The transcripts for January - March 2022 are up at WordPress.com
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I hope people enjoyed Fragment Week. It looks like my added space to podcast is a permanent thing, so, there's more material in the months ahead.
The current runsheet is as follows. Bold items are already complete and loaded on timers. Asterisks are monsters. Note that, yes, in late may you do get hours and hours of Lucian. It's my sixth anniversary of doing this podcast that week, and I really wanted to do it.
M5: The troubadour *
M12: Venice - The Company of the Calza
M19 Cellini breaks out of the papal jail
M26 Six Years
M27: Lucian - True Story Part 1
M28: Lucian - True Story Part 2
J2 Demon of Grief * / Cats of Venice
J9 Magonomia - Alchemists in Chaucer 1
J16 Cellini swears he didn't shoot at the Cardinal.
J23 - City of Dreadful Night 1
J30 - City of Dreadful Night 2
J7 Beth Gelert - Folk saint *
J14: Venice - The Jewish Ghetto
J21 Cellini's wounds are tended by the angelic host
J28 Magonomia - Alchemists in Chaucer 1
A4 The Witch of Atlas *
A18 Cellini gets poisoned like a prince
S1: The White Witch *
S15 Cellini swears his statue is not haunted and annoys the king's primary mistress
O6: Our Ladies of Death *
O20: Celinni in Paris
N3: Insomnia Demons *
N17 Cellini and the Birth of Perseus
D22: Cellini faces Renaissance medicine
Somewhere in here are the Magonomia Bestiary KS episodes
The Laidly Worm of Spidlestone Heugh
Grim, King of the Ghosts
Malkins
The Two Sisters
Kenidjack
Satyrs, Beer, and Lions
Herne's Oak from Shakespeare was going to be part of this, and is written, but I think I'll pull it from this sequence, as I'm working on two more (Unicorn and Basilisk). It may make its way back via a later Fragment Week.
In the long term, the replacement for Celinni is likely to be "The Discoverie of Witches".
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Hi all, I have COVID and my brain is not working, but my podcast plan needs to be fed content, so here are the upcoming episodes.
Please be aware the quarterly scripts will be delayed until my brain recovers. See below for an example of me being unable to do simple proofreading now.
Bold items are recorded and loaded on release timers. Plain items are written, but not recorded.
J14: Longevity potions discussed in the works of Francis Bacon
J21 Cellini's wounds are tended by the angelic host
J28 Magonomia - Do you know Mr Stow?
A4 The Witch of Atlas *
A11 Swiatek the beggar - an early werewolf story. This is Seabury Quinn's version, not Sabine Baring-Gould's. This has been slipped in because my concentration is shot and the way my podcast plan works, something needs to go here.
A18 Cellini gets poisoned like a prince
A25 Magic Mirror Murders - In my notes this is down as "Magic mirror minors" and the actual file seems to be called "Magic mirror members". This is what's convinced me I can't proofread to save myself at the moment. It's a serial killer pretending to be a magician. Power level closer to Magonomia than Ars Magica, but still good for a one shot or grog only story.
S1: The White Witch *
S15 Cellini swears his statue is not haunted and annoys the king's primary mistress
S22 Magonomia - Haunted Homes 1 - in which I pick through "Haunted homes and family traditions of Great Britain" for ghosts Elizabethan and earlier. Again, Covid brain rambly warning.
S29 - Magonomia Haunted Homes 2.
O6: Our Ladies of Death *
O20: Celinni in Paris
O25: The Dark Pool - brief piece for Halloween week.
O26: The Dance of Death by Flaubert - ditto
O27 - The folktale Poe borrowed for the Masque of the Red Death - ditto
N3: Insomnia Demons *
N17 Cellini and the Birth of Perseus
D22: Cellini faces Renaissance medicine
Somewhere in here are the Magonomia Bestiary KS episodes
The Laidly Worm of Spidlestone Heugh
Grim, King of the Ghosts
Malkins
The Two Sisters
Kenidjack
Satyrs, Beer, and Lions
Herne's Oak from Shakespeare was going to be part of this, and is written, but I think I'll pull it from this sequence, as I'm working on three more (Unicorn, Basilisk and Urban Wisp). It may make its way back via a later Fragment Week.
I'm really loving the poetry of Madison Caewin at the moment, and several of his are being prepped for an episode. One of his matches up well with Herne.
In the long term, the replacement for Celinni is likely to be "The Discoverie of Witches".
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Hi,
Covid delayed this, but these are the transcripts for April to mid-August this year.
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Podcast news
So things are a bit weird in the near future. Imagine if you will, dear reader, that I've had to do a month's worth of episodes while hopped up on painkillers for COVID, and then lost a week to influenza. That's the September episodes. Then the Magonomia Bestiary Kickstarter landed in Halloween week, so I moved those episodes into the spare week I had, also in September. September's going to be really, really odd.
Then we get to October, which starts normally, and then kicks off a two-episode per week thing for five weeks, to back the Bestiary.
So, the runsheet looks like this. Bold items are recorded and uploaded on timers, but I may not yet have written the accompanying notes to the blog.
S1: The White Witch *
This is where the Halloween week stuff landed. I topped and tailed it with fresh material to explain why it's out of its time sequence, so it is six short and one quite long, episodes. Basically it's moody poetry that could bit literal in game for the most part.
S2 Herne's Oak
S3 Fata Morgana
S4 The Dark Pool
S5 The folktale Poe borrowed for the Masque of the Red Death
S6: The Dance of Death by Flaubert**
S7: Gloramone by Madison Cawein**
S8: The Ghost-ship by Richard Middleton
S15 Cellini in Paris
S22 Magonomia - Haunted Homes 1 - in which I pick through "Haunted homes and family traditions of Great Britain" for ghosts Elizabethan and earlier. Again, Covid brain ramble warning.
S29 - Magonomia Haunted Homes 2. Covid brain - I distantly recall spending a lot of time saying I'm on the side of the Screaming Skull.
O6: Our Ladies of Death * A variant on the witches of the Suspira de Profundis.
O13: Haunted Homes 3 I was having so much fun doing Haunted Homes 2 that I did another right away. I have no idea at all what's in it. Seriously. None. I hope its a pleasant surprise for all of us.
O20: Celinni swears his statue is not haunted and Cellini offends the king's mistress were originally prepared as two episodes, but they are short, so they are both going live this day.
This is where we hit the Magonomia bit:
O25: The laidly toad
O28: Grim, King of the Ghosts
N1: Malkins
N3: Two sisters (Eala)
N8: Kenidjack the demon umpire
N10 Satyrs, beer and lions
N15 The street cry of the afanc egg seller
N17 Second thoughts on urban wisps Accidentally went live this week.
(There should be two more here. Probably basilisks and unicorns)
D1: Insomnia Angels
D15: Celinni and the fiery birth of Perseus
D22: The dong with a luminous nose by Edward Lear. I did The Two Gentlemen as a Spell effect last year and so it's almost a tradition.
J19: Celinni faces Renaissance Medicine. This ends the Celinni material.
The Ars Magica monster stats continue to lag terribly, but Andrew was paying me solid cash to write monsters for him, so you can, I hope, see why that had to be a priority. 8)
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I've prepared these early, so I have the decks clear for the Magonomia Kickstarter.
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I didn't get a lot of Ars Magica done this quarter, because I was doing the Magonomia Kickstarter and then the Magonomia stretch goals. Here's the product, though. https://timothyferguson.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/gff-october-december-2022.pdf
And here are the plans for 2023:
I'm taking part in #Dungeon23 via the #City23 variant, to force me to get the Venice material down on the page. Basically Dungeon23 is writing a room per day, for 365 days, to make a megadungeon. Instead I'll do at least a paragraph a day for Venice, every day. That will likely land in the blog once a week and the podcast once a month. It may go on my otherwise-barren insta, because it's a journalling exercise and I'm really into fountain pens now.
The upcoming episodes look like this. None are written into the blog, but they are all recorded and uploaded. An asterisk means it is a monster of the month. Stats are still not done. I hope, because I'm getting well of the weekly treadmill of episodes this year to start clawing that backlog in..
Jan
5 Gabrinus from Stories of the Rhine* (Faerie innkeeper)
12 The Swine Gods by Regina Bloch (demonic regio)
19 Venetian Treacle (historical alchemy - may move.)
26 Experimenti by Caterina Sforza (Real life alchemist)
Feb
2 Wolf of Ironwood by Eleanor Smith-Dampier* (Werewolf)
16 Who? by Maurice Level (Ghost story)
23 Cider magic in England
Mar
2 Diary of Mr Poynter by M R James* (Killer curtain)
16 Crimson Flower by Todd Robbins (Infernal regio)
Apr
6 The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes* (Ghost)
20 News From Scotland Concerning Witchcraft 1591 (historical document)
May
4 The Vampire by Vaseli Alecsandri* (Genuine Romanian vampire)
18 The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock (Taking things literally, this guy is doing the divided character sheet thing we have as an option for Arcadia)
Jun
1 The Demon of Memory* (Demon of nostalgia)
15 The Shrine of Death by Lady Dilke (Mystery cult initiation)
Aug
3 The Seventh Incantation* (Nyogtha is in the public domain now...)
Sep
7 The Visitor in the Vault* (Infernal ghost)
Oct
5 The Snowmaiden* from "The Secret" in "The Shrine of Death" (Ice nymph)
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The previously mentioned Venetian Treacle and Experimenti episodes have been pulled into my post a day project about Venice, so I've moved up News From Scotland Concerning Witchcraft (1591).
Next week will likely be me reading the first thirty-one daily Twitter/Insta posts regarding Venice, so you'll still get Experimenti and Venetian Treacle.
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So, it turns out the Venice episodes are a heap of work. The plan is to give you the February one this week and the transcripts up to two weeks later. My handwriting puzzles free OCR, so I'm using Youtube's voice to text, which is not very good. I'll look for other free solutions.
I've been having health problems, so I've been hitting the podcast release dates by cannibalising prepared episodes from future months, which is why the layout given earlier now looks completely out of whack. 8) I'm sure I'm on the mend. Basically the plan for the near future is two episodes written by me per month, and two episodes of public domain audio that's useful to us. One of these is a monster which, eventually, will be added to the Bestiary I've been neglecting for years.
The cider magic episode had to be pulled because it used material connected to the Magonomia Bestiary, which is still under NDA until it launches. I'm going to push it down a few months.
Back again. It turns out I've been mysteriously able to catch Influenza A in Australia during high summer. People are quite interested in how I managed it, given I've not been overseas, so for the next couple of weeks transcripts will lag behind the audio episodes (which I completed a while back).
The Mythic Venice "post a day" thing is going to push out until at least the end of March, but I seem to be falling into a rhythm of uploading them every two or three days. My written entries currently stretch to April 4.
The annoying thing is I know there's at least one other major source out there I've not been able to access, because there's a set of stories which turn up all over Venetian tourist sites and I've not seen their source. One of them is the ghost of an impious bellringer who sold his skeleton, post mortem, to an doctor for drinking money. Now his ghost goes about begging for funds to buy his skeleton back from the surgical school, while the skeleton itself, wreathed in spectral flame, walks each night to Saint Marco to ring the midnight bells. See? Great stuff.
My best guess is that they come from a trilogy of books by Alberto Toso Fei, only one of which has been translated into English (and none of which, irritatingly, are available via Australian interlibrary loan or Kindle). I'm sure I'll find a destroyed copy in a second-hand bookstore eventually.
...but enough of that. In brief, transcripts may be delayed a bit for a week or two.
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Podcast news:
Hi all: the menu for upcoming episodes look like this. Bold items are recorded and loaded on timers with Libsyn. Unbolded items are ones I've made a start on, not nailed down.
S7 The Visitor in the Vault by Lady Dilke (monster)
S14 Cider Fauns (a variant which I worked up too late for the Medieval Bestiary for Magonomia)
S21 The Wood of the Dead by Algernon Blackwood (faerie regio)
S28 Venice notes (this month is about shipbuilding and companions from the arsenalotti).
O5 Schalken the Painter by J Sheridan Le Fanu (monster)
O12 Medieval gift-giving and House Mercere
O19 The Phantom Town (Anon - regio)
O26 Venice notes: Likely either more of the shipbuilding and arsenollti material or more on local companion types.
N2 The Dragon of Cos by Mandeville (monster)
D7 The Child Who Went With the Faeries by J. Sheridan le Fanu (monster)
J4 The Ogre of Rashomon (monster)
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So, the "Write about Venice every day" thing has wrecked the podcast. On the upside I'm working on the first draft of a Venice sourcebook.
The plan for next year is being laid down and I need to know what people would prefer: a post per month about folklore from Devon (based on the recent book by Mark Norman) that click into the Cornwall web supplements we did a while ago, or a post per month about Cheshire folklore based on the the works of Christ In A Hole (shoutout to another fandom there). The game has shied away from North Wales because that's where the Tremere hang out in Blackthorn. For the Magonomia inclined this also suits the plot hook in the new bestiary about Elizabeth having a parthenogenetic birth, because the heir in her time isn't Prince of Wales so much as Duke of Cheshire and Flint. Also, this is the period where every English sovereign names their firstborn son Arthur to try and make a King Arthur (they call it off after four Prince Arthurs die without getting the throne) so it'd be Arthurian in flavour.
So, what's the preference?
I'm way behind with everything and my voice is shot, so that's not getting better anytime soon. THe pattern for next year is going to be 2 epsiodes written by me and 2 historical texts per month, one of which is a monster. Unless I pull the rip cord and choose to go full fanzine, in which case I'll be looking for 12 articles from other people.
Episode 500 is also coming up,and I think it needs something special, so...I need to work on that too.
State of play:
D
17: The Dead Men of Pest (vampire poem)
21: Gift giving in Mythic Europe ( I mean, clearly I should have put this here all along)
28 Nympholept (poem by Swinburne about mystery cult initiation)
J
4 Ogre of Rashomon (Japanese Beowulf)
11 First Cheshire or Devon ep.
18 Mice (poem by Bullet about demonic oppression)
25
F
1 To a cat (Swinburne - also about demonic oppression. I might condense those two)
8 Second Cheshire or Devon ep.
15 Smokey fancies (Cory)
22
29
M
7 Ghost girl (Poem - Price)
14 Third Cheshire or Devon ep
21 Sonnet for Spenser (Keats - mostly for the Magonomia fans, but its got a faerie monarch in it, so...)
28
A
4
11 Fourth Cheshire or Devon ep.
18 The Voice (poem - Browne)
15
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How has the podcast been wrecked by the Venice material? Did you lose a bunch of regular listeners?
If you pull the ripcord, I have articles standing by for you!
I would be curious about Cheshire, having lived there as a kid.
Oh, I've not been able to keep up with an episode a week or the podcast trabscripts. I'm writing a heap of Ars, but it's all hidden until the Venice thing is finished.
It's had less subscribers just because there's less material. The thing is designed to run on a shoestring, so the money side is fine.
I'll keep your offer in mind. 8)
My saga takes place in Devonshire, so that would be my preference...
Just a quick update on the outline given previously.
I've taken some burnout leave from work and I'm using it to pull together the rough draft of the Venice thing, so it will be around when the Definitive Edition goes live and we see the shape of the license. The first four chapters are done to rough draft. They are called "Who are you?, "The Actors" "The Stage and Backdrops" and "A Year of Festivals". It's 39 000 words long so far, and doesn't have monster stats, useful rules ported across from the official line, or indigenous magical traditions. It also doesn't have any of the obviously-possible appendixes, like faerie vendors for the market in the Merceria Some of those can be ported wholesale from the blog of the podcast, like the vendor of tears, the goblin costermongers, and the clock demon..
The next bit is domestic alchemy, Venetian glass and mirror magic, and lacemaking / net weaver magic. Before I dive into a review of the Vulgar Alchemy rules, I'm going to spend some of the time left on my leave putting in the work on podcast episodes. I'll hold off on the Cheshire stuff until I have Venice locked down. Fuller details in a couple of days.
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M
20 The Fairies - Willingham
28 This moth eats words (Exeter Book riddle)
A
4 Jeebung Polo Club
11 Three extracts from Padraic Colum's "The Boy Appenticed to an Enchanter".
M
2 The birds of Ibycus
J
6 The Awful Bugaoo
If you are one of the podcast's paid Patreon backers, you should have just recevied an email or other notification which gives you access to Draft Zero of the Venice material I've been working on during my burnout leave. It is currently locked behind a password because I don't want to scare off the rest of Ars fandom by displaying it in its current, ramshackle state. I'll keep working on it until the open license becomes available, and then kickstart it for a budget to get maps/deckplans/a cover/an editor/whatever.
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