Now, first I must admit not to have thoroughly read the rest of the GPC, so it may get mentioned later on. However, what I'm wondering is: who/what was responsible for the magical poisoning at St Albans? Merlin? A Lady of the Lake? The Saxons? I'm curious, although I realise it's probably not essential to know the answer (otherwise it'd be in the book, or asked on here!)

I do have an idea as to how to use the consequences of it (my group are still a few years off from St. Albans so I'm trying to think ahead) to add a bit of background spice to the Anarchy Period. Sir Brastias, once recovered, could roam the land trying to track down the perpetrator of the poisoning, albeit with more in the way of summary justice rather than sober detective work. Think of Guy Pearce's character in "Memento" but without the memory loss! This could prove interesting if one or more of the player knights had some involvement with the kitchen/serving side of things that night (e.g. sidling off with a serving maid) and thus become a target for Brastias' "questioning" a few years later.

According to Geoffrey of Mommoth, the Saxons are responsible for the poisoning of the well (actually a spring), though the poison is not noted for being magical. The posion kills about a hundred men, too, though it isn't specficed if these are the barons of the realm.

I'm not sure where Greg got the poison being magical, though. Perhaps one of the French, Welsh, or German versions of the tale? Or maybe he just wanted a justification for the poison being 100% lethal, ensuring that all the great lords of the realm were killed, so that the anrachy peroid would be even more chaotic?


When I ran year 495 with Boy King, I did allow a PC to survive. He had a 23 CON and crticalled a CON roll, so I felt it didn't hurt the believability in the poisons effectiveness if he survived.

Just because the GPC says a poisoning was "magical" doesn't mean it really was - just that characters would believe it to be magical because it was so effective. Anytime anything is excessively sneaky or underhanded, knights could say "That could only have worked by magic!"

Certainly, there are some player knights with low Awareness that miss people sneaking up on them, who subsequently attribute the success of their opponents to foul sorcery!

Sir Brastias could be after the British traitors who presumably poisoned the wine on behalf of Saxon paymasters - it seems unlikely that any Saxons would have been let into the camp to carry out the task themselves after all.

While it is true that the "magica;
bit might just by how the characters view the situation, the way it is worded in the GPC has me believing that it is GM information we are reading there.

As far as a British traitor goes, according to Geoffrey of Mammoth's History of the Kings of Britain (what I believe to be the source of the poisoning), the culprits were Saxon spies disguised as beggars. The spies notices a particular spring that King Uther would drink from when he was ill, and poisoned it completely.

Tracking down the spies might make an interesting adventure. Some PCs could check out the poisoned well, ask some questions, find out about the beggars, and try to track them down, maybe even successfully. Geoffrey doesn't say much about events after the poisoning other than when the villainy was discovered the well was filled in with earth. So it is quite open for an adventure.

The only downside is that regardless of how the investigation goes, it ultimately doesn't make any difference. King Uther and all the nobles are still dead, and the spies are all small fry. I suppose the GM could put some Saxon chieftain behind the plot and allow the PCs to bring him to justice in order to provide some sense of closure, Dark Age style. Maybe even doing it in stages with the spies having some clue that does not incriminate the guilty party until years later.

This was a bit of a conundrum for me but a few events gave me an excuse to give some signs which foretold doom and in the end the most prestigious knight decided to eat with his men anyway. So they all survived.

I have seen it written that the poisoner was Saxon and simply got themselves a job in the kitchen, there is also a tale were Uther regularly used a watering hole to bathe and wash etc and they poisoned the hole.