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Eerie Candle
Folktales and Mythology through an RPG lens
Monday 1 June 2020
Thursday 10 October 2019
Yekinary Spirits
This post revolves around a new monster based mainly on Siberian pregnancy/birth folklore. The creature is used as the base material for painting with (very) broad brushstrokes a rough setting with taiga and steppe elements. A couple of tables are thrown in, along with three unusual items (a table with magical coins connected to one of the possible spirit habitations is bound to appear in the immediate future).
As far as the
raw materials are concerned, they are the following four beliefs of
indigenous Siberian people, all extracted from Aboriginal Siberia:
-A
woman wishing to become pregnant should eat spiders. (Kamchadal
people)
-A
child born in storm must
be killed (Kamchadal people)
-Two
pregnant women should not be allowed to inhabit the same house, in
case the two unborn children communicate and decide which mother
should die. (Yukaghir
people)
-Souls
destined to be newborn children are hanging from the crossbeams of a
god’s house. (Koryak
people)
as
well as the Arachne and Paris’ judgment myths of ancient Greece.
Friday 20 September 2019
Plait the Hair – An Erythraean spell
"One day a raft appeared with an image of Herakles the Dactyl on
board, halfway between Chios and Erythrae. A tug of war resulted as
the men of Chios and the Erythrean men both struggled to draw it to
their own shore, but neither could prevail. Phormion, who - like
Stesichorus - was blind, dreamt that the Thracian women of Erythrae,
by plaiting their hair into a rope, could draw the image ashore,
which they duly did. Afterwards the rope was laid in a sacred house;
Phormion visited it and was cured of blindness."
Encyclopaedia Goetica, Volume 2 - Geosophia - The Argo of Magic, Jake Stratton-Kent
This spell weaves a
magical rope of legendary strength out of ten people’s hair. The rope
can be directed towards any visible target upon sea or land (not
air), though the further it goes, the harder it is to control and the
greater the toll it takes upon the caster. Secluded
settlements have
been using the spell to pull ships (and their cargo) upon
rocky coasts.
Apart from the main
caster, the spell requires ten long-haired persons (each called
Clotho during the ritual), two aides in charge of braiding (each called Lachesis), and
one person (Atropos) who holds the sacred scissors with which the
hair are cut when it is time for the spell to end.
Ritual Procedure: The
Clotho aides
are hang upside-down in nets, their hair dangling. The caster
moves to a spot that provides a line of sight towards the target, and
sleeps there by use of potion, herb or magic. Then the Lachesis aides
start braiding.
The spell begins to work as soon as the first braids are completed, slowly but
steadily extending the length of the hair. As soon as all braids are
united, the rope is ready. It is then that the dreaming caster starts
guiding the rope with her will. Once the rope finds its target, it
starts coiling around it. If the target is animate, or controlled by
animate beings, a grappling battle begins (treat the rope as a sea
serpent or a kraken tentacle immune to non-magical damage).
Otherwise, the rope is wrapped tightly around the target and starts
pulling it where the caster directs it.
When this is over, the Atropos must cut the hair of all the Clotho people with the sacred scissors, at which point
the spell ends and the caster awakes, alas bereft of vision for one
month per kilometer traveled.
The rope is coiled
by the Clotho aides, and transferred and stored to a holy place (a house
of gods in the case of Erythrae). During the months of the main caster’s
blindness, all other blind people who touch the rope are cured.
Notes:
-The rope is
unnaturally thick, roughly two meters in diameter.
-The rope can pull
any item as long as it isn't part of the earth. Thus a huge ship can
be pulled, while a stone lying half-buried in the earth (that has not been
excavated by human hand) cannot.
-The rope’s speed
is roughly one kilometer per turn/10 minutes.
-For each five
kilometers (beyond the first five) traveled by the rope the caster is
required to make a suitable test, spell check or saving throw with
a steadily increasing difficulty. If she fails it, the control is
broken and the rope swiftly coils back to its source, where it
unravels, each braid trying to suffocate the person it originates from.
If the Atropos aide is not fast enough with the scissors, the Clotho ones die in a matter of minutes.
-Due to the risk involved, most casters do not guide the rope beyond 5 kilometers.
-Cutting the hair
without the Atropos scissors is not an easy task. For the duration of
the spell they are hard as steel wire.
-After the spell's
completion, the rope loses its extraordinary flexibility, though it
gains the power to heal blindness as mentioned above. Also, it can be
used as a fishing net in times of need, if the braids are
sufficiently loosened. This can happen only once for each rope;
afterwards it becomes useless. Fish and other sea beings caught in
the hair provide unnatural sustenance but also tend to whisper long
after they have been eaten – they may reveal sea secrets but they
also make concentration and sleep hard for a month.
Friday 6 September 2019
Found in a forest clearing
Here are three tables I created some months ago, to be used in forests with a folk/mythological atmosphere (Dolmenwood is the obvious choice, ideally with a hint of Siberian shamanism).
Friday 23 August 2019
Of hearth infants; an elven origin
For a number of nights after giving birth to Achilles, Thetis kept passing him through the hearth flames so as to burn away his mortality. Unfortunately, she was unable to complete her work, because of her husband, Peleus, who stumbled upon the (gruesome to his eyes) scene one night; thinking that his wife was trying to incinerate their son, he interrupted her. Thus Achilles was left an (undoubtedly mighty) half-mortal, with a glorious albeit short lifespan.
When
the goddess Demeter roamed the earth in mourning for her daughter’s
(Persephone) abduction, she visited the palace of Celeus, king of
Eleusis, in the guise
of an old crone. He welcomed her and asked her to nurse his newborn
son Demophon. Wanting to reward the king for his hospitality, Demeter
passed the infant through the hearth flames each night, in order to
burn away his mortality and turn him into a god. Alas, as in the case
of Achilles, one of the boy’s parents (the mother this time)
chanced upon the night scene and interrupted the ritual. To make
things worse, in this case the infant wasn’t powerful enough to
survive the ritual’s interruption.
The idea that mortality can be burnt away in the hearth flames is a
memorable one and has long fascinated me. Stumbling once more
recently upon the Demeter myth in Martin Persson Nilsson’s Greek Folk Religion,
I thought about how this removal of mortality can be distilled and
transmuted in game terms. What I ended up with is a rough take on
elves and half-elves; how these races come into being and what sets
them apart from humanity.
The core idea:
Infants
that are passed through the flames of the hearth by their
otherworldly wet-nurses or mothers for a number of nights (3 or 7 or
what reasonable magic number suits you) become elves – this is how
elves come into
being. If the process is interrupted and the infant survives (5%
chance), it becomes a half-elf.
Concerning the process itself:
-The
power of the ritual does not solely lie in the hearth fire or in the
person manipulating the infant. Rather, it is the combination of the
two aforementioned elements that makes the magic work.
-The
caster of the ritual must be a full-blooded elf or a divinity, and
the hearth fire must have been burning
continuously for at least a whole week (that is why people are
over-protective of winter-born children and cold autumns). For
the purposes of this text, a hearth fire is any fire around which
people gather to warm themselves and tell stories: a
fireplace, a stove, a campfire, even the oven if people usually
gather beside it in winter while food is cooking. [Note 1: If
a human/half-elf/other pushes an infant through the hearth flames,
the child will be burnt. In the case of the half-elf there may
optionally be a very small chance (1% or less) of it working – but
then there is the matter of how the half-elf will find the way to the
Elfland (see below),
for only true elves have been taught
the way.]
-Upon
the ritual’s completion the caster takes the newly-transformed
elfling and departs for the
otherworld/Elfland/beyond-the-hedge/wherever
it is that elves dwell in your world (preferably in a place that reeks of otherness
and myth). [Note 2: As a side-note, they may
leave in its stead a changeling, which becomes a half-elf. This fits
nicely with changeling folklore, the kidnapping of infants by elves,
etc.]
Parenting:
There
are people that consider their child’s immortality a great gift
that overshadows its being raised far away from them. As a result, they
try to attract elven midwifes and caretakers; a task rarely
successful, for elves work in mysterious ways. Of course, there are
creatures (wizards, hags, shades, pregnant ghosts, intelligent cuckoos, the new moon) that try to
take advantage of the situation, passing themselves as elves in order
to snatch the baby.
How to attract an elven midwife (aka adventure seeds):
- Burn the last corn of the year in the hearth at midnight, and douse it with snow from the highest mountains (above the permanent snow line).
- Carve the baby’s true name on an eagle shoulder bone and hang it above the threshold.
- Recite a prayer in front of a mirror that has seen a basilisk or medusa.
- Leave a plate of wooden/earthen fruits (found in dense forests and deep underground respectively) on the windowsill.
- Fill a gown with twigs stepped upon by criminals on their way to the gallows.
- Count the grains of sand in a blessed hourglass and plant each, separately, in the garden.
Most parents, however, tremble with the idea of their child being
taken and raised apart from them. That is why they are extremely
suspicious with autumn and winter visitors, and snuff out the hearth
fire at least once per week.
Concerning the races:
Half-elves:
They grow among humans but they usually feel slightly out of touch
with them. Half-elves have the potential of living longer than
humans, though they usually die young and tragically: they all have a
mortal weakness; their mode of death, or a condition pertaining to
it, is always foretold in prophecy. [see table] If they are doing a
deed that requires prolonged activity and is heroic in conception,
then not only are they not tired or need sustenance, but they show
superhuman resilience and skill; the deed must be something that
verges on the heroic in spirit (run for a whole night in order to
save someone, stand guard at a passage fighting off enemies, etc). Half-elven children do not have a proper elven mien (see below, in the elven section), though distant echoes of it may appear as a
flickering flame in the eye pupils or whispers in an unknown
language. They
are mightier than both humans and elves, akin to mythological heroes.
Table of Preordained Half-Elf Banes & Dooms:
- Will die by a wound in a specific body part (heel, ear, left palm, tip of the finger, etc).
- Will live until a particular piece of firewood burns completely (usually, this log is kept in a safe place by the half-elf and/or its family).
- When a bird knocks three times thrice upon the stone on which the half-elf was born, the half-elf will fall.
- A river will not tolerate the half-elf’s bloodlust and rise up to drown it.
- A traveler both known and unknown, relative and lover, foe and friend, will be the bane.
- Will die when forced to speak its true name in complete silence.
Elves: They are
the stuff of legend, immortal otherworldly beings. They
know the way to Elfland. They may eat and drink,
though they need not to. They cannot be
truly killed. However, they can be defeated at which point they are
banished (their body gone, leaving behind ashes and clothes/equipment); their return to the world may take hours or years, as they
nurse their wounds in the Elfland
(where time is a mysterious thing, having nothing of the
inevitability and
single-mindedness
of our world’s time).
In
almost all of cases, elf babies are taken by their mother or nurse to the
otherworld/elven place. This is because their grandeur may literally
kill mortals; having no control over their glamour, even their
sole presence may immolate a mortal gazing upon them. In game terms, elven children may (especially when angry or blissful) manifest
a flaming mien accompanied by unnatural sounds that causes fire and
divine damage to all nearby mortals. Elven adults have managed to control the mien, but as a result it has been rendered dormant; the power is at odds with any sort of control.
Both races have a special relationship with hearth
fire: Elves are invulnerable to it, while half-elves are resistant
(other kinds of fire may damage both races normally). Both races can
make people take vows upon the hearth, which vows become binding.
Elves can manipulate the flame in subtle ways, creating shadows,
lessening or heightening its light. They can draw sustenance (eliminating their need
for rest) and power (empowering their magic) from it, though they
must serve the people of the hearth for a time if they do so.
Mortality
ashes:
Mortality
is a fleeting, immaterial thing which, surprisingly, leaves material ashes
after each ritual night. These ashes are treasured. They can be made
into potions that accelerate or delay old age. If scattered in a
field anything that grows in it has blood inside. If used as
fertilizer for mandrakes, the plants will initiate a cult or coven.
Friday 9 August 2019
Velkeres - Lords of the Frigid Breath
Velkeres were part of the folklore of the villages of eastern Pelion mountain until roughly the start of 20th century. Wintry spirits, they were alien personifications of snow and weather, shepherds of clouds that provided the people's ancestors with sustenance in the deepest winter; all that until the coming of Christianity which forbade the consumption of such heavenly flesh.
Here is my expansion upon the fragmented original material. Velkeres could be used as a whole race of weather spirits (even players could be Velkeres, especially those that have been forced into human skin), or as a lone demented and utterly hostile creature, the last of its kin. They could also be tied to an ongoing war with a celestial cult or religion, or their draconic ancestry could be emphasized (the awakening of the dragon sleeping under the earth (an enormous creature of whom the mountain itself is just a part) is a distant (or not so) menace).
Wednesday 31 July 2019
Varypnas (Vrachnas/Mora)
Paradoseis [Fables, or Folk Beliefs] is a collection of folklore (mainly of a supernatural hue) from all over the Greek and Cypriot world (as well as several Turkish places also), published by the folklorist N. Politis in 1904. It spans two tomes, the first being the main work, organized in thematic chapters, and the unfinished second being the notes to the entries of the main tome (notes of extreme length, including a lot of material).
This corpus of folklore has a lot of potential for gaming purposes. As a result, the idea is to kick off a series of posts concerning creatures from this book, gameifying and expanding the source material, all the while enriching a folk setting that I have been working on. The first entry draws from chapter 33 (Vrachnas) and deals with a well-known motif, namely a creature that smothers sleeping people.
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