Quoted from an interview with Mr Cordory himself during brief period of lucidity.
This is the background to the world the adventures were set in. Are you sitting comfortably children? Then I’ll begin...
Once upon a time, in the dim and distant past, as it were, there were creatures who trod the land with fantastic magical powers. They were, I guess, the equivalent to dinosaurs in the fact that only hints of their existence remain and they lived way before living memory.
As far as I can remember they were:
Dragons/Wyrms
Gryphons
Unicorns
Pegasus
(basically all the costumes we were never likely to make)
They may have equated to the 4 different styles of magic in the system but I only vaguely remember this:
Offensive
Divinitive
Curative
Defensive
(I seem to remember that Dragons were ‘offensive’ (“Call that a f*ckin’ maiden?!? Fat tart more like – f*ck off you little c*nt and bring me some gold!” etc), Unicorns were ‘curative’ and Gryphons were probably ‘divinitive’ and nothing whatsoever to do with Harry Bl*ody Potter back in those days...maybe. I also seem to remember that Wyrms were responsible for necromantic magic and it all slotted into a nice ring of power, phasing from one discipline into another – I’ll see if I can dig it out for what it’s worth).
Anyway, at some point back in THE MISTS OF TIIIIIIIIIME... TIIIIIIME... tiiiiime...tiiime...tiiiiiiime.... it all went tits-up for them and they wiped each other out in a massive war.
Or maybe the just died out.
Or maybe it was a meteor or the ice age or something, I forget.
The essential thing was that their magical energy leeched into the land, the water and even the air over millennia, sort of like radiation fallout, and it’s this energy that anyone using magic now taps into one way or another. In places where the creatures actually died/were buried the energies are strongest, and over time people discovered this and built stone circles/temples etc to mark these ‘Sacred’ places.
Lay lines of power flowed between such places like magnetism flowing between poles, and a lot of the nature-based and curative magic (IE: Creative and Restorative and enduring) derives from this as it still has ‘form’ having been channelled and contained. The closer to a ‘Source’ the better it is. Energy that’s dissipated into the air and water however, has, to an extent, lost it’s coherence and is more volatile and difficult to shape, but it’s this that’s tapped into mostly to create the ‘active’ or ‘destructive’ magic – explosive bursts of magic with generally short-term effects.
Making any sense so far?
So, guess what all this energy was called? - give up?
‘Lore’
And the creatures from which it came were.....wait for it... wait for it...
’Myths’!
Not a bad bit of retro-fitting a mythology to fit a name if you ask me ;)
That’s all I can remember for now.
Alas at this point mark got the vapours again, started talking about his work on Dr Who and the interview had to be postponed.
The nurse came and administered more of the ‘special’ medication and a few more nuggets of information were gleamed.
In the world of Mythlore we had one major city called Fesh, obviously for budgetary reasons we never actually went there, (although the Dragon's Lair was meant to be within it's boundaries). . The map (that's in the gallery) is the one I drew up for the tabletop adventures, I've still got it so if you want to incorporate it anywhere just let me know.
Actually I tell a lie, there was also the city of Rulsirim which basically equated to Gloucester on the map - I can't remember where Fesh was meant to be though.
Fesh was home to one or two characters that cropped up in the adventures, mainly Shemesar the Alchemist who ran "Shemesar's Wondrous Rings and Things", which is where most of the healing potions/scrolls and other items came from in the adventures, including "Shemesar's Wondrous Access Acessories" (a thieves tool kit of which I have the only surviving copy I believe - there's bound to be someone with another copy to prove me wrong...).
There was then a general rambling about characters and things that are only relevant to Mark. If you have any other memories regarding the system then please feel free to tell us about them on the forum.
