The latest issue of my newsletter went out to subscribers today. In this issue of A Peregrine’s Path, you’ll read about how a Tennessee boy left the island of Crete for the castles of Bavaria.
Follow Stephen’s next adventure on
A Peregrine’s Path
EXPLORATION—DISCOVERY—ADVENTURE
Peregrine are travelers with whom we cross paths and share stories.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, Celtic tribes spread out of Bohemia onto the Alpine Foreland and up into the river valleys of the southern mountains. These people became known as the Baiuvarii /by-you-var-ee/, which may have meant “people from Bohemia.” From this word we get Bayern in German and in English Bavaria.
The Baiuvarii were a fierce and independent people. The tribes were led by chieftains. Their spiritual leaders were druids. The druids were wise men and women who served as legal authorities and judges, lore keepers, healers, and advisers to the chieftains.
The druids were also sorcerers. They drew power from nature: from rush of wind, from steady of stone, from fall of water, and from heat of flame.
Then came the Franks from the east. They dominated the Baiuvarii and set up the first dukes to rule over them. The Franks feared the power of the druids and, so, tried to repress them. To defend themselves, the druids called up from the earth a great dragon.
The dragon was big as a mountain. On wide wings, it swooped in the air, its scales were hard as rocks, it moved quick as a river, and it breathed great gouts of fire. The dragon defended the druids against the Franks.
In the 8th century, Charlemagne came. Charlemagne fought the dragon and subdued it. He was then crowned emperor in the year 800. His son Louis the Pious appointed the first king of Bavaria. There followed a series of six Bavarian kings in the 9th century. These kings were fabulously wealthy, the next more wealthy than the previous.
Now the dragon had been subdued but not defeated. And when the last of the six kings died, the dragon collected the treasure of the Bavarian kings and brought it to the Alpsee. It dropped the treasure to the bottom of the lake. The dragon then lay down beside the lake, with the Crown of Bavaria upon its head, and slept.
Do you see the dragon…?
The castle is the Crown of Bavaria atop the dragon’s head.
The dragon’s snout lies in front of the castle. Behind the castle, the hill crest runs up its neck to its back, the tallest hills. Its wings, green hills, spread behind the lakes on either side. The tail stretches into the background, right.
I may have made up parts of this story. Druids are commonly associated with the Celts earlier in history. We don’t hear so much about them later. This is perhaps due to two reasons: one, it was first the Romans, then later Christian conquerors, who repressed the druids for fear of their power, and two, in compliance with their own customs, the druids didn’t write.
I’m sure I’ve exaggerated the Bavarian kings’ wealth, and as far as history is concerned, druids did not call dragons. Some of us know better.
“…the participants can then be allowed to make their first descent into the dungeons beneath the ‘huge ruined pile, a vast castle built by generations of mad wizards and insane geniuses.’”—Gygax and Arneson, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Men & Magic
Some say Ludwig II was a genius. For others, the king was mad. The vast castle he built is yet far from ruined. Though when the time comes, the pile will be huge.
“And the dungeons beneath?” a friend asked after I posted yet another photo like the one above on social media. Since I left the Isle of Myth a year and a half ago, base town is across the river from Bavaria’s most famous castle. In reply I recited a local legend:
An old man lives outside the village in the castle’s shadow. He is blind and frail, so doesn’t often leave his hovel. But if you bring him a bottle of single malt and tell him stories of daring adventures of youth, he’ll tell you to go, on a winter’s day, to the bridge behind the castle. Bouncing planks take you high above a gorge. Cool mist rises from a laughing cascade below. It brings an odor of pine and earth. The sun at its zenith reaches deep between two central towers. There, dazzling rays reveal to the keen observer a cavernous portal of unknown depth, into which few have ventured and from which none have returned.
This article was originally published on DONJON LANDS, April 10, 2024.
In French, as in English, a “bordel” is a brothel. A “bazar” in French, or “bazaar” in English, is a chaotic marketplace. Both terms are also used in French as slang for a place in disarray, one more so than the other.
Walking in Paris on a bright spring day, I stopped on the curb next to an elderly lady. On the far end of the crosswalk, the little man glowed red. A motorcyclist approached the light. He rode slow in a diagonal across the street and onto the zebra-striped crosswalk, turning toward the lady and myself. We stepped apart as the motorcycle passed between us, onto the sidewalk.
The lady and I looked at each other across the now vacant space.
“C’est interdit, vous savez,” she said to me. “That’s illegal, you know. Paris is a bordel.”
The little man turned green. As we stepped onto the crosswalk, she had a second thought. “No, a bordel is more organized. Paris c’est un bazar !”
I will always remember the sound: The shrill pitch. Anguish. Utter loss. It must be twenty-five years ago now. Still, a shiver runs down my spine, makes the hair stand on the back of my neck, goose pimples raise on my arms. I have to set my jaw to keep the teeth from chattering. Sudden tears cloud the vision.
I was at work one day. It was the afternoon. A workday afternoon like any other. A coworker got a phone call. A preteen boy, his best friend, a gun in the house, a mother’s scream frozen in time.
Following is the preface to Littlelot and the Rescue of Gwenevere, the first story in the Littlelot series of adventure books for children and the grown-ups who read to them.
A young reader himself, Littlelot feeds his imagination on legends, myths, and classic tales. So inspired, he tells the stories of his games and adventures in this children’s series for ages 6 to 10.
Preface
The valiant knight in shining armor rides a resplendent steed on dangerous adventures. He surmounts overwhelming obstacles, rights terrible wrongs, and rescues the damsel in distress.
That’s what I want to be when I grow up!
Alas, I was born centuries too late. As were you, Young Reader, if such might be your own grown-up ambition. Left to us in our times are stories of those chivalric heroes, models that we may yet apply to our modern lives.
The quintessential tale of noble knights is that of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table as told by Sir Thomas Malory in Le Morte d’Arthur. Reputedly a knight himself, Malory compiled his fifteenth-century rendering from various sources, among them, the Vulgate Cycle, the Prose Tristan, and the Stanzaic Morte Arthur. Each of these drew on earlier works, including Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain and a collection of stories by the French troubadour Chrétien de Troyes. In turn, Malory’s work inspired a profusion of novels, narrative poetry, films, and other forms, collectively known as “Arthurian legend.”
The first story of Littlelot recounts the adventure of the most renowned of all the Round Table knights, Lancelot, and his rescue of Gwenevere, drawn from Book VII of Le Morte d’Arthur. My own retelling differs from Malory’s in length as well as in certain details.
All book sales made through Bookshop directly benefit independent bookstores.
Littlelot
and the Rescue of Gwenevere
Littlelot Book 1
An Arthurian legend with knights and damsels and other action figures.
In his game of make-believe, a boy must make a choice—break his oath to the king or break the heart of the woman who gave him the most meaningful gift.
Available in paperback and e-book wherever you buy books.
Disclosure: This page and linked pages contain affiliate links to Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and Kobo. As an affiliate of those retailers, Stephen earns a commission when you click through and make a purchase. Thank you for your support.
If inspiration for everything I write comes from a source, this book is about the source.
“Stephen’s delightful memoir makes you want to travel upstream to your own formative D&D headwaters, dig out your old graph-paper maps and worn dice, and rediscover the gateway to what the author calls ‘the fantastic path.’”
—Ethan Gilsdorf, author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms
“A vibrant recollection of what it’s like to encounter Dungeons & Dragons for the very first time.”
—Dan “Delta” Collins, author of Book of War and co-host of Wandering DMs
Warning: Reading this book will make you want to play D&D!
Thirteen-year-old Stephen is growing up in a mundane world until, during one fateful week in 1982, he discovers a new kind of game. It’s called Dungeons & Dragons, it’s a role-playing game, and under his best friend’s tutelage, he learns to play it. Now, he enters a world of medieval fantasy, where knights in shining armor perform heroic deeds, where monsters lurk in the shadows, and wizards wield powerful magic, where fabulous treasures lie hidden behind cunning traps, and deadly pitfalls await the unwary. In this game anything is possible, and by week’s end, Stephen knows it will change his life forever.
“I recommend this book not just to fans of ‘Holmes Basic’ but to anyone who enjoys playing Dungeons & Dragons. The author’s clear prose captures the excitement of those early, half-remembered adventures when everything about the game was new and awe-inspiring.”
—Zach Howard, author of The Ruined Tower of Zenopus and archivist at Zenopus Archives
“From his first glimpse of those strange dice, Stephen paints a picture of a young gamer’s friendships and adventures as he finds his way into a new world. The book is both a wonderful narrative and a personal history.”
—Tony Dowler, author of How to Host a Dungeon: The Solo Game of Dungeon Creation
“Stephen’s essays take me right back to those heady days. You will recognise many of the moments in this book, from figuring out weird dice, employing outside-the-box tactics, inventing new spells and monsters and magic items, drawing sprawling maps—but, most of all, you’ll remember the freshness of a completely new kind of play.”
—Michael Thomas, author of BLUEHOLME
“A celebration of dice, maps, friendship, and, above all, imagination—the very stuff from which the hobby of role-playing is made.”
—James Maliszewski, author of Grognardia: Musings and Memories from a Lifetime of Roleplaying
“The men who dare admire things in advance of the rest of the world are not common.”—Jean François Millet
From Alfred Sensier, Jean François Millet: Peasant and Painter, translated by Helena de Kay (London: Macmillan, 1881), 131, originally published as La Vie et l’Œvre de J.-F. Millet (Paris: A. Quentin, 1881).
BookStop is open! Hosted by the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, BookStop showcases hundreds of books for your young reader. Picture books, chapter books, middle grade, young adult—something for every age.
Littlelot is there with Gwenevere. They’re browsing for their next good read.
Last year, I recorded a series of anecdotes on DONJON LANDS about my early experiences learning to play Dungeons & Dragons with my best friend. On the occasion of my 40th anniversary playing D&D, I’ve edited the anecdotes into a short book. Blue Flame, Tiny Stars is set for release by the end of next week.
