Tag: Celtic

As I read more classics I find that different mythologies seem to present entirely different worlds. The world of the Iliad, for example, is so different in certain ways from that of the Irish Fiona, that the systems which run these mythologies would have to be in some ways intrinsically different. For example, the handling of magic. In the Irish World of the Fiona, magic is imbued into the very living substance of the universe, and the question is how easily one can migrate between our world and the Otherworld (tir na nog). In the Iliad, however, there is no sense of humans transporting between worlds, but rather it is the Gods who step down from on high and invade ours. Rare is the hero who enters the Otherworld in Greek Myth. Common is he who does so in the Celtic Mythos.

Were I to create a world for running an “Iliad” game, that world would have Gods of non-infinite powers, who act directly in the game, who can be wounded by mortals (such as Diomedes, who causes Aphrodite to bleed the famous Ichor of the Gods), and who scheme and connive their way throughout the entire fabric of the story. In fact it is a story about the competitions and victories of the Gods, and almost incidentally about the Heroes. This world would require strong rules for handling God-like Powers, and for it to be reasonably sporting, the Player Characters would pretty much need to be Heroes and the children of the Gods. Conversely, you could play it low level, in the same world, where the Player Characters come within approximate range of the Heroes, get occasionally swept up (dangerously so, I should think) in their Quests, and perhaps return to the village either a richer or wiser or stronger somehow. Either way, it would be an interesting world, but the rules would have to support it.

On the other hand, when we look at such fairy tales as Kil Arthur, the son of the King of Erin, I think we’d find that a different set of rules would be required. Or if not the rules themselves, at least the parameters of those rules in which our game would operate. It could certainly be played at almost any level, as what influence the Gods may have in these stories, there is little obvious to tell. An impulse to go here, a ship perhaps sent on the wind to a magical island, or the appearance of a giant over the edge of a hill…none of which seem named to occur by the dictate of any particular deity as in the Greek mythos. No, rather it is the Character who has chanced to enter, perhaps, the Otherworld, and knowingly or otherwise, has entered upon some quest. The mood is mysterious and vague and clouded, unlike the Greeks, whose tales were starkly brilliant in their divine clarity. We know each of the Gods and all of their motives, arguments, stratagems, and follies with the Greeks.

I wonder if anyone here has attempted to put these kinds of worlds to the test in their RPGs, and how did you go about GMing for it, and how did it work out?

— The Iliad as Source Material – Literary RPG Society of Westchester

Alas, that forum is gone, and the Internet Archive does not have a copy of this post. I have copied the entire text here for posterity.

That autumn, when the weather finally broke toward winter, Blaise and I returned to my long-abandoned lessons. I studied with greater intensity now because I had the hunger, and because I so wanted to make up for lost time—committing the stories and songs of our people to memory; sharpening my powers of observation; increasing my store of knowledge about the Earth and her ways, and those of all her creatures; practicing the harp; delving deep into mysteries and secrets of earth and air, fire and water.

But it soon became apparent that in the realm of things men call magic, my knowledge outstripped his. Gern-y-fhain had taught me well; what is more, the Hill People possessed many secrets even the Learned Brotherhood did not know. These I possessed as well.

The winter proceeded, one cold leaden day following another, until at last the sun began to linger longer in the sky and the land to warm beneath its rays. It was then that I reached the end of Blaise’s tutelage. “There is nothing more I can give you, Hawk,” he told me. “On my life, I cannot think of another thing to teach. Yet, there are many you might teach me.”

I stared at him for a moment. “But there is so much—I know so little.”

“True,” he said, his lean face lighting in a grin. “Is that not the beginning of true wisdom?”

“I am in earnest, Blaise. There must be more.”

“And I am in earnest too, Myrddin Bach. There is nothing more that I can teach you. Oh, a few of the minor stories of our race perhaps; but nothing of import.”

“I cannot have learned it all,” I protested.

“True again. There is much more to be learned, but I am not the one to teach you. Whatever else there is, you must learn it on your own.” He shook his head lightly. “Do not look so downcast, Hawk. It is no disgrace for pupil to leave master behind. It happens….”

— Merlin, Chapter 14

News of [Prince] Elphin’s astounding prowess in the battle with the cattle raiders spread quickly throughout the six cantrefs. His kinsmen greeted him respectfully when they saw him and told one another once and again about the uncanny change in the king’s son.

He was bold, they said, and brave; the soul of an ancient hero—perhaps the very one whose torc he now wore—animated him. The lumbering Cuall, formerly one of Elphin’s harshest detractors, became overnight his greatest advocate.

Elphin enjoyed the praise and his increased status in the clan but did not make too much of it, preferring to minimize his role in the remarkable series of events that seemed to be clustering around him since his discovery of the babe in the weir. And Hafgan [the druid], whose prophecy had foreseen the change, appeared to view the young man in a different light. Clan members saw the two talking together frequently….

With no shortage of eager volunteers, work [on Elphin’s house] was progressing quickly: timbers were cut, shaped, and erected around the perimeter of the excavated hole and connected with beams and rafters; walls of split logs had been lashed into place and the chinks were being filled with clay; soon reed thatch would be laid and trimmed for the roof….

…Then there came the sound of hammering. Elphin looked back toward his house where Cuall, having prepared the heads of the two raiders slain by Elphin’s spear by dipping them in cedar oil, was now nailing them to the doorposts of his nearly-finished house. “This is a warrior’s house,” he said, stepping back to admire his handiwork. “Now everyone will know it.”

“A warrior’s house,” muttered Elphin, shaking his head. “It was luck, not a warrior’s skill that felled those two.”

“Do not mock the faith of simple men,” replied Hafgan. “Luck in battle is a thing of power, for whatever men believe they will follow.” He paused and pointed at Cuall. “I spoke of the future. There is yours.”

“Cuall?”

“And men like him. A battlechief must have a warband.”

“A warband! Hafgan, we have not maintained a warband since before my grandfather was a boy. With the garrison at Caer Seiont there has been no need.”

“Times change, Elphin. Needs change….”

The druid turned and walked away. Elphin watched him go, and then went back to inspect his house. Cuall was lingering nearby, and Elphin realized with some surprise that the man waited for a look or sign of recognition from him. He stopped and studied the heads nailed to his doorposts and then directed his gaze to Cuall.

“I am honored by your thoughtfulness,” he said and watched a huge grin break like sunrise across Cuall’s crag of a face.

“A man should have renown among his people.”

“You have earned the hero’s portion often enough yourself, Cuall. And I have heard your name lauded around the feast table more times than I can count.”

Elphin was amazed at the impact of his words. The hulking Cuall grinned foolishly, and his cheeks colored like a maid’s when her clumsy flirtation is discovered.

“I would fight at your side anytime,” said Cuall earnestly.

“I am going to raise a warband, Cuall. I will need your help.”

“My life is yours, Sire.” Cuall touched his forehead with the back of his hand.

“I accept your service,” Elphin replied seriously. The two men gazed at one another and Cuall stepped close, taking Elphin in a fierce hug. Then, suddenly embarrassed, he turned and hurried away.

“You will make a good king.”

Elphin turned to see [his recently-wed wife] Rhonwyn watching him from the doorway. “You saw?”

She nodded. “I saw a future lord winning support. More, I saw a man putting aside the hurt of the past and reconciling a former enemy, raising him to friendship without rancor or guile.”

“It is not in me to hurt him. Besides, he is the best warrior in the clan. I will need his help.”

“And that is why you will be a good king. Small men do not hesitate to repay hurt for hurt….”

— Taliesin, Chapter 13

The act of sacrifice occupies an important position in every religion, but our present day conception of it appears to be a modification of its original meaning which has gradually altered over the centuries.

For the word sacrifice actually derives from sacrum facere which means “to make sacred” and was used to describe any act of self-transcending through which the individual sought to attain the divine. It has now come to denote very little more than the killing of an animal or a man as an offering to the divinity either by way of supplication or thanksgiving; and Christianity has further devalued the word by associating it with notions of austerity and self-denial.

To regard sacrifice as a synonym for mortification is a serious error, since it totally alters the nature of that spiritual process by which the Ancients sought to fulfil their destiny. Ritual sacrifice was never intended to deprive creation for the sake of the creator. The Gallic chief Brennus gave a lucid and accurate account of its real meaning during the Celtic expedition to Delphi when he uttered the supposedly impious comment that “The gods had no need of treasures since they showered them upon men.”

Sacrifice was first and foremost a psychic procedure in which the sacrificial “victim” threw off the burden of earthly dross and rose through a series of stages in his attempt to reach the divinity. This divinity might be the Perfect Being, the Great Mother, an objective god or some concept of the ideal which was inherent in the individual….

The original act of sacrifice…was a process of self-identification with the divinity. It is this act which the Catholic priest performs during the mass. As Plutarch points out in his treatise on the E of Delphi, however, wise men seek to hide the truths from the masses and resort to fable as a means of preserving a tradition accessible only to the initiate. For the truths are not always to be lavished upon the common herd, and the means used can be both positive and negative in their effect. They may lead those who use them thoughtlessly and clumsily to unforseeable disasters. The way to hell is paved with good intentions….

— The Celts, p. 224

Emphasis mine.