John the Balladeer
Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2007 2:51 pm
http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/03-S ... 87_toc.htm
I read one of these stories as a little kid (Desrick on Yandro) in a short storeis collection called Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Gallery, and recently, in a fit of nostolgia, tried looking up the story online. Lo and Behold, I found it and the rest of a series of stories starring the eponymous bard, the mysterious John the Balladeer, and the rather unusual circumstances he finds himself in, often but not always as a result of his own songs sparking some idea in the heads of his listeners.
These stories aren't quite horror, though curses and oaths and dark supernatural things abound. They are set, as near as I can figure, in the corners of the Appilachian mountains and South. John himself, about which almost nothing is revealed, is an interesting take on a bard. I can't tell if it's just his Bardic Knowledge that helps him out, but he sometimes seems a little more than just a normal bard. There's more than a few hints of 'holy man' or 'supernatural agent' about him, though he's never actually presented as being anything other than regular human with just a little bit of uncanny luck and knowledge of ...irregular things.
Though instersting reading in and of themselves, I thought that the setting and characters of them might be helpful to others creating domains and adventurs based on stores and folklore of the eastern American mountain regions, or Gothic Earth.
I read one of these stories as a little kid (Desrick on Yandro) in a short storeis collection called Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Gallery, and recently, in a fit of nostolgia, tried looking up the story online. Lo and Behold, I found it and the rest of a series of stories starring the eponymous bard, the mysterious John the Balladeer, and the rather unusual circumstances he finds himself in, often but not always as a result of his own songs sparking some idea in the heads of his listeners.
These stories aren't quite horror, though curses and oaths and dark supernatural things abound. They are set, as near as I can figure, in the corners of the Appilachian mountains and South. John himself, about which almost nothing is revealed, is an interesting take on a bard. I can't tell if it's just his Bardic Knowledge that helps him out, but he sometimes seems a little more than just a normal bard. There's more than a few hints of 'holy man' or 'supernatural agent' about him, though he's never actually presented as being anything other than regular human with just a little bit of uncanny luck and knowledge of ...irregular things.
Though instersting reading in and of themselves, I thought that the setting and characters of them might be helpful to others creating domains and adventurs based on stores and folklore of the eastern American mountain regions, or Gothic Earth.
