It's a quite continental adventure spanning two years this session, as knights and ladies alike depart for France and adjoining regions to wage war and debate romance. And what's the deal with that Count of Ascalon, anyway?
Featuring:
Des
Dave S.
Jade
Jen
And…Edie the Dog
The campaign's wiki can be found here.
I'd read that J.R.R. Tolkein had set up the death of the Witch King as an homage to Macbeth, with the same prophecy but a woman and a halfling (not of the same race as man) contributing to his downfall somewhat equally.
ReplyDeleteThe invasion of France seemed oddly perfunctory. Was there no battle in the book, or did you just want to put it aside to focus on the much more entertaining romance? Leander is actually the perfect type of Romance knight - apart from the magical drugging - since he's always striving to win over his love, is consumed with jealousy, and really has to earn every favour from his lady. Or not as the case may be. Did his Amour not go away after he conceived a Love Wife(?) passion?
And I am a little sad that Daig's newfound counthood has spawned countless mistresses and bastards, failed to take into account his wife's feelings leading to her to discount her love for him after the shameless recounting of his many affairs. I guess she hoped she could counteract the worst of his pagan tendencies, but couldn't take being a cuckolded Countess and moved to the nearest county with a nunnery.
Somewhere Sir Gondrins is slinking away after his questions - which were designed to embarrass Leander - accidentally embarrassed the groom at his own wedding. Hopefully there will be no further fallout from this.
Paris is supposed to fall after a full battle, yeah. But I nixed that as, like you say, there's a lot more interesting stuff going on this year, and it seemed pretty even more perfunctory to go through the whole battle process. (Especially since there's a chance we may see another battle later in the year...tune in next week!)
DeleteLeander still has his Amor passion--they can exist simultaneously to a Love passion, as long as they're for two different people.
Is Daig's wife actually a Christian? Isn't she King Cadwy's daughter, and isn't he the ancient, weird, non-knight king? I would have guessed that he was pagan. Or was she just a lesser king's daughter? I don't quite recall.
DeleteAnd it's a bit surprising that Guineviere would come to this big wedding/tournament thing but Arthur wasn't there. Maybe he's out fighting and he left her behind? Maybe he just didn't want to be there for the unveiling of these new rules.
I was a little confused about both points. Maybe Guineviere knew her new rules would lead to a lot of people reading them, going back to a previous rule, saying "Wait..." and then having a lot of questions she didn't want to answer right then.
DeleteThe Man, The Myth. The Legend, The Hammer: Sir Daig.
ReplyDeleteCynfan, continues were his father Edern left off, completely dominating the tournament scene.
Jade is to tournaments what Dave is to fashion contest apparently. Jen's complete lack of surprise at the spawn of Cynrain owning everyone was spot-on. Wulfram probably made sure to write down a bunch of glowing tales of Cynrain's heroism for his monks to study.
DeleteWhenever I think of any of Cynrain's scions in a fight I always think of what that peasant said to Ademar in a Knight's Tale that the only way to beat Thatcher was while he was asleep. Kind of ironic because Cynrain is played by Rufus Sewel.
DeleteAlbum cover for this episode: http://tinyurl.com/NotoriousDAIG
ReplyDeletehahaha yes.
DeleteThis was actually quite difficult for me to make, almost entirely because your choice of character portrait really is not the most attractive of men, and I had to look at a lot of APP 7 pictures before I found one I could use.
DeleteDaig really does have good friends if they're okay being around him all year.
Daig's APP 9 now. He's getting more considerate now that he's a count.
DeleteI remember, but you said you only got rid of the horse smell. You still have the excessive amounts of the devil's red hair, which also covers your arms and hands...
DeleteDarn. I should've used Orangutang hands for the picture.
Yeah, now that his wife left him Daig is no longer getting his usual bi-monthly wax.
DeleteJust get Myrtle to do it for you now. You've got an acknowledged child with her, and now she's just an annual 5% chance away from having a shot at that Countess position.
DeleteI believe in you. You can teach Leander how to neglect your wife to death. Unless you wanted to acknowledge your Love Wife 15 and devote yourself to making amends and experience a sudden onset of personal growth and responsibility. Perhaps some older pagan knight who also discovered Countship might have some words of advice for you.
I think we all know Daig was only pretending to love his wife and his subsequent actions were the result of his mental breakdown from trying to suppress his true feelings for his only love, Lady Loorette.
DeleteThis is easy to deduce by those that truly understand the rules of love and know you may only have one Amor or Love at any given time, excepting that one of them is for Guenever. The dice remembered and took extreme action against Daig for breaking that most sacred rule.
Oh yeaaaaaaaah, I had thought that gaining Love Wife removed Amour, but you're right, his all-consuming Amour for Loorette would preclude any possibility of happiness I guess.
DeleteI'm sure she's impressed with his actions this last year and a half.
The best/worst part of that is that the two will never get together.
DeleteEspecially not now that we have been dropped tantalizing hints of a Cynfan/Loorette pairing.
DeleteOnly if she can manage to ditch her chaste for an afternoon.
DeleteIf tournament performance has the potential to make ladies swoon, then I'll bet on Jade winning a tournament over you making any kind of roll that you want to.
DeleteI showed the image to Des and the look on her face as she slowly realized what she was looking at was priceless. Thanks for trawling through all the low APP pics, Jake. I know that pain well.
ReplyDeleteAs for Daig's ability to transcend his looks, it's a perfect example of how Pendragon's Glory mechanics reflect how people will give someone a pass on a lot of other counts (no pun intended) if he's otherwise famous. Check out this video of Shane MacGowan drunkenly crooning a ballad, and how everyone reverently stops talking to listen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6Y2yTirltk
I love all the shushing going on up in there.
Deletehaving just about caught up on this campaign, I am a bit saddened I now have to wait for new material. of everything that happened, to me the most profound moment was after Cynrain found Mavis, and she was singing with the other new knights, and it reminded him of how he and Wulfram used to be so many years ago, and shed a tear in his memory.
ReplyDeleteVery very touching.