The Deadfire Saga: Gateway

This is a two-part, ongoing Ars Magica Saga, with a somewhat unconventional setting. It is set over a hundred years later than typical Ars Magica games, in a Mythic Europe where the Order of Hermes was effectively destroyed at the Massacre of Gdansk in 1308, by the Teutonic knights. The player characters' covenant is known as the Concilium, and it is home to a handful of the Hermetic magi that remain in the world. The Concilium is located on an island near Ragusa, on the Dalmatian coast (in the modern world, the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia); this places it within what was formerly the Transylvanian Tribunal. The Rock itself is modeled after the Benedictine monastery at Mont St. Michel.

Gateway last updated 9/3/96.

The Saga

o Part I
Mike Simpson was the sole StoryGuide for the first part of the Saga, which ran for two dozen sessions, from December 1994 until July 1995 (in game time, Autumn 1325 through Autumn 1327). In addition to the full archive, there is a condensed summary of the complicated, epic plots of this part of the Saga, which revolve around the discovery of the Deadfire Weapons (wheel-locks, an invention 200 years anachronistic) and the quest to recover and protect them. (Warning: These pages are quite image-heavy.)

o Part II
This part of the Saga picked up where the earlier storyline left off. It is being run Troupe-style, with Lydia Leong and Bill Brickman as the Alpha StoryGuides.

o Sacrum
Mike Simpson ran the concluding seven sessions of the forty-one total sessions of the Saga. The magi of the Concilium finally confront the destroyers of the Order, and discover more Secrets Man Were Not Meant To Know.

An Art Gallery

Here's a small collection of pictures related to the Saga.
o A view of modern-day Dubrovnik (84K)
The city's actually quite well-preserved; it's not much different, architecturally, from the original small medieval walled city.
o The walls of Dubrovnik (8K)
A close-up of one of the city walls. They were eventually built up to a height of seventy-five feet, though in the Deadfire Saga's time, they were somewhat lower.
o Long-distance view of Mont St. Michel (121K)
The island is forested, with the village below. The covenant house sits at a considerable elevation above the waterline. A causeway, which floods with the tide, bridges the mainland and the Rock itself. It looks, more or less, like Mont St. Michel does.
o Close-up of the buildings of Mont St. Michel (16K)
This is a closer view of the buildings themselves.
o Bend in the Danube River near Visegrad (39K)
A photograph of the Danube, and surrounding terrain, near Visegrad (where King Charles Robert Anjou of Hungary had his main seat of power).
o Rennes-le-Chateau (8K)
The magi of the Concilium believe that Rennes-le-Chateau, in the Languedoc, is the stronghold of the secret order which originally held the Deadfire Weapons and the Sacrum.
One of the hardest things, perhaps, is to play a human being: alternately confused and consumed, torn by decision, stubborn in necessity, fallible, joyous, enraged... mad and sane. Humans ride the paradox every moment of every day because we must, because it is demanded of us. The characters we create don't have to... they do it because we insist and because we work at it.

(from a Deadfire player's email to the rest of the Troupe)

The Deadfire Saga is a participant in Project: Redcap.

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Lydia Leong / lwl@graphics.cis.upenn.edu / November 28th, 1995