So I'm putting a pastiche of Arthurian legend and lore in my homebrew setting and while doing some research and shit, I realized something...
Was Scotland part of Arthur's kingdom? I know that, historically, the incorporation of Scotland into the UK came well, well, well, after even the latest dates attached to Arthur's reign; historical, pseudo-historical, or wholly fictional, and yet I can't help but notice that there's still a fair few sites and shit in Scotland nonetheless associated with Arthurian lore.
Are there any Arthurian tales where he is explicitly King of Scotland?
Every part of Britain was Arthur's kingdom OP, at least going by the classical stories. King Lot and the Orkneys play a big part. Anyway here's a big Pendragon folder:
Scotland isn't in that map at all? I mean, heck, regardless of the common misconception, Hadrian's Wall isn't even the border with Scotland, it's entirely in England.
A king Arthur thread on page 8? Might as well hijack it.
A friend of mine is going to run a king Arthur-esque game soon. It'll take place a century or two after the death of Arthur and during the Anglo-Saxon invasions, which the DM and I agreed would be around the time Charlemagne and his clique were kicking around.
My planned character is a paladin in both the literal and figurative sense: the younger brother of Chevalier Roland who seeks to start his own legend in Britain to match or even overshadow his brother in Francia.
Is there something I should need to know when roleplaying a Frank in Celtic Britain, other than to fart in the enemy's general direction?
Also, how tight were the Anglo-Saxons invading Britain with the Saxons that Charlemagne rekt on the mainland?
Jose Young
Firstly we need to know one question. Magic or no magic?
Your dude will have to be good with languages. He will have to speak some sort of Frankish, at least one Brythonic language and Saxon. Also Latin if you want to do anything fancy.
The Saxons on the British Isles were mercenaries hired by native tribals wanting to settle scores with each other paid for with roman gold either got through being paid by Rome or got by beating up romans.
They were also hired by what was left of the roman influence trying to keep order amongst the tribals after Rome took it's military home.
It wasn't so much the Saxon invasion as the Celts getting Saxonized. It's why most of the new Saxon pocket kingdoms had the same borders as the old tribal borders.
So the Anglo-Saxons would have been on talking terms with the Saxony-Saxons with loved family members and friends till over in the old country but the new little kingdoms would have been too precariously unstable to start sending troops back over without everything exploding.
They would be hugely pissed at Charlemagne but unable to do much about it.
Also you better be religiously tolerant. There were 3 branches of Christianity, a few old Brythonic pagans still holding on and most of the Saxons were another sort of pagan.
Oliver Cooper
>Firstly we need to know one question. Magic or no magic? From what I know it'll be pretty high magic. One of the players is planning to roll a spellcaster and the Anglo-Saxons use dark magic (which may or may not falter as Charlemagne burns Irmunsil).
>The Saxons on the British Isles were mercenaries hired by native tribals wanting to settle scores with each other paid for with roman gold either got through being paid by Rome or got by beating up romans. True historically, but in the legend wasn't it Mordred and his cronies who hired the Anglo-Saxons to settle the score with Arthur? I guess that's close enough.
>There were 3 branches of Christianity U wot? I'm actually curious about that. This might be pretty interesting in the eyes of a Frank, who hails from a somewhat religiously unified homeland.
Juan Bennett
There's also the superb "Pagan Shore" splat that deals with Ireland.
Cameron Gray
I'd have thought people wouldn't much care that you're a Frank or even a Saxon. What they'd want to know is who your lord is and whether he is friendly or hostile to their lord. The idea of being loyal to a nation wasn't really a thing yet. What really mattered was personal loyalty to god, family, lord and king, in that order
Dominic Hughes
Arthur "irl" was a warlord in Lloegyr, his stories were preserved in Wales but the real man probably never went outside the south-east of what is now England. In the myths, Arthur deals with a "king of Cornwall", I don't think Alban is ever mentioned but the eastern side of Scotland was a single unified state under the Picts so there would have been a "king of Alban" in the time period. Also, there was a "king of the North", based at York, who commanded the armies of the North (the successors of the Roman forces in the region). This figure is preserved in English myth as "Old King Cole" and as Shakespear's "King Lear".
David Lopez
Third edition Pendragon has rules for playing magic-users, and rules for playing as pagan Saxons, too.
Adam Campbell
>Third edition
My bad, 4th edition. They're not in the latest, 5th, or any earlier ones, because the game is meant to be about knights and magic is largely a narrative device in the hands of the GM.
Lincoln Morales
Romeist - proto-Catholics basically.
Palaginates. Following the teaching of the missionary Palaginus. Taught that God had no plan for you, there is no such thing as destiny or fate and shit just happens so take some fucking responsibility. Also sin is not hereditary so Original Sin is total bullshit and Adam's foolishness only screwed Adam over. Was declared EXTRA HERETICAL! by the Romeists. Vortigern was one of them.
The Celtic Church. It's what happens when you get a bunch of pagans converting but keeping hold of their old ways as much as possible. No hierarchy. I don't know much about them.
My father is a retired history teacher with an interest in post-Roman Britain.
Celtic Christianity is not really pagan, it had only minor differences from mainstream Christianity of the time, mostly in how they cut the tonsure (that bald patch monks have, the Celts cut it from ear to ear which was probably taken directly from Druidism), and in how they fated Easter (which seems to have been a huge problem for the early church generally).
James Nguyen
Thank you. I was unsure on how to spell it.
Josiah Garcia
This. Dude was Welsh.
Michael Jenkins
>Dude was Welsh.
Depends what you mean by "Welsh". Usually this word means a speaker of a Celtic language, in the western or northern parts of Britain. Arthur would have been a Latin-speaker, like the people of Lloegyr, and would have seen himself as Roman. But the Germanic word "welas" that Welsh and Waloon derive from means "romanised celt" in general, so in the broadest terms sure he was Welsh.
Dylan Gonzalez
Which of the depictions of Merlin are you going to go with?
Mad possibly immortal Druid? Son of the Devil? Time traveller from the future? Two different welsh bards that just happened to have the same name? Mysterious hermit that gets taken on as royal advisor? Future seeing friar living in a cave?
Jose Clark
Yes, because Arthur explicitly conquered Orkney, which is all the way north in Scotland. Sirs Gawaine, Gahaeris, Gareth, Agravaine, and Mordred were Orknish. The remaining tension between England and Scotland was part of how Camelot went to shit.
Ethan King
>Orknish Orcadian
William Perry
Orky
Leo Sullivan
No I think that's Yorkshire.
Leo Nguyen
The nasuverse version. Giver of magical dicks.
Juan Baker
>Ususually means a speaker of a Celtic language No. Welsh is a person who speaks the Dialectic of the Brythonic language common in Wales post roman empire, in other words people speaking Welsh, that is the version of the welsh language spoken today.
Lucas Reed
The word welsh is an old Germanic word meaning foreigner, usually Celtic or Roman. It dates back to about 500 B.C.
Benjamin Thomas
...
Brayden Flores
Okay. How does that relate whatsoever to Arthur?
Robert Young
How does anything relate to King Arthur?
William Mitchell
Because the Welsh people weren't incorporated into Briton until after Arthurian times.
Friendly reminder that strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Charles Davis
How do you type "We Wuz Kangz an Shiiiet" with a Scottish accent?
Mason Fisher
W'e were kiengs lad's!
Christopher Baker
King Arthur has been reincarnated as Geri Halliwell? Is that the premise of the campaign?
Benjamin Myers
There is literally a set of small islands off the coast of britain called "the orkney isles".
Seems accurate.
>w'wiz da big yins und shite!
>entire plot of a Fate game but with the spice girls as the main characters
Connor Gray
>>entire plot of a Fate game but with the spice girls as the main characters
Who would be who tho? Geri is Arthur obviously. Beckham is Lancelot?
Jackson Bailey
>Beckham is Lancelot? No, Kylie Minogue is
David Adams
Wouldn't this make Guenevere a dude, tho? Or are we just having Arthur and Lancelot as lesbos
Asher Wilson
>are we just having Arthur and Lancelot as lesbos Well, why not! Let's make Logres a magical realm both literally and figuratively.
Brayden Morales
It was already pretty magical when you hit the "Spice Girls are reincarnated arthurian knights" point, senpai
Gabriel Torres
>Wouldn't this make Guenevere a dude, tho? This is my fetish.
No matter what you do, magical realms are unavoidable. You can choose between >Princes and kings being saved and guarded by noble ladyknights >Girl on girl NTR scissoring
Asher Long
Either way, it's pretty clear Merlin is a milf, right?
Caleb Mitchell
Given that there's a lot more arthurian knights than spice girls, maybe they're reincarnated as all sorts of different singers? Or entertainers in general.
Alexander Wilson
>Original Peoples of Britain (Welsh Tradition)
i assume the parts of the map marked in vowel-less, unpronounceable bullshit are the Welsh controlled areas?
Carter Johnson
Who's an older female british artist who's still fuckable. There's your merlin
Benjamin Peterson
>Either way, it's pretty clear Merlin is a milf, right? MUH. DICK.
Matthew Jackson
No, there are many Welsh people who do not speak Welsh, and there are regions that were once considered Welsh that are no longer, such as Cumbria and Cornwall.
Arthur was not "Welsh" by most understandings of the word, he would have spoken Latin, not Celtic.
Cameron Jones
"Y" is a vowel in Welsh, with the sound of "i" as in "pig".
Chase Hernandez
Ara ara Merlin when?
Landon Thompson
What counts as "Arthurian times" varies wildly depending on what story you're going with. If you want a "historically accurate" Arthur based on the vague accounts of him in tenth-century chronicles about sixth-century kings, you're not going to have most of the chivalric trappings associated with the Matter of Britain. And if you're going just by what might be earnest historical accounts of him, it's not even certain that Arthur and Mordred were related, or if they fought on the same or different sides. Certainly you have to throw out things like Arthur's wars in Scotland and Italy. Malory seems to place him somewhere in the 1200s instead of the 500s, and T.H. White mostly aims for the 11th-12th century but is full of intentional anachronisms that acknowledge what a clusterfuck it all is, including waffling on the question of whether Uther Pendragon is supposed to be William the Conqueror or not.
James Cook
Dywedwch fod i fy fucker wyneb nid ar-lein a gweld beth sy'n digwydd
Jeremiah Parker
>Or are we just having Arthur and Lancelot as lesbos
aww yisss.
David Evans
Essentially Camelot 3000
Cameron Bennett
What was Yorkshire doing in Arthurian times.
I remember playing a fantasy based strat game based on king Arthur and you got what were basically chaos warriors from Yorkshire.
Alexander White
Fate is trash and you're trash for liking it.
Elijah Ortiz
>King Arthur has come back... in the form of a nightclub dancer
That name is a joke, the place is just called "llanfair" which means "Church of Mary". The maximum length name is just a description of the area, and was devised specifically for the railway sign to give the place a schtick.
Nicholas Sullivan
It worked.
Henry Bell
Certainly did, they get loads of tourism from it.
Dylan Cook
"accurate" Arthurian times? Celts, then lots of vikings
Chivalric romance times? Lots of Normans fighting Scots.
Sounds pretty brutal. You know your life sucks when allying with a bunch of Danish rape monsters is your best option.
Lucas Roberts
I think? Arthur is like the 500s and vikings is like the 600s. But since there's so little evidence for Arthur anyway, and since so little of the stuff we associate with Arthur could have existed in the sixth century, it's worth fudging the timeline to include your favorite things.
Ayden Perry
"Celts" is not strictly accurate, the great city of Euburacum (York) had a Roman culture and spoke Latin like the people of Lloegyr. However, the Romano-British is the area got BTFO pretty early one, by the Angles who founded the kingdoms of Bernica and Deria. The western part of the North remained Welsh for a long time after Arthur, tho, as it's name of "Cumbria" attests even today.
Isaac Richardson
In many stories the scottish lands are off limits to arthur and the border regions suffer many conflicts and wars. Lancelot was given this domain (in some stories) to pacify the picts. In others, it is this land that Morgana hail from.
Owen Jones
How about
Merlin needs to unify Britain to try and halt the influx of Fae influences because fuck the faeries.
To do this he enlists the help of Uther Pendragon. He needs someone to unify the islands and rule it well so that when he outlaws dealings with otherworldly abominations people actually listen.
Works for a while then Uther starts lusting after Eigyr, Duke Gwrlai's wife. Tears country apart in civil war to get her. Looses all respect. People start welcoming the faeries in again.
Merlin givens the Uther what he wants by making him look like the Gwrlai and Merlin arranges for an accident to happen to the real Gwrlai. In exchange Merlin gets Uther's first born son.
Merlin takes Arthur then drops the magic disguising Uther. Then kills Uther because fuck Uther.
Raises Arthur to be a good and noble king and to hate faeries and all who deal with them.
Does right well, reunifies the islands, drives the faeries back for a while and all is well. Then Moryen Sea-Born/Morgan le Fay and legitimate child of Eigyr and Gwrlai comes calling. Knowing she will never be Queen she instead seduces her half brother and has Mordred. She never actually hated Arthur. She just thought he was a bit of an idiot being manipulated by an evil bastard of a druid.
Morgan le Fay is all for the introduction of the Faeries and sees them as playful little things. Dangerous to foolish people but great allies to the wary and cunning.
She and Merlin detest one another with a passion.
She finds out that Merlin is the result of a human mother and an elf father.
She tells Arthur all of Merlin's misdeeds and nature.
Arthur has Merlin's hands nailed to the branches of a rowan tree, his eyes torn out, set on fire and what was left buries in a very deep cave behind a waterfall. Being a half-elf this didn't kill him. He would heal from these injuries at the normal human speed. They figured it would be a problem for another generation.
Caleb Ward
If they had killed him properly they figured he might find a way to either come back or possess somebody else.
Fast forward 10 or 20 more years and Queen Gwenhwyfar and Sir Lancelot of the Lake have been screwing around.
Arthur is no longer the idealistic or particularly nice person he once was. He has them both burned alive despite the proper form of execution being beheading.
Both Queen Gwenhwyfar and Sir Lancelot were much loved by the people and the gentry and Morgan le Fay uses this to get half the people that matter to rally around Mordred. Mordred is boosted by fae fuckery and so is his army. Arthur has a magic sword given to him by Merlin but now locked in a bed of rock because he learned of where the wizard got it from
Mordred wins and gets the throne. He might be an inbred bastard but he is the child of Uther's only legitimate child. Also he can't possibly be as bad as Arthur managed to be.
Skip forward ~200 years. Mordred's grandson is Arthur II. He has an incomplete knowledge of the magical and mundane fuckery that went on before and is about 17 when he got the big hair and heavy hat.
Morgan le Fay is still hanging around the castle occasionally offering advice on all things unnatural or acting as intermediary to the other realm on his behalf.
Gets a new adviser. A wise old hermit from the mountains also steeped in ancient lore. Also showed him where to get this FUCKING AWESOME magic sword.
It's Merlin. Because of course it is.
And that's the shithole the game starts in.
Alexander Phillips
It is now.
Thomas Turner
This is not appropriate, the king of the Britons would never be this slutty.
Nolan Powell
He slept with his own sister.
Jose Lewis
Not in all versions of the story.
Andrew Martinez
Not in any version I'm aware of. Assuming user meant Morgana, she is at best a cousin and more likely not related at all.
Josiah Gomez
Males sleeping around is not the same as female sluttiness, you should know this user.
Carson James
Personally, I had my own terrible recreation of the Arthur Saga envisioned. >Setting is modern-esque, with knights benefitting from magic generators they can tap into to increase their power, speed, reaction time, and durability substantially, like muscle wizards >More complex magic is much harder to do, usually handed off to computers >'Arthur' is a chick, 'Morgana' her incest-fetish brother who got passed over for the throne because he's a complete creep despite being good with computers >Mordred is basically a clone daughteru 'Morgana' made from his and Arthur's DNA, he has enchanted her to serve him (multiple meanings, the prince is a piece of fucked-up work) >Gueniviere is a bitter politician and CEO who's fucking pissed about the fact that he knows he's being cuckolded by Lancelot but can't prove it, is funding Morgana on the side to get a piece of Mordred >Lancelot is a drunk, womanizing sleazebag who only keeps his job because he's fucking incredible at it, he and Arthur plow from time to time >His son Galahad is the child of a one-night stand and single mother whose image of his 'kind and courageous' father is crushed upon meeting him. He still manages to be the best person listed here. >Gawain is a man who had his psyche implanted into a robot frame as an experiment he volunteered for, making him virtually unkillable because he's in the magic internet now. He tutors Galahad. Grimdark/10?
Cameron Moore
No. Just stupid.
David Long
Just play Kamen Rider already.
Aiden Fisher
Kind'a makes sense. They were both people who had radically different views of their respected religions.
Alexander White
>king Arthur needs you to help get into her stage outfit >she's getting a bit too pudgy for it
