The Holy Crown of Hungary
Surprisingly little of the Medieval royal regalia of Europe has survived. One exception is the Holy Crown of Hungary. This lovely piece has seen almost a thousand years of history, and was itself history at a few points. It’s a marvelous bit of treasure, and it has a remarkable number of plot hooks baked right […]
The Rose-Realm of Laurin, King of Dwarves and Giants
The Laurin poem is a Medieval German saga of adventure and conquest. While the story is pretty boilerplate, it has a truly remarkable setting and antagonist: the sylvan realm of gardens, glades, and underground castles ruled by Laurin, the pagan king of dwarves and giants. Let’s ignore the boring stuff and jump straight to the […]
The Mos Teutonicus and the Excarnates
If a Medieval European aristocrat died far from home, what was to be done with the body? His family usually wanted it returned to be buried with his relatives, but that could entail a weeks-long Faulknerian trip with an ever-riper corpse. Embalming was one solution, but it was frightfully expensive. Enter the mos teutonicus, a […]
Taboos as Plot: Dá Derga’s Feast Hall
Almost all human cultures have general taboos, and many also have personal taboos. For example, if your personal taboo is the bird, killing birds is likely forbidden to you, but not to your neighbor. We can use this to make awesome adventures! To explore the idea, let’s look at an early medieval Irish epic about […]
David Alroy, the Wizard-Messiah
The tale of the false Messiah David Alroy (dead circa 1160) is a wondrous one, full of magic and miracles, international politics, and abstruse scholarship. The appearance of a self-styled Chosen One is an amazing plot hook that works in most settings, and Alroy’s story is one of the better ones. Let’s dive in! This […]
Palace Intrigue in the Mansa’s Mali
The palace intrigue between Suleyman, the King of Mali, and his senior wife Kassi is a brilliant little historical anecdote. Involving the PCs in a life-or-death game of power and legitimacy between two NPCs based on Suleyman and Kassi would be an amazing adventure. As a bonus, the story is bound up in some major […]
The Hoard of Sigurd Fafnir’s-Bane
The Völsunga saga from late 13th-century Iceland is an amazing story of love, heartbreak, adventure, violence, and betrayal. It tells the story of a Germanic warrior named Sigurd, the treasure he wins, the politics he gets caught up in, and the bloody aftermath of it all. It’s incredibly gameable! Let’s look at the relevant parts […]
The Wokou Raiders
In the 16th century, Ming China was beset by coastal raiders from Japan. The Chinese army, defanged by two centuries of systematic degradation, was powerless to stop these ‘pirates’. It’s a perfect place for PCs to step in! These coastal raiders, called ‘wokou’, were more than just brigands. Their core members were Japanese soldiers, veterans […]
The Wonders of Sir John Mandeville (Asia)
Last month we started our trip through The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, and this week we’re going to finish! As before, Sir John Mandeville was an English knight who claimed to have traveled broadly in the mid-14th century. He reports soldiering in the service of the Fatimid Caliph in Cairo and for the Emperor […]
Folkloric Villains
Folklore is full of villains and antagonists. By a striking coincidence, so are RPG campaigns! Here are four villains drawn from folklore: a Russian singer-sorcerer, a Roma witch-queen, a Persian hero-villain, and an Irish kidnapper-princess. This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Arthur Brown. Thanks for helping keep the lights on! If […]
The Wonders of Sir John Mandeville (the Mediterranean)
Sir John Mandeville was an English knight who claimed to have traveled broadly in the mid-14th century. Among other things, he reports soldiering in the service of the Fatimid Caliph in Cairo and for the Emperor of the Yuan dynasty in China. The actual extent of his travels is unknown, but along the way he […]
Extraordinary Folkloric NPCs
European folklore is full of odd characters that are neither truly hero nor villain. These characters can make wonderful supporting NPCs for an ongoing fantasy campaign. We’ll look at five: a wizard who weighs virtue, an assassin with poisonous skin, a doctor who can rewrite personalities, a magician with a dangerous sense of humor, and […]
Tall Tales of the West African Gold Trade
From the 8th century to the late Middle Ages, the West African savanna was a gold-producing region for the distant Mediterranean. Vast sums of metal flowed along sinuous trade routes into the Islamic world and Europe. As the gold traveled, the merchants carrying it knew less and less about the source of this wealth. By […]
The Secret Basque Fishing Grounds
In the high Middle Ages, the Basques – an insular people of western Europe – quietly experienced an economic miracle. Basque fishermen brought huge quantities of preserved cod and whale meat from secret fishing grounds somewhere in the Atlantic. As Basque communities prospered, the rest of Europe scratched its head. Figuring out where the Basques were getting […]
The Wreck of the Ma’adin Ijafen
Caravans are the ships of the desert, and they can wreck just as surely as an ocean liner. Not every camel train that went into the Sahara came back out. The discovery of a caravan wreck is a great jumping-off point for an adventure! Let’s piece together some cool bits of history to flesh out […]