Descendants of a Mad King

 

While doing research for a novel project, I checked up on my lineage to Swedish king Gustav Vasa. Gustav's son Erik, who is also my ancestor, became king after his father as Erik XIV, but it didn't end well for him. Since I'm also Erik XIV, being the fourteenth generation from Gustav Vasa, I try to restore my distant relative by picturing him in the novel. Alas, I have a feeling it won't end well this time either…

Here's my complete heritage line
(researched by my father Birger)

Gustav Vasa, f 1496
Erik XIV, f 1533
Virginia Eriksdotter, f 1559
Elisabet Hand, f ?
Johan Gyllensvärd, f 1617
Gustaf Adolf Gyllensvärd, f 1652
Märta Eleonora Gyllensvärd, f 1701
Carl Magnus Krusell dy, f 1730
Carl Johan Krusell, f 1758
Carolina Charlotta Krusell, f 1802
Joseph Napoleon Lindhé, f 1827
Sven Lindhé, f 1865
Karin Nordström, f 1899 (my grandmother)
Barbro Granström, f 1926 (my mother)
Erik Granström, f 1956

Gustaf Fröding wrote some poems where king Erik XIV laments his fate. These poems were set to music by Ture Rangström, and I especially play this one as inspiration. In it, the king, somewhat desperately, celebrates the capture of members of the Sture family with his prison master and hangman Welam Welamsson. Soon king Erik will have the Sture nobles killed, loosing his mind and running off into the woods in the process.

 

Illustration by Daniel Falck, picturing the legate Ludenbrand for the game Svavelvinter by Free League Publishing. Erik XIV was a model for the Ludenbrand illustration along with Steve Jobs and a friend of mine.

On the Working of Clocks

 

This is a model of a simple, mechanical pendulum clock.

1. The escapement wheel (yellow) strives to rotate clockwise (duh) drawn either by a spring or a weight hanging from a string wrapped around its axis.

2. The anchor (grey) allows the wheel to only rotate incrementally, one cog at the time, as directed by the swinging pendulum connected to the anchor. The force of the escapement wheel at the same time gives a little push to the anchor to keep the pendulum swinging. The clicking sound of a pendulum clock is due to the light tapping of the anchor arms on the escapement wheel.

3. The rest is a question of casing, gears and hands, translating the mechanism's movement to our definition of seconds, minutes and hours.

The very basis of clocks or indeed any time measurement device, is something observable that changes at a steady pace. This goes for the day to night shifting of our revolving earth, the flowing of sand in an hourglass, the behaviour of atoms in an atom watch or any other time measurement device. In a pendulum clock, the steady pace is set by the swinging of the pendulum, which is basically constant under given circumstances.

On the passage of time in Forbidden Lands

My reason for considering the mechanisms of clocks, is the following thought concerning the passage of time in the game Forbidden Lands:  

What if clocks exist that don't measure time,
but instead direct aging and passing of time?

 I haven't fully decided where to go with this, but I will know when the upcoming Alderland expansion is published. These are some of the question I'm pondering:

* What if the drive to age – the striving of the clock's escapement wheel to turn – is applied by intelligent beings, death gods or their minions constantly pulling at the feet of the living?

* What if the rate of aging – the swinging of the pendulum – is set by biological oscillation? We have several examples of molecules in our bodies that swing between two different states depending on circumstances, the taut / relaxed form of hemoglobin for instance. What if such a biochemical switch is purely cronological?

* What if the clocks of aging have actively been set by some intelligent being?

* If so, then why don't elves age?

* What if you came to a valley in Alderland where flowers periodically shifted from violet of orange due to the biological pendulum?

* What if some smart dwelvers have studied the biological pendulums? What if they found out how the mechanisms of aging could me manipulated, either by removing the driving force OR by jamming the biological pendulum.

* What if they already experimented with this several hundred of years ago, as they forged Horn's Astra and built the Metrochrone of The Sisters' watch in Aslene?

* What if the leading mind behind the current dwelver research has lost it and now appears in markets as a fool named The Pagnillo?

* What if the adventurers' task would be to find The Pagnillo to either kill it as a threat to world order OR to get it back on its research track?

Sculptress: Margareta Persson

Me and our Community

 

In this triptych you see three versions of the map of Ravenland, which is the initial gaming area of the role playing game Forbidden Lands from Free League Publishing.

* To the left is my very first draft of the map, made with pencils on paper.
* In the middle you see the finalized black and white version that you'll find on the inside covers of the gaming books (there is also a separate, coloured version in poster format)
* To the right and below is a brand new wooden version made jointly by Samuel Nedergård Bergsten and Ronja Eriksson as a gift for a gaming friend. They have divided the map in three layers (mountains and forest, plains, water). These layers were then laser cut, engraved and lastly glued together yielding this piece of art.

Seeing their work really warmed my heart. It also gave me an opportunity to thank all fellow enthusiasts – gamers and creators alike – for all the collaboration and obscure discussions and projects we've had the pleasure of sharing during the years. Considering all the hate and lies and manipulation that goes on in the world today, I find that me and our community in some respect share what is actually the best features of humankind: passion, project cooperation, creativity, unselfish helpfulness and love! Some may call rpg gaming simply entertainment and escapism, and for sure there's room for that as well, but what counts for me is the practice of humanity and the warmth I encounter in doing so. I'm convinced that this type of shared enthusiasm makes the real world better. Thanks, my friends – let's keep doing this!

 

 

Sex in The Bloodmarch

SPOILER WARNING – for The Bloodmarch, a Forbidden Lands RPG expansion below. Also be warned of SEXUAL CONTENT (though not explicit really).

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My original text to The Bloodmarch had some sexual content in it, most of which was edited out by Free League. They explained that they have to be careful due to various international laws and standards and also due to some recent RPG-related scandals that you might have heard about. I can understand and accept that. Still, I'd like to share some hints on what was there in the first draft, not only because I like raunchy details (which I do), but also because some of it has connections to the plot that you might want to explore. GMs can include these sexual elements or leave them out according to group preferences.

Disclaimer: Free League Publishing is not responsible for what I'm writing in this blog post (or any other). These are my personal musings.

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Sex at Ashenstead
1. In the adventure site Ashenstead there's an upcoming wedding between the son and daughter of two Aslene clan leaders. One event had Merdekai, the father of the bridegroom, claiming ius primae noctis according to ancient customs – that is the right to sleep with the bride on her wedding night. The bride and her father were naturally outraged. It is uncertain whether Merdekai meant what he's saying OR whether it was a test of his counterparts / his son's balls OR a way to start a civil war (which Grudenstaal doesn't want if he's there). In any case, the adventurers are asked to solve the situation diplomatically. One solution is to access the temple's library and verify that the custom of ius prima noctis is stated only in some apocryphal texts that may be refuted.

2. The high priests Liklaudos and Melgir are to have public, ritual sex on the temple roof as part of the wedding ritual, which makes Melgir's husband Tordenost madly jealous. Murders take place, the tower Kardena's watch is made to fall into the abyss with the lovers in it, and the adventurers have to investigate whodunnit. An alternative perpetrator is the penitent dwarf in the temple hall that knows magma song.

Sex at The Watch of the Sisters
The mad composer Cavaldo is based on the actual, historical 16th century composer and prince Carlo gesualdo. In historic reality as well as in the first draft of the adventure, Cavaldo caught his wife and her lover making out in flagranti and brutally killed them, a deed that distressed him for the rest of his life and affected his work. In the game, the forest spirit Margarita fuelled his wrath towards the lovers in order to increase his musical passion.

Sex at Oxengelder
The garden of Novices in the original text was kind of a hippie park with free sex, dream and drug experimentation aiming to free your body and mind for true oneiromancy. Two charismatic young dreamers were leading these orgies, that in one event got out of hand, tranforming the participants to agressive beasts. There was also an aphrodisiac called Libertine involved, that could lead to interesting complications. The male leader of this crowd called himself ”Olof Skötkonung”, which I though was somewhat funny (actual name of historical, Swedish king, but untranslatable joke I'm afraid ;-) ). The female leader was namned Vilega Starsight as a homage to the raunchy online comic ”The Cummoner”. The elders of Oxengelder frowned upon these practices, but couldn't do much since the Dreamstress herself didn't seem to care.

Fiena Fromelei having sex
In the original text the escort goblin Crudehack, protected Fiena Fromelei so closely that he made her pregnant without she neither understanding what was going on or that she is carrying a child. Fiena's daughter could become a moonelf after birth as an alternative to herself.

Some additional sexual couples in the original text
Kurmena and Eisendor in Taregyll
Vaerfor van Reiben and the Dreamstress
Draug of the White and Mildella (reluctantly from the latter, as part of her debt)
Poansa and Grudenstaal if they join forces

En målning byter ägare

 

En av mina vänner, den spännande konstnären Mark Frygell, har köpt Steven Stahlbergs (tidigare Steven Hägg) originalmålning till det ursprungliga äventyret Svavelvinter från Fredrik Malmberg. Mark bytte den mot en av sina egna målningar och båda verkar lika nöjda över transaktionen.

Mark och jag har ofta intressanta och öppna diskussioner om rollspel, konsten, livet och kreativiteten. Han är helt rätt person att förvalta målningen, eftersom han som gammal rollspelare vet hur viktig den har varit för många genom åren, och dessutom kan visa den där den bör visas i konstkretsar. Fredrik uttryckte för sin del önskemål om att målningen ska tillgängliggöras för de intresserade och inte bara hängas undan privat, vilket jag vet inte heller är Marks avsikt.

När jag pratade med Mark vid midnatt igår så hade jag ändå blandade känslor eftersom jag själv hyst funderingar över att försöka köpa målningen. Treåringen i mig ligger fortfarande och surar på golvet, men samtidigt är jag övertygad om att detta var det rätta och att verket hamnat i bästa händer! Världen blev rentav lite mer spännande.

Kanske får jag till och med snart se tavlan i verkligheten såhär trettiosju år senare ;-).

The Unreliable Narrator

There has been a discussion on Discord recently about the pros and cons of the Unreliable Narrator style of the Forbidden Lands Roleplaying Game (RPG). Being one of the lead writers of the game and of its concepts, I thought I'd give my personal view and explain where it comes from. Now, I'm not that familiar with most RPGs, so I assume there are unreliable narrators in other games as well, but if so, my inspiration might come from elsewhere, and the setup might differ. I wouldn't know.

According to Wikipedia, an Unreliable Narrator is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. This can be due to a number of reasons: bragging, lying, filling in the gaps, misunderstanding, hallucinating etc. Unreliable narrators are not uncommon in first person renderings nor in movies, where at best the unreliability results in a twist – called Peripeteia by Aristotle.

In computer games, simplistic twists are common, often meaning that the good guys that you worked for actually turn out to be bad and vice versa. In an RPG however, the narrator traditionally is reliable: The Game Master (GM) reads how the world really works in the rule books and sets the game up accordingly. There is an actual, objective answer to most questions, for instance whether gods exists, how beings came into existance and how magic actually works. The players, on the other hand, often get fed lies and incomplete speculations, the decoding of which make up a big part of the game. 

Not so in Forbidden Lands. In the basic Game Masters Guide, the GM may indeed read the elaborate history of the land, get descriptions on the kins (aka ”races”, which is a term I avoid out of various reasons) and their origins, read about gods etc. Pretty soon, however, the GM gets the impression the none of this seems to be entirely true. Do the gods actually exist? Is the presented history merely human-centric and politically biased – one narrative out of many possible ones? Did the dwarves actually build the planet? did the six primordial elves actually organize life? Were orchs made as a slave kin? Were humans led across the ocean by a raven god? Etc. The GM can't be sure.

I'm not aiming for ”gotchas” with this insecurity – setting up false pretenses and dropping red herrings to fool everybody. Nor do I seek to raise elaborate illusions that suddenly vanish into thin air. 

My aim is instead to present facts, legends and observations about the forbidden lands that the viewer may percieve as patterns – different and ever changing patterns depending on changing perpective and new information coming up. Some of this stuff I won't even know about, since it is created in your individual game, but I'm confident that you'll make sense of it, since humans basically are pattern-oriented beings. Ideally, earlier observations may be fitted into the amended narrative, but in a new way, rather than turning out to be plain false, which of course also will happen as players know from the game's legends.

What I don't do in the Forbidden Lands RPG is present a ready-made pattern – ”the truth” about he world that many ask me about. Instead, I basically describe the forbidden lands in line with how I perceive our own world. Things happen around us all the time, and we try to make sense of it, fitting new information into contexts we already believe, arriving at the currently most useful and probable patterns, amending them as we go. This is also how research works.

I'm not saying I'm an adherent to alternate or totally made up facts like some current politicians and dictators. Things are and things happen. People say, see, think and do things that can't be denied, also in a game world. It's when we interpret, descibe and put these things into narratives and patterns that it gets weird. I do not believe that there even IS an objective way to decribe something at all. As soon as something is put into words, we have done assumptions concerning what and how something is to be told and in the process inevitably have discarded innumberable alternate ways to say it. This doesn't mean that anything goes, or that all descriptons are equally true – just like in research, different narratives fit more or less well with actual observations and also may serve different purposes.

The approach might be called postmodern, and was for instance used by writer Umberto Eco in ”Foucault's Pendulum” and ”The Name of the Rose”, where the protagonist, the detective monk William of Baskerville, strings together facts to a pattern that makes sense but turns out to be wrong.

So why don't I give the truth concerning The Forbidden Lands? Well, I personally think it gets more interesting and flexible and opens for more vividness and depth with some uncertainty. You may also see the unreliability as a challenge to myself as creator and to you as GM's and players, challenges delivered with love and confidence in your ability. Some may like it – some don't, but then there are other games.

The picture shows baron Münchhausen putting together his horse that was acidentally severed in two.
Artist: Gustave Doré

 

The Maha Language

Maha is not about you. 

It is not about the world. 

It is about melding your mind to the world.

    /Gremerdin the speaker

The pictogram Maha Language of the Elvenspring druids is described in the Forbidden Lands RPG. Players may encounter it as a puzzle in the adventure site Pelagia of the campaign Raven's Purge. What is presented there is pretty limited due to practical reasons. In my first drafts of the game I had the ambition to use the Maha language as a foundation for druid magic and to invite players and game masters to add to the language to see were we would end up. Since some interest was aired in the game forums, I here present my initial thoughts on the language and its structure. Note that this is an unpublished draft and not official in any sense, but please lets discuss what you think!

Picture by Niklas Brandt. These are just examples of signs, not the complete Thesaurus.

Maha Language and Druid Magic

According to myth, Maha is the creation language of the god Clay. It is used by elves and elvenspring druids. The signs are often written on small clay tablets, that are burnt and combined when used. The tablets regularly have a hole drilled in the upper right corner, showing their orientation. Druids often carry their tablets on a string through the holes.

The Basics

* Maha is a holy, incomplete pictogram language. It is traditionally used to create statements that describe and affect aspects of the world, magically enforcing the statements or making them come true.

* Maha is a written language of symbols. There is no specific spoken language connected to it.

* Maha is normally not taught. Learners are supposed to gain insight by personal interpretation of statements.

* Maha signs are pictograms. Statements are formed by arranging secondary signs around primary signs.

* A mirrored sign means its opposite. For instance signs for ”white” and ”black” mirror each other. Symmetrical signs have no opposites.

* Maha signs are seldom complex or abstract and never decorated. Brevity, simplicity and clarity traditionally means more power and are the signs of a master.

* Individuals and places might be given unique signs, unless their names have a meaning that may be written as a statement.

* A laid down Maha statement may normally be interpreted in several ways over time. ”The most convincing sign” is usually accepted as true, being the interpretation chosen by the majority of respected interpreters. An already placed Maha statement may change meaning as new, more convincing interpretations come about. It is believed that this also changes the effect of the statement on the world.

Structure of Maha statements

 The primary sign (1) is mandatory. It is traditionally marked with a drop of the writer's own blood as a tribute to Clay. Druids often carry a small lancet for this purpose. Less convincing, the primary sign might be marked by having its edges blackened.

Secondary signs (2-5) are added as needed. Their position in relation to the primary sign determins their meaning. There may be more than one secondary sign in each position. Additional ones are added further from the primary signs, and certain schools make a point of the distance to the primary sign. A shorter statement is however always preferred. Statements may be added in sequence after each other to make longer sentences. The more traditional way is however to arrange statements in groups, leaving more room for interpretation.

General key:
1 = Noun
2 = verb
3 = adjective / adverb
4 = grammatical form (like plural or genetiv or imperative mode)
5 = numbers and operators (and / or / if – then / not etc)

The same sign changes meaning when it is placed in different positions. For instance these are all the same Maha sign:

Fire (1)
Burning (2)
Hot (3)
Imperative form (4)
Melded with (5)

Everyday use of Maha signs

Maha signs are often used to reveal information or wisdom in druidical holy places. Oracles might for instance offer a Maha statement. It is up to the reader to understand, and if the reader doesn't do so, he is considered not to be ready for the statement. Druids often use Maha signs for meditation and prayer, alone or in group placing Maha statements, contemplating on the shifting meanings and investigating interpretative changes when secondary signs are shifted.

Magical use of Maha signs

(I took some out here – if we were to use Maha in magic we would need to gamify)

Druids may use the Maha language for magic. Depending on skill, the druid may carry a limited number of signs for this purpose. The limitation doesn't depend on weight or space of the signs, but instead on the mental capacity of the user – how many he ”knows” and is able to focus on, i.e. connected to skill. The carried signs may over time be exchanged for others, but this normally takes a few days.

The basic function of Maha magic is that what is stated becomes true in reality, subject to the skill level of the druid. The effect is also subject to the interpretation by the majority of readers around (in practice, the druid player may place a statement and the other players get to interpret. Majority decides effect).

Maha signs used for magic should be made by the user. Statements are activated by placing a drop of the druid's blood on the primary sign.