felis_ultharus (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
felis_ultharus) wrote2005-02-10 06:42 pm
felis_ultharus) wrote2005-02-10 06:42 pm
Lions
Hey. Just a little heads up for my D&D group -- I'm so sick today that my boss actually ordered me to go home. I think I ran a fever, I feel quite dizzy, and my voice is fading in and out. I doubt I'll be recovered enough to DM, so I'm cancelling the game for the week. Sorry about that.
Adventures will resume regularly next week.
Since I didn't work today, I've been making my way slowly through my required readings. I have to say the "Knight with the Lion" (written in the 12th century by Chrétien de Troyes) is hilarious. It's like a nature program. I'm learning all sorts of fun facts about the species of lion native to Brittany, France.
For instance, dragons tend to prey on them, which explains why the Breton lions are now extinct. Breton lions are not only capable of bowing, but understand the rules of chivalry. Their claws can cut effortlessly through chainmail, and they can take down a half-demon in a single pounce. More surprisingly, Breton lions are prone to suicide if their liege lord dies:
The lion stops just in time. Yvain never notices, and goes on to lament his lost lady love.
Adventures will resume regularly next week.
Since I didn't work today, I've been making my way slowly through my required readings. I have to say the "Knight with the Lion" (written in the 12th century by Chrétien de Troyes) is hilarious. It's like a nature program. I'm learning all sorts of fun facts about the species of lion native to Brittany, France.
For instance, dragons tend to prey on them, which explains why the Breton lions are now extinct. Breton lions are not only capable of bowing, but understand the rules of chivalry. Their claws can cut effortlessly through chainmail, and they can take down a half-demon in a single pounce. More surprisingly, Breton lions are prone to suicide if their liege lord dies:
"There my lord Yvain almost lost his wits a second time, as he approached the spring, with its stone and the chapel that stood close by. So great was his distress that a thousand times he sighed "alas!" and grieving fell in a swoon; and the point of his sharp sword, falling from its scabbard, pierced the meshes of his hauberk [chainmail] right in the neck beside the cheek.
There is not a mesh that does not spread, and the sword cuts the flesh of his neck beneath the shining mail, so that it causes the blood to start.
Then the lion thinks that he sees his master and companion dead. You never heard greater grief narrated or told about anything than he now began to show. He casts himself about, and scratches and cries, and has the wish to kill himself with the sword with which he thinks his master has killed himself.
Taking the sword from him with his teeth he lays it on a fallen tree, and steadies it on a trunk behind, so that it will not slip or give way, when he hurls his breast against it, His intention was nearly accomplished when his master recovered from his swoon, and the lion restrained himself as he was blindly rushing upon death, like a wild boar heedless of where he wounds himself."
The lion stops just in time. Yvain never notices, and goes on to lament his lost lady love.