TenKeep

In Old School Essentials (OSE) , enchanted armor and shields are described in three sentences and Del Teigeler's illustration, below. Imagine Teigeler's comic knight, dropping his bag for that statue's shield! [ OSE 2020, illustration by Del Tiegeler (2019)] Here, read news of two magic shields in Arms and Armor at the Metropolitan Museum. Thank you to writers of the museum labels in the Met! *** First, a shield from 16th Century France. Here's the kite shield of King Henry the Second, leader of the French 'Italian Wars' against a greater foe, the Holy Roman Empire.   [Shield of Henry II of France (1555), Metropolitan Museum] Inlaid with gold and silver, the shield depicts the Battle of Cannae (216 BC) , where Hannibal and a Carthaginian force of 40,000 encircled and destroyed a Roman army twice as large. What magic was imbued in King Henry's shield? Ambition, wrath, and hope? Strong magic for an old school game. *** Second, a 15th Century shield from Sax...

Awaiting the acolyte Orderic, the young veteran Frembas handled packages for tower mages along a fading coast. The year had gotten late, flapping helplessly like creatures in Jules Massenet's 2 Pièces pour piano: No. 1. Papillons noirs . The visits there were fine. A ntiquaries in their towers shared sometimes sublime, sometimes 'execrable' texts and tomes!  [fragment from Rodolphe Bresdin's lithograph The Comedy of Death (1854) ] Like this one - Bresdin's lithographic dream. 'Who was this Bresdin,' Frembas' host exclaimed. 'How was it, Bresdin saw these Lazari dance? What made them rise?'  *** Clark Ashton Smith knows what makes some shadows rise! In his The Maker of Gargoyles (1932), spurned Blaise Reynard's rage infused two murderous gargoyles: [Blaise] would not have said, perhaps would not have even known, that in one of the gargoyles, he had imprisoned all his festering rancor, all his answering spleen and hatred..." And in the o...

                 [Gildor and the Wandering Elves (Max Carr)] Moldvay wrote that elves love 'frolicking in wooded glades.' Some, Tolkien says, 'lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon. Others lived ages in the 'Faerie' West and grew 'fairer and wiser and more learned'. Here are elvish songs and magic items, and some elves I've lately met. *** The songs of elves are filled with nightwalks, stars, and memories of beauty. Gildor and the wandering elves sang of Elbereth the Starkindle r: Gilthoniel! O Elbereth!         Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath! Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee          In a far land beyond the Sea. Be side the river Nimrodel, the wood-elf Legolas sang 'in a soft voice hardly to be heard amid the rustle of the leaves.' Where now she wanders none can tell,        In sunlight or in sha...