MummeryPickford suggests the characters in the Alice stories are based on a guising group (mummers) who are active in Cheshire. The characters are the Letter-In (who is in a tophat and is arguably the rabbit/portal guardian), Good King George (feels later than Ars period, swap with saint?), the Black prince, Mary (played by a man),…
Read MoreUncle Abraham’s Romance by Edith Nesbit
When not writing children’s fiction, Edith Nesbit also wrote ghost stories. This one has a vampire that, at the beginning, appears relatively gentle. It drains the health of its victim without the penetration and violence of Stoker’s vampires. Note, however, that it permanently damages the man. He never has a romantic relationship again, and never…
Read MoreRobert Herrick: To the Genius of his house
Genius loci are an idea which turned up in Ars Magica with several of us finding them all of a sudden. I used one in a fiction competition, and I believe the authors of The Mysteries First Edition had already written others up. In my case I saw an odd bit of Latin in a…
Read MoreRobert Herrick: To His Lovely Mistresses
People say Herrick was the last Elizabethan poet, but in this poem he goes the full Byron by suggesting his mistresses form a mystery cult to worship him. In Ars Magica if you pulled this off you’d complete apotheosis and become a daimon of some variety, but if you missed no-one would know because this…
Read MoreMirrored life
Sometimes the Cheshire Cat, Alan Moore, and Hank Green smash together. Could a magical fumble create a new apocalypse, that’s at the fringes of modern science? Life on Earth is made of proteins and these could theoretically be either the type we have, or a second type which is a mirror image of the ones…
Read MoreSome notes for the new year
Happy new year! A few interesting things in the community. Darkwing has a thread on the Atlas Forum where people are discussing his ideas on materials they’d like authors in the community to work on. May I ask you to seriously consider participating in this? https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/30-days-of-product-ideas/176549 Mythic Europe MagazineSubmissions are open and I’ve accepted and…
Read MoreMythic Cheshire: Frederick Woods 2
Here are a few pieces of useful material from Further Legends and Traditions of Cheshire by Frederick Woods, that suit Ars Magica games. Birkenhead Hall The lady of the hall became convinced her husband was having an affair with the maid. After seething for a while, she pushed the maid over the bannisters and fled…
Read MoreRobert Herrick: a dryad for the forlorn
Robert Herrick’s elegy for willow trees seems to suit a dryad that feeds on, and perhaps relieves, sorrow. I’m interested in her grove as a vis source for a covenant, but for it to work, the magi need the local people to have passionate, tragic affairs. I could see the dryad making wicker crowns that…
Read MoreMythic Cheshire: Boneless
There’s a cryptid found in Longdendale, a mountain pass in the Peak District of England. It’s a slug the size of a horse, with a head that looks like that of a whale. It has at least one eye, which swivels madly in its socket. Boneless makes a grating noise as it travels. It doesn’t…
Read MoreThe Terror of Blue John Gap – Arthur Conan Doyle
One of the annoying things in my Cheshire folklore review is that I keep finding excellent spots for covenants, but little folklore around them to support campaigns. I discovered there’s a mineral found only in a couple of places, called “blue john” and though that it was likely useful as a vis source. Blue John…
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Games From Folktales