Sumer is icumen in

"It was an age that enjoyed transvestism and [...] bisexuality. A great deal of Spenser's Faerie Queene concerns the exploits of the Amazonian knights Britomart and Belphoebe. Britomart, like Viola, has to woo a lady in order, we are told, to keep up her disguise. She seems to have been very convincing."

-- Maureen Duffy, The Erotic World of Faery

To mark the summer solstice we have some wild and riotous fantasy in store. Brawny knights dressed fetchingly in dainty frocks. Fair maidens clad in plate armour and knocking down opponents like ninepins at the joust. Courtly gatherings where honeyed words are more dangerous than poison. Tourneys that are tests of virtue as much as of mettle.

Come back tomorrow for all the cross-dressing, gender-bending, sword-clashing, monster-hunting, pseudo-medieval action you could ask for, as filtered through the triple lenses of Thomas Malory, Greg Stafford and, most of all, Edmund Spenser. Yes, it's The Faerie Queene as it might have been reimagined in an OSR module of the 1980s. Farewell for now, friends, I'll be gone; our queen and all her elves come here anon.

Elf or devil?

A cross-post today from my Patreon page, in a brazen attempt to lure you from the antechamber that is the FL blog into the Aladdin's Cave of true treasures. It is of course specific to the fantasy world of Legend from Dragon Warriors; other medieval imaginaries are available.

*  *  *

How can you tell a faerie from a devil? The first thing is to ask why it should matter. The fays of Legend were once deities. They embody the gamut of human passions and, though capricious, they’re fond of wagers and contests and they are bound by codes of behaviour that oblige them to keep to the letter of an oath. (Pay attention at the back; these details could save your life.)

Devils on the other hand are not merely whimsical but outright malicious. They will lie and deceive and are so eager to break their word (unless sworn on a symbol of the True Faith) that their very contrariness is one of the few ways to outwit them.

Faeries fear cold iron and have a distaste for holy things. Devils fear faith and goodness and can be harmed and driven off by holy things.

But this world is not a place built on scientific principles. Ask a village priest if Ned from Gallows Wood (The Elven Crystals) is a goblin or a devil and he’ll tell you they’re the same thing: 'Whatever is not godly is ungodly.' What about a White Lady? Is she a ghost? A faerie? A devil? An enchantress? A pagan goddess? At this point our friend the priest may be fixing you with a suspicious eye and wondering where he’s left the holy water.

As most people take their lead in such matters from their priest, everyday folk don’t draw a conscious distinction between the fay and the diabolic. They might say, ‘Old Robin in the spinney, ’e’s no ’arm to man nor beast. Might occasionally carry off a baby, but only if it was set to be a wrong ’un.' Or alternatively: ‘If’n you see red eyes looking out at you from the ol’ barn, you turn tail and you run. Looks like a mangy cat, but that’s an imp right out of hell, that is.’

So in the acceptance of some locally cherished goblins you may sense an echo of the time when they were propitiated, whereas the devils that came tumbling along in the wake of early missionaries are shunned and feared.

Scholars are the only ones who would perceive and debate the difference. In Ellesland that means educated clergy or wizards or both. ‘The Gentle Folk are known to be shapechangers,’ says Brother Mulk of Osterlin, ‘but we might say they are more often met in a form somewhat like a man or woman, even if gnarled or covered in thorns, though also sometimes in unblemished forms of dangerous beauty. Devils enjoy appearing in the shape of a cat or toad or rooster, especially when acting as familiar to some damned soul, but they too will sometimes appear with two arms and two legs – often with the addition of little wings, horns, or cloven hooves. Bat wings, that is, bald and leathery; the Lords and Ladies, they’d favour gossamer wings if any. But none of these rules are hard and fast. The mortal form given to us by God is one they all like to copy, the only distinction being that it’s harder for devils to put on such a shape without some disfigurement to mark out their unholiness.’

'Faerie glamour is a kind of illusion, is it not?'

'No mere mirage. Faerie glamour is a weft and warp that overlays reality. If we are to call it illusion, it is illusion that fools the senses of the world. Devils, on the other hand, more usually manifest by possessing the body of a blameless creature. We have the example in scripture of the Gergesene swine.'

‘There are stories of bargains to be done with such creatures, both fay and devils.’

Brother Mulk throws up his hand as if to ward off a blow. ‘Devils bargain for one thing only, and for that they can never offer enough. It’s true that the others can be held to a deal, for their words are anciently forceful and have power to bind even themselves. Thus in parts of Chaubrette you hear tales of the sotay or sotré, a sprite that inhabits a household and takes a proprietorial pride in keeping it swept and the cows milked in just the same way that the lares and penates of the ancient Selentines watched over the family homestead. If you meet such a one, who may take the form of a wizened old man as swarthy as a charcoal burner, you must be careful to treat him with the nicest manners. Do not compliment him directly, but even more importantly do not slight his appearance or make any reference to his incongruous clothing.’

‘What about his clothing?’

Mulk admits he is only relating what he’s heard. ‘Perhaps they affect the toga of the Selentine nobles. But the strictest rule you must follow is never to draw attention to the unusual nature of the fellow.’

‘Is that why you refer to them as “the good people”?’

‘You know that the Kindly Ones were anything but. You would not call them by their older name. God is our protector, but why tempt fate?’

‘Is there no sure way to tell a faerie from a devil?’ you might ask.

Brother Mulk (no doubt wincing at the term ‘faerie’, for he is careful to respect the fallen gods even though he knows they can do nothing against the True Faith) might reply, ‘There are signs for those who would see. The reek of brimstone hangs around devils, for example, as they have always one foot in the infernal realm. And colours too may guide you. Green is often taken to betoken the elfin folk, while many take the red of licking flames to denote a devilish presence.’ He spreads his hands. ‘But nothing is certain.’

‘Except faith.’

He nods, a pensive frown on his face. ‘Except faith.’

Elves as cosplay

“My name is Eildonas of Hulda Hoo,” I tell him as we walk. 

“I take you to be one of the Grey Elves,” he says with a sidelong glance, provoking in me a short laugh, since such categories have meaning only to mortals.

I recently quoted that (a line from the elf’s story in Heroquest book one, The Fellowship of Four) when somebody was telling me about their game: "The other players assume my character's an imp, which is funny because actually I'm playing a sprite."

It’s the sort of distinction that probably makes sense in a D&D campaign, where the Monster Manual is treated as a diegetic text. (“It’s a ghoul.” “No it’s not; it’s a shade. Ghouls have red fingernails and regenerate.” Something like that, anyway.) It would make no sense in Legend, the setting of the Dragon Warriors and Jewelspider RPGs, where the peasant warning you about that damned thing out on the moors might call it an imp, pixie, sprite, goblin, redcap or elf all in the same breath.

Another gamer I know, after reading the blog post in which I elaborate on that theme, singled out this line:

“The point is: you don’t need player-character elves or dwarves.”

He asked the other players in his campaign:

“What's your take on the tendency to play 'furries'? I include the Dragonborn (half man, half dragon playable creatures in D&D) and the Tieflings (humans tainted by demonic heritage in D&D) in this. I think it's the same impulse. It's a very millennial thing, perhaps? How does everyone feel about playing nonhumans? Does it appeal? What's the appeal? Does it repel? Could there be a race that would be enticing to play? What would that be like?”

By the way, the faerie folk in Legend never say “human” or “nonhuman”. It’s a bit too Desmond Morris, that. They say “mortal”, stressing their own point of superiority but perhaps also betraying their envy of the part they don’t share, the immortal soul.

Naturally, like for anything else in roleplaying, everyone's mileage is different. For me, those elves and dwarves and trolls aren't “races” in the D&D sense. They are the very embodiment of the Other. So it makes no sense in a Legend game to have player-character elves or whatever. Elves don't have souls, nor goals that we could ever relate to. There's nothing about them that's human except in the glamour that clothes them in a form we can perceive.

But lots of people like playing exotic aliens and races, and if that's the style of fantasy they enjoy then why not. I guess it's a kind of role-cosplaying. They do then get tied in terrible knots over issues like “Drow -- oh dear, are they racist?” Well, maybe, if you're interpreting them as another Homo racial line, ie a sort of mutant humankind. But if they are simply manifestations of how we conceive these debased and residual spirits called faerie folk, then no.

One of my gaming friends likened it to picking avatars in computer games. Avatars (and an avatar is clearly not the player; think Gordon Freeman or Geralt) must have influenced players’ choice of character types over the last few decades. I notice that players very often refer to their characters in third person these days, as though they were avatars that the player controlled rather than personas that they put on. Roleplaying has become the middle-aged man's version of playing with dolls. But as for those dolls being nonhuman, there were plenty of halfling thieves scampering about in D&D games back in the ‘70s, so maybe the trend was set by Tolkien rather than by World of Warcraft. 

I also discourage players in my Tekumel games from taking nonhumans, even though those are simply alien species and not mythical beings. The reason for that is they always end up bring played as stereotypes, extreme versions of human types. Then the game almost becomes an allegory with characters standing for Aggressiveness, Greed, Pedantry, etc. Now if a player could portray a truly alien mindset then I'd be intrigued to see them explore that, but it would have to be a lot more out there than the likes of Worf or Spock.

David Kajganikh, creator of The Terror, said he wanted to appeal to the viewers “who would watch the show if it didn’t have monsters”. That’s where my hand goes up. Unfortunately, Mr Kajganikh meant those who would watch whether or not it had monsters. For me, there’s a fascinating story of ambition, egotism, stupidity, bravery and resourcefulness in the Franklin expedition. It’s not only quite unnecessary to tart it up with Eskimo demons, it’s an insult.

Eliot believed that “anything that can be said as well in prose can be said better in prose.” He wasn’t against poetry (obviously), nor am I am against fantasy when I say that whatever can be done as well with human characters is better done using human characters. Legend is a low-fantasy world not because I want to sweep fantasy under the carpet, but because fantasy is a powder worth keeping dry. That way it counts for something when you do use it. High fantasy adventure is a different style, and in a long-running campaign it leads to diminishing returns; eventually even mainlining the pure stuff isn’t going to give you a kick.

But now I’m mixing metaphors, so perhaps it’s time to wrap up and hand over this over for discussion. Let's close with a typically thought-provoking line by Ursula K Le Guin:

“Fantasy is the language of the inner self.”

At its best, fantasy isn't taking us out of ourselves into dressing-up and escapism. It's taking us deep into our dreams where logic cannot go.

The face of the fays

If you happen to be in Oxford anytime between now and mid-January, the Ashmolean has a very fine exhibition called "Last Supper in Pompeii". What particularly interested me, though, wasn't the lava bread but a well-preserved statue of a woodland sprite. It was the face. The wide, high cheekbones, slanting almond-shaped eyes, the grinning mouth and sharp chin. Show that to any child today and they'd still know it for a goblin or an elf. And those are faces you can see from time to time even on the street. I walked past two chaps in Brighton, both on the short side, wiry of frame, and with the same bright vulpine features. Some few with faerie blood still walk among us.

It's curious to think that a particular look has been thought of as elfin for thousands of years, and from the Mediterranean to the Western Isles. There's even a genetic condition, Donohue Syndrome, that used to be called leprechaunism because of the distinctive facial features it produces.

So perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that many of our best-known fairy tales occur throughout the world, and some may go back as far as 6000 years. Here's a nice one from County Kildare, and if you want to get into the spirit of Oíche Shamhna, there are a few more in the same vein here.

Thomas Fitzpatrick, a young farmer of Kildare, was sauntering along one holiday when it came into his head to shake out the hay and bind up the oats, as the weather looked like changing. As he was doing so he heard a stump-tapping sound like a stonechat, only it was late in the season for a stonechat to be calling. So he stole along to see what it might be, and, peering through the bushes, he saw a little wee man with a wee leather apron tied round his waist hammering away fitting a heel-piece to a little bit of a brogue. Tom knew it was no other than the Leprechaun. He knew the Leprechaun was the richest creature in all Fairyland and he knew if he could keep his eye fixed on him he could force him to give up one at least one of the crocks of gold he had hidden about in the fields. So he made a sharp pounce on him and held him tight and threatened him with all the worst things he could think of unless he showed him where his gold was hidden. He was so fierce that the little man was quite frightened, and he said, ‘Come along with me and I’ll show ye where it’s hidden.’ Tom fairly glued his eyes to the little fellow, who directed him through sticks and stones, and up and down and to-and-fro till they got to a field just covered with bolyawn buies (ragwort). He pointed to a tall one and said: ‘Dig under that bolyawn and ye'll get a crock chock full of golden guineas.' It was a holiday, so Tom hadn't his spade by him, so he tied his red garter round the bolyawn. ‘You’ll not be wanting me again,' said the Leprechaun. ‘No, no,' says Torn. ‘Now you’ve showed it me I'll off away for a spade.' So the Leprechaun melted away like a drop of water in sand. Tom ran for his spade as fast as the wind. He was gone no time at all, but when he got back there was a red garter round every bolyawn in that field.

Lost in the wildwood

Last year Gary Chalk called me up to talk about collaborating on a graphic novel. How that came about was that Gary, who lives in France, had been at the supermarket a few days before and he ran into an elderly woman he knew who said, “Why aren’t you at Saint-Malo, Monsieur Chalk? I thought every artist went? Even my grandson took his portfolio.”

Saint-Malo is the venue for one of France’s biggest comics conventions – bande dessinée, I should say –and Gary’s immediate reaction was to rush home, dump his groceries on the kitchen table, grab a few art samples, and drive to Saint-Malo that afternoon.

“Quite a few publishers said they’d take a look at anything I have to show them,” he told me. “So how about it? Do you want to write something and I’ll draw it?”

Did I? You’d have to hold me back with an electric prod. Gary is a fun guy to bounce ideas around with, his artwork is uniquely captivating and gloriously inventive, and I enjoy writing for comics more than just about any other medium.

After some brainstorming over Skype, I went back to Gary with a proposal for Jewelspider – a series of bande dessinée books set in Legend, the Dragon Warriors universe, some five hundred years after DW. Think Down Among the Dead Men’s Tudor world of magic and faerie and you’re not far off. I figured that the combination of flintlocks, faerie woods, rude mechanicals, half-timbered cottages and horror would suit Gary’s style to a T. Here's the overview:

A country a little like Elizabethan England. OK, a lot like. Only there is real magic and there are faerie folk. The heartless sort of faerie folk whose whims make a cat seem compassionate.

Twenty-five years ago at the village of Crossgate, a peasant woman called Mary Barley finds a child lying in the snow near the edge of Jewelspider Forest.

At the same time, the stillborn baby of Sir Roger and Lady Olivia Keppel, whose body was lying in Crossgate Church, is found to have been taken. The locals suspect the “ladies and gentlemen” of the woods, but the priest doesn’t want to hear that. When Mary shows up carrying a baby, he claims that it’s the Keppels’ child, who was only mistaken for dead. “A fox must have dragged him off, and the shock brought him round,” he says. “A miracle! Praise be!”

So the baby is raised as Lady Olivia’s second son, Pelagius. But the rumours of faerie origin persist and the child is undeniably strange. Soon Lady Olivia wants him gone from the manor. He’s given to Mary, who discards the name Pelagius and raises him as plain John Barley.

The years pass. “Gentleman” John Barley is an up-and-coming playwright with the Publican’s Players. As New Year approaches, the Players set out to perform a special play for the Earl of Netherford which they hope will earn them patronage. “We’ll soon be the Earl’s Players,” reckons the company’s manager, Francis Barnsbury.

On the way to Netherford, Francis has seen the opportunity to put on a Christmas play in Crossgate, not realizing that it’s John’s home village. John is not keen to go back. They arrive to find the village troubled by the disappearance of John’s one-time stepbrother Peregrine Keppel.

Before long, and very much against his will, John is investigating what happened to Peregrine and uncovering a macabre tale involving “Mad Dan” Duluth, the squire of the manor a hundred years before. Mad Dan and his henchmen, known as his three knaves, so terrorized the county that they are used to this day as bugbears to scare children. But John begins to suspect that, though dead and buried, Mad Dan and his knaves don’t rest as quietly as they should.

Before the curse can be lifted and the ghosts laid to rest, John will have visited the court of Faerie where he finally learns who his real parents were.

No doubt you will have spotted that the plot borrows from the scenario “Silent Night” which I ran on this blog one Christmas and which I later intended to use as the basis for an interactive story app. Only, this being fiction rather than a game or gamebook, that wasn’t what the story was really about. What interested me most was the Shakespearean career of John Barley, and how being a changeling gave him a special relationship with the world of the imaginary. Some deconstruction of the storytelling process itself seemed likely to feature.

Just as Will Shakespeare liked to mix comedy and high drama – the Joss Whedon of his day – I set out to create a similar blend. Horror on its own bores me; it’s too one-note. Humour helps to add the human dimension that makes the horrific elements more disturbing. And in regard to storytelling I always use disturbing in a good sense, of course.

That’s where Gary and I didn’t see eye to eye. So don’t get excited, because (as I maybe should have said at the start) this collaboration is never going to come to pass. Gary hates that whole Joss Whedon vibe, you see, and he felt the comedy elements I’d included, particularly with my Will Kemp like character Pip Cabbage, destroyed the suspension of disbelief.

Well, not every project comes off and that’s a hard truth you just have to get used to as a writer. Because the writing happens before everything else, you end up with an awful lot of abandoned fragments of development work. Jamie and I have got whole TV scripts and samples of novels that fell on stony ground and now languish in the attic or the far unvisited corners of our hard drives. I briefly toyed with finding another artist to work with, but it’s already a struggle finding the funds to pay Leo and Nikos to work on Mirabilis. I don’t really need another comic book to finance!

So here is that unfinished script. Too jokey? Or a fine blend of the humorous and the macabre? I leave it to you to decide…

Jewelspider Wood book one

PAGE 1

PANEL 1a:

A big panel, this, maybe top two-thirds of the page. Nice establishing shot.

Caption:  Then.

A snow-covered landscape, late afternoon. In the left foreground we see thickly clustered trees – the edge of Jewelspider Wood. From there the land slopes down to a valley where the village of Crossgate stands in the middle distance beside a river: cottages, church and manor house. Smoke rising from the chimneys. Beyond, the hills sweep up again into the distance.

A peasant woman, MARY, is trudging up the hill in the foreground carrying a basket. Mary is in early middle age, which for the times and given her social class might mean her mid-30s. It’s bitterly cold – see her breath steam out on the wind.

Behind her, further down the slope, three peasant lads are chucking snowballs at each other.

PANEL 1b:

Reverse previous shot, so we’re looking up the slope with the three lads in the foreground. Mary is a tiny figure approaching the edge of the forest.

Lad #1: Bet a farthing you won’t go twenty paces into Jewelspider.

Lad #2: Nearly suppertime. I would else.

PANEL 1c:

Mary looking down sadly at her basket, which contains just a few twigs. She needs more firewood.

PANEL 1d:

View from behind Mary as she faces the immense, dark and forbidding wall of trees that marks the edge of the woods. We can sense that she feels daunted by it.

PAGE 2

PANEL 2a:

Mary has ventured a little way into the wood. Here under the trees there’s less snow – just what the wind has blown in, edging the dead leaves.

She’s stooping to pick up a bit of firewood, but looking all around nervously as she does so.

PANEL 2b:

CU on Mary, startled as she turns towards the sound.

Sound effect: SNAP!

PANEL 2c:

Mary looks down to see some broken twigs laid on the ground in the shape of a pointing arrow. It points back out of the woods.

PANEL 2d:

Mary reacting to the sound of a baby crying out-of-shot (sound effect cutting off at edge of frame?) in the direction the arrow points to. Her hand to her mouth. Fear forgotten now – she’s only concerned for that lost baby.

Sound effect: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Right behind her in the dark undergrowth – she’s not aware of them - are dozens of cat-like eyes and grinning fanged mouths. The faerie folk.

PANEL 2e:

A faerie POV shot – we’re looking out from between the trees as Mary runs down the slope away from Jewelspider Wood.

Sound effect: WAAAAAAA

PANEL 2f:

In a hollow in the snow, Mary comes across a baby (in right f.g.) lying on a blanket. She drops her basket in shock.

Mary: Oh, Heaven and all the saints!

Baby: Waaaaaaaa!

PAGE 3

PANEL 3a:

New scene -- Outside the small village church in Crossgate. FATHER GULES (Patrick Magee; about 30 yrs old in this flashback) is berating the SEXTON. By the way this is the equivalent of roughly 1565 AD.

The church door is open and there’s an infant’s coffin lying on the path between them, on its side, lid off.

A small group of less than a dozen peasants has gathered to see what all the fuss is about.

Father Gules (gesturing at the door): Obviously you left it open. A wild animal --

Sexton (deferential but aggrieved): Wild animal? In Crossgate, Father? And I double-bolted it, I swear to that.

PANEL 3b:

At the back of the crowd of onlookers, ROD arrives. He’s a 12-year-old with a shock of unruly red hair (which we will recognize immediately when we return here in 25 years’ time). He tugs the sleeve of a woman, who looks round.

Rod: What is it, Ma?

Rod’s Mum: The lady’s stillborn infant. Laid out in the church, poor mite, and something stole the body.

PANEL 3c:

Back to the argument by the church door. Now Father Gules and the sexton have both rounded on OLD ABE, the gravedigger.

Sexton: The child should’ve been buried by now, anyway.

Old Abe: You take a pickaxe to this ground if you want. Like iron it is.

PANEL 3d:

Father Gules turns to the small crowd of onlookers, one of whom is pointing up towards the woods.

Peasant: You know what’s took it. No wolf.

Father Gules: Enough of that talk! And none of you breathe a word of this up at the hall. If the lady –

Father Gules pauses in surprise at the sound of a baby crying from the back of the crowd.

Sound effect: Waaaa

PANEL 3e:

The crowd parts to reveal Mary standing at the back. In her basket she’s cradling the child she found.

Baby: Waaaaa!

Father Gules: Mary Barley. Where did you get that child?

Mary: Found him, Father. Up by Jewelspider Wood.

PANEL 3f:

Father Gules lifts the blanket to look at the baby.

Father Gules: It is a miracle. You have found Lady Olivia’s baby son – and he lives! Give thanks to God.

PANEL 3g:

On Mary’s horrified expression as the basket with the baby is taken from her.

Mary: No. He’s not hers. Hers was dead. I found him!

(new bubble): No! NO!

PAGE 4

PANEL 4a:

Close-up on the exasperated face of “GENTLEMAN” JOHN BARLEY, mid-20s.

John: No no no no NO!

(new bubble): Feeling! Give it some FEELING!

PANEL 4b:

A large function room over a pub, where the Publican’s Players are rehearsing. This is the equivalent of ~1590 AD. John and Francis have copies of the script.

It’s not a dress rehearsal – they’re in regular clothes, though DOUGAL GRATE (late-50s, old thesp, wild-haired Michael Gambon type), who is playing King Solomon, wears a crown and carries a sword. He ought to wear spectacles but he’s too vain, so he makes do with a squint.

FRANCIS BARNSBURY (late-30s, George Sanders type) is the company’s manager and pitches in playing bit parts as needed.

RICHIE BIGG (late-20s, Randy Quaid type) is a lumbering, easy-going hulk of a man who ought to be a bouncer rather than playing one of the women whose case has been brought to King Solomon. He’s the object of John’s ire.

PIP CABBAGE (mid-20s, a young Jeremy Piven) is playing the other woman. He’s the company’s clown, one of those guys who can’t go one minute without turning everything into a joke.

Caption: Now.

Richie: Sorry, John.

Francis (looking at the script): Can’t we simplify it a bit, love? All this “my son” and “thy son”... You’re going to lose the groundlings.

PANEL 4c:

Pip pours himself a flagon of ale.

Pip: “Whoreson”, now that’d get a laugh.

John is impatient – he wants to get on with rehearsal. It’s not a play he’s especially keen to do, either, so Pip’s insouciance is doubly annoying.

John: Not everything has to be about getting a frigging laugh, Pip!

PANEL 4d:

John grabs the tatty rag doll that they’re using as a prop and holds it up to Richie. He points to Pip, who is playing the other mother.

John: Look, Richie, the King – he’s going to cut the little perisher in half. Pip says it’s his kid. But it’s really YOURS.

Richie: I’m the father?

John: You’re the mother!

PANEL 4e:

Pip: Ha ha!

Richie (looking at Pip): I can do feminine, thank you! I’m very in touch with my lady side. I just need direction.

PAGE 5

PANEL 5a:

Richie leans close to John for a confidential chat, but Dougal is right behind them.

Richie: John, the thing is... I’ll fling myself in there, mate. Take one for the nipper, God love ‘im. But couldn’t we get Dougal a wooden sword?

Dougal: I heard that!

PANEL 5b:

Dougal draws his (real) sword and strikes a majestic pose. We see a glimpse of the sizzling brilliant actor he was ten or twenty years ago.

Dougal: What need have I of props? Gewgaws and fakery! Fifteen years I’ve trod these boards.

PANEL 5c:

Dougal swings his sword in a wild sweeping arc. He’s very short-sighted. John and Richie duck just in time to avoid having their heads cut off.

Sound fx: SWOOSH

Dougal: Precision! Focus! Control! And you propose I brandish a whittled stick? Have you no appreciation of the thespic arts?

John: What about a pair of glasses?

PANEL 5d:

Francis leads John aside, gesturing towards TIM and TAM, in the foreground, the company’s two midgets..

Francis: Glasses? John, love, next you’ll want a real gold crown.

(new bubble): If I showed you the accounts book it’d give you a bigger scare than the Welsh Play. We can’t even afford wires for the fairies to fly in on.

PANEL 5e:

Seeing themselves talked about Tim and Tam come over with their copies of the script.

Tim: It’s not like we don’t appreciate the lines, John, but we don’t always have to play elves and goblins and that. 

Tam: Yeah. We could be – you know, just little people.

PANEL 5f:

John is always considerate of everyone’s feelings:

John: Well, I –-

But Francis dives in with a frothy pep talk aimed at giving Tim and Tam the brush-off.

Francis: And you are. You are DEAR little people. But audiences today demand a faerie touch, a whiff of otherworldliness. It’s bums on benches, loves.

PAGE 6

PANEL 6a:

John looks back over his shoulder as he and Francis go out of the door.

John: Haven’t the heart to tell them they’re going to be playing cherubs.

Francis: Cherubs? In this weather? Brrr.

(new bubble): John, I’m sorry, I know the Old Testament isn’t really your thing. No scope in it for all your usual laughs and mayhem. But it’s what the Earl of Netherford expects.

PANEL 6b:

Outside. They’re going down the steps into the pub garden. It’s a cold day in early December. Not snowing. The pub is in a town but it’s morning, and whatever clientele there is hasn’t spilled out to the garden yet.

Francis is warming to his theme, arms waving. John catches the eye of a SERVING WENCH who’s putting out trestle tables.

Francis: And if we get the Earl’s patronage, the sky’s the limit.

(new bubble): Terribly nice touch getting a baby into the story, by the way. Should go down well. The Earl’s wife is broody, so I’m told.

PANEL 6c:

John helps the serving wench with a table. She smiles saucily at him. Francis doesn’t even notice as he goes to sit at another table.

John: Just as long as it wasn’t Moses being found among the rushes. That would’ve been too close to home for me.

Francis: Ah, yes. Your mysterious orphan past. I know better than to pry.

(new bubble): Not too scary with that Solomon scene, though, eh? Don’t want the ladies fainting, do we. Unless it’s for love.

PANEL 6e:

Francis, still not noticing the flirting going on, is pouring a beer from the pitcher on the table.

Winking, John leans over the table to steal a kiss. The serving wench looks like she’s going to respond. No doubt John is thinking of her as he says:

John: Wait till you see the Queen of Sheba’s dance. Should be a real show-stopper.

(new bubble): Mind you, it’ll be Richie in a dress, so that’ll take the edge off.

Francis: Oh, I meant to say, you will get a chance to stage one of your gutsier plays after all. I’ve booked us a performance on the way to Netherford. Just a manor house gig to earn a few crowns.

PANEL 6f:

John jerks his head round to look at Francis, who is holding out a flagon for him. The serving wench is left kissing empty air, lips still puckered but eyes wide in surprise.

John (pensive): Netherford..?

Wench: !

Francis: Yes. Rural folk, you know. They’ll appreciate the Gentleman John Barley touch. I thought “The Death of Pompey”. We’ll use the wax head from “King Herod”.

PANEL 6g:

Extreme close up on John’s expression of shock and dismay.

Francis (out of shot): Crossgate Manor, it’s called.

(new bubble): Ever heard of it?

The gods of the earth

I've been recording an episode of Fictoplasm with Tim Harford and host Ralph Lovegrove. If you've never caught one of these podcasts, Ralph and his guests take a story and consider both its literary qualities and how it could be used in a roleplaying game. I recommend them all (my own favourites are the Gene Wolfe and Mike Moorcock episodes) and if you want to hear ours, in which we talk about the Lyonesse novels by Jack Vance, it's right here.

One of the aspects of Lyonesse that we talked about was Vance's use of faerie creatures. They are, in a nutshell, droll, capricious and dangerous, just like fairies in Legend. And that in turn reminded me (there's an end point to this segue, believe me) of John Hagan's comment recently about W B Yeats's take on fairies as angels not good enough to be saved, nor yet bad enough to be damned. So I thought let's get a guest post from Yeats, him being dead and hence entirely biddable. So here it is:

 The Trooping Fairies

 The Irish word for fairy is sheehogue [sidheog], a diminuitive of "shee" in banshee. Fairies are deenee shee [daoine sidhe] (Fairy People).
     Who are they? "Fallen angels who were not good enough to be saved nor bad enough to be lost," say the peasantry. "The gods of the earth," says The Book of Armagh. " The gods of pagan Ireland," say the antiquarians, "the Tuatha De Danan, who, when no longer worshipped and fed with offerings, dwindled away in the popular imagination, and now are only a few spans high."
     And they will tell you, in proof, that the names of the fairy chiefs are the names of the old Danan heroes, and the places where they especially gather together, Danan burying places, and that the Tuatha de Danan used also to be called the slooa-shee [sheagh sidhe] (the fairy host), or Marcra shee (the fairy cavalcade).
     On the other hand, there is much evidence to prove them fallen angels. Witness the nature of the creatures, their caprice, their way of being good to the good and evil to the evil, having every charm but conscience-consistency. Beings so quickly offended that you must not speak much about them at all, and never call them anything but the "gentry", or else daoine maithe, which in English means good people, yet so easily pleased that they will do their best to keep misfortune away from you, if you leave a little milk for them on the window-sill over night. On the whole, the popular belief tells us most about them, telling us how they fell, and yet were not lost, because their evil was wholly without malice.
     Are they "the gods of the earth?" Perhaps! Many poets, and all mystic and occult writers, in all ages and countries, have declared that behind the visible are chains on chains of conscious beings, who are not of heaven but of the earth, who have no inherent form but change according to their whim, or the mind that sees them. You cannot lift your hand without influencing and being influenced by hoards. The visible world is merely their skin. In dreams we go among them, and play with them, and combat with them. They are, perhaps, human souls in the crucible—these creatures of whim.
     Do not think the faeries are always little. Everything is capricious about them, even their size. They seem to take what size or shape pleases them. Their chief occupations are feasting, fighting, and making love, and playing the most beautiful music. They have only one industrious person among them, the lepra-caun --the shoemaker. Perhaps they wear their shoes out with dancing. Near the village of Ballisodare is a little woman who lived among them seven years. When she came home she had no toes; she had danced them off.
     They have three great festivals in the year--May Eve, Midsummer Eve, November Eve. On May Eve, every seventh year, they fight all round, but mostly on the "Plain-A-Bawn" (wherever that is), for the  harvest, for the best ears of grain belong to them. An old man told me he saw them fight once; they tore the thatch off a house in the midst of it all. Had anyone else been near they would merely have seen a great wind whirling everything into the air as it passed. When the wind makes the straws and leaves whirl as it passes, that is the fairies, and the peasantry take their hats off and say, "God bless them".
     On Midsummer Eve, when the bonfires are lighted on every hill in honour of St. John, the faeries are at their gayest, and sometimes steal away beautiful mortals to be their brides.
     On November Eve they are at their gloomiest, for according to the old Gaelic reckoning, this is the first night of winter. This night they dance with the ghosts, and the pooka is abroad, and witches make their spells, and girls set a table with food in the name of the devil, that the fetch of their future lover may come through the window and eat of the food. After November Eve the blackberries are no longer wholesome, for the pooka has spoiled them.
     When they are angry they paralyse men and cattle with their fairy darts.
     When they are gay they sing. Many a poor girl has heard them, and pined away and died, for love of that singing. Plenty of the old beautiful tunes of Ireland are only their music, caught up by eavesdroppers. No wise peasant would hum "The Pretty Girl milking the Cow" near a fairy rath, for they are jealous, and do not like to hear their songs on clumsy mortal lips. Carolan, the last of the Irish bards, slept on a rath, and ever after the fairy tunes ran in his head, and made him the great man he was.
     Do they die? Blake saw a fairy's funeral; but in Ireland we say they are immortal.

Last year (Dave here again now, not W.B.) I started writing a comic set in and around the faerie-haunted Jewelspider Wood. It was to be illustrated by Gary Chalk, but he didn't like the story so that collaboration never came off. Kind of a shame, as it had changelings, undead, faerie curses, forest monsters, and murder, all mixed up with the misadventures of a travelling theatre troupe. If I can find an artist maybe I should get back to it - though really I need to find a way to finish my Mirabilis epic first.

Gazed often at the stars

The autumnal equinox now, and to mark the long deep darkness ahead, a poem of the wild faerie winds by W.B. Yeats:

The host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare;
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling 'Away, come away:

'Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,

'Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.'

The host is rushing 'twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caoilte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling 'Away, come away.'

Believing in faerie

Recent posts and comments about Dragon Warriors, in particular the discussion about how Paul Mason used centaurs in "The Tower of Horglin", have been reminding me why I prefer "low fantasy" over the kind of setting used in most FRP games, and specifically how that preference shaped the DW world of Legend. I characterize it as low fantasy because Legend itself is intended as a pretty realistic milieu into which the fantastic occasionally intrudes. Because centaurs and elves and whatnot are not part of the infrastructure of the society, there is no necessity in DW to treat them as ethnic groups with their own customs and ecology. Instead, they stand for something in the human psyche. They can be (as fantasy should be) illogical and dreamlike.

The article below, in which I explain the thinking behind that preference, originally appeared in the DW fanzine Ordo Draconis which contains loads of useful material for roleplaying campaigns and is not tied exclusively to the DW rules either. It's well worth a look. (Incidentally, there is also a band called Ordo Draconis and their second album was released by Opus Magnum Records, while Magnum Opus Press publishes 2nd edition Dragon Warriors. So you see, there is a God and He has nothing better to do.)

If you've already come across this little article in OD, apologies for repeating it here. My excuse is that many Fabled Lands players may not be all that familiar with what's going on with DW and yet may still find it interesting. The line of reasoning behind these choices when I originally created Legend is pretty much the same as is elaborated in this post on the Lawful Indifferent blog - ie, human beings are so diverse and complex that you'll never get to the end of them, while PC elves and dwarves are just a way of avoiding immersion through stereotypes.

The FL world, of course, is all awash with high fantasy quests and not at all like Legend. So with that caveat in mind, here's the article...

FAERIE FOLK IN THE LANDS OF LEGEND

Lafcadio Hearn wrote a story about a mujina that haunted a stretch of road in old Tokyo. The mujina appeared as a woman without a face, terrifying travellers at night. Because the term “mujina” had not been seen in the West, readers assumed that it meant a creature that had no face. Eventually the word achieved its reductio ad absurdum: an entry in a the monster manual for a dozen fantasy role-playing games that were either set in the Orient or had reached the point of desperation where another few dozen new creatures were needed to sell a supplement and it didn’t matter what part of the world they came from.

The truth is, mujina doesn’t mean a creature with no face. It’s just a word for a goblin, sprite or imp, derived in fact from the medieval Japanese superstition that badgers and foxes were mischievous faerie critters. And the blank face? Just a spooky magic trick. Hearn – a folklorist, not a biologist - never intended it as the defining characteristic of a species.

Elf, dwarf, goblin. Where do those words come from? From the mind of Man, who is never happier than when he’s managed to tie a label on something and put it in a display cabinet.

All very well in our world, but this is Legend. Darwin is never going to exist here. The magic of Legend is not a science and, despite the convenience of the game rules, magic doesn’t yield to strictly logical principles. The creatures of faerie that we may call elves and dwarves may have very different ideas of how to categorize themselves.

Gin ye ca’ me imp or elf,

I rede ye look weel to yourself;

Gin ye ca’ me fairy,

I’ll work ye muckle tarrie.

The fays of Legend are not the elves and dwarves of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth or of Dungeons & Dragons. For one thing, they are rare. The people of Legend believe in elves and dwarves, but they don’t expect ever to meet one. They hope never to meet one, put it that way. Because they are rare, there is misinformation about them; conflicting stories. And because this is Legend, those conflicting stories may all be true. Logic sits in the corner without a dance partner, disapproving and ignored.

But what are fays, or faerie folk? They are the degenerate remnants of pagan nature spirits whose power has sapped away with the coming of the True Faith. As nature spirits, they take their form and their nature from the living landscape. In forests they are shadowy, agile, willowy. In mountains they are squat and strong as barrels. Out on the moors they are gnarled, spiteful and dank-breathed. You can call those elves and dwarves and goblins, but to the creatures themselves the terms would seem irrelevant. No doubt they do see themselves as distinct from each other, but the urge to fit things into categories is not part of a fay’s outlook. Referring to them as species like that means even less than the concept of race among humans.

As you travel about Legend, you’ll encounter local beliefs in the faeries just as you might have done in Cornwall or the Scottish Highlands not so very long ago. When a Cornumbrian tells you of mischievous pookas and an Erewornian tells you of murderous redcaps, the nature of the creature they are describing may simply be the vernacular penchant of the fays, shaped by countryside and weather and the attitudes of mortals.

More often, though, the talk in taverns is of a specific local fay: Long Lankin or Old Ned or Jack Hollyshoes. No two are exactly alike. A hobgoblin is just a goblin that nearly did for you. There’s no such thing as a genome we can use to pin down their faerie lineage. If you want to GM them properly, you can put that rulebook away for a start.

“My name is Eildonas of Hulda Hoo,” I tell him as we walk.

“I take you to be one of the Grey Elves,” he says with a sidelong glance, provoking in me a short laugh, since such categories only interest mortals.

What the fays do recognize is territorial sovereignty and status. An elf of the forest regards himself as cultured aristocracy, and may even model his manners on the etiquette of a mortal court. The kobolds or dwarves of crags and caverns are a more rough-hewn breed, but still pride themselves on having noble status. A mean creature of the moors and ditches, whether you call it a goblin or a boggart, knows its place in the hierarchy of faerie.

Now, all of this is the way it works in “real” Legend – that’s my and Oliver’s Legend. (You did get that I put "real" in inverted commas, right?) You’ve bought the Dragon Warriors books, so your Legend is entirely up to you. We don’t have no truck with authorial privilege in these parts. But I do have a good reason for recommending that you don’t start neatly indexing elves and dwarves and what-have-you into suitable player-character templates. That’s because it will ruin your game.

Mike Polling (the author of “The Key of Tirandor”, an excellent scenario in White Dwarf #49-50 that is to be reprinted in In From The Cold) describes a problem in fantasy fiction and gaming that he calls taxonomic reduction. It begins with a demand for details about elves, for example - their social organization, clothing, breeding habits, and so on. So you get a supplement with all that stuff… hit points for Grey Elves, magic for High Elves, eye colour and what they eat. Now you can play an elf. But actually all you are playing is another kind of human being.

Okay, so now your players start to sense that something has gone. Elves used to be mysterious. Now they know more about them than they do about Yanomami Indians. So you have to bring in something new. You scour legends until you find Trows, say, or Sith. Just words. Now they take the place of the elves who have been filed and categorized into meaninglessness. Yet pretty soon a player says, “How can I get to play a trow character?” and the whole reductive process begins again.

The point is: you don’t need player-character elves or dwarves. Unless of course you want to recreate Lord of the Rings in your games, in which case stop playing Legend right now because it’s not that kind of setting - what you want is D&D or MERP. Human beings (or rather mortals, as the term is in Legend) already have infinite diversity. If you aren’t able to find that in your own role-playing ability, dressing up as an elf isn’t going to do it for you.

We have to have the rules in role-playing, but they’re a necessary evil. They shouldn’t be allowed to shape the way we think about the world and characters. And most especially they shouldn’t be allowed to stifle the magic and mystery that’s the whole point of choosing Legend as your game world in the first place.

Of course, DW is a game system as well as a milieu. So you're perfectly at liberty to chuck out the low-magic medieval setting and spooky flavour and just use the rules for combat and magic. My own gaming group did it the other way round: our games are set in Legend but we use our own GURPS variant, 7URPS.

By the way here's a nice little companion comment on fairies by Alan Moore. And if you should be interested in running games in the authentic Legend style, it's worth tracking down copies of Maureen Duffy's book The Erotic World of Faery and Susanna Clarke's brilliant short story collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu.