A Fine Mess

UK Games Expo was enjoyable but exhausting. On top of my inevitable fatigue I unmasked to eat and drink (could have gone outside but it was too, too hot and my companions weren’t sure they could handle the heat and frankly, on the amount of meds I take that fuck my heat tolerance neither was I) and couldn’t find my hand sanitiser so may have picked up some kind of con crud one way or another because I feel a little iffy. It does seem to be mild but blegh.

I picked up a gift for a friend and some solo rpg zines and also! The physical starter set for the Pendragon RPG which I’ve been curious about for ages. I have a free pdf of the starter set (or part of it?) but found it very difficult to work with in that format.

The Beef and I played the intro tutorial game and I think I could possibly run a couple of sessions for him using the adventure in the box and the abbreviated rules. I have an interest in Arthuriana but my study is quite shallow so I’m glad his point of reference is half remembered films like Excalibur haha. I think he should pick up the vibe okay, though.

My real interest is the possibility of playing it Solo, however, as I’ve seen it done and have been inspired. As usual though I find myself tending away from the source material and I’m pondering how well I could reskin it to be an episodic game of adventures of a faery knight in the setting I’ve developed for my game of Apothecaria. I think the Faeries I created for that (pulling from various inspirations but particularly from the weirdness of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and their rigid cycle of reenacting old fae legends that feel very Arthurian, over and over.

To share my context via the series of messages I sent a friend when they very kindly played sounding board for me:

In Apothecaria I decided that the faerie lore = the realm of Faerie has been in trouble for some time. Fae are getting sick and because they are supposed to live so long their natural fertility rate is pretty low. They have been having a population crisis. Hence nipping over to the mortal realm and kidnapping or charming humans away—they can interbreed, magic breeds true (with caveats) and humans do it Fast.

Eventually though a bunch of fae leave to try to make it in the mortal realm (in fictional not!Briton) and immediately run afoul of the natives who are Not happy with the sudden dramatic increase in fairy bullshit! Abducting people, fucking with them for the lols, hunting them down, all that jazz.

Human magic users are not as powerful as faeries. But there are a lot of them. And while fighting between fae courts is heavily codified because if they kill each other too much… they have these structured almost feudal court systems and a strict code of conduct almost like the ideals of chivalry (perhaps less benign) but the high fae knights are captured and ransomed, not killed. Cruel and unusual behaviour has strict rules about how it can be applied, etc. Debts and vows are binding. Those who break the rules certainly exist—nobody can exploit a loophole like a Faery—and coups and large scale invasions are semi regular (every hundred years, or so?) but they were unprepared for human armies.

The humans have their own sense of honour on the battlefield and off, but they are not the same. They’re spell sniping knights left and right! Their blades are made of an alloy containing deadly iron and they do not hesitate to use them with lethal force! That’s not how this works! Though very easily manipulated alone or in small groups, it turns out humans are terrifying in their own way en masse. But they do honour surrender.

So the Archfae agree to what will be known as The Truce. They can keep the land they currently inhabit, but no more abductions. No charming all the children from a village away to be eaten by hags or enslaved to make Faery shoes or made into pages to serve the wine that looks horribly like blood and fear catching the eye of a bored noble. No torturing artists by making them salve away at their canvases until they die feverishly clutching their painbrushes. Yes, fine, the mortals who are too daft to take precautions and listen to the tales are fair game. Seductions are also not the same as abductions. But we’re watching you, and we Will End You.

…Can the human sorcerers do that? Well. No. Even aside from the fae being formidable and continuing their reign of terror on the general populace while war rages, they are a bit like a fungus. You could wipe them out, but their magic has infiltrated the land and it will create more of them through means other than birth over time. They cannot be killed in any way that matters. Better to pin them down now with a binding while they still don’t really understand what lying is.

By the time Ivy is born a few centuries later, more and more iron and steel is in the cities. It’s more common for urban dwellers to not even know another person who has seen a fae of any kind, let alone seen one themselves. The new generation of sorcerers are getting complacent and not paying attention. In another couple of generations the Witches may be the last bastion keeping the fae in check.

The fae are watching these developments with interest.

You know what, I might actually do little round ups of my games when something interesting happens.

I have had so much fun with this game. So far I’ve written over 90k words over the last few years (not counting the bits I’ve thrown away while editing.)

It’s been my saviour when I’ve been bedridden but still able to use my brain enough to be bored to the point of risking mental breakdown. If it were an anthropomorphic book in one of those weird dating simulator games where you can romance your fridge I’d have carried it off into the sunset, leaving my husband to what I’m sure would be some very strange therapy sessions.

I’m basically playing this as a dating simulator anyway, because that’s how I roll.

The story so far:

Ivy, our witch, shiny and new after completing her apprenticeship, is posted out to a town in the Not-Scottish Highlands (I’ve tweaked the tone and setting quite a bit as time has gone by) to replace their previous witch who has gone ~~mysteriously missing~~ oooOooOo.

Ivy is certain that Cieran chose to leave because they left behind a grimoire and a note, addressed to her by name—written before she was even chosen for the job! The grimoire contains a botanicum of the reagents that Cieran has found in the region and their magical properties when used in potions and maps of the nearby regions in which they can be found (and many sardonic annotations). As the town of High Rannoc grew it spread far too close to the enchanted wood, and as a result the townsfolk are constantly coming down (or up, or sideways) with magical ailments that the town doctor can’t handle. It’s vital that Ivy step into Cieran’s shoes as fast as possible!

So far she’s spent two and a half seasons getting to know the townsfolk, making friends (and enemies, such as that bastard of a doctor and his stupid hat) and devising cures for the weird things people come to her with. Her long-suffering familiar Nutkin, a Fey spirit locked in the body of a squirrel, has aged about a thousand years watching Ivy learn how dangerous Rannoc is very, very fast. She’s a witch—and a good one—and they are all tough and learn quickly… but when she catches the attention of the Lady of the Glimmerwood and her court of dangerous creatures, Nutkin knows that it’s only a matter of time before they find out if it’s quickly enough.

While Nutkin struggles to warn Ivy of the incoming danger through elaborate charades and interpretive dance, time marches on and Autumn comes around. The veil between worlds weakens and spirits begin leaking into the world or the living. Ivy discovers that she is expected to take on the extra duties of getting said spirits back where they belong by helping them fulfil their unfinished business, leading the town in the traditional celebrations and rituals of the season, and completing tasks set by the enigmatic Keeper of the mysterious Manor that has appeared on the border between worlds—and all before the clock runs out or the spirits and monsters within will be on the wrong side of the veil come midnight on Bogle’s Night! That’s on top of learning how to deal with new ailments like haunting, possessions, and… the Shrinkies??

As if that weren’t enough her personal life has spun out of control.

Ivy’s odd acquaintance with the mildly terrifying Druid she keeps bumping into in the forest seems to have somehow turned into a situationship—to Nutkin’s horror (because he’s dangerous! Her ambiguous romantic pursuits are her business! He’s a familiar, not an agony aunt!) She is struggling to deal with the guilt of losing her first patient. There’s a vampire preying on the young people of High Rannock and she’s got to find and stake him in his weird freakish heart before his games kill someone. Oh, also she saw her Fetch, and she can’t get an appointment with her solicitor to make her will without her mother finding out she’s in town, which is almost worse than seeing the omen of her imminent death, frankly.

I developed a hankering to play a solo journalling RPG again but decided I was going to do it for NaNoWriMo because when I last did that I really enjoyed the community feeling of having writing sessions to drop in on and seeing people updating their word trackers and such. Then I realised that's months away still and since my hands need a break from knitting I decided today was the day, and have spent the day so far setting up a scrivener doc for it.

I'm planning to play a game called Apothecaria, in which you play as a novice witch sent to fill the role as healer for a village whose previous witch went missing. Using a deck of playing cards (or in my case some homebrewed tarot card rules someone provided on the author's discord server) you generate prompts to guide you through writing a journal following the witch's life diagnosing patients, foraging for reagents and foraging in various magical locales. It sounds adorable and very fun.

I've been reading through the instructions this afternoon, collecting the additons I need for using a tarot deck, making a pinterest board and spotify playlist for The Vibes (the most important part of any project, of course) and now I'm about to start building a witch character and then I guess I'll start the first week and see how far I get this evening!

It's the first bit of writing I'll have done for years so I'm going to try not to hold myself to any particular standard and just enjoy myself. If it goes well I might post some of it here!