Prester John was a popular myth in Medieval Europe: the priest-king of a magical Christian land way off in Asia somewhere—or was it Africa? The legend evolved with the centuries, fitting itself to the historical moment. I’m a sucker for a good Prester John story. One of the earliest surviving references to Prester John comes from 1165–70, in a letter purporting to be from the priest-king to Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komemnos. The letter was a fake, but the treasures described within are wild—and make great loot for RPG player characters!
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By the time the forged Prester John letter arrived, many Europeans were familiar with the legend; our oldest surviving reference to Prester John dates to 1123. The 1165–70 letter was in Latin and purported to be a translation of an original (which likely never existed) in Greek supposedly received by the Byzantine emperor. It detailed the wonders found in Prester John’s kingdom. Scholar Bernard Hamilton (1932–2019) argued that the letter was anti-papal propaganda: forged at the court of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and showing how marvelous a land can be when it’s ruled by a proper Christian, unlike that nasty pope. If the letter was propaganda, it proved popular: 234 Latin copies survive, including 30 from the 12th century. Many doubted that Prester John’s land was as magical as depicted, but few doubted that the kingdom was a real place.
The first of the treasures I’ll mention is the root of the assidios plant, which grows on the banks of the River Ydonus (Indus?), a stream that flows through lands abounding in precious stones. If you dry an assidios plant and carry its root, all spirits that approach you are forced to say their name, who they are, and where they’re from. If they’re an unclean spirit, the root also offers some protection against them. I’m a big fan of this sort of treasure in RPGs: it gives the players more information, but it still lets cool encounters happen. You can still throw weird spirits at a party carrying an assidios root, but the players will have more to go on when roleplaying with the spirits. If the scene turns into combat, the party will have more information about their foe, and so will be able to make more interesting decisions.
The letter describes fireproof garments made from the shed cocoons of wormlike salamanders. Like the mythical Chinese huoshu (fire-rat), it’s a mythical explanation for cloth made of the fireproof mineral asbestos. Garments made from salamander cocoons are cool flavoring for fire resist gear.
The Prester John letter describes all manner of amazing creatures: silent cicadas, attack chickens, two-headed serpents with rams’ horns and shining eyes, and so forth. A great many of the animals are tame. The party might find one for sale in a market, be given one as a gift, or be taught the secret of summoning such creatures. One of Prester John’s subject peoples raises savage hunting dogs the size of horses. They steal the puppies from their wild dams while the dogs sleep (itself an adventure hook), then tame and train them while they grow to enormous size. Another subject people—described as bearded women with flat heads—raise animals to hunt their kind: lions that hunt lions, bears that hunt bears, stags that hunt stags, etc.
The sea that surrounds the island of the Amazons is full of tame fish. The most notable is a fish shaped like a horse crossed with a flounder. They offer themselves up to be ridden as steeds over the waves. The river holds tame fish in the shapes of all other kinds of beasts that do what that beast does but better, like hawk-shaped fish that can fly faster than hawks. All these fish offer themselves up to be commanded by humans, but they can only survive out of the water for a few days.
The rest of these treasures are magic stones.
At the foot of Mount Olympus there originates a river whose water changes flavor every hour. In the bed of the river are stones called midriosi. They have all sorts of neat powers, like dispelling hatred and envy. But the power that’s really gameable is that if you wear it in a ring, it helps your eyes. You can no longer be blinded, if you were already blind you can see again, and “the more he sees, the more his sight is sharpened.” If you’re playing with a rules set that has a Perception or Spot skill, I love the idea of a midriosi ring as a magic item that grants bonuses to the relevant ability and gets more powerful as you explore and see more new things. If you want to excite a player about an aspect of gameplay, it can often be a good idea to tie a mechanical reward to it. If you want to get someone excited about exploration, give them a magic item that gets more powerful the more their character explores.
The letter describes another magic stone from a river that has gems in its riverbed. This stone lets you live underwater for three or four months at a time. Because of these stones, an entire tribe lives in this river.
Prester John himself possesses a magic stone that acts like a blowtorch. The flame it emits consumes anything it touches: water, earth, metal, condemned prisoners, etc. To turn it on, you must sprinkle the stone with the blood of a lion. To turn it off, sprinkle it with the blood of a dragon. With this stone, a party can cut your way through anything, but you have to go on quests for lion and dragon blood to use it.
A dried sap called stintochim consumes iron the way fire consumes a candle. Additionally, if passed through water, it cuts the water in two. By dragging it behind a ship, you can expose dry seafloor upon which an army can walk, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Lances and swords can be tipped with stintochim so they pass through armor.
Finally, Prester John’s meals are cooked without fire, since smoke or ash might render the food impure. His food is instead cooked over the ever-hot stone zimur chipped off Mount Zimurc. The priest-king’s kitchen is full of vessels lined inside with zimur. Presumably containing the zimur in this way makes it safe to handle or leave on the shelf. Food that needs to be boiled is cooked in water retrieved from a naturally ever-boiling fountain. Water taken from the fountain gets even hotter than the boiling water in the fountain and never stops boiling. Food cooked over zimur or in ever-boiling water tastes even better than food prepared in normal ways. An ever-hot stone or a skein of ever-boiling water would be a potent tool for creative adventurers.
Sing and fight magical folk ballads in 1813 England and Scotland! Ballad Hunters is the sequel to Shanty Hunters, winner of a 2022 Ennie Award (Judge’s Choice) and nominee at the Indie Groundbreaker Awards for Most Innovative and Game of the Year. And it’s live on Kickstarter!
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Source: Prester John: The Legend and its Sources by Keagan Brewer (2015)