Artist Pieter Brueghel circa 1558: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.

Musee des Beaux Arts
by W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Overview

When the Winds That Will Be campaign concluded in January, 2002, I suddenly had a lot more time on my hands. I also had a marvelous gift in the world that the Winds That Will Be PC's created with their actions, great and small, courageous and petty.

Like most gamers, having time on my hands inevitably leads to more gaming, but the kind of game I wanted wasn't around. You know the type... heavy on mythology and character development, with a dose of heroic opportunity and tragic fall. I gathered some players, both new and familiar, fired up my brains (both innate and electronic), and set out to discover what in the Unicorn had become of the many Realms since the War for the Keep a.k.a. the War of the Axle a.k.a. the Sundering.

As always, poetry, art, music, and the imaginations of my players are playing by far the greatest part in this creative effort. The poem at left and the painting that inspired it are just two examples of ideas that have helped me realize the shape of this game. For more poems directly inspiring this game, go here.

I hope this site, like that for Winds that Will Be, will fill up with wonderful contributions and commentary from the players. In the meantime, I'm creating a guide to the game with public information for the players. Feel free to browse and enjoy. If you have no idea what the heck I'm talking about, remember it takes years of comics and gaming to get this weird.

All the best,

--Simone

 

 

 

The Banner of Cian, the Unmanned King