I was wondering if there are any details on the upcoming Faerie Stories book, as i have just received an email from our local game shop for pre-orders for December-January and it has the new book listed there. So i was wondering if anyone from Atlas Games could give us a teaser on what to expect from the upcoming book, as this book holds great interest to our group as we are heavily based in Arcadia and interacting with the Fae?

Any Information would be greatly appreaciated

Many Thanks

Sir Parn Prince of the Court of the Great White Oak!!:)

Faerie Stories is sort of a saga book. Really, it's a bunch of locations, characters and some interrelated stories. Storyguide oriented. Ostensibly it's set in Brittany, but it's supposed to be easy to transport elsewhere.

Here's what the contents look like:

Chapter 1: Introduction. The usual.

Chapter 2: The Land Herebouts. General information on the region, map of Brittany, ideas on covenant locations, regional politics, rules for vis hunts.

Chapter 3: The Town. Description of a Breton town, modeled after the historical town of Quintin. Includes the town's annual fair. What's neat about the annual fair is that sometimes there is a a faerie fair, a sort of parallel/caricature, that takes place in the same place, via regio. The faerie merchants are distorted reflections of the human merchants. (You know -- there's a human horse merchant, and then a faerie horse merchant, for example. Like, he's a fay horse.) The faerie fair is of course the sort of place magi would like to go -- or where apprentices and companions might be sent to trade for unusual objects (at unusual prices).

Chapter 4: The Short Way Home. A faerie mischief story. Works well to play on the way back from the fair.

Chapter 5: The Valley of the Mists. Introduces a nearby location that alternates control between the Fae of Dark Summer and the Fae of Bright Winter. Neat place to explore, interesting denizens, sets up future story outlines.

Chapter 6: Story Outline: Hunters' Contest. A story to take place in the Valley of the Mists. Compete in the faerie lady's contests, win vis! And of course complications...

Chapter 7: Story Outline: The Tower in the Rock. Trouble in the Valley of the Mists! The troupe gets a chance to find out what's gone wrong, and make it aright.

Chapter 8: Brief Encounters. Various small encounters that can be worked into a saga.

Chapter 9: Appendix: Brittany. Some info and other ideas about Brittany in general.

Will this be a substitute for a Normandy Tribunal sourcebook, in the way that A Midsummer Night's Dream lightly covered Languedoc, or will the tribunal get a seperate book at some date in the future?

Gene

This is not a substitute tribunal book. The parts dealing with Brittany in general just aren't that meaty; after all, it's meant to be easily ported elsewhere in Mythic Europe.

There may be a Normandy Tribunal book at some point (years in the future), but it's not on the schedule or anything. We'll have a lot of things that need to be covered more urgently after 5th edition before we get back to Tribunals, I expect.

~Alex

I was referring to David Chart's character Constantine at the La Roche Caribet site. I've been spending a good deal of time there lately and it is clearly the source of a lot of the ideas you've mentioned for Faerie Stories. I was not being (intentionally) obscure, I thought you would get the reference.

The site has really whetted my apetite for the new book, I'll be looking forward to it. Will it be available in time for Christmas?

Have fun,
Gene

> Will it be available in time for Christmas?

I hope so. Since its already at press, we should have it back before the end of November, but we are ganging the print run with another book (a d20 release that is of the same page count and print run, making for big cost savings by combining the print jobs), so I'm planning to hold one in the warehouse for 2 weeks after we receive it. (Two releases means two opportunities for distributors to check their inventory and reorder backlist items!)

Glad you liked the LRC site. If you look at who does what in the web-site stories, you'll find that Constantine missed all the interesting Faerie Stories - so his personal fans must go without!

Those who've read the journals of Caribet will have seen how just one troupe blundered through what might have been... With the publication of the book, you get a chance to learn what they missed, and what could have been, and try it for yourselves! (I gather the saga players are waiting to find out what they missed...)

Faerie Stories is composed of formal write-ups of stories from the saga I play in, as Neil said. This is *not* intended to be a common source of future books. Actually, Faerie Stories was commissioned to avoid a hiatus in the line, when there were delays to another book. (Not yet announced, but now finished and waiting for publication.) The stories were good, and Phil Masters, who is in the troupe, was willing to be co-author with Neil Taylor, the storyguide and thus creator of the stories, which meant that the manuscript would be well written.

Faerie Stories was an extreme case of asking people I knew could do the job to fill in in a crisis; it is in no way supposed to become standard practice. I think we got a really good book out of the crisis, though. (And the delayed book turned out nicely, as well.)

David Chart
Ars Magica Line Editor

So who is complaining? I'm looking forward to it, and if it is as good as I expect I would hope this does become standard practice :)

Gene

Any chance of an announcement soon?

Oh, and when will FS be available for orders?

Eek. Turns out the pages for both Faerie Stories and Sacred Ground II were accidently hidden, so nobody could see them to order. This has been corrected and both titles can now be preordered. Sorry about the confusion.

Faerie Stores: http://www.warehouse23.com/item.cgi?AG0271
Sacred Ground II: http://www.warehouse23.com/item.cgi?AG3225

Michelle Barrett
Warehouse 23 Manager
Steve Jackson Games
www.warehouse23.com
michelle@sjgames.com

(There's an RPG called "Living Legends," and we didn't want any confusion -- hence the change from that working title to the final one.)

Also, It was nice to have someone think up some plausable vis hunt rules. Thanks for that.

Mark

Niall

Er, that may just be us.

David Chart
Player in the saga Faerie Stories is derived from

Faerie stories was not available. :( I'm considering ordering it...

Please tell me if my miserable life bothers you. ;)

Don't worry, Mithriel. Your "miserable life" is clearly more of a hindrance to you than it is to me, if that makes you feel any less miserable.

Mark

What did you think of FS? I've been through it in a little more detail now and there are some great ideas.

I've just received it. Now I must read it. ;)