jeffjerwin

Camden is identifying the site with Catbrain Hill, but his etymology is extremely shaky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catbrain

The Cath Palug in Welsh legend is associated with the Menai Straits (and even appears there in an adventure in Savage Mountains!). Which is interesting in terms of the story in Geoffrey of Monmouth. In the French Vulgate Arthur fights it at Lausanne, en route to Rome, and in GoM he's fighting 'Lucius Hibernius'... I wonder if the Welsh sources had a king of Ireland as Arthur's foe before Camlann rather than a Roman Emperor. Meeting the Cath Palug at Menai would make sense for that route.

There's a giant (house) cat that in some stories is said to have eaten King Arthur: https://www.medievalists.net/2019/03/the-kitten-that-nearly-killed-king-arthur/. The Alans, who came to influence Breton (and chivalric) culture had a huge dog called the Alaunt, which they doted on. And Welsh (and apparently Irish) society valued cats very highly, mainly as mousers (unlike mainland Europe). Cats even had a ransom/blood price in the Laws of Hywel dda.

Yes. Angles/Saxons, Cymry, 'Romans' and possibly even a few Picts and Jewish people... (if we mix up the historical Welsh kingdom of Ebrauc with medieval Yorkshire). Edit: it's thought that the Deiran Angles may have been foederati, and thus fairly integrated into 'Malehaut's' culture, making for an easy takeover after King Peredur fell in battle in the late 6th century - sort of like how the Angles and Iceni are described in Hzark10's post.

The Welsh (Cymric) word for all Anglo-Saxons (and Jutes) is Saesneg, which should explain things a bit. A wouldn't run an adventure requiring nuance with them without more gently suggesting some alternate approaches than killing everyone via some sort of smaller encounters. In my experience, Hate (Saxon) is best countered by opposing it with some of the virtues such as Merciful, Trusting, or Forgiving, which may outstrip that passion for some characters. But with a Hate (Saxons) that high you might have PCs coming to blows over the situation. Consider having a sympathetic, not-dangerous Saxon appear in the story beforehand, such as a woman, child, or Christian convert. Their influence could lead to a decrease in the passion, which will rapidly become counterproductive once Arthur starts making peace with them. There are 'Danes' (i.e., Jutes) among Arthur's followers in some stories: Meliant of Denmark appears as a Grail knight; Ariohan the Dane is a chivalrous hero; and Escil of Denmark submits to Arthur and fights against Mordred in Geoffrey of Monmouth. (Indeed, with the Jutes being in proximity to Camelot at the Isle of Wight they make a good choice for 'less-fearsome Saxons'). There's also the heroic Amleth (Hamlet) who visits Britain in Saxo Grammaticus (and in Shakespeare) in this very period.

It looks like the Welsh didn't even attempt to convert the Saesneg. But the real source of conflict was that the Kentish royal house had made marriage alliances with the Merovingians and the Roman Church was pro-Frankish at the time. To the British, who considered themselves heirs to Rome, I suspect that rankled.

Well, the idea was that great estates could be 'married off' without some squire or social climber getting the bride. Usually, by this point the woman either had a child and heir to herself by an earlier marriage - or didn't and appeared to be infertile. In each case the overlord would have the next generation or the next-in-line still in their power. Of course sometimes it might backfire: the child might die young; the thirty odd-year old bride ends up pregnant by her own choice of husband...

This was often only allowed if she was too old to have children, unfortunately.

Parishes usually have several manors within them.

Here's something: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/britannia/saxonadvent/climate.html

This is actually what happens in the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate. The gap appeared because of Malory's abridgment. There is a two-year gap (approximately) between Uther's death and the Sword in the Stone.

Welsh tradition made him the brother-in-law of Adeon or Gadeon ab Eudaf (as can be seen by the Dream of Macsen) who was Arthur's great-great-grandfather (though the Bretons and Geoffrey also made Arthur a descendant of this guy (who probably = Aldreon in Breton), they do so by a different line). Nonetheless the Middle English tradition claimed that Arthur was rightful Emperor by descent from both Magnus Maximus and Constantine the Great. The Welsh were obviously less concerned about such imperial ambitions, though he is still called 'the Emperor' in Welsh poetry.

Note that literacy and books is closely associated with magic (both natural and demonic) in Arthurian and medieval romance. A literate knight may become feared or suspected of 'trifling' in such things... Never mind what a literate knight might be moved to do with Camille's books.

Gawain and the Green Knight was clearly an influence. Steinbeck's attempt another. All these are in the suggested reading list at the end of the 5.2 edition, with his comments; you should look there. We discussed Sir Kay using Karr's novel as a point of reference. And of course in film Excalibur was one of his favorites. Greg's Arthuriad is in some ways less opaque than his Glorantha, as his entry into it was through texts we can all access, not a trove of his own texts. Don't imagine that he has necessarily a secret key that contradicts the many stories - his genius was in collation: the key links between his preferred books are I think vigor, emotional honesty, and poetry in the broad sense, i.e., beautiful, symbolically resonant narrative. I think therefore Arthurian legend is a myth he loves not necessarily as coming out of his personal interrogation of myth and spirituality like Glorantha but loving it entire (something outside of us and him but also including us) in its contradictory, many-layered whole. Like a friend versus one's child or one's self. Greg's Arthur is the Middle English hero, not the flawed French version. So is his Gawaine (even more so!). His Lancelot, though less clearly, is probably rooted in White, as is much of his Merlin. The key here is love. Love of the flawed heroes and their human-ness in a world which remains vibrant.

It's a list of settlements and castles with their 'real-world' names and their names from the stories or from the period when Greg was 'translating' names from their etymologies. It does have the current canon locations of some places left ambiguous in the GPC and other books.

Well, in Parzival, there's an actual reasoning: a group of knights have abducted the maidens and the knights are searching for them. Of course, one can be diverted by the abduction en route, as is a common trope in romances, if it looks like the route is approximately the same. The abductor is Meliagant in fact (which would place the events ordinarily before 538) and the abductee is the Lady Imane; the other ladies are her handmaidens and the other knights are Meliagant's escort. As to why they are stealing away to Maelgwn's kingdom, perhaps there is an alliance between Gorre and Gomeret, which makes a great deal of sense. In any case, the rationale for being in the Lonely Forest (Snowdonia) is pretty much irrelevant - the point is meeting the young Percivale, after all, so it changes nothing if the PKs and PLs are doing something else. In my campaign, the PKs and PLs were searching for Lancelot and were diverted en route into searching for Orilus (the knight whose wife Percivale will shortly trouble) who had taken prisoners for ransom. I tossed the bandit side plot so I could introduce Orilus, Lancelot, and Percivale. This was the very first adventure of my current campaign, so bringing in Lance made a great deal of sense.

Gomeret and Maelgwn are vaguely hostile to Arthur after Maelgwn expels Pellinore's family from the throne in northern Cambria after Pellinore's death (523). Btw the adventure would fit well with the events that lead to the discovery of Percivale in the GPC: his mother's house is about 30 miles north of the Castle of the Kite, so, a different route back or to Cadair Idris could be folded into that episode. I put that in c.535 in my campaign so it would match Chretien. If you use the century = phase for a rough corresponding sequence of events, the Cambrian War would be around 542, but Arthur's imprisonment would conflict. Maelgwn dies in 547. His son Rhun hir could easily however continue an anti-Arthur policy. Hostages of Maelgwn could also meet Elffin, the foster-father of Taliesin, and be rescued by the boy-seer if the adventure takes place in the 540s. An earlier setting could work during the period Ryons usurped northern Wales (c.510-514). King Garan (whose name means 'crane') is sometimes represented as the father of Gwyddno Garanhir, the ruler of Maes Gwyddno, alias Cantref y Gwaelod. He also is sometimes connected to the family of Cynyr, the father of Cei (Kay the Steward), though this is not the case in this adventure.

It isn't actually clear that the fortresses mentioned in Preiddeu Annwn are the same fortress or whether they are different stops on an Otherworldly journey, which I thin is quite possible: there are fragmentary references in Welsh sources (as well as John Dee!) to an Arthurian expedition to Iceland and Greenland. Caer Wydr is usually on an island, but may be distinct from Ynys Wydryn and so forth: we simply don't know. It does resemble in certain ways the 'tower' or 'pillar of glass' encountered in various Imrama stories and in the Partholon story, which suggest possibly an iceberg. In Welsh, 'siddi' can mean 'turning', but here it's thought to be an Irish loan-word. A 'turning castle' appears as Curoi's fortress in Irish myth, and that legend, in any rate, is probably not contaminated significantly with romance influence. There is also a turning castle in Perlesvaus, and if I recall correctly, in Artus de Petit-Bretagne.

It's literally turning in the romance, but it's only mentioned in the Vulgate. It is, however, a folk-translation of Caer Siddi (though the real etymology is the Irish Sidh, or mound). Here's a brief article (in French, if you can read it): https://www.persee.fr/doc/roma_0035-8029_1911_num_40_158_4633. Suffice to say it's a somewhat common romance motif associated with wizards.

The location of Camelot is Cadbury on the poster map that came with the 1st edition, to clarify things a little. There are also more 'historical' references in the (original) Pendragon Campaign book. Morris' Age of Arthur (now very outdated) was a crucial source for the 3rd edition in particular. Hence there was a certain amount of 'historical Arthur' floating behind all the Malory. edit: also the names of the cities of Britain were Latin on the poster map, not English: Ratae instead of Leicester, for instance.

Waha is a a member of the Storm Tribe and hence a minor Orlanthi deity (and is worshipped by the Poljoni anyway, just not as the primary male divinity). Part of being a Heortling butcher is learning the Peaceful Cut. Otherwise Praxians couldn't eat the meat outside their tribes, and Bob's Bison Burgers would lose a lot of customers. See David Scott's comments here: https://www.glorantha.com/forums/topic/prax-and-all-the-thousands-of-questions-about-it/page/2/

As I understand it (word of Jeff Richard), Waha is the Heortling butcher-god, and his followers do learn Peaceful Cut in Sartar and among the Southern Theyalans. However there may be a different tradition among the Alakorings.

Gwenbaus is a magician (a 'wise clerk') and derives ultimately from Gwyn ap Nudd. There are three major 'marvels' made by him in the Perilous Forest - a form of courting the 'wise lady of the Perilous Forest' (a 'king's daughter', though never named) - the Castle of the Caroles (which also appears in Meraugis), the magic chessboard (probably a variant of the magic chessboard in the Second Continuation and the Didot Perceval, as well as Gwenddolau's magic gwyddbydd board), and the Turning Castle... Loomis related him to Curoi, the Irish wizard. The Perilous Forest is crowded with other strangeness: it is the home of Hellawes, Annowre (though she is also placed in Darnantes, nearby), one version of Merlin's tomb, the abbey of the Perilous Hall, where Moyse suffers eternal torment, etc. In this regard Arden may be a better choice, as it doesn't displace these things. Though I might add the 'De Boys' family and Celia and Rosalinde to any adventure there...

Galvoie is deeply entwined in the Conte du Graal and Klingsor. (See Chretien and Wolfram von Eschenbach) I would suggest a placement in the Perilous Forest, where a similar enchanted realm was created by Gwenbaus in the Vulgate Merlin and Livre d'Artus. Perlesvaus places the 'Cercle d'Or' at Montesclaire, which is probably Alclud, but that contradicts the geography of the adventure.

Historically, the Saxons (Gewisse) around the Thames Valley were pretty early (<500) so the dyke - which if Roman or pre-Roman perhaps delineated a boundary between the Belgae and the Dobunni (and Atrebates), might have been refurbished in the late 5th century. In Geoffrey of Monmouth the Gewisse are the mercenary tribe serving Vortigern. Edit: current historical theories: http://projects.arch.ox.ac.uk/wessex.html Edit 2: 'Gewisse' is 'Gentian' where the knight who kills Constantine comes from...