Lords of Men Chapter Seven: The Peasantry

See Also

• The Ars Magica Reference Document
• The Lords of Men Open Content page.
• The Lords of Men product page on this wiki

Chapter Seven: The Peasantry

Peasant life is unpleasant. Peasants, for the most part, live a marginal existence filled with toil. They have little scope to improve their lives, and often lack the education to know how their lives could be improved in the first place. Most peasants never travel more than a few miles from their birthplace.

Peasants are not, however, stupid, and many grasp opportunities to escape the worst of their lot. Over the generations, peasants have bargained and paid for little ameliorations of the worst of their conditions. In 1220, some peasants are even free of serfdom. That is, they are not required to labor for a lord, and can instead pay him for their use of land.

Classes of Peasant

There is an ascending scale of wealth and status in peasant communities. Generally, richer peasants have the highest status, and those who have the most land are the wealthiest. Some of the terms used in this section to define land holdings are defined in the Chapter Six: Manorial Fiefs. This section uses English peasantry as its model, although similar social roles are found in most of Mythic Europe.

The Unemployed and Day Workers

The population of Mythic Europe is swelling rapidly in 1220. In most agricultural areas, for the length of any usual saga, the unemployment rate is around twenty percent outside of the planting and reaping seasons.

These people pour into towns looking for a better life, but often find that they are barred from seeking guild-controlled employment. Lacking other skills they turn to crime, which is why the term "villain" has such negative connotations.

Many day workers tramp the roads, seeking employment. Peak agricultural periods differ for various crops and grazing animals, so many laborers chase work. Others stay in a single village, where they are known as being free to work odd days. These are generally the poorest people in any village.

In France, any stranger who dwells in a manor for more than a year is automatically the villein of the lord, unless he can prove that he is free, or that he is the villein of someone else. A lord is, technically, not permitted to allow his villeins to starve, so many lords force the poor to move on so that they do not gain a claim to the lord's charity. A compromise between vagrants and lords is often reached whereby the itinerant poor keep to Church land, such as pilgrimage sites. This, legally speaking, is outside the manor.

Famuli and Other Retained Servants

The famuli are the household staff of the lord. These serfs include agricultural laborers as well as those who provide a second service in addition to labor, like the lord's shepherd, swineherd, and dairymaid. The famuli usually also includes cooking and cleaning staff.

The famuli are lodged and fed by the lord, but theirs is not a luxurious life. Famuli tend to sleep where they work, or in the great hall. They eat simply and usually drink only water except at special celebrations. The food and lodging provided for famuli are usually for the servant alone — many cannot afford to marry.

Many members of the famuli are allowed little treats based on their job. Shepherds are given lambs occasionally and dairymaids are allowed to take cheeses. These small gifts are not, however, enough to make a famulus as wealthy as a villein farming a virgate. Some famuli members supplement their income as bovaters, described in Chapter Six: Manorial Fiefs, which enables them to marry.

It's possible to be a retained servant, like a famulus, without being a servant of the lord. The agricultural laborers who tend the glebe on behalf of the priest are sometimes like a famuli to him, for example, and live in his house and are fed from the produce of the glebe. Many free peasants are wealthy enough to have domestic servants of their own. Members of the lord's famuli live under the care of the lord's bailiff, so they are usually considered to be of higher status than similar servants working for less influential people.

Comparing the status of famuli to villeins who farm their own land is complicated. In areas where villeins are relatively rich, and lords comparatively stingy, the villeins are considered better off, and so are of higher social standing. In other areas the comparative freedom from famine of the famuli, and their relatively high standard of living as recipients of their lord's largesse, makes them socially superior to the villeins. Generally, famuli cannot afford families and villeins with land can, and so villeins with land may be considered richer than famuli for that reason. Service in the famuli may, however, be an excellent form of advancement for the son of a landed villein, while he saves sufficient money and becomes well enough known to seek land in an assart, or to marry well.

Serf or Villein

A serf or villein is an agricultural worker whose labor is owned by his lord in exchange

for the use of land. Serfs are not free; they cannot choose who to work for or what work to do. This also means they cannot choose where to live. Serfdom is passed to the children of serfs. Serfs are not, however, slaves, and so they cannot legally be whimsically murdered or maimed. It is legal, however indeed, it is usual in some areas — to casually beat serfs. One particular Churchman is famous for his saintly character in part because he never raised his hand to his servants.

Serfs owe their lord rent, week works, and boon works. Rent is traditionally a penny an acre a year, but may be far higher. A serf's week works are usually expressed as a certain number of days per week, but these "days" are generally measured from sunrise to noon. Many serfs work four or five of these "days" for their lords, although in some areas they works as few as two, paying higher rents instead. This is common, for example, in lands where money is made by running sheep and so the lord has little use for additional agricultural labor.

On some manors peasants pay an annual fee to be excused from week work for a year. This is called the censum. The desirability of the censum depends on its price. On some manors rich peasants embrace the censum, while on others it is used as a punishment of the manor court for people whose labor is poor or tardy.

Boon works are added days theoretically performed out of love for the lord. The lord, by tradition, usually feeds his laborers during boon works. Most serfs owe more week work or boon work during the harvest period (August and September) than during other parts of the year.

Technically no serf is able to own anything: he does not own his labor and therefore cannot own the profit of his labor. In practice, in most areas, serfs are able to keep some of what they produce. Most of this they pay in rent or fines to their lords, but over time they can save sufficient money to buy off some of the worst of the taxes and charges they face.

As noted in the Chapter Six: Manorial Fiefs, the status of peasants increases as the amount of land they rent with their labor increases. Generally virgaters are wealthier than bovaters, who are wealthier than cottars. There is, however, a major exception to this: tradesmen.

Many tradesmen are members of the famuli, or hold small crofts of land surrounding their homes and owe little or no villein service. Millers, blacksmiths, and reeves are examples of men who live more richly than most villeins, but have little land and so owe only minor villein service. The most unusual such trademen are the ministeriales found in some of the German duchies. These villeins are knights who pay for their keep with military service. In areas within the Norman sphere of influence it is considered wrong to knight serfs without freeing them first.

Offices for Villeins

The least desirable, and yet most lucrative, of the official positions on a manor is that of reeve. The reeve is responsible for the direct oversight of the daily work of the villeins of the manor. He is also responsible for making sure each villein does his days of work, or is reported to the bailiff for failing to. The reeve is usually appointed annually on Michaelmas (29 September, just after harvest) although some reeves are re-appointed each year for decades.

Reeves, in most areas, must be villeins. Proof that a peasant has served as a reeve is taken in many courts as proof he is a serf and not free. It is usual for the reeve to be selected by the villeins in the manor court, from among the villeins with the largest landholdings in the manor. The lord or his steward may veto their choice. Villeins who absent themselves from the manor court may find they are given this job in their absence.

Many people dislike being reeve for three main reasons. The reeve is financially responsible for any failure of the administration of the manor that it was his responsibility to prevent. He can be fined if people shirk work or steal, or if equipment breaks because it was poorly maintained, unless he can fine someone else for the fault. The reeve, as the enforcer of the lord's due, is the person who makes sure that the other members of his community don't take easy options when working. As a result, he's hated for the extra hassle he causes and the little thefts of time and material he prevents. Finally, being reeve takes time away from the work the villein could do on his own behalf during harvest season.

The role is so unpopular that on some manors there is land specifically reserved to pay the reeve. On other manors all of the major villeins pay a fee so that they need not have a reeve at all. This fee is as high as a shilling a head a year in some places. In other places, a person elected as reeve may pay a substantial fine to force the manor court to pick an alternative reeve.

Story Seed: The Wandering Poor

The wandering poor are defined by the fact that they do not come from the community — they are strangers. Many are simply poor people. Some have strange customs, but are nonetheless human beings with personal tales of woe that might turn to the better or worse when they encounter the player characters. Some wanderers, however, are far more than they appear. Saints, even God himself in some folktales, take the form of wandering beggars to test the morals of people who profess Christianity, rewarding the good and shaming the hypocritical. Demons also walk the roads and bring temptations with them. Faeries seem to walk the roads, seeking to be nearby when interesting things occur. Some faeries steal children, or enter strange bargains with lords, reeves, or individual peasants, offering treasure or terror.

Reeves gain wealth from five sources. Most are forgiven all, or part, of their rent. Reeves are usually paid a small wage: generally double whatever is being paid to other laborers, and for the entire year rather than simply the harvest periods. This wage is sometimes given as grain from the demesne, and may be increased by the right to be fed by the lord either for the whole year, or during the planting and reaping seasons. Reeves are excused many services to the lord, allowing them extra time with their own crops and crafts, other than at harvest and planting. Reeves, as mentioned above, may be granted the use of certain lands during their tenure. The final source of wealth for reeves is corruption, and most villeins consider corruption among reeves to be rife.

It is the corruption of reeves that makes the searching annual audits, which prepare the figures for the steward, necessary. Reeves have a tremendous opportunity to take bribes for unprovable returns, like the right to finish work early or be assigned the easy bit of the haymaking. They also have many opportunities to steal directly from the lord. Regardless, a reeve owes the lord any goods or services not collected or remitted in his term.

Story Seeds: Famuli Matters

The stories of the famuli are similar to the stories about servants in many other genres. Theirs is the "below stairs" view of the world of the nobility or magi. Servants know their masters intimately and even if they like their masters, they recognize their weaknesses and human foibles. Stories set among the servants can allow a change of pace from the heroic stories which involve magi.

Cleaning Up

The famuli are the hidden characters who clean up the stage between the episodes in the lives of the magi. If a horde of faeries attacks the covenant, it is the famuli who tidy up afterwards by rebuilding damaged walls, washing the blood off the courtyard, carting away the bits the magi don't want for experiments, and finding ways to bury them. This style of story works best for covenants with magi who deal with immediate crises and then retire swiftly to their laboratories.

There are many other positions to which villeins are elected by the manor court. The most significant of these is the office of messor (or beadle), which is usually coupled with the office of hayward. The beadle acts as the reeve's enforcer. He implements the customs of the manor, summons people to the court, collects fines, and warns people that they will be due for services and tallages. The hayward is the overseer of the harvesting laborers and the guard of the harvested crop. He is also the person charged with the health of the pasture, so he is the confiscator of wandering stock. The hayward is paid, much like the reeve, by reduction of his rent, excusal from services, use of reserved meadow, and feeding at the lord's expense at harvest time. He is also sometimes given free seed corn. Haywards tend to hold less substantial lands than reeves, so their effective rewards for office are less.

Other lesser offices include woodward, who cares for the lord's plantations, forester, who cares for the lord's hunting wood, and herdsman. In East Anglia there are peasants who are charged with the maintenance of dykes. On some manors, plowmen are appointed by the lord and live as his officers, although in most places a lord's plowmen are simply famuli. Ale-tasters, who ensure ale brewed on the manor is of sufficient quality for sale, are often women.

The Church Supports Serfdom

The church in 1220 does not see keeping serfs as evil. Most Churchmen even considerer slavery morally acceptable provided masters stay within certain limits of behavior. Serfdom, which is better than slavery, is actively supported by the Church.

Half-free

A half-free peasant is one who is a free man or woman, as described below, but who has accepted the rental of villein land from a lord, and therefore owes villein service. Half-free peasants are sometimes wealthy enough to pay a hired worker to carry out their villein service. A half-free peasant is free of non-agricultural taxes and services, like a free peasant.

Free Peasants

A free man or free woman is, in this case, an agricultural worker who does not owe service to the lord for land. Freedom from service is rarely absolute; the exact nature of freedom varies in accordance with manor custom. This means that in some areas, for example, free men are still required to serve as jurors, members of the military levy, or supervisors of unfree laborers at harvest. These requirements vary not only between neighboring manors, but between free men of the same manor. Many free peasants owe the Church a small fee, called church-scot, each year in November. A free tenant can theoretically leave his farm at any time by ceasing to pay the rent, but this usually leaves him in poverty.

Free parents have children who are also free. A free person who marries a servile one makes his spouse free for the length of the marriage, although she reverts to servile status upon the partner's death or if they separate. The children of such a union are, usually, free, although customs vary. A free peasant must pay a fine for freeing a spouse by marriage, and can generally arrange a higher fine to ensure that the partner does not return to servile status after the marriage ends.

Free peasants make up less than ten percent of the population of most manors, but on some manors, all of the peasants are free. This is particularly common on assarts and in newly founded towns, where men are offered freedom in exchange for their sweat and shillings. Free peasants are most common on royal manors, and are more common on secular manors than ecclesiastical ones. This is because setting villeins free is a common form of charity among secular rulers, particularly in their wills, but to free villeins is forbidden to Churchmen by canon law.

Officers

A manor's officers hold positions of trust from the lord and administer the manor's affairs. There is a great confusion of manorial officers. The same titles are used on neighboring manors for different jobs, and the titles on the same manor may change over time without any observable change in workload for the officer. As a general rule, though, there are two free men who are highly significant to the running of the manor.

The steward, or seneschal, is the lord's representative on the manor. He is required to act in the lord's stead at the manorial courts, and to account for the fief's business annually, down to the last egg. Some stewards are chosen from the prominent free men of the fief, and where this is done the office is circulated to limit corruption. Other stewards are members of the professional class of estate managers that is beginning to form. These are often free men with some education. The role of steward is, for example, a job often taken by the younger or illegitimate sons of minor noblemen who do not desire to enter the priesthood.

The steward is the master of all of the other manorial servants of the fief, and is paid highly for his services. The payment varies by the size of the estate from half a pound a year for a free man on a manor, to twenty pounds a year for stewards who are maintained as knights, to vast grants of land for those who act as stewards on behalf of kings.

Story Seed: The Rolls

The records of the manorial court are kept on rolls of parchment, and special decisions are sewn onto the rolls. A peasant who could tamper with the rolls, by sewing on a ruling that indicated that he was personally free and only acted like a villein because he held villein land, could gain substantial advantage. The main barrier to this is that the roll is guarded and the villein illiterate.

A villein brings a scheme to change the roll to the attention of the magi. He has a little money from a crime, which he can't spend publicly, and offers it for the aid of someone who can write in Latin. The magi, considering his plan, might give him the letter free, provided he also adds another document to the rolls that is to their advantage. They might also give him greater assistance, because it would be embarrassing for him to be caught before the two additions had been made to the roll.

The bailiff (or beadle, or sergeant) is the controller of the daily operation of the manor, through the reeve. A bailiff may be responsible for a handful of manors, if they form a tight group and travel between them is easy. The bailiff answers twice a year to the steward, and must give a detailed account of the manor's finances. Bailiffs are almost always free men who live locally to the manor, and in most places they have the right to live in the manor house. Bailiffs are, more than any other manorial official, most likely to be attacked by aggrieved peasants.

Bailiffs are rich, for peasants. A bailiff is paid approximately ten shillings a year in the smallest fiefs, although this amount may rise as high as six pounds for bailiffs who handle large, difficult territories for their masters. Bailiffs are known for their corruption, including for failing to enforce laws and for distorting custom to gain extra service or money from the peasants.

The term "bailie" is used in northern France to describe an official with a role similar to that of an English sheriff, and this title is usually anglicized as "bailiff." These are different roles, however.

Standard of Living

The standard of living of peasants is strongly affected by the proximity of towns. In areas where flight from the manor is viable, standards are higher. As the living conditions improve in towns, so too the living conditions in the hinterlands of the towns improve. The sections that follow most accurately describe manors more than two days from a major town.

Housing

Many peasant houses have a single room. Wealthier peasants might, however, have a chamber, pantry, buttery (a room where alcohol, not butter, is kept), and separate kitchen. Many peasant homes contain a byre, a room for penning animals.

Peasant houses are usually constructed by building a frame, which holds up a ridge pole, then using wattle and daub to build walls. The frame, called a bay, usually contains an area 15 feet square. The average house is two bays in size, although they vary between one and five bays, based on the wealth of the builder or the obligation of the tenant.

Wattle and daub is a technique for wall building. A weave of twigs is created to act as the core of the wall. This is plastered with layers of mud, or mud mixed with straw. The wall is allowed to cure in the sun, and is often whitewashed with lime to discourage vermin. Stone sections are rare in peasant houses. Wattle-and-daub houses are fragile: housebreakers regularly rob them by literally smashing through their walls.

Peasant houses are often roofed with thatch or wooden shingles. Thatch is made from straw, which is a byproduct of the grain harvest. Rye straw is considered superior to wheat straw for this purpose. In some areas reeds are used instead of straw, because these make the most durable roofs. Thatched roofs are often built with a higher pitch than shingle roofs, because this allows more rapid runoff.

Thatch roofs provide good insulation, but are slightly permeable, so many peasants do not have chimneys. The smoke from their fires rises through the thatch and reduces infestations by insects. Thatch roofs are difficult to extinguish once they have caught fire, though, and in some cities new thatched roofs are forbidden. In London, thatched roofs now have a layer of plaster on their underside, which acts as a fire retardant. In other areas, the thatch lies on a layer of turf, which improves its insulating properties.

Peasant Loyalty

Peasants in Mythic Europe are not required to be loyal to their lord. Most have never seen their lord, and only see his steward twice a year. Some lords, who have heads filled with poetic tales, believe that their peasants sit in their hovels blessing their lord for his charities, and do boon works because they love their lord so much. In Mythic Europe, unless your troupe decides otherwise, this is simply naive. Peasants may be happy or unhappy because of the actions of their lords, but they are never loyal to strangers. Peasants who interact with their lords may develop a personal bond of loyalty, but this is rare.

Players used to computer games may feel that lowering taxes should make peasants more manageable, because this is a common game mechanic. It doesn't work well in Mythic Europe, however, except in the very short term. Peasants, when they become rich enough to have free time, use it to organize politically. Rather than becoming complacent with their gains, rich villeins become increasingly politically restive. This is particularly true if nearby towns offer greater personal freedom and a higher standard of living.

Military household servants — the mesnie — are an exception to the idea that loyalty is not expected of servants. As knights, they are expected to be loyal to their lord, provided their lord maintains their standard of living and dignity. The loyalty of the mesnie may be tracked using the system given in Covenants, page 38, or simply assumed to be strong while times are good and less good during difficulty. Characters may take Virtues and Flaws to change the loyalty of their underlings.

Community Loyalty

Magi can prevent their rich peasants from becoming restive by offering them a deal better than that provided by the nearest town's royal charter. These peasants do not become loyal to the magi, who likely remain strangers because of The Gift. They may, however, be loyal to the community that the magi create and govern, or to the community's figurehead if they know him personally. Many peasants support covenants simply from self-interest. When magi attempt to develop communities with very high living standards, this creates resistance from nearby nobles and Churchmen, which provides opportunities for stories.

Flight and Rebellion

The loyalty mechanic given in Covenants, beginning on page 36, is suited to organizations of magi, perhaps with the occasional nobleman as their peer or servant, who are somewhat distant from the rest of the world. The Covenants rules are suitable for the large households of senior nobles, but they don't work as well when modeling the relationships of lesser nobles to their agricultural peasants. Noblemen lack the means or ability to provide many of the factors that make covenants loyal, and further lack the capacity for magical retribution. To their benefit, however, they also lack The Gift's social penalties.

A peasant flees the land when it seems he has better prospects elsewhere. This choice may be based on individual factors, like fear of being punished for a particular crime, or wider factors, like rumors of war. The presence of large towns makes the decision to flee far easier for peasants, as do stories of successful flight carried back to their village by travelers with messages from those who have left.

Peasants rebel when they feel they have no other choice. Rebellions are rare, because they tend to end badly, with the rebel leaders put to death. This occurs despite laws that prevent lesser nobles from usurping the mortal justice of the king. Short of armed rebellion, some peasants choose — as a group — to refuse to labor. Such villeins can be evicted and replaced, but this is expensive for their lord, and this inconvenience sometimes leads to a change in his policies.

Nothing Grows for the Wicked

Players may prefer a more folkloristic approach to peasant loyalty. In many ballads, the reign of a good king is marked by God with fertile harvests, while the reign of a bad king is blighted with famine. Similarly, if the player characters are virtuous and successful, then God raises the standard of living of the peasants in the covenant's area of influence. The peasants notice this and attribute it to the magi. This generates community loyalty.

Troupes using this system select good harvests rather than making the annual roll called for by the Mythic Pound system (see Covenants). Alternatively, peasant characters from the covenant's lands, when they appear in stories, may always be portrayed as happy and wealthy. This system is not used through the rest of the chapter.

Most peasant houses have no luxuries. The floor is usually beaten earth, strewn with straw. There is a table, a few stools, and a chest for clothes. Some peasants have bed frames, while others sleep on sacks of straw or wool off-cuts. Some prefer to sleep on lofts that are reached with a ladder. Richer peasants have more furniture.

Food and Drink

The main food of the peasants is bread. It is sometimes made from wheat, but in many areas wheat is grown primarily to pay the rent of the lord, or for sale. Rye and barley bread are common. Even in areas where wheat is consumed by peasants, their bread is often made from maslin. Maslin is a mixture of the lowest class of the manor's main grain (usually wheat or barley) with some cheaper foodstuff. This is usually rye, but may be barely or even beans.

The peasants' second staple is pottage, which is a soup or stew made by boiling miscellaneous things together. In many places pottage is simply made of rolled oats, but barley, peas, and lentils are common in pottages, as are garden vegetables, herbs, and spare bits of meat. Meals of pottage are cheaper than those of bread because they are exempt from milling and baking charges. Pottage is also a more filling way of cooking limited amounts of grain, because pottages gain bulk from the chaff that has not been winnowed from them, and they contain far more water than bread.

Meat is rare in the peasant diet. It is added for special occasions, like religious festivals and the customary feasts given by the lord to mark the end of sowing or planting. The diet may be supplemented with additional meat by poaching small game, which is one of the most popular crimes in Mythic Europe. Fish are also added to the diet in areas where they are readily available. Fat is similarly scarce in peasant diets.

There is a rough line across the center of Europe, north of which peasants drink ale, and south of which they drink wine. Neither, however, is particularly potent. In half the manors of England the famuli are given no allowance of ale, and drink water. In most places this is considered unsafe. In limited areas cider is more common than either ale or wine.

Ale is vital to the economies of many manors. It provides a source of nourishment that keeps well and, unlike bread, is free of the lord's taxes. Most manors have ale tasters, who are minor officers of the manorial court who assure that ale is not too watery. Most ale-making is done by women. Widows sometimes turn their attention to the craft as a way of supplementing their income.

Improvement in Living Standards

One handbook for senior clerics and estate managers lists the sins described in the following sections as popular with peasants who seek to increase their material wealth at the risk of their souls. Characters performing any of these sins will be substantially wealthier than their more pious neighbors, but expensive piety is rare in peasant families.

Paying Tithes Inadequately

One tenth of everything that a person gets must be given to the Church. Theological theories that would limit tithes to the natural increase of plants and animals aside, every person owes tithes, for everything of value, always. Every person, it is assumed, lies about his tithes and defrauds the Church. The mortuary, a charge described in Chapter Six: Manorial Fiefs, is always levied on the dying. Its function is to make things right between the Church and the dying thief.

Story Seed: Excommunication

Peasants who do not pay their tithes are cursed. That is, they are excommunicated by their priests. The widespread use of excommunication calls demons to an area, as they sense an easy harvest of souls.

A bishop near the covenant has pronounced an anathema on all those in his see who have failed him in the matter of tithes. Since those who knowingly have contact with an excommunicant are also excommunicated, he has placed large numbers of souls outside the protection of the Church. Various competing factions of demons flock to his see, and create mischief for the magi and each other. The characters can stop this by getting the bishop to lift his ban.

Common peasant rationales for paying lesser amounts include subtracting the expenses of collecting the harvest before the division, paying for only the primary crop of the field, not tithing byproducts of the harvest like straw, tithing with the worst of the fruit or grain instead of the best, paying late, delivering tithes to a local church instead of the church appointed to the manor, or docking the pay of a poor-quality priest.

Senior officers of the Church may, out of a sense of mercy, excuse the tithe in limited circumstances. Beggars, for example, owe tithes on the alms they collect. They are excused payment for alms sufficient to prevent them starving. Note that exceptions may never be self-assessed.

The Church puts a little leeway into tithe-exemption calculations. People who think they are likely to starve if they pay their tithe can only be compelled to pay by sending armed men to arrest them and seize their property. This is, itself, expensive, and so on some manors, it's not considered worth the effort. On other manors, strict enforcement is thought to be the obligation of the lord for the spiritual betterment of the peasantry, and so uneconomic tithes are levied anyway.

The Economics of Tithing

Tithing effectively swallows twenty percent of the income of most peasants. This is because the tithe is ten percent of the peasant's crop, rather than ten percent of what he has left once his seed corn for the next year, wages for laborers, and taxes to his lord have been accounted for. In areas where farm yields are higher, tithing is less onerous, but in much of Mythic Europe, average land returns less than four bushels of grain for every bushel planted. Lay lords and monasteries, because they do not owe themselves rent, sometimes farm land even more marginal than this.

By tradition, tithes are divided in the following way. One-quarter of all tithes go to the rector of the manor. One-quarter goes to the support of his curate and other priests. One-quarter is used to maintain the fabric of the church building. Finally, one-quarter is used to feed the poor. Many authorities, even within the Church, claim that this system is not followed in practice in many places. They point to the rundown churches found on some manors, and the lack of a dole for the poor, as signs that the priests are keeping too much for themselves.

Some demons try to persuade priests that monks, having no personal possessions, are therefore poor. As such, it is not necessary for the Church to give the final quarter of the tithe to the servile poor. They are less deserving, the demons argue, because their work is less important than prayer.

Paying the Lord Less Than You Owe

The simplest way for a peasant to have more money is to give less to the lord than is owed. This is difficult where there are cash rents, but is relatively simple in areas where rent is paid in the form of goods. Typical techniques include giving the lord the smallest fish, fruit, or eggs, and the worst quality grain.

One practice considered particularly pernicious is seen close to some of the capitals of Mythic Europe. The peasants of a lord simultaneously refuse to pay their taxes. This holds his lifestyle to ransom. This tactic generally only works if the lord is unable to bring force to bear, such as if he is deeply in debt or needs the money to pay the king's scutage.

Story Seed: Claiming the Covenant

In some parts of Mythic Europe, anyone who lives on a lord's holding for more than a year, and lacks written proof that they are free, is automatically a villein. This can cause trouble for a covenant that hides its magical status, because it means that every servant of the covenant, and even the magi themselves, are legally the property of the local baron. Even if the baron does not attempt to press his claim and force the magi to take to the plow, he feels he has a right to a large payment in exchange for their manumission.

Paying the Lord Only What You Owe

If a lord is getting only what he is owed, by custom and law, and this leads him into a life that is below what his peers enjoy, it is the moral duty of his peasants to give him more. The lord, technically, owns everything they own anyway. See the concept of tallage in Chapter Six: Manorial Fiefs for more detail.

Not Resting on Holy Days

Refraining from work on the sabbath and on the holy days of the Church isn't a privilege, it's a duty. The holy days on which a peasant is forbidden to work theoretically take up about a quarter of the year. This is so uneconomic that no lord of the manor respects it, and all serfs work on lesser holy days. Peasants who do refrain from work on a holy day are expected to make up the day owed to the lord from their free time. Similarly, it is considered wrong to take in only the mass of the service (such as by waiting outside the church with others to conduct business until the moment of the mass, then rushing inside, then departing again when the mass is done). Meeting after church to drink and dance is also considered sinful, but it is common.

Story Seed: Sending Lawyers and Money

In the classic form of peasants withholding their tax (which causes the most alarm among the writers of estate management handbooks), a group of peasants sends a delegation to the capital to hire a lawyer. They give the lawyer the money that they owe to their lord, to argue against the lord in a court of law. If the peasants win, they have lost nothing: their fees for the lawyer are smaller than the continual stream of fees that the lord could otherwise demand. If the lord wins, he has still suffered a great expense, great disruption to his domestic staff if he had no cash in reserve, and is unlikely to be able to collect the full amount his peasants owe him regardless.

The characters become involved because the carrier of the peasants' message is a redcap. When the redcap is found dead, the characters must determine who is responsible, and where the money has gone.

Perjury on Behalf of Lords

Many peasants, as a way of increasing their financial well-being, are tempted to lie in court disputes on behalf of their lord. This is particularly prevalent in boundary disputes. Lying on behalf of one's lord in the royal court is one of the fastest ways to make easy money.

Stealing from Neighbors

The two most common thefts in Mythic Europe are of firewood and stock. Stolen stock is relatively easy to hide, because all sheep look identical when skinned. Stolen firewood is even easier to hide: wood looks like other wood and the evidence literally goes up in smoke. Communal fields allow many other opportunities for theft. These include moving border markers, plowing in ignorance of the markers, and over-reaping such that one's scythe cuts down a little of a neighbor's crop.

Story Seed: Saving a Village, or Saving For a Village

The lord of a local village is marrying for the second time. He demands the peasants pay an extra tax, to allow him the sort of feast required by his new father-in-law, who is a baron. This extra tax will impoverish the village. The characters may prevent this, or encourage it, to find ways to benefit from the lord's greed and the peasants' suffering.

The characters may seek to prevent the tax being tallied. They may do this by sabotaging the marriage. This is difficult, but not impossible, because although the lord does not usually dwell at the manor, he will be in residence for a few weeks before the nuptials take place.

The characters may instead encourage the nobleman to impoverish his people. They may do this by offering rare and expensive delights and entertainments for the feast, through their intermediaries. This leaves the villagers and lord open to the covenant's financial influence. It allows the covenant to lure away the manor's tradesmen, and may even make the village so marginal that the lord would accept a cash offer for it, or the role of tame nobleman.

Changing Priests Without Permission, or Deducting Tithe for his Flaws

Some unscrupulous priests allow their flocks to pay an incomplete tithe. This leads peasants into sin, encouraging them to shop around for the priest who will give them the best rate regarding their tithes and other duties. Medieval peasants are not permitted to choose who their priests should be. They are required to accept the care of their souls by the person appointed to them by the bishop, regardless of his competence or piety.

Story Seed: Lying for the Lord

A peasant flees to the covenant seeking protection. His lord asked him, along with a group of compurgators, to lie about the ownership of a piece of land that was in dispute. Some of the others who acted as witnesses have gone missing, and the peasant thinks they have been murdered. He is not sure if his lord had them killed to make sure that they cannot tell the truth to the royal court, or if the slighted party carried out the killings, taking revenge. In truth it is far worse that this: a demon is murdering parties on both sides of the dispute, hoping to trigger a regional war.

Story Seed: Deodand Donkey

Stealing from neighbors is considered particularly heinous if the neighbor is frail, but this stops few criminally minded people because the elderly are such easy victims. The covenant has unknowingly bought a donkey that was stolen from an elderly man who died when it bucked him. It was stolen by a neighbor when it wandered out of its byre afterward, seeking grass. This animal, because it has caused a death, should be given to the Church. Theoretically the price of its sale would be used to provide for the dead man's relatives, but effectively this is just another tax.

The deodand donkey contains a little of the ghost of the dead man. The fragment of his spirit that resides in the deodand is angry at his death. It can transform its host animal into a spectral, centaur-like creature with the hindquarters of a donkey. It uses its powers to cause trouble in the area where it is kept, until it is given to the Church or destroyed.

Story Seed: The Bishop's Mistress

There is a folk story about the hearth mate of a priest who heard that the bishop was on his way to reprimand her partner for living with a woman. It is said that she filled a basket with good things to eat and took a shortcut through the woods. Reaching the bishop's party before he arrived in town, she was asked who she was, and where she traveled, all alone in the wood. She answered that she was taking food to the bishop's mistress, whom she had heard was with child. The bishop, mortified by his shame, returned home.

A bishop on good, or at least neutral, terms with the Order has contacted the covenant and asked for help. He is the bishop in the story. The strange part, for him, is that he doesn't actually have a mistress, and yet everyone he meets seems to believe he does. His home has a room for her, decorations selected by her, and clothes that she seems to have discarded for the maids to wash. One of his rooms has become a nursery, and between visits someone is filling it with furniture and toys. He does not know if this is some mundane trick engineered to drive him mad, if the mistress of the priest made a deal with the faeries of the wood, or if demons are bedeviling him.

Even a local priest who is heretical should be assessed and removed by the bishop, not judged by laymen. Some peasants ignore this and deduct a fine from their tithe for the things their priest does that they are sure are sins. This is unacceptable to the Church. The Church has, however, made some rulings that allow parishioners to ignore their priests. The most significant of these, to the daily life of peasants, is that they are enjoined not to attend the services of priests who live as if married. They are still required to tithe in such cases, although most do so parsimoniously.

Sexual Abstinence

Many peasants limit the size of their families by abstinence or contraception. This is a sin because it is robs a lord of the peasant's brood, and reduces the size of the family available to support the peasant in his old age. Unsupported elderly peasants become a drain on the economy of the manor or the Church, so failing to have sufficient children is considered antisocial.

Story Seed: Gift to the Faeries

Many mothers of illegitimate children, or of children in families that are too large, leave their babies exposed in the wilderness, comforted by the idea that they will be taken and raised by the faeries. The lack of corpses in the traditional sites where children are abandoned reinforces this hope.

Each site has its own explanation. In some the children are taken and raised by faeries, or given to mothers who want children but cannot have them. In others, faeries or other predators consume the children. In Transylvania and the Alps, these places are monitored by magi, who find that a surprising proportion of these children are Gifted. Even those who are not become highly loyal servants to the secret communities that rescued them from death.

In this story seed, a noble whose son has died on crusade is desperate for an heir. He knows he has a bastard son, and seeks him out only to find that his mother abandoned him on the Waif Rock, a faerie site near her village. He asks the magi to find his child, and return him home. Perhaps he has been taken by the faeries. Perhaps he is now a servant of the covenant. Perhaps the characters can just pick a suitable servant and claim he is the lost son returned. If they substitute a fake, eventually the prodigal returns, filled with faerie power and mischief.

Working in Old Age

Elderly people who work are considered avaricious. Instead, society expects that they should turn their lands over to their children. On many manors it is usual, before the land is handed over, for a written contract to be sown to the manorial roll. This lays out precisely how much the retired person may expect each year, in grain, cheese, money, and clothes. It almost always promises "a place by the fire." In some parts of Mythic Europe, people over forty are considered to be aged, but they are not expected to turn over their lands until a more advanced age.

Story Seed: Even Demons Have Limits

A local baron is taking to ridiculous extremes the idea that his servants are required to labor for him cheerfully and with a whole heart, working people almost to death. The characters are contacted by an agent of a local demon of greed, who does his best to hide his involvement, retaining the guise of a local taverner. The demon believes that the peasants of the area are too exhausted to sin properly. The demon thinks that he has the lord's soul safely claimed by now, but regrets that his experiment has cost him the souls of the exhausted peasantry. The demon hopes that the characters will be able to somehow intervene with the lord to ease the peasants' burden, that all will be able to freely sin again.

Story Seed: Misguided Faeries

Characters breaking the taboo of working in old age attract faeries that represent their fear of decrepitude and powerlessness. Magi also attract these creatures, despite the fact that a magus in his sixties is only middle aged. These faeries, lacking experience with magi, cannot see the magicians for what they really are, or at least pretend they cannot. This makes their attacks humorously ineffective, if still annoying.

Moving Manor

Flight is theft, because a peasant's labor is not his own, to dispense as he wishes. It also encourages lords to attempt to buy popularity, by meeting the rising living standards in nearby towns. The Church has mixed views on this, but in large sections of the Church this is seen as wrong, because physical poverty leads to a desirable spiritual state, and because this forces the ecclesiastical landlords to offer more for farm labor than is traditional, which prevents them from spending this surplus on charity, crusading, and other good works. Offering more for labor encourages people who ask for more than is customarily theirs — that is, it encourages thieves.

Story Seed: The Inn of Good Rest

A character of interest to the covenant dies of poisoning and the characters decide to investigate. They discover there have been a series of poisonings, all pilgrims who have worshiped at a local shrine. The deaths are being caused by the followers of the faerie lord to whom the shire's site was sacred before the coming of Christianity. They run a brothel, and occasionally kill pilgrims who visit it. They do this because their faerie patron guards the border between the profane and sacred, and feel that they further this by killing people who are at spiritual risk.

Some pilgrims mistakenly assume that since pilgrimage washes clean some of their sins, they can perform some of the more interesting sins the night before the pilgrimage concludes and not suffer any spiritual ills. The faerie lord, is more influenced by commonly believed stories than by theological accuracy, and has, his followers use slow-acting poison, because it is sure not to kill any given victim before his pilgrimage is complete. The faerie's followers believe that they can catch the pilgrims just after they enter a state of grace, killing them before they can sully themselves again.

Not Working Hard

A peasant is required, by scripture, to cheerfully work to his utmost to please his lord. A peasant choosing not to exhaust himself in his labors for his lord, who does not have a heart filled with a desire to serve, is in a state of sin. A peasant who makes a contract with his lord such that he is not required to work to exhaustion is seeking license to sin, and such licenses are false documents.

Being Hard on Pilgrims and the Poor

Peasants are required to aid pilgrims and the poor. Providing for the poor is increasingly difficult in Mythic Europe, due to the booming population. Some peasants believe that the poor should be provided for from the tithes of the Church. They therefore surmise that it is not their duty to succor the poor, given that they, themselves, live a marginal existence.

Similarly, pilgrims tend to be wealthier than peasants. They at least have sufficient free time to travel. It's not clear to some peasants why they should offer food and lodging to people richer than they are, who choose to pretend to be poor briefly while engaging in a sort of spiritual tourism. In some parts of Mythic Europe, pilgrims are also considered troublemakers. It's believed that many pilgrims use the opportunity of anonymity away from their home communities to engage in theft, inebriation, and — particularly — fornication.

The Gaining of Freedom

For many serfs, freedom is an important goal. A serf who is free has the right to own property, marry as he or she wishes, have children who are not born to servitude, and work in a profession of his choice. Free people are also, in the minds of Mythic Europeans, fundamentally better people then serfs. There is a strong sentiment in Mythic European law that serfs are legally incomplete, like children, the insane, or women. This is why, for example, all priests are free.

Manumission, the freeing of serfs by lords, is favored by the teaching of the Church, but is rarely practiced by senior Churchmen. Far fewer serfs from Church lands are made free than from the lands of lay rulers. This is because secular lords, at death or to give thanks for the birth of an heir, often bestow charity on the poor. One of the forms this charity takes is the manumission of serfs. Churchmen almost never give charity in this form.

Manumission by Lay Lords

The process by which lay lords give manumissions varies between kingdoms. In France, for example, a lord may only free a serf if the lord's feudal superiors, up to the king himself, give him license to do so. In England, this is not the case; a lord personally owns the service of his serfs and may do as he wishes with them.

Manumission costs whatever the lord wants it to cost, so the price varies tremendously based on the financial needs of lords. It is higher in England, where demesne farming is popular, than in France, where renting land to free men is preferred. It is lower in lands at war, and higher in lands at peace. It falls tremendously just before a major campaign is mounted. It falls when labor is cheap. If a lord sets the price of manumission too high, many of his peasants instead use their wealth to rent additional land. As a rule of thumb, a player character can purchase freedom, for himself and his descendants, for between six and ten pounds.

In many areas, because it is believed that serfs technically do not own anything, a legal ritual is used to manumit serfs. The serf gives his money to a free man, and then that free man and the lord come to a bargain whereby the lord is given the money, and in exchange manumits the serf. The lord is, therefore, not setting the precedent that his serf had the right to keep the money that was used to buy his freedom.

If a boy begins schooling to become a priest, then he is free. The father of the child then owes the lord a fine. This is far smaller than the usual fee for manumission. For player characters, assume this sum to be ten shillings, and the duty to say masses for the soul of the lord on a regular basis. In some areas if such a person ceases to be a priest — for example, if he is cast out of the holy office due to scandal — then he becomes a serf again.

Manumission by the Church

Manumission of serfs is explicitly forbidden to senior Churchmen, banned as a form of alienation of property from the Church. Senior Churchmen, in theory, hold no property of their own. They instead administer the property of the Church, which they cannot sell. How much is the lifetime labor of a peasant worth? How much, in addition, the work of every descendant, though all generations until doomsday? No peasant has that sort of money, and so he cannot pay his worth to the Church.

More practical Churchmen counter with the idea that sale of Church assets, at the going rate, does not diminish the Church's holdings. They feel that it is right to free serfs for money, provided that they don't pocket the money themselves. Refusal to release any serfs is seen as a way of keeping priests away from this temptation. The Church, practically speaking, does manumit serfs, but almost exclusively in exchange for money, and only when finances are unusually weak.

Manumission by Membership of a Town's Guild

In many areas it is possible to become free by being a member of a town's guild for a period of time. The idea that a person becomes free by living in a town for a year and a day oversimplifies this legal point. To become free the person must not stray from the town, and must be accepted as a resident by the authorities of the town. This generally requires guild membership, which, in turn, generally requires the active support of a wealthy patron who gives the villein employment. It is, therefore, far easier for villeins who have relatives living in a town to escape villeinage in this way.

Manumission by Force of Crusading Sentiment

It is felt by many people that there is something ignoble about forcing one who has fought for the cross back into serfdom. Legally, a crusader has no right to claim his freedom. Effectively, in most kingdoms, a man who has been able to attend crusade as part of the retinue of a great lord is freed by his service to God.

The Agricultural Year

The agricultural year is divided into four uneven seasons by the work done at that time, which is dependent on climate. Roughly speaking, winter runs from September 29 (which is the first day of the administrative year) until Christmas. Twelve days of recreation follow Christmas, and then spring begins. Spring lasts until Easter. Easter again is followed by a week of festivities, and heralds Summer, which ends at the start of August. Autumn lasts until the end of September.

Two or Three Field Rotation

All of the villeins labor together during the sowing and reaping, but most manors have distinctly marked blocks belonging to individuals within the great fields. Plowing is done by individuals, or by teams of men who lend each other oxen and plows in turn, so that they form a complete ox team. Reaping is done by individual crop owners and their servants.

In a three-field manor, wheat or rye is planted in autumn in the first field. An alternate crop, which varies by climate and locale, is planted in the spring in the second field.

Popular crops include oats, vetches, beans, peas, and barley. The third field is left fallow. In the following year, the wheat is moved to the fallow field, the secondary crop to the wheat field, and the secondary crop field is left fallow. In the two-field system, one field is left fallow while the other is divided in half and planted much like the second field in the three-field system.

Parts of either field may be sown with crops other than the main one selected for that season. The field is divided into sections, called furlongs, which are long rectangles. The manor court selects what is planted in each furlong, and all holders of land in that furlong must plant the correct crop. This makes planting and harvesting easier. This also allows the manorial court to ensure that a village has the correct balance of crops.

Story Seed: A New Crusade

Crusades are extremely expensive. They create problems for peasants unable to resist the tallage of their lords (as described in Chapter Six: Manorial Fiefs), but also provide opportunities for those who have sufficient power to stare down their lords. At the beginning of the Third Crusade, peasants throughout England found that their lords wanted a great deal of money very quickly. They sold manumissions and land cheaply. They were willing to grant concessions on villein fees and services. Some were even willing to sell their demesne lands, determined to make their fortune in the Holy Land or be buried there.

A new crusade is also an opportunity for covenants with spare money, or who are willing to engage in usury. The demands of the lords for money in coin make it difficult to come by. Usurers respond by raising their interest rates. A covenant willing to loan money to the local peasants at a cheap rate could become very popular, while one willing to loan money at the going rate would be unpopular, but comparatively wealthy.

August and September

August and September are the months for the harvest. Every serf is required to give extra service to his lord, which can make bringing in his own crops difficult. Even freemen are usually required to work at this time, although their work is supervising the day laborers they have hired to do their physical labor. After the harvest, poor people wander the fields looking for missed grain. They are permitted to keep these gleanings as an act of charity. After this, the cattle are set loose in this field, to graze on the wheat stubble. The peasant then takes his tithe to the Church and his rent to the lord. By tradition the harvest is meant to be complete by Michaelmas (29 September) because that is the day of reckoning for manorial taxes, not only for the peasants, but also for the reeve, who must give account up until this day, and who is replaced or reaffirmed in office on this day.

On many manors pigs must have rings through their snouts after Michaelmas. This prevents the pig from uprooting plants with its nose. Each sow is expected to give birth to around 14 young a year, so their population grows rapidly. Pigs are only considered good eating in their second year, but they are generally able to keep themselves alive by foraging over winter. This foraging can damage the crops of other peasants, necessitating the ring.

Cattle are bred in September. This allows them to calf after winter ends.

Richard's Deed

King Richard — who was always more at home in Normandy than England said at the start of the Third Crusade that he would sell London, if only he could find a buyer. In Mythic Europe, kings can't say silly things like that without someone, or something, answering their summons.

Magi might have bought London. There have always been rumors in the Order that House Tytalus wanted to take him up on the offer. Many other covenants, at this time, sought charters from the king guaranteeing their rights. There is also a Mercer House in London that seems to thrive.

Faeries would gladly have bought the right to access some or all of London, for their court. This gives them a Right of Entry, as described in Realms of Power: Faerie, which lessens the impact of the Dominion. It also provides great hunting opportunities for some dark faeries. Those that cannot cross thresholds without being invited in would be free to attack people in their homes in London because Richard is their landlord, and so can "invite in" whatever he likes.

Richard may have sold similar rights to demons, thinking them magi or faeries.

The player characters may seek the title deed for London, if by seizing it they prevent a demon from burning down the town, or a malevolent faerie from spreading a sickness. The Deed of London is kept in a regio, closely guarded by demons or faeries.

October

The movement of the cattle onto the wheat field leaves the fallow field free for a third, slightly deeper, plowing. After this is complete the peasants make preparations for winter. The most important preparation is the gathering of wood. This is used as fuel, but is also the raw material for the craft work that the peasants expect to do over winter. This usually includes house repairs. As the weather became progressively worse, increasing amounts of work are done indoors. Threshing, for example, needs to be completed. October ends with All Saint’s Eve, Hallowe’en, when the dead are thought to walk.

Sheep are bred in October. Breeding can occur earlier, but October breeding allows them to drop their lambs after the worst of winter.

November

Martinmas, the Feast of the Plowman, is celebrated with a feast on the 11th of November. The annual slaughter of beasts that the peasants do not wish to feed through the winter begins, in some areas, as early as Michaelmas, but is usually the work of this slower part of the year. Cows are rarely slaughtered if they are still capable of bearing calves, but oxen that are older than six are often killed, as they are considered to be at the end of their strength. Sheep are only killed for lack of fodder, if their health fails, or on special occasions, because they are considered to have better value alive.

December

Christmas usually marks the end of fieldwork, other than the spreading of manure or agricultural lime, until the following January. Many use this time to perform craft work, make repairs around their houses, and beget children. The time of the year between Christmas and Epiphany is set aside for festivals and prayer. It is a time for lords to grant largesse to their followers. Peasants owe their lords their respects and regards, a sort of theoretically voluntary tax, usually of poultry.

January

A feast is held to celebrate the resumption of work, although in colder climes there is little to be done in the fields at this time. In many areas plow races are held. In Britain bands of young men travel the streets asking for money for the plow, and destroying the yards of those who refuse. Animal husbandry begins in January, with the breeding of pigs and the first lambing. Lambing in England occurs in March, but in pleasanter climes comes earlier.

February

Once the ground has softened a little, whatever soiled straw a peasant has collected during the winter is laid on the surface of his land, so that when the plow turns the soil, the straw and manure are dug in. On manors that are relatively warm, and that have many sheep, ewes are sometimes shorn in this month to prepare them for lambing in March. Calving beings in February.

The middle of February is commemorated as the day of the Purification of the Virgin. This refers to a ceremony that mothers perform after giving birth to make them spiritually clean enough to re-enter the church. It involves a procession with candles, a feast, and — in parts of France — eating crepes.

Story Seeds: Faeries at Christmas

In many areas a game is played where a bean, or silver trinket, is hidden in a treat and the person who finds this foreign object in his serving is the king of revels for the feast. Some people believe that, in ancient times, these bean kings were killed by the pagans. Dark faeries, who do not care if a story is true or false as long as it ends in screaming and blood, have difficulty finding admittance to communities on Christmas, and so they rarely hunt bean kings. A bean king who wanders, however, might find himself pursued, if his term is up, or treated with the greatest courtesy and showered with gifts, if his day has time remaining.

One way for faeries to enter the human lands during the 12 days of Christmas is to take on the role of mummers. Mummers are humans who form bands, put on masks, and then parade, beg for money, or fight. Many bands of mummers perform traditional plays. The mixture of traditional roles, artistically performed stories, and transgressions made possible by assumed identities draws in some of the strangest and most obscure faeries, who are only ever discovered if they are forced to remove their masks.

In this story seed some faeries conspire to make real the things that are only the pretenses of the mummer's play. The actor playing the fool loses his wits for a year until he plays the same role again. The actor playing a woman similarly has his gender changed, until she can repeat her performance the following year. The characters do not know that these curses are of limited duration and seek the assistance of the player characters. They are aided in their quest to fix this trick by a prop from the play: the pills of the doctor, which bring the dead hero back to life, can now cure all wounds instantly, and contain Corpus vis.

Story Seed: Holly and Baby

A hedge witch has reason for vengeance on a noble lady. She put a small holly branch over the window of the nursery of the lady's child last Candlemas night. Dark faeries, able to enter the house because of the invitation of the holly, killed the child in its cot, leaving it cold and lifeless with not a mark.

The revenge of the witch, however, is not yet finished. This year she plans to put up the holly again, so that a faerie, in the shape of the dead child, will attack the mother. Characters may prevent this by removing the holly, or they may appease the faeries entirely by burning a candle in every window of the noble lady's house. The witch will try to snuff one of the candles and hang more holly. How do the characters monitor all of the candles at once?

Story Seed: Mob Football

On any festive day when the weather is suitable, peasants may play football. The rules of football vary greatly from place to place. Whichever team gets the ball back to a designated spot in their village (or to their end of the village, in a game played by halves of a single village) is the winner.

• Each side may have an unlimited number of players. Players have a side by birth or residence. That is, those born in the poor part of a town, in many places, must play for that part of the town.
• Killing the players of the other side is forbidden, but striking them with a certain degree of force is inevitable.
• Striking members of your own team is allowed. On some manors, it's considered impossible to commit an assault during a football match, because the crowd of drunken football players will swear that whoever is charged before the manor court didn't strike the blow.
• Players may trespass where they like. Trampling crops is permitted — but low — play in many areas. As with assault, there's no way to assign blame.

Candlemas is considered an excellent day for divination by hedge witches. Even the untalented know simple folk observances. These include predictions of lean times for those who don't still have half their flour and hay, and a present end to winter if Candlemas is rainy. Candlemas is also a day to predict the death of relatives by listening for soul bells.

Peasants caution that greenery used to make the house colorful for Christmas must be taken down before this day. To fail to do so angers the spirits of dead children, and this is one of the many origin stories of faeries. Faeries express their annoyance with tricks or, in the worst case, by killing someone who lives in the house. They prefer to kill children, who are like themselves.

March

Lambing occurs slightly before sowing. This is busy time on manors that graze sheep, particularly those that graze in preference to cropping. Lambing on estates with large herds is done in pasture, which requires more work than barn lambing, because some ewes seek privacy while giving birth. Humans are often able to rectify problems that might otherwise kill a ewe or lamb, and sometimes are able to graft orphaned lambs onto ewes whose lambs have died.

The primary crop is sown in March, and this takes as much labor as the manor can provide. In areas where the last neck of grain is saved from the previous harvest, either as a bundle or having been made into a corn doll, it must be plowed in now.

The field is then harrowed. That is, a tool is drawn over it to cover the seeds so they are not eaten by birds or rodents. On some manors, the primary crop is all wheat; this is particularly true on wealthy manors where the crop is being grown for sale at a nearby town. On more independent manors, only a quarter of the primary crop is wheat. The remainder is a mixture of other grains and legumes.

At the beginning of Lent, in some areas, a great feast is held to use up forbidden foods which cannot be stored until after Easter. For peasants these are eggs, butter, and milk, which become pancakes and pastries. Races of various types are held, and mob football is played. In other areas, peasants just eat their normal fare, which is so humble that it is considered suitable for fast days.

April

Easter is a time for processions of various types, and for the veiling of the cross until Good Friday. A vigil is held between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and it is believed by many peasants that Infernal powers are strongest at this time. The week after Easter is a holiday for peasants according to the Church, although most lords do not accept this and merely allow peasants to work their time in some other week. As the weather is warming, sports and games are popular.

The week after Easter ends, in parts of England, with Hocktide Monday and Tuesday. The celebration of Hocktide varies from place to place, sometimes including bizarre rituals of mutual flagellation by husbands and wives. In its more usual form, women use ropes to capture male travelers and refuse to release them until they pay a penny, or a kiss in some cases, on the Monday, and the men return the favor on the Tuesday. The money collected is spent on a worthy cause.

In this month the fallow field must be given a shallow plowing to kill the weeds. Weaning begins, which prompts dairying. Piglets are born, a process called farrowing.

Story Seed: Faerie Kidnapper

Three of the girls of the village are pregnant. They are greatly distressed, because two of them claim not to have known men, and their prospects of marriage have been seriously damaged. Investigation demonstrates that all three were kidnapped at Hocktide by a man they thought was their beau, and each of them gave him a kiss as their ransom. When their children are born, it is obvious that they have a faerie father. The characters may wish to shield the children from the abuse that is likely to follow. They may also seek the father, because faerie satyromaniacs can't be left to make mischief so close to the covenant.

May

During this month the peasants perform such labors as are required by the customs of the manor. This may include construction work, maintenance, or warfare. The month begins with the celebration of May Day. It is also the month for capturing swarms of wild bees to create hives.

In some areas, strict sexual morality is abandoned on May Day and people spend the night in the forest. May Day celebrations often involve fires around which people dance, or over which people leap. Some people think their rye will grow as tall as they leap over the fire, although Hermetic magi have never demonstrated this to be true. Peasants "bring in the May" by carrying flowers and green boughs back to their homes in the morning.

Story Seed: Rogation Blood

There is always some concern at Rogation that a parent will not hurt a boy sufficiently for him to remember the landmarks. In one village the blood of so many virgin boys spilled on a particular stone, year after year, is a sacrifice to an almost-forgotten pagan god. When the Rogation becomes so lax that there is not enough blood, the deity stirs to seek repayment for the village's debt.

Story Seed: Wake Day

Wakes are celebrations where people stay up the night before a feast day. Wake Day is a special wake that is celebrated at different times on various manors. The wake is celebrated on the evening before the day of the patron saint of the Church in the manor. Festivities vary, to suit that saint. In many areas the saint reflects the local industry.

Informally, many Jerbiton-influenced covenants celebrate September 26 as their Wake Day. This is the Feast of Saints Cyprian and Justina of Antioch. Cyprian was a sorcerer, and perhaps a diabolist, who tried to use his powers to seduce a Christian virgin, but then forsook evil when his spells failed. He is the patron of the church at Valnastium, the domus magna of House Jerbiton.

A character comes to the player characters on Wake Day and claims to be a penitent Infernalist. He offers to name the nobleman who recruited him, and the other members of his coven. How can the player characters be sure he is telling the truth? Do they give him a chance to live a life of atonement, or assume that he is an agent of the Infernal attempting some scheme?

Many peasants run their cattle or sheep between two May Day fires, to defend them against the curses of hedge witches and this is — in some areas — completely effective. This may be because local witches sometimes make sure the effect works, to protect their village from interlopers. The Beltaine rituals can hex those who practice magic, which includes Hermetic magi who are lax in renewing their Parma Magica while outside their covenant's Aegis.

The Rogation Days begin forty days after Easter. On these days, the people of a village walk its boundaries, and prayers are said in traditional places. Young men are taken on the walk and abused so that they do not forget where the landmarks are. They may be dunked in pools and rivers, have their faces mashed against rocks and trees, or be beaten at particular points. This is done for the good of the boys, often by people who love them. There is a feast afterwards.

In May or June, Pentecost is celebrated. This day, 49 days after Easter, represents the giving of the Commandments to Moses, and the entry of the Holy Spirit into the apostles before they began the ministry detailed the Book of Acts. A feast, dancing, and horse racing are popular on this day. Pentecost is often followed by a week of holidays.

June

Shearing occurs in this month.

Other duties also require attention from the peasants. A second, shallow plowing for the fallow field occurs at this time. It is considered unlucky to plow before Midsummer (24 June) because thistles killed before this time are thought to grow back threefold.

Midsummer Eve, the night before the Feast of John the Baptist, is a mystical evening. In many parts of Europe it is believed that ferns drop fiery seeds on this night, and that if you collect the seeds then the Devil is forced to appear and give you a bag of money. In a separate tradition, children race around the village with flaming sticks and set alight piles of rubbish to scare away dragons that would otherwise poison the wells.

Midsummer is the traditional start of haymaking. Each laborer can cut about an acre a day in good weather. It is vital to make hay while the sun shines, because cut hay is left to dry for hours. If stacked while it is still wet, hay begins to rot. This generates heat deep within the haystack and, if left unchecked, may cause the haystack to ignite. Most stock will not eat hay that smells of smoke, so if a single haystack catches flame in a stackyard, it can ruin much of the crop.

July

By tradition, the last day of July is the last day of haymaking; in August the manor switches to reaping its harvest. Many manors finish haymaking more quickly than this, provided the weather is fine. During July women harvest, prepare, and spin flax and linen, to make cloth or string. Men weed their fields. For this they use a pair of sticks, one forked, the other with a blade at its end. At the end of July, after the meadow has recovered from haymaking, it is reopened to stock.

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