Through Ultan`s Door and Mirrors of England

Recently I got Ben`s L. wonderful Wishery zine fresh of the printing press. At least the digital and spiritual representation of the real thing. Ive been slowly poring over this dream inspired scenery.
I had some reservations about exactly how to start people here on the journey of OSR discovery. I have seen the portents, I have seen the signs. And now I know how I must proceed. A journey through a little blue door in the back of printmakers shop. What is better then a lost city beyond the doors of sleep to sell players on such a foray.

But why the Mirrors of England.

Lazy way of doing things would be reusing the old Sarnaathium map I posted earlier this month. And the world of Wishery would fit right in with the theme of dreams of Nightmares Underneath / City of Poison it was made for. And yet I have the urge to do something different with it ( I still might be a lazy bastard about it tho and reuse Sarnaathium).

Recently there was a discussion about certain map of Europe that got me thinking. I know I want to do the whole Dying Earth Campaign Setting. But that is a lofty goal and there are some things I need to figure out along the way. So how about doing something more simpler for a bit all the while adhering to a time honored tradition of good GMing and be lazy about it. I can make a simple setting with idea that Logan Knight had with his Corpathium setting - reusability.

Im a great fan of LOTFP setting premise of a more historical setting. And with steady surplus of wonderful England themed products like Dolmenwood and Midderlands out there lately. Add the fact that I have been fascinated of English history even more so then my own countries history. This feels like a natural place to put starting point of Wishery. And that is where the Mirrors of England come in.

Make the world usable for all those products, compatible with more grounded ideas when I need them and make it compatible with with Dying Earth setting in the future. And the best way is doing a mirage, a pale reflection of the real thing. Something that is inherently familiar and yet gives freedom to twist it in the shape I want it. All the optic puns are intended, because here is my plan.

• Grab a old timey map of England and mirror it. here are few likely candidates:

1852 Vuillemin Map of the British Isles
1772 Bonne Map of England and_Wales

• Photoshop magic some hexes on it.
• Plop mirrored Ruined Ghinor highlands features somewhere on the southern cost as a tribute to Wishery, and mirror those the other way.
• Feel smart about it.

Original culprit done by Vandel J. Arden

Part II will follow after some quick photoshop magic with more details of Mirror of England.

And after that I plan to make a post about how this ties into Dying Earth idea, something akin to fluid history, not sure how to call that idea just yet.

Reasons for making this blog

A while back I stumbled on a marvellous blog called Last Gasp Grimoire, this is the story of how it ruined my life.

While reading I came upon page called Corpathium, an idea for setting generation using handful of funny shaped dice. All based on a book called Viriconium by M. John Harrison. After a quick search I immediately decided to get one myself, it hit tome with multiple themes I enjoyed. And that slowly spiralled out of control

More and more appendix N themed literature was acquired.
Dying Earth by Jack Vance
Collected Fantasies by Clark Ashton Smith.

Meanwhile I still kept digging thru OSR clones deeper and deeper. And one starts inadvertently mixing things together.Why isn`t there a Dying Earth genre retro clone ( there might be, I just haven`t seen any). Well there was Numenera, I like the setting, not fan of system and writing, but it did its damage.

How it all starts

Other noteworthy thing is one of local buddies started organising Eclipse Phase game, so as one should you slowly start researching into that. Spend way to much time in Orion's Arm transhuman wiki hellhole (warning exposure might lead to a chance of going down the rabbit hole). But I started having thoughts like, Dying Earth is kinda old now, and science has advanced in rapid pace, think of all the cool shit that we know! What would it look like if it was written now? Internet. Advent of cybernetics. Nanotechnologies. 3d printing ( i recently learned people are having ideas about 4d printing already) Space elevators. Mega scale engineering. Stellar engineering. There are people out there thinking about moving stars!

How it ends? Snorting pixie dust of a unicorn. Thats how!

Ive been sitting on this for a while, but like some sick wizard spells its staring to burn a hole in my brain. I kinda want to put this down somewhere and maybe organise everything along the way in something more usable then bunch of random ideas.

So mission! Make a science / science-fantasy inspired setting dressed up in fantasy clothing I would want to play myself. And hope no one can tell I am making shit up as I go most of the time.


P.S You should really read Viriconium if you have not before.