Letters From Outland

Dear Cardwyn--

Hi, Sis! Greetings from another world! 

I'm not exactly sure if you can call Outlands another world, as (I've been told) this is what's left of the place after primal forces tore the world of Draenor apart. Given how vast Azeroth is, I find it hard to believe that anything could be powerful enough to destroy an entire world. Even the Scourge can't do more than just scratch the surface of the Plaguelands. 

I made it safely across the Dark Portal to find demons pressing our forces from the front. The stairs leading to the portal from the Outland side funnel the attacks toward the middle of our lines, so we don't have to spend as much time defending our flanks. Here, both the Horde and Alliance are defending our opening into Outland in much the same way as we fought at Ahn'Qiraq in what feels like ages ago. I ran into Keyrissa when I stopped by the field hospital set up to the side of the stairs, and she says to tell you hello.

If you can see it in the background, the
sheer size of the infernals here are mind boggling.

I checked in with the Nethergarde in command on the stairs, and he sent me to the Alliance base called Honor Hold.

To be honest, I'm surprised that the old Alliance forces have lasted this long, shut behind the Dark Portal, without going insane. They have all aged significantly over the years, and I can't decide how much of that was the stress of constant warfare versus the natural progression of time.

Anyway, when I landed I was accosted by Marshal Isildor before I could check in at the Keep, 

and he gave me a once over and said "You'll do, Sister."

I told him I wasn't his sister --and that you'd take exception to his attitude-- and he didn't like that very much. 

I reported in at the Keep, and I was stunned to see Danath Trollbane of Arathor standing before me. I was sure he was long dead, as did everybody else, but the Light works its miracles.

He was speaking with an Elf so I had to wait my turn, but if I heard right that Elf is Turalyon's and Alleria's son. Given how we used to play Rangers and Trolls as kids, it feels weird to have the son of the Ranger General of Quel'Thalas right here in front of me.

And don't tell him I said this, but I think he probably takes after his mother in looks. I mean, I've seen the statues at the entrance to Stormwind, and Turalyon looks like someone who was told to clean the latrine for mouthing off. (Not that you'd know anything about that....)

After I met with Lord Trollbane, he gave me orders to report out into the field once I got settled into my barracks. 

Ever since, I've been out and about in this foreign hellscape.

The Orcs here, known as Fel Orcs, are a lot like the Dragonmaw and Blackrock clans in that nobody --not even the Horde-- likes them. Oh, and they're red for some reason. Nobody knows why, but I get the feeling I'm going to get the job of finding out.

But the thing that I noticed the most is that there must be something in the water, because it seems like everyone around here is abnormally tall. It's as if they've all been drinking that Firewater you are fond of...

Even the demons are much bigger than found in Azeroth:

And there are new varieties, too. Like this one, that seems like something out of a teenage boy's fever dreams:

But you know the old saying about the bigger they are...

Some things never do change. Such as the line for the latrine...

Or some of the goofy armor pieces that they hand out here. They may be better pieces than what I had back in the Plaguelands, but there's no way that I'm not getting an axe in the gut along the way.

What good is the armor if anybody can tickle you while you're wearing it? I may need you to ask your friend Keren* to come over here and complain to the smiths about this.

But one thing does still stand out: the power of friendship. I was tasked with seeking revenge on some Fel Orcs --the red ones-- for ensorcelling an Honor Hold officer, and after surveying the field I realized I was in over my head. But a new friend of mine, one of these Draenei you've no doubt heard about, volunteered to support me. Were it not for her, I'd have likely not made it back alive.

Light! How they knew my name is beyond me.
I might need  your skills to investigate this.

She has a sister of her own out here in Outland, but she hasn't seen her in a while. We'll have to seek her out once we get out of this peninsula.

I do believe that it is best for you right now to stay home and heal some more, because I'm sure that this place would rip the scabs off of your mental scars. I've heard that other parts of Outland are much more beautiful than this place, and I hope to finally get out of here to seek them out soon.

Tell the rest of the family hello for me, and that yes, I am taking care of myself out here. I hear that my nieces and nephew are getting pretty big now! You'll have to tell me more about their adventures in your next letter. Light willing, I'll receive a short leave of absence so I can come back home to visit. Maybe I'll drag my friend, Zarleigha, along with me. She's not been to Elwynn, and my description of home and the fishing pond intrigues her.

Be well!

--Linna

*Yes, that's her in-game name. And yes, she's used to those sorts of jokes.

EtA: Fixed a grammatical glitch in the first paragraph.

EtA: Fixed multiple "but" sentences right after each other. Yeah yeah yeah, ::giggle:: ::giggle:: ::giggle::... He wrote "but" a lot....

"Great Caesar's Ghost!"*

I swear I didn't even notice it at first.

I was on a couple of different toons the other night, talking with my questing buddy. She knows how to find me and has a standing invitation to ping me whenever, so when I was on and was just putzing around she pinged me and we chatted for a bit.

When I have nowhere to go and nothing to do, I tend to just roam around wherever. In this case, I was avoiding my guilded toons --Briganaa and Cardwyn-- so I was just cruising around on Neve, then Az, and then Linna. You know, hopping from flight point to flight point, riding around to nowhere, just chatting away without much of a concern of any mobs aggroing on me. Well, I was on Linna, just flying around and then landing and chatting, when I landed at Nethergarde Keep. I summoned up her warhorse and cavorted around the Keep for a bit, then around the outside of the Keep. While I was typing a reply, a flash of light caught my eye: the lightning that's near the Dark Portal. I sat there, captivated by it for a moment, and I got a sudden feeling.

The time is now.

So I rode south...

"Welcome to the nightmare. Indeed."

Dismounted...

Paused a moment...

And ran across...

"Well," I told my questing buddy, "I did a thing."

"What did you do?" she asked.

I sent her this pic via Discord in reply.....

"SQUEEEEEE!!!!"

"Bring on the clown gear," I replied, tongue planted firmly in cheek. 

Truth be told, I have no idea what'll happen, as it's been ages since I played a Paladin in any sort of serious fashion. I never got that far with Linna here in Classic --she was my boosted character as a precaution in case the raid needed a Ret Pally-- and the last time I played any Paladin for any length of time would have to be Tomakan back in Cataclysm. Quintalan retired just before Cataclysm went live, after the pre-patch, and I stopped playing Balthan when Rades' Bloggers Guild faded away.**

But if nothing else, Linna can send letters back to Card while the latter recuperates from her time spent in Naxxramas.

Saints preserve us, because I'm sure I'm not ready for this. My gear is low-mid 50s Greens that you get from the boost, I don't remember the rotation much at all, and while my memories of Wrath Paladins were mostly positive, TBC/TBC Classic is an entirely different beast.

Oh well, here goes nothing.

*Yes, the tagline that Perry White of The Daily Planet used to say in the old 1950s Adventures of Superman television show. Those shows ended up on the afternoon cartoon/kids block on our local independent around my 4th or 5th Grade.

**For all I know, Balthan could still be the guild master.

"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!"

When I was a kid, I used to get sick.

A lot.

As in, "holy crap how are you still alive?" a lot.

I don't believe in the "that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger" nonsense, because I've lived through a winter that had me catch bronchitis, the flu (twice), strep throat, scarlet fever, and pneumonia. That was just ONE WINTER, that of my First Grade. Eventually, my doctor told my parents that if I caught one more thing it would likely kill me, so they pulled me from school and made an arrangement with my teacher for me to complete my First Grade schoolwork at home.

I, uh, was not a very attentive student at that time, and although I lived in fear of my father, I could get away with goofing off with my mother.*

But for a hyperactive kid, being cooped up is like a death sentence. You can't go outside, you can't run around**, and you can't make any noise. I did love reading, but there's only so much schoolwork type of reading you can do before you start to go crazy.

What kept me sane? My imagination.

There were three shows on television that captivated my attention --two series, one movie-- and I'd spend hours dreaming about them: Batman, Speed Racer, and The Adventures of Robin Hood.

***

The first, the 1960s live action Batman television series, was what I lived for on Saturday nights at 7:30 PM. Even my aunts and uncle were cued to that I loved that show, so when we'd visit my mom's family*** they made sure that the television was tuned to Adam West and Burt Ward. My mom had a pair of button down cardigan sweaters, one blue and one yellow, so my brother and I would wear them as capes, mimicking Batman (me, because I was the oldest dammit) and Robin (my brother). 

Oh, I did. Believe me, I did.

 

In an era before The Dark Knight (the comic book), Adam West's semi-comic version of Batman was what I knew, and I loved his wit and his gadgets and ability to see through the villain of the week's plans. It seems so odd to me now that Batman struck such a chord with me, given that superheroes as a genre today aren't really my bag, given I'm kind of sick and tired of all the superhero movies out these days.

***

The second, Speed Racer, was more of a forbidden fruit for me than anything else. 

Oh, not in the way you'd expect, mind you. My parents were fine with the early anime show. It was that Speed Racer was pulled from the local airwaves because it was "too violent". 

I wish I were making it up, but there it is. 

I mean, I've seen Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, and all of the old Popeye cartoons, and they were all vastly more violent than Speed Racer. But since Speed Racer involved car crashes, it was supposedly far more violent than those others. Parental complaints led to Speed getting pulled off our local independent station, and there was nothing I could do about that. 

And oh yeah, somebody bitched about the word "demon" in the theme song. Yes, my hometown is right on the northern edge of the Bible Belt. Does it show?

But while it was on, I loved that show. I loved the Mach 5 so much that 5 became my favorite number. Add to that Speed's propensity to getting into trouble with the "bad guys" that always led to confrontations on the race track****, yeah I was hooked. I had no idea what anime was --I believe both Speed Racer and the few years later import Star Blazers were lumped into the name "Japanimation" back then-- but in an era before the dominance of NASCAR in the US, motorsports were dominated by the Indy 500 and Le Mans, and Speed tapped into that popularity with a car so far out that it was more James Bond than Mazerati.

***

I saved the best for last, and I referenced it in a comment I made over on Bhagpuss' Inventory Full: The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Since I was sick a lot, some of my earliest memories were of me being propped up on the couch where I could watch television when I was recovering. We only had one television at the time, and it was a black and white one*****, but it was my window into the world. 

In those days, before Rupert Murdoch launched FOX as a fourth network, most localities in the US had at least one independent television station. Those stations were typically filled with old shows in syndication, cartoons in the afternoon that they could put on cheaply, and old movies. Tons and tons of old movies.

Like, oh, the 1938 Errol Flynn classic mentioned above.

Channel 19, before it became one of the first FOX stations back in the mid-80s, would have movies at 1 PM daily (ending at 3 PM in time for cartoons), and would have an average of three movies on during the weekends during the days. And it always seemed that whenever I was sick, The Adventures of Robin Hood was sure to be on in one of those slots. If you want adventure, patriotism, strong female characters (for the era), and more than a bit of swashbuckling adventure, Robin, Lady Marian, Little John, and the Merry Men were hard to beat. And for a kid watching the swordplay and archery in an era before D&D or the SCA exploded onto the scene, it was more than you could ever hope for.

You can't have a good movie without good
villains. Before I knew him as Sherlock
Holmes, Basil Rathbone (center) was
Sir Guy of Gisbourne. (From the DVD.)

It was little surprise, I suppose, that several years later when I was introduced to Lord of the Rings and D&D that I just hopped on board that train and haven't looked back.

***

It's not hyperbole to say that those early influences helped pave the way for my love of gaming. A love of adventure, heroism, and the medieval period are pretty much a straight line from those early influences to RPGs to video game RPGs and finally to MMOs. It probably also provides a background why I play the way I play; I don't explicitly think it, but my deference to letting others have loot first and helping others rather than asking for help could be easily traced from Batman and Robin Hood to today. From my perspective, it's just being a decent player, but for others it could easily be seen as being a 'goody-two-shoes' and 'overly chivalrous'. But you can't please everyone, I suppose.

Now, if you'll excuse me, there are some influences from my later childhood that I need to reconnect with as well....

*How times changed. When the mini-Reds were old enough for school, I was much more easy-going than my wife was. I swore I would not be my father, and I refused to engage in strict discipline. Thankfully, the mini-Reds turned out okay, but I was basically the "Good Cop" to my wife's "Bad Cop".

**We lived in an apartment that Spring while our house was being built, and the family below us had a newborn. So my brother and I weren't allowed to run around the apartment at all. Or bang on the metal container that held our Lincoln Logs like a drum.

***She was the oldest of six, so only she and her closest sibling in age were married. Her second sibling was still 3+ years away from her wedding.

****And that the mysterious Racer X was in fact Speed's older brother, there were definitely overtones that as a kid you never realized weren't in cartoons before.

*****We didn't buy our first color television until 1979. I remember that day well, because we bought the set at Sears, brought it home with the box in the trunk of my parents' 1972 Chevy Nova with the trunk lid tied down with twine, and when my dad turned on the TV for the first time, there was Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk in his full green skinned glory.

Distractions, Distractions

Today has been a day for LoFi music.

Part of that is dealing with the unexpected stuff at work, part of it is the ice storm that's currently trying to switch over to snow right now. 

This is what it was like around mid-morning.
That's ice and ice pellets on the ground and
road. Not snow or slush. And I was not crazy
enough to go driving in it. (Photo from the
Cincinnati Enquirer.)

 

And part of it is just dealing with the hand I was dealt with in Classic.

***

I got on Card this morning, when nobody else was around (and at work there was a (very boring) all hands meeting talking about sales), and killed some mobs for the Frostsaber questline. I never really did any of those quests because I never really wanted a Frostsaber*, and to be fair there's a lot of quests up in Winterspring that I never did on Card, so there's plenty of quest opportunity there. Because of that, Card is about halfway to L63 right now, still not having gone to Outland, and at this rate I think she can make L64 fairly easily before the grind starts to get extreme.

But it's something to do, you know, when I'm not on Neve.

I did get on Season of Mastery for a bit, but I discovered that quick leveling does have one big problem: you outlevel your ability to make gold for training purposes very fast. Since you then have to spend time grinding crafting so you can sell it on the AH and make gold that way, it slows you down a bit on an artificial basis. Still, the pace of leveling is actually, well, fun. It's faster than the old Classic servers, naturally, but it just feels smoother, I guess. I haven't gotten to the mid-30s, which is where Classic really started to slow down (before TBC Classic gave leveling a boost with XP tweaks), so we'll see when I get there.

Those two things serve as a distraction, of course, because the big question mark is what to do with Briganaa. 

I've thought about taking her to another guild's raid that fits in more with my time slot, but some of the guilds I'd have considered either left the server or blew up and don't have much of a presence at all any more.

"What happened to Conquerors?" I asked when I heard that another guild, Midnight Souls, blew up a few weeks ago. "I haven't seen any of them around much lately."

"Oh, they imploded several months ago," someone replied. "No big loss if you ask me."

Considering I'd never had any bad interactions with them, I was kind of surprised.

So.... Scratch off two potential guild landing spots.

Even so, I'm not exactly sure if I want to just go raid somewhere else right now, anyway. I did raid with another guild's alts on Az for a while back in Classic, but when that raid stopped being able to down Ragnaros due to geared people leaving, I found out that other guilds don't have it as well as we did. And with people not really spamming LFG (or using the LFG tool) to set up dungeon runs as much these days, there isn't as much of a chance to get to know people before I'd consider joining a raid opening.

Plus, there's that little matter of running the gearing up rat race should I join another guilds' raids, and.... No. I'm good for now.

So I'll just pull Brig out of the garage on Fridays, and occasionally help out when my questing buddy needs a second for making spellcloth, but I think that Brig is going to just not be my focus for a while. I'm just not into the complexity of her rotation, and I'd rather not be told how to up my DPS by people I barely know. 

There's always the option of server transfers, but I'm not really interested in that right now. If I transfer anywhere, it's faction transferring rather than server transferring.

***

There is at least one option available that I've not fully explored: Final Fantasy XIV.

As nice as it has been seeing FF XIV kind of stick it to WoW without really trying, and that FF XIV has a ton of story that's (apparently) well done, there's a lot about FF XIV that makes me uneasy. The whole "stick a leaf on your name so people know you're new" does kind of bother me when you're trying to just kind of blend in and not be noticed. FF XIV does encourage people to help out newbies, but you know, I'd rather not be helped if it means everybody knowing you're new.

And there's the art part about FF XIV. You know, the part that screams "anime": bunny people, cat people, tiny people that have a vaguely childlike look about them. Thankfully, that last group don't make me feel as dirty as when I see the Elin in TERA.** There's the anime look of the humans too, which simply doesn't do it for me, because the little anime I watched were first generation anime, like Speed Racer and Star Blazers/Space Battleship Yamato. I don't have that generational connection to the genre and art that it seems a ton of people do now, so it's just not my thing.

Still, it is a possibility. If I can find a server that works for me. I already poked around enough to try to create a toon on my son's server only to find that they're not accepting new toons there now.

Oops.

*I did the raptor grind on Quintalan back in Wrath, so I knew what the grind meant.

**I still cringe when I think about it. The fanservice to the outfits in TERA aside, the Elin alone --as well as the players who "dress" their Elin in the most revealing outfits possible-- make me want to vomit. There's a reason why I uninstalled the game, and it has nothing to do with how my Elves looked while playing.

EtA: Frostsaber, not Wintersaber. Oops.

Invisibility Blues

Awkward.

Very very awkward.

Technically speaking, my last progression raid was on January 31st. I was hoping to go out with a kill of Kael'Thas, so I could say that I completed Phase 2 of TBC Classic before I bowed out. 

As with most of TBC Classic, that didn't go as planned.

In the lead meeting after the raid on the 24th we settled on who my replacement would be. That person was ready to go, except she didn't have a Vashj or Kael'Thas kill on her toon. Since it made sense for her to get the kills out of the way before our raid moved into Phase 3 content, I stepped aside to let her have my spot to get the kills done. I put myself on the bench, and I figured that as long as someone didn't show* I was done. That Kael'Thas kill would elude me, but I didn't have to go through anything weird or maudlin at the end of my progression raiding career.

Well, things got weird real fast.

My replacement got into an SSC run --and a corresponding Vashj kill-- during the week, so she was locked to SSC already. That meant there was a spot available for me, but on the boss I didn't need. Still, I was a good trooper and offered to fill in for the Vashj kill after they downed K'T.

And naturally they killed Kael'Thas on the second try, so once again I was reminded that I wasn't going to finish Phase 2 as a raider.

***

I had parked Briganaa in front of the SSC summoning stone hours before the raid, so I was ready to summon people once the Tempest Keep portion of the raid finished. 

And I made the conscious decision to not draw attention to myself by not using my headset during the raid, so no microphone for me. I did have another reason to not use the headset for technical reasons**, so I relied on that excuse when telling the rest of the lead team that I was going to be on mute. And I was glad I stayed on mute, because I could have made a ton of quips along the way but in the end I kept quiet.

There was still a lot of talk about the Kael'Thas kill, and I didn't realize how much it stung until I heard it.

Along the way, I got a whisper from my replacement thanking me for covering for her. I told her "You're welcome!" but for an insane moment I was jealous. This was supposed to be my spot, and my kill, I grumbled. It was the only thing I wanted before my time was to end, and it was denied me. But after a few minutes, I shook myself out of my funk and just accepted that was how things were going to be.

***

And the run to Vashj was incredibly awkward, mainly because we simply could not bring Vashj down. 

The RNG gods frowned on us by having Striders and Naga appear in the same location --and naturally the Striders feared the melee-- or we'd have an AOE damage hit the melee right after Vashj would spew her own lightning strike, and melee would drop. Or that people were slow and missed a tainted orb, causing more damage and/or healers to drop. Or.... Well, you get the idea.

I had nothing to do with any of these things per se, but the fact that I was there and my replacement wasn't, and K'T went down quickly and Vashj wasn't, stuck in my craw. As if I was the problem.

And that the raid was talking as if I wasn't there at all --there were a couple of offhand comments that made it plain that people forgot-- I was painfully aware that I was the interloper, much like how it was when I first attended AQ40 on Labor Day 2020.*** Without any whispers of encouragement from people.

So when the raid finally ended without a Vashj kill, I posted a "Farewell!" to raid chat and dropped group, then switched to Neve so nobody could find me.

Excuse me?
What am I, chopped liver?

 

***

All through today I regretted my decision to keep running Karazhan on Fridays.

I really wanted to just cut the cord, go away, and not have to deal with anybody's whispers or pity. Or worse, radio silence.

It was not made any easier that I'm going through the same thing at work.

Sorry, I can't speak much about that end of things, but the reality is that as awkward as I felt in that raid, it's 10x worse at work. My direct bosses who have supported me from the beginning have been great, as well as my coworkers and the administrative leadership within the company, but the rest of it....

/sigh

I think I need to run Kara, just to see if I can shake myself out of this funk. And if that doesn't work, my WoW time is coming due in two weeks. I can take a sabbatical for a while if need be.

*Let's be honest here: we have had a few instances of people not showing, so we've had to scramble to fill in a spot on the team. We run so lean that we don't have a bench at all, so me being on the bench is a luxury for the team.

**For some reason Discord does not like it when my headset went on mute and basically shuts down my headset mic connection to the app. I've searched for a solution --and even deleted and reinstalled Discord-- to no avail. The only solution is to unplug and plug my dongle back in. I personally blame Logitech for this, since it's their headset and I've already had to use contact cleaner twice on switches on the headset, but I've no definitive proof.

***It was that long ago? Really?

****Paraphrasing. She was quite.... creative... in her language.

Something I Never Thought I'd Ever See... Ever

I opened my email this morning to find this there:

Seriously.

As a Cincinnati native, I was attending college the last time the Bengals were in the Super Bowl --yes, I'm old-- but after decades of losing and heartbreak and bizarro stuff that can only be described as "losing in the most Bengals way possible", my team has climbed the mountaintop to reach the summit.

It's as likely as me picking up Retail WoW and declaring it the best thing ever.

But here we are.

If we win, great. If we lose, that's okay. But we're back, and I'm still stunned.

An RPG from the Past: Ars Magica

Note: This is likely the first of an occasional series about RPGs and/or other games that I've either played or wanted to play in the past. Look, I get that people aren't likely to find these interesting, so I'm doing this more for my own trip down memory lane. Up first is a game that's been a lot on my mind lately, Ars Magica.

 

A long time ago, around the time my wife and I were married, she worked at the Cincinnati Museum Center* and we got to know several fellow recent college graduates on staff. This was during the first huge surge of popularity for Magic: The Gathering, and a couple of her friends on staff offered to show us how to play the game. We'd played Talisman and other board games such as Advanced Civilization**, so I figured we were ready for a new challenge. We met up at a coffee shop attached to a local bookstore, set up the cards, and started playing. 

The game was okay, I suppose, but what I remembered the most about that evening was one of my wife's friends casually mentioning role playing games. 

"Sure," I said in reply. "I played D&D back in the day, lived through the Satanic Panic, and I played MERP as well."

"MERP?"

"Middle-earth Role Playing."

Oh, Iron Crown Enterprises.
My old friend. I have waaaay too
many splatbooks from them.
(Pic from worthmore.com.)

"Ah! Have you tried Ars Magica?"

"No, I haven't," I replied after a short pause. I'd tried a couple of less well known RPGs, such as Gamma World, Top Secret, and some indie games people were developing, but Ars Magica didn't ring a bell.

"Oh! You have to try it!" he replied. "It's a game where the main characters are all Magi and it's set in Mythic Europe, where all of the myths are real."

"So like the setting for Darklands, then," I added, making the connection between the Microprose video game and his RPG.

"Yeah, but the system is really different. Magi are really the main characters in the game and are much more powerful than any other character."

"Oh." I preferred playing Clerics and healer types, so that kind of put a damper on my enthusiasm. Still, I didn't want to turn down the potential offer of playing another RPG, so I kept him talking about the setting and how it all worked out.

The next Friday that we got together to play some M:tG, he handed me the core rulebook:

From all over the internet, but
this one was from Atlas Games.

I was used to an RPG having multiple rulebooks, such as D&D or Rolemaster, so a singular rulebook of around 160 pages or so kind of threw me. I was expecting something, well, more massive than it seemed. 

But still, when I read the first words of a narrative story provided to the reader...

The wisps of mist swirled around Lucienne as she trudged the last few yards up the hill with the others. Nearing the summit, she stopped and looked up to see the goal of her journey, the tower of Mistridge Covenant thrusting heavenward through the gray fog. Perched on the parapet at the top of the tower was the ragged silhouette of a woman clawing at the air. A screech echoed over the hill as she suddenly plunged earthward. In a mad flurry of feathers, she turned into a large raven, then flew off across the valley.

Watching the bird disappear into the distance, Lucienne looked behind her. There lay the rolling countryside, lush, green, and fertile, home of the common folk, home of the life she was now leaving forever. Somewhere just beyond the horizon lay Foix, the city that had burned her father for heresy and left her mother dead in the gutter. In that city she had no future, but what lay before her now?

She glanced uneasily at the tall, gray-robed wizard beside her. Grimgroth, her future mentor: she would call him master. He had stopped beside her and was searching her face with a somber, inscrutable gaze.

Avoiding his eyes, terrified of what she might see, Lucienne peered forward to see the gate of the covenant through the mist. Once she passed through that portal, there would be no turning back. Inside awaited a whole new world.

Thoughts and memories of her former life rushed through her mind. Of her years as a forlorn waif running through the crowded streets with a gang of urchins. Of stealing bread from the market stalls beneath the disapproving gaze of the looming cathedral. She remembered her only friend, Friar Ambrose, who would sometimes gather her into his robes at night, offering her the only peaceful sleep she ever enjoyed. After the death of her parents, there had been only the cold, the hunger, and the loneliness.

Then one day he came, a tall, gray shadow, whose stare tugged at feelings of awe within Lucienne. He had followed her around the city for days, watching everything she did, scrutinizing her very soul. She had been terrified, but there was no one she could turn to. In the end he had asked her to go with him. And she had gone, compelled by a nagging curiosity, tinged with a hint of fatalism. Anything would be better than the streets.

She had heard stories of the wizards and their damnable deeds. The tales were mainly the babblings of old women and over-zealous priests, but what if there was some truth in them? As she began to realize what might lie before her, a feeling of panic clutched her heart.

"What am I doing here?" she said in a whisper barely audible above the wind that raced over the hill.

Grimgoth, who had waited patiently for her, said gently, "You, Lucienne, are becoming a magus, to learn the art of magic, and to learn of yourself. You have the Gift within you, and I will draw it forth. Come."

Her worries somehow laid aside, and her heart filled with new courage, Lucienne walked with Grimgoth the last steps through the mist to the tower, entered through the gateway, and heard the thick, oaken doors shut behind her. A new life had begun.***

There was more to the story, of course, scattered throughout the rulebook, but past that first page I was drawn into what the designers wanted. 

The game was a "troupe" style narrative system, where the players would create several characters --one mage and several others-- and who they played depended on the scenario and the GM. The GM position rotated among the players as well, so that gave everybody a chance to direct the story as well as play different characters. Since you had a stable of characters, the imbalance inherent in Ars Magica with vastly powerful Magi coupled with Grogs and Companions (both "normal people") meant that nobody felt left out in the game. 

A lot of the illustrations from the 2nd Edition
would have been at home in old style D&D books.
From Ars Magica 2nd Edition, page 102.

Magi in Ars Magica are vastly more powerful than the other characters in game, but they are limited in social interactions and by the code of the Order of Hermes, which all magi belong. The long and short of it is that The Gift makes people uneasy around magi --magi included-- and magi in general lack in social skills. On top of that, the code which all magi swear to is to avoid being pawns or meddling in mundane affairs (those without the Gift) or that of the Church or Infernal beings. If a magi breaks the code, the inquisitors of the Order investigate and can order the destruction of any mage found guilty of breaking the code. Given that the Divine can wipe the Order of Hermes off the map if it chose to do so, staying out of mundane affairs is a prudent path forward.

Of course, that doesn't mean that magi don't make problems into their own, such as Faeries attacking a nearby village becoming the magi's problem when people blame the magi for the attacks. To clear their name and possibly obtain rare resources in the process, the magi investigate to determine the truth of the matter, beginning a campaign in Ars Magica.

One last bit of the basics of Ars Magica is the Covenant, the "home base" for magi. A group of magi come together to form a Covenant that operates much like a self contained keep or manor house, complete with people who run the place (non-Gifted humans known as Grogs and their more specialized Companions). Covenants themselves have vigor and importance based on the "seasons" of their life: Covenants in their Spring are brand new, full of vigor, but hardly any influence; Summer Covenants have grown in arcane power but political power lags; Fall Covenants are at their height with political and magical power in abundance but the seeds of their decline are already planted; but Winter Covenants are those that have lost their political and magical power, and are but a shell of their former selves.

The game could be combat heavy, politically heavy, or research and development heavy. Sometimes all at once, sometimes something different entirely. It was entirely up to the players in the same way that a modern FATE or Burning Wheel game is today. And that free form magic system that was in place... That was something totally unique to the time. I can't really describe it as anything other than placing latin words to magical effects, and the mixing/matching that goes on courtesy of the naming is something else.

***

I never got the chance to actually play Ars Magica, because the person who let me borrow the rulebook for a while ended up dating someone who consumed almost all of his time, and that was that. Some years later I stumbled across a 3rd edition of Ars Magica and picked it up, but it was a slightly edgier version of the same rules than I'd experienced before.

I found out later that Mark Rein-Hagen had taken some of the basic rule design of Ars Magica, in particular the "troupe" style of play, and created Vampire: the Masquerade, which happened to become a bit of an RPG hit in the 90s. I suspect the edginess from 3rd edition came from that association with V:tM as well as another descendant of Ars Magica, Mage: the Ascension. 

The game whose popularity in the
90s eclipsed that of D&D.

For some reason, Ars Magica's edginess and association with V:tM bothered me. I wasn't a prude by any means, but I think that my dealings with the Satanic Panic back in the day made me sensitive to how games could be perceived by the religious parts of society, and the Mythic Europe of Ars Magica skirted that border so much that it made me uncomfortable. You'd think that someone well versed in Fantasy and Science Fiction wouldn't have such issues, but I did. I guess I wasn't as secular as I thought I was, because it took much longer for me to make some peace with my ghosts and move forward.

Not too long ago, I stumbled across a 5th Edition of Ars Magica --the current version-- and on impulse I bought the game. 

A better quality photo than I'm
capable of.

 

It still has its players but is nowhere near as popular as D&D, Pathfinder, or even its own descendants, the World of Darkness games. That's a real shame, because the game has an extremely well thought out design and a game world that is both immediately recognizable and familiar to players. I have made my peace with the troupe style of play, due in no small part to playing Mages in World of Warcraft and other video games, and if I had the chance I'd jump at trying my hand at an Ars Magica campaign.

*Back then she worked in the Natural History Museum as floor staff. Eventually, she transitioned off that job and into working evening events, which worked out well for her once we started having kids. I could take care of the kids in the evening, and she could go out and work an event or four per month.

**The Avalon Hill boardgame, not the one based on Sid Meier's Civilization.

***Tweet, Jonathan and Rein-Hagen, Mark; Ars Magica, 2nd Edition, 1989, pg 4. What I find most interesting is who also contributed to the book: Lisa Stevens, now the head of Paizo; Doug Shuler, artist for M:tG and plenty of RPGs; and John Nephew who went on to form Atlas Games.