The Matter of Glenwyr

[Catullus64]

I'm gearing up to run a campaign using a Welsh/Brittonic-inspired setting called the Kingdom of Glenwyr. One of my core ideas is "what if something like the Arthur mythos was the basis of a large-scale organized religion for an entire kingdom?" With that in mind, I've come up with the sketch of a somewhat Arthuresque mythic history for this kingdom, and the idea of a church built around it. If this sparks any interesting contributions or questions, I'm always glad to hear them.

The central figure of this myth is Ynyr, the Holy King. A chieftain of the Maerni tribe some eight hundred years ago, who forged the kingdom of Glenwyr by uniting four other tribes (variously by conquest or diplomacy). He defended his new kingdom quite effectively against both Orcs from the west and the large kingdom of men called the Othrians from the east. He was unable, however, to defeat an army of giants whose wrath he provoked when he cuckolded the Giant King. Fatally wounded from battle with the giants, he made a bargain with the Giant King to spare his kingdom. In exchange, Ynyr would depart the lands of men, sailing across the ocean to the Other World, where he would remain until the passage of three thousand years.

Five members of Ynyr's household, called his Holy Court, make up the other deities worshipped by the church. The next in prominence is Gwendolyn, Mother of the People, and Ynyr's queen. Wise, compassionate, beautiful as the sun and moon, a bringer of healing and fertility, a protectress of women and children. Her marriage to Ynyr secured to him the fealty of the Ilverni tribe, who became among his most dedicated followers. She went with Ynyr on his voyage across the sea, to tend his wounds.

Curwen, the Arch-Druid, was a mystic, poet, and Ynyr's most valued councilor. What Ynyr could not win by the spear, Curwen's spells and stratagems won for him. It was he who enabled Ynyr's fateful seduction of the Giant Queen. Because Curwen is a divine figure, the Druid circles retain official sanction by church and state. Many of the more conservative druids, however, secretly consider Curwen a traitor to their order, who sold their secrets to Ynyr to feed his own ambition. The Bards, however, revere him greatly as the founder of their order. He did not depart with Ynyr across the sea, but instead went away beneath the hills to prepare the way for his king's return.

Rhodri was the firstborn son of Ynyr and Gwendolyn. Though an able warrior like his father, he was first and foremost a scholar and a speaker of prophecies. He went among the tribes that still resisted Ynyr's rule, foretelling the mighty kingdom that would be built in his father's name. He was tortured and slain by the Clunviri tribe, becoming the Martyred Prince, but appeared in spirit form to stay his father's wrath and bring the Clunviri peaceably into the fold. His collected and attested sayings make up the better part of the church's wisdom literature.

Balnean was a foreigner from the land of Othria, sent to ambush Ynyr on the road and assassinate him. They fought all day and night, until Balnean proved the victor, but was so moved by Ynyr's courage that he renounced his former loyalties and became Ynyr's most redoubtable champion, the Penitent Knight. He set the example of peerless chivalry for all generations to follow. Balnean fell to no mortal foe, but to the love of his lady Gwendolyn; rather than choose between denying his passion for her, or betraying his liege and friend, he rode alone into battle with the Black Wyrm of Penrhyd, where he slew and was slain, depriving Ynyr of his best warrior. His scorched armor, still bearing the touch of his ghost, was carried with Ynyr across the sea.

Siannon, the Dark Princess, was the bastard offspring of Ynyr's tryst with the Giant Queen. When she was a baby, Curwen spirited her away from the giants and brought her to Ynyr. She possessed fell powers which she augmented with arcane study, and she fomented many disorders in Ynyr's realm just to amuse herself. Ultimately, however, it was she who was able to mediate the truce with the giants, and accompanied her father across the sea.

Worship of Ynyr and his court was sporadic and informal in the first generations after Ynyr's departure. Ynyr's kinsman Baenr, who ruled after him, was deposed by Calcas the Red, who mocked the idea of worshipping the former king and actively persecuted the fledgeling religion. This in turn provoked numerous more rebellions, which only ceased when Calcas abdicated in favor of his son, Calcas the Lawgiver, who made public sacrifice to Ynyr, ordained the first bishops of the church, canonized a set of holy books, and codified the procedures for electing the king. He therefore made the king effectively the head of this religion. The strength of the new religious institution would be tested during the next king's reign by the First Druids' Revolt, in which the former chief religious authorities tried to violently reassert their status with the backing of some of the tribes, but this was defeated. A Second Druids' Revolt, concluded just a few years before campaign start date, was more about land seizures and forestry rights than religious principles.

[brian 333]

The concept of The Quest as a purification ritual usually sponsored by The Church:

Questing has been used by the society to maintain a cadre of powerful warriors in peacetime against the future need of war leaders. One foreign diplomat claimed, "The land is awash with devout youths chasing hither and yon across the land searching for a trinket they can show to demonstrate their prowess."

The truth is, many questors are exactly that. But the purpose of a quest is not to find a trinket. It is to forge dedication, devotion, and obedience into the hearts of as many young warriors as possible. Warriors thus indoctrinated are destined for positions of power within the government and clergy, while those who "fake it" wind up in charge of border forts and training battalions.


Questions:
Is there a caste or class system, such as feudal hierarchies, or is there an egalitarian society based on merit, or something else?

What is the social role of families and clans? Do other bonds supercede family?

In thinking about Arthurian mythos, I think of isolated castles, perhaps with a village, surrounded by wilderness, connected to other castles by worn out dirt roads. How close to correct is this?

Is the countryside more wild and populated with monsters, or is it more settled and highwaymen the greater danger?

[Catullus64]

The concept of The Quest as a purification ritual usually sponsored by The Church:

Questing has been used by the society to maintain a cadre of powerful warriors in peacetime against the future need of war leaders. One foreign diplomat claimed, "The land is awash with devout youths chasing hither and yon across the land searching for a trinket they can show to demonstrate their prowess."

The truth is, many questors are exactly that. But the purpose of a quest is not to find a trinket. It is to forge dedication, devotion, and obedience into the hearts of as many young warriors as possible. Warriors thus indoctrinated are destined for positions of power within the government and clergy, while those who "fake it" wind up in charge of border forts and training battalions

That's good stuff, and might actually dovetail usefully for the storytelling elements of Paladins which I'm working on.

[brian 333]

Quest Ideas:

Cure the Blight in Dreshwin
On a night of no moons, an eerie whistling music can be heard across the large pond that powers the mill. No one who has investigated has returned, but after the music was first heard, the crops became sickly and infected with fungus. The villagers have resisted burning their fields because even a sickly harvest might be enough to get them through a winter. Solve the musical mystery, save the village from the Blight, and begin building a reputation!

The Beast of Twelve Trees
Twelve Trees is a village undergoing a terror. A massive boar with claws instead of hooves and a demonic voice roams the area at night, devouring anyone foolish enough to be outside. Is it a lycanthrope? A demon? Something else?

Guarnat's Wedding
The groom has vanished 24 hours before his wedding to the very ugly but very wealthy Haermal Goldmun, whose spine is much straighter than it used to be and whose pox-scars seem much diminished from a few years ago.
Guarnat can be found, wearing women's clothes and headed away from town as fast as he can go. He refuses to go back, and is prepared to fight to the death rather than fulfill a promise by his father, made when the boy was two years old. "Marry her yourself if you are so eager to see her wed!"
Marrying Haermal would be an acceptable outcome for her father, and she doesn't seem to care. After the wedding there is a feast, at which Haermal asks about where he plans to take her for her honeymoon. The farther, the better.
She plans to vanish into the farthest city she can find. Her hideous deformities are part stage makeup and part illusion, made by her nanny before she came of age to discourage suitors who were after her money. As she travels she grows less ugly, but wants no part of marriage. Collecting on the dowry might be an issue with an absent bride.

Sir Ectra, the Dragon Knight
This dragon has a vicious sense of humor. He has a motley suit of armor made of chain harnesses which hold flattened breastplates and other bits of armor to his body. They offer little protection, but the dragon claims the armor of his defeated rivals gives him spiritual armor. Anyone going toe-to-toe with Sir Ectra had best prepare a defense against his massive ego.

[brian 333]

Have you addressed the concept of social status?
Arthurian legends were steeped in the chivalric codes that came long after historic Arthur, but even in the 500's social stratification by family was a thing. Of course, your world is free to imagine society in any way you like.

One concept:
Feudal monarchies form leagues and alliances, but few kings choose to serve others. In this case, 11 kings, (and queens,) and 3 princes, (and princesses,) each rule former counties of Great Glenwyr, reclaimed from formerly conquered lands and in some cases with descendents of the former rulers. Most have claims to the throne of all Glenwyr which are disputed by the others.

Duke/Duchess is a modern title, usually reserved for those who have wealth and ties of blood to the monarch.

Earl is a much older title, but it carries the same weight as Duke, (though perhaps less prestige.) Dukes and Earls are the highest class of the nobility, and have the authority of High Justice, which allows them to hold lesser nobles accountable under the law.

Baron/Baroness is the title given to particularly wealthy or successful knights.

March Lords/Ladies are knights charged with border security and defense. Usually, (but not always,) able to control import and export taxation, they tend to be among the wealthier members of the peerage.

These are the second rank of the peerage, who are endowed with the power of Low Justice. While they may not administer justice to a member of the peerage, they are empowered to administer common law.

Baronets are typically wealthy or successful knights whose fiefs tend to be urban or centered around a particular commodity or enterprise.

Knights are typically rural landowners, who earned their fief in military enterprises, (or inherited such appointments from their ancestors.)

Third Rank nobles typically have the responsibilities of tax collection, training the militia, and keeping the peace. While they cannot administer justice, they are responsible for training and provisioning sheriffs and constables who make arrests and bring evidence against the accused who stand before appointed civil judges or higher ranked nobles.

Below the Peerage are the squires and hedge knights. Squires are propertied individuals whose family titles expired. Some become highly placed ministers in the government, others become aids to powerful peers, but most are landowners who directly manage their properties.

Hedge Knights are a collection of people trained and typically equipped for war who own no titles or estates. Some are children of nobles who were disinherited or disgraced, some are veterans of foreign wars, some are the children of commoners who learned martial skills in the hopes that they will earn a title. Hedge Knights are generally afforded wary respect by the population of the Kingdoms of Glenwyr.

A strong sense of family as a source of pride permeates the society, from the lowest menial to the most prosperous merchant. Farmers revere their family name and history as much as Lords. Commoner family names are far more localized, so that within a day's walk different families dominate the social hierarchy.

Commoners tend to hold skill and success in high esteem as well. No matter the person's origin, what he makes of himself is more important.

This has led to a bewildering variety of games and contests across the countries which are held around the calendar. The Dudger Games are held twice a year on the Equinoxes, with a boxing tournament primary among the festival's events. The Heskir Stone Games happen every seventh year on the Summer Solstice, and involves non-contact track and field events. These and uncounted other fairs and carnivals give the peasantry opportunities to display their skills and earn bragging rights.

[Catullus64]

Have you addressed the concept of social status?
Arthurian legends were steeped in the chivalric codes that came long after historic Arthur, but even in the 500's social stratification by family was a thing. Of course, your world is free to imagine society in any way you like.

In broad outline, I have thought about that. Between this mythical time and setting present, there's definitely a process that transforms one system of power (non-hereditary tribal chiefs with their professional warrior retinues) into another (an entrenched hereditary nobility connected by complex vassalage relations.) Of course, just like 13th-century European aristocrats imagining themselves at the Round Table, there's a fair amount of retrojection of values going on here.

What that process was exactly, I have yet to determine. One thing to consider is the idea that in the earlier times, due to the poverty of the soil and tribal rivalries making territorial settlement difficult, the chief form of wealth is not in land but in animals, particularly cattle. Since herds of cattle are more easily divided between daughters and sons than land is, individual families aren't able to consolidate the kind of power to make themselves a hereditary aristocracy.

Maybe the unification of this kingdom under Yynr changes that. With unity comes greater stability, and military success against neighboring powers, which together allow the tribal war-leaders to accrue large estates of land, and thereby subjugate the people and secure hereditary rights for themselves and their followers, especially the right to be the electors of the kings. The 'tribes' which make up the kingdom transform over the generations into administrative divisions rather than ethnic ones.

Paladins are something of a disruption to this: anyone, noble or not, can manifest the powers of a Paladin should they be worthy of heart. But even this is probably mediated by social structures: to be recognized as a Paladin, and to receive the enormous latitude of one, you need to present yourself before your local bishop, so that he and a council of other clergymen can consult the appropriate precedents and signs to judge if you are a true Paladin. I imagine that these clerical councils, consciously or not, bias very strongly towards approving those with a noble pedigree, and thus there are more Paladins of noble extraction.

Perhaps there is some irony to be found in the fact that the campaign PCs, as free-wheeling adventurers out to seize their own greatness from the dungeon's teeth, actually have more in common with the mythical king and his followers than the landed aristocrats that identify most with them.

[brian 333]

The Misty Isles

In ancient times the goddess Jord, to protect a colony of her worshippers, tore a promontory from Glenwyr's Northern coastline and dragged it into the Frozen Sea. The promontory cracked into four larger islands and many islets. They are located where a tropical current breaks up and disperses into the polar sea, which causes severe storms and immense fog banks on all but the coldest days.

The former colony is all that remains of the Jorduun folk, who were destroyed by a series of invaders on the continent, but for thousands of years they have remained on the Misty Isles, protected by fog and shoals and brutal storms. The folk who live there live by coastal fishing, goatherding for wool, dairy, and meat, and by seasonal bounties such as springtime seabird eggs robbed from massive cliff colonies and autumn seal harvesting. (Both practices are strictly regulated by local druids.) While the season for farming is short, long summer days and naturally fertile soil maintained by good agricultural practices ensure crops in sufficient varieties and quantities to keep even the poorest adequately nourished over the long winters.

While there is no trade between the Misty Isles and the rest of the world, on occasion a ship will find its way to one of the seven harbors on the islands. Shipwrecks are far more common, and no captain has successfully charted a safe route. Few have returned a second time. On the other hand, sailors lost at sea and storm-wracked ships have found themselves cast ashore on the island's stone-covered beaches even though they were lost many thousands of miles away.

Rumors speak of the sorceresses who rule the islands, each the caretaker of a library devoted to a particular field. Libraries of agriculture, medicine, history, mathematics, engineering, music, sculpture, and so forth are said to contain knowledge lost by uncounted cultures over uncounted years.

Some say that the sorceresses control who may enter and leave the protective barrier around the island, others say that luck or the intervention of the gods is required. Most admit that no one has been able to determine the truth, but that no one commanding a force under arms has ever been able to get even a glimpse of the islands, which appear to have powerful magics distorting and diverting the attempts by even the most powerful diviners to scry them.

Still, in every generation, a handful of young students find their way to the islands' libraries. And some return to the outer world with magic and knowledge unimagined in modern times. Even under great duress these folks have not been able to produce working charts or lead outsiders to the Misty Isles.


A Tale. Fable. Myth?

Eight centuries ago a thirteen-year-old third child of a chieftain hired on as a whale hunter. In that era, the eldest child fostered with the liege, ally, or friend of the parents upon coming of age at 13. The second child apprenticed under the parents and learned to manage the estates. Eventually, the eldest would rule and the second would manage the family herds and wealth. Third and later children would be dowried into marriage, sent off to join the clergy or to study magic, or were otherwise rendered ineligible to inherit so that family wealth would not be divided too much.

So it was a relief to his parents that young Ynyr chose a life at sea. Whale hunting was dangerous, incredibly profitable to those who survived, and was not a profession for those who wanted to marry. Two years and two voyages saw the young man attain a respectable amount of personal wealth, but on his third voyage disaster struck.

After killing and beginning to process a whale, Uin came. Uin is a whale with godlike powers, or a god in the shape of a whale. Only a few legendary figures have claimed to have seen this master of the sea. On this day the whale-god, three times the size of a whaling ship and five times the size of a normal whale, smashed Ynyr's ship, leaving him and a half-dozen of his shipmates floating at sea on the carcass of their kill.

Sharks came, the great oceanic white-tip sharks among them, and began to devour the carcass. A futile attempt to fight them off cost the life of two of the shipmates, then the other three died of exposure and thirst over the next eighteen days. On the nineteenth day a storm struck, and after two days and two nights the boy was so exhausted he lost his hold on the dead whale. Cast into the sea, he found and held on to a bit of flotsam until he passed out.

He awoke on a beach of gem-like pebbles surrounded by kindly but strange folk with straight blond hair, blue and violet eyes, and tall, thin bodies. Their skin did not wrinkle and only the oldest males had much in the way of facial hair, giving them a child-like appearance. They gave him water and clean clothes, fed him, and took him to the harbor of their tiny island, where he saw a stone tower of natural green-brown stone supplemented by masonry in places, creating sponsons and turrets on the otherwise gently tapered megalith.

This was the Tower of Aleeta, who some say was the leader, even queen, of the Misty Isles. The folk brought the young man before her to be judged, as was their custom when strangers arrived.

Myths and legends describe the meeting in various ways, but the common thread is that the immortal sorceress fell in love with the mortal son of a tribal chieftain. Regardless of the truth of that legend, it is known that for the next five years, Ynyr was educated, trained, and tested by the sorceress, whose library contained the sum of the world's military arts.

In his sixth year he grew restless. He was idle at a time that his peers were out making names for themselves and earning wealth. So, for his twenty-first birthday Aleeta gave him arms and armor from her library, along with the news that his parents and elder siblings had been killed, and that his youngest brother was being forced to marry into a rival tribe, thereby delivering his family's wealth and leadership position to them. To aid him in his return, Aleeta gifted him a great black galley with a bronze dolphin ram that he named Aleeta's Gift, (commonly called The Gift,) and all of the outsiders on the islands who wished to return to the outer world. She warned them that none who sailed away on the black ship would ever return to the Misty Isles alive.

Again, many tales speak of a parting of lovers, that Ynyr left her holding their child, that she was pregnant and either he did or did not know, or even that it was so recent that she herself did not know. Scholars dismiss these as fantasy tacked onto the legend to make the story better, in the storyteller's perspective.

What is known is that Ynyr returned with a ship and a cadre of warriors, reversed the fortunes of his family by marrying the heir of the chief who sought to steal his family's name, and went on to become the True King of Glenwyr.