The Dragon and the Bear - The Novgorod Tribunal.pdf - Ars Magica - Dimzard

The Dragon

and the

Bear

T HE N OVGOROD T RIBUNAL

BY S IMEON S HOUL

T HE N OVGOROD T RIBUNAL

The Dragon and the Bear

T HE N OVGOROD T RIBUNAL

For use with Ars Magica Fourth Edition

by Simeon Shoul

The Dragon and the Bear

T HE N OVGOROD T RIBUNAL

For use with Ars Magica Fourth Edition

by Simeon Shoul

The Dragon and the Bear

C REDITS

Design: Simeon Shoul

Additional Design (Shamans design and adaptation): Aaron Link and John Snead

Development, Editing, Layout, and Project Management: Jeff Tidball

Editorial Assistance: John Nephew

Cover Illustration: Douglas Shuler

Interior Illustrations: Toren Atkinson, Jaume Fabregat i Vilella, Ralph Horsley, Eric Hotz, Jeff Menges, Eric Pommer, and Tonia Walden

Commentary and Playtesting: Robert Angeloni, Adam Bank, Glenn Berry, Michaël de Verteuil, Rich Evans, Dan Fleener,

Jeremiah Genest, Damelon Kimbrough, Lydia Leong, Nicole Lindroos, Marc Philipp Messner, Kyle Niedzwiecki, David Oda,

J. Reed Pease, Chris Pramas, Roderick Robertson, Charles Schafer, John Snead, Sabine Völkel, and Kirby Vosburgh

The author would like to thank the assembled magi of the Covenant of Wadi Al Akhdar for their steadfast support and advice.

A wise man once said “everything right is down to my friends, everything wrong . . . blame the Tequila.” Many thanks to Luke

Silburn (Plaenomus of House Tytalus), Alex Whittaker (Lysander of House Jerbiton), Johnny Griffiths (Sion of House Criamon),

Bradley “BJ” Crooks (once Magyar of House Ex Miscellanea, now Thomas of House Merinita), Alistair Cooper (Arriana Assini

of House Flambeau), Greg Pankhurst (Tariq of House Tytalus) and Max DeVries (Victor of House Bonisagus).

The line developer would like to thank Jerry Corrick, one of the best reasons to stay in adventure gaming; Lydia Leong, who

wrote extra text for this book from her saga notes while speaking at a conference; and Stacey Tidball, for voluntarily taking up a

stupid last name in the name of love.

About the Author

Many fans of Ars Magica discuss it on an e-mail discussion list. To sub-

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(no quotes) to the same address.

Project: Redcap archives and links to many of the fan-created Ars Magica

pages on the World Wide Web. To get to Project: Redcap, point your

browser at http://www.redcap.org.

Errata for the first printing of the fourth edition of Ars Magica is available

on request. Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the address below.

Up-to-date errata is also posted on the Atlas Games World Wide Web site.

Ars Magica , The Dragon and the Bear, Mythic Europe, Covenants, and

Charting New Realms of Imagination are trademarks of Trident, Inc. Atlas

Games and the Atlas Games logo are trademarks of John Nephew and

Trident, Inc. Order of Hermes and Tremere are trademarks of White Wolf,

Inc. and are used with permission.

without written permission from the publisher, except short excerpts for

the purpose of reviews, is expressly prohibited.

Simeon Shoul was corrupted by heroic fantasy fiction and

Dungeons and Dragons at the age of eleven and his youth

was squandered in a state of roleplaying delinquency.

During his late twenties he was briefly rehabilitated

(mostly because he was living 4,000 miles away from all

the roleplayers he knew) but on returning to London in

1992 soon fell back into bad company and contracted the

far more insidious Ars Magica habit, which he has yet to

kick. Sadly, he remains addicted to drawing maps and

spending most of his free time pretending to be somebody

(anybody) else. He got interested in Medieval Russia

because of a morbid fascination with the great disasters of

history, of which the Mongols were a sterling example.

From there he was lead into a consideration of the devel-

opment of Poland as a nation and from there into a study

of the Teutonic Knights and from there into an examina-

tion of the pagan pantheons of Eastern Europe and from

there . . . well, suffice it to say that tragically there is no

end to this downward spiral in sight. Mr. Shoul has not yet

paid his debt to society, and in all likelihood never will.

PO Box 131233

Roseville, MN 55113

info@atlas-games.com

www.atlas-games.com

D IGITAL V ERSION 1.0 • J ULY 2002 • S TOCK N O . AG0260PDF

The Dragon and the Bear

C REDITS

Table of Contents

I: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

The Mongol Reconnaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

The Return of the Mongols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

The Middle and Late 13th Century . . . . . . . . 156

Variations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

II: The Slavs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

The Slavs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Russia: Building the Nation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Russia: Early 13th Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Wars of the Early 13th Century . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Poland in the Early 13th Century . . . . . . . . . . 33

Three Polish Cities in 1220 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

The Teutonic Knights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

The Baltic Pagans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

The Livonian Crusade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

The Prussian Crusade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

The Tainting of the Crusade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

VII: Saga . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

The Novgorod Tribunal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164

Appendix I: Shamans. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

Shaman Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

The Spirit World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

Shamanic Powers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

Shamans in Sagas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

The Mongol Shamans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Appendix II: Slavic Deities . . . . . . . . . . 177

III: Slavic Magic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

A Magical Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

The Volkhv Character. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Volkhv Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

The Darker Side . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

Domestic Slavic Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Appendix III: Mystical Artifacts . . . . . . . 186

Appendix IV: Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

IV: Slavic Faerie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Bestiary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Arcadia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192

V: Hermetic Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

The Harmonist/Wilderist Debate. . . . . . . . . . 106

The Covenants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Three Lakes Covenant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

Thousand Caves Covenant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Pripet Maior Covenant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

Leczyca Covenant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

VI: Mythic Mongols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

The Mongol Military . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

T HE D RAGON AND THE B EAR

The night had been dark as the bottom of a

coal sack, overcast, windy, and bitterly cold.

She had gotten very little sleep. Stanic, Marya, and

Milosch had curled up together to share body warmth,

but her dignity forbade her that simple comfort.

Huddled amidst the stacked bales at the end of the jetty,

she had wrapped her thin cloak around herself as tightly

as possible and shivered the night away.

She had been tempted to try conjuring up a little

warmth, but common sense had warred with discomfort

and finally won. Fire was not her strength. It tended to

get away from her, and the bales they were sheltering

within seemed to be mostly furs . . . .

The light of the sun rising over the edge of the bales

touched her hand and brought a sudden unexpected

warmth. Slowly, easing the stiffness from her back and

shoulders, she stood.

The wind had died. The waters of Lake Ilmen were

placid and gleaming. A thin mist, lit to shimmering gold

by the sun, was drifting slowly along the shore. To the

north Novgorod was out of sight, hidden by a range of

low hills. Yesterday had been a nightmare of mud trails

and vanishing tracks, but she’d thought it all worthwhile

just to get away from the city. All winter, pent up inside

those massive, water-stained, wooden walls. The stink of

forty thousand people crammed together, the reek of

urine in the streets fighting with the ever-present odor of

cabbage; boiled cabbage, fried cabbage, cabbage stuffed

with horribly dubious meat, cabbage mixed with wheat

meal into a gruel . . . she spat over the side of the jetty,

then paused.

There was a noise, something that didn’t fit amidst

the dawn quiet of the lakeside; a creaking, rhythmic and

steady, quiet splashing, a man’s voice calling a stroke.

The boat swept out of the mist — high-prowed,

wide-beamed, long banks of oars sweeping it forward.

For a second they were plunged deeply into the water,

kicking up a froth, and then the boat was drifting, so eas-

ily, alongside the jetty. From the prow a man threw out

a rope, another spun out from the rear. “To shore!”

someone barked.

Men dropped to the planking in an ordered rush;

bales were grabbed, hoisted, boosted up over the side of

the ship. Behind her she heard her companions rising,

Marya and Milosch querulous and protesting, Stanic

annoyed at being disturbed, cursing at the boatmen,

which won him nothing but laughter.

“Please, where is the captain?” She asked carefully,

of a man busy hauling a bale to the edge of the jetty.

“Vladim Ilyich,” he jerked his head sharply to the

right. “Asking the water’s blessing.”

He was at the very end of the jetty, staring out across

the lake, oblivious to the turmoil behind him. Big,

broad-shouldered, red haired, wearing a thick fur jerkin,

and bare armed. Malincka shivered, how could he stand

the chill? He was praying.

She had spent a year back in Hungary and a winter

in Novgorod, patiently mastering the Russian tongue.

But she had to strain to make out his speech. The accent

was all deep gutturals, rumbling cadence, and there were

words she did not understand.They seemed . . . old .

He was praying to the waters. And more, praying to

the boat. Talking to it, why, as if it were an animal, a

steed! She blinked, fascinated. Four months in that den

of Christian intolerance to the north had convinced her

that every mortal soul in Russia was as God-blighted as

the worst bigots Hungary had to offer. But this?

“Swim swiftly for me, Fflyfodd, part the waters...”

She shivered. There were places near Buda were a

man could be burnt for less.

He finished. Turned. He was wearing a crucifix, and

his eyes were a blue so pale it was almost gray. “Well?” A

gruff voice, hoarse from many years of shouting orders.

“Captain Vladim Ilyich?”

“Yes.”

“My name, it is Malincka Capcek, I am going south,

yes? These bales you take for Pressil Sakadovich? I am

going along with them. You see? And my people, my ser-

vants. As well.”

She pulled the contract out from her wallet. A stiff,

thrice-folded sheet of vellum. She held it out for the

captain, and steeled herself. It usually happened at this

point.

He plucked the paper from her hand, unfolded it,

squinted down at it.

Nothing. He hadn’t stepped back. Hadn’t frowned.

His mouth hadn’t hardened in that half-nervous, half-

disgusted fashion she’d seen so often. He was staring at

the paper, lightly tracing the contours of the pale wax

seal at the bottom, nodding slowly.

“Well, I know Sakadovich’s seal. And I can read the

numbers. You pay Sakadovich, I take you south,” he

squinted at the vellum. “My cargo share is two extra

bales. Good.” He didn’t smile really, it was more of a gri-

mace; one more thing to bother a busy man. He pushed

D awn did not find Malincka in a good mood.

The Dragon and the Bear - The Novgorod Tribunal.pdf

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