by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law
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by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law |
The most important of these sources is The Pale Mountains, a book of legends from the Dolomite region, which - deliberately - surrounds the Covenant of Valnastium. I knew that the book was written late in the nineteenth Century and translated from Ladin to German, but my attempts to find the English translation consistently failed. In July 2003, I discovered that there had been an "American translation" in 1927, and had a beaten-about copy of it shipped from Rhode Island to Central Queensland. By this time the text of Sanctuary had been finalised. Even had it still been open, sections of The Pale Mountains would have suited a book like Living Lore better: a collection of folktales, particularly of this length, would have distracted from the tight focus on the Order that was a feature of the Sanctuary draft.
Gifts from the Moon is my response to The Pale Mountains and other sources, like True Story by Lucian, which I could not include in Sanctuary of Ice.
There are two main ways to use these stories; by using them as historical events and by retelling them with the player characters as protagonists or bystanders. This guide tends to focus on the first option, because retelling is comparatively simple, and because the author has spent years thinking of them in the Alpine context, where they make most sense as origin stories for geographical features. Sagas set in other tribunals, however, may find that retellings are the preferred form of use.
Some of the stories include statistics for items and creatures. These are usually unsupported in the original story. They are suggestions that are included to allow storyguides to use this material with a minimum of effort, but they should be tailored to individual sagas.
You will find occasional references to "XXXX" in some of the stories. These refer to information that will be filled in as soon as it becomes available.
The Pale Mountains is still protected by copyright law in Australia, where Gifts from the Moon was written: Carl Wolff died in 1966, and his rights will wane in 2016. That being noted, he was a folklorist, and folklore is not protected under Australian copyright law, except in certain cases of indigenous sacred business. What is protected are his dialogue and any original characters he added. Taking faith in his assurance that his tales are authentic, I have based these stories primarily on Francesca Le Monte's translation of Wolff, but removed her dialogue and avoided duplication of her prose, with the exception of brief, marked quotes. Where possible I've compared with modern retellings, but I've kept Le Monte's titles. It is my belief that this is a fair use under local law, and I apologize to any offended party if, in other jurisdictions, it is not.
During this project I became aware of the Sagen website, which contains alternative translations of most of these tales and a handful of others. At time of writing it was at http://www.sagen.at/english/index.html, with the deeplink for these tales at http://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/italien/legends_in_english/sagen_legends_in_english.htm, as the click-through menu seems not to lead to these stories. Sagen's copyright position is that works in its jurisdiction are protected for 70 years from the author's death, which makes me wonder at their Wolff material. Their Wolff stories are from the German version of Wolff's work, Dolomiten Sagen (1913), which was notably more verbose than the American edition, which is in turn more florid than my version.
Ars Magica, its titles, terms and intellectual property belong to Trident Inc., operating as Atlas Games.
Text copyright © Timothy Ferguson 2004. Artwork copyright © Stephanie Pui-Mun Law 2004.