Ars Magica 5E Standard Edition, Chapter Fourteen: Mythic Europe

The official setting for Ars Magica is Mythic Europe, a world very like the middle ages of our world, but with magic. For many people, this setting is a large part of the fun of the game. You can “change history,” or at least “visit” historical places. When you save a country from demons, you’ve saved France, not some imaginary land. It’s also possible to actually visit the place where your saga is set, although that’s easier for European players.

However, some players and storyguides can find this a little intimidating. There is no need for this. The most important thing to remember is that it is a game: it is supposed to be fun. If historical accuracy is spoiling your fun, you need less of it. Any way you enjoy playing the game counts as playing it “properly.” The second thing to remember is that this chapter contains all the history you need to play the game in Mythic Europe. There is, of course, a lot more history out there, but none of it is necessary for play.

The reason for the historical setting is that it is fun to pretend that you are involved in history. If that isn’t fun for your troupe, you should consider playing in a non-historical setting (see page 221).

Making it Historical

If you are playing a historical roleplaying game, you want the stories to feel historical. You should not attempt to do this by avoiding errors, because mood is better set by positive, obvious features of the story, rather than by omissions. Thus, you should include historical features and make them an important part of the story.

Some aspects of this are both easy and obvious. There are castles, and knights riding around in armor. However, these features of the environment do not distinguish Mythic Europe from many generic fantasy settings. If you want the game to feel properly medieval, rather than vaguely medieval, you need to do a bit more.

One possibility is to introduce known historical figures. The main problem with this is that most players will only have heard of the most famous medieval figures, generally kings and saints, and it can spoil suspension of disbelief if they show up all the time. On the other hand, if your saga is set in northern Italy a little before the canonical date it is entirely realistic to have St Francis of Assisi wander past every so often. Still, it is unwise to rely on famous medieval people entirely. If your players have more background knowledge on the period, less-famous figures might work just as well, and you could make several historical figures into recurring NPCs.

A second possibility is to have the characters turn up at famous historical events. This suffers from some of the same problems as using historical characters, and has an additional potential problem. If you decide that you want the course of history in your saga to match the course of recorded history, you will have to stop the player characters changing anything. This is, in general, a bad way to write stories.

Another approach is to make distinctively medieval things central to a story. This is much easier than it sounds, for two reasons. First, you only need to find out one thing for each story. For example, you might learn that medieval people went on frequent pilgrimages to saints’ tombs, and then build a story around a pilgrimage. You don’t need to know about the rest of the cult of saints, because those other aspects do not matter to your story. Second, by putting something obviously medieval on center stage, you draw attention to that, and away from the areas where you are making things up as you go along.

You can use any area of medieval culture for this, but you should pick something that you find independently interesting. Once you have found an interesting fact, you have to work it into a story. This does not mean that the thing should turn up, and that you then lecture the players about it. Instead, the course of the story should depend, in some way, on the thing that you have discovered.

Some discoveries are easier to incorporate than others. For example, there was a significant tendency for people to try to steal relics from shrines, so that they could have the holiness for themselves. This is easy to incorporate; the story can just be about a relic thief, and the NPCs simply mention that such thefts are not uncommon. Similarly, features of the laws and systems of justice can easily be worked into a story centered around a court case.

It seems harder to incorporate details of medieval diet into a story, but it is not impossible. For example, the nobility ate meat with nearly every meal, as a sign of status. So, have a nobleman arrange to visit the covenant, and then have an enemy curse the covenant so that their meat stocks all turn rotten, as does any new meat they bring in. If the covenant cannot lift the curse, they will have to feed the nobleman vegetables, and he will be insulted.

For some aspects of social history, the best way to incorporate them is to create an NPC around that fact, and then have the NPC play a central role in at least one story. For example, it was common for widows to take over and continue their husbands’ businesses, but many businessmen regarded such women with a degree of hostility. A widow could, therefore, seek the covenant’s help.

A final option is to spend some time reading medieval legends and stories, and then to create stories based on them. Many medieval legends are available in inexpensive English translations, and some are extremely easy to convert into stories.

The main body of this chapter, and other Ars Magica products, contain a large number of such aspects of medieval history, along with explicit suggestions for how to turn them into stories. It is entirely possible to create a saga with a very medieval tone without buying any books that are not part of the Ars Magica line.

Some storyguides might worry that their players will not appreciate just how medieval some of the things they incorporate are, but this is unlikely to be a problem. If the players know that you are trying to incorporate genuine medieval history, they are likely to take it on trust that the person they have just met had real medieval counterparts, and thus when the events of the saga differ from the assumptions of generic medieval fantasy they will know that this is because of genuine historical flavor.

In addition, it is not at all uncommon for players of Ars Magica to start reading a bit about the middle ages. If your players do so, they will find that they come across things that have already featured in the saga. This will impress them with your erudition, and with the historical feel that the game has.

Pieces of History

The following sections cover the Mythic European setting, concentrating on the more historical, or historically legendary, aspects. The Realms and Bestiary chapters provide some more ideas on the purely fantastic aspects of the setting. This is not a history text. It is generalized to the point that nothing in this section was exactly true of any part of medieval Europe, and there are some places where the generalizations didn’t apply at all. If you want more specific and accurate history for a particular area, you can buy one of the Ars Magica Tribunal books; books for Fourth Edition can be used for historical background with no modification at all, although, obviously, game statistics will need some conversion.

Further, this is not a narrative history of medieval Europe. Such things are easily available in encyclopedias, if you want to read them. However, the sorts of details that are useful for adding historical flavor to a roleplaying game are not the sorts of details that are necessarily easy to find.

The information given in this section is most accurate for 1220, the “official” date for Ars Magica. Using it will give your saga the feel of something happening between about 1000 and 1400, which is likely to be good enough to most troupes.

The Church

The Church is probably the quickest and easiest way to give medieval flavor to your saga. Christianity influenced every aspect of life in medieval Europe in a way that’s hard to even imagine today, and does not feature in most fantasy settings. Almost everybody, including most Hermetic magi, is a Christian, and the overwhelming majority of Christians believe that the Church is essential to their religion.

The fact that the medieval Church is, after some changes, still around as the Roman Catholic Church means that you have to be a bit careful about offending people when using it in your sagas. Over its history the Church, both clergy and laity, has had periods when it was more true to Christian ideals, and periods when it was less so, and at all periods members of the Church have run the full gamut from sinners to saints. You will need to decide what sort of atmosphere prevails in your game, although you should keep in mind that, unless you change the game mechanics, the Church is backed by the Divine, which puts limits on how corrupt it can be. In the end, the best way to avoid giving offense is probably to portray rounded characters, rather than stereotypes at either extreme.

Doctrine

There is one God, eternal and unchanging, who created the world from nothing and sustains it from moment to moment. This God is three persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Son became a human being as Jesus Christ, an event called the “Incarnation,” which is considered the most important event in history. Jesus Christ died on the cross, the Crucifixion, and by his death paid the penalty for all the sins committed by human beings. On the third day, he rose from the dead, in the Resurrection, and forty days later he ascended to heaven.

In the beginning, God created two humans, Adam and Eve, and placed them in the Garden of Eden. There, they were tempted by Satan and sinned, and this Original Sin tainted all of their descendants. Where once all of nature had served humankind, now it turned against them. Human beings in Original Sin can do nothing truly good, because their motives are always tainted. Baptism washes away that stain, and fits a person to receive God’s grace, which grants the ability to do good.

Good acts are those which accord with God’s will, and tend to His glory, while evil acts are those which do not. The seven deadly sins are the basic roots of almost all sins committed by human beings, and the Church warns against them in particular. They are Avarice, Envy, Greed, Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Wrath. On the other side, there are the three theological virtues: Faith, Hope, and Love, and the greatest of these is Love.

All humans have an immortal soul, created at some point before birth. (In 1220, theologians still disagree about when.) After death, the soul is judged by God. Those who die perfect, having done penance for all their sins, pass directly into heaven. Those who die penitent, but not yet perfect, pass to purgatory, where they do penance after death for all those sins remaining. Those who die impenitent are condemned to hell for eternity.

Game Use: Doctrine The deadly sins and theological virtues make excellent Personality Traits for medieval-themed characters. Beyond that, the issues covered by this section are rarely likely to come into play in sagas, which is probably as it should be.

Magic and Sin One question that is not decided by the core rules of Ars Magica is whether magic is sinful in itself. It is clear that it can be used for sinful purposes, and lends itself well to all seven deadly sins, but it can also be used for good ends. If magic is inherently sinful, casting a spell is sinful no matter what the purpose. The choice you make here affects the possible relationships between the magi and the Divine. If magic is inherently sinful, saints and angels will always encourage magi to abandon it. This creates a strong tension, and so works best if interactions with the Church are rare. It does not mean that the Divine is always hostile, as the world is full of sinners, and magic, in itself, is not necessarily a particularly serious sin. If magic is not inherently sinful, magi could have close, and good, relations with the Church, saints, and angels, with occasional concerns over sins the magi committed using magic. In this case, giving up magic, whether temporarily or permanently, is a suitable penance in itself; giving up a sin can never be a penance, because it is required anyway.

Sacraments

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