The Inquisitorial School for Girls
The Colegio de Niñas Expósitas de Santa Cruz de Atocha was a school for foundlings in colonial Lima, Peru (“the City of Kings”). It was run by the Spanish Inquisition. Because of its unusual administrators, the school had some odd quirks, even by the standards of tyrannical charity schools. It’s a really interesting adventure site […]
Death’s Godson
Death’s Godson is a fairy tale found in different versions throughout much of the historically-Christian parts of the world. It’s number 332 in the Aarne-Thompson classification, and a version of it is #44 if the Brothers Grimm. At the climax of the story, the world changes so no one is able to die, and no […]
Two Calendars in Augsburg
In early 1582, Pope Gregory XIII announced that the calendar date of the day following October 4th that year would not be October 5th, but October 15th. This was part of a packet of calendrical reforms we now call the Gregorian calendar, and which most of the world uses today. But this reform came at […]
Heirs of the Ziggurat
First—super exciting! The Molten Sulfur Blog was nominated for a 2025 Ennie award for Best Online Content! This is the third time the blog’s been nominated, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Thank you, Ennie judges! In 401–400 B.C., when ten thousand Greek mercenaries had to escape the Persian empire, the land of Mesopotamia […]
The Forest Fire Boxcar Escape
On October 12, 1918, a forest fire of unprecedented size and ferocity devoured the lumber towns of Cloquet and Moose Lake, Minnesota and most of the surrounding countryside and farmland. 450 people died, but thousands more were rushed to safety by freight trains—the same trains that had started the fire in the first place. At […]
Eleven Riddles from the Old English Exeter Book
The strange Old English manuscript called the Exeter Book includes a bunch of really fun riddles suitable for use at the gaming table. Riddling doors in dungeons, riddling fey encountered on the road, riddling hermits sought out in their hidey-holes: all can be stocked with a riddle or two from the Exeter Book! This post […]
The Endless Tea Troubles of the Speckled Bamboo Shrine
From about 1615 to 1620 in Shaoxing, China (just south of Shanghai), the Speckled Bamboo Shrine had a problem. A spring on the temple grounds had produced a fad among fashionable tea-drinkers in and around Shaoxing. The sudden demand for the spring’s waters impinged on the shrine’s ability to run its affairs. The situation generated […]
PCs on the Battlefield: Xenophon on the March
In 401 B.C., Cyrus the Younger, the brother of the Persian emperor, decided to seize the throne for himself. He hired a bunch of mercenaries and marched on Babylon, hoping to catch his brother before the emperor could summon his vast armies from the far-flung corners of the empire. Among those mercenaries was a young […]
Hired into an Albanian Blood Feud
Before the arrival of state control in the 1920s, highland Albania had a highly-developed culture surrounding blood feuds. There was a particular way these feuds were supposed to be conducted, but all rigid customs turn out to be enormously variable when you dig into individual cases. One gray area surrounding Albanian blood feuds was hiring […]
PCs on the Battlefield: Kill the King!
In 401 B.C., the Battle of Cunaxa resolved a civil war in the Achaemenid Persian Empire. While the battle had all the things military history buffs enjoy—formations, miscommunications, different events in different wings, all that jazz—the singular event that resolved it was like something out of a fairy tale. In the midst of a battle […]
Drumming the Scandal
In the first half of the 20th century, the Tiv people of east-central Nigeria developed a way to air their disputes called “drumming the scandal.” The quarrelers each wrote catchy songs about what a scumbag their rival was, then performed them so loud they could be heard from other villages. This technique tended to escalate […]
Frontier Poltergeist: The Bell Witch
The Bell Witch is an old piece of creepy Tennessee folklore that presents a gameable variation on the standard haunting: a dangerous, powerful, profoundly malicious spirit with whom you can nonetheless hold a normal conversation. The story was codified in the 1894 book An Authenticated History of the Famous Bell Witch. Much of the book […]
Posting Less and Opening Up the Back Catalog
tl;dr: I intend to reduce my posting to once a month, but I’m getting rid of the paywall on the back catalog. I’ve also made some tweaks to the search and filter function so it’s easier to find the exact thing you need amid hundreds of old posts to fit your game tonight, be it […]
Expelling the Jesuits from Mexico: Order 66?
In 1767 King Carlos III of Spain decided to expel the Jesuits—a religious order within the Catholic Church—from Spanish lands. But the Empire of Spain spanned the globe, from South America east all the way to the Philippines, and Carlos wanted to make sure none of them escaped to go underground. So he sent secret […]
The Convenient Tyranny of Judar and Mahmud
In 1590 the Saadi Sultanate in Morocco invaded the Songhai Empire in what is today Mali and Niger. The man the sultan sent to oversee the conquest and occupation did a good job, but had the temerity to question one of the sultan’s decisions and was replaced by a new guy. These two successive Saadian […]