Tales from the Mabinogion

A painterly narrative exploration game retelling Welsh myth, entirely narrated in Welsh. Wishlist on Steam now

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Before Games of Thrones, before Lord of the Rings, before even Geoffrey of Monmouth compiled the legends of King Arthur - before all of these came the Mabinogion.

Discover the magical stories of this ancient book in 'Tales from the Mabinogion'.

Wishlist on Steam now!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3067260/Tales_from_the_Mabinogion/

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When the witch Ceridwen gave birth to a cursed child, he was too beautiful for her to kill, so she cast him into the sea in a basket.

The abandoned babe was found and taken in by Elffin ap Gwyddno. As he was picked up, the child began to sing, in perfect rhyme and meter.

The child would of course grow up to become the great bard Taliesin, and those first poetic words he spoke would be known as the Dyhuddiant Elffin. The poem attributed to the baby bard can still be read today, preserved in the Book of Taliesin.

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Possibly the earliest depiction of King Arthur's court, a precursor to the Camelot of later tradition, is found in the tale of Culhwch and Olwen.

Located at Celliwig in Cornwall, it is portrayed as a place of great wealth and splendour, with many of Arthur's retinue described in detail.

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If you're a gamedev lacking art skills and budget for a concept/storyboard artist, may I suggest using fine art paintings, instead of defaulting to LLMs?

Here's an example of the references I used for one shot in the opening cinematic of 'Tales from the Mabinogion'.

The principle image there is the opening shot from the cinematic, the surrounding images are all paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, that I used for storyboarding and general inspiration.

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The Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi tells the story of the enchanted flower maiden Blodeuwedd. Her lover, Gronw Pebr, is slain by a spear that pierces through a rock he is standing behind.

In 1934 a stone was discovered that matched the description of this rock - around 30 inches wide by 40 inches tall, with a hole at the level of a man's heart.

A similar rock (or perhaps the same one) was rediscovered at the beginning of the 21st century, and now stands on a farmstead in North Wales.

The rock shown in this photo, however, is a recreation sculpted for the filming of The Owl Service TV show. The sculptor later engraved his name to ensure that it would not be mistaken for a genuine ancient monument.

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Hordes of reanimated zombies are of course a staple of Hollywood. But the trope of the army of the Undead dates back much further.

In the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, we find one of the earliest stories of battle against a zombie horde, where the soldiers of Ireland are brought back by a magical cauldron gifted them by High King Bendigeidfran.

The rebirthed Irish come back as silent, soulless warriors, unable to speak or feel, driven only by the will to fight.

The cauldron is finally broken, but only seven warriors survive the devastating battle.

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The Cauldron is one of the great recurring symbols of Celtic mythology.

Irish myth gives us the 'Coir Ansic' that never runs empty, while Welsh myth has cauldrons that give life to the dead, grant the gift of poetic inspiration, or feed only the brave leaving the cowardly hungry.

Many scholars see the magical cauldrons of Celtic myth as precursors to the Holy Grail of later Arthurian legends.

In one of the earliest Arthurian tales, 'Preiddeu Annwfn', or the Spoils of the Otherworld, Arthur himself leads an expedition to recover a magical cauldron in a mission reminiscent of later Grail Quest accounts.

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“This is the language of memory... woven into our being, giving meaning to the land beneath our feet.”

A poignant message not just for Welsh, but for all minority languages. Worth a watch.

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Cath Palug was one of the three great plagues of Ynys Môn. Born as a kitten to the great white sow Henwen, it was cast into the sea and later found by the sons of Palug. Raised without knowing its true nature, the kitten grew into a monstrous cat-beast, wreaking havoc on the island.

The image shows a medieval floor mosaic depicting King Arthur and his knights hunting Cath Palug.

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The 'Adar Rhiannon', the Birds of Rhiannon, are three magical birds found in the stories of the Mabinogion.

Their song had the power to lull the living to sleep, or wake the dead, and could be heard as if close by even when the birds were far away.

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In 1838 Lady Charlotte Guest published her translation of "The Lady of the Fountain", one of the earliest Arthurian legends. Between 1838 and 1845, she published seven further volumes of medieval Welsh folklore, mythology, and other tales, in what became the very first English language edition of The Mabinogion.

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The Cŵn Annwn, the red-eared, ghost-white spectral hounds of the Welsh Otherworld, are most often portrayed running alongside Arawn on his wild hunts. But they appear elsewhere also.

When Culhwch rides to Arthur's court, he is accompanied by two of the beasts. What greater flex for a medieval hero than to arrive at King Arthur's court with a pair of hellhounds (as the Christians would later dub them) by your side!

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One of the oldest stories of King Arthur is found in The Dream of Rhonabwy, in the Mabinogion. While Rhonabwy sleeps, he has a vision of Arthur playing chess against his follower, Owain, to the backdrop of the Battle of Badon.

Neither player wins, however, with Arthur throwing a temper tantrum and smashing the board before the game is complete! Rhonabwy eventually awakes, to find he has been sleeping solidly for three days.

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I've been seeing many Easter posts about 'bunnies', like the one shown here, and I think it's time for people to start paying more attention to their Leporine biology!

This is clearly not a 'bunny', it is a hare, an altogether different species of animal! You can tell by the sword - bunnies were tranquil creatures, seldom seen in battle, and never trained in the arts of sword fighting.

Get it right, people!

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I talked on a recent panel for the Coding Medieval Worlds event a few weeks back, in which I played the game live for the first time in public!

It's only a few minutes in game, and the streaming/recording quality is not great, but you can still check it out here for anyone that's interested... :)

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One of the oldest tales of King Arthur is the hunt of the giant boar Twrch Trwyth, found in the story of Culhwch and Olwen.

Less well remembered, though, are the boar's piglets. They were every bit as brutal as the older boar, killing all but one of the hunters sent after them.

The strongest two of the piglets were named Grugyn Gwallt Ereint and Llwydawg Govynnyad. Grugyn was described as having 'bristles like silver wire', and Llwydawg would go on to kill the King of Armorica (a province of Gaul), as well as two of Arthur's uncles, being finally being slain by the men of Gaul.

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Shortly after his birth, the infant son of Rhiannon and Pwyll, Lord of Dyfed, is stolen away by some unseen creature of the night.

Seeking to avoid blame for his loss, his nurse maids fake the babe's death with the blood and bones of dead puppies, and falsely implicate his own mother, Rhiannon, claiming she tore him apart in a fit of madness.

Meanwhile, Lord Teyrnon of Gwent pursues a clawed monster that his been stealing his horse foals. Striking off the beast's arm he finds a baby, abandoned by the creature. The child grows, unnaturally quickly, under the care of Teyrnon and his wife.

Finally the two tales meet, when Teyrnon recognises the similarity of the boy to Pwyll, and pieces the events together - the babe he found in his stable was the same as the child of Pwyll and Rhiannon taken that fateful night.

The boy is returned to his true parents, and Rhiannon's innocence is finally established.

Seeing him for the first time, she renames him in a kind of symbolic rebirth: Pryderi, an apt name derived from the Welsh word for 'anxiety'.

It's a fine tale for this time of year, with the cold of Winter giving way to the return of Spring, a reminder that, at least sometimes, the things that are lost return.