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

The life of the Church is structured around the seven sacraments. Most of these mark important stages of life, but the most important of the sacraments, the Mass, is devoted solely to man’s relationship with God.

Baptism is the first of the sacraments. It involves literally or symbolically immersing someone in water, while announcing that you are baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Baptism washes away the stain of original sin, and is generally essential for salvation. Baptism can be performed by anyone, even a non-Christian, and even someone who gets the process wrong, as long as they intend to be performing a Christian baptism.

In 1220 there is theological uncertainty as to the fate of babies who die unbaptized, so the Church has many procedures in place to ensure that children are baptized as soon as possible after birth. Baptism should be performed by a priest if at all possible, but in an emergency anyone, as noted above, may do it. As a result, Jews are just about the only unbaptized people in Mythic Europe.

Confirmation marks a person’s desire to be united with the Church on earth, when he reaffirms the promises made on his behalf at baptism. This is supposed to take place at the age of reason, seven years old, but often does not. Confirmation can only be administered by a bishop or a priest specially designated as his representative, and, ideally, only after examining the candidate to ensure that he understands the Christian faith. These requirements make it hard for most medieval people to get a proper confirmation, so there are a substantial number of people who have never been confirmed. In particular, most Christian magi have not been, unless they or their parens are particularly pious.

Marriage marks the start of a family, and is another sacrament that doesn’t need any Church representative. A man and a woman marry by declaring that they are married to each other, as long as they are both old enough (over twelve for a woman, fourteen for a man), neither is already married, and they are not too closely related. Marriage is for life, and cannot be dissolved. The Pope occasionally issues annulments, but these merely recognize that the marriage never actually took place.

Although no ceremony is required for marriage, the Church strongly encourages people to have a public ceremony involving a priest. Apart from anything else, this helps to head off later arguments over whether there really was a marriage. It would be extremely rare for a couple to get married with no ceremony or celebration at all.

Extreme Unction is the final sacrament, given just before death. For this reason, it draws the most ambiguous attitude of any sacrament. While it is generally believed to ease the passage to heaven, many people believe that, if you have received it, you are dead to the world in some sense, and must enter a monastery if you recover. Similarly, people are often reluctant to receive it, as that means admitting that they are about to die, and Church doctrine is absolutely clear that it is not necessary for salvation. Extreme Unction can only be administered by a priest.

Ordination is the sacrament that turns a man into a priest, or other member of orders. There are two main classes of orders: minor orders, doorkeeper, lector, exorcist, and acolyte, and major, or holy, orders, sub-deacon, deacon, priest, and bishop. Men in holy orders may not marry, or have a living wife, whereas men in minor orders are much less restricted. All ordained men take the tonsure, which involves shaving the crown of the head, leaving a ring of hair.

Penance is the sacrament that responds to sin. Christians are required to confess all their sins to a priest, who then assigns a penance if he is convinced that the sinner has truly repented. The penance is something of some difficulty, which the penitent sinner performs to show that his repentance is genuine. It does not purchase forgiveness; that was bought by Christ’s death. Instead, it allows the penitent to renew his respect for God in a concrete way. Common penances involve saying a certain number of prayers or psalms, giving charity or helping the poor in some other way, or going on a pilgrimage to a shrine, at a distance depending on the severity of the sin.

Priests are not allowed to mention what they hear in confession to anyone, not even their superiors in the Church. The contents of confession are between the priest, the penitent, and God.

In the Mass, God Himself becomes manifest in bread and wine, which is shared with the congregation. In most of Europe, the laity now only receive the bread, but in a few places the custom of receiving both bread and wine persists. The bread becomes the body of Christ, known as the “Host,” and the wine becomes His Blood, so that the Mass symbolizes the sacrifice of Christ for the salvation of all believers, and the participation of all believers in that sacrifice.

Actually receiving the bread is known as “taking communion,” and a person must confess and do penance before doing so. (For large penances, a sincere intent to complete it suffices.) As a result, most people only take communion once a year, at Easter, although they attend the service most weeks.

Because the consecrated bread and wine are extremely holy, they must be consumed completely during the service, with great care taken not to spill or drop any.

Game Use: Sacraments The sacraments are as central a part of modern Catholicism, and many other contemporary varieties of Christianity, as they were of the medieval Church. Thus, a certain degree of care should be taken to avoid offending people. That said, they are a central part of medieval life, and thus make good stories. A number of covenfolk decide that they want to be confirmed; living at the covenant, they have previously had no opportunity. This means taking them to the bishop, and getting them through the catechism without painting the covenant as a hive of heretics. A moderately pious magus decides to confess and take communion after several lapsed years. The (knowledgeable) confessor assigns a pilgrimage to a distant shrine, without using magic at all, as a penance. The covenfolk find out that Hermetic magic, or, indeed, any other magic, is completely incapable of affecting the Host in any way. They form a fraternity devoted to honoring the Host as God’s presence on earth. (In 1220, this is unusual, but not heretical. Later, it becomes common and absolutely orthodox.) Someone born at the covenant becomes deeply pious, but some power seems to be driving him out of churches, and he has ominous warning dreams in which he is overwhelmed by great waves. It turns out that he was never baptized, and the dreams are to encourage him to do so. The unbaptized pious character dies without working out the problem. After his death, a close friend has visions revealing that he is damned to hell, and why, warning them to ensure that everyone is baptized. This could launch a quest for a way to baptize the character posthumously. (This has happened before. At the earnest request of Pope Gregory the Great, later a saint, God allowed the Roman Emperor Trajan to be saved after death. But God did warn the Pope not to ask such things again.)

Saints

Saints are people who served God faithfully when alive, and have now died and joined the Church Triumphant in heaven. (Living Christians are often called the “Church Militant,” as they must still fight temptation and the wiles of the devil.) Strictly speaking, angels are not saints, as they are not and never were human, but the archangels Michael and Gabriel are often treated as saints.

The importance of saints for living Christians is that they are willing to intercede with God on behalf of the living, and while they have no power of their own, God is willing to listen to them. The most important saint, by far, is the Virgin Mary, the mother of God, who is believed to have particularly strong influence. After her come the twelve Apostles, Christ’s closest followers during His ministry on earth, and particularly St Peter, the first Bishop of Rome and the rock on which the Church was built. St Paul, called the “Apostle to the Gentiles,” is of almost equal importance. There are many other saints, including the saints of the Old Testament, such as Abraham, Moses, and David, martyrs, who were killed for their faith, and witnesses, who bore witness to God’s message in particularly impressive ways.

The Church is, in 1220, moving towards an official list of recognized saints, although the process is not yet complete. Further, the Church recognizes that there are many saints in heaven who are not on the Church’s list. The list includes only those saints that the Church is sure about, which means that they lived a clearly holy life, and that miracles have been attributed to their intercession after death.

Saints often take an interest in a particular area of life or institution, reflecting their interests when they were alive, and petitions addressed to the saint tend to be more effective in that area. Similarly, saints are particularly attentive to their relics, physical objects that were closely associated with the saint in life, most often bodies or body parts. The faithful often make long pilgrimages to pray at a shrine containing the relics of a particularly important or appropriate saint.

This, however, moves into tricky territory. Strictly speaking, no one worships saints, and the requests for intercession addressed to them are to be distinguished from the prayers offered directly to God. In practice, most people are rather fuzzy on the difference, and the Church doesn’t mind, as long as the faithful accept that the Church’s doctrine, which they don’t fully understand, is correct. God does not require all His children to be expert theologians.

Game Use: Saints Saints are an excellent medium for divine intervention in a saga. First, most medieval stories of divine activity involve a saint as mediator, so this choice keeps medieval flavor. Further, there are many saints, some quite local and obscure, and they all have different personalities. Some are quite abrasive, particularly when dealing with people opposed to God’s work. Thus, you can make up a local saint with a personality appropriate to the story you want to tell. The attitude of saints to the covenant and the magi depends on whether you decide that magic is inherently sinful. It need not be; magic is opposed by both Divine and Infernal auras, after all. If magic is inherently sinful, any saint will want the magi to abandon it. If it is not, saints will merely urge the magi to use their power in the service of God. Either way, there are many specific options for using saints. A saint takes an interest in the covenant, and starts looking after it. He or she appears in the dreams of covenfolk offering warnings, and occasionally manifests in the covenant to warn against sin or advise on God’s will. On the one hand, this is a very useful ally. On the other, the magi will want to avoid a Dominion aura springing up within the covenant. The covenant comes into conflict, over land or some other resource, with a monastery that has a particularly protective patron saint. They find that their magic is opposed by the power of the Divine, forcing them to find another resolution. Members of the covenant become particularly devoted to a saint with a shrine some distance away, and pilgrimages become a feature of normal life. Even the magi might choose to venerate this saint. The covenant discovers an important relic in the course of an adventure. Keeping it at the covenant would guarantee a stream of pilgrims and an eventual Dominion aura, but giving it away would make a firm ally of the recipient — and possibly enemies of the other groups who wanted it.

Structures

The head of the Church on earth is the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, who is the Vicar of Christ. (A vicar is someone who performs a role on behalf of someone else.) Over the last century Popes have been campaigning to increase the actual authority of their office, and the campaign is working. Nevertheless, lower-ranked churchmen have a great deal of independence. In theory, anyone who disagrees with a lesser bishop’s decision can appeal to the Pope, but in practice this is so expensive and difficult that only the most serious problems, involving kings and major lords, or powerful monasteries, actually make it there.

There are many other bishops across Europe, all based in a city, or at least somewhere that was as close to a city as the area had when the bishopric was founded. The church where the bishop has his seat is known as the “cathedral church,” from the Latin term for the literal, physical chair (cathedra), and the area around is called the “diocese.” The bishop’s responsibilities start with ensuring that the clergy, monks, and nuns are all doing their jobs and living lives appropriate to their station, but also extend, in theory, to the spiritual wellbeing of every human being in the area. In particular, bishops often find themselves protecting the Jews of a town from angry, and antisemitic, mobs.

A bishop carries out his duties primarily by means of visitations. In these, he visits a priest or monastery, and carries out investiga tions to ensure that all is in order. The enthusiasm that bishops bring to these duties varies widely, but very few will overlook persistent reports of major abuses.

Within the diocese, Europe is divided up into parishes. Each parish has a church, the parish church, and a priest, the parish priest, assigned to look after the spiritual well-being of all those within, a position called “having cure of souls.” Everyone has their own parish, and is supposed to confess only to their parish priest, although exceptions are made for travelers and extreme circumstances. In some parishes, the priest with primary responsibility, called the “rector,” actually performs the duties. In others, he pays another priest, called the “curate,” to do the actual work for him.

Game Use: Structures All covenants are in a parish, even if they want nothing to do with the Church. Thus, the parish priest could come calling at any time, seeking out the lost sheep of his flock. A covenant with a cozy relationship with the parish priest hears that the bishop is coming on a visitation. Precisely how this plays out depends on the covenant and bishop, but it needs some response. The covenant wants to get itself recognized as a separate parish, where the magi can choose the parish priest. This is not unreasonable; most covenants are large enough and rich enough to justify this. But neither is it a foregone conclusion, as the characters will have to negotiate a great deal of Church politics.

Canon Law

The Church has its own law, canon law, which is based on the old Roman law but covers all aspects of Church life. It also covers a number of areas that might not seem obviously related to the Church: marriage, inheritance, and commerce, most notably.

All canon law cases must, in theory, be heard by the bishop of the appropriate diocese. In 1220, formal structures to delegate this authority to full-time judges are being established, but the process is far from complete, and many cases are still judged by the bishop in person, or by a representative chosen for that particular case.

Heresy is a growing concern of the church courts. Most heretics are encouraged to accept the teachings of the Church by their parish priests, and the vast majority, being heretical through ignorance rather than conviction, do so. The few who reach court generally recant, returning to the Church, if they are convicted, and this always ends the case. Those who persist in their heresy may, finally, be handed over to the secular authorities for execution, but the Church is reluctant to do this as it all but ensures someone’s damnation. However, if the alternative is a serious risk of damnation for more people, misled by the heretic, they feel they have no choice.

Canon law on commerce makes it illegal to lend money at interest, to buy things and sell them at a profit unless you have transported them a long distance, and to buy large stocks of something when it is cheap, to sell when it is expensive. Canon law only covers Christians, so these activities are all legal for Jews, which has made a few Jews extremely wealthy, while inflaming the prejudices of those who owe them money.

Game Use: Canon Law The magi are accused of heresy, and forced to defend themselves in court. The magi use magic to get around some of the canon law rules on commerce, making a large amount of money, but stirring up opposition from mundane merchants, who appeal to the bishop. A friendly bishop is faced with a case of heresy where the heretics appear to have diabolical powers. Knowing his limits, he appoints one of the magi as his judge-delegate, sending along a learned clerk to help out. The magus has strict instructions to save as many heretics as possible.

Resources

The Church, as an institution, has extensive resources. The most basic of these is the tithe; the Church is entitled to one tenth of everything of which God gives the increase — essentially, all agricultural products. This is a substantial amount, and the Church and its agents are quite enthusiastic about gathering it. Failing to pay the tithe is a serious sin, for which heavy penances are routinely assigned.

In addition, the Church owns a good deal of property, from which it draws income just as any other mundane lord. The result of this is that many high-ranking clerics are personally very wealthy, a situation that some people, including some lower-ranking clerics, find incompatible with the Church’s mission.

In theory, one third of the tithe is supposed to be used to support the poor. In practice, much less than this is devoted to charity, but the Church is still effectively the only source of support for the most vulnerable members of society.

Game Use: Resources Magi still have to pay the tithe. God gives the increase on vis sources. Most priests won’t care, but what if the local priest does? A covenant might be located so that the nearest major lord is a bishop or monastery, rather than a mundane noble. Alternatively, the mundane noble the covenant had good relations with might die without an heir, leave his lands to the Church, and give the covenant a new, powerful neighbor to handle.

Monasteries

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