Session 0 Questions

 Poker Night (from A Streetcar Named Desire) by Thomas Hart Benton

Another post that's been done 10,000 times before, and better, but hey, I'm writing the list, I might as well post it. Somebody might find some use in it!

 

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LOGISTICS

• When do we meet? How often?
• Where? Same place every time?
• How long will each session be?
• Snacks/drinks before? After? During? Spend 15 (or 45) minutes shooting the shit or just jump straight into the game? Roll it into a dinner party?
• What if people can't make it? When should they alert the group? If people can't make it, should we skip that session, try to reschedule, or play without them? Is there a threshold (down one person, we go ahead; down two or more, we reschedule)? Do people want to play one-shots of other games, or with other characters, when we're short-handed?

VIBES

• What do we want from this game? What kind of experience does everybody want to have—is this about challenge, system mastery, self-expression, storytelling, some combination of these, something else?
• What tone do we want to strike? Gritty, serious, immersive, and earnest? Zany, ironic, humorous, and light-hearted? Something in between? Something else?
• Relatedly: What subject matter is too dark/serious (or just too uncomfortable) for the game? Does anybody want to veto any particular kind of content? My inclination is to include dark subjects (torture, sexual violence, violence against children, etc.) in the setting, as warranted, but not in the gameplay. You might have to bring a torturer or rapist to justice, you might interact with his victims, but we're not going to witness his crimes. Similarly, seducing NPCs is a classic RPG shenanigan, go nuts with that, but we'll always just tastefully “fade to black” before anything sexual happens. No sex among PCs. No game-mechanical incentives for PCs to pursue sexual relationships.
• Relatedly: How much conflict among PCs are you comfortable with? Should characters keep secrets from one another? Should players? Are conflicting agendas acceptable? My inclination, at least for a typical D&D-ish game, is that intra-party conflict should not go beyond PCs preferring different paths to similar goals. No highly antagonistic actions among PCs (sniping at each other and pranking each other is fine; robbing each other or physically harming each other is not).
• How should the game be structured—episodic vignettes, one continuous epic narrative, chapters of a story? How much narrative continuity do we want from session to session? Should we have a fixed length or clear objective in mind for the game, or just run with it as long as it's fun?
• Are we most interested in individual characters, a group or community, or the setting as a gestalt? How much character continuity do we want to have across the course of the campaign, if we're doing a longer campaign? (Will characters die often? Will they retire or become NPCs? Will we rotate PCs among a larger cast of characters?)
• Do we want the characters and adventures to be heroic, antiheroic, picaresque, or some combination of these?

SYSTEM AND SETTING

• How central to the gameplay do we want combat to be?
• How much mechanical customization and differentiation (i.e., “build optimization”) do you want for your characters? Conversely, how little thought and effort do you want to have to put into their creation and/or advancement?
• How comfortable are you with a lack of “balance”? Is it fine for some PCs to be have significant mechanical advantages over others?
• What game system do we want to use? Do we want to play it by the book, hack it from the jump, or play things by ear? 
• How much do you all want to collaborate in developing the setting and story? This could be “There's a world I invented with a bunch of stuff for you to discover” or “We make it up together as we go along” (canon vs. anti-canon). How much control do you want me to have over your own inventions (like character backstories)? How about the other players? Do I have, or does the group collectively have, a veto over stuff that doesn't “fit”?
• Roughly how long will the campaign be, and what should be the pace of character advancement (and what will advancement look like)?
• Are there particular themes we want the campaign to foreground, and if so, what are they?
• What kind of impact do you want to have, or to be able to have, on the setting?
• What campaign setting do we want to use, or what kind of campaign setting, if we're going homebrew?
• What kind of goals do you as individual characters and as a group have? How goal-driven should the gameplay be?
• How did or will the PCs meet? Why are you, or how do you become, allies? Why trust each other? 

d666 Mostly Obscure but Authentic Medieval Saints

 

 

You ever have a dumb little idea that you just feel inexorably compelled to follow through on? And in the course of following through on it, you make it much dumber and much, much bigger? This is one of those things.

I was doing some prep to run a little Outcast Silver Raiders, and I thought, Hey, it'd be good to pull together some information about medieval saints, especially ones important in Scotland and Northern England. And then I thought, Well, as long as I'm doing that, I might as well make a proper table of it and turn it into a blog post. And why do a d20 table when you can do a d66 table?

And why do a d66 table when you can do a d666 table? Saints, 666, har har har. Many hours later…

Here are 216 actual, honest-to-God saints (actually more than 216, because some of them are pairs or groups of saints canonized together) who were venerated in medieval Europe, with a strong bias toward Scotland and Northumbria (but lots of Irish, Mercian, Welsh, and other British saints mixed in, plus assorted saints with unusual names or epithets, and the namesakes of a lot of Gene Wolfe characters, and other folks I just took a liking to). I can't guarantee that all of these saints were really real (in fact, many were surely apocryphal or legendary or amalgamations of other people), but I'm 99% sure that medieval people thought they were all real, and many of them were especially venerated in Scotland and Northern England. (The most important saints in medieval Scotland are highlighted in gold; those especially important in the North are in red.) I believe all of these people were dead by the middle of the 11th century, so if you're running a campaign set in the British Isles after the Norman Conquest, this should be a pretty reliable resource (sorry, Wolves of God GMs).

I've included feast days for all of them and various other potentially interesting or useful details for some. The feast days are almost certainly mostly or entirely wrong, strictly speaking, what with the switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar and the relentless march of time and the dodginess of the sources I used (mostly Wikipedia and Catholic Online), but they're approximately right (like, most of them are probably within a week or so of being right, or in the right season, at least), and the objective here is verisimilitude, not perfect accuracy. After the table, there's a calendar, so your party marching around the Mythic North is never more than a few days away from one saint's feast or another, and you always know what festival the next town could be preparing for or recovering from.

Likewise, a lot of the info about specific saints probably isn't really accurate to the medieval period; I don't think the whole concept of patronage existed the same way it does now, and certainly a lot of the specific modern patronages didn't exist at all or weren't associated with these saints. But it might still be useful for flavor or to spark some idea for a quest or whatever!

 

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THE TABLE 

111: Abbán the Hermit (aka Abbán of Corbmaic, Eibbán, Moabba; feast day is October 27)
112: Abban of Murnevin (feast day is March 16)
113: Abercius Marcellus (aka Abercius of Hieropolis; feast day is November 4)
114: Abibus of Edessa (aka Abibus the New, Habib the Deacon; feast day is November 15)
115: Abdiesus (aka Hebed Jesus; feast day is April 22)
116: Acca of Hexham (feast day is October 20; major shrine in Northumberland)
121: Adrian of May (feast day is March 4)
122: Adrian of Nicomedia (feast day is September 8; “chief military saint of Northern Europe for many ages, second only to St. George”)
123: Agia of Hainault (aka Aye or Austregildis; feast day is April 18)
124: Agilus (feast day is August 30)
125: Agrippina of Mineo (no longer celebrated in Catholicism, but was back then; Orthodox feast day is June 23)
126: Aidan of Lindisfarne (feast day is August 31; evangelist to the Northumbrians and founder of Lindisfarne; major shrines at Lindisfarne and Iona)
131: Ailerán Sapiens (feast day is December 29)
132: Alban of Verulamium (feast day is June 20; protomartyr of Britain; patron of converts, refugees, and torture victims)
133: Alban of Mainz (feast day is June 21; invoked against hernia, epilepsy, and kidney stones)
134: Alchhild of Middleham (aka Alkelda, Alcelda, Alchhild; feast day is March 28)
135: Alcmund of Hexham (aka Ealhmund, Alhmund, Alchmund; feast day is September 7)
136: Alkmund of Derby (aka Alkmund of Lilleshall, Ealhmund, Alhmund, Alcmund, Alchmund; feast day is March 19)
141: Andrew the Apostle (feast day is November 30; major shrine in Edinburgh; patron of Scotland, fishermen, fishmongers, rope-makers, textile workers, singers, miners, pregnant women, butchers, and farmworkers; invoked against sore throats, convulsions, fever, and whooping cough)
142: Anthony the Great (aka Anthony of Egypt, Anthony the Abbot, Anthony of the Desert, Anthony the Anchorite, Anthony the Hermit, Anthony of Thebes, Father of All Monks; feast day is January 17; patron of animals, skin diseases, farmers, butchers, the poor, basket makers, brushmakers, and gravediggers)
143: Appian (aka Amphian; feast day is April 2)
144: Balthere of Tyninghame (feast day is March 6)
145: Beatus of Lungern (feast day is May 9; depicted as an old man reading in a mountain cave or a monk fighting a dragon)
146: Bede the Venerable (aka the Father of English History; feast day is May 25; not formally canonized until the 19th century but widely venerated in Britain by the 9th)
151: Bega of Copeland (feast day is September 6)
152: Begga (aka Begue, Beghe, Begge; feast day is December 17)
153: Benedict Biscop (aka Biscop Baducing; feast day is January 12)
154: Benjamin the Deacon and Martyr (feast day is March 31)
155: Beocca and Hethor (feast day is April 10)
156: Billfrith (aka Billfrið; feast day is March 6)
161: Boisil of Melrose (feast day is July 7)
162: Boniface of Tarsus (removed from Catholic calendar in 1969 but used to be celebrated on May 14)
163: Bosa of York (feast day is March 9)
164: Caesidius (feast day is August 31)
165: Caraunus of Chartres (aka Caranus, Caro, Chéron; feast day is May 28)
166: Cassian of Tangier (feast day is December 3; patron of stenographers) 

211: Cathan (feast day is May 17; once very popular in western Scotland)
212: Catherine of Alexandria (feast day is November 25;  depicted breaking the wheel, with a sword, with a crown at her feet, among hailstones, with a bridal veil and ring, with a dove, surrounded by angels, with a scourge, with a book, and/or in an argument with pagan philosophers; patron of unmarried girls, apologists, potters, spinners, archivists, dying people, educators, girls, jurists, knife sharpeners, lacemakers, lawyers, librarians, libraries, maidens, mechanics, millers, milliners, nurses, philosophers, preachers, scholars, schoolchildren, scribes, secretaries, spinsters, stenographers, students, tanners, theologians, haberdashers, and wheelwrights)
213: Cedd of Lichfield (aka Cedda, Ceddus; feast day is October 26; brother of St. Chad)
214: Ceolfrid (aka Ceolfrith, Geoffrey; feast day is September 25)
215: Ceolwulf (feast day is January 15)
216: Chad of Lichfield (aka Ceadda; feast day is March 2; brother of St. Cedd)
221: Christina of Persia (feast day is March 13)
222: Colmán of Lindisfarne (feast day is February 18)
223: Columba of Iona (aka Colmcille; feast day is June 9; first evangelist in Scotland; founded the abbey on Iona; many Scottish clans claim descent from his followers, and Clan Malcolm/Clan McCallum is named for him; patron of bookbinders and poets)
224: Columba of Sens (feast day is December 31; portrayed as a crowned maiden in chains, with a dog or bear on a chain, holding a book and a peacock's feather, with an angel on a funeral pyre, or beheaded)
225: Concordius of Spoleto (feast day is January 2)
226: Congar of Congresbury (aka Cumgar, Cungar, Cyngar, Concarius; feast day is November 27)
231: Conran of Orkney (feast day is February 14)
232: Conval (feast day is September 28)
233: Corentin of Quimper (feast day is December 12; depicted in episcopal attire, with fish)
234: Curetán (aka Curitanus, Kiritinus, Boniface; feast day is March 14; invoked against leprosy)
235: Cuthbert (feast day is March 20; patron saint of Northumbria; depicted as a bishop holding a second crowned head in his hands, sometimes accompanied by seabirds and animals; died on the same day as his friend St. Herbert)
236: Cyprian the Magician and Justina (removed from Catholic calendar in 1969 but used to be celebrated on September 26)
241: Daniel the Stylite (feast day is December 11)
242: Darerca of Ireland (feast day is March 22; sister of St. Patrick)
243: Demetrius of Thessaloniki (aka Demetrius of Sirmium, Holy Great-Martyr Demetrius the Myroblyte; feast day is October 26; major military saint, patron of soldiers, Crusaders, agriculture, peasants and shepherds, winter, snow, and cold)
244: Dingad of Llandingat (feast day is November 1)
245: Domnina of Anazarbus (feast day is October 12)
246: Domnina of Terni (feast day is April 14)
251: Domnina, Berenice, and Prosdoce (feast day is October 4)
252: Domninus of Fidenza (feast day is October 9; depicted as a soldier, with dog, cup, and palm of martyrdom; invoked against rabies)
253: Donald of Ogilvy (feast day is July 15)
254: Donnán of Eigg (aka Donan; feast day is April 17)
255: Dorcas (aka Tabitha; feast day is October 25)
256: Dotto (feast day is April 9)
261: Drostan (feast day is July 11)
262: Dryhthelm (aka Drithelm, Drythelm; feast day is September 1)
263: Duthac (feast day is March 8; “St. Duthac was greatly venerated in Scotland and his memory is still preserved in variations, in the names of places and organisations, including Kilduthie, Arduthie near Stonehaven, and Kilduich on the Loch Duich”)
264: Eadberht (feast day is May 6)
265: Echa of Crayke (feast day is May 5)
266: Egbert of Rath Melsigi (aka Ecgberht; feast day is April 24) 

311: Egino (feast day is July 15)
312: Elpidius the Cappadocian (feast day is September 2; represented by a vine in leaf in winter)
313: Eosterwine of Monkwearmouth (aka Easterwine; feast day is March 7)
314: Epiphanius of Pavia (feast day is January 21)
315: Epiphanius of Salamis (feast day is May 12; depicted holding a scroll; associated with iconoclasm)
316: Erbin of Dumnonia (current Catholic feast day is January 13, but it was celebrated on May 29 in the old Welsh calendar)
321: Eunan (aka Adomnán or Adamnán of Iona; feast day is September 23; biographer of St. Columba of Iona and historian of the Picts)
322: Fergus (feast day is November 27 or September 8; supposedly used to be November 18 in Scotland)
323: Fillan (aka Filan, Phillan, Fáelán, or Faolán; feast day is January 19 or maybe February 13 locally; according to legend, he put a geas on a wolf that killed the ox he was plowing with, forcing the wolf to plow his field; “credited with powers such as the healing of the sick and also possessed a luminous glow from his left arm which he used to study and copy scripture in the dark”; relics include an arm bone, the Mayne, a crozier, the Quigrich or Coygerach, which was supposedly present at Bannockburn, and a bronze bell, the Bernane; patron of the mentally ill)
324: Firmus and Rusticus (feast day is August 9)
325: Fulgentius of Ruspe (feast day is January 1)
326: Gaudentius of Novara (feast day is January 22)
331: Georgia of Clermont (feast day is February 15)
332: Gerasimus of the Jordan (feast day is March 5; depicted taming a lion)
333: Guibert (aka Wicbert; feast day is May 23)
334: Herbert of Derwentwater (feast day is March 20; died on the same day as his friend St. Cuthbert)
335: Hilarion of Thavata (aka Hilarion of Gaza; feast day is October 21; depicted with scroll and monastic habit; venerated as model monk)
336: Hilda of Whitby (aka Hild; feast day is November 17; depicted with a coiled snake or ammonite, the crozier of an abbess, and a model of Whitby Abbey)
341: Himelin (feast day is March 10; depicted as a pilgrim, with a staff, or ill in bed)
342: Hyacinth and Protus (aka Protus and Hyacinth; feast day is September 11)
343: Ia of Cornwall (sister of Erc mac Dega, aka Erc of Slane; feast day is February 3)
344: Idus of Leinster (feast day is July 14)
345: Iwig of Wilton (aka Iwi, Iwigius, Ywi of Lindisfarne; feast day is October 8)
346: Irenaeus of Lugdunum (feast day is June 28)
351: Irenaeus of Sirmium (feast day is April 6)
352: James Intercisus (aka James the Mutilated, James the Persian, Jacob the Persian; feast day is November 27; patron of the deaf)
353: Jason of Thessalonica (feast day is July 12)
354: John of Beverley (feast day is May 7)
355: John the Dwarf (aka John Colobus, John Kolobos; feast day is October 17; patron of dwarves)
356: Jonas of Bobbio (aka Jonas of Susa; feast day is June 28 in Scotland…maybe)
361: Jonas of Demeskenyanos (feast day is February 11)
362: Julia of Corsica (aka Julia of Carthage, Julia of Nonza; feast day is May 22; patron of torture victims; invoked against pathologies of the hands and the feet)
363: Julius the Veteran (feast day is May 27)
364: Kenneth of Aghaboe (aka Canice, Cainnech, Kenny, Canicus; feast day is October 11; patron of the shipwrecked)
365: Kennocha (feast day is March 25; particularly venerated around Glasgow)
366: Kentigern Mungo (feast day is January 13; founder of Glasgow: “on the spot where Mungo was buried now stands the cathedral dedicated in his honor…a great center of Christian pilgrimage until the Scottish Reformation”; patron of salmon and those accused of infidelity; invoked against bullies) 

411: Kessog (aka Kessag, Prince of Cashel; feast day is March 10; depicted in a soldier's habit, holding a bow bent with an arrow in it)
412: Lelia of Limerick (feast day is August 11)
413: Leocadia (feast day is December 9; depicted with a tower, to signify that she died in prison)
414: Liborius of Le Mans (feast day July 23; depicted with pebbles on a book, a peacock, and episcopal attire; invoked against calculi, colic, fever, and gallstones)
415: Loman of Trim (aka Lommán mac Dalláin; feast day is February 17)
416: Lucian of Beauvais (feast day is January 8)
421: Machar (feast day is November 12)
422: Macrina the Elder (feast day is January 14; mother of Basil the Elder, grandmother of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Peter of Sebaste, and Macrina the Younger)
423: Macrina the Younger (feast day is July 19; patron of virgins, monastics, theologians, educators, and students of scripture; older sister of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Peter of Sebaste)
424: Máel Ruba (aka Máelrubai, Maol Rubha, MoRubha, MaRuibhe, Malruibhe, or Rufus; martyred on April 21, but Scots kept his feast on April 27; “after St. Columba, perhaps the most popular saint of northwest Scotland”)
425: Magnus of Cuneo (feast day is August 19; depicted as a soldier bearing a banner and the palm of martyrdom; patron of pastures and livestock)
426: Mamertinus of Auxerre (feast day is March 30; depicted exhorting monks, lying on a mat in his cell before his death)
431: Mammes of Caesarea (aka Mamas, Mammas, Mammet, Mema, Mammès, Mamante, Mamés, Mamede; feast day is August 17; child martyr, depicted with a lion; patron of babies who are breastfeeding; protector of sufferers from broken bones and hernias)
432: Marnock of Kilmarnock (aka Marnocus, Marnan of Narnach, Marnanus, Marnocalso, Ernin; feast day is October 25; “a strong cult of veneration developed for Marnock after his death, particularly in the region of the Scottish Borders”)
433: Margaret the Virgin (aka Margaret of Antioch, Margaret of Antioch in Pisidia; feast day is July 20; depicted, in the West, slaying a dragon, and in the East beating a demon with a hammer; patron of pregnant women, nurses, peasants, exiles, the falsely accused, the dying, kidney disease)
434: Maruthas of Martyropolis (feast day is December 4)
435: Maxentius (feast day is June 26)
436: Menas of Egypt (aka Mina, Minas, Mena, Meena; feast day is November 11; depicted with his hands cut off and his eyes torn out, with two camels, or as a young knight with a halberd)
441: Merryn (aka Modwenna, Monenna; feast day is July 6)
442: Mildburh of Wenlock (aka Milburga, Milburgh; feast day is February 23; patron of birds; “said to have had a mysterious power over birds; they would avoid damaging the local crops when she asked them to […] syncretized with a pagan goddess…chosen to fill the role of grain protectress in Shropshire when the ancient pagan protectress could no longer be venerated”)
443: Mildgyth (aka Mildgytha; feast day is January 17)
444: Mildrith of Thanet (aka Mildthryth, Mildryth, Mildred; feast day is July 13; depicted as a crowned princess, with an abbess's crozier and hind)
445: Mirren of Benchor (aka Mirin, Merinus, Merryn, Meadhrán; feast day is September 15)
446: Modan (feast day is February 4)
451: Molaise of Leighlin (aka Laisrén or Laserian; feast day is April 18)
452: Moluag (aka Lua, Luan, Luanus, Lugaidh, Malew, Moloag, Moloc, Molluog, Molua, Molvanus,  Murlach; feast day is June 25; invoked against madness)
453: Monan (feast day is March 1; follower of St. Adrian, who sent him to the Isle of May, where he “exterminated superstition and many other crimes and abuses, and having settled the churches of that island in good order, passed into the county of Fife, and was there martyred; being slain with above 6,000 other Christians, by an army of infidels who ravaged that country in 874”; had a shrine at Innerny, in Fifeshire, where his relics were famous for miracles)
454: Moses the Black (aka Moses the Strong, Moses the Robber, Moses the Egyptian; feast day is August 28)
455: Nathalan (aka Nachlan; feast day is January 19)
456: Nectan of Hartland (feast day is June 17)
461: Neot (feast day is July 31)
462: Nicetas of Remesiana (feast day is June 22)
463: Ninian (aka Apostle to the Southern Picts, Ringan, Romanus, Rinian, Trinian, Ronian; feast day is September 16; associated with a magical or heavenly bell, the Clog-rinny or Bell of St. Ninian)
464: Orontius of Lecce (feast day is August 26; depicted in episcopal attire, smashing pagan idols at his feet)
465: Osana of Howden (feast day is June 18)
466: Oswald of Northumbria (feast day is August 5; depicted as a crowned king, carrying scepter, orb, ciborium, sword, and palm-branch and/or with his raven) 

511: Oswine of Northumbria (aka Oswin, Osuine; feast day is August 20)
512: Ouen (aka Owen, Audoenus; feast day is August 24)
513: Palaemon (feast day is January 11)
514: Pantaleon (feast day is July 27; depicted with a compartmented apothecary's box and a long-handled spatula or spoon; patron of physicians, apothecaries, midwives, livestock, and lottery winners; invoked against headaches, consumption, locusts, witchcraft, accidents, and loneliness)
515: Patrick (feast day is March 17, of course; sister of St. Darerca; supposedly born at Old Kilpatrick, at the western end of the Antonine Wall)
516: Patroclus of Troyes (feast day is January 21; depicted as a warrior pointing to a fish with a pearl in its mouth; invoked against demons and fever)
521: Paul the Simple (feast day is March 7)
522: Paulinus of York (feast day is October 10)
523: Peter of Rates (feast day is April 26)
524: Philogonius (aka Filogonius, Philogonus, Philogonios; feast day is December 20)
525: Quirinus of Neuss (feast day is March 30 or April 30; depicted in military attire, as a knight with lance, sword, and hawk, with a banner or sign with nine balls; invoked against the bubonic plague, smallpox, and gout, afflictions associated with the legs, feet, ears, paralysis, ulcers, goiters; skin conditions, and diseases affecting cattle and horses; patron of animals, knights, soldiers, and horsemen)
526: Rudesind (feast day is March 1)
531: Rufina and Secunda (feast day is July 10; depicted as two maidens floating in the Tiber River with weights attached to their necks)
532: Rule (aka Regulus; feast day is October 17; said to have brought St. Andrew's bones to Scotland)
533: Rumon of Tavistock (aka Ronan, Ruadan, or Ruan; has various feast days, but his translation is celebrated on January 5)
534: Sabbas the Goth (feast day is April 12)
535: Samson of Dol (aka Samsun; feast day is July 28)
536: Sarbelius and Barbea (feast day is January 29)
541: Serenus the Gardener (aka Serenus of Billom, Sirenatus, Cerneuf; feast day is February 23; patron of gardeners)
542: Servulus of Rome (feast day is December 23)
543: Severian of Sebaste (feast day is September 9)
544: Severian of Scythopolis (feast day is February 21)
545: Sidonius Apollinaris (feast day is August 21; notable poet)
546: Sidwell (also known as Sidwella, Sativola of Exeter; feast day is August 1)
551: Simeon the Holy Fool (feast day is July 1)
552: Sulpicius the Pious (feast day is January 17; patron of priests who come to the vocation late in life and patients with pains, gout, or skin conditions)
553: Talarican (aka Tarkin, Talorcan; feast day is October 30; probably Pictish)
554: Taneu (aka Teneu, Thenew, Theneva, Tannoch, Thaney, Thanea, Denw, Thenewe, Thennow, Denyw, Dwynwen, Thametes, Thameta, or Thenelis; feast day is July 18; mother of St. Kentigern Mungo)
555: Tatberht of Ripon (feast day is June 5)
556: Ternan (aka Torannan, Bishop of the Picts; feast day is June 12)
561: Thea and Valentina (feast day is July 25)
562: Thecla of Iconium (feast day is September 23
563: Thecla of Kitzingen (feast day is October 15)
564: Theodore Stratelates (aka Theodore of Heraclea, Theodore of Arabia; feast day was February 7; depicted as a warrior, with spear and shield, or as a civilian; patron of soldiers)
565: Theodore of Tarsus (aka Theodore of Canterbury; feast day is September 19)
566: Torquatus of Acci (feast day is May 15) 

611: Triduana (aka Trodline, Tredwell, or Trøllhaena; feast day is October 8; principal shrine was at Restalrig, now part of Edinburgh, but she also had a significant pilgrimage site, St. Tredwell's Chapel, on Papa Westray in the Orkneys)
612: Tryphon, Respicius, and Nympha (used to be celebrated together on November 10; Tryphon is depicted with a falcon and is patron of gardeners and winegrowers; invoked against rodents and locusts)
613: Turibius of Astorga (feast day is April 16)
614: Ultan of Péronne (feast day is May 1; brother of Sts. Fursey and Foillan)
615: Ultan the Scribe (aka Ultan of Ardbraccan; feast day is September 4)
616: Ursinus of Bourges (feast day is November 9)
621: Ursus of Aosta (feast day is February 1; depicted as an archdeacon with a staff and book, bearing birds on his shoulder, wearing fur pelisse in a religious habit, striking water from a rock, or giving shoes to the poor; patron of children who die before baptism; invoked in childbirth and against faintness, kidney disease, and rheumatism)
622: Ursus of Solothurn (feast day is September 30)
623: Valeria of Milan (feast day April 28; depicted with Sts. Vitalis, Gervasius, and Protasius, being beaten with clubs; invoked against storms and floods)
624: Valerian of Abbenza (feast day is December 15)
625: Victorinus of Pettau (feast day is November 2)
626: Victor the Moor (aka Victor Maurus; feast day is May 8; depicted being thrown into a furnace, roasted in an oven, or trampling on a broken altar)
631: Vodoaldus (aka Voel and Vodalus; feast day is February 5)
632: Walpurga (aka Walburga; feast day is February 25, but the translation of her relics on May 1 was also widely celebrated)
633: Werburh of Chester (feast day is February 3)
634: Wigstan of Repton (aka Wystan; feast day is June 1)
635: Wihtberht (aka Wigbert; feast day is August 13)
636: Wilfrid of Hexam (feast day is October 12; depicted baptizing, preaching, landing from a ship and being received by the king, or engaged in theological disputation, with his crozier near him and a lectern before him)
641: Wilfrid the Younger (aka Wilfrith; feast day is April 29)
642: Wilgils of Ripon (aka Wilgisl and Hilgis; feast day is January 31)
643: Wulfhad and Ruffin (feast day is July 24)
644: Wulfram of Sens (aka Wulfram of Fontenelle, Vuilfran, Wulfrann, Wolfran; feast day is March 20)
645: Wulfric of Holme (feast day is December 9)
646: Xanthippe and Polyxena (feast day is September 23)
651: Xenia the Righteous of Rome (aka Eusebia; feast day is January 24)
652: Ymar of Reculver (feast day is November 12)
653: Zacchaeus of Jerusalem (aka Zacharias; feast day is August 23)
654: Zamudas of Jerusalem (aka Zambdas, Zabdas, Bazas; feast day is February 19)
655: Zeno of Verona (feast day is April 12; depicted with fish, with a fishing rod, or with a fish hanging from his crozier; patron of fisherman and newborns)
656: Zosimus of Rome (feast day is December 27)
661: Zosimus the Hermit (feast day is January 3)
662: Æbbe of Coldingham (aka Tabbs; feast day is August 25)
663: Æbbe the Younger (aka Ebbe, Aebbe, Abb; feast day is April 2)
664: Ælfflæd of Whitby (feast day is February 8)
665: Ælfthryth of Crowland (aka Alfreda, Alfritha, Aelfnryth, Etheldritha; feast day is August 2)
666: Æthelwold of Lindisfarne (feast day is February 12)

 

* * * 

 

THE CALENDAR

January 1: Fulgentius of Ruspe
January 2: Concordius of Spoleto
January 3: Zosimus the Hermit
January 5: Rumon of Tavistock
January 8: Lucian of Beauvais
January 11: Palaemon
January 12: Benedict Biscop
January 13: Kentigern Mungo
January 14: Macrina the Elder
January 15: Ceolwulf
January 17: Anthony the Great; Mildgyth; Sulpicius the Pious
January 19: Nathalan
January 21: Epiphanius of Pavia; Patroclus of Troyes
January 22: Gaudentius of Novara 
January 24: Xenia the Righteous of Rome
January 29: Sarbelius and Barbea
January 31: Wilgils of Ripon

February 1: Ursus of Aosta
February 3: Ia of Cornwall; Werburh of Chester
February 4: Modan
February 5: Vodoaldus
February 7: Theodore Stratelates
February 8: Ælfflæd of Whitby
February 11: Jonas of Demeskenyanos
February 12: Æthelwold of Lindisfarne
February 13: Fillan
February 14: Conran of Orkney
February 15: Georgia of Clermont
February 17: Loman of Trim
February 18: Colmán of Lindisfarne
February 19: Zamudas of Jerusalem
February 21: Severian of Scythopolis
February 23: Mildburh of Wenlock; Serenus the Gardener
February 25: Walpurga

March 1: Monan, Rudesind
March 2: Chad of Lichfield
March 4: Adrian of May
March 5: Gerasimus of the Jordan
March 6: Balthere of Tyninghame; Billfrith
March 7: Eosterwine of Monkwearmouth; Paul the Simple
March 8: Duthac
March 9: Bosa of York
March 10: Himelin; Kessog
March 13: Christina of Persia
March 14: Curetán
March 16: Abban of Murnevin
March 17: Patrick
March 19: Alkmund of Derby
March 20: Cuthbert; Herbert of Derwentwater; Wulfram of Sens
March 22: Darerca of Ireland
March 25: Kennocha
March 28: Alchhild of Middleham
March 30: Mamertinus of Auxerre
March 31: Benjamin the Deacon and Martyr

April 2: Appian; Æbbe the Younger
April 6: Irenaeus of Sirmium
April 9: Dotto
April 10: Beocca and Hethor
April 12: Sabbas the Goth; Zeno of Verona
April 14: Domnina of Terni
April 16: Turibius of Astorga
April 17: Donnán of Eigg
April 18: Agia of Hainault; Molaise of Leighlin
April 22: Abdiesus
April 24: Egbert of Rath Melsigi
April 26: Peter of Rates
April 27: Máel Ruba
April 28: Valeria of Milan
April 29: Wilfrid the Younger
April 30: Quirinus of Neuss

May 1: Ultan of Péronne
May 5: Echa of Crayke
May 6: Eadberht
May 7: John of Beverley
May 8: Victor the Moor
May 9: Beatus of Lungern
May 12: Epiphanius of Salamis
May 14: Boniface of Tarsus
May 15: Torquatus of Acci
May 17: Cathan
May 22: Julia of Corsica
May 23: Guibert
May 25: Bede the Venerable
May 27: Julius the Veteran
May 28: Caraunus of Chartres
May 29: Erbin of Dumnonia

June 1: Wigstan of Repton
June 5: Tatberht of Ripon
June 9: Columba of Iona
June 12: Ternan
June 17: Nectan of Hartland
June 18: Osana of Howden
June 20: Alban of Verulamium
June 21: Alban of Mainz
June 22: Nicetas of Remesiana
June 23: Agrippina of Mineo
June 25: Moluag
June 26: Maxentius
June 28: Irenaeus of Lugdunum; Jonas of Bobbio

July 1: Simeon the Holy Fool
July 6: Merryn
July 7: Boisil of Melrose
July 10: Rufina and Secunda
July 11: Drostan
July 12: Jason of Thessalonica
July 13: Mildrith of Thanet
July 14: Idus of Leinster
July 15: Donald of Ogilvy; Egino
July 18: Taneu
July 19: Macrina the Younger
July 20: Margaret the Virgin
July 23: Liborius of Le Mans
July 24: Wulfhad and Ruffin
July 25: Thea and Valentina
July 27: Pantaleon 
July 28: Samson of Dol
July 31: Neot 

August 1: Sidwell 
August 2: Ælfthryth of Crowland
August 5: Oswald of Northumbria
August 9: Firmus and Rusticus
August 11: Lelia of Limerick
August 13: Wihtberht 
August 17: Mammes of Caesarea
August 19: Magnus of Cune
August 20: Oswine of Northumbria
August 21: Sidonius Apollinaris
August 23: Zacchaeus of Jerusalem
August 24: Ouen 
August 25: Æbbe of Coldingham
August 26: Orontius of Lecce
August 28: Moses the Black
August 30: Agilus
August 31: Aidan of Lindisfarne, Caesidius

September 1: Dryhthelm 
September 2: Elpidius the Cappadocian
September 4: Ultan the Scribe
September 6: Bega of Copeland
September 7: Alcmund of Hexham
September 8: Adrian of Nicomedia
September 9: Severian of Sebaste
September 11: Hyacinth and Protus
September 15: Mirren of Benchor
September 16: Ninian
September 19: Theodore of Tarsus
September 23: Eunan; Thecla of Iconium; Xanthippe and Polyxena
September 25: Ceolfrid 
September 26: Cyprian the Magician and Justina
September 28: Conval
September 30: Ursus of Solothurn

October 4: Domnina, Berenice, and Prosdoce
October 8: Iwig of Wilton; Triduana
October 9: Domninus of Fidenza
October 10: Paulinus of York
October 11: Kenneth of Aghaboe
October 12: Domnina of Anazarbus; Wilfrid of Hexam
October 15: Thecla of Kitzingen
October 17: John the Dwarf; Rule
October 20: Acca of Hexham
October 21: Hilarion of Thavata
October 25: Dorcas; Marnock of Kilmarnock
October 26: Cedd of Lichfield; Demetrius of Thessaloniki
October 27: Abbán the Hermit
October 30: Talarican 

November 1: Dingad of Llandingat
November 2: Victorinus of Pettau
November 4: Abercius Marcellus
November 9: Ursinus of Bourges
November 10: Tryphon, Respicius, and Nympha
November 11: Menas of Egypt
November 12: Machar; Ymar of Reculver
November 15: Abibus of Edessa
November 17: Hilda of Whitby
November 18: Fergus 
November 25: Catherine of Alexandria
November 27: Congar of Congresbury; James Intercisus
November 30: Andrew the Apostle

December 3: Cassian of Tangier
December 4: Maruthas of Martyropolis
December 9: Leocadia; Wulfric of Holme
December 11: Daniel the Stylite
December 12: Corentin of Quimper
December 15: Valerian of Abbenza
December 17: Begga
December 20: Philogonius
December 23: Servulus of Rome
December 27: Zosimus
December 29: Ailerán Sapiens
December 31: Columba of Sens 

Bookpost #4

Ah, I've been negligent.

It's been a fallow season for me, TTRPG-wise; I've been going through some drama in my personal life, and my long-running Stars Without Number game has gone on a “hiatus” that will probably prove to be permanent. I had a falling out with one of the players, and nearly all of the others have gone through something major of their own in the past couple months (two had deaths in the family; two are about to have their first kid). Most of the group continues to meet, but sporadically now, and often with only two or three players. We've been trying out Black Sword Hack, which is delightful and great for some drop-in, drop-out adventure-of-the-week action, but after literally years of getting six people together every week, almost without fail, seeing the game come to this is tough. And missing my best, most enthusiastic player—who was one of my closest friends, too—is tougher still.

But life goes on. I'm not doing much TTRPG stuff, but I'm writing poetry and fiction, I'm drawing, I'm playing board games, I'm cooking. And I'm reading a lot! And I haven't done a post about books since January! So now there's way too damn much to go into detail, and I'm skipping over a bunch of things I didn't like or don't have much to say about. But the highlights:

Convergence Problems (Wole Talabi)

The last thing I mentioned in the previous post was, reasonably enough, the first thing I read this year. And it was great! The quality of the stories is a bit uneven, but the best are fantastic, and even the weaker ones are different enough from what's popular in American SF, and offer enough insight into Nigerian society and culture, to be fascinating.

How Not to Network a Nation (Benjamin Peters)

If/Then (Jill Lepore)

Two different 1960s-centric nonfiction stories about the technological futures we didn't have. Lepore is a much, much better writer than Peters (no offense, Ben), and her book infinitely more readable, but the subject matter of How Not to… is, to me, much more interesting. Kinda wish Lepore would write about it!

All for Nothing (Walter Kempowski)

Old Filth (Jane Gardam)

Two great literary novels about some of the darkest corners of 20th-century history that are way, way funnier than they have any right to be.

Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen (Garth Nix)

History of the Runestaff (Michael Moorcock)

The Languages of Pao (Jack Vance)

A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge)

A bunch of “Can you believe I'd never read this before?” SFF classics. (Okay, maybe Pao specifically isn't exactly a classic, but it's the first Jack Vance I'd ever read, so that's something.) Love a lot of the worldbuilding detail in Nix's work, particularly the musical magic. Love how clear it is that OD&D was just “let's turn the Runestaff books into a game.” Love a good old SF take on the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, Vance's vocabulary, and his eye for environmental detail (his characters leave a lot to be desired, though). Absolutely adore the over-the-top, overstuffed space opera plenitude of Vinge's Zones of Thought setting.

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (Stanislaw Lem)

The Two of Them (Joanna Russ)

Always Coming Home (Ursula K. Le Guin)

Five Ways to Forgiveness (Ursula K. Le Guin)

A bunch of new-to-me works by beloved favorites. Memoirs isn't the most gripping narrative, but it's a fascinating perspective on American Cold War paranoia from an outside perspective. The Two of Them is vivid, incredibly well drawn, and repeatedly heartbreaking. And both of the Le Guin books, well, shame on me for not having read two of the best works by my all-time favorite author earlier. Five Ways is gorgeous, incredibly moving, far more romantic than you'd expect from her. Always Coming Home is just astounding. A whole world, a whole philosophy, a whole way of living.

Empire of Pain (Patrick Radden Keefe)

Yeah, it really is that good. And they really were that bad.

Godwin (Joseph O'Neill)

Funny, strange, thought-provoking. Wonderful characters; the degree to which the narrators are utterly distinct and different from one another and both absolutely believable is real virtuoso writing.

Total Chaos (Jean-Claude Izzo)

A fun, pacy, trope-heavy crime novel that is so thick with culturally, geographically, chronologically specific detail that it's easy to forgive the many predictable beats.

You Dreamed of Empires (Alvaro Enrigue)

Best thing I've read all year. One of the most memorable, strange, immersive, exciting novels I've read in quite a few years, in fact.

Appendix M for Michael

Illustration for The Tombs of Atuan by Charles Vess (from The Books of Earthsea)

All the creative works that influenced me and my own creativity, I realized as I tried to organize my thoughts for this most auspicious of blog bandwagon occasions, have accumulated in distinct layers, like the stages of a decades-long construction project—the building of my mind palace, if you will, floor by floor. Its foundations were dug in elementary school, its ground floor went up in my teen years, it sprawled out in various directions in my twenties, and in the last decade or so, its shape pretty firmly established, it's seen some fairly minor renovations, a new coat of paint, some interior redecoration.

Let’s take a tour.

Earliest Foundations

• My Side of the Mountain
• Redwall
• The Land Before Time (1988)
• The Adventures of Tintin
• The Diamond in the Window
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• The Tripods
• The Earthsea Cycle, particularly The Tombs of Atuan
• The Hobbit
• Aladdin (1992)
• Star Wars (1977)
• Doom
• Magic: The Gathering

The lowest level has a pretty strong thematic orientation, one that’s stuck with me my whole life and in many ways guided me to D&D and thus eventually to this very blog. If you can’t see the pattern, or can’t see how it connects all of these things, know that my favorite parts of the Redwall series always involved old ruins and ancient mysteries (the word “Loamhenge” still excites my inner eight-year-old), and likewise my favorite Tintin adventures; that nothing in Star Wars appealed to me as much (or ever has) as “an elegant weapon for a more civilized age”; that as much as I enjoyed blasting demons and zombies in Doom, I at least equally enjoyed looking out at the misty grey mountains of the Knee Deep in the Dead skybox, wondering what other inscrutable alien relics were buried beyond the horizon; and that my chief interest in MTG, as an elementary school kid, was in art and flavor text. I loved Fallen Empires.

Lost cities? Dead languages? Antediluvian relics? Quests for rumored things or places that the skeptical dismiss as the stuff of rumor and legend? Secret worlds, secret pasts, secret passages? I couldn’t get enough. I still can’t.

Ground Floor

• A Canticle for Leibowitz
• The Postman (the novel)
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (the books, not that the film isn't great)
• The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea
• The Hainish Cycle, particularly The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness
• Dune
• “Guest Law” (John C. Wright)
• Seven Samurai
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Alien (1979)
• Blade Runner (1982)
• Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise
• Akira (1988)
• The Ghost in the Shell (1995)
• Fallout (1997)
• Homeworld (1999)
• The Longest Journey (1999)
• Quake (1996)
• Half-Life (1998)
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert
• Planescape: Torment
• Anachronox
• The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

You can see how what I loved as a little kid led straight into what I loved as a teenager, even as I churned through vast swathes of culture and went through my most breakneck-paced period of construction. A lot of this is just one permutation or another of the romance of lost worlds and ancient treasures. We’ve got the post-apocalyptic angle: What if our civilization became some future person’s “vast and trunkless legs of stone”? We’ve got the space opera angle, in novels, short stories, and PC games. We’ve got a little historico-mythological revisionism, in Mary Renault’s reimagining of the Theseus myth as historical fiction, based on the best archaeology and anthropology the late 1950s had to offer. There’s Raiders, which is basically the ur-adventure narrative, inextricably racist warts and all.

But I started to pick up on other things, too. I fell hard for cyberpunk and for the charms of a science fiction that focuses relentlessly on verisimilitude and realistic detail: The exhaustively researched and carefully considered alternate-history material culture of Royal Space Force, the gorgeous, tactile production design of Alien and Blade Runner, the shocking viscerality of Akira and Ghost in the Shell. I got way into PC games, too, and in addition to buttressing a lot of my existing fixations, those brought me into the world of mods and custom maps, especially for Quake and Half-Life, which was my first brush with DIY gaming. (I’ve written a bunch about Quake here before, of course.)

Some of these stories and worlds also got me thinking, in an inchoate kind of way, about the course of history, about contingency, about the paths that could lead us to these imagined futures or could have led us into a different present. Royal Space Force, again, was formative, and so in a sillier and much more direct way was Red Alert, but digging into what was by then older science fiction was instructive too. Why didn’t the future turn out this way? Where are the robots? What happened to the Soviet Union? This stuff probably primed me to be a Marxist (and I did first read the Communist Manifesto around this time, although I didn’t really understand what I was reading yet), but it also made me think more deeply about the rules and patterns and, yeah, material forces that drive history, culture, political geography—all the key ingredients in any worldbuilding stew.

Later Extensions

• The Blue Sword
• Roadside Picnic
• The Incal and The World of Edena
• Hyperion
• The Lathe of Heaven
• The Fall
• Lonesome Dove
• Firefly

Some of these offered new ways of looking at old fascinations—Roadside Picnic is a kind of dark mirror of portal fantasy like Narnia; Firefly offered a blueprint for turning the roguish charm of Han Solo into an entire universe—and others just proved to be indelible. The orange groves of The Blue Sword, the Nesters of Edena, the cruciform from Hyperion, the Augmentor from The Lathe of Heaven, and the whole fantasy setting of The Fall live rent-free on the upper stories and mother-in-law apartments of my mind palace, always popping up in one form or another when I put pen to paper. And Lonesome Dove, well, you’ve gotta have a little room in your heart (and your imaginary mansion) for the greatest Western ever written, even if you’re not really a big fan of Westerns in general. (Likewise Seven Samurai, which I didn’t touch on above; it doesn’t really connect to anything else here, but it’s such a damn good story and framework for RPG adventures, and it’s just printed onto my brain at this point.)

Recent Renovations

• Machineries of Empire
• Always Coming Home
• Woman on the Edge of Time
• The Book of the New Sun
• The Employees
• Brigador
• Hardspace: Shipbreaker
• Heaven's Vault
• Disco Elysium

These too showed me a bunch of new perspectives, cynosures that point toward more interesting science fiction settings and fresher ideas. The Brazilian- and Korean-inflected futures of Brigador and Machineries of Empire; the fragile, imperiled utopias of Always Coming Home and Woman on the Edge of Time; the workaday zero-G labor of Shipbreaker. Wolfe and Ravn are beautiful, challenging, uncompromising writers and authored irresistible images (and Wolfe expanded my vocabulary like nobody else). Disco Elysium and Heaven’s Vault are inspiring realizations of a whole bunch of my favorite stuff at once: Dead languages, ancient ruins, class conflict, wildly inventive alternate material cultures, beautiful writing, paths not taken, hope in the dark.

I still remember the day I found The Tombs of Atuan on the bookshelf in my sixth-grade classroom (I read the series out of order). Nothing else, before or since, ever fired my imagination or rewired my brain to quite the same extent. A few things have come close, though, Always Coming Home not least among them. It is pretty wonderful that Le Guin has been with me at every step, from Earthsea to Anarres to Portland to the Valley of the Na. You could do a lot worse, as mind-palace architects go.

Housekeeping

So, as apparently happens every August now, I'm experiencing a little personal-life turmoil. Maybe it's my incipient middle-agedness—each time my birthday comes around now, some unconscious drive pushes me into one minor drama or another, raging against the dying of the light or whatever. Also, my country just keeps going more and more dangerously insane; that's not helping.

The upshot is that I've exiled myself, for a little while, from my home computer, most of the software I'm accustomed to using, the digital drawing tablet I recently got (with grand ambitions to flex my long-dormant art skills a little), my cats, and every bit of my usual routine. My plan to post twice a week, every week, to this blog went to pieces almost as soon as I implemented it. Maybe I'll get back to it in September…or maybe in October. We'll see.

What I have managed to stick with is most of the game jam stuff I committed to! I just put the last little touches (at least until I reread it tomorrow and catch a bunch of typos and have to make another round of edits) on my entry for Anne's second Summer LEGO RPG Jam, which I've posted on itch.io and which, if I do say so myself, turned out looking not half bad considering I cobbled it together in Google Docs, half on my work computer and half on my decrepit old MacBook.

Next up is finishing at least a rough draft of my adventure for the FIST Anniversary Jam, and then my voluminous ramblings for the Appendix N bandwagon, which are threatening to turn into a full-blown autobiography, and then the Build a Better World jam, and I've got some Cairn stuff I've been tinkering with that I want to lay out and post, etc. etc. I'm writing and doodling plenty the old-fashioned way, in notebooks and sketchbooks, and reading books I'll need to blog about it, and watching movies I'll need to blog about, and generally staying busy and generating a tremendous backlog of stuff to blog about whenever I do force myself into a proper routine. Which I'm looking forward to!