![]() ![]() Bucolic farmhouses and sacred stables, home to centaurs, still litter the land, waiting to be put to use once more. Once tended by centaurs these farmlands have fallen into disarray. Perhaps they can be restored to their former glory. The river god Ladon once lived in the gushing waters, but now the rivers of Arcadia run dry as Ladon slumbers. Though it breaks immortal hearts, Arcadia must be given * to those who would restore it to its glorious, arboreal splendour. For what is to be done? It is now the Age of Man, so it must be the mortals, feeble though they may be, pitiful even, to whom the task must fall. #FABLED LANDS GAMEBOOKS ONLINE FREE#But where is Chiron now? Does he slumber somewhere in an abandoned stable, lost and forgotten? Can mortal men free him from his long sleep of oblivion and restore him to greatness? Only time will tell. A druid or two can still be seen tending to half-forgotten woodland shrines, perhaps a wanderer may catch a glimpse of a centaurs’ hind quarters as it flees into the safety of the forest or catch the mournful sigh of a dryad wandering alone through the glades, but mostly, Arcadia sleeps.Ĭhiron, greatest of the centaurs, tutor of Hercules and Achilles, and the god of medicine himself, Asklepios, once walked Arcadia’s leafy trails, and galloped across its verdant fields. Faerie folk can still be found in the weed choked gardens, sprites too, though their magic is fading. It is said that King Lycaon himself, father of wolves, still lives somewhere, in the deepest, darkest dens of the forest.Įlsewhere, Arcadia is not entirely abandoned. These werewolves feed on the unwary and the lost. In its wilder regions, the Sons of Lycaon wander the deep forests, wolves by night and men by day. ![]() Now they twist and turn, choking the life out of the land. The bowers and arbours are overgrown with the thick, fibrous vines that once yielded up the grapes that Bacchus used to make his celestial wines, drunk with joyous abandon in every nook and corner. Its bathing pools and lily gilded ponds are filled with rot and decay. The babbling brooks and streams have long since dried up, nothing sleeps in their beds now but desiccated earth and bleached bones. Ancient trees, long untended, clog the forest trails, roots rise up from the ground to topple the statues, fountains and sundials, cracking open the conservatories and summer houses. Silence reigns over the weed infested garden walkways. Everywhere life blossomed with joyous abandon.īut Pan plays his pipes no more, Diana hunts not in the deep forests-green, dryads and nymphs dance no longer in dappled moonlit glades to the music of the spheres. Even mortals, those chosen of the gods, attended the revels. Satyrs and centaurs gambolled in the sunlit groves, druids and sprites tended to the trees and flowers. Ares, lord of war, rested here after bloody battle, and Ceres sowed her seeds of plenty in its lush farmland. Hera plotted vengeance against her husband, Zeus in dusky glades, Aphrodite seduced many a mortal, even a god or two, in its sweet smelling bowers, lovers embraced in candle-lit forested walkways. ![]() Once they walked its sylvan paths, sipping ambrosia, plucking the golden apples of immortality, drinking the wines of Bacchus, and filling the elysian groves with their laughter. Fans of the Dirk Lloyd books will appreciate Jamie's distinctive authorial voice at work here:Īrcadia, the garden of the Olympians. #FABLED LANDS GAMEBOOKS ONLINE FULL#And in creating a world I'd always go for Tolkien's goal of a full subcreation. Greek and Roman never really did it for me. The ones I really liked were the Norse myths. The wheel forever turns."I read all the mythology books when I was a kid. So now this Graeco-Roman stuff comes across to the gamer of today as new and original - or at least a nice change. But since the rise of Lord of the Rings and Warhammer and their ilk, goblins, green-skinned orcs, Alien rip-offs, elves, dwarves, chaos demons and so on have taken over the majority of fantasy. It's kind of interesting in the sense that this kind of mythology was ten a penny in our day, so much popular fiction revolved around those myths ( Hercules, Clash of the Titans, Jason, etc etc). It's all Graeco-Roman which I have unashamedly mixed up together (which once would have outraged me, but nobody cares anymore). "I quite like what I've written as it's in classic gamebook prose, which I haven't really done for a long time, so it was fun. After I mentioned his Vulcanverse project a while ago, Jamie shared some of the background material he's been developing for it. ![]()
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