Seven Strange Beheadings

First - ITS NEARLY ALL OVER

YOU HAVE (AS OF THIS POST) TEN HOURS LEFT ON THE GAWAIN KICKSTARTER

Get on it now or you may end up frenching Lord Bertilak in a semi nonconsentual way.

Losers get a fox-fur and a vague sense of shame!

Ok, here is the last of my questionable marketing content posts. In tribute to Gawains strange Beheading-contest Quest, and for HALLOWEEN WHOOO here are, Seven Strange Beheadings.



1. The Prophet of Uuur was beheaded for blaspheming the Church of the Great God Ark. 

But the head continued to prophecy post-mortem and ultimately became the living text of that faith, passing between hands in multiple holy wars, installed in different temples and slowly falling into incomprensability as the means used to preserve it occluded its voice and the nature of its ancient language became more and more subject to interpretation..


2. The Demigod 'Hawks-Shadow' is beheaded by the Crescent Moon

Though their head re-grows with the moon each month. This god hates to be headed and grows desperate and mad the closer the moon moves towards its crescent form. In their extreme desire to escape they usually ends up committing the crimes which necessitate their execution.



3. The Four Knights of the Fox insulted the King of Mice and were sentenced to death.

Beheading by Knight of Mice was the method but they were allowed to choose the scale and manner themselves.

The first Knight of the Fox chose to remain as he was and face a Mouse Knight of mouse size. His end was terrible, the chewing and hacking and slicing and tearing went on for hours. At the end the Mouse Knight died of blood-slick exhaustion and little was left of the Knight of the Fox.

The second Knight of the Fox chose also his own size, but a mouse of that scale also. His end was a little better. The Enormous man-sized Mouse Knight had some trouble manipulating weapons at our scale but took off the head in a few hacks. The King of Mice now sleeps within the painted skull.

The third Knight of the Fox chose to shrink to the scale of a mouse. He died quickly, with honour and ceremony, after giving a great speech which was applauded by weeping mouse maidens. His small head came off with a 'click' and the King of Mice now drinks from his skull, but sorrowfully.

The fourth Knight of the Fox chose to be as a mouse to mice. He shrank and shrank and shrank until he scampered about between the feet of the court of the King of Mice. He was so small and so fast that none there could catch or hold him - he slipped through their fingers and chewed through their shoes.

Mice have no mice themselves, they had no art to seek him, and no traps. And so the Fourth fox fled. And when mouse-ladies hear a scampering in the wall, or find cheese with bites taken out, they say "There is the Knight of the Fox."



4. The Foul Duke of Verloon was told by prediction that he would be decapitated by a note.

He was so fearful of his life that he burnt every music shop in his Dukedom and if anyone could sing, he cut their vocal cords with a silver knife. Music was punishable by death and Bards were stoned to the borders

One night, the Harp-Maker, stained with ash from his burnt home and weeping tears for the voice of his singing daughter, went to the forest and string up the last harp-wire he held between two trees.

Sure enough, that very night the Duke raced through, chasing a fiddler at top speed. The tight wire took off his head in a flick. Blood drops sparkled for a moment in the moon and the harp-wire vibrated out a low, clear note.



5. In Sughud, in far Yoon-Suin, a rare and ruinous method of assassination is the Death-By-Amber.

This tends to work best against women, and luxurious Slug-Men, who love their jewels.

Magnificent amber beads are carefully hollowed out and filled with a clear liquid composed via agonisingly careful alchemy. This liquid becomes a powerful explosive under very specific circumstances. Sometimes in sunlight, sometimes via heat or from a hard shock.

A necklace of this substance is then delivered to the target, the trigger for its incandescence linked to the lifestyle of the one who is to die.

They wear the jewels, and the next time they see sunlight, or become very hot from.. exertions, or go dancing, or fall. BOOM, off comes their head.

This method has fallen out of use in Sughud, for the incalculable expense of the materials and the rarity and specificity of the triggering event means many would-be rulers have effectively bankrupted themselves simply through the means of assassination they chose.

War is cheaper. And more reliable.



6. The God-Kings of the Aurulent Empire may not be hurt by mortal hands.

The only One with the right to harm them is their father, the sun.

So the terrible fate for a fallen God-King is that of Beheading by the Sun.

Strapped to an obsidian table in a temple of lenses and mirrors, with their neck in an exact position beneath the final focusing lens, they can only wait for the sun to rise and pass across the sky, smelling their own cooking flesh as the wandering ray sloooowly burns through the meat of their spine.

Since the ray cauterises as is passes, it can take a very long time for them to die. And if the Sun withholds his judgement, and is obstructed by vengeful clouds, it can take more than one day for the sentence to be carried out.




7. The Great Judge Scaedeweald sentenced himself to death.

He famously hated crime so much that, on discovering that he had executed the wrong man for murder, he sentenced himself to death. He then appealed, but then refused his own appeal.

He was pardoned by King Aescelm, on condition that he be turned, via magic, into an Axe, thereby to punish crime and treason forever in that form.

This plan itself rebounded when King Aescelm invaded his former kingdom at the head of an army of mercenaries, after being deposed for his cruel rule and fetish for turning people into magic objects. He died under the bit of Judge Scaedweald.

The Axe still refuses to cut anyone who is not legally guilty.

Courteous Quest Generator

First, the Gawain Kickstarter for an illustrated, hardback print of my version of "Gawain and the Green Knight" is FUNDED, and has been for a few days.

Click here, click the Knight on the Right, click anywhere really.

So this is going to happen and people are going to get their books.

As of the 18th everyone who backs for a print copy gets a digital copy for free.

If you want extra gubbins added on and have an idea, we have nine days left so drop me a comment in the Kickstarter.

Check out any of the promotional content here;

Dans Notes on the Art Development;

Gawain and the Green Knight - From sketch to final illustration

Gawain and the Green Knight -  Character design notes

Gawain and the Green Knight - From sketch to final illustration - Stanza 39

Mateos Arthurian Troika Hacks;

https://hexculture.com/2019/10/gawain.html

https://hexculture.com/2019/10/the-sharpest-sword-does-not-exist.html

My.. whatever I was doing here;

Pilgrims of the Green Moon

Twenty Green Knights


Now, on to the fresh content!

Courteous Quests

Words not Swords. Just delete the "S". What follows is my attempt to create a kind of mission or situation generator for problems that can only be solved by courtesy.

I was trying to take apart the complex situation between Gawain, Bertilak and Lady Bertilak in the poem, to see if I could create a generator to produce situations like that.

Essentially - no, but I came up with this instead.

First, the feudal Matrix. This has to be a place limited and bound in some way, so that neither the Quester, nor anyone else, can just avoid the problem by leaving. It also has to be a 'civil' place, with reasons for people to talk to one another, and with enough room and potential anonymity for intrigue and sneaking around.


A - You are All In:
(d6)
1. The Court at Christmas. Its freezing out and no-one should leave until festivities are done.
2. A Ship becalmed at Sea.
3. An Enchanted Forest or garden. Full of Glades and Strange Airs. No-one can get out until the situation is resolved.
4. A Monastery or Nunnery. Possibly one or more of you are in disguise as the other gender.
5. A Masque Ball - Plague is ravaging the country outside.
6. A Castle under siege.



B - You Are:
(d2)
1. A Knight known for courtesy.
2. A Lady, Full-Fair


(You can just apply your own character to this, but they should be something like a Knight or Lady, someone high-status, known to be courteous? Someone with enough of a social role that surrendering it will be a serious loss.

In the poem, people keep telling Gawain "You are not Gawain". His position as current Best Knight of Arthurs Court makes him a simultaneous badass, moral paragon, celebrity and fetish object. He tries really, very hard to live up to this role and ultimately fails, which is part of what leaves him so crushed at the end of the book.

Whoever the main protagonist or 'player' is, they need to, essentially not be an old-school D&D protagonist. They need to care about their social role and to fear humiliation and to want to live up to the positive qualities their role exhibits. If the Player Character is Cugel the Clever, you might get an interesting game of manipulation but I think that's all.

Of course you can "create" these situations in D&D temporarily by turning the desired personality shift into a voluntary diegetic element; "You can go to the party but you have to wear this crown which ensures you can only be courteous / accept the Witches curse or Geas / wear this Jewel which the Quest-Giver will observe through." etc.



C - One you May Not Offend
(d10)
1. A powerful secretive and dangerous Witch, possibly under a Glamour.
2. Your Queen. Beautiful, adored by all and the only thing holding the nation together.
3. A Maiden, known by all for Purity and Virtue, daughter of a powerful Duke.
4. A Nature Spirit, Dryad or Forest Fey, who rules the wild lands around.
5. The Ghost of an innocent murdered girl. May not know she is a ghost. Fulfilling her desire may set her free.
6. Crowd of Washer Women & Serving Girls. The lower orders may revolt, leading to danger for you, or a massacre of them.
7. A Beautiful Courtesan. Desired by all, with many strong Knights obedient to her word.
8. The Abbess of a Nunnery. A Royal relation known for learning and religious observance.
9. An Imperious Small Princess.
10. Your Mother.


D - Another You Fear to Refuse
(d10)
1. Your King! Brave, handsome, beloved and the only thing holding the country together.
2. The Bishop. Wise, respected, charitable, wealthy and observant.
3. The Wizard. A respected, if mercurial, Adviser of unknown, but potentially vast, power.
4. The Kings Champion. First Knight of the Kingdom, handsome and feared.
5. A Foreign Potentate. Wealthy, imperious, powerful. Your nations teeter on the edge of war or alliance.
6. A powerful Ogre or Giant. One who could seriously wreck the place. Possibly temporarily changed in shape or under a Glamour.
7. A Holy Hermit, famous for visions and access to God.
8. A Grieving Father who has recently lost his Daughter or Son.
9. A Powerful Moneylender (probably a Jew if you are going 'real-ish Middle Ages).
10. A Demon! In Human Form!


E - The Object of their Desire

1. It’s You.
2. It’s the Other. If C, they are obsessed with D. If D, they are obsessed with C.
3. Your Bae. They are obsessed with whomever you are crushing on.



F - The Nature of their Overwhelming Desire

1. Desire-based desire. They wish to possess their object sexually*.
2. Pride. They must have their greatness recognised and admitted to, in public terms, by their object.
3. Suspicion. They are certain their Object is Up To Something and obsess over worming out their secrets.
4. Faith. They have a deep religious interest. Either conversion, corruption or something else.
5. Honour. They either feel slighted by the Object in some way, or are obsessed with testing their Honour.
6. Hate. They despise the object and secretly want to ruin them.

(*Unless you roll something which makes this too creepy to game, like your Mother or a child. (Unless you are playing a real dark game.))


So to create a Courteous Problem, roll

A - A Place and Situation.

B - Who you are.

C - One you may Not Offend.
E - The Object of their Desire.
F - The Nature of that Desire.

D - Another you Fear to Refuse.
E - The Object of their Desire.
F - The Nature of that Desire.

That should create a near-impossible problem of courtesy.

If you want something a little more focused you can simply roll once for E - The Object of their Desire, meaning both are obsessed with the same person (or each other), and possibly once for F - The Nature of the Desire, meaning they both want the same thing (although if its sexual, that may be a short adventure.

Well that doesn't quite produce Gawain-Level situations, but it may at least produce some interesting situations.

Twenty Green Nights

Incredibly, the Gawain Kickstarter is now only £548 away from hitting its target, with 23 days left on the clock!

See how happy Arthur is? WHAT COULD GO WRONG????



As a thank-you of sorts, and also as more shameless marketing. Here is a list of Twenty Green Nights taken from all across the Patrickverse;


1. A night lit by the Green Moon itself

Worshipped womb-god of the Chimeric Druids of Uud and quested for in GreySpace by the field-armoured FadeShips of the Genarchs. Some call this moon Umbor, the Green Womb, and claim it as a repository of forbidden and ancient Genological knowledge. For others the moon represents redemption of a kind, or judgement. Appearing and disappearing over millennia, fading from records as magically as it seems to fade from memory, lifetimes can be lost in search of the Green Moon, or it can be stumbled over in a moment due to a glitched drive or fractured co-ordinate blotch.


2. A night lit by the Green-Shifted stars of an entropy-guarded stellar cradle zone

Deep-time Ultra-Sophonts strung adaptive cosmic webs around the shifting mass clouds at the cosmic core. Here the stellar nursery is safe to birth forth stars and potential life-carrying worlds, away from the invisible vampiric entropic effect which infests the rest of GreySpace and which almost certainly spells a slow, accelerated doom for baryonic life in the cosmos.

These cradle-stars glow green through the time-web. Perhaps an effect of the titanic powers of its creation, or perhaps this future cosmos will be lit by the light of green suns, if it survives.


3. A night lit by the Green Lamps of the Viridian ULeague of Nox

Nox, black, Navigator-ruled, city on the Nightmare sea, is a place not famed for mercy. Yet every pseudo-eon in the gap of the Time-God Oct, by ancient stricture, the Viridian Union is permitted to march with its glimmering and delicate emerald lamps. The Union is made up of the descendants of those members of the former-slave classes who rose up to defend Nox from the unregistered cannibalism of the Iron-Eye Islanders from the Bone-Beach sea, when they invaded during the power vacumn left by the fall of the Undead Navarchy.

The numbers of the Union lessen every cycle, life for the descendants of the Viridian League has not been easy, though they are technically granted the rank of 'citizen' they still exist in condemned poverty on the borders of society. Many of their children have fallen back into slavery, or collaped into insane mutation.


4. Seen though Digital-Green Nightvision Goggles on the borders of the Umbral Zone

The pixel-camouflaged draft-troopers on the borders of the Oil-Scarred Umbral Zone trade in Vaseline, which they rub into their faces to ease the sores brought about by the required 24-hour, even-in-sleep wearing of their registered night-vision goggles, and in baby-food which they say eases the deliberate constipation brought about by army rations.


5. Green from the Phyto-luminescence of a Green Sea

On a distant world in the eastern spiral arm of a small Galaxy, lit by a yellow sun, the vast ocean of the southern hemisphere awakens into light. When cut by the wake of ships, the splash of limbs or the ripple of waves, water writhes with its own light, kinesis become illumination.


6. The Green Eyes of the Red-Black Cats of Phrax

Swarms of the miniature Red-Black cats, each no larger than a teacup, but swarming in their hundreds, flow though the jungles of Phrax IX, the leaves turned a seeming black by the sinking of the red sun of Phrax. The large light-sensing eyes of the cats spark like green fire, the iridescent emerald feathers of the Nykicorax they hunt shimmer faintly in the reddish dark and the luminescent breeding glowflies hunted in their turn by the shining birds themselves glow green making a layers constellation of verdant biology.


7. "Night is Green" - A No-Target designation

In the fortress-spinnacles of the dreg-haunted plains of GreyWorld Vanaxis, a "Green Night" is a blessedly rare dark-period in which the rifle-armed guards patrolling the spinnacles warspheres are neither attacked nor probed by the Bio-terror dregs outside. Sixteen hours without railgun fire or impact grenades will be marked by smiles and green flares for the next shift cycles.


8. A Chlorophyll-Poisoned Sun-God

The Sun-God ark, poisoned by the mother of Swamps, the Green Leviathan Oouuo, turned all reality a sick, black-green as the poisoned air of the Dragons breath covered the land and absorbed every other colour. Though only golems and the breathless undead remained to witness or record the deed.


9. Burning Copper Cities on the Borderlands of Hell

Only a lamp of another kind. What sins confine souls to the Tin Cities of Hell, and whether the fire consuming them is a deliberate act of Diobolic Justice or simply random caprice, is unknown to all but a handful of visionary screaming theogonists. In the eternal bight of that Black Realm, they are one of a few stable navigating points.


10. A Night inside the Enchanted Emerald of the Sultan of Jazar

The Sultan will sometimes offer exciting or attractive dinner guests (or political enemies) the chance to spend the Night within the enchanted emerald which makes up the centrepiece of his crown.

Within lies a virid and transmorphic reality, all controlled by the mind of the "Demon" Zero-Sleep. Zero-Sleep has until sunrise to convince anyone within his Green World, whether through luxury or fear, to take his place as master of that fragile paracosm. Should he fail, his guests will be released with the sun. (Unless the Sultan hides his gem, but that would ruin his authority with the court for only the wearer of the Gem may rule Jazar).


11. A Dream of a Caterpillar

Sages and Opium smokers sometimes speak of the peaceful dream of a caterpillar which dozes, replete, beneath a half-eaten leaf with a bright summer-sun beating down upon the upward side. For the Sage this is a metaphor for transience and the limited nature of understanding, for the Opium fiend, perhaps simply a desired state of mind.


12. A Sleepless Night at Christmas on a distant Relatives Couch

Curled up awkwardly on a strange-smelling piece of furniture, in an unfamiliar room, watching dying firelight dance across mistletoe, holly wreathes and the needles of a Christmas tree, waiting for inconstant sleep and knowing it will not come soon and not last long.


13. A Night of Eco-Police ShameRaids

A city woken to terror at midnight as Central floods the dying cycle-suburbs with Green police who break open homes and carry out on-the-spot inspections of ReCyc-Rule obedience and Carbon Observance. Those seen to have failed or not noted the primary laws in their own home are dragged out and publicly shamed, mocked and belittled by their own neighbours and friends, themselves terrified and relieved that they are not on the receiving end of this months "Green Night".


14. Braindamage Suffered by the Corpse-Robber Brendan Shoom

Shoom staggered forth from the Tomb of Queen Ave, his vision fogging in the still black night and wild spots of green flaring unpredictably behind his eyes. The cause was massive, terminal and cascading neurological damage from the poisoned breath of the Ur-Tiger guardians of Aves corpse. It was his last green night, but the handful of emeralds found clutched in his dead hands was enough to call yet more fools to their doom in the Queens Necropolis.


15. Spinning Biofragments in the Womb-Ship 'Thramis'.

The ruined lifeship trapped in a dying vector between LaGrange points of the Veridian system, in the freezing zero-gravity of its cracked and crystal-walled biovaults, the freeze-crystallised fragments of ten million years of planetary life glimmer like emeralds as the spin and dance though the ships dead halls, lit only by pale uncaring stars in the infinite night.


16. Death by Strangulation by the Ular Cult.

Throttled by a band of twisted green silk wrapped around the throat like a garotte, the silk then worn on the subsequent day, in full view of the victims relatives, as both insult and deniable threat. "The Prince sleeps in the deep, green night." So did the Cult of Ular spread their terror throughout the cities of the Bumbling Plains, before their righteous destruction.


17. A night of No Emergencies at the Watchtower of Realities.

In the great tower of the Hyper-Optimates, from which they observe the central-axis and high-energy world-wreaths of the Infinite Empire of Esh, a row of green lights means that no realm or paraverse has been threatened by entropic invasion or inner chaos - a 'Green Night', though a dull one for such adventurous end bellicose guardians.


18. Full Knowledge of the Verdant Tao

For some seekers after the path of the Tao, the 'Green Night' refers to a complex spiritual state indicating something close to what many would call 'ego death', combined with a full revelation of the creative and meaning-generating power of emptiness itself, and therefore a comprehension of the unity of All.


19. A Goblin Night

In the lands of the Gackling Moon, during the period where that regrettable satellite shows its Goblinish Face to the world, a Green Night is one of locked doors and pitchforks, as the Moonlands Goblin population is driven into cackling, grasping, gackling, thieving and chaotic overdrive.


20. A Night in the Silk World

In the court of the Jade Emperor the spirits of innocent maidens embroider endlessly upon ribbons of green silk produced at the Emperors request by the Cosmic Caterpillar Om-Kot. The tapestries on these ribbons portray the adventures-after-death of those heroes of the mortal world who acted in the greatest and most noblest intent, but sadly failed too soon.

For as long as the spirits of more innocent maidens arrive in the Celestial Court, and for as long as they embroider on the endless ribbons, the spirits of those failed heroes may adventure still through a reality of silver thread and an unending green night.

This Kickstarter Might Actually Work!

We have passed the half-way mark on the Kickstarter! 

Which strongly suggests is might actually be a success.

As well as that, Maeto has done a Troika/Arthrian Uptate post!

GAWAIN KICKSTARTER TAKE TWO

We are doing the same thing again, but for less money!  - KICKSTARTER LINK AT THE BOTTOM AND ON THE RIGHT.

But first, fresh content!

This might belong to the Sci-Fi universe conglomeration of thoughts I was considering here;

Exo-Suits of the Hot Girls
Hackships of the Cryogenic Rats
The Omnistructure in Decay
A Hoard of Ice, a Throne of Gold
Science Fiction Fortifications

I guess these are all part of the same developing paracosm? Now mixed with Uud, and mixed with Gawain?





Pilgrims of the Green Moon

Uud-Space is sometimes patrolled by Alpha-Class Genarchs of the Instrumentality piloting ritual Destrier-Class  Fade-Ships sheathed in Mayltrix fields and managed by quasi-sophontic A.I's.

Fractured and crypt-locked engrams records recovered from an Eon-sealed and somnolent artificial archivist indicated that, beginning in the year 22,593 one such Genarch embarked on a solitary search for loc/vector relative-point-stable biome codenamed only "Green Moon".

The following are recovered data fragments showing encounter file headings only, with one-line orthodescriptors.

Sadly, the file locations are scrambles and it is impossible to tell which locators, descriptors and actions apply to which.

LOCATORS

1. Tomb World orbit.
2. Unused LaGrange for a system quarantined as Paperclip-class nano-disaster.
3. Trailing in the exhaust-shadow of a migrating Yg-Fleet.
4. Orbital array of the Ice-World Indigo-Phi.
5. Sim-Space injection beyond the orthogonal zone.
6. Penumbra of a militarised Glass Cage Exoworld.
7. Unmarked and stagnant move-route in the Wir-Heal nebulae.
8. Rad-wrecked starless dockyard with deleted ident tags.
9. Roguespace conglomeration.
10. In the orbit of the Green Moon.


ENCOUNTERS.

1. Sun-Happy detrivores worshipping the Slump-God.
2. Thane-Engined Biocruiser Womb-Ship holding hyper-deep faunocogitators engaged in dense reality algorithms.
3. Megalith-Ship crowned with viridian war-maser Agon-Corona.
4. Chrono-Shadowed entropy-pulse. Assumed wake of a deep-reality mover, but moaning through the E.M. spetra with auto-responding thought shades.
5. School of Ex-Empire Lupenised hackcraft psycho-redacted from the noosphere, cognitively linked with cycling predatory stim-jacks.
6. Burbling vagueplague colony pods lancing through a re-transmitted hashcloud of their own upcycled sophonticidic apocalypse sims. Ultradrives quavering and bursting out screaming EM radiospheres.
7. Tumbling Nightminds held in iron-asteroid reality magnets. Sensorblack bodies pulse with subconscious reply dreams keyed to subtly override neocortical governance.
8. Rad-blasted auto-scow captained by self-uplifted engram-A.I. combo, way outside Exo-World bulterian lexosphere. pulses personalised xenopop from engrams copy-paste light cone. Seems unarmed.
9.Filement drive iridium spike ship coasting on half-surge with engines muffled and weapon-bays dark. Ident tags read infinite zero and vox replies in simulated Assyrian.
10. Unknown Fadeship, coursier class or above, viridian mayltrix and engine pluming Cherenkov energy while eco-spheres return sub-zero deathstate or flat recursive gamma-sign.


EMERGENCE

1. Tumbling, No clear vector.
2. On collision or attack course.
3. matching vector for boarding or mass-exchange.
4. Crossing vector/no other response.
5. Accelerating past LaGrange position.
6. Incoherent course changes.
7. Engines flickering, possible distress.
8. Flat burn for system edge.
9. Course is parallel.
10. In flight from your destination.

NOW LINKS - HIT THE IMAGE OR CLICK HERE FOR THE KICKSTARTER

Well, we failed last time so whats different this time?

- Cut the profits from any backer books out.
- Displaced postage onto the BigCartel store to be paid separately.
- Reduced the number of books.

Total to hit is waay lower. Postage has been removed from that total so it may still be a challenge to get there BUT we will have longer and the fact that the total is potentially achievable will hopefully raise our spirits and yours and keep the whole thing feeling like a real possibility.

(Also, I now have a marketing twitter, https://twitter.com/pjamesstuart, we will see how long I can keep that up).

Gawain and the Green Knight Hadback Kickstarter

I'm back off my holidays and it's time to watch me crash and burn in excitingly new ways, and also to watch me awkwardly read poetry on Youtube.

That's what the public wants right? Chivalric Renaissance Poetry? Because that's what you are getting.

WITH A KICKSTARTER

EVERYONE UNIVERSALLY LOVES KICKSTARTER RIGHT??

For, quite a long time a team made up of Daniel Puerta (artist), Mateo Diaz Torres (layout) and I, have been working on an illustrated hardback book of my version of the poem 'Gawain and the Green Knight', which you may remember me blogging a few years ago.

Here is a sample of Daniels art;

If you would like to see more, click the links here, the images or the Green Knight Himself to the left to go to the KICKSTARTER.

If you want a book of chivalric poetry, arguably ruined by being partially re-translated into my own idiom, in HARDBACK, with about 18 illustrations - THEN YOU HAVE TWENTY (ONE?) DAYS TO GRAB ONE SO CLICK THAT KICKSTARTER.

If you have questions, comments etc, ask here, on the Kickstarter or anywhere.

Would you Fund this Weird Gawain Project?

Some of you may be familiar with my thing for Renaissance Chivalric Poetry, like the time I did a version of the 'Gawain and the Green Knight' poem, ending here, or the time I spent months going through, and reading aloud, the Faerie Queene by Spenser, ending here.

"Since the siege and the assault was ceased at Troy,

The burg broken and burnt to brands and ashes,

The turd that the strands of treason there wove,

Was tried for his treachery, the truest on earth."

This image is by Daniel Puerta, who you can find on Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook. Aaan here is his intro;

"So far the biggest thing I have worked on is the illustrated edition of "At the Mountains of Madness" by Ediciones T&T: https://www.edicionestyt.com/producto/en-las-montanas-de-la-locura---preventa/16

For that editor I have illustrated a couple of roleplaying adventures, one for the game Ragnarok called "Pryroda Zvira" and other for Dungeons & Cthulhu "La Siniestra Fortaleza de Bahía Espinosa" 

I have also have done three illustrations for the bestiary "Criaturas del Vacío Celeste";
 https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/223740/Criaturas-del-Vacio-Celeste

[I just realized that on drivethrurpg there is a free sample of a game that was never finished "Dioses Extraños", that has some of my drawings: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/164602/Dioses-Extranos-Quickstart

But I uploaded them on my tumblr long ago at https://dandibuja.tumblr.com/tagged/dioses-extra%C3%B1os
but I'm not sure if this counts]

I also illustrated an adventure for the roleplaying game "Tesoro y Gloria", called "El trueno sin relámpago" but it hasn't been published yet. http://tesoroygloria.com/

I have done other things, a couple of book covers and illustrations for a children's book and for local cultural and historical expositions, but I believe the best examples of my current work are those above."

And here is a preliminary sketch by Daniel of the Green Knight scene

"The blood burst from the body and blackened on the green.

And neither faltered the fell freak, nor tipped,

But started and sprinted forth upon strong shanks,

And running he reached out among the standing ranks,

Leapt to his lovely head, and lifts it up quick;

And turning boldly to his bronco, the bridle he snatches

Steps into the stirrup and strides aloft,

And his head by the hair in his hand holds;

The sire sitting neatly in his saddle seat

As if no mishap he had, though headless now

instead."

For the past, months? year? multiple years? Its been a while. For a while now Daniel has been working on a set of illustrations to go along with my strange semi-translation of the Gawain poem.

Aaaaaand, they are all pretty much done.

That's twenty illustrations, plus a cover, for an A5 book of a little over 100 pages.

All of this is laid out by Mateo Diaz Torres who used to blog at Gloomtrain and who I think now blogs at Hex Culture.

"At each warp-over-water where he wished he could cross

If he found no foe before him, a wonder it was

And one so foul and so fell that fight them he must.

So many marvels in mountains there the man finds,

It were too sore to tell of the tenth part.

Somewhile with wyrms he wars, and with wolves as well,

Somewhile with Woodwose who waited in stones,

Both with bulls and with bears, and boars otherwhile.

And Eoten that him attacked from the high fells;

If not grim and grit-hard and God he had served,

Doubtless he had been dead and dashed full oft."

So, this is going to be a book and its going to be available one way or another, the only real difference is exactly how.

We can do a kinda-OK'ish PoD version easily enough.

However, this blog post is about trying to discover if there is any interest in a fancy Kickstarted properly-printed high quality version.

This would still be A5, just with a fancier cover, real binding, thicker paper and just generally more like an actual book. We would probably print in the U.K. and ship from here as, being small, the book should be relatively easy to post.

I haven't made any of the calls required to cost this out yet, this is more of an exploratory post to see if there is any interest at all.

I mean, its a book of poetry, translated in a wierd way, with illustrations. It has almost no game or RPG utility at all.

"The wild one was aware of the weapon in his hands,

His bristles bunched, out burst such a snort

Those lads feared for their lord, lest befell him the worst.

The swine surged him out at the stalking man so,

The boar and Lord Bertilak both fell in a heap,

In the swift part of the water; the worst had the former,

For the man marks him well, as they meet first,

Set strongly the sharp in the swines throat,

Hit him up to the hilt, that the heart sundered,

And snarling he fell, was swept under the stream,

into its core."

One reason some of you might be interested is that, if you have got your hands on Silent Titans yet, or have looked through the PDF, and if you are familiar with my Gawain semi-translation, then you may well have noticed certain clues or elements suggestive of a certain someone and their presence in the Silent Titans background.

Not that the Gawain poem gives you any firm answers to anything in Silent Titans, or that you need the poem to understand the book, or the book to understand the poem, but they are, in a way, slightly parallel texts.

So, if you want this in a fancy specially-printed version, say something somewhere, either here in a comment, or on facebook or elsewhere I will see it and if there is a non-trivial response I will start looking at costs and printers and postage,

The Green Knight Wants To Fuck Gawain

I said somewhere that I would write about what Gawain means to me, so here we are. This will be the last one I promise.

So I got very depressed and didn’t work on anything for a long time and spent a lot of evenings drinking and mainlining animated series on DVD (Clone Wars is a mixed bag with some very good elements, Avatar the Last Airbender is excellent).

As part of some research for another thing I re-read parts of Gawain and translated a bit of it.

Translating it was the only work I was capable of doing that didn't feel like I was grinding broken glass into my own face. I'm curious as to why that is. Perhaps its because my mind had something to look at that wasn't itself. (Inventing stuff sometimes feels very much like your mind looking at itself.) It’s poetry, which does often calm me down, I’m not sure why that is.

So I would go to work each day, (my phone tracks my movements like a stalker and thinks the library is 'work' because I go there during work hours), and translate a bit of Gawain.

It's set where I'm from. Not exactly, it spends a lot of time in Yorkshire and Lancashire, but the paths of my life and of Gawain’s journey cross quite a bit. I have family in the Wales he wandered around, I went to university in the Lancashire he travelled through and, most of all, I was writing in the Wirral he found such a grim place, at almost exactly the same period of the year that he was in it. The weather has not changed.

And the weather and the descriptions of it are some of the best parts of the poem, the ones almost all the translators seem to think are really good, especially considering the frequency with which they are translated.

(Poets are just good with wind I think.)

Yet all the travelling of Gawain takes place in a few pages and its barely relevant to the dramatic action of the story. It's mainly a courtly story about high status people having parties in rooms, or, essentially, about Gawain not having sex with a hot girl.

There is a lot going in in Gawain, let’s look into some of it.

TO GAY OR NOT TO GAY

Working out how gay Gawain and the Green Knight is, is a complex endeavour. The word 'gay' and the concept probably, don't exist for the poet. Medieval literature rarely (as far as I know) talks about, or names, non-hetro sexual practices, but sex does show up, in stuff like Chaucer certainly and almost everyone grew up in a hovel & probably heard/saw their parents having sex under the sheets, which was considered relatively normal I think. Sex and sexual desire is a key element in Gawain, which is quite a fancy upper-class courtly story.

So this certainly isn't a modern culture story, but it’s also not a Victorian or early-modern culture, which is what we first think of when we contrast a sexual culture to "us". It's not repressed in the same way. Doesn't have quite the same sharp duality. Although Certain Things aren't mentioned, it doesn't have the same feelings of denial. And like almost anything from before the modern era, there is a lot of sensual male contact that is just considered part of normal male behaviour, from guys being super-glad to see each other, even crying from happiness, to a lot of kissing, touching, grabbing or "laching", and a lot of frank appreciation for each other.

Guys in this era are just well up in each others business socially in a way not common to our own time.

So any modern reader feels a familiar internal monologue which goes something like this:

A - Wow some of these male behaviours seem pretty gay.

B - Probably you're just reading a sexual element into a behaviour that had no sexual element when it was performed as you have been perved-up by modern knowledge.

A - But surely some men did gay stuff in this period?

B - It's likely, but without any generally accepted and widely known awareness of homosexuality, a lot of quasi-sexual feelings are going to be absorbed by and expressed in general, warm homosocial contact.

A - Then surely that warm homosocial contact could itself be interpreted as being a bit gay...

B - NO! Stop trying to gay up history and see gay stuff everywhere!

A – Well it sounds like you’re in denial to me. Anyway, who says there wasn't any widely known awareness of homosexuality, or at least, guys getting busy with each other. I mean there was that king in Shakespeare..

B - They almost never talk about it.

A - But that doesn't mean it wasn't happening.

B - Even if it was happening that doesn't mean that all the stuff in Medieval texts that seems a bit gay is actually a secret signifier for gayness the way it might be in a modern or early modern text.

and so on and so on and so on.

So, with this in mind, reasons I interpret the behaviour of Bertilak/The Green Knight towards Gawain as more homosexual than homosocial are -

One - The Green Knight/ Bertilak remarks on their happiness at seeing Gawain and their desire to be in contact with Gawain a LOT. In Arthurs hall as the Knight, in his own hall in numerous ways, and again at the end as the Knight, he still just wants Gawain around him.

Two - Bertilk laughs and giggles when Gawain agrees to stay at his house, he acts as if he doesn't know what he's doing. This is from the guy defined in the text as being super tough and the most masculine guy ever, the guy who always seems to be in a dominant position and always knows what’s going on. Yes, in some translations its Gawain that giggles and loses control of himself, but I have re-checked my facing text and I think that it a bullshit interpretation.

“The lorde let for luf lotegh so myry,

As wygh that wolde of his wyte, ne wyst quat he might.”

Three - The sex game. "Ok Gawain, you stay here and I'll go hunting. Whatever I win out there I will give to you and whatever you win in here you give to me." Bertilak goes off & catches symbolic animals while his wife stays home and try’s to fuck Gawain. Then Gawain gives Bertilak his own wife’s kisses later in the day. Which Bertilak is quite pleased about.

So two things. If Gawain had fucked Bertilak’s wife, what would he have had to give Bertilak that night? And secondly, knowing this, what was going through his head when she flirted with him the second and third times? What does he think Bertilak thinks is going on? I mean, that’s a highly specific bet right? Is Gawain just super-innocent, or is he quite jaded and courtly and ‘cool’ and has a good idea of what is going in and just deals with it?

I refuse to accept that my interpretation of this as being a bonkers sex game is a modern interpolation of an 'innocent' medieval text. I believe that at least a fraction of the audience reading or, more likely, hearing this read out, knew exactly what was going on with this. I think most of them did.

Four - Gawain is feminised and Bertilak masculinised, a LOT. Gawain’s beauty is gone on about quite a bit, when he arrives in Bertilaks hall he is dressed in skirts and described (I think) as like a flower. Bertilak and the Green Knight are both described as super-masculine with specifically well-shaped limbs (especially thighs), narrow waists and muscular trunks. He's always called 'stiff' staunch' and strong. His beard is off the hook. He physically does things 'on camera' in ways Gawain does not. Gawain has some generalised adventures and battles on his way to the Green Chapel but they are never described action-by-action. Bertilak does a lot of stuff, he hunts, attacks, skins, fights and, most crucially, grabs. Gawains main heroic qualities in the poem as shown by action are him *not* doing things.

And Five - Bertilak grabs and 'lacches' Gawain a lot in his castle. Whenever he wants Gawain somewhere he 'lacches' the guy and basically moves him where he wants him to be.

I state this as a cornerstone of my theses, and its fucking ridiculous that no-one has said this directly before: The Green Knight Wants to Fuck Gawain.

RELIGIOUS YET WITTY VS WITTY YET RELIGIOUS

Tolkien described the poet as (I'm paraphrasing) a man of religious conviction and some humour. I tend to see him the other way round, as a funny man with strong religious feelings. That may just be the natural difference between Tolkien and I.

By the time we get to the poems end, it is very much a religious work, the finish is anguished and serious and very Christian.

But the rest of the poem, is, not exactly light, or humorous, but lively, witty and wry.

It's hard to describe how the Gawain poet is funny, there are very few 'jokes' and not many hard distinguishable moments where you can point at it and say "look, this is meant to be funny". Nevertheless, the image we get in our minds of the poet is someone with a wry, somewhat ironic, compassionate and rather rueful view on the world. The mild doubling of meanings, the understatements and the kinds of situations created: Arthurs court describing what they think Arthur should have done, Lady Bertilak duelling with Gawain, Bertilaks comments after some of the kisses, the nameless doomsayer telling him blankly to run, show someone who is aware of, and enjoying, the multiple intersecting levels of awareness, and wants you to be aware of them too.

There's a few medieval texts I think, where we see the warmth of the human lifeworld duelling with the totalising and annihilating power of the world of faith, with varying results. The Morte is a lot like this, with the faithworld stuff coming in hard during the grail quest and with Galahad. Both worlds are good at different themes and good in different ways. I tend to favour the human lifeworld, (as, I suspect, most modern readers), but even when the story is deeply concerned with human things, the faithworld is still there wrapped in in everything.

I doubt the poet saw them in conflict in any meaningful way, to the creator, I believe, it’s all one story with all of the elements making a neat whole (except maybe for the bit with Morgana's plot).

THE SWEARING

No-one in the poem ever says 'fuck' or anything close to it but I put the word in a few times. Even though I did a lot of specific stuff with the translation, this is the one that is going to stick out and if anyone notices it they are going to call it the "Fuck Gawain". So my excuses/reasons are;

One - It's a natural part of my internal repertoire. I say fuck in my head like its punctuation and my translation goes back and forth a lot between a very archaic representation and some very modern interpretations, depending on how I felt each part should come through.

This means my translation doesn't have a unified tone, at least according to the way an English teacher would describe it. But it does really because that is my tone and the pattern of my thought, it is natural to me, no matter what anyone else thinks of it and therefore is a reasonable pattern of translation.

In most cases I put in a fuck where I felt *that Character* might say it according to my own internal sense and what they were up to at that moment. There are only three parts where it comes in.

One - Arthurs Hall. I read this much like a Scorsese scene. (This probably isn't entirely accurate to the nature of the scene in its original context, but no translation could be). This is the moment when one masculine guy in a masculine culture jokethreatens another masculine guy in front of his male friends.

Many of you will remember this situation from school. The aggressor says something that could be a a joke or a threat. If you respond as if it’s a joke then you might be judged as if you were afraid to respond to the threat, showing lack of courage, so you lose face. But if you respond as if it is a threat, and the aggressor plays it off as a joke, then you look as if you ovverreacted, showing fear and internal weakness, so you lase face anyway. There is no good response to this. I read it pretty much as a Scorsese gangster scene and I thought the Green Knight might way say 'motherfucker' and it fit the sonic structure of that line so I put it in.

Two - The Nameless Doomsayer. This is the fuck I feel most fine about. This character is a churl who exists purely to lighten the mood of the last part of the poem before the scary bit and, as a churl, he is meant to show what a super-knightly guy Gawain is. He is the character most likely to say fuck and use low language and I had no problem putting one in.

Three – Gawain’s rebuke. This is the least likely. Right at the end, as Gawain realises he is alive after the axe comes down and leaps away drawing his sword, he rebukes the Green Knight and tells him quite forcefully that this is it, the thing is done, he is not going back under the axe. Gawain never uses low language of any kind, or even comes close, the worst you get from him is a bit of cold sarcasm at the end. But I felt the emotion of the moment and the extremity of the incident might allow it and I was a bit fuck-happy at that point so I gave Gawain a small fuck of his own. He had earnt it.

WHAT IS THE GREEN KNIGHT?

Well, this motherfucker is about twenty things. Let’s see if we can count them.

He's Nature - Well, he’s green. Plus he's covered in leaves and things. Plus he's literally carrying a branch. Plus many of the things that threaten Gawain on his way to the Green Chapel are nature incarnate, bears and bulls and wolves and woodwose. Plus at the end his chapel is in the wildest most barren place ever. Plus it’s called the Green Chapel. Wildness is not good in the medieval mind I think because they haven't yet invented Wordsworth and Shelly to tell them it’s ok.

Arthurs court is the epitome of civilisation. Nature BURSTS its way in to civilisation to say "Ha Ha! You thought you could forget me mankind, well here I am to challenge your weak assertions that you are something other than nature. How about that chivalric code you made up, reckon you can stick to it?"

He's Violence - He's carrying an axe. His contest is a murder. The axe is his prize. When we meet him again he has another axe and is sharpening it. As Bertilak he hunts and kills a LOT of stuff and this is described in the most detailed and gory fashion.

"Knights! You think you are pretty great hey? We have you noticed that all of you are KILLERS? And that all of your knightlyness is based on MURDER? You like killing so much, why don't you kill me tough guys? Hmmmm? Then I’ll kill you. Afraid to muderdie murderers?"

He's The Outside/Elves/Elvishness - He's clearly magic as fuck. Described as 'an elvish man' in the text. Exhibits magical regeneration, seems to change location near-magically, changes size and appearance magically. He's just very magic, he's a magic man. This is probably more real to the original audience than us. From a modern perspective we can add “He’s the Unconscious” to this one – see below.

He's Death And Winter - Turns up in one winter, meets Gawain in another. Carries holly which is strongest in green when the boughs are bare. Leading us to;

He's Rebirth And Summer/ The Unity Of Opposites - The Green Knight loves being opposite things. A super green guy in a dead white winter land. Carries a holly branch as symbol of peace and an axe at the same time as a symbol of warishness. Fucks with everyone but is a stickler for knightly conduct and oaths and fine legalisms of behaviour. Is the green-bearded Green Knight and the Red(ish) bearded Bertilak. Wants to fuck Gawain and tries to trick Gawain into sexdeath. Works to destroy Arthurs court but ends up giving them the green girdle that becomes a symbol of a knightly order. Schemes and lies to corrupt Gawain and forgives and reassures Gawain. Dies but lives. Likes dogs AND cats! And yes, sex and death. OPPOSITES. COMBINNNNEEDDDD.

He's Cycles - You have to wait a year to meet him the second time. He dies and lives again. Pluss see all summer/winter stuff above.

He's A Gay Dude/The Fear Of Being A Bit Gay - Wants to bone Gawain. You never know how fully Gawain notices this and exactly what his response to it is. Until he finds out Bertilak and the Green Knight are the same, he seems to be really fond of Bertilak, but also kind of glad to get away? We leave the story with one certainty: Gawain is definitely not gay, even a bit.

He's The Best Dude Ever - It's pretty great to be strong and manly with great legs and an amazing beard and your own castle. Wouldn’t you want to be that guy? or at least to hang out with him. Bertilak confirms, manliness, beards and roaring fires are the best. If the situation was reversed, Bertilak would definitely have fucked Gawains wife, and possibly everyone else in the castle as well, but Gawain does not do this. So, are you manly enough to not act manly? You enough of a real man to not be ruled by your virility? Another Gawain paradox.

He's A Threat To His Own Kingdom Somehow - This is an odd one that not many people bring up. On the way to the Green Chapel the nameless doomsayer tells Gawain that the Green Knight is super-dangerous and just kills the fuck out of people for no reason and has been haunting this area for ages. But the Green Knight is Bertilak, and this is not far from Bertilaks castle.

Possibly this is some black ops mission impossible shit where Bertilak gets this guy to talk up the danger of the place to see if Gawain will flinch. But if it isn't, then Bertilak is the monster haunting his own kingdom. He is the lord in the castle but also the terrible violent thing from the outside that kills at a whim. Which leads us to;

He's The Things That Are Inside Us That We Would Rather Were Both Outside Us And Very Far Away - See above, being gay, being violent, being a crazy ass murderer. Also possibly magic.

He's Mercy - Gawain is set an impossible moral challenge that leads directly from his desire to be the best possible knight and it inevitably leads to his destruction, but he isn't destroyed because he's willing to go through with it. So this is a Book of Job story maybe? Which is easy to crap on in a Stuart Lee or Ted Chiang way, because Job gets his 'stuff' back, so it seems like a fake moral message - pretend to go through with this apparently self-destructive moral code and I will reprieve you at the last minute. If you look like you are willing to die, you won't really have to.

It's kind of easy to make fun of from a modern perspective but I'm not sure that that’s what the original creators of those stories meant, or that we are fully understanding them. If you look at it from a detached, ironic, material perspective then it looks like a trick, if you look at it in the spirit and nature of its time, what is it then?

He's Kind Of Like God Maybe? - See above. I will add that in the last scene with the Green Knight, Gawain confesses his mild indiscretion when he had previously lied about it and the Knight says he is now "clean" as if he had been confessed by a priest, from the perspective of the story-world, it’s not clear where the fuck he thinks he is getting the moral authority to do this from. His words and his general air of moral assumption are not those of a trickster but a tolerant moral superior who is congratulating a student for finally seeing through a knotty problem and reaching a new level of awareness and understanding. He forgives like he's god, which makes the next bit even odder;

He's A Pawn Of Morgana La Fay - At the same time as he is forgiving Gawain the Green Knight gives him the backstory to what is going on, which to a modern reader (me) seems ridiculously thematically and dramatically disconnected from the rest of the text. Ok so it was a womanfight between Morgana and Guinevere. Was she orchestrating the sex game thing? You seemed super in charge before, and super in charge now, but in reality you weren't/aren't? Does she turn you into a giant green guy regularly? If she can do that, why not just send you to take out Arthur? Ok some of these are nerdboy questions, but still.

This also meshes with the poems turn towards misogyny in the last part. There seems to be some kind of divide between the poem and the poet on the subject of Lady Bertilak. From the poems point of view she's hot and funny, active, intelligent and has a lot of positive qualities. When the poet wakes up to what his heart is writing he has to remind us that she is sleazy and corrupt and kind of evil even though she doesn't seem it. Then he has the Green Knight effectively say that the whole thing was the fault of women and Gawain confirm it. To us reading, this is Gawain at his worst. I do wonder what the original audience would have thought of the whole thing. I do think, even from a Medieval perspective, it’s at least partly Gawain’s fault, yes you were assailed by magic giants and sexy girls, but it all interlaced with your own honour code and your own image of yourself, this isn't just me being 21stC, the poem seems to take a similar view, in its opening parts at least. And at the end the Green Knight wants to take Gawain back and reconcile him with his wife, his ‘opponent’ as if they were players in a game that is now over.

Would the original audience think it was good that Gawain didn’t back, bad? He’s refusing to go back into the sex/death house, but also refusing to be reconciled with a women/women in general.

VERY CHRISTIAN-SEEMING PARADOXES, THE NECESSARY IMPERFECTION

Finally we come to the end and Gawain crying and crushed because he failed, even though to us, to his opponent and to his friends, he scored 90% in a moral battle against a witch, a magic giant and a hot girl.

And Gawain never really cheers up, not in the narrative at least. We end on him sad, filled with a sense of his own failure. And we don't really know what to think of this. To Arthurs court it’s a failure that is not a failure. To Gawain it’s a success that is not a success. To the court the green girdle is a trophy. To Gawain a mark of shame.

We come back again to the unity of opposites, the necessity of imperfection in the search for perfection. Gawain’s failure is more humanising, and in a way, more noble than clear and direct success would have been. (Also a better drama.) Gawain’s super-brave and almost self-destructive honour code that first seemed bold, then dumb, then impossibly complex to maintain, then simple again just before the end, is now a weight for him.

What does it mean to hold yourself to an impossibly high standard? What does it mean to oppose death, nature, sex, the possibility of being a bit bisexual, hyper-masculinity, violence and a pawn of Morgana La Fay, and to fail, and yet to be forgiven? To be forgiven by all those same things?

………………………………..

I doubt I’ve got any close to “an answer”. I doubt there is one and if there is its probably obscure and theological.

I’m glad I got to meet the poet through the text. Gawain poet, I’m glad you wrote this. You can’t go straight from sad to being happy but you can go from sad to calm and your words helped me do that. And, if you’re also the ‘Pearl’ poet then I’m sorry about your kid.

Gawain 2478 - 2530, Merry Christmas everyone.

He's actually pretty sad.

Wild ways in the world Gawain now rides
On Gryngolet, that by grace had got still his life.
Oft he harboured in house and oft all thereout,
And many adventures in vale, and vanquished oft,
That I will no take the time in this tale to recount.
The hurt was whole that had had rent in his neck,
And the bright belt he bore thereabout,
Across, as a baldric, bound by his side,
Linked under his left arm, the lace, with a knot,
Betokening he was caught and taught of a fault.
And thus he comes to court, knight all in sound.
There wakened wonder in that residence when they learned
That good Gawain was come; a great thing they thought.
The king kisses the knight, and the queen also,
And then many super knights that sought him to know,
How he fared, what he found, and he frankly told,
Lets be known all the costs of care that he had,
The chance of the chapel, the cheer of the knight,
The love of the lady, the lace at the last,
The nick in his neck he naked them showed,
That he was allowed for his lewdness at the lords hands
           for blame.
He quailed when he should tell,
He groaned for grief to name;
The blood in his face blushed well,
When it he should show, for shame.


"Lo! lord," said the lad, and the lace handles,
"This is the banner of the blame I bear in my neck,
This is the shame and the scar that I seemly received
For the cowardice and covetousness that I have cast there.
This is the token of untruth that I am taken in,
And I must needs it wear while I may last;
For man may hide his harm, but un-harmed may not be,
For where it once is attached it  detach never will."
The king comforts the knight, and all the court also
Laughed loudly thereat and lovingly accord
That lords and ladies that belonged to the Table,
Each bro of brotherhood, a baldric should have,
A band across them about of a bright green,
And that, for sake of that sire, they swore to wear.
For that was accorded the renown of the Round Table,
And he honoured that it had, evermore after,
As it is bound in the best book of romance.
Thus in Arthur's day this adventure befell,
That Brutus' book thereof bears witness.
Since Brutus, the bold bro, bowled hither first,
After the siege and the assault that ceased at Troy,
          ended so amiss.
Many adventures here-befallen
Have happened so 'ere this.
Now who bears the crown of thorn,
May he bring us to his bliss!

AMEN

...................................................................

If you'd like the whole thing in PDF or MOBI format then clicking on the cinquefoil below will take you to the shared drive where you can download them both for free.

Gawain 2429 - 2478, I wouldn't go back to that house either.

"But for your girdle," said Gawain, "God give you thanks!
That will I wield with good will, not for the wild gold,
Nor the sake of the silk, nor the side pendants,
For wealth nor for worship, nor wondrous works,
But in sign of my surfeit I shall see it oft,
When I ride in renown, to remind myself
of the fault and the faintness of our frail flesh,
How tender it is to entice touches of filth;
And thus, when pride shall me prick for prowess of arms,
The look of this love-lace shall leap to my heart.
But one thing I would pray of you, displease you never:
Since you be lord of yonder land where I have spent time
With you with worship - the wise one send you
That upholds the heavens and on high sits -
How known is your right name, and then no more?
That shall I tell you truly," said that other theign;
Bertilak de Hautdesert I am in this land.
Through might of Morgane le Faye, that in my house dwells,
And kindness of clergy by crafts well learned,
The mysteries of Merlin many has taken-
For she had direct dealings full dear sometime
With that accomplished clerk, as know all your knights
          at home.
Morgan the goddess
Therefore is her name:
Wields none so high haughtiness
That she cannot make full tame.


"She girded me in this guise, and to your good hall
For to assay the chivalry, if it truth were
Those rumours of the great renown of the Round Table.
She worked on me this wonder you wits to rob,
For to have grieved Guinevere and scared her to death
With horror of that ghastly guy that ghostly spoke
With his head in his hand before the high table.
That is who that is at home, the ancient lady;
She is even thy aunt, Arthurs half-sister.
The duchess's daughter of Tyntagell, that there Uther after
Had Arthur upon, that autarch is now.
Therefore I ask you, Gawain, to come to your aunt,
Make merry in my house; my many thee love,
And I will thee as well, wanderer, by my faith,
as any guy under God, for thy great Truth."
And he answered Nay, he would no way come.
They accorded and kissed, and commended each other
To the prince of paradise, and parted right there
          in the cold.
Gawain on his horse lean
To the kings burgh rides bold,
And the knight in bright green
Where-so-ever he would.

Gawain 2358 - 2428, Sarcasm, and a bit of arguable misogyny, Gawain is a poor winner.

"For it is my work you wear, that woven girdle;
My own wife it you gave, I know well for certain.
Now know I well your kisses and your cost also,
And the wooing of my wife; I wrought it myself.
I sent her to assay you, and I certainly think
You the most faultless fellow that ever foot set;
As a pearl to dried peas is worth prize more,
So is Gawain, in good faith, than other gay knights.
But here you lacked a little sir, and lewd you were;
But that was for no wild work, nor wooing neither,
But for you loved your life; the less I you blame."
That other staunch man in study stood a great while,
So aggrieved for guilt he greyed within;
All the blood of his breast blushed in his face,
That all he shrank for shame at what the man said.
The first word upon field that the found to reply:
"Cursed be cowardice and covetousness both!
In you is villainy and vice that virtue destroys."
Then he clasped at the knot and the cloth loosens,
Whipped wrathfully the wrap at the waiting knight,
"Lo! there is the false thing, foul may it fall!
For care of thy cut cowardice me took
To accord me with covetousness, my kind to forsake,
That boldness and bravery that belongs to all knights,
For I am faulty and false and have broken my faith,
Am treasonous and untrue - am abhorred both, beyond
          all care!
I confess you knight, here still,
All faulty is my fare;
Let me overtake your will
And after shall be ware.


Then laughed that other lord and lightly said:
"I hold it healed whole, the harm that I had.
You are confessed so clean, and know your faults,
And had you your penance at the point of my blade,
I hold you pared of that plight and purged as clean
As you had never forfeited since you were first born.
And I give you sir, the girdle that is gold-hemmed;
For it is green as my gear, Sir Gawain, you may
Think upon this thing when thee have found thy way
Among princes of prize, and this a pure token be
Of the chance of the green chapel among chivalrous knights.
And you shall return in this New Year season to my home,
And we shall revel the remnant of this rich feasts
          full cream."
There pressed him the lord
And said: "With my wife, I deem
We shall you well accord,
That was your enemy keen."


"No, for certain," said the chevalier, and seized his helm
And tips it off civilly and the knight thanks,
"I have sojourned sadly; sweet future to you,
May he send you your salary that our saviour made!
And commend me to that courteous one, your comely wife,
Both that one and that other, mine honoured ladies,
That thus her knight with her cunning has cleverly beguiled.
But that a fool behave foolishly should hardly faze her,
And through wiles of women be won to sore end,
For so was Adam in earth with one beguiled,
And Solomon with a fair few, and Samson as well-
Delilah dealt him his wyrd - and David thereafter
Was blinded by Bathsheeba, with baleful result.
Since they were wrecked with their wiles, it were a wynne huge
To love them well and believe them not, if only we could.
For these were formed the finest, most favoured alive
Excellently of all these other, under heaven
          that mused;
And all they were bewildered
With women that they used.
That I be now beguiled,
I may think myself excused.