I'm wondering if there is any on-line material about games that have been played focused on Voluntas up in Yorkshire. (Up from where I am currently anyway.)
The map at the back of HEIRS OF MERLIN shows it to the West of Scarborough and to the North West of Pickering by a large wood.
The description in the book says it's near the village of Wilton. Now there is a Wilton in the area but it lies between Pickering and Scarborough and to the south of where I think that wood must be.
Has anyone used this location and if so where did they flesh it out to?
As someone who has family on the southwest edge of the North Yorkshire Moors, there are two Wiltons. One is on the North side of the moors in between Middlesborough and Saltburn, so it would be a day's hard travel across the moors from Pickering. One is on the south side, where the modern road between Pickering and Scarborough goes. There is a forest there - Dalby Forest, north of Wilton, has some of the darkest skies in Yorkshire so is used for astronomy in the modern day.
The southern one is Wilton, Ryedale
The northern one is Wilton, Redcar & Cleveland which happens to have a history of a castle. According to wikipedia, King John gave a noble family the right to fortify their manor house in 1210.
Choose which one suits you better. Timothy Ferguson went with the southern one when creating a map for his blog. I like the southern one as it's closer to York and close to a lot of places which have 13th century churches, and there are monasteries not too far away. The northern one might suit you if you prefer being away from cities.
Actually, looking at the map the northern one is the other side of Guisborough from the moors, so isn't really on the moors properly. It would however allow you to have companions such as Sir Guy of Guisborough and George of Lazenby.
I found the southern one via Google Earth and I'll probably go with it but it isn't quite where the (admittedly sketchy) map in HEIRS OF MERLIN puts Voluntas.
I also found Bishop Wilton much further south. It even has it's own saint!
(Actually, I wonder if I could use her to provide the Meddlesome Saint Hook...)
Hmm....looking at the map for places around Pickering, stape has a Roman road going southwest of it and then north across the moors. Stape is due North of Pickering, so maybe if you situate Voluntas somewhere between Wilton and Stape you get the "roughly north of Pickering" area while still having Wilton as the easiest village to do business with.