The following are my session notes (slightly cleaned up) from a session I ran a while ago. I hope it can be an illustration for just how low-prep an Ars Magica adventure can be given source material of sufficient quality. See https://blakearchive.org/copy/mhh.d?descId=mhh.d.illbk.17 for the original.
I fully acknowledge that this post is rife with anachronism. YSMV.
A Memorable Fancy
The just man rages in the wilds where lions roam
loosing the eternal horses from the dens
of night, crying Empire is no more!
and now the lion & wolf shall cease.
This cry echoes off the mountain tops of Albion, back through time, to our saga...
The characters are on a hunt in the fairy forest when they see a Golden Eagle fly overhead.
"When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius. Lift up thy head!"
William Blake is suddenly standing behind the characters.
Blake: “A fun little proverb I just learned from a friend in Hell. I seem to have gotten a bit lost on the way home. Could any of you point me in the direction of London?”
introductions…
A biblically-accurate angel appears
Blake: “Let me guess: ‘Be not afraid!’ How do you expect them to feel when you come in all wings, eyes, and wheels! You want to talk about restraint…”
The angel changes into the form of a man, perfect in all proportions, and says in a voice like the blaring of trumpets
…“O pitiable foolish young man! O horrible, O dreadful state! Consider the hot burning dungeon thou art preparing for thyself to all Eternity, to which thou art going in such career.”
Blake: “Perhaps you will be willing to show me my eternal lot, and we will contemplate together upon it, and see whether your lot or mine is most desirable.”
Angel: “Very well.” He turns to the PCs. “You shall accompany us. Let this man’s folly be a lesson to you all.”
So he took me through a stable, and through a church, and down into the church vault, at the end of which was a mill; through the mill we went, and came to a cave; down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way, till a void boundless as a nether sky appeared beneath us, and we held by the roots of trees, and hung over this immensity; but I said: “If you please, we will commit ourselves to this void, and see whether Providence is here also; if you will not, I will.” But he answered: “Do not presume, O young man; but as we here remain, behold thy lot, which will soon appear when the darkness passes away.”
So I remained with him sitting in the twisted root of an oak; he was suspended in a fungus, which hung with the head downward into the deep.
By degrees we beheld the infinite abyss, fiery as the smoke of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun, black but shining; round it were fiery tracks on which revolved vast spiders, crawling after their prey, which flew, or rather swum, in the infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals sprung from corruption; and the air was full of them, and seemed composed of them. These are Devils, and are called powers of the air. I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot. He said: “Between the black and white spiders.”
Vast Spider
Faerie Might: 20 (Animal)
Characteristics: Int –2, Per +5, Pre 0, Com –3, Str +3, Sta 0, Dex +2, Qik +3
Size: +2
Age: n/a
Confidence Score: 1 (3)
Virtues and Flaws: None that came up
Personality Traits: Relentless +3, Cheerful –3
Reputations: Powers of the Air (mythical) 3
Combat: Bite: Init +9, Attack +10, Defense +10, Damage +6 Soak: +7
Wound Penalties: –1 (1–4), –3 (5–8), –5 (9–12), Incapacitated (13–16)
Pretenses: Athletics 5 (climbing), Awareness 8 (spotting prey), Brawl 3 (bite), Living Language 2 (threats)
Powers:
Encumbrance: 0 (0)
Vis: 1 pawn Auram in each set of eyes
But now, from between the black and white spiders, a cloud and fire burst and rolled through the deep, blackening all beneath so that the nether deep grew black as a sea, and rolled with a terrible noise.
Angel: Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me… Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth.. [where were you] when He fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place
Beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest, till looking East between the clouds and the waves, we saw a cataract of blood mixed with fire, and not many stones’ throw from us appeared and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent. At last to the East, distant about three degrees, appeared a fiery crest above the waves; slowly it reared like a ridge of golden rocks, till we discovered two globes of crimson fire, from which the sea fled away in clouds of smoke; and now we saw it was the head of Leviathan.
Angel: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
His forehead was divided into streaks of green and purple, like those on a tiger’s forehead; soon we saw his mouth and red gills hang just above the raging foam, tinging the black deeps with beams of blood, advancing toward us with all the fury of a spiritual existence.
Angel: Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope? … Any hope of subduing him is false; the mere sight of him is overpowering… Follow me, despise thyself and repent in dust and ashes.
My friend the Angel climbed up from his station into the mill. I remained alone, and then this appearance was no more; but I found myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moonlight, hearing a harper who sung to the harp; and his theme was: “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”
But I arose, and sought for the mill, and there I found my Angel, who, surprised, asked me how I escaped.
Blake: “All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics; for when you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight, hearing a harper. But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I show you yours?” He laughed at my proposal; but I by force suddenly caught him in my arms, and flew Westerly through the night, till we were elevated above the earth’s shadow; then I flung myself with him directly into the body of the sun; here I clothed myself in white, and taking in my hand Swedenborg’s volumes, sunk from the glorious clime, and passed all the planets till we came to Saturn. Here I stayed to rest, and then leaped into the void between Saturn and the fixed stars.
“Here,” said I, “is your lot; in this space, if space it may be called.” Soon we saw the stable and the church, and I took him to the altar and opened the Bible, and lo! it was a deep pit, into which I descended, driving the Angel before me. Soon we saw seven houses of brick. One we entered. In it were a number of monkeys, baboons, and all of that species, chained by the middle, grinning and snatching at one another, but withheld by the shortness of their chains.
The “houses of brick” are industrial chicken coops. The chains hang from a walkway above. STR+Athletics target 10 to pull the chains and prevent a primate from devouring its neighbors. There are more chains than hands to hold them though, and it is inevitable that some cannot be held back.
However, I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then the weak were caught by the strong, and with a grinning aspect, first coupled with and then devoured by plucking off first one limb and then another till the body was left a helpless trunk; this, after grinning and kissing it with seeming fondness, they devoured too. And here and there I saw one savourily picking the flesh off his own tail. As the stench terribly annoyed us both, we went into the mill; and I in my hand brought the skeleton of a body, which in the mill was Aristotle’s Analytics.
(A character (Second Sight?) notices something strange about one of the bodies. The party must retrieve it from the floor. Who knows how they’ll do it.)
So the Angel said: “Thy phantasy has imposed upon me, and thou oughtest to be ashamed.”
I answered: “We impose on one another, and it is but lost time to converse with you whose works are only Analytics.”
To close the session, the players discuss whose eternal lot was most desirable, and why?