The Myth Weavers

It sure has been a while, eh?  That’ll happen between semesters.  We got together a few times in that space, but tonight was the first time we got everyone together at once.  But we played In a Wicked Age to shake the cobwebs off.  I couldn’t find my Skype-recording software, but it all worked out; it went a little zany, so I don’t know if anyone would want to listen to it anyway.  We should be back on the podcast soon, so don’t worry!

With the Hammer still on walkabout, we could only get myself, Giuli & Fen together, so we decided to try out In a Wicked Age with the bioregional animist oracle I put together, the Three Rivers Oracle.  We drew:

A panther and a hunter compete to see which has more skill in the hunt, wagering all they catch.

A craftsman discovers a bed of magical flint—when knapped, the blades come to life, but they seek to cut and sow chaos.

An old grandmother and storyteller seeks an heir to teach her stories to.

Flint does not want to let go of his reign and let spring begin, so a shaman schemes to trick the trickster.

Which gave us the following characters:

Panther [PC, Giuli] - Kitty
Covertly d12 (reduced to d10)
Directly d6
For Myself d8
For Others d6 (reduced to d4)
With Love d4
With Violence d10
Particular Strength: Predator
Best interest: A steady population of small mammals
Best interest: Beat Shouting Bow

The Hunter [PC, Fen] - Shouting Bow
Particular Strength: Hunter
Best interest: To feed his family.
Best interest: Get Flint to let go of winter.

Splitting Stone, a craftsman who finds a bed of magical flint
Action d6 d4
Maneuvering d10 d6
Self-protection d12 d8
No particular strength.
Best interest: To keep his magical flint secret from his brother-in-law, Shouting Bow.

Flint, the Trickster
Action d10 d6
Maneuvering d12 d8
Self-protection d6 d4
No particular strength.
Best interest: To keep the Winter from ending.

Swims-Like-Tree, the Grandmother
Action d10 d6
Maneuvering d12 d8
Self-protection d6 d4
No particular strength.
Best interest: To test Shouting Bow to make sure he’s a suitable heir.

Seneca Warriors
Invented impromptu as the story required.
Action d12 d8
Maneuvering d6 d4
Self-protection d10 d6
No particular strength.
Best interest: To test Shouting Bow to make sure he’s a suitable heir.

Cunning-as-Rabbit, the Shaman
Action d10 d6
Maneuvering d12 d8
Self-protection d6 d4
No particular strength.
Best interest: Find a way to trick Flint into letting go of the winter.

And these particular strengths:

Predator, the hunting practices of a wild animal.
It has to be used with violence or covertly.  For NPC’s, it’s good for Action.
Significance 1: It’s broad.
Its die is a d8.

Hunter, the hunting practices of human.
It has to be used for others. For NPC’s, it’s good for Action.
Significance 1: It’s potent.
Its die is a d10.

Special thanks to Abulafia for the names.  This marked my first time running In a Wicked Age, so hopefully I didn’t screw things up too badly.  Fen & Giuli went for their strengths, so we ended up with no one on the Owe list!

If you like this, and live in the Three Rivers bioregion, check out GASPcon in November–I’ll run three sessions of In a Wicked Age with the Three Rivers Oracle, as well as the first public playtest of The Fifth World—probably the first bioregional animist storyjamming track at any gaming convention!

 

 The Myth Weavers, episode 6 [2:11:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (122)

Special episode with just Willem Larsen and Jason Godesky, chatting about rewilding, stories and story games: what they have to do with each other, and why The Myth Weavers exist.

 

 The Myth Weavers, episode 5 [56:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (57)

We experienced some technical difficulties with this one (Skype kept dropping our call), but we still managed to stitch the pieces together.

 

 The Myth Weavers, episode 4 [1:16:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (52)

We’ve gotten listed on iTunes!  We haven’t gotten together to record much lately, though.  But, I do have two old episodes that have not yet gone online.  Here, you can download the first of these, and I’ll put out the second a little later.

 

 The Myth Weavers, episode 3: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (46)

The pilot episode of “Howl of the People.”

 

 The Myth Weavers, episode 2: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (79)

In season one, Howl of the People follows the lives of a wolf pack newly migrated into Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness, an area where wolves have recently returned. Season one follows the lives of one family of these intrepid pioneers, returning to a lost, native land.

Produced by Willem Larsen

 

 The Myth Weavers, episode 1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (108)

For our first game, we decided to start with Primetime Adventures, ironically enough for a bunch of rewilders not particularly impressed with the nature of mass media.  But then again, in terms of restoring our natural oral traditions, what better place to start than by appropriating the conventions of television, right?  We did something that I personally think of as really innovative.  We present Primetime Adventures‘ first wildlife documentary—

Premise

Around the world, humans have shared a unique relationship with canids. Today, often hunted to the brink of extinction, wolves and coyotes have done extraordinary things to adapt to this new world. Howl of the People follows the social life and drama of canid lives in transition, packs living on the edge of civilization, struggling to find a place for themselves between diminishing wild habitat and the expansion of civilization.  Like Meerkat Manor or Orangutan Island, Howl of the People looks closely enough at these packs for their individual personalities to take center-stage, and the inter-personal drama of how they relate to one another.

We’ve planned three short seasons for the series, moving from west to east. In season one, we’ll follow a wolf pack recolonizing the Cascades. In season two, we’ll see how coyotes live in the suburbs of Calgary. In season three, we’ll follow packs of “eastern coyote” in western Pennsylvania.

Conventions

We want to emphasize eloquence and poetry, with thick description that appeals to synaesthetic experience and senses other than sight, particularly scent. Violence shouldn’t distract us from that, so when the plot goes there, we won’t shy away from graphic descriptions of violence, but by the same token, we won’t add violence for its own sake, either.  On the other hand, we all feel sufficiently uncomfortable with cross-species erotica to just “fade to black” when it comes to canid mating. Ideally, we could tell the whole story from thick descriptions, odors and body movements, but if we have to resort to talking animals from time to time, we can accept that as a shorthand that compensates for our limited olfactory vocabulary. If it takes you a while to figure out that the characters appear as wolves, all the better. Like most native human groups, they also refer to themselves as “the People,” and speak more in terms of verbs and patterns of movement than the literate habit of referring to things and their attributes.

Tone

Like Meerkat Manor and related shows, Howl of the People takes other-than-human personhood seriously. If not for the accident of their species, you might see these characters on an hour-long HBO drama.  We’ll have tension and drama, but we also want to show ‘the good life’ that wild creatures can have. The series emphasizes questions of nativeness vs. invasiveness, bioregional connection, wildness, feralness, and domestication.

Once upon a time, there was a small village in a valley, where there lived two of the weavers who were known all over the world. These weavers created beautiful fabrics that shimmered like morning dew and were as colourful as a field of wildflowers. They knew each other well, and liked to challenge one another and test each others abilities. One winter, when the wind was blowing coldly outside and everyone was getting chilled, they challenged each other to see who could weave the best way to keep warm, to stave off the frigid air, to provide comfort and support in the face of the frigid and barren winter. They set their looms side by side in the town square, with the snow swirling in strange patterns in the air and on the ground and began to weave. As they wove, they talked and laughed, tying ever brighter and warmer colours into their looms. They drew crowds of people from all over the village who came to see, not only what the weavers would create, but the joy they took in the weaving. The weavers seemed to dance around their looms, playing with the threads, only to have them slowly fall into wondrous patterns as if by accident. Finally, after three days and three nights of weaving, and only weaving, the weavers were done, and the people in the town square gathered close to see what they had created. Hano, the first weaver, had created a beautiful, storied tapestry, thick and heavy with meaning and weighty with colours and patterns more beautiful than a sunlight, layered grove. Tyli, the second weaver, had created a bright shawl, thinner than Hano’s tapestry, and embroidered with fewer and simpler stories and figure than the great tapestry, but still beautiful and meaningful in it’s own right. However, the villagers all flocked to the profound safety seemingly offered by the tapestry, impermeable to the wind and weather. “But the contest in not yet complete” cried Tyli, and all the villagers turned towards her. “We still have to see whose performs best throughout the winter” she said, and all the villagers nodded, sure that Hano’s creation would block out the wind and snow and keep him the warmest. Hano and Tyli left the square, and each went to their own home, where Hano put his tapestry across his door and Tyli put on her shawl as she walked home.

Both weavers were comfortable and warm, both the tapestry and the shawl gave relieving heat and soothing protection, and the weavers went to sleep to rest and recover after their three days spent weaving. When Tyli got up the next morning, she put on her shawl and left her home and went about her daily business. She stayed warm and protected from the cold elements all throughout her day. When Hano woke up, he walked towards his door, and shifted his magnificent tapestry so that he could get out. Immediately, he has hit with a blast of cold snowy wind that shocked him so much dropped the edge of his tapestry and it swung back into place in front of his door, stopping the cold wind. While Tyli was out doing meeting friends and doing errands, Hano stayed stuck behind his wonderful tapestry. He couldn’t leave his house again till the end of winter.

The next winter, Hano wove a shawl.

I want to weave a shawl, something that has meaning and significance, but also something that I can carry with me, take into the wider world, and use there. I also want to experiment with the play of playing, increase my spontaneity and ability to improv and work collaboratively to create. I want to tap into my ability to create, that I don’t use that often and that I would like to use more, another thing that I would like to carry with me into the world out of this experience. I want to create stories with meaning, significance, as well as stories that are fun to play.

I want to chart unexplored territory, territory I’ve found myself surrounded by but never really ventured into. Story. To start weaving and playing in story and drama, dancing in improv without tripping over my feet so much. I’ve got an almost contradictory nature, on one side, shy, quiet, lacking in my social skills, and lately finding I fall almost dumb when put on the spot. And well, that bothers me, because for my other side, my mind races and thoughts pour into my head and I’ve found I can write off pages and pages, and I want to blend this in to my everyday and in the moment. I’ve done theater, starred as a ’scooby doo/con artist’ dark butler in Ha Ha House and sang and danced as a Sailor (and bartender) in Anything Goes, as well as writing and playing two albums in the band Femantiks.

I love jamming and improv, I love when the magic happens, and I feel a bit rusty at it, and want to improve. I think practicing in any help all of them, but I like them all, and I haven’t done much musical jamming (with others) or dancing of late. As far as roleplaying games go, I’ve played minimal amounts of D&D, but had a fun time doing so. With story jamming I intend to start feeling, seeing, and playing with story around me, to take the story brush and start painting my canvas. Here goes to losing my story gaming virginity.

Cheers