Escaped gaming meme

[mithriltabby]

Recalling a classic random encounter...

Ars Magica is a splendid role-playing game that is set in Mythic Europe— Europe as people believed it to be in the Middle Ages, with the addition of a secretive order of wizards called the Order of Hermes. (This is where White Wolf got that bunch for their game Mage.)

The magic system in Ars Magica allows wizards to stay at home in their laboratories and make progress on their researches without having to go out and earn experience points. One of the things that can bestir them from their labs, though, is the acquisition of vis, distilled magical energy, which is available in a number of aspects. Hermetic magi find it usually corresponds to one of the fifteen Arts— five Techniques (verbs) and ten Forms (nouns), where any spell cast is based on a combination of at least one Technique and Form.

In the Amurgsval campaign, the magi had managed to invent a number of interesting ways to get around Mythic Europe without costing too much of their precious lab time, so they wandered into all manner of interesting nooks and crannies of the world. In one such encounter, they ran into a rather interesting hedge witch.

They were initially a little wary of a crone living in a cottage with human skulls in macramé hangers maintaining her mystic wards, but she was quite hospitable to the mysterious and spooky wizards dropping in, and was happy to talk shop. When vis trading came up, she had quite a collection of valuable basilisk-derived Perdo (destruction) vis. Further conversation showed that she farmed basilisks.

Now, these are classic medieval bestiary basilisks, beings so poisonous that if a person were to stab one with a spear, the poison would run up the spear and poison the creature’s assailant. Fortunately, these nasty creatures don’t overrun the world because they are the result of a cockerel laying an egg in a dungheap, where it’s incubated by a toad.

The witch explained that the tricky part was scaring a rooster so much that it laid an egg, “and they aren’t good for much afterwards, either.” But they were favorably impressed by the witch’s ingenuity, and did some vis trading— she was very happy to purchase Corpus (human body) vis from them, and remarked how it would be very handy for her to restore the appearance of youth long enough to snare another husband, who would be used up in short order.

This notion bothered some of the magi with stronger consciences, but they couldn’t bring themselves to interfere with her, as a matter of professional courtesy. If they had discovered her preying on the local villagers first, they probably would have put a stop to her depredations, but once they’d actually traded with her, it just wouldn’t have been right. There was much amusement over this at the player level.

I was particularly pleased with the basilisk farming idea, since it explains how one goes about it, but replaces one mythic feat (a rooster laying an egg) with another (scaring a rooster so much that it lays an egg).

Comments

[grandmoffdavid.livejournal.com]

I'm still remembering the basilisk as weapon of mass destruction that I got to do in our High Fantasy Feng Shui game. It's simple when you've got enough TK. Granted, this was the D&D style turn enemy to stone basilisk, but still. Pick up, point away from you, fan it around a given area, good bye opposing army.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

We used a basilk as a Weapon of Mass Petrification in an old AAD&D game. Unfortunately, it was wielded by the Evil Person posing as my mage, and so was tossed into the middle of the player's compound. Even more annoying, it was tossed back over the wall before it could do any real damage- except to the orc army.

It's weird how much I was getting into that character- happily plotting the ruin of everything my regular player had been trying to accomplish, and getting annoyed when my schemes failed.

[mithriltabby]

AAD&D = Anonymous Alcoholic Drinking and Dicing? (Kind of like Bar Trek: “Jim Beam up, Scotchy!”)

[deirdremoon.livejournal.com]

Nah-- Anonymous Attention Deficit and Dicing: "My fighter attacks with 3d6 and... ooh, look, chocolate!"

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Anonymous Attention Deficit and Dicing? Someone must have gamed with me before. ;')

In any case, I take no responsibility for that post- it was the mojitos talkin'. And an itchy posting finger - "Oh damn, I can't edit comments, can I."