Fox Magic: Kitsune
Kuniyoshi's woodblock print of the legendary kitsune Kuzunoha.
A year or two ago, I wrote a couple of articles for Dragon magazine, back when Paizo was still publishing it as an actual print-on-dead-trees magazine. You won’t find those articles by looking through back issues, because they were never published. Something about Paizo losing the print-on-dead-trees license and Wizards releasing articles as PDFs to subscribers, now.
But this left me with a bunch of 3.5e stuff on my computer for which I had little use, and had in fact more or less forgotten about until I came across it recently while looking for something else entirely.
My loss of a publishing credit is my gain of some blog posts, because I’m going to update at least some of it for fourth edition. Given my inclinations toward Mythic China and Mythic Japan elements in my game, I thought I’d start with my article about kitsune, the shapeshifting foxes of Japanese folklore.
Wikipedia’s article on kitsune (which I wrote large chunks of, back in the day) is pretty good for a compact overview of the folklore. Japanese folklore in general is pretty interesting stuff; if you’re looking to spice up your game, I’d recommend getting your hands on some, reading it, and looking for elements to adapt. But I digress. On to the kitsune. For today’s installment, the basic writeup.
Categories: Myth Direction, Mythic Japan, Original Game Content | Comments (6)
Myth Direction: the Faerie Courts
A quick thought experiment, today. The Manual of the Planes contains some information about the Faerie Courts, the Seelie and the Unseelie, in its Feywild section. I don’t plan to use that particular take on it in my game, since I have something else worked out. But it did inspire some ideas about a third way.
This probably owes something to The Dresden Files
One of the more obvious bits of the construction was a simple emphasis on the duality: the Seelie Court, the Court of Summer, is right at home in the Feywild, with its preternatural wilderness. So where else should the Unseelie Court, the Court of Winter, be, than the Shadowfell? In fact, I picture the Feywild as an eternal summer, warm and vibrant. The Shadowfell isn’t entirely locked in winter — but certainly parts of it are, as I picture it, a frozen waste of eternal cold.
Categories: Myth Direction | Comments (2)
Myth Direction: Dragons’ Teeth
Dragons’ teeth figure in two tales from Greek mythology: the story of Cadmus, founder of Thebes, and the story of Jason and the golden fleece. In both cases, the teeth, when planted in the ground, would grow into armed human warriors eager for battle.
Cadmus, a Phoenician prince, arrived at the site of Thebes following the advice of the oracle at Delphi, who had instructed him to follow a cow and to build a city wherever it stopped. Having found his site, Cadmus wished to sacrifice the cow, and in order to do so had to fetch water from a spring sacred to Ares, which was guarded by a dragon. Cadmus slew the dragon, but not before it killed many of his men. Athena gave Cadmus half the dragon’s teeth, and told him to sow them; when he did, the warriors appeared. He threw a stone among them, and, each thinking another had thrown the stone, they began to fight, until only five remained. These five, along with Cadmus, became the founders of Thebes.
Athena gave the other half of the teeth to Aeetes, king of Colchis, who later offered the golden fleece to Jason if Jason would sow them. Jason did, employing a similar strategy and successfully overcoming the challenge.
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Myth Direction: The Great Con
In my last post, I mentioned The Lies of Locke Lamora, a novel dealing, in part, with a series of elaborate cons pulled by a master thief. Con artistry is a device that shows up in many stories; whether it’s tales of Coyote or Robin Hood or films about Bugs Bunny or Ocean’s Eleven, the Trickster is an archetypal figure, and one of his greatest tricks is to pretend, for an extended period, to be someone or something he’s not.
So, how does this translate to the game?
In fourth edition, the most obvious answer is to structure the con as a skill challenge. This works well for smaller cons, which can be completed as a single encounter. But if you wanted to run a more intricate and convoluted con, a single encounter just won’t do. The players might need to meet key NPCs multiple times, perhaps over days or weeks; they might need to perform investigation or thievery in between; they might need to arrange distractions; they might need any number of other things.
Categories: Advice, Myth Direction | Comments (0)
Myth Direction: Excalibur
Arthur’s sword Excalibur (or Caliburn, in some translations) is perhaps the single most iconic of legendary weapons — its particular part of the Arthurian legend is fairly widely known among the general public, and of course Arthurian legend is a major influence for many fantasy campaigns. Anything with knights in shining armor probably owes at least a little to Arthur and his Round Table. They weren’t the earliest tales of heroic warriors, but they’re some of the most recognized.
And Arthur’s wondrous sword wasn’t the first magical weapon, but it’s one of the best known. Meanwhile, the legendary weapon is a trope that applies well to many fantasy roleplaying campaigns. So let’s take a look at implementing it in 4e terms.
Caledfwlch, as the sword was known in Welsh, is described as having a design of two chimeras on the hilt, and its blade is like two flames springing from the chimeras’ mouths. The sword shed light, apparently; sufficient light that it was difficult for anyone to look at it. This is backed up by a later tale, in which the blade of Excalibur shines as brightly as thirty torches when drawn, blinding Arthur’s enemies. Some versions also state that Excalibur’s blade could cut through metal; in Malory, its name is translated as “cuts-steel.”
Categories: Myth Direction, Original Game Content | Comments (3)
