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The Athenian Human Sacrifice Raid
In 480 B.C., against the backdrop of the second Greco-Persian War, a small Athenian force under Aristides the Just launched a daring, high-stakes raid. The raid went well, but unexpectedly ended with...
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The Reverse Marco Polo
The first Chinese person whom we know to have traveled to Europe arrived in 1287. Bar Sauma was a Chinese-born, ethnically-Turkic, Christian monk and an agent of two different Mongol empires. His...
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Ashes of the Imagined King
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 12th-century chronicle The History of the Kings of Britain gives some really great and gameable details about the ashes and resting place of wise King Belinus of Britain. But...
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Death’s Godson
Death’s Godson is a fairy tale found in different versions throughout much of the historically-Christian parts of the world. It’s number 332 in the Aarne-Thompson classification, and a version of it...
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Two Calendars in Augsburg
In early 1582, Pope Gregory XIII announced that the calendar date of the day following October 4th that year would not be October 5th, but October 15th. This was part of a packet of calendrical...
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Eleven Riddles from the Old English Exeter Book
The strange Old English manuscript called the Exeter Book includes a bunch of really fun riddles suitable for use at the gaming table. Riddling doors in dungeons, riddling fey encountered on the road,...
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Hired into an Albanian Blood Feud
Before the arrival of state control in the 1920s, highland Albania had a highly-developed culture surrounding blood feuds. There was a particular way these feuds were supposed to be conducted, but all...
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Rewriting the Gospels for Germanic Barbarians
The Hêliand, composed about 830 A.D., is a tale of the life of Christ in the Old Saxon language. It takes the form of an epic poem, a saga in verse, and was part of a missionary effort to convert the...
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The North Rona Island Rat Apocalypse
North Rona (or just Rona) is a tiny island in the icy waters far off northern Scotland. Its geography and animal life would make it a cool adventure site on their own, but its real claim to fame is...
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Language Windows Into the Vagrant Underworld
Since I was first exposed to D&D, I’ve thought it was neat that one of the languages you could be proficient in was “thieves’ cant,” a language for rogues. Real life and real languages are more...
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Herald-Inspectors
The role of the herald in Medieval western Europe was multifaceted: messenger, diplomat, announcer, and an expert in the system of personal and family insignia called “heraldry”. Starting in 1530 in...
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The Battlemap Entrance of Maiden Castle
The east entrance to the Iron Age hillfort at Maiden Castle, Dorset, England, makes a really great battlemap for RPG combats. Lucky for us, it also has some really interesting history and archaeology...
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Divine Intervention and the 885 Siege of Paris
Through much of 885 and 886 A.D., a large force of raiders from Scandinavia besieged Paris. An eyewitness account of the Viking siege has survived: the Bella Parisiacae Urbis (Battle of the City of...
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Moving Lost Packages with the 6888th Postal Directory
The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion (its soldiers just called it the ‘six-triple-eight’) was a groundbreaking U.S. Army unit in WWII: the first unit of black, female soldiers America ever...
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PCs on the (Failed Invasion) Battlefield and Coleridge’s Red Herring
In February of 1797, a small French military force landed in Wales. It was farce, easily rolled up by the British defenders. Participating in an invasion based on this one – either as an invader or a...
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Sappho
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more...
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The Chinese Legation to the Paris Commune
In 1870, the government of China had to send an emergency legation to Paris in response to an incident in a Chinese port. It was an unusual circumstance; this was only the third formal diplomatic...
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I’ll Sell You Sicily, but You’ll Still Have to Conquer It (Part 2: The Conquest)
From 1250 to 1266, four successive popes worked to sell the Kingdom of Sicily to any capable European warrior-aristocrat who could afford their steep asking price. The trouble was, the papacy didn’t...
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I’ll Sell You Sicily, but You’ll Still Have to Conquer It (Part 1: The Hook)
From 1250 to 1266, four successive popes worked to sell the Kingdom of Sicily to any capable European warrior-aristocrat who could afford the steep asking price. The trouble was, the papacy didn’t own...
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The Trial of the Six Generals
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more...
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