A Continent of Banalities

The following is a knightly order for Paolo Greco's Mageblade! rpg. I think it's an overlooked gem.  I was reminded of the game because Paolo recently put out a third magical grimoire which may be used with the game. The Knights are people of leisure, lovers of good food and drink in ample measure. They are a ruddy-faced, pot-bellied lot who would probably perform all their heroics at the feasting table, if it were not for the pull of Luilekkerland. This place is sometimes called Cockaigne, Schlaraffenland or simply the Big Rock Candy Mountain. It is a place where fine libations flow in streams, sweets grow on bushes, and where quail fly into one’s mouth already roasted. While questing for this layabout's paradise the Knights will save the enslaved, slay dragons and brave moderate discomfort. Devotions Sleep After Toil, Port After Stormy Seas: The Mageblade draws a circle which protects 1d6+Focus number of people from bad weather and wandering predators and vermin. F...

 Like great men before me, I too have wandered the evil paths where hope is a distant memory. While I cannot claim to be of the same stature as my learned forebears, fact itself might be the reason why I have discovered hells they overlooked in their cartographies of suffering. Here I shall endeavor to describe one. By what door or opening it is entered into no one can say. Perhaps there is a darkened corridor, like a cavernous digestive tract or perfumed tomb through which the damned enter the phantom-life of the café. Perhaps there are as many entrances as there are patrons. Perhaps one does not arrive but simply endlessly is, the past a dream and one's order already placed. Such things do not ultimately seem to matter. One finds oneself standing in line, bone-white tray in hand. Some sort of grand treat seems to have been promised. Outside the café are snowdrifts, looming houses and damp, menacing shadows, as distant and uncaring as the inhabitants of deep sea trenches. The peop...