The Long Yarn: Newfoundland's Late Heroic Age (After The End Fan Fork AAR)

[HistoryDude]

These characters have Arthurian names, but their tale isn't conflated with Arthur's. Is this narrative segment a view of what actually happened or a legend from later times?

Why was Mabel renamed Morgan? Symbolism? To confuse future historians?

 

[Knud_den_Store]

Not only is this a very interesting AR. You're also one hell of a writer! I loved this!

Thank you!!!

These characters have Arthurian names, but their tale isn't conflated with Arthur's. Is this narrative segment a view of what actually happened or a legend from later times?

Why was Mabel renamed Morgan? Symbolism? To confuse future historians?

It's a view of what actually happened - all the narrative segments will be. The Arthurian names are just an in-game fact when you start, which I'm trying to weave the narrative around.

And I think we can say Mabel was renamed both for the symbolism and to confuse future historians!

 

[Henlaar1]

It's always a good day to see an After the End thread, but especially about the Newfies! My last play through was of an Anglican Newfoundland, got this close to forming Artica (?) but the redcoats put a stop to that, so I will follow this eagerly!

 

[Knud_den_Store]

III: Morgan, First Queen in Avalon?​

Morgan, the ancient and mythical first queen in Avalon, is better known as Morgan “le Fay,” or just “Fay,” a name never given to her brother Arthur or to her cousin the Bonnie Prince. On some accounts, the Fay were a class of people among the Britons who wielded supernatural powers, of whom Morgan was the only survivor after the exodus across the sea. Many tales and songs about Morgan have her smoothing the seas for fishermen, causing freshwater springs to pop out of the ground, or bending her enemies’ spears with magic spells. In others, she seems mostly to sleep with various warriors and cause petty trouble for those who get in her way. She receives quite different treatment in different versions of the Yarn of King Arthur, the main tale of the Calamity. In Avalon and Bonavista, Morgan is usually a force for good, while tales from the west of Newfoundland usually make her out to be at best a mischief-maker, at worst a traitor who allies with the horsemen and only reaches Avalon by disguising herself as a poor old hag and sneaking aboard a ship. All the stories agree on two things: Morgan was a rare beauty, and she had a way of drawing extraordinary characters to her.

In centuries past, there were as many versions of the Yarn of King Arthur as there were bards who sang it. Though the Fay never managed to stamp out competing versions, in the early days of the Empire, they succeeded in making their preferred telling of the story the dominant one. This version of the Arthur is attributed to Kenneth Fifield, a bard who likely lived sometime in the 27th century and whose other known works are mostly lighthearted singalongs (such as The Squid Who Jigged A Man and My Baby Thinks She’s A Bear). The comic tone sometimes comes through in Fifield’s telling of the Arthur, but he is careful never to make too much fun of one character: Morgan le Fay. Not only does Arthur’s sister show him the way to the Antipodes, she is the only one who can cross the great stretches of water which lie between the Emerald Isle and the new lands. In Fifield’s words, Morgan alone can “pierce the veil of mist that chokes the sea-road to Avalon”; if Arthur reaches his destination and she and the Bonnie Prince reach theirs, the credit is really all hers.

This special ability to pierce the veil fits in well with the broad picture Fifield paints of Morgan: she is “the last of the Fay and the first,” the woman who can carry her people from the old world to the new because she knows that there is neither new nor old, that the human world runs in cycles and that every death is a rebirth. This knowledge allows her to rule over boundaries, the boundary of the sea which separates lands and peoples as well as the Calamity which separated two ages of the world.

Fifield’s Arthur is one of the yarns which speaks of a war with the Mi’kmaq, followed by peace and an alliance; the bard even names the Qalipu, the massive House which ruled over the north of Newfoundland at least since the Calamity. On Fifield’s account, after the war, Morgan pledges to aid the Qalipu against any who should attack them, while the Qalipu agree to acknowledge Morgan as Queen of the Rock. Morgan’s daughter marries the son of the Qalipu war chief Everett, and the yarn ends with a marriage feast and games.

Knowing that the Fay were already the leading rulers in Newfoundland by the start of the 2700s, and that they intermarried with Qalipu leaders over the course of centuries, we can easily imagine that this end to Fifield’s yarn reflected some political reality of his time. He may even have been commissioned by the ruler of Avalon to produce a version of the story which would help the Fay legitimize themselves in their new role as overlords of Newfoundland. To use a Pre-Calamity word that has recently come into fashion, Fifield’s yarn smacks of propaganda. All this makes Fifield an interesting springboard from which to ask: Was Morgan truly a figure of the distant past, or did she appear much later, perhaps as late as the 27th century, based on a real ruler?

One thing is almost certain: there was more than one Morgan who held the title of queen in Newfoundland. In the Long Yarn, Setanta records two, one in the late 27th century and one in the early 28th. It is the earlier of these two who concerns us for now. This earlier Morgan blurs almost completely into legend: even Setanta, usually a staunch realist, has her emerging from an unnamed lake in the woodland interior of Avalon, aweing the Townies (that is, the people of Sainjohns, Avalon’s capital) with her beauty, then becoming their queen after she negotiates with the local sea-sprites to bring twenty-six drowned sailors back to land and to life. When the sailors rose living from the waves, according to Setanta,

De folkes odde Town ran furte embrace de men wat had returned, den said to Morgan, we dint grab your nature properly afore, but now we understand youse Fay, wat can speke widde Sprites ov land an sea like not even de Druids can; an if youlle keep us from rack an ruin in dis manner, de lang empty trone oddese lands is yours for lang as your blood floes on.

Setanta no doubt had many tales to work from, and in his own telling he must have chosen his words carefully. Offering the long-empty throne to Morgan for as long as her “blood flows on” could mean that she will reign for as long as her blood flows in her veins, or it could apply to the whole lineage that she would spawn. Though Setanta worked for Empress Maude and her successors, he avoided praising Fay rule almost as deftly as he avoided criticizing it.

There is even ambiguity in the declaration of the Townies that they now understand that Morgan “is” Fay. As I mentioned earlier, the Fay are sometimes said to have been a class of people in the Isles of the Blessed, who held special communion with the world of gods and sprites. There is no indication that this status was necessarily passed on from parents to children, and there are many yarns of children discovering for themselves that they have these special powers, much to their parents’ bewilderment. The Long Yarn preserves the legend of Morgan without using it to legitimate the rule of her successors.

It is clear at least that Setanta thinks of this first, legendary Morgan as a relatively recent figure, living not during the Calamity but a mere two hundred years before his own time. And if she left no written trace on the Rock during her lifetime, she seems to have left some on the Mainland, where her name is tied to the first signs of permanent Newfie rule outside of Newfoundland. The Rivière-Madeleine Treaty is in fact an agreement between two Newfie lords, Clayton of Gaspe and Ronald of Chic-Chocs, to place the boundary of their fiefs at the Rivière-Madeleine, a river running inland from the northernmost part of the Gaspe peninsula. The treaty is written neither in any form of English nor in the High French written by Ursuline officials, but in a local, “Low” French; it may have been published to tell locals which of the two foreign lords had the right to tax them. Luckily it bears a date in the Christian reckoning: September 17th, 2687.

In the treaty, lords Clayton and Ronald acknowledge that they hold their titles “par donasson da Raine Morgane sul Rocher” – that is, by bestowal of Queen Morgan(e) on the Rock. The literal translation of “the Rock” suggests that the text of the treaty was dictated by Clayton and Ronald themselves. It is hard to know what the lords originally said to their translator, who in turn must have relayed the message to some poor bewildered local nun who wrote it down. It remains unclear whether Morgan is here thought to be just one of several rulers on the Rock or if she is in fact queen of the Rock. In any case, she holds power and clout enough that Newfie warlords on the Mainland pay her at least token allegiance. If she was truly the first ruler of Avalon to project power beyond the Rock, then it is unsurprising if stories about this Morgan became confused with the Morgan from the Calamity – so confused, even, that they came to share the name Fay.

Possible political situation in the East around 2687. Lightly shaded areas seem in some sense to have acknowledged Morgan as their queen.

According to Setanta, this first Queen Morgan died young, though he gives no age or date for her death. She is supposed to have left behind four children by her husband, a Miquelon man named Accolon. Of these four, the two eldest, Lancelot and Lillian, would reign over the Rock in their turn. It is in the reigns of Lancelot and Lillian that the Fay step out of legend and into clear, documented history, mostly thanks to Mainland chroniclers who can no longer ignore the incursions of these increasingly organized heathen fighters from across the Gulf.

Besides her four legitimate children, some yarns claim that Morgan had a son by her lover, an adventurer named Finn. This Finn is supposed to have come with her from the Emerald Isle, where he had proven his mettle in the long fight against the Four Horsemen and served as a retainer to Brian Boru. From these details, it should be clear that this story belongs more to the mythic ancient Morgan than to the likely real queen mentioned by Setanta. Though there is an adventurer by the name of Finn who carved out a fief at Cape Egmont on Prince Edward Island around 2700 and paid homage to King Lancelot, there is no clear connection between him and Lancelot’s half-legendary mother. In any case, the mythical Morgan is famous for her many romantic escapades - some of this reputation most likely got transferred to the later queen Morgan in the confusion.

If I mention this tale, it is only because of another strange story: in 2742, when a large raiding party loyal to Queen Nellie Appletree landed near Caracas, they met a traveller named Tomas who asked them in slanted Newfie to sail back to Newfoundland under his command and place him on the throne. The man claimed to be the grandson of queen Morgan and her true love via the bastard child they bore together. When asked who this true love might be, Tomas answered that his grandfather had been an adventurer like himself, and that his name was Finn.

 

[Knud_den_Store]

It's always a good day to see an After the End thread, but especially about the Newfies! My last play through was of an Anglican Newfoundland, got this close to forming Artica (?) but the redcoats put a stop to that, so I will follow this eagerly!

Glad to have you! I considered going Anglican with this one, but instead I, well, you'll see

 

[Specialist290]

An adventurer named Finn, eh? Looks like another of those obfuscated references the mod loves so much.

Queen Morgan appears to have left a strong foundation for her house. A united Newfoundland, and even a set of overseas conquests that should serve as a good base for future expansion onto the mainland.

 

[HistoryDude]

Queen Morgan has done well carving out a kingdom, even if much has faded into myth.

The ambiguity here is excellent.

 

[Knud_den_Store]

An adventurer named Finn, eh? Looks like another of those obfuscated references the mod loves so much.

Queen Morgan appears to have left a strong foundation for her house. A united Newfoundland, and even a set of overseas conquests that should serve as a good base for future expansion onto the mainland.

It seems that he is! I read on the fan wiki that he's a reference to an Adventure Time character, which I know nothing about. My idea was that his legend got mixed up with that of Finn MacCool/Fionn Mac Cumhaill, the hero from Irish myth - I didn't write enough to get that across properly in the last chapter I'm afraid, but fret not, he'll be back.

Queen Morgan has done well carving out a kingdom, even if much has faded into myth.

The ambiguity here is excellent.

Glad the ambiguity is still working!

As for Morgan, to answer you both, she's done well alright, building a unified kingdom that will prove more stable than her neighbours and antecedents on the Mainland. In terms of vassal loyalty, for now I'll just say that she has an easier go of it than her descendants will

In terms of style for the next bit, the history book side of things will move steadily along through my various rulers, while the narrative side stays behind with Morgan in Avalon. If I sense we've had enough Morgan, then the narrative will jump forward to other characters, but for now I'm enjoying coming up with her storyline, even if it's almost totally gameplay-less, so as long as others are enjoying it too!

 

[Knud_den_Store]

Quick note about my screenshots: I've decided to include a few character portraits from the gameplay start (July 4th, 2666), even though these aren't accurate in terms of characters' age/position for the current setting of the narrative, which is a few years earlier. At this point, though, I don't think there's any major spoilers left to come from them

B: Nettles

Kenny Fifield

2658 AD

(Year 89 of the Third Vacancy in Avalon)

We spent most of the trip back to the Town in silence. Once in a while Lady Tibbo would smile a bit and ask Morgan, who’d just hours ago been Mabel, a question: what were her sisters’ names? Did they all get along? And there was an older one too, right? Oh she’d gone off and married a man in Carbonear, had she? The feller didn’t want to move in and take up with the family? No? Must be a right fool, marrying a girl whose mother kept barrels of good strong ale in the storehouse, whose father and cousins brought in a fat catch year after year, but not wanting a slice of the pie himself.

Morgan answered with smiles, chuckles, short sentences. The lady must have thought chat would help the girl stay calm, but Morgan didn’t seem to need any calming, she grinned and looked around, let the salt-spray lick her face. The sea was nearly flat and the wind was steady from the northwest as we rounded Cape Francis, which made my job easy. No better day could have been picked to convince Morgan that she was sailing into a bright future.

At first I wondered why the girl didn’t ask more questions. Back at the house, Merlin had said she might come to hold a special position – what was it exactly? Who had held the position before? And why her? Why was the Chief Druid ready to house her in the druids’ quarters when she didn’t have a lick of real training and was too old to start? But she kept quiet. Years later, Morgan would tell me she hadn’t really believed that what was happening to her that day was real: she’d gone to bed the night before expecting to wake up and find we’d vanished, like haunts from a dream. When she found us still there, when we whisked her away in our sloop, she decided to keep on as if it were all just that, a dream. The trip was fun, but it wasn’t real. Merlin, Pratt, Lady Tibbo, me, we weren’t real either. Just phantoms of her mind. Haunts.

When the sun was well on its way down to the west, we came ashore. As Merlin and I had agreed, we docked not in Town, but at a launch some miles north which belonged to my cousin who was out fishing on the Banks. When she noticed that I was turning to shore, Lady Tibbo looked alarmed and cried out, “Lug’s lungs, why are we stopping here? There’s plenty of room at my dock in Town!”

“That there is,” I answered, “and everyone in Town watches to see what boats come in your dock. More than that, my good lady, if they see that it’s you coming in, we’ll have a flock of them eyeing us up and down, trying to figure out who you’re with. This way we don’t make a scene.”

That seemed to satisfy the good lady, as if she couldn’t tell we’d planned it without her. “Well alright,” she hummed, “as long as we really don’t make a scene.” Lady Tibbo owned a fleet of forty fishing smacks and sloops, not to mention the hundred fighters she fitted out to run raids down the Scotian coast; she wasn’t keen to be seen coming into Town on foot.

We came up along the launch. I stepped out with one rope from the stern. Merlin was about to reach for the rope from the bow when Morgan jumped up and grabbed it, throwing off her blanket and hiking up her baggy trousers as she hopped ashore and made fast the rope to a spike. Merlin smiled.

I finished the business of furling the sails and carrying our scant luggage ashore. It seems it only struck us all right then that we hadn’t eaten since leaving the Fay island that morning. Lady Tibbo tapped her haunches with her jewelled hands and said she was starving; for once I was grateful to her for piping up. Right there on the launch – the day was warm and fine yet – Merlin opened his sack and, bidding us all sit down, took out five large biscuits which looked to have cheese and carrot and dill mixed in. Good man. But then he did something he hadn’t warned me about: he set all the biscuits in front of Morgan and said to her, “now Morgan, would you care to choose first?”

This “choosing” isn’t a custom I’ve seen in any part of Avalon or beyond – Merlin was making it up. But Morgan smiled and thanked him, since I suppose this was just as normal as everything else that was happening to her. With a little hovering motion she chose the middle one. Merlin grinned and nodded, and the rest of us took the remaining biscuits. I found them the best fare I’d had all week, but more than once I saw Morgan trying to wipe away a funny grimace as she chewed.

When we were finished, we picked up our bags and made for the Town. We all kept the same pace at first, which seemed to make no one happy: Merlin was already getting on in years, Lady Tibbo was only a few behind him, and while Pratt walked fast in Town, on the rocks and grass he always seemed somehow a few steps away from keeling over. Eventually, with a sad shrug to Merlin, I pulled ahead of the party, and Morgan with me. Once we were out of easy earshot, she nudged my elbow and declared,

“Right. I need to know.”

I grinned. “Do you now?”

“I do, I do I do. Right, so,” – she looked lost in thought for a second – “why… did you come?”

“To your house?”

“Yessir.”

“Well if it’s me you mean, I’m the helmsman. Someone had to steer, didn’t he?”

“No no, enough of that. They could’ve hired anyone in Town for that. I understand that Merlin is the brains of this little racket, whatever it might be. Lady Tibbo is the purse. And the Chief Druid provides the clout. So where do you come in? Lovely as you sing, that can’t be the whole reason either.”

I chuckled. That old woman’s voice trapped in a young girl’s pipes, that Conception Bay twang grew on you fast. And she was right, I hadn’t come just to be the helmsman. Nodding back at the laggards, I asked her:

“Notice how those three haven’t said a word to each other since we left?”

“Why, just so, you’re right!” she turned to look at me, eyes a bit too wide with the revelation.

“Merlin may not show it, but he can hardly stand Pratt ever since the big man cut him out of the Beltane rites in the Town two years ago. Meanwhile, Pratt won’t talk to Lady Tibbo because she donated the costumes for the Beltane parade that same year, and he thought the way she dressed up the Ghillie Dhu was far too frisky. And as for Lady Tibbo, she’s scarcely said a word to Merlin since he went and convinced her daughter to join the druids instead of staying in the family business. I’m the only way they can all stand being around each other.”

“I see,” Morgan nodded deeply. “You’re like their Swisserland.”

“Their who what?”

“From the Yarn of the Blue Puttees. Swisserland, the land in the mountains beyond High Germany, where there’s no king or queen and the people never go to war? And so the kings of the other lands all go there to do business?” she realized she’d lost me. “It’s one of Druid Curt’s yarns. I’ll teach you if you like.”

“That I would,” I said and couldn’t help but laugh. Something had loosened up in Morgan all at once, but she was still composed, even charming. She was looking at the rocky brushlands around us as if it were all marvelous and funny and scary at once. Out of nowhere, she laughed heartily, then grew serious again and said:

“Now tell me truly… Merlin’s biscuits, did they taste funny to you? There was some herb in there, a real strong one, that I couldn’t place.”

It was starting to dawn on me. Merlin had filled one of the biscuits, at least, with what the common folk called Druid’s Nettles. It was meant to be taken the night before a druid had to pronounce a verdict on an important case, as it cleared the mind of clouds and helped the heart swell with Lug’s wisdom – but I knew many druids took it whenever they pleased.

Yet clearly Merlin hadn’t put the nettles in the other biscuits: I hadn’t tasted it, Pratt hated the stuff and would’ve spat it out, and Lady Tibbo would’ve been more affected than she looked. What was the old man playing at? Was it a test? And if so, why had he let her choose the biscuit? Certainly most grown women and men wouldn’t have handled the green stuff as well as Morgan did, but he couldn’t have known that beforehand. Merlin was taking some kind of risk with the girl for reasons I couldn’t fathom. I wouldn’t tell him off for it just yet, no sense getting Pratt and the good lady involved.

We chatted on and off the rest of the way to Town, not about her or me, but about the art of singing, about the old yarns, about the time of the Fall and what we thought had caused it. Morgan told she’d heard from old Druid Curt that some said a great Fall happened every ten thousand years – or no, twelve – brought on by an alignment of the heavens which caused the sun to burst her bounds and rain fire on the earth. I’d already heard that one, of course, and I told her there’s a whole bunch of druids whose main goal in life is to figure out what year this last happened so that they can foretell the next one. She seemed a little let down. We did our best not to get too far ahead of the three dawdlers, but we reached the Town before sunset just the same.

There were no guards at the northern gate, but that was true half the time in those days. Once we were within, Lady Tibbo took her leave with a couple muttered words – maybe she was just tired and hungry, maybe her interest in the girl had already run out. Most of the Townies were still at supper, and the streets were mostly empty. Merlin and I went on to the outer wall of the druids’ quarters, where Pratt turned to face us and said, “I’ll take care of things from here.” The first words he’d spoken all day.

Though we both had every right to enter the druids’ quarters, we didn’t press Pratt, Chief Druid that he was. The space within those walls belongs to none but the gods, but the big man thought it was his little kingdom, and now wasn’t the time to tell him different. Morgan still wore a broad smile as she thanked Merlin and me, asking if she’d see us again soon. She would.

As we walked away, I turned to Merlin and gave him what, by the standards of our friendship, was an earful:

“I can’t see what call there was for that.”

As usual, the old man knew what I meant before I’d really said it.

“You think it was too soon?”

“Great Grian above, Merl,” I said, “I’m after seeing druids thrice that girl’s age curl up into balls and call the sky to fall down on their heads because they couldn’t handle the nettles.”

“But Morgan did no such thing.”

“Lucky for her.”

“Far more than lucky.”

“Some kind of test, was it?”

“If you will.”

“And today somehow proves she is who you think she is?”

“Well no,” Merlin admitted, “it doesn’t prove anything on its own. But it’s a clear and a hopeful indication of just the kind of fortitude she needs. If Morgan truly is to be Morgan, she will prove it not in a moment, but over a lifetime.”

“So when you did your rites with the smoke and they pointed you straight to her, that didn’t prove anything either? Just another little sign?” I knew Merlin wouldn’t tell me exactly what rites had pointed him to Morgan – only two or three people could know that – but he’d made it all sound awfully fool-proof.

“Such rites,” said he, “do not live in the world of proof and evidence. Forgive me Kenny, but I’d better say no more on that for now. Except that a queen will only be ‘proven’ once she is queen.”

Queen. That was the first time he’d said the word out loud, though I’d more or less known that was the plan. I went on.

“Will the people let her get there? There hasn’t been a queen or king in Avalon for nearly a hundred year, it’s all gone from living memory. You think you can bring the girl before the Town and say, ‘here’s your new queen, yes that’s right, we have a queen now, though we didn’t ask any of you if you wanted one,’ and they’ll just nod and go along?”

“That,” Merlin said, “is something only time will tell. But do you have any alternatives? There’s always been an Arthur or a Morgan in the times of greatest need, though we may not remember those times ourselves. And this time, I fear, either we convince the people to take her, or we watch as our order comes apart.”

There wasn’t much I could say to that. Hard to fathom now, but in those times it seemed to many of us that Avalon was ripping at the seams. Though nigh everyone still knew the gods and sprites, few people paid them any mind. We thought we were the last of the druidic line, and we wondered only if the next generation would replace us with Christ or with drink. Only Merlin and a handful of others even saw a point in fighting it.

I didn’t ask him why he’d let her choose the biscuit. It would’ve been another one of his mystic rites beyond proof and evidence. I may have trained with the druids, and I’ll grant that I’m a nosy bugger, but certain things I just don’t need to grasp.

“Besides,” Merlin came back around, “If it were up to me, I would have waited much longer to have the girl try the nettles. But you know I don’t have the final say in these matters.”

I nodded. I knew who was running this show from her backwoods cabin. There was only one person Merlin and Pratt had ever feared, and that was old Grace.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was weeks before I saw Morgan again. It was a hot, dry afternoon, and I was about to step into Ryan Fancy’s beer hall for a quick jug to cool me down when the girl spotted me.

“Kenny!” she called as if we’d known each other for much longer. “I was hoping I’d see you!”

“At your service,” I replied, which for now remained a joke.

Morgan was striding down dry, dusty George Street towards me, wearing the unmistakeable green frock of a druidess-in-training. So that was how Pratt had decided to dress her up for now. Her hair was tied up and around the crown of her head in the usual braid.

“You figure they’ll let me in here?” she nodded at the door of the beer hall.

“That frock does you no favours,” I pondered, “But I’m sure they can be swayed.”

“I’ll buy you a jug for the trouble.”

“Best not,” I laughed, “I’ll buy, you’ll get your turn when you’re rich.” I led the way inside.

The hall was empty. It wasn’t Ryan Fancy himself behind the bar that day, but his niece Kerril, who called out “afternoon, Kenny” and almost forgot to ask about the short young druidess-to-be by my side. After I asked for a jug from whatever barrel was coldest, she did think to say, “is the Council getting trainees to accompany ladle-happy bards on their afternoon benders?”

“This one’s training is a little different,” I offered, pointing at Morgan. Kerril thought it was a joke and cackled nervously. When I didn’t laugh, she sighed and started grabbing a jug and two bowls, talking about how anything goes these days. Soon, she said, the druids would start sleeping in till noon and cursing the gods, and then maybe the Scotians would come and baptize the rest of us. She set the jug and bowls on the table.

“Right then,” said Kerril, “I need to run to the salthouse down by the docks, but if you want anything just get up and grab it, and Kenny will take care of it with me after, alright dear?” she rubbed Morgan’s shoulder. The girl smiled and said nothing. Kerril ran off on her sudden errand.

“Something up with her?”

“We slept together some years ago,” I admitted, “when we weren’t much older than you. Sometimes she still takes a little fit over it.”

“Still pining for you? And you keep coming to her bar? I thought you’d have more heart.” Morgan furrowed her brow at me.

“Isn’t it out of a guy’s hands,” I pointed to my head, “if a woman’s still pining for him when he’s got a big bald dome like this?”

“Speaking of which,” she laughed, though it was hardly a speaking-of-which, “I think I might have a boyfriend.” From there she brought me up to speed on everything she’d been up to since we’d brought her to the Town.

Though Lady Tibbo knew even less than I did of what was really going on, she’d told Lady Fay the truth: her school for bright gals and gaffers was quite real. There Morgan spent most of her time, at least when Pratt didn’t insist on having her assist him in the druids’ quarters. She’d mostly learnt off by heart the Chief Druid’s endless routine of prayers and incantations and libations to Lug and Dagda and Brigid and the few other high gods Pratt bothered with. He wasn’t letting Morgan have any part in the divination, the one thing that clearly interested her.

Her boyfriend was a lad from Miquelon, the only French kid in the school. He’d snuck up behind her before battle training and knocked out her legs from behind with his foam. (Why they call wooden dummy swords “foams” I’ve never understood.) In the commotion she’d been none the wiser when the same boy came around in front of her and offered her a hand up, saying “ayoye, you okay?” She’d laughed at his accent and thanked him. A minute later, when she realized how he’d tricked her, she called him a dirty French bastard and spat in his face. They sparred with their foams, he knocked her on her back, she chased him behind a storehouse and planted her lips on his.

Since we’d dropped her off, Morgan had seen Merlin only once. He came to visit her in the druids’ quarters, carrying something long wrapped in a blanket. He asked her some quick questions about Lady Tibbo’s school, how Pratt was treating her, how she liked the Town. He asked her if she already had a good cloak for when winter would come; she did. That’s when he pulled out nine golden cloak-pins and asked her to choose one. Like most of Merlin’s requests, this one made no sense – but as usual, he needed no explanations to get people to do what he wanted, just his wise yet sheepish smile. In any case, he seemed very pleased with the choice Morgan had made – a shorter-needled pin with a red stone set in the head. He left as suddenly as he’d arrived.

She was worried, of course, that no one had yet explained to her exactly what her “special position” was supposed to be. She hardly dared ask Pratt – whenever she came near the topic, the big man stammered and didn’t answer, instead getting on her case for this or that fault in her performance of the rites. She hadn’t had time to ask Merlin before he faded back into the shadows. So of course, now she was looking at me expectantly, thinking I’d finally be the one to tell her. I struggled not to.

“Look,” I managed, “if I could tell you I would, but it’s not the kind of thing the higher-ups like explaining to errant bards like me. Anyhow, you’ll know more of it than I do soon enough.” She realized she’d get no further with me.

Besides that, Morgan talked on and on, and for once in my life I had trouble getting a word in edgewise. Not that I minded: I’d already grown to like her voice, and she seemed happy just to be talking. Why Morgan was so keen to give the run-down of her new life to a bald bard she’d only met once before was beyond me. She’d surprise me in like manner again soon.

 

[Specialist290]

Ah Merlin, inscrutable as always. I can't help but imagine that everything he does is in some way meant to test Morgan's character.

An nicely ironic twist that the local version of the Arthurian legend has him returning to Avalon in his hour of need rather than from Avalon.

 

[Knud_den_Store]

Ah Merlin, inscrutable as always. I can't help but imagine that everything he does is in some way meant to test Morgan's character.

An nicely ironic twist that the local version of the Arthurian legend has him returning to Avalon in his hour of need rather than from Avalon.

Merlin is certainly testing her - including in ways that haven't been explained yet! And yes, if you're a real person living in a real place called Avalon, you gotta adapt Arthurian legend a bit if you want it to make sense.

There's an update coming soon, I promise!

 

[HistoryDude]

I'm liking this. Nice to see that they've acknowledged what they're training Morgan for.

This does seem somewhat dreamlike. I can see how Morgan made that mistake.

 

[Knud_den_Store]

IV: The Crumbling of the Maritimes


Cosser ste son bin hau en air
Murmure d’onne mere qi braye
Tchisson stes hordes en chanday noere
Qi foncont dans batay
Cosser la ville dsus des montagnes
Crac pi s’reforme pi clate
Virant dans l’air violate
Pi stes tours q’el feu gagne


(What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of a weeping mother
Who are those hordes in black hoods
Who are rushing into battle
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts
Turning in the violet air
And those towers which fire is consuming)
​

The above lines in Middle Acadian were spoken by an unnamed Miramichian geezer to Ogden Beaton, King of the Maritimes, when the king rode by the old man’s house after a campaign around Miramichi in 2643. These cryptic words are from a piece of Occultist lore; though their lords were Christian, people in Miramichi at this time would likely have held to the Occultist rites, or to the Druidic teachings, or both. A friend and colleague of mine from the Maritimes, Annabel Mansoor, tells me that the lines are part of a longer piece called the Riddle of the Wasteland, composed by the revered Pre-Calamity prophet Tees Eliot. (In the Occultist tradition, any string of words that are revered and not understood gets called a Riddle.) An original copy supposedly exists in the basement of the Crimson Library in Boston; I suspect the lines spoken by the Acadian geezer have strayed far from the original, further even than translation requires.

The encounter between the geezer and King Ogden is recorded by Ella Bailey, an important Maritime chronicler of the late 27th century who worked for Ogden’s successor, Queen Caitlin. According to Bailey, the old man had witnessed Ogden’s soldiers capturing a druidess who was pronouncing a hex on the king. When the king declared her banished from the Maritimes, the old man rushed before Ogden to warn him that this judgment would bring ruin down on his head, and would eventually cause the end of his line. The king’s bodyguards kicked the geezer and chased him back into his hut, during which he spoke these words from the Riddle of the Wasteland. Whatever the truth of the story, it serves as an interesting window into a place and time where Occultist and Druidic rites met and melded together.

That is not, of course, the only reason that I have begun this chapter with those lines. In light of what happened to Ogden’s descendants and their kingdom, starting less than thirty years after his death, it would be easy to think that the geezer’s words were prophetic. Within seventy years, the Kingdom of the Maritimes was no more. This was partly the work of Queen Morgan’s children and grandchildren, whose reigns we will have plenty of time to discuss. The Fay conquests, however, would hardly have been possible if the Mainland kingdom had not been imploding for its own reasons, almost of its own accord. This situation was an indelible part of Newfoundland's Late Heroic Age, as it gave Newfie warriors and adventurers a suitably tough yet ripe ground for plunder and warfare. As my readers may have guessed, I am taking a brief detour to discuss the collapse of local authority which made the breakthrough of the Fay and other Newfie warlords on the Mainland possible.

It may be time to clarify a point of terminology. My readers will by now have heard Newfoundland (or the Rock) spoken of in opposition to the Mainland, or simply the Main. In principle, this term can refer to the whole continent. Just as often, however, the term “Mainland” is used to designate the narrower area otherwise known as the Maritimes, lying southwest of Newfoundland across the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. To the Newfoundlanders, the rulers of this land (in those periods when it was united) were known as Kings and Queens of the Mainland – a title given first to the Irvings, then to the Beatons, then finally to the Fay. Our concern now is with the crucial years in the late 2600s when Beaton control over the Maritimes collapsed, turning their kingdom into a battle-ground for local lords, Yankee chiefs, and Newfie and Madelinot seafarers, in which the Fay would slowly emerge as the new hegemonic power.

As we discussed in Chapter II, the first Kings of the Maritimes were the Irvings, a family which had purportedly held sway in those parts even before the Calamity. Their fortunes waned over the 24th century until Tarleton the Mad restored the Irving kingdom with around 2470. After a reign marked by slaughter and heavy reliance on bandits and mercenaries, Tarleton’s reign ended in a rebellion led by Ivor Beaton, leader of a powerful clan from the southern shores of Cape Breton. After killing Tarleton in battle, Ivor took for himself the title of High King, usually referred to in English as “Airdree” from the Gaelic Àrd-righ. (When women ruled, they did not take the equivalent female title of Àrd-bhanrigh, instead preferring Rhiannon, a word of unclear origin supposedly meaning “great queen”.)

With the first Airdree and his successors came a new state religion in the form of the Anglican Church, to which Ivor’s family were recent converts. The Beaton takeover also marks the ascent of the Gaelic language, which was then spoken only by a few clans in and around the Beaton homelands but which by 2600 was used in administration throughout much of the Maritimes, though most Maritimers never learned to speak it fluently. This affinity for the language of the Beatons led the Maritimers (and the Scotians especially) to be called “Kimmerhaws” by their Newfie and Yankee neighbours, a bastardization of the Gaelic greeting Ciamar a tha thu (how are you). Though the borders of their dominion would fluctuate, the Beatons would hold onto their throne for over two centuries.

Under Queen Caitlin, who reigned from 2645 to 2672, the Maritimes enjoyed their final stretch of independence and internal stability. Caitlin Beaton was the last ruler of her line to wield real power over the whole of the Maritimes (besides the lands around the Bay of Chaleur and the Madawaska Valley, which the Beatons laid claim to as part of the ancient province of New Brunswick but never brought to heel). According to Scotian chroniclers from shortly after her time, Caitlin was a masterful diplomat and tireless powerbroker, able to keep her subject-lords in check and her own family at peace for as long as she lived. Some chroniclers point out that things were easier for the queen on the family front because she was the only child of her father, King Ogden – her own three sons and her grandchildren would not have it as easy.

Upon Queen Caitlin’s death in 2672, her children wasted no time in destroying the kingdom she had only barely held together. Like in Newfoundland, new rulers in the Maritimes were usually elected from among the previous ruler’s family by the lesser lords of the realm. The lords of the Maritimes first elected Caitlin’s eldest son, Bairre, who struggled for seven years to keep the kingdom together before being murdered in a plot led by his eldest sister, Therese (who was packed off to a nunnery when her role in the murder was discovered). The throne then passed to Caitlin’s youngest son, who reigned as Ivor II; he was a great commander in battle, and may have stopped his kingdom’s collapse had he not been found drowned in the Mira River four years into his reign. Ivor II thus became the first of three Beaton rulers to die not knowing the name of their killer. His daughter Marilla, only ten years old upon her father’s death, was elected to the throne; under the circumstances we should be impressed that she made it to adulthood at all, though she soon made herself enemies within the Anglican Church and died strangled in her sleep at age 24. The next king was Marilla’s cousin Peleg, son of Caitlin’s previously murdered son King Bairre; Peleg reigned in his turn for nine years before “slipping” off a cliff near Meat Cove at the northern tip of Cape Breton in 2706. Peleg’s son, King Hamilton, would rule over an ever-shrinking kingdom which finally collapsed in 2724, though he would not die with it.

Perhaps we should not give the Beatons and their infighting all the credit for their kingdom’s collapse. At another time, a kingdom might have survived a couple generations of royal sibling rivalries. It was simply bad luck that the Maritimes, at the end of the 27th century, were being pressed upon from three directions at once. On the one hand there was the old familiar threat of the Yankee chiefs, who raided regularly into New Brunswick and were growing ever more eager to set up permanently in the province. Foremost among these was Jehoram M’Rai, who ruled over the federation called the Newopies, and who started pushing into New Brunswick almost as soon as Queen Caitlin was dead; by the time of King Peleg’s death in 2706, Jehoram had pushed up along the Bay of Fundy to near Hopewell Rocks.

Another threat was that posed by the lords on the fringes of the Beaton domain, of whom the Miramichi Acadians were the first to break off. Like the Yankees, the Acadians largely followed the Occultist rites. Unlike the Yankees, they had mostly kept to their own lands, though many Acadians held that before the Calamity they had (along with the Mi’kmaq) lived spread out all across the Maritimes. In the 2640s, the Occultist Acadians of Miramichi and Caraquet had accepted a Christian Acadian lord, Émile Bastarache, who acknowledged Caitlin Beaton as queen. By Caitlin’s death, it seems, Émile’s son Benoit was quickly losing control of his late father’s domain, and there was little the old queen or her successors could do to stop it. Sometime in the 2670s, an Occultist trader calling himself Roger Beausoleil began drawing supporters to him, claiming to be the descendant of the mythical Pre-Calamity war chief who led the Acadians against the English. Within a few years he held sway over the whole length of the Miramichi River, wresting away another corner of the Beaton kingdom. This new Beausoleil would die childless, leaving his small kingdom to his allies, the Melanson family. This new lineage would expand the kingdom south to encompass the old Irving lands around Moncton and Sackville, and later generations of Melansons would come to be a thorn in the side of the Fay.

The second lord to cast off the Beaton yoke was Finbar Carmody, called Duke of Scotia Proper by his overlords, self-styled King of Scotia. Within the Kingdom of the Maritimes, the Carmody were always the second most powerful after the Beatons. Though the Beaton title of Airdree or High King was at first designed to let local rulers keep calling themselves kings and queens, the Beatons slowly discouraged their underlords from claiming that title, finding it too often led those lords to think they could do without a protector. By the time of Queen Caitlin, only the Carmody family still flouted this directive, calling themselves “Kings of Scotia” in the decrees they issued. Sometime after the death of Queen Caitlin and before the death of her son King Bairre – so between 2672 and 2679 – Finbar Carmody simply stopped paying homage and tribute to the Beatons. King Bairre made a brief attempt to bring his duke back into line, but it was no use: Finbar was a far more seasoned commander, who at this point fielded as many soldiers as the Airdree. The Carmody would keep their independence for a century to come, and like the Melansons would give the Fay no end of trouble.

Finally, of course, there were the raiders from across the Gulf. These came both from Newfoundland and from the smaller, Acadian islands of the Gulf, where the people gave sacrifices to sea-gods and lived off fishing and seafaring even more than did people on the Rock. Though the Fay would slowly subjugate these islands, their local lords kept on pillaging the Mainland quite independently, and even tried to carve out Mainland dominions of their own, as did the second greatest Newfie family, the Holwells. Yet the Fay were, in the end, by far the greatest of the conquerors, something which they owed to the bases they established in Gaspe.

All coloured areas on the above map were under the control of the last real Rhiannon, Queen Caitlin Beaton, at her death in 2672.
Areas in orange, magenta, and dark green were lost under the reigns of the four murdered Beatons between 2672 and 2706.

These bases were possible only because Quebec was in a state of fracture, and was already much further down that path than the Maritimes. In the late 2500s, Véronique Castel, the daughter of a high-ranking Seigneur from the Beauce, had united Quebec into a single kingdom for the first time since the Calamity. It would also be the last time, as none of her children and grandchildren proved up to the task of keeping Véronique’s kingdom together. By the late 27th century, the Castel family held a string of domains between the lower Saint-Lawrence and the Madawaska Valley, though like the Maritimes these lands were under increasing pressure from Yankee chiefs. The rest of Quebec had reverted to old Seigneurs and to the powerful abbesses of the Ursuline Church whom Véronique had briefly brought to heel. In Gaspe especially, the fracturing was more complete than anywhere else, as no lord held a string of more than a couple towns and castles under his or her rule.

It is in Gaspe that Morgan, Queen on the Rock, established a foothold across the Gulf, as we have already seen. Yet it appears that the main function of these Gaspesian ports in Morgan’s time was as supply bases for longer raiding expeditions on the Mainland. It is in the reigns of Morgan’s children, Lancelot and Lillian, that they would turn into launching points for conquest.

 

[Knud_den_Store]

I'm liking this. Nice to see that they've acknowledged what they're training Morgan for.

This does seem somewhat dreamlike. I can see how Morgan made that mistake.

Most glad you're liking it!

It is quite a dreamlike storyline. It'll likely keep feeling that way for the next few narrative instalments at least.

 

[Specialist290]

There are few better seedbeds for the foundations of a new realm than the decaying remains of its predecessors.

 

[HistoryDude]

Morgan was somewhat lucky, then. Or, perhaps, she was given power because they needed new rulers...

It's interesting that some of the Mabinogion is still remembered...

What faith does Morgan follow?

 

[Knud_den_Store]

There are few better seedbeds for the foundations of a new realm than the decaying remains of its predecessors.

Morgan was somewhat lucky, then. Or, perhaps, she was given power because they needed new rulers...

It's interesting that some of the Mabinogion is still remembered...

What faith does Morgan follow?

Morgan and her children certainly had excellent timing - without the Great Maritime Implosion, the game would've looked quite different in the early years!

And yes, bits of the Mabinogion found their way into the collective memory. I figure by this point the lines between the distinct texts in the Matter of Britain would've quite thoroughly blurred over.

And Morgan follows the Druidic faith, as does all of Newfoundland. The in-game lore is that Druidism used to be much more widespread across the Northeast, but it's been on the run for a couple hundred years. This is the religious situation at the start of gameplay in 2666:

Anglicans, Ursulines, and Anabaptists are Christian. Druidists, Pelagists, and Occultists are classed as Pagan by the game, and Midewiwin is based on traditional Cree practices. Rust Cultist probably explains itself.

 

[HistoryDude]

Is there any Anglican-Occultist or Anglican-Druidic syncretism?

 

[Specialist290]

In-game, probably not - the mod still uses the core CK2 religion mechanics where religion is very much a yes-or-no, is-or-isn't proposition.

In-story... well, I'm sure Knud will fill us in on the specifics, but it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't some intermixing and exchange of ideas.

 

[Knud_den_Store]

Is there any Anglican-Occultist or Anglican-Druidic syncretism?

In-game, probably not - the mod still uses the core CK2 religion mechanics where religion is very much a yes-or-no, is-or-isn't proposition.

In-story... well, I'm sure Knud will fill us in on the specifics, but it wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't some intermixing and exchange of ideas.

@Specialist290 you're right, the game doesn't allow for much in terms of sycretism. (One of the ways in which I find some Paradox games' representation of religion kinda limiting, alongside the all-or-nothing province conversion mechanic, but I digress...)

In-story, there's naturally quite a mixing. Part of that dates back to the times of the Calamity, before which Newfoundland and the Maritimes would've been, of course, largely Christian. There was even a flipping of what had happened in the Middle Ages where pagan traditions and deities got incorporated into Christian holidays and saints - several saints have by now been absorbed into Druidic practice as minor gods or sprites. More on that to come, I'm sure.