did Sevilla justice, but I did have some very nice empanadas. It was time to chill for a few days in a laid-back coastal town.
Cádiz
Cádiz is situated on an island connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus just on the Atlantic side of the Strait of Gibraltar. The Phoenicians were the first people to spot its potential as a trade post in the 7th Century BC and they walled off the isthmus to create a fortress. The 16th Century Puertas de Tierra still divide the old city from the new; another notable feature is the large number of sea-facing merchant watchtowers dotted around. I climbed a tower, went to the cathedral and had a great time in the extensive fish market, where I bought a big bag of prawns for €4 (they were no longer wriggling, unlike the crabs). Cádiz's place in history was further cemented when it became the de facto capital of Spain during the Peninsula War. It was here that the liberal constitution of 1812 was proclaimed, and this left-wing attitude has been proudly maintained ever since. It is most evident today, I'm told, in its riotous annual carnival, which I had just missed.
Or so I thought.
I began to suspect something was up when I saw a group of middle-aged men in silly costumes waving inflatable guitars at each other on the Saturday night. By Sunday afternoon, crowds had started to gather at the steps of various buildings around town, which served as stages. These were filled up apparently at random by groups of performers in even sillier costumes – the group of large rubber ducks was a personal favourite. The acts divided roughly into two types. The first I would describe as "street pantomime": two people – friends or a husband-and-wife team – would regale passers by with stories, jokes and songs with the help of kazoos and wooden sticks. Afterwards they would give out badges in exchange for coins and spend the coins on beer and sherry ("Please fund our alcoholism," read one sign, in English). The second type would be a group of ten or more singers with guitars, drums, cymbals and seriously good four-part harmonies. The words were entirely lost on me which was a shame as the crowd were laughing and joining in with everything, especially the drinking. I'm pretty sure, however, that the nun was inviting the fireman in through her window for some distinctly un-nunnish activities.
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Accident the Third - because why have one accidental carnival stop when you could have three?
Córdoba
My last stop was another former Moorish stronghold with remains of walls dotted around. My first view of the cathedral and alcázar was from the far side of the Guadalquivir river, where there are historical bridges and watermills. The alcázar here was actually built by Christian kings after they conquered the city in 1236. More recently some exquisite Roman mosaics were moved here, but the gardens with their rows of fountains were the highlight for me. I went to the Museum of the Sephardic Jews in an old town house, which was very moving. Many converts to Christianity continued to practise Judaism in secret – an activity the 15th century Inquisition sought to stamp out. Just across the road was a synagogue, forgotten after its conversion to a church but now restored. The city's famous Mezquita is another example of a religious building changing over time: it's a cathedral built to completely cover and encapsulate an earlier mosque. The first thing you see on entering is some of the 800 or so columns supporting arches stretching away into the gloom. I finished up with a tour of the churches to the east of the old city, then it was time for a bus back to Madrid and a flight home.
I'm not sure how to wrap this up. It was a brilliant three weeks and I'd recommend it to anyone. The bigger cities could easily be done as a weekend getaway or, for a longer tour, Andalucía could be combined with Portugal, Valencia and Barcelona or even Morocco (an hour away by boat). There may be a few errors in the dates and facts in my account so please let me know if you spot any. Regarding my three accidents, I suppose I was simply in the right place at the right time. If that doesn't encourage you to put a bag on your back and go somewhere new I don't know what will. Thanks for reading.
Editor's Note: If you enjoyed this article and want to read more travel writing by Exilian members, please check out the forum's Travel Writing Index, which includes a range of members' travels and thoughts on places from Tunis to Tbilisi and more besides!
Thinking Chimerically
March 18, 2023, 01:07:36 PM
Thinking Chimerically
By Jubal
What makes a chimera a chimera? Whilst of course there's the 'original model' with its goat, dragon, and lion heads and snake tail, the term has a more general usage for animals made of bits of other animals. These include the gryphon, the hippocampus, the hippogriff, the owlbear (in its post-Gygaxian/modern incarnations), the wolpertinger, the jackalope, a lot of grotesques in medieval margin images, and so on. We've even had the spectacle of a real creature being declared chimerical: the first Europeans to see platypuses assumed they were sewn together fakes, and indeed some aboriginal tales posit them as the offspring of a duck and a rakali, giving them a chimerical ancestry.
We keep coming up with and using chimeras. The gryphon may be ancient, after all, but the owlbear is only about half a century old. The inherent way that animal parts can be recombined is something we will doubtless keep playing with – but what works, and how we can put together a chimera, isn't something entirely without logic or rules. Those rules depend on what we're trying to achieve with our chimerical being, and how we feel and think about the particular animals and animal parts being used. For the time being, we'll start with a basic definition of a chimera as having the characteristics that it has parts that are recognisably from multiple animals, and that it also bears some attribute or connection to those animals.
Within that, I think there are two main purposes of a chimera: a chimera as confusion and a chimera as magnification of the animal's attributes. The chimera as confusion is exemplified by the original chimera. The purpose of the chimera is that it is wrong: it is unnatural and strange that these familiar images have been reassembled into something unfamiliar. Medieval grotesques also fall into this category, with human faces and dragon's tails and legs poking out of all sorts of places that, well, they just shouldn't be.
However, here's where things can fast get out of control, because creating something that just looks wrong is actually kind of easy: if we create a creature with sixteen limbs alternating octopus tentacles and spider legs, give it an array of eight eyes, the beak of a rooster and a big ol' fish fin, we definitely have something that is weird as hell but not really something that fulfils a chimera's function. It's just too weird, and whilst it might be horrifying, that's because of the inherent horrors of what we've created more than because the bits don't belong together. Another way of putting this is that a messy chimera can easily just become an alien, where the whole thing is weird rather than having the specific wrongness of relatively familiar elements mismatched together. Insectoid and invertebrate elements transposed into vertebrates, too, are such a staple of horror as a genre that it's (in my view probably unfortunately) relatively difficult to use them in a chimera-like situation.
So we get the twist in the chimera's tale: it relies on a weirdness that needs a certain level of familiarity to make it work. The specific horror or discomfort of the chimera is that it takes elements we know and understand, and put them in a combination or situation that breaks that image. In this sense, the especially incongruous goat head might be the most important part of a classical chimera. It's the familiarity of that image – or that of the human parts in medieval human-dragon grotesques – that combined with the multi-part nature of the creature creates the effect. Especially aspects like its multiplicity of heads manage to provide a clear mix-and-match nature and a clear wrongness while maintaining the clarity of which parts come from where rather than making a simply alien being.
They greymarne - very much not the gryphon you know and love. Author's own work.
To give a good example of just how much this works on feelings, I want to share with you a creature I've used in the past, the greymarne, a corruption of Griffinus Marinus (in much the same way that a vormorant is a shortening of Corvus marinus, the sea-crow, this is a sea-gryphon). There is very little mechanical difference between a greymarne and a gryphon – both have bird head, animal body, fly, and so on. But the greymarne has the head of a gull, and that changes everything. The gryphon is a noble steed and soars the peaks: the greymarne squawks in your face and tries to dive-bomb you. The gryphon chases wild ibex in the hills or attacks mighty elephants, while the Greymarne is out to get your lunch and will probably snack on a dead fox if one washes up in its vicinity. Because our feelings about the input animals are so different, two mechanically similar creatures come with wildly different expectation games.
Again, we have an interesting problem that parallels the one we had with our confusions, which is that some combinations that work well don't function properly as this sort of chimera, either because the respective parts don't resonate or because, to take a cooking analogy, the combination overpowers the original flavours. Enter Quetzalcoatl, stage left. The winged serpent is a fantastic image and, nominally, chimerical, including bird and serpent parts. But because most people around the world nowadays do not have terribly strong feelings about quetzals, they become a sort of adornment to the core serpent image rather than something we might think of more properly as a chimera. Generally a lot of bird + lizard combinations end up with some issues like this, giving a more dinosaur or lizardman feel than something we perceive as chimerical, perhaps due to our lower familiarity and empathy with a lot of non-mammalian creatures.
So we can move from these thoughts to a couple of core guidelines about using chimeras and, perhaps, creating new ones. There are two major ways to create a chimerical creature, either by trying to create something where the combination of parts turns the familiar into the unfamiliar, or by creating a creature where shared ideas and familiar attributes give a reinforcement to both sets of characteristics. In both of these cases, it tends to make sense to have at least one part of the animal be something that is comparatively familiar and about which the audience already has some fairly heavily embedded ideas. Mammals tend to work especially well for these purposes, because we're more familiar with them and tend to feel less like they're alien to us.
To give a couple of examples to end with: let's first make a wrong chimera. We'll start with something cute and familiar: a small cat, for example. We then need to focus on giving it some things that are incongruous, but also familiar themselves. A good idea for a secondary head might be that of a rat – we get the incongruity of "hey that has a second head" but we also play with the idea that this creature both represents predator and prey, perhaps even with the 'prey' side being the more malevolent one. Add some webbed back feet, like you might find on a duck, and we have a creature of damp ditches or sewers from a fantasy city, gnawing on foul meat and frightening the regular stray cats and dogs with its terrifying multi-headed shadow – and yet at the same time, it's all almost something you could imagine taking in, giving a bath, and letting settle down for a nap by the fire.
To make a type two chimera, we need two animals that we have similar feelings about, unlike our cat, duck, and rat. Let's once again start with a mammal, this time a badger. We think of badgers – probably not wholly correctly – as grumpy but loveable, stoic and somehow defensive, tenacious creatures. What else do we give those attributes to? Well, a tortoise or a turtle. We'll go with a more aquatic style of turtle to emphasise the difference: shell and back legs of a turtle, front legs and snout of a badger. The resulting Bortle (or Machvaku, or Tadger, or Bouldersbane, to come up with some names) is a creature of wild waterways, defending burrows it digs into the riverbanks. Slower moving than a badger on land, it moves more quickly by water, and its powerful bite and sharp claws give it a reasonable means of defence. It could easily be given some magical attributes to set it apart too, perhaps its shell having particular properties or it having some ability to sniff out particular other creatures or items that a story character might need.
So there you have it, some chimerical thinking and a couple of examples of how to apply it in your fantasy setting design and games. What did you think? Let us know below!
Goblin Week: 28 Goblin Concepts To Cause Chaos In Your Stories
January 29, 2023, 09:28:11 PM
Goblin Week: 28 Goblin Concepts To Cause Chaos In Your Stories
By Jubal
By Jubal
Goblins are one of the commonest creatures in modern fantasy, but at the same time can be hard to use well. Since the division between Tolkien's goblins appearing in the Hobbit and then the term Orc being used for the more epic threat in the Lord of the Rings, the idea of a goblin has been increasingly pressed into evoking the chaotic, children's storybook feel of Bilbo's adventure rather than the epic nature of Frodo's. This idea of a small, almost childlike nature can pose problems with game styles where one is simply fighting them in combat encounters, and they can easily lose their sense of mischief and chaos if made into generic enemy cannon fodder.
At the same time, goblins aren't goblins if they're easy to live alongside. Whether due to confusion or malevolence, whether in funny or scary ways, goblins are here to make our lives more difficult, and to sit at best uneasily alongside humans who have jobs to do and mouths to feed and who value a lot of things, like safety, that have never really occurred to goblins.
So that was part of the challenge for these goblins - it being goblin week, the aim certainly was to celebrate goblinkind rather than simply produce malevolent cookie-cutter bearers of evil. But nonetheless it was important to produce goblins that evoke that sense of childlike mischief. The other part of the aim for goblin concepts was to think of goblins as individuals - a goblin horde nees little introduction, but giving goblins an individual existence for story characters to interact with is a different tricky challenge.
So without further ado, here are 28 goblins, four for each day of goblin week, with a few sketch illustrations by the author. Hopefully you'll find some of them interesting, useful, or simply enjoyable - do let us know if you use any in your RPGs or storytelling. And, of course - happy goblin week!
Pritskik is a goblin who values order, and to that end thinks that nothing should move its location ever. Goblins breaking things is a known problem: goblins nailing, bolting and glueing everything to everything they can find is a new challenge.
Mroblaff the goblin is a mage-priest, granted spells by gods who are very absent minded, can't spell well, and don't understand mortal life. Mroblaff's spell list includes Summon Ladybird, Somewhat Ladybird, Moss Depth Word, and Ethereal Beak.
H'thizz meanwhile hunts rabbits with the aid of a pack of stoats. H'thizz has one great rivalry in the world, with an enormous green-eyed housecat called Godfrieda. Neither has yet won.
Lubgom the goblin has one eye, a stick too big to carry, and a tendency to pick fights with angry chickens for fun. The main surprise is that Lubgom has an eye remaining.
Mujg the alehouse goblin throws salt in the beer, drains the flasks of anyone bringing their own liquor, and switches the mugs of anyone putting potions in someone else's drink. The barkeep is yet to work out why her tavern does so well.
Frottl is a goblin that steals naughty children, on the assumption that they must really be goblins who need better training. They are usually returned within ten days with strict instructions on how to vex their parents yet further.
Stiglit is the goblin who "borrowed" the third day's post in this series, both out of curiosity and to use as nest lining, which is why it only appeared on day four of Goblin Week.
Jumbrokkle is a goblin who lets deer and moles into people's gardens, because they look horribly tidy and it can't be good for anyone to have things all straight and pruned like that and Jumbrokkle has Concerns.
Dlup the goblin was a legendary hero who went around human weddings across the world, breaking their crockery because the noise sounded pretty. In some cultures breaking crockery became so expected that humans started breaking their own as a tradition. It is perhaps a pity they do not invite a goblin to enjoy doing it.
Sopipt is a very small goblin who makes little holes in feather mattresses and crawls in them to sleep or store shiny things, which has been the cause of a number of back pain problems among the local nobility.
Aaugh just likes yelling. Aaugh has gone looking for a thing called a "void", having been told that it's there for you to yell into, which sounds *perfect*.
Xherb likes rotting smells and carefully sneaks around putting single bad fruit or occasional dead voles into barrels of fresh-picked produce every harvest time, just to make sure everyone else can enjoy them too.
Peppkrik wants to be a lighthouse keeper, but lives next to a mud pond in the fens. The dancing lights of Peppkrik's home in a large bush have caused many a full boot as people head off the path at night. It has been nearly a year since the reed-bed was last set on fire which is probably good going.
Tsmits the goblin grew up without other goblins in the cave of an owlbear, and wears a feather hat and a fur coat because it's just Correct that things are supposed to have feathers at one end and fur at the other. Tsmits is almost a brilliant tracker but makes Very Excited Owl Noises slightly too often upon seeing a quarry go by.
Flimminy lives on a mountain and pretends to be a goat. The lack of difference in attitude means few goatherds ever notice.
Very Goblin Svleck lives in a goblin village in the marshes and actually *is* a small goat. The lack of difference in attitude means few goblins ever notice.
Jlamk is a goblin general in the finest traditions of generalship: wearing Many Shiny Items, making Loud Shouty Noises, and Not Getting Near Actual Scary Fighting. Jlamk is very successful at all of these. Especially the last one.
The goblin called Oorasolb has ears long enough to trail on the ground, a problem resolved by tying them up into a large pointed hat. Most goblins now assume Oorasolb is a wizard, and that any protestations otherwise are sheer modesty.
Rvaich the goblin is an artist who sculpts in mud, straw, and horse dung. Rvaich leaves very kind gifts of modern art outside the doors of less artistically inclined humans in local villages, and assumes their rapid disappearance is because they have been sold so quickly.
Metterflup is confused by humans making themselves work so much, and steals people's work tools in the hope of giving them a hint that they ought to not do so sometimes.
Klab lives in a rockpool and likes eating sand, and quietly makes sure any food people take onto the beach gets a good seasoning of it as well.
Zrand maintains a ruined temple. Humans don't appreciate how much work refurbishing wall art in nouveau mud-and-rat-bones style is. Zrand carefully piles skulls, scatters straw, and places rusted spears that shine in the moonlight, in case someone visits.
And sometimes, in the old chantry, the goblin sings.
A Juggler of Words: Making False Etymologies
December 28, 2022, 12:01:47 AM
A Juggler of Words: Making False Etymologies
By Jubal
By Jubal
Puns and plays on words are funny, but they tell us more than that about our relationship with words and ideas. People have been fascinated for many centuries with the problem of where words come from, and fun etymology facts, true or not, are a staple of social media clickbaits.
Finding these connections between words, whether true or not, can also be a source of inspiration. Ideas and concepts previously disconnected can click together and create ideas about a setting, story, or imagined past. Whether referring to things around the home, or links between animals and people, or relations between great powers, reimagining our relationships with words can be a route to reimagining how they connect together and how else we can imagine the things themselves. These new connections might generate ideas for creatures, settings, people, or simply alternative ideas for how things might have developed, imagining how processes might have acted differently to nonetheless create familiar results.
So what might some of these ideas look like? Whilst we always encourage true etymological nerdery, we can get a lot from coming up with alternative ideas as well. In that spirit and as examples or inspiration-joggers or simply for the sake of amusement, here are a set of entirely false etymological facts (we want to stress, none of these are true: please do not spread them as misinformation!) Maybe they'll inspire – or at least amuse...
1. The name of "rum-butter tarts" derives from Islamic prohibitions on alcohol: some Ottoman-era Turks falsely claimed that Orthodox Christian traders spiked their butter with alcohol to corrupt people from the faith, hence "Rumi butter" or "Roman butter" after the Byzantine Greeks. A mid 19th century French chef created the modern dish for a Turkish-themed masquerade, using cointreau: rum itself started being used for the food in the 1910s.
2. The verb "to enter" comes from the German Ente, meaning a duck: German traders in the past often were told to "duck" when going into the houses of English merchants due to low lintels over the doorways in England. Asking for the translation of "duck" and finding it was "Ente" (the bird), the Germans assumed this was a quaint English saying whenever someone went into a house and the association of "ente" and going inside gradually made its way into English as well.
3. The term "wallflower" has actually reversed its meaning over time: originally it is a corruption from "whale-flower", that is, the blowout spouting of a whale, and meant someone who spouted or talked far too much. The term, popular in the 18th century, then started to be used in jest or sarcasm for people who were considered too quiet, until it eventually shifted its meaning entirely and people forgot the original maritime associations.
4. The manatee, originally the "man 'o tea" due to a gentle and calming demeanour associated with the imagination around sipping the drink in question, was one of a number of sea creatures named along this format by 18th century sailors, the Portugese Man 'O War jellyfish being the other example that has survived to the present.
5. A "socket" is an Anglo-French mixing, literally a "sock-ette" - too small to be a sock, but still there for fitting something snugly into. Sockettes that just fitted over the toes and toe-joints, leaving the ankles bare, were a fashion piece in the 1610s: the term was adopted by high-class doctors later in the century to find a way to explain the action of ball-and-socket joints to their wealthy clientele, and it stuck.
6. A number of old words for movement involve a thing used or imagined in the movement - among these is waddle, the motion done by people walking on wads of thick cloth strapped to their feet as a treatment for bunions. Paddle, to push oneself along with a pad, is also in this category - a lesser known one being to boatle, which only survives now in the phrase "to bottle it" - actually "to boatle it", i.e. to run away in a boat.
7. Microphone (pronounced "My-Cro-Fon-Ee") was a nymph in ancient Greek myth in variants of the myth of Echo and Narcissus, who was responsible in some version of the tale for reporting the sad fate of the two lovesick beings to the world due to being the only one who remembers everything that Echo says despite all her words being ignored by others as repetition. Johann Philipp Reis adopted her name for his early sound transmission equipment in the 1860s.
8. The word "bully" comes from Malay "bulan" - which means the moon. Mixes of Malay and then English sailors in southeast Asia started using the words to have a deniable discussion of supervisors who pushed them around on the sea - as the moon does with the tides, so any discussion of being "pushed around" that was overheard could easily be explained away as sensible nautical consideration.
9. A probable old word, now lost, is "aff", likely a verb meaning to get involved in things. From this root we "have an affair" where we aff with someone for their fair (beautiful) nature, and "affray", to aff with someone because relations have frayed, and we "affirm" things to firm up our affing with them. Being "affable" now just means pleasant, but this developed from it meaning to be most able to aff and get involved in matters concerning others.
10. A hamlet was originally a settlement so small that in medieval tax assessments it was only noted as having one pig or fewer between all the villagers - hence, just one ham.
11. Vibia, a member of the family of the same name which produced Romans such as the emperor Gaius Vibius Trebonianus Gallus and the author Vibius Sequester, was exiled from Rome in AD 53 on a charge of asking astrologers to foretell the emperor's death. Her cause became totemic for Roman astrology, and her name thus a by-word for trying to work things out through vague or unknowable methods - hence why we look for places with "good vibes" today.
12. One of the less successful endeavours of early seventeenth century explorer Robert Dudley was a natural history treatise in which he tried to classify animals by utility to mankind, and regularise their names and terminologies accordingly. The only two animals to which he gave the highest rank were the dog, for its faithfulness to man, and the butterfly, for its beauty: whilst science has moved on, his regularisation of "pup" or "pupa" for a young stage of either remains.
13. "Paradise" is of German origin, literally a "Parade aus Eis": this stemmed from early medieval Christian depictions of heaven and hell in which there were assumed to be continuities between them as opposite poles of the cosmology. Thus, since hell was assumed to be the hottest possible place so that sinners were burned, heaven was assumed to be the coldest place in creation, a cold made liveable by grace: to see God was to walk the Parade of Ice to heaven itself.
14. Using a carpet for flooring was originally something practiced in marsh and fenland villages of northern Europe, where old or broken fishing nets - literally, carp nets - would be piled on the floor to avoid some of the damp and risk of bare mud floors. Aristocrats from the fifteenth century onwards later referred to piling middle-eastern rugs in similar fashion as "carp-net" in reference, and the modern carpet was born.
15. In the north of England in the 19th century, tools were often loaned or lent to poorer workers, some of whom relied on these tool-loansmen to ply their trades. One part of this practice was that is the worker picked the same tool ten times running, the loansman would keep it reserved for them thereafter: liking a tool enough to give it its tenth use then became known as "tenth-use-ing", which is why we now "enthuse" about things we like.
16. Contrary to popular belief, "feeling down" doesn't refer to the direction, but to the soft feathers of baby birds. The phrase was originally "feeling downy", and implies that one is like a baby bird: limited in ability to interact with the world, and frowning all the time (a look that baby birds tend to have due to the "gape" skin structures on either side of the mouth that help the adults feed them).
17. To have "aspirations" comes from the asper, a medieval silver coin type especially used in the late Byzantine world of the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea. Someone who wanted "to seek aspers" - that is, to go and find their fortune as a mercenary or trader in the wealth - was seen as implying a willingness to take high risks for potentially great rewards.
18. "Eyaaaa" used to be the standard English way to write a shout of pain or frustration. The modern, more familiar "Aaaagh", derives from British Imperial rule in India and "aag", the Hindi word for fire: it became widely known and popularised after a number of colonial administrators died due to failing to realise that locals were telling them about a fire that had started, which led subsequently to an increased awareness of the term among the colonisers.
19. One North African legend about the hoopoe, upupa epops, was that if you could get it to sit within a circle it would tell you who you were going to marry. People and especially young women thus brought loop-shaped perches to entice the birds and these "hoopoe rings" or "hoops" became a general term for larger ring-shaped loops of metal: the term was carried back to Europe both through trade and through an early 18th century Italian fashion trend for "hoop" earrings.
20. The gazebo tent, with openings on all sides, was originally set up as a way to allow ladies at some more risque and fashionable sixteenth century jousts to get a better view of the knights as they headed out to the lists, rather than just seeing them from the front whilst they fought - hence, a gaze-your-beau tent, and the modern gazebo was born.
Why not come up with your own ideas along these lines? Do comment good ones below, we'd love to see what you come up with. We hope these in some way amused you or poked some thoughts into being that might not have been there otherwise. Happy wordplaying!
Pasts and Playfulness: Protecting Fantasy from Fascism
September 25, 2022, 01:55:10 PM
Pasts and Playfulness: Protecting Fantasy from Fascism
By Jubal
It's no great secret that the European and North American far right are very keen on the medieval period and medieval aesthetics. From DEUS VULT emblazoned on flags at the storming of the US Capitol last year, to anti-Islam imagery coming with , to 'viking' or 'pagan' masculine imagery being used to promote 'traditional' family structures, there are many permutations and combinations out there.
This far-right use of medievalism – the correct term for imagined-medieval aesthetics, not all of which come with true medieval pedigrees – comes along a number of lines which are often conflated. There's crusade imagery, often appropriated within a 'clash of civilisations' narrative that presents. There are also religious-traditionalist images, often part of narratives around the supposed high or elite culture of medieval polities that is seen as having in some way degenerated (the Byzantine History-Far Right links are often in this area). Then, somewhat in tension with the former images, there's the sort of 'grimdark enlightenment' view that sees a gritty, violent, hyper-masculine and often implicitly or explicitly non-Christian northern European culture with rigidly enforced social roles as an actively good and aspirational outcome. It imagines a past in which individual masculine dignity and a counterpoint submissive, protected femininity are restored by a revival of strength and 'pagan' cultural elements.
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This is a complex area but the above outline will do – what I want to talk about in this article is how those of us engaging in creative pursuits that use medieval ideas and aesthetics can push back and undermine these people through our work. I'm axiomatically assuming that's a good idea, and that part of it is in the work itself. We obviously can, and should, push back at a meta-level as well by rejecting these people's claims: but I think it is also good when we can build wider and more interesting medieval worlds that are less simplistically easy for these people to hang their hats on. That both means not providing them with models of the past that chime so easily with the world they want to portray, and it means contesting their claims to aesthetics, imagery, and people as for example "White", "Nordic", or "Anglo-Saxon", all terms that the far-right often use somewhat ahistorically and interchangeably to represent their ethnic and cultural ideals. These cross over both things that purport to represent history and fantasies that are justified by reference to that history – indeed, these things are actually a sliding scale in any creative work or representation.
In any case, I'm mostly going to focus on creative work here, more than about attempts at writing actual history: one can get sucked forever into the minutiae of why particular historical views held up by the right are muddled, wrong, and misread, and I don't intend to wade into that in this piece. Instead, I'd rather focus on how we build medievalist ideas and aesthetics that are harder to appropriate and which help undermine far-right presentations of the medieval period in different ways.
I think one of the best ways to counter the sort of hyper white "Saxon" imaginary (examples shown in in the image screenshots here) is finding smart ways to play with it. Writers, artists, game developers etc can do a lot to shake and subvert far right claims on & about these imaginaries/aesthetics. We see even for pure fantasy settings many arguments about what is and isn't "realistic": really they're about what feels authentic, not about historical facts, though these relate to each other. But expanding that authenticity space to embrace more of human experience is vital. Essentially, we end up somewhat mentally trained to particular sets of expectations that certain things go together – and we should see those sets of things as arbitrary and malleable, they're something that we as creators can and should actively work with.
Tales of medieval demon-fighting heroes need not be centred on Europe. British Library Add MS 5600.
Engaging with people and texts about places and mythos more widely is critical: whilst the European past was considerably more diverse than the desperate imaginaries of a racist minority, it's also important to recognise that even in that period this was not a disconnected world and that portrayals of the period need not be confined to a region that was rather a backwater in terms of Eurasia at the time. Other people seeing themselves in the past is partly a matter of "hey that guy has a face shape and hair like mine" but it's also importantly about people finding their stories and their families' stories in the imaginaries we build. These things help build on one another, too: the stories and names and tropes that make the medieval less European-centred may make it more familiar to some people globally who the Whites-Only Middle Ages types want to exclude, but will also make it less familiar to those versed in the standard medieval and fantasy tropes of the Anglosphere. That unfamiliarity is good! It's fun, it stops settings becoming moribund, and it arguably presents better a world that had a potential for unfamiliarity greater than our deeply information-connected present. When I write medieval fantasy tales and games a lot of my characters whose pseudo-cultures are not very European are the result of me reading some piece of mythos or medieval text or history book where I thought "you know what – that's really cool", and that mix of enthusiasm and authenticity tends to work well.
I think another route which also works with the idea of unfamiliarity is to play more creatively with how weird and playful imagined pasts can be. For example I run early medieval fantasy TTRPG games that often focus on getting players to explore concepts and ideas like guest-rights and their importance. This helps combat the simplistic far-right version of the hypermasculine middle ages, in that it erodes the ideas of masculine authority and strength at the expense of the highly developed social rules and norms that people grappled with in the period. Similarly, portraying vassalage and manorialism and their very real quirks can erode the idea that medieval countries were simple precursors to modern states with their "nations" already formed. Appreciating how political and ethnic identities might not connect as neatly in a world where allegiance is fundamentally to a person not a state makes it harder for people to then accept appeals to 'national' moments in the medieval period as directly connected to the struggles of modern countries. Right-wing societal "values" of insular opposition to travel and outsiders, absolutist relationships with religion, and nuclear man-centred households don't make sense in a medieval world: a complex, human pseudo-past society that needs to talk through its problems doesn't let them take that space.
(As an aside, when talking historical games I often emphasise the "how" as well as "what", society & process as well as the aesthetic, and thus why code, quest design and narrative structure are useful to consider more. The above is one good reason why that massively matters).
"Remember what they took from you!" works a little less well as a caption for this picture.
British Library manuscipt, Royal 10 E IV f. 122.
A final thought on an idea that resonates overmuch in fiction: the connection of blood and soil. This is (perhaps especially in Europe) a very core part of white supremacist ideals, the idea that essentially peoples are inherently connected to places by blood and culture. It's important to actively pull this one up by the roots, but it still appears played-straight in far too much fantasy, especially with the wider fantasy focus on bloodlines and inheritance as a way of passing down various forms of magical power or bond (one of my least favourite parts of Haven & Hearth, a game I generally love, is the fact that the land claims in it are referred to as A Bond Of Blood And Soil).
I think for this we should engage explicitly with ideas of nature and home, what it means to choose a place and expanding spaces of belonging so their claim doesn't land. We can and should make worlds and fey and woods and hills that explicitly reject blood claims upon them. There are any number of ways that things can be fated, and medieval rules of magic are often explicitly bizarre – check out just about any geas in a piece of Irish literature, half of them are rules like "you must never have a drink under a full moon, never eat soup at the same house twice, and never dance when there are more than three dogs in the room" or similar. We don't need to make things entirely random, either: there's no reason why someone's personal, individual connection to a place or site should be derived from blood rather than being a personal characteristic of that person.
I will note that I'm not saying every work has to do all these things, all at once, and I'm definitely not saying there should be some wide shared agenda for what fantasy and medievalism should look like. What I want here is to say exactly the opposite: that taking medievalism in different directions, both digging deeper into the complex humanity of medieval material and thinking explicitly about when and where we use and reject that material, breaks medievalism out of the box and keeps it growing in a way that both offers huge storytelling potential and less fertile ground for people who want to use these symbols for their extreme misinterpretations and ideas. Making it difficult for the far-right to put their roots into medieval ideas generally also creates the space for a lot of the current common tropes and symbols of medievalism to be part of our stories and imaginations without dominating them: a bigger, more human scope for medievalism is good for everyone.
I hope you've found this brief discussion interesting – please do feel free to share your thoughts and ideas on this complex and growing area in the comments. Building complex, exciting, messy and human fictional worlds is something where we can all learn from one another: it doesn't have to mean trashing or abandoning the things we love about pseudo-medieval worlds, indeed it's the continuation of the process by which they were made. Our love of the quirky, the small, the strange and the ancient – that which cannot be made to conform – has a power, and it's one that those who want the world to fit into cruel, bland boxes should, very reasonably, fear.
Acknowledgements and thanks for this piece coming together should go to Kat Fox for coming up with the original screenshots, Dr. Mary Rambaran-Olm for her discussion of them on Twitter, and to Thaheera Althaf for reading over this piece, extended from an original Twitter thread of mine, before publication..
A Bad Pun RPG Idea Calendar
January 02, 2022, 12:25:32 AM
2022: A Bad Pun RPG Idea Calendar
By Jubal
So, recently on Twitter I foolishly said that I would post a pun-based RPG plotline idea for every like on a tweet. I am nothing if not true-ish to my word, and as the likes piled up I ended up producing over fifty of the things as the month of December 2021 wore on... and having produced that many, I decided there was nothing for it but to reproduce them in article form. And how better to do it than a 2022 calendar?
As such, here it is, with one awful pun-based idea for a sidequest or subplot per week for the entire year of 2022! Check out your birthday or other significant dates through the year for maybe-or-maybe-not appropriate puns galore, or just browse to find interesting ideas for your upcoming creative projects and campaigns. Or because you just want a lot of groan-inducing humour in your life, that's fine too. And thus - the calendar!
THE PUNS
Jan 03 - Jan 09
Evil wizard Butho Cai will try to create the Thousand Coloured Robe of Fate amid the the Ancient Looms of the Hill of Fading Time.
Will you stop him, or all perish? Fight cloth demons, unravel traps and find out in this adventure because it's a WYRD HILL TO DYE ON.
Jan 10 - Jan 16
Dragon-hunters use hawks to track their mighty prey - and you've just found one in a snare. Will you return it, losing time and maybe the huge bounty? Or keep pushing on and leave the bird to its fate? Your choice will have consequences in THE EARLY BIRD GETS THE WYRM.
Jan 17 - Jan 23
The Ship of Dreams carries the Elder Kin from world to world and plane to plane, powered by the dreams of a mortal who broke a fated duty. But now it's crashed in the mortal world: its pilot has escaped, and the Elder Kin raid to find him, desperate to leave, in OUT OF GEAS.
Jan 24 - Jan 30
A herbalist has grown the world's first hardy all-weather mandrake, but is under pressure from the King to hand over the secret and makes no secret of his distaste for the monarch's plans. Can you save him from the royal guard in A MANDRAKE FOR ALL SEASONS?
Jan 31 - Feb 06
You awake. Sheogorath is there. You see a bubble of abstract madness. Fifteen glowing atronachs pop in and out of existence. You wander in the nest of a moth. You sleep. You awake. Sheogorath is there. You see a bubble... welcome to GROUNDHOG DAEDRA.
Feb 07 - Feb 13
You know you did nothing that would merit this - but you've awoken in a demon's lair anyway. Are you being framed for consorting with demons? Who is responsible? And... might it not be somewhat fun even if you are? Face death and lust alike in THROWN UNDER THE SUCCUBUS!
Feb 14 - Feb 20
Sir Everhorn is a legend among knights: appearing and disappearing like the wind, saving the lives of folks who he will never see again. But can the heroes get him to commit to protecting the people for a longer term? Why does he roam eternal? Find out in ONE KNIGHT'S STAND.
Feb 21 - Feb 27
A young lady had a romantic tryst with a Selkie three summers past. Now the Selkie has left her for another, but she's still magically, inexorably drawn to the sea. Can you break the curse? Or might she still find true love in the water? This and more in SEALED WITH A KISS.
Feb 28 - Mar 06
Dwarves are notoriously secretive, their protections against Watch snooping absolute. When Elder Bastrom fears corruption in the Diggers' Guild, then, she needs you to join the guild & investigate. Can you thwart the plot? Only if you've successfully MINED YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
Mar 07 - Mar 13
A document has surfaced proving that a mere farm-hand must be the heir of the famed Beowulf. Now he's come to you: he's been exalted as a potential hero, but he doubts the document is real and has no idea how to fight a dragon. Will you help him manage GEAT EXPECTATIONS?
Mar 14 - Mar 20
Rumours of the Lost Dwarf Forge prompt streams of would-be heroes to investigate. But are the young warriors being lured out for other reasons? Why don't they return? Are the best weapons the ones you had with you all along? You'll learn more in A HALBERD IN THE HAND...
Mar 21 - Mar 27
The Host of the West comes. All forces of darkness quail... and you are one of Morgoth's lieutenants. You must devise & enact an escape plan to allow your master to flee to hiding and waylay his mighty siblings, in DISCRETION IS THE BETTER PART OF VALAR.
Mar 28 - Apr 03
In 972, you were sent to the Howling Jail of the Elfin Lords for a fairy crime you didn't commit. You escaped: still hunted, you survive as tricksters of fortune. Now someone has a problem and no one else can help: and they've found you. Maybe they can hire... THE FAE TEAM.
Apr 04 - Apr 10
Two murders: a jilted love affair, an ensuing blood feud. Such happens in the blood-dark of a cold marshland winter. But these ghosts are unquiet: the locals think the souls refuse to leave, but you know powerful ritual magic binds them here, in TWO WRONGS DON'T MAKE A RITE.
Apr 11 - Apr 17
Lightning rolls. Two shepherds drunkenly stumble off the moor: each blames the other for the howling banshee that has been unleashed from the Auld Stones. Who is right - or is their enmity hiding the real tale? You must face the truth this time in KNOWING MEAD, KNOWING EWES!
Apr 18 - Apr 24
Preachers roam the streets chanting about the Great Floods and urging you to drive back the evil water spirits. Doom seems nigh indeed: outlying villages have been washed away. But are the water spirits solely to blame? It's time to wade into the problem in THE END IS NAIAD!
Apr 25 - May 01
A musician is forced to leave her home city of Dassalora permanently after inadvertently causing a riot. She turns to you for help clearing her name: the Council may be willing, but they have other problems to solve. In BARD FOR LIFE, see if you can help her return to fame!
May 02 - May 08
A noble believes his harvest will be the realm's finest, and has invited the king to stay. But, some say as punishment for hubris, a cockatrice now ravages his lands. You are called in: can you find the cockatrice's vulnerability and save the visit in COUNT, YOUR CHICKENS?
May 09 - May 15
The rules of troll fights are intricate and hard for humans - and then there's their strength. But now a huge young lady from from the hill clans demands your village beat her fairly on the village green or give her a husband. Will you play fair when BRAWLING A MAIDEN OGRE?
May 16 - May 22
The great bird has come to your mountain realm. It carries off the great markhors and elephants, and threatens all the herds of the kingdom. You must find a way to save the region's wildlife by travelling to the barren, rocky mountaintops in BETWEEN A ROC AND A HARD PLACE.
May 23 - May 29
You'd expected Devils to be hellish, enforcers of rules. You hadn't expected them to be so parochial. A carnival of demonic evil would be one thing: standing in perfect, recorded line to play hoop-la for your soul is somehow worse. Can you survive A FETE WORSE THAN DEATH?
May 30 - Jun 05
The Monster tears - again - a rift between Daevic and Mortal realms, unleashing curses into both. As you investigate, you find the source of its pain and realise why it it cannot rest. Can you find a way for it to exist at peace? Test your heart in THE BEAST OF BOTH WORLDS.
Jun 06 - Jun 12
The trail is cold: Geralt's investigation of a curse in scrolls and notes is fruitless. But the first witcher who took the contract is missing & could have seen more: perhaps finding him is Geralt's only hope in A WITCHER IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS.
Jun 13 - Jun 19
At the Grand Archery Tournament, a stray arrow that missed the target has shot Prince Muskwort, who is critically ill. The archer uses his own distinctive arrows... but he and the crowd swear he was facing the other way. What's the truth? Find out in HIT OR MYSTERY.
Jun 20 - Jun 26
A fae message comes from Orion, King of the Hunt. Against Forest Law, he refused to kill a magic talking stag he loved but was fated to slay: it lives wounded and hidden. The breach of law would tear the fae court apart. You, an outsider, must decide who is left HARTBROKEN.
Jun 27 - Jul 03
Rebellion and civil war loom. One last social event, the Dance of Summer Moths, will bring partisan lords together: the Great Temple wants YOU to host it & avert all-out war.
Expect intrigue, romance, murder: how you react is crucial, because THE BALL IS IN YOUR COURT.
Jul 04 - Jul 10
A fad for demon possession? You can't believe your ears, but the archmage nods. Locked in their tower, mages hunger for anything that gives strong feelings: and demonic anger is truly strong. What can men do against such reckless hate? It's ALL THE RAGE right now, after all.
Jul 11 - Jul 17
The story of Icarus' death and the wax on his wings is well known, but is that all there was to it? Having discovered Daedalus' notes you realise Icarus was never meant to land safely - and that you must journey to the sky yourself to find the truth in LIKE FATHER, LIKE SUN.
Jul 18 - Jul 24
You are in Saruman's retinue in Isengard. You've been told to oversee work in Fangorn.
A promotion? ...or is someone getting you out of the way? You might very well think that, but the events of I COULDN'T POSSIBLY CALM ENTS will determine your survival.
Jul 25 - Jul 31
A team of Dwarven thugs are operating in broad daylight in your outpost town: worse, they have a signed order from King Bhelen's governor giving them wholly free rein for whatever they wish to do. Stop their plans and expose corruption in CARTA BLANCHE!
Aug 01 - Aug 07
You dreamt of being Chosen by a god as a scarred urchin on the streets. Now it's happened! But... rather than the great war or death gods you've been Chosen by Aheria, Goddess of Beauty. Where fashion sense is sacred, tread a path from sacking to silks in BLESSED TO IMPRESS.
Aug 08 - Aug 14
Cave lions as a rule don't come into the cities, but folk in Krahlek keep hearing them. When you investigate, it turns out this isn't just a wildlife problem and that the merchant guild is involved - and that it may not be clear who to side with, in DOING A ROARING TRADE.
Aug 15 - Aug 21
A silvered blade: it strikes fear, and also a lot of sharp metal, into the heart of monsters. But the anvil that made them is lost. There's one upside: that gives YOU a shot at real glory. Venture to the clouded isles and find the forge where EVERY SWORD HAS A SILVER LINING!
Aug 22 - Aug 28
The city-states of the Autumn Isles are a political tinderbox. A priest relays to you a divine command: to help two lovers from rival cities to elope. But far from calming things, this may ignite the flame of war... defy the gods or risk slaughter in A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN.
Aug 29 - Sep 04
The people of Lyrendorf are terrified of the Myrken Woods, where dryads wander and folk hear chanting under the moon. But now the Woods are sick - and the same illness threatens the harvest. To save either side, you must get both to work together in ALL BARK AND NO BLIGHT.
Sep 05 - Sep 11
You're fey creatures, and a human has wandered through a portal to your realm. He looks exhausted and sad, avoids talking & refuses aid. The Fairy Queen Siannura gives YOU the task of helping him learn to hope again and become a hero. It won't be easy to TEACH A MAN TO WISH.
Sep 12 - Sep 18
During the mage rebellion, a hunter comes across a wrecked shrine and the aftermath of a summoning gone wrong: he flees with the dead wizard's valuable supplies. An old templar and a desperate apostate are on his tail, though, in NO CHANTRY FOR OLD MEN.
Sep 19 - Sep 25
Dragons navigate by scent: when the king orders you to catch the Green Wyrm of the Hills, mixing a dragon-breath like gas lure is your best bet. But keeping the alchemical mix stable will be hard & while you stake it out you'll be vulnerable, in A WAIT WITH BAITED BREATH.
Sep 26 - Oct 02
The dead are rarely called on as heroes. But Sir Hordavan cannot be buried until he completes his list of side-quests: he is clearly no longer able. His will names you as champions in the event of his death... descend into the Deep Caves & finish his work in SIX FEATS UNDER!
Oct 03 - Oct 09
What dark deeds linger with those who one fought the Darkspawn? Are you willing to tear memories from the dead to find out? Few Wardens get marked graves... so you, and a troubling mage companion, venture to the Deep Roads to find the SHADES OF GREY.
Oct 10 - Oct 16
A flesh golem, brought to life by great lighting rods, is being hailed as a miracle of a new scientific age and the bringer of perfect truth. But you suspect the creature is being manipulated into parroting messages from a secret cult: can you change its tune in VOLT FACE?
Oct 17 - Oct 23
The town's household spirits are disappearing, sneaking off to standing stones, up old trees and down crumbling wells. What draws them there? What links these locations? An adventurer like you will be needed to examine THE BROWNIE POINTS and find out... before it's too late.
Oct 24 - Oct 30
Due to a problematic legal technicality and an army from its own eukaryotic kingdom, the Grand Overfungus now rules the Kingdom of Soko. You can't risk all-out war: you must persuade the Overfungus to leave before Soko is awash with mushrooms in WHEN IT REIGNS, IT SPORES.
Oct 31 - Nov 06
They believed it useless. A revenant too big to lurk in the dark, too slow to evade the witch-hunter's torch. Abandoned by its undead kin, it lay born of undeath's hubris.
But now the WIGHT ELEPHANT is back. It trumpets vengeance on the deathless: but the living fear too...
Nov 07 - Nov 13
Phoenix feathers are rumoured to have a thousand magical uses: but none in this age has ever stored a full feather and survived the bird's rage long enough to study it. Can your team be the first to return one to the alchemy guild? Burn your way to glory in in TAILBLAZER!
Nov 14 - Nov 20
The siege of Taraness drags on after years, due to a curious problem: the city keeps magically moving around the attackers! In the siege camp, you've towers and weapons but little hope: can you come up with a plan & capture the city? Have you tried TURNING IT OFT, AN ONAGER?
Nov 21 - Nov 27
Cantankerous Sir Kay was never friendly with young Sir Gareth - but tricking the former kitchen servant turned knight into being indebted to him seems a bit harsh. Can you help Gareth out and solve the intergenerational dramas of Camelot in OWE KAY, BEAUMAINS?
Nov 28 - Dec 04
Food delivery, a Viziman noble's new fad: but now a Witcher is called. A man is dead: insectoid monster eggs, ready to hatch, were snuck into the food parcels! Team up with a sorceress in training to get cake delivered safely in KIKIMORES DELIVERY SERVICE!
Dec 05 - Dec 11
A wealthy noble has had some items stolen - he won't say what, but still wants you to find them. You find they have been fed to mimics - but why and what secrets do they hold? Discover the answer in GET IT OFF YOUR CHEST.
Dec 12 - Dec 18
The ferocious Snowbound Order of Nuns lets no initiate leave their ice-monastery: but an old friend was, while habitually drunk, tricked into the magical joining ritual, and is desperate to flee. She sneaks a message to you: can you help her escape, so she can KICK THE HABIT?
Dec 19 - Dec 25
Midwinter brings a mysterious stranger with a set of musical instruments to the castle door. She hails from a land of burning sand, and wishes to find her way home, granting you three wishes for doing so. Can you find the true spirit of generosity in THE DJINN GIRL'S BELLS?
Dec 26 - Jan 01
A carpet merchant hires you to track down goblinoids who stole his stock - but they've fled into the Caves of Frost Eternal. You must fight not only the beasts but the cold too as you build a camp in the frosty tunnels! Can you be...
AS SNUG THERE AS A BUGBEAR IN A RUG LAIR?
And that's your lot! Happy New Year, dear reader, and I hope this bout of silliness has added some joy to a world that always needs more of it. Take care, let me know in the comments what quest you'll be doing on your birthday, and have a wonderful 2022!
Riddles on a Cold Moon
October 31, 2021, 10:46:30 AM
Riddles on a Cold Moon
By Jubal
It's the time of year for moonbeams and shadows in the dark, the dying of summer plants and the turning of the seasons: a time for warlocks and silvery ghosts, the wakened dead and unhallows all. Yes, it's All Hallows' Eve, and so here's a special set of autumnal or dark themed riddles for you to try out. All of these were written specially for the season this week, and it's up to you to puzzle out the answers - if you dare, that is...
Riddle 1.
'Twas you stole my unborn, you who slashed me apart,
And you too must be blamed for my burning heart.
Though you strive by my start iron and water to bend,
Your brother and mother will meet my end.
Riddle 2.
I once took gold from powers on high,
But lost my purpose when night drew nigh,
I'm often torn from gnarled, hard limbs,
And teeth rip at me on beasts' dark whims,
Til' when nights turn to deathly cold,
I fall: I turn to dust and gold.
Riddle 3.
I protect all that's you, be you peasant or earl,
Be you bard who would raise me to speak of a girl,
Unless I am naked, to name me is rare,
And when I am naked, no name comes from there,
So I wonder the reason for your unease?
I'm a mere memento, plus, that which sees.
Riddle 4.
Legs needed I none to give wisdom's euphoria,
But I've four if you find my home under Victoria,
I'm in the precise things you needed to know,
I'm done unto eggs: say my name, and I'll show,
And if you're now stumped, if there's aught you require:
Let's make a deal – I know you've what I desire.
Riddle 5.
Those said to be like me may wheedle and flatter,
But my biggest lie – it's not me holed in batter.
Though my cousins found fame on the Owl-queen's town's stage,
And dropped on two crowns through a sky-threatened rage,
I've not got their complexion, but I'm doing just fine,
So if you stayed in check, then I'll be at the line.
Riddle 6.
They made me from that which was dead,
They bound my fingers to make my head,
My namesake's robed in gold and green:
But I grasp dirt they don't want seen.
And I am grasped in turn, and rise,
By these unhallowed hands and thighs,
My head, from dust, thus seeks the skies.
Riddle 7.
These tired rivers now flow blue,
They say, for kings, they always do,
But not for you and I, my friend:
The proof can come from blades that rend,
Though they sound much like preening pride,
You need these rivers, deep inside.
'Twas you stole my unborn, you who slashed me apart,
And you too must be blamed for my burning heart.
Though you strive by my start iron and water to bend,
Your brother and mother will meet my end.
Riddle 2.
I once took gold from powers on high,
But lost my purpose when night drew nigh,
I'm often torn from gnarled, hard limbs,
And teeth rip at me on beasts' dark whims,
Til' when nights turn to deathly cold,
I fall: I turn to dust and gold.
Riddle 3.
I protect all that's you, be you peasant or earl,
Be you bard who would raise me to speak of a girl,
Unless I am naked, to name me is rare,
And when I am naked, no name comes from there,
So I wonder the reason for your unease?
I'm a mere memento, plus, that which sees.
Riddle 4.
Legs needed I none to give wisdom's euphoria,
But I've four if you find my home under Victoria,
I'm in the precise things you needed to know,
I'm done unto eggs: say my name, and I'll show,
And if you're now stumped, if there's aught you require:
Let's make a deal – I know you've what I desire.
Riddle 5.
Those said to be like me may wheedle and flatter,
But my biggest lie – it's not me holed in batter.
Though my cousins found fame on the Owl-queen's town's stage,
And dropped on two crowns through a sky-threatened rage,
I've not got their complexion, but I'm doing just fine,
So if you stayed in check, then I'll be at the line.
Riddle 6.
They made me from that which was dead,
They bound my fingers to make my head,
My namesake's robed in gold and green:
But I grasp dirt they don't want seen.
And I am grasped in turn, and rise,
By these unhallowed hands and thighs,
My head, from dust, thus seeks the skies.
Riddle 7.
These tired rivers now flow blue,
They say, for kings, they always do,
But not for you and I, my friend:
The proof can come from blades that rend,
Though they sound much like preening pride,
You need these rivers, deep inside.
Hope you enjoyed these riddles! Feel free to comment answers, ideally in spoiler tags, below. If you enjoyed this riddle set, do check out our regular riddle thread for the latest unsolved puzzle there! Stay scary, and have a suitably happy, or horrifying, Hallowe'en!
Apocalypse Now, Or Never: A Brief History of The End of the World
October 27, 2021, 07:09:07 PM
Apocalypse Now - Or Never?
By Jubal
Part 1: A Brief History of The End of the World
"The world is in peril. You are all that stands between the gathering darkness and the fragile lives of every-day folk in villages and cities scattered across the lands you know as home." If this situation sounds familiar, well, it probably is. The total and existential threat is a classic of fantasy stories, gaming and is an exceedingly common trope in modern fantasy RPGs, both computer-driven and otherwise.
There are various minor variants on apocalyptic showdowns: what "destroying the world" literally means, whether it's a black hole or turning the planet into a demon-only hellscape or simply a thousand years of oppression by brutal dark overlords, can vary. What all of these things fundamentally share is that they are worse than anything you or any regular actor in the setting can imaginably do. No regular despotic tyrant could even envisage this sort of power: and that's why you have to stop it. There's no question of where it sits on your to do list (at least in theory), because if this doesn't get done then you won't have a To Do list.
In this and hopefully one or two subsequent articles, I'm going to take a look at the end of the world, where it fits into our fantasy settings, and some problems with using it that we may or may not be able to solve. I'm mostly going to focus on ends of the world that are mythic or intentional, such as tend to fit into classic fantasy settings, rather than mass depopulations and post-apocalyptic waterless wastelands. In this first part, I'd like to take you on a whistle-stop tour through the history of the apocalypse, and we'll see if we can find one or two interesting things to discuss along the way...
Facing down the apocalypse has a long history: the first imagined apocalyptic event in known literature is possibly Ishtar's threat to release the dead to devour the living in the Epic of Gilgamesh (though this is a threat to ensure she gets to provide her preferred albeit technically lesser punishment to the epic's heroes, specifically releasing the monstrous Bull of Heaven on the city of Uruk). It's notable that whilst the Bull is defeated, Ishtar isn't – ultimately, in ancient societies, apocalypse is in the hands of the gods more than mortals. We see the same in the medieval Eddas' tellings of Norse mythology, where Ragnarok is specifically a conflict between gods, one in which others may fight but ultimately a cosmic inevitability. Christian revelation, likewise, is an apocalypse of gods, not of heroes.
Indeed, we might even suggest that an apocalypse the protagonist can get involved with and one only the gods can manage are semi-exclusive: a genuine world-ending scenario to be defeated cannot so easily be envisaged when it's a tenet of faith that there is one specific world ending, which has already been mapped out and is core to your religious understanding of the world and its cosmology. You may be on the look-out for symbols of your pre-existing apocalypse (and there have been, to put it gently, a lot of false start calls on those over the years) but it's harder to then invent or conceptualise other literary apocalypses.
Another feature of apocalypses as imagined in religion and myth is that they are frequently in some way punitive, a setup for the next world, or both. That is, not only is stopping the end of the world not a thing you actually can do, but it's a thing that would ultimately be bad if you managed it. Either that or they're mainly to be combatted through fundamentally internal, moral struggle: the external problem is a consequence of moral failure. See for example Dr. Eleanor Janega's notes in this post on Jan Milíč of Kroměříž, who did believe the apocalypse could be delayed, but only through fixing what he saw as the moral and social failings of his contemporaries, in particular re-instating a harder line on clerical celibacy and establishing a more powerful, unified, Christian empire at the heart of Europe. The changes he sought were ultimately socio-political, not individual and heroic, in character. The concept of the end of the world coming alongside a general degradation of humanity that necessitates its destruction can be seen not only in Abrahamic faiths but also in for example Vaishnavite Hinduism (where at the end of the Kali Yuga, our current age of decay, the incarnation of Vishnu called Kalki will come and rally the righteous to purge the world of evil). Both Vaishnavite and Norse eschatologies, along with others like that of Zoroastrianism, also include the concept of a post-apocalypse world better than the one that passed before being formed after an almighty final battle.
So, whilst the end of the world has a long history, for most of it there hasn't been a lot for heroes to do with it other than perhaps get judged with the rest of us or turn up as groupies for whichever deity is purging the unrighteous. Or at least, that's mostly true: apocalypses as world domination, rather than as world destruction, are a slightly different matter. Even these are quite rare in classical and medieval texts (with the usual caveat that my knowledge is relatively Eurocentric in these matters). An exception would be some (though not all) western medieval treatments of the Mongols. Writing in the thirteenth century, the Franciscan friar Giovanni di Plano Carpini assured his readers that "The Tartars mean to conquer the entire world if they can... it is said, they do not make peace with anyone unless they submit. Therefore, because except for Christendom, there is no land in the world which they have not taken, they are preparing to fight us." The concept of a mighty threat from the east which must be resisted at all costs is in some ways an echo of ancient Greek writers' views of the Persians, but when added to the religious, moral threat that someone like John saw in the Mongols, we move from invasion to apocalypse: in a future dominated solely by the Mongols, there will be nowhere in the world left to run to. As Giovanni puts it, "it is not fitting that Christians should submit to the Tartars because of their abominations, and because the worship of God will be reduced to nothing and their souls perish and their bodies be afflicted". Not only moral risk to the soul, but physical corruption is hypothesised as the effect of the Mongol advance. In his account the Mongols are somewhere between the human and monstrous: beatable as long as Christendom unites in time and adopts the right methods for dealing with the threat, but a threat on an existential and spiritual level, nonetheless.
These templates of world ending as conquest and world ending as true apocalypse are brought together in the grandfather work of modern fantasy – Tolkien's Middle-earth. Sauron is an apocalyptic figure, well beyond the potentialities of any human ruler, and physical and moral corruption is core to the systems of his power. There are echoes of John of Plano Carpini in the presence of orcs as corrupted peoples (exacerbated by Tolkien's private descriptions of them as 'mongoloid', one of the more awkwardly racist notes in the Professor's conception of his world). There are echoes, too, of the extent to which uniting against him is key to his downfall. Middle-earth, though, is a heroic fantasy, and this unity can be built by a small number of exceptional individuals. It is important to Tolkien's conception of Sauron that he is small on a cosmic scale: even his master is in truth only of a super-angelic rank, with the real eschatological muscle in the hands of the creator. Ultimately, though, Eru Illuvatar is a more modern sort of God: a background figure whose ultimate justice does not prevent proximate world-ending catastrophe.
Tolkien wrote against a backdrop where the end of the world had come closer to home in literary terms. The genre of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction had developed through the nineteenth century in English & European literature, though most of these works covered ideas of natural (or divine) catastrophe and the possible aftermath situations. A turning point to note was perhaps H.G. Wells' 1898 The War of the Worlds – one of the first modern works in which ultimately, though not due to its heroes, the apocalypse was both driven by a sapient, intentional force, and also lost. An apocalypse that could be defeated: the path for the modern heroic fantasy was open.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the dawn of fantasy gaming created new demand in the apocalypse market – we'll look in the next section of this series at why apocalypses are such a useful plot driver in games. It was now more socially acceptable (the so-called "Satanic Panic" notwithstanding) to reincorporate demonological works and other aspects of Christian and mythic eschatology into fantasy literature and games, with the additions of Moorcock's concepts of Chaos and some aesthetics from the eldritch works of H.P. Lovecraft creating a wide range of looks already associated with end of the world scenarios that writers could draw upon. With fewer religious themes in these works, too, the apocalypse had lost its sense of providence and possibility: the pathetic-aesthetic protagonists of Warhammer or the anti-heroes of sword and sorcery novels invited us to consider that the end of the world might not have anything better after it, and if it did, well, what was the chance of scumbags like us being among the morally pure elect?
Bringing mythic and weird fiction elements into apocalypse fiction for modern fantasy audiences meant changing them to fit, however. In particular, it meant humanising and rationalising concepts and creatures that were primordial, unknowable, or defined by a fundamentally pre-set place in a story in their original contexts. Rather than being primarily intangible threats to morality and the soul, to become drivers of an apocalyptic story demons also need to become tangible threats to material reality. Pulled out of their original context, demons (and, in a different but not wholly dissimilar way, elder gods) could become far more present, tangible forces of destruction ready to destroy the worlds we know, rather than primarily forces of temptation and corruption that undermined them from within. For this to make sense, in many cases the aims of apocalyptic villains needed to be changed to more tangible and material ones - actions that a heroic character or characters could then fight back against. Gods were either elevated too high above the picture to influence it (as per Tolkien), removed entirely, or reduced to the point where they, too, were at risk from the course of events.
There are now more pieces of apocalyptic fantasy game and fiction than any one writer can cover, but this pathway to the present highlights a few features of how they got that way. We've seen how apocalyptic events were once more the preserve of the gods, and how the presence of a pre-defined idea of apocalypse in faith might be a barrier to telling other tales of the ends of the world. We've seen that eschatological apocalypses aren't always evil or created as evil acts: they may be punitive, but this comes as part of the ultimate destruction of evil and sin. Giovanni di Plano Carpini's ideas of the Mongols offer them as an alternative premodern view of absolute destruction, one that can be resisted, though one also tightly bound up with ideas of faith, monstrosity, and moral risk.
In modern fiction we've seen how some of those ideas of corrupted monstrosity and ultimate moral hazard recombine in Tolkien's apocalyptic antagonists, after a 19th century surge of interest in world-ending scenarios – and then how the reintroduction of classically demonic or new eldritch aesthetics and their increasingly tangible position within fantasy worlds created the scope of apocalyptic possibility that's easily available to fantasy writers today.
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So, welcome to the apocalypse – I hope you've enjoyed the few thousand years it's taken us to get here. In the next article in this series, I'm going to write a bit about why the apocalypse is so useful in modern fantasy and game writing, and question whether there are alternative ways we could use and frame it outside the ones we use so often. See you then!
This is the first part of a series. You can read part two, Apocalypse Always, here.
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