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.’

Stranger than fiction

For Legend games I’ve always liked taking a seed crystal of historical fact (or anecdote) and growing an adventure around that. When a friend of mine told me a story about Notker the Stammerer and a stolen relic, I had the basic set-up for “A Box of Old Bones” right then and there.

Real history offers plenty of inspirational snippets like that. How about these, taken from a review in The London Review of Books of Martyn Rady’s book The Habsburgs?

“Werner the Pious was the first fabricator in the family, forging a charter that confirmed him as the hereditary abbot of the local abbey (where the Emperor Karl’s heart rests today). But this was small potatoes compared to the heroic efforts of Rudolf the Founder, who had his scribes concoct five interlocking charters claiming that previous emperors had confirmed the Habsburgs as hereditary archdukes of Austria, bolstered by letters supposedly written by Julius Caesar and Nero.” 

“Cymburga, the Polish mother of Frederick III, renowned both for her beauty and for her ability to drive nails into planks with her bare fists; Frederick the Slothful, who travelled his realm with his own hen coops to save on buying eggs; the Habsburg knights who had to cut off their fashionable long toe-pieces when forced to fight the Swiss infantry on foot; Margaret of Parma, another illegitimate child of Charles V by a different serving wench, who grew and carefully trimmed a moustache to provide her with an air of authority when her father made her governor of the Low Countries.” 

“The slaughter of thirty thousand in the Lutheran stronghold of Magdeburg led to a new word being coined, ‘Magdeburgisierung’. Invaders bombarded cities with shells of poison gas, a fetching compound of arsenic and henbane. After the war, France and Germany signed the Strasburg Agreement of 1675, the first treaty to ban the use of chemical weapons.”

There are ideas for Legend there almost in whole cloth. But they’re trumped by another of Notker’s accounts which is pretty much a ready-to-run adventure:

“In one particularly bad crop year, a certain greedy bishop of Old Francia rejoiced that the people of his diocese were dying because he could sell the food from his storehouse to the survivors at exorbitant prices. Amidst this climate, a demon or spirit started haunting the workshop of a blacksmith, playing with the hammers and anvil by night, much like a poltergeist. The blacksmith attempted to protect his house and his family with the sign of the cross, but before he could, the demon [Notker describes it as ‘pilosus’, ie hairy] proposed an arrangement of mutual benefit: ‘My friend, if you do not stop me from playing in your workshop, bring your little pot here and you will find it full every day.’ The starving blacksmith, ‘fearing bodily deprivation more than the eternal damnation of the soul’, agreed to the demon’s proposition. The demon burgled the bishop’s storehouse repeatedly, filling the flask and leaving broken barrels to spill on the floor. 

“The bishop discovered the theft and concluded, based on the excessive waste, that it must be the work of a demon rather than a starving parishioner. So he protected the room with holy water and placed the sign of the cross on the barrels. The next morning, the guard of the bishop’s house found the demon trapped in the larder. It had entered during the night, but, because of the holy protections placed by the bishop, was unable to touch the stores nor exit again. Upon discovery, it assumed a human form. The guard subdued it and tied it up. It was brought to a public trial where it was publicly beaten (ad palam cesus). Between blows, it cried out: ‘Woe is me, woe is me, for I have lost my friend’s little pot!’ “

If we read that with a modern sceptical eye we can work out what had really happened, but the motif of the devil and the blacksmith is common in folklore, and the world of Legend is the Middle Ages as the people at the time believed it to be, not as it really was. That said, I doubt if any demon or goblin in my game would be quite so easy to deal with.

This is a repost of a piece on my Patreon page, proceeds for which will support the artwork (by Inigo Hartas; sneak peek at the top of this post) for the Jewelspider roleplaying game which is due for publication later this year.

Little devils

Many Legend games I’ve played in use the Five Magi as the main antagonists. It’s not surprising, given that’s their role in the Blood Sword books, but I never intended them to bulk so large in the wider world of Legend. 

The Dragon Warriors world is a facet of the Medieval Imaginary, after all, and the enemy in everyone’s mind is the Devil himself, always waiting to show you the way to hell if you stray off the straight and narrow. That threat is hammered home every Sabbath and most churches have hair-raisingly vivid paintings of heaven and hell to ensure that you get the message even if you doze off during sermons.

This month I have a Halloween adventure on my Patreon page, and so I unashamedly invite you to go over there, drop a coin in the slot, and help yourself to that and a whole cartload of other goodies.

Talk of the Devil

Each season of my comic book epic Mirabilis: Year of Wonders sees hero Jack Ember facing a different adversary, but overarching all four seasons is the Big Bad who will present Jack with his most personal and fraught challenges. The Kind Gentleman is not overtly the Devil, but Jack's mentor Talisin at one point calls him "humanity's darkest dream" and - well, draw your own conclusions from that.

Some people have described Mirabilis as steampunk, but it isn't that at all. In the world of Mirabilis, everything is coming true. Whatever has been dreamt up by mortal minds over the millennia is given substance by the green comet that heralds this annus mirabilis.

Leo Hartas, Martin McKenna and I planned it as a vast storyline incorporating horror, faerie, whimsy, mythology and dream. There is Victorian and Edwardian science fiction, with murderous brains in tripods and stuff, but I wouldn't actually call that steampunk any more than I'd say the Green Knight sells sweetcorn.

Anyway, we were talking about Old Nick recently, so I thought you might enjoy this glimpse of what happens if you annoy the Kind Gentleman when he's trying to watch a slideshow. Personally, I have a lot of sympathy.

The Devil is a gentleman

Midsummer is a good time to talk about the Devil. I don't mean the Biblical fellow. (Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub... They're not even the same character, are they?) In English folk tales he has another persona, as Sybil Marshall reminds us:

"The medieval folk-concept of the Devil, as distinct from that preached by the Church, is of Rex Mundi - large, dark, and handsome, infinitely attractive, a jolly fellow full of pranks and merriment and still displaying some of the attributes of his counterparts in pagan times."

In older English legends, the Devil tends to be a ferocious adversary, often scaly or horned, whose main function is to make saints look cool. And making those early British saints look cool is quite a task.

When we meet the Devil in English folk tales, though, he usually comes clothed as a squire or, if he's feeling particularly wicked, maybe a monk or a parson. In this guise he has a little bit of faerie about him, and seems to borrow the aspect of Odin or Cernunnos rather than God's erstwhile favourite angel. He enjoys a challenge - building a bridge in a night, a riddling contest, or even a simple wrestling match. He is a trickster, sometimes so cunning that he outwits himself. If you are familiar with the TV show Once Upon A Time, this is pretty much the character of Rumpelstiltskin, only without the Hollywoodized origin story.

Saints are far too boring to appear in any decent folk tale, all preachy and chinbearded as they are, but many an English hero named Jack shows his mettle by outsmarting the Devil. Souls are sometimes wagered, and in the wager the Devil's greed will usually see him come off worse. I'm sure we're supposed to sympathize a little when, returning a farmer's wife, he gripes that...

“...I've been the Devil the whole of my life
But I never knew hell till I met your wife.”

I'm not just rambling, honest. There's a point to all this. If you cast your mind back to midwinter, at the end of the Legend scenario "Silent Night", I put in a throwaway line that had Mitch Edgeworth justifiably raising an eyebrow:

"At midnight on Christmas Day, the Devil comes to Crossgate Manor and offers to play a game of chess for a favour."

Clearly this was to be a story seed for the referee to extemporize a minor epilogue incident, perhaps with a single player, to contrast with the desperate danger and action of the preceding few hours and possibly to set up an ongoing relationship in the campaign. The Devil might enjoy having one mortal friend to play chess with just as much as Morpheus is fond of an occasional glass of wine with Hob Gadling.

Mitch did preface his comment by saying that he's not a role-player, which explains the confusion. Encountering the Devil over chess might very well develop into an interesting ongoing storyline, but setting up the idea in a scenario takes no more than one line. In real games, half a page of notes are ample for running a session of several hours, and scenarios like "Silent Night" are written up only to explain to somebody else how that adventure might be run. In our own game, the denouement came in the forest, not in Crossgate Manor, and the key to defeating Duruth and his knaves was completely unexpected and yet perfect. It arose out of nowhere, a story created from the participation of the group where the best parts have no individual origin. Which, in a nutshell, explains why I am a role-player.

The picture, by the way, is Pan, not the Devil. Image copyright Ian Greig and used here under Creative Commons Licence.