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The Crafty Lover or, The Lawyer Outwitted

This traditional ballad could serve as a background for a player character or a pair of covenfolk. I’d make one little note: the word “daughter” and “after” are rhymed here. There are dialects of English in which the word was pronounced “dafter”. Slaughter, similarly, was said “slafter”. It was collected in Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England edited by Robert Bell in…

The Book Hunter by Arthur Macy

I remember having a discussion at a writers workshop about 30 years ago, when I suggested that if all you did was respond with aphorisms you were less a person than the sewn together bits of other people. I was insufferable back then. Anyway, I thought of that because in this poem there’s a bibliophile who, in mythic terms, is gradually being replaced by the accidents of his books. He’s…

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Fourth Fit

Thanks again to Thomas Copeland whose Librivox read I’m making comments on. My initial plan was to add the rules for the Green Chapel mystery cult to this episode. My health being what it is, instead next month you’ll get the variant of the story that contains a Faerie-raised lady as the motivator for the quest. The month after we’ll go into the Green Chapel Mystery and think about how it can be…

The Jovial Hunter

This is an English folksong that has a boar I’m choosing to read as infernally-possessed. It’s a simple sort of monster, but suited for low-combat sagas. The song is often called Sir Robert Bolton had three sons because the trend at the time was to use the first line for indexing. Some performers call it The Jolly Hunter of Bromsgrove. That’s a town in England just south of Birmingham.This is…

Anime eyes and model collapse in Mythic Europe

In Ars Magica, magi of House Jerbiton value beauty, but only when created by nature or humans: never faeries. As a plot hook, I’d suggest this has a historical cause, and it’s a the Mythic European version of AI model collapse. To define terms, model collapse is caused when the outputs of an algorithm are fed back in as inputs, through so many iterations it fails. As a metaphor, there’s the Dark…

Alpine Papyrus

This is one of the rare episodes where I haven’t written up a script, so you’ll pardon me ifI’m very rambly. This week I had hoped to present to you the episode which involves The Fairy with the Blue Hair, also known as the Blue Fairy, from “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, but having just halfway written her out, it’s already 3,000 words long and most of those are statistics, so it’s clearly not…

The Spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers

This week: another monster. I originally was writing this up, I wasn’t sure how to approach it. Is it a vampire with a very complicated way of mesmerizing and then consuming you? But then I thought, no. Maybe this is an infestation. Rather like the maggots in Realms of Power, The Infernal or like a couple of creatures that have appeared in Ars Magica Monsters, Baudelaire’s Chimeras, or Stoker’s…

"Men Who Walk Upon The Air" by Frank Belknap Long

Yellow water filled the ditches by the roadside. Yellow clouds drifted lazily through tranquil webs of darkness and obscured far, glimmering stars. Horror and misery stared out of sodden eyes, and the night was filled with voices. Men with packs made vivid, grotesque gestures against the yellow sky and swore in their beards. Men ambled over stony paths and climbed hills and passed with disgust…

Ghosts in Court by Sabine Baring-Gould

The following very curious story is from the Eyrbyggja Saga, one of the oldest and noblest of the Icelandic histories. As it results in an action unique in its way,—a lawsuit brought against a party of ghosts who haunted a house,—it well merits attention from all lovers of curiosities. In the summer of 1000, the year in which Christianity was established in Iceland, a vessel came off the coast…

The Chromatic Ghosts of Thomas by Ellis Parker Butler

This is a sort of ghost story from 1907. It’s also how I intend to cheat slightly for the 30 monsters in May thing on the Atlas Games Forum. Bwahahahah.*** Our cat Thomas was very sensitive. I never knew such a sensitive cat as Thomas was. The slightest harsh word seemed to hurt his feelings and put him into a fit of the dumps. And if anybody scolded him he would sob once or twice, then burst…

The Sea Raiders by H G Wells

This little-commented story by HG Wells lets us reuse some of the statistics already published in Ars Magica Monsters Volume 1. It’s about a group of social, amphibious octopi that generally dwell in the depths, but might not always. Thanks to Mike Pelton and his Librivox production team. Statistics eventually, but obviously based on the squid in AMM1. *** I Until the extraordinary affair at…

Alvearium: preliminary notes on a new covenant for the Greater Alps

Sanctuary of Ice had had two covenants cut from it, to give troupes space to write their own. Rough drafts of them were produces, and I published them several web pages ago. Shadow of the Moon used a similar system to the Dreamlands supplement for Call of Cthulhu, where each character had two sheets, and they became increasingly disconnected as the version from inside the covenant’s aura became…

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Third Fit

Thanks again to Thomas Copeland and his Librivox team. The editor of the version which Copeland is reading for us has a footnote here which is of value to us: In part it reads: “The account of each day’s hunting contains a number of obsolete terms and details of woodcraft, not given in full. The meaning of some has been lost, and the minute description of skinning and dismembering the game would…

"The Lady Witch" by Lady Jane Francesca Wilde

This week a fragment of Irish folklore from Lady Jane Francesca Wilde. It comes from her book Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland. Her name, if slightly familiar, may be eclipsed a little by her more famous son, Oscar Wilde, whose writing took a rather different direction. Her book contains a lot of folklore that’s useful, but is neglected now because it has been so…

Robert Herrick: Upon Love

A brief one here: a demon from Herrick that takes the form of a pagan god. It aids people who want to harm themselves by destroying their own capacity for love. Love, in medieval theology, being one of the forms of God, and that humans should love being one of the commands of God, this is a sort of damnation. On reading critics of Herrick there’s a statement that this really is Cupid and that the…

"The Valley of Spiders" by H.G. Wells

This has a certain American feel, but can be easily transposed into feudal times. Statistics for the monsters eventually. Thanks to Tennishoes and his Librivox production team.***Towards mid-day the three pursuers came abruptly round a bend in the torrent bed upon the sight of a very broad and spacious valley. The difficult and winding trench of pebbles along which they had tracked the fugitives…

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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Second Fit

This second part of the the story starts with a lengthy piece that sets the tone. This beginning of adventures had Arthur at the New Year; for he yearned to hear gallant tales, though his words were few when he sat at the feast. But now had they stern work on hand. Gawain was glad to begin the jest in the hall, but ye need have no marvel if the end be heavy. For though a man be merry in mind…

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