An invitation to... VESPERS An alternative Ars Magica Campaign set in Thirteenth-Century Russia ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is an invitation-only PBEM campaign. This is gaming for People Without Huge Amounts Of Time; the planned turn progression is one or two turns per week, though players with more time are welcome to interact with each other more than that. The basic rules system being used is going to be the third-edition Ars Magica rules, _but_ most things will likely end up being relatively diceless. Also, I lack reference materials such as _Order of Hermes_, and therefore I'm going to feel free to create an alternate version of the Order's history. The setting is going to be the area around Novgorod, in the year 1255. Just to give you a general idea of the timeline, this is during the Tatar Conquest of Russia. Alexander Nevsky is Prince in Novgorod, and he has already instituted a policy of cooperation with the Khan. This is not going to be a completely historically accurate campaign. Much of what has been written about Russian folklore seems to date from the eighteenth century or later; fortunately, due to the relative isolation of Russia, the beliefs and customs of the peasants differ very little from the Middle Ages. I plan to draw heavily upon the superstitions of the peasants (which are many and varied, and often much more "extreme" than those of Medieval Europe), and upon Russian folk tales. Also, because I happen to have a strong interest in Russian classical music, there's likely to be a fair amount inspired by that. There may be some almost Gothic elements in this Saga, and the overall tone is likely to be quite dark. (The meaning of the campaign title will be made clear... eventually.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- BACKGROUND PREMISES In Russia, far from the center of the Order's power, much magic is in the hands of those not trained by the Order of Hermes. The peasants are extroardinarily superstitious, welding together a mixture of the old pagan beliefs and the new Christianity of the Russian Orthodox Church. Occult powers are even often attributed to skilled craftsmen -- blacksmiths, carpenters, stonemasons, and so forth -- because, evidently, the special knowledge or skills of these professions are regarded as inaccesible to an ordinary person and therefore beyond the human realm. Covenants in this area are, largely, "Spring" and "Summer" covenants, to use the terminology of the Ars Magica rules. They are usually small, and they are usually disguised as something other than a group of sorcerors living together. The Church is active in extinguishing activity which it believes to be diabolical; covenants of magi continue to exist because it is extremely difficult to tell true magic from the babblings of some frightened, superstitious, illiterate field-worker. Alexander Nevsky has repelled several invasions by this time, including one by the Teutonic knights (probably most famous for the "battle on the ice", depicted in an Eistenstein film, with a score by Prokofiev). This is a world which is in many ways even more brutal than that of Europe of the same period. The lives of the magi are not much better. The covenants in this area are engaged in a bitter battle for survival, and for political power within the Order. Here, the strict rules of the Order are difficult to enforce, and magi sometimes dabble in the forbidden, and differences are not always settled by challenging another magi to Certamen. The more daring magi may even be directly in the service of a mundane, despite the rules of the Order. This is where force reigns, and there are few that can be trusted. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHARACTER AND COVENANT DETAILS I am relatively open, as far as the details of the player characters' Covenant goes. My preference would be that of a newly-established Spring Covenant, with most, if not all, of the player-character magi being relatively inexperienced magi -- just out of their apprenticeship, or even still in the middle of it. The areas around Novgorod and Kiev have been subject to a number of massacres in the past decade, and it's not unlikely that the Masters of PC mages were killed in such massacres. Every player is permitted to create a Magus character. I _may_ allow more than one magus character per player, if someone has really stunning ideas. Other than that, I would like everyone to create at least one Companion, if not more, and feel free to populate things with grogs. I would prefer if all the mage characters were basically Hermetic Magi, though if someone can come up with a sufficiently compelling character who isn't, I will probably permit it. There are a number of possibilities for settings. The first is the city of Novgorod itself; the magi are likely nobility, or are part of the Novgorod underworld (of which, perhaps unsurprisingly, I could find no historical information about, and thus you may feel free to detail). The second is a peasant village somewhere around the vicinity of the city; the magi might be disguised as skilled craftsmen, or might be openly ruling it, in which case at least one of the characters should be a nobleman of some sort. You are encouraged to propose other settings (some ideas floating through my mind include the magi posing as a reclusive order of monks, or in the service of a power-hungry nobleman). You'll need to decide how much time you want to spend in the city; Novgorod is a rather unusual Russian city, and if people want to do a lot of things in it, I can certainly come up with a number of twisted plots to throw at all of you. A final possibility would be to simply forget the city of Novgorod entirely, and focus upon the remants of Kiev, to the south. Novgorod, however, provides lots of opportunity for politics, which Kiev does not. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- At this point in time, I'd like to open things up for discussion. I've created an email alias: vespers@graphics.cis.upenn.edu which contains myself, and the four players who have been initially invited to participate. I would eventually like five or six players; you may wish to pass other interested parties my way. If you're not interested, let me know and I'll take you off the list. I will also permit spectators. Please stick "VESPERS:" at the beginning of the subject line of your mail; it will make my mail sorter (and yours, perhaps, eventually), happy. I'd like to begin with people agreeing on the type of Covenant they want, and then begin generating characters. I'm going to stick background information up on the WEB; the address is: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~lwl/vespers/ I will put a few pointers to Russian WWW servers up, though there seems to be a woeful lack of information on the Net about this setting. If anyone has pointers, please let me know. I've placed two documents, adapted from Nicholas Riasanovksy's _A History of Russia_, on the WEBpage. One details the history of the area; the other details the city of Novgorod itself. Please read them; they're not lengthy and I've spent some time picking out what's relevant and typing it in. They ought to be fairly helpful for familiarizing yourself with the sorts of characters which one might find in this area. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lydia Leong - lwl@graphics.cis.upenn.edu - http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~lwl/