Averoigne

[jeffjerwin]

Many years ago I wrote an adventure (called "Monkshood") set in a pastiche of Averoigne. I'm contemplating rewriting it for the Repository and I'm pondering the copyright rules regarding it. As I see it, I can set it in the real 16th century Auvergne without a hitch, and with "a sense of the Averoigne" (i.e., Sadoque, etc.) without being specific - or are Repository titles covered by Chaosium's agreement with Arkham House? In which case I could use the fictive names and locales.

Also I welcome any thoughts about the basic idea: it's a werewolf and witchcraft story set in the Massif Central, based on folklore and history. It has a hint of the mythos, but isn't completely overt. There's a war raging around, but not so much in the province itself - I'm thinking I'll include notes on setting it in the 1940s and 1790s as well. There's a ruined castle, a druidic barrow, depraved monks, a hallucinatory hell-wood, and a necromancer.

Cheers - Jeff

[rsanford]

On 12/25/2017 at 10:41 PM, jeffjerwin said:

Many years ago I wrote an adventure (called "Monkshood") set in a pastiche of Averoigne. I'm contemplating rewriting it for the Repository and I'm pondering the copyright rules regarding it. As I see it, I can set it in the real 16th century Auvergne without a hitch, and with "a sense of the Averoigne" (i.e., Sadoque, etc.) without being specific - or are Repository titles covered by Chaosium's agreement with Arkham House? In which case I could use the fictive names and locales.

Also I welcome any thoughts about the basic idea: it's a werewolf and witchcraft story set in the Massif Central, based on folklore and history. It has a hint of the mythos, but isn't completely overt. There's a war raging around, but not so much in the province itself - I'm thinking I'll include notes on setting it in the 1940s and 1790s as well. There's a ruined castle, a druidic barrow, depraved monks, a hallucinatory hell-wood, and a necromancer.

Cheers - Jeff

This sounds VERY intresting. Is the original available somewhere?

[jeffjerwin]

4 hours ago, rsanford said:

This sounds VERY intresting. Is the original available somewhere?

Well, it was written for a 3PP Pathfinder publisher which went on to have financial issues... I still have the manuscript but would rather sit on it for now. The CoC conversion would be streamlined since it doesn't need XP benchmarks, and the monsters would be subtler.

On the nomenclature:

My main issue is the somewhat incoherent nature of CAS' copyrights. De facto, they're controlled by Arkham House (in the US only) but references to CAS' Averoigne by Lovecraft have crept into the Public Domain. CAS' stepchildren inherited the copyrights by all appearances, but not every published story had its copyright renewed. Because of the Sunny Bono Act, much of CAS' oeuvre is seemingly protected.

If I publish using a quasi-real Auvergne, there are, however, analogous locations I can use that can be revised "back" to CAS' setting names fairly easily.

The wording of the Repository license however allows the use of setting material in the the main 7e rules. Campbell, Lumley (and others)'s creations are called out as not available for Repository material. The defining line may depend on whether the rights were negotiated with Arkham House or separately with the authors...

Now, whether Lovecraft's mention of places in his OOC or Arkham House claimed copyrighted material is a work around I have yet to finesse.

[jeffjerwin]

It looks as if most of CAS' Weird Tales stories (in their original published form, typos and cuts included) are out of copyright, at least for those issues that never had their copyright status renewed. This would include The Maker of Gargoyles and The Colussus of Ylourgne. However, in the UK, the copyright on the stories lasts until 2031.

What a mess. I guess p.2 of the Keeper's Book should be my guide... Tsathoggua appears on p.326. Gaspard du Nord appears on p.226. "Averoigne" and the "Chateau des Faussesflames" appears in Hazel Heald and Lovecraft's "Out of the Aeons" (Weird Tales, 1935) - she died in 1961, the same year as CAS.

 

Does anyone know the basis for World of Cthulhu's use of Averoigne?

[jeffjerwin]

For purposes of comparison, if we go by the lifetime of the author(s) rule for excluding elements from CoC adventures in the repository, we should also be not be including the Hounds of Tindalos or Chaugnar Faugn (Frank Belknap Long died in 1994 - as did Robert Bloch), all of Derleth's creations (Ithaqua, Cyaegtha, etc.) and anything by authors still alive: Eddy C. Bertin is notable among them. Robert E. Howard's work is highly problematic in terms of copyright.

That leaves Lovecraft's own creations: Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, Cthulhu, the Dreamlands, Nyarlathotep, etc. And, it appears, Robert W. Chambers' creations.

[jeffjerwin]

I'm looking at holding off on publication until this is clarified.

[jeffjerwin]

Well, I've worked out that I'll have to wait until 2028 to publish.

(and if anyone wants me to do math on whether a certain Mythos story is definitively out of copyright, I've done the research, so let me know and I'll help)

I will be sharing my geographic notes, however. Watch this this space, soonish.

Edited December 29, 2017 by jeffjerwin

[jeffjerwin]

Averoigne Revisited

 

The map from Worlds of Cthulhu 2 shows a region 40 miles east-west and 50 miles north-south. This is rather smaller than the actual province, which is about four times larger.

 

If one identifies the Isoile, the principal river of Averoigne, with the Sioule and Sioulet rivers that flow into the Allier from the far side of the Puy du Drôme range, the actual equivalent region in our world would seem to be the western part of the arrondissement of Riom. This was a part of the Duchy of Auvergne by the 16^th century, a royal demense. It is partially in the seigneurie or baronnie of Combrailles in Basse-Auvergne by the 18^th century.

The map on the left shows Combrailles within the Massif Central georegion.

 

The name Isoile seems to be a blend of Issoire, in the southern part of Auvergne, with the river Sioule in the northwest part of the province.

 

The Auvergne derives from the Celtic civitas or tribe of the Arverni or Arvernesi. Averoigne derives from the Averones, a fictional version of the same name; indeed ‘Averones’ is a likely enough spelling variation on Averni. Auvergne (mediaeval Latin Alvernia) has a likeness to Avernus, the Roman underworld in sound and certainly Averoigne has its actual resemblances as well.

 

The WoC map shows the Isoile Marsh at the south end of the region. In fact there were marshes at the confluence of the Sioule and the Allier to the northeast.

 

The Isoile is stated on several occasions to flow into the Loire, which should mean a roughly northern course, given its mountainous terrain – a characteristic of south central France.

 

In ‘The End of the Story’ Perigon and the forest of Averoigne appear to be somewhere between Moulins (in the department of Allier, and former capital of the Duchy of Bourbon) and Tours.

 

As can be seen by the map (attached below) (Senex, 1719), a little before the era of the story (late 18^th century), there is a post-route to Tours from Moulins that follows the Allier and then the Loire, and round-about route that cuts across to Limoges from Clermont. The terrain north of Moulins is quite unsuitable as a placement for Averoigne, so we may tentatively posit that the protagonist chose the somewhat less direct route, which would place him crossing the Sioule – that is, the Isoile – at ‘Pont Gibaut’. This also suggests that the wood and Perigon are situated beside and on the western side of the Sioule/Isoile.

 

The only real canonical clue to the course of the Isoile is found in ‘The Colossus of Ylourgne’:

 

‘Undaunted, he set forth on foot, carrying only a dagger and a wallet of food. He timed his wanderings so that he would reach Ylourgne at nightfall in the rising of a full moon. Much of his journey lay through the great, lowering forest, which approached the very walls of Vyones on the eastern side and ran in a sombre arc through Averoigne to the mouth of the rocky valley below Ylourgne. After a few miles, he emerged from the mighty wood of pines and oaks and larches; and thenceforward, for the first day, followed the river Isoile through an open, well- peopled plain. He spent the warm summer night beneath a beech-tree, in the vicinity of a small village, not caring to sleep in the lonely woods where robbers and wolves — and creatures of a more baleful repute — were commonly supposed to dwell.

 

At evening of the second day, after passing through the wildest and oldest portion of the immemorial wood, he came to the steep, stony valley that led to his destination. This valley was the fountain-head of the Isoile, which had dwindled to a mere rivulet. In the brown twilight, between sunset and moonrise, he saw the lights of the Cistercian monastery; and opposite, on the piled, forbidding scarps, the grim and rugged mass of the ruinous stronghold of Ylourgne, with wan and wizard fires flickering behind its high embrasures. Apart from these fires, there was no sign of occupation; and he did not hear at any time the dismal noises reported by the monks.’

 

To summarize: Vyones was bordered on the east by the forest of Averoigne, which stretched to the valley of Ylourgne, where the Isoile river emerged. It is two days to the east of Vyones. Hence, as the Isoile flows beneath Vyones, it must head roughly east.

 

Averoigne has to major towns: Ximes and Vyones. The first has a bishop and the latter an archbishop. These usually are characteristics of towns and cities founded by the Romans.

 

Vyones, the Roman Avionium, and Ximes, Latin Simaesis, should both be situated on a Roman road. The map above is from an 18^th century map of Classical Gaul. The principal settlements marked at Eborolacum (Ebreuil), ‘Fines’ and Ubimum (which actually has never been identified).

 

It is tempting therefore to identify ‘Fines’ with the similar-sounding Simaesis or Ximes. If ‘Fines’/Ximes (Pontaumur) is twenty-five miles from Vyones, Vyones might be associated with St-Gervais-d’Auvergne (formerly Mongolt) on the Sioule.

 

The town of Pontgibaud (the map’s Ubimum) is so named because the Roman road from Clermont to Ahun crossed the Sioule here. At Pontaumur the same road crossed the Sioulet, the western branch of the Sioule. Pontaumur is close to Combraille, the eponym of the Combrailles region.

 

Vyones is said [Wikipedia, find citation] to be in the northern part of Averoigne, with Ximes in the south.

 

‘At that time, the year of our Lord, 1138, Vyones was the principal town of the province of Averoigne. On two sides the great, shadow-haunted forest, a place of equivocal legends, of loups-garous and phantoms, approached to the very walls and flung its umbrage upon them at early forenoon and evening. On the other sides there lay cultivated fields, and gentle streams that meandered among willows or poplars, and roads that ran through an open plain to the high châteaux of noble lords and to regions beyond Averoigne.’ ‘The Maker of Gargoyles’

 

Tim Kirk’s map in The Freedom of Fantastic Things, however, situates Ximes and and Vyones fairly close to each other, roughly west and east with the Isoile bending north and then due east between them. The source of the Isoire in all analyses of Averoigne’s geography. is the Collines d’Est, which correspond to the mountains separating the Sioule valley from the Allier.

 

WoC however makes clear that there should be about 25 miles between the two communities, with the Inn of Bonne-Joissance between them. Between the two is the Bois d’Auvergne, an ancient forest.