Your players are faced with an ancient Sumerian curse! However, since the early ancient Sumerian language was only used for recording tax debts, it turns out to actually be an ancient Sumerian bill.
and therefore they need to get hold of some ancient Sumerian coinage and bring it to the ruins of the ancient Sumerian tax office, because the Sumerians had a pleasingly direct way of preventing tax evasion, namely horrifying curses.
well I don’t have any coin but I have these copper ingots, lovely copper ingots, from a very reputable merchant, never heard a word said against him, very thorough with his paperwork, anyway they’re guaranteed pure copper and proper weight, so can I pay my tax with those?
I just want everyone to take a step back for a second and really think about how we’re using the most powerful knowledge tool in history to make jokes about a specific dude who lived almost 4000 years ago.
the grass in the original shrek movie is not grass. its hair. they used hair textures for the grass bc the actual grass for some reason in their computer modelling programs would not behave like grass so they used hair textures colored green.
elvis presley was a registered DEA officer who asked nixon for the title and was awarded it.
What else?
the great escape artist houdini was living in a time period where mysticism, fortune telling, ouija boards, seances and etc were becoming very common place and trendy. and he fucking hated it so much. so much that he would go to seances in disguise and make some bullshit off the wall shit like “my son died last year can you let me talk to him” and the seance person would be like ‘THIS IS YOUR SON HELLO FATHER’ then he’d rip off his disguise and be like YOU FRAUD I HAVE NO CHILDREN.
He died on Halloween night in detroit and as far as i know every year they hold seances on halloween trying to get in contact with his spirit. If seances work i bet his ghost is just pissed off and not responding out of raw spite.
foxes cant snarl like dogs and wolves cus the muscles in their muzzle dont allowe it so they just drop their jaws and scream.
if you were to eat the liver of a polar bear you would succumb to vitamin A poisoning
Graham crackers started off as anti masturbatory aids, Coca-Cola was intended to be a medicine.
Mr. John Harvey Kellogg invented corn flakes as a measure to stave off masturbation and was huge into the anti-masturbatory movement, which he believed caused health problems.
also in the same vein as houdini shit: he commissioned H.P. Lovecraft to write a piece discrediting mysticism and it fucking exists. He, the fantastic magician, commissioned the fuckn horror fantasy writer to dunk on mysticism. I cannot get over this for any span of time it comes back to slap me each day.
also H.P. Lovecraft was deathly afraid of fish, and was a self-described
So every year my school has a trip for all the band and choir kids, and this year, we’re going to Washington DC. While we’re there, we’re going to go to Medieval Times. Now, I loved going to Medieval Times as a kid. It was my favorite place. But recently, it has come to my attention that they only employ males as Knights or Squires. They claim that it’s okay because they’re only being historically accurate, even though there were famous female Knights. There was even an entire order of knights that consisted only of females.
You may be thinking, “why does this matter?” Growing up, I never really fit into society’s gender norms. At my first Halloween party, everyone there was dressed as a princess, or a fairy, or a fairy princess, but I showed up as a pirate. Medieval Times was a place where I would imagine myself in the shoes (or more accurately, armor) of a knight, but even then I was always told that I should buy the tiara or the light up rose rather than a sword and a shield. That I should act like a princess rather than a knight. And it weighed on me. I would think that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t act like little girls “should”. I don’t want any little kid to feel the same way I did. I want a little girl to be able to go to Medieval Times and imagine herself as a knight, and have that be validated rather than shut down.
So I’m asking for your help with any information on female Knights (source texts and things I can bring with me) or any stories of your own. I plan on talking to the managers of the “castle” there and trying to get them on our side. Maybe they’ll pass our stories along and soon enough Knights of any gender identity can battle in the tournaments.
Yes, that is a lot of European examples, but you asked specifically for Knights. You may find it easy to expand upon the list from there for other examples.
i need feminism because when jesus does a magic trick it’s a goddamn miracle but when a woman does a magic trick she gets burned at the stake
fabulous
i mean they did also kill jesus. that was a pretty significant thing that happened. like i understand where you’re coming from here but they very much did kill jesus.
Otto I. “The Great” undertook an intense diplomatic effort to improve the relationship with the Byzantine empire. One of these measures was to marry his son Otto II. with a Byzantine princess. After several failed attempts, he managed to convince Constantinople to send a bride. The girl who arrived in Germany was apparently a disappointment: Instead of the deceased Byzantine emperor Romanos II.’s daughter, a niece of his ousted predecessor was sent to Germany. Some advisors told him to send her back, but Otto I. decided to marry her anyway with his son, probably to avoid more diplomatic trouble.
In April 24, 972, the wedding took place. In this document, after a theological introduction, the political circumstances of the marriage are mentioned. After that, legal affairs are regulated. The empress obtained imperial rights for several provinces and courtyards scattered from Italy to today’s Netherlands, and income from these territories.
The parchment is soaked with a purple-red pigment mixture from lead red and madder root. The golden pigment of the ink is a pulverized alloy of silver and gold. It is largely written in calligraphic minuscles. The OTTO monograms near the bottom are very well recognizable, and by reading closely, you may actually find Theophanu’s name.
Theophanu apparently took a very active role during the reign of her husband, as many documents carrying her name prove. When he suddenly died, she took over the regency for her only five year old son, together with her mother-in-law until her death in 991.
The very well preserved 144.5 by 39.5 cm large document was forgotten in the library of the Gandersheim monastery for centuries. It was rediscovered around 1700; its importance was recognized by mathematician and scholar Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. It is now on permanent public display in a darkened room under optimal air-conditioning at the State Library of Lower Saxony in Wolfenbüttel.
Just realise I’ve must have been walking by it a lot during my childhood. I went to the library in Wolfenbuettel a lot as a kid.
*academic growling* The first half of this is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.
Otto I wasn’t trying to improve relations with Byzantium. He was actively invading and trying to take their Western European holdings! Otto I had only recently named his kingdom an empire and wanted to *legitimatize* being able to call his digs the Roman Empire by getting his Heir a bride from the actual remaining Roman Empire. That’s it. That was his plan. He started trying to achieve this goal in 967, but the current-Emperor of Constantinople said Nope because Otto I was in the middle of trying to steal their shit.
Part of the reason Constantinople (NOT BYZANTIUM, NOT THEN) later agreed was a fucking negotiation: Otto I would get a princess of Constantinople for his son if he agreed to leave Constantinople’s shit in Western Europe and Italy the entire hell alone. Otto I agreed, and the (new) Emperor of Constantinople sent one of his nieces by marriage. This pissed Otto off, since he was expecting a daughter of the Emperor, but that’s what the stupid fuck Otto I got for not encouraging proper Latin reading and education–the contracted agreement stipulated that the bride would be a niece or a granddaughter of the Emperor, not a daughter.
Theophanu was NOT SENT TO GERMANY, AND SHE WAS NOT A DISAPPOINTMENT (except in the perceived political snubbing sense). Also important: Otto I is infamous for not giving a single fuck what his noble advisors thought about Otto’s doings unless those advisors were his self-appointed men of the Church, which yes, he also appointed the Pope.
The Church was entirely down with the marriage considering where this marriage took place:
Theophanu was sent directly to motherfucking ROME in the company of a guard, a LOT of treasure, silks and riches (that the Germans had no concept of at the time and considered a sinful excess), a massive entourage, and a LOT of other shiny things to show off that Constantinople and Theophanu were complete badasses and this pathetic excuse for a western Roman Empire best recognize it right now.
Otto I was smart enough to realize that, daughter or niece, the marriage would still accomplish what he wanted. Otto II and Theophanu were married that same month in Rome in St. Peter’s Basilica, and Theophanu was crowned Empress Regent with Co-Emperor Otto II by the Pope the very same day. And it was 14th April, not 24th. Seriously. Research. Do it. The date is ON THE CONTRACT.
Seriously, what the fuck, who wrote this original summary? The only thing correct are the details about how the contract was made!
Theophanu was not the daughter of Romanos II. (People often make this mistake because Romanos II was married to a different Theophano.) Romanos II had also been DEAD since 963, well before the original bride-negotiation attempts began. Theophanu was the niece-by-marriage of Emperor
Iōánnēs I Tzimiskēs, and most likely the daughter of Constantine Skleros and Sophia Phokaina, who was the cousin of the Emperor; Sophia was the daughter of the brother of Emperor Nikephoros II, who was the dude
Tzimiskēs
had just deposed via handy assassination. (Nikephoros was Tzimiskes’ maternal uncle.Yep, family killing family, time-honored tradition among Roman Emperors.)
That was not Theodora gaining those income rights, by the way. That was CONSTANTINOPLE keeping their property. Theodora was Empress Consort and because the Kingdom of the Romans was a bag of dicks, they did not really recognize noble women in positions of authority unless those women were badass enough to stand up and give them no choice–like Theophanu, Greek and Armenian woman who was not about to put up with that nonsense for very long. (Otherwise you pretty much had to be an Abbess, which is why you’ll find that so many widowed queens and high-ranking nobility became an Abbess after their husbands cacked it. It was a way to retain authority that was recognized by the Church.)
It was not during her husband’s reign that Theophanu was an active and powerful badass–the Saxons and Franks would have thrown a complete hissy fit and seen it as attempts to weaken and undermine her husband the Emperor. Besides, Otto II and Theophanu were only married for about ten years, and she spent a great deal of that time having their five children. (Otto III’s twin sister died before baptism, unfortunately, so we don’t even know her name.)
Theophanu is famous(and later infamous) for earning the respect of her entire new Empire after her young husband unexpectedly dropped dead of malaria. This could have destroyed the Empire. So, instead of being a mere little Regent while Otto III was a kid, Theophanu took the reins and ruled so well that she was readily recognized by the nobility and the Church as Imperatrix Augusta. EMPRESS. Not Empress Consort. Not Empress Regent. EMPRESS. The only other woman to be recognized as Empress in full during that period was Otto I’s third wife Adelheid, who he insisted be named Empress along with himself when he made Rome name himself and his wife Roman Emperor and Empress after he saved Rome’s ass. (Then Rome tried to take it back. That Pope did not last very long.)
Otto III was not five years old at his father’s death. He was three. Dowager Empress Adelheid had no regency over her grandson until after Theophanu’s unexpected death at age 34, when Otto III was eleven.
Oh, and that peace agreement? Otto I and Otto II both went immediately back to trying to conquer all of southern Italy to take away Constantinople’s holdings. It wasn’t until *after* Otto II died that Theophanu negotiated and maintained peace with Constantinople so that the two Empires weren’t at each other’s throats all the time. It was her polical savvy, diplomacy, and negotiations that strengthened the entire Western Roman Empire. Hers. Not any of the Ottonians. Her. She did it.
Imperatrix Augusta Theophanu Skleraina.
Oh, and there are much better views of the marriage contractso you don’t have to deal with Tumblr’s shrinking of images:
he just…. crammed from textbooks to learn how to do the things he was supposed to know
During Demara’s impersonation as Brother John Payne of the Christian Brothers of Instruction (also known as Brothers of Christian Instruction), Demara decided to make the religious teaching order more prominent by founding a college in Alfred, Maine. Demara proceeded on his own, and actually got the college chartered by the state. He then promptly left the religious order in 1951, when the Christian Brothers of Instruction offended him by not naming him as rector or chancellor of the new college and chose what Demara considered to be a terrible name for the college.[5]:115–119 The college Demara founded, LaMennais College in Alfred, Maine, began in 1951 (when Demara left); in 1959 it moved to Canton, Ohio, and in 1960, became Walsh College (now Walsh University).
whfsdf
do students at that university, like, know? they must, right?
He described his own motivation as “Rascality, pure rascality”.
i am… in awe.
this was an extremely powerful man
Demara told his biographer he was successful in his roles because he was able to fit into positions which no one else had previously occupied. Demara explained it in the following excerpt from his biography:
’(Demara) had come to two beliefs. One was that in any organization there is always a lot of loose, unused power lying about which can be picked up without alienating anyone. The second rule is, if you want power and want to expand, never encroach on anyone else’s domain; open up new ones…’
Demara referred to it as ‘expanding into the power vacuum,’ and described as such; ‘if you come into a new situation (there’s a nice word for it) don’t join some other professor’s committee and try to make your mark by moving up in that committee. You’ll, one, have a long haul and two, make an enemy.’ Demara’s technique was to find his own committee. ‘That way there’s no competition, no past standards to measure you by. How can anyone tell you aren’t running a top outfit? And then there’s no past laws or rules or precedents to hold you down or limit you. Make your own rules and interpretations. Nothing like it. Remember it, expand into the power vacuum!’[5]:
aka, I love this woman So Fucking Much and you should too.
She was born in Aquitaine (southern France) in 1122 and her grandfather was Duke William IX of Aquitaine, also known as the Troubadour, because he wrote a lot of (often highly risque) songs. Eleanor was raised in the liberal south of France, along with her younger sister Petronilla, and when her father died, she was fifteen years old and became sole heiress to Aquitaine, the largest and wealthiest province of France. So her guardian, Louis VI (aka Louis the Fat) quickly married her off to his son, Louis VII, who was two years older.
Eleanor’s time as Queen of France was… eventful to say the least. She was used to the south of France, which along with the different language (langue d’oil was northern French, langue d’oc was southern French) was far less buttoned up and starchy than the Very Proper and Boring French court. Louis adored her, but his advisors disapproved of him listening to her on things (which was a shame, because Louis usually screwed them up, bless his heart). Eleanor liked to have fun and also sex, which Louis pretty much did not (she later complained that she had married a monk, not a king – Louis was intended for a career in the church before his older brother died, making him heir, and never kicked the habit). She fought quite a bit with Bernard of Clairvaux, one of Louis’ most influential churchmen, and it took until 1145 for Louis and Eleanor to have their first child – a daughter named Marie. This was No Bueno since they obviously needed a son. The Capetian dynasty were kings, but they were generally the least powerful overlords in the country, and their power was limited outside Paris and the surrounding area. Eleanor was very much someone who was all over the scandalous tabloids and gossip mills of her day, and her behavior was generally considered too outrageous for a queen. She was known as one of the most beautiful women in Europe and did whatever tf she wanted, causing massive heart attacks among the churchmen. Her sister Petronilla also fell in love with a French nobleman, the already-married Raoul of Vermandois, and they ran off to get married, which caused a huge scandal for Louis.
Anyway, the Second Crusade was called, Louis decided to go, and Eleanor decided she was coming too. They packed up and fucked off to the Holy Land, where a lot of things went wrong, for which Eleanor was promptly blamed. She was also accused of having an affair with her uncle Raymond, prince of Antioch, who was a) handsome b) accomplished and c) a hell of a lot more interesting than milquetoast Louis. They probably didn’t actually sleep together, but they at least flirted (Eleanor had never known him as a child) and this of course was Extra Shocking because crusade and holy war and as a result, women were barred from going on the next crusade (of which Eleanor’s son would be one of the major leaders) because Eleanor was considered to be such a bad example.
Anyway, Louis screwed the pooch, the siege of Damascus was a disaster, and the crusade broke up in general and humiliating failure, as did Louis and Eleanor’s marriage. They returned separately to France, Eleanor had a lot more adventures on the way, and the Pope tried to reconcile them, which resulted in the birth of a second child. Unfortunately, this was also a daughter, Alix. This was just about the last straw, and divorce proceedings were initiated.
Around this time (1150), the eighteen-year-old Henry, son of Empress Matilda and Geoffrey of Anjou, came to Paris with his father. Geoffrey of Anjou was legendarily good-lookin’ (his nickname was Geoffrey le Bel or the Handsome) so naturally, rumors quickly got around that Eleanor had slept with him. She also turned his son Henry’s head while she was at it, despite being 12 years older than him. Six weeks after she divorced Louis, she married Henry (1152) and two years later, at the death of King Stephen, Henry became king of England. (His mother Matilda, also a formidable woman, had been fighting her cousin Stephen for the throne for nineteen years, and the settlement dictated that Matilda’s son became king after Stephen died). Henry was also duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, count of Anjou and Maine, and would add more titles as he went.
In short, Eleanor was now the queen/duchess/countess of most of western Europe, she’d married Louis’ bitter rival who commenced one-upping him at every opportunity, and to salt the wound, she and Henry promptly had a buttload of kids, including four sons in six years – William, Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey – and three daughters. (The unlucky John wasn’t born until 1166 when they were already estranged). Only William died in infancy, and Eleanor was busy with childbearing and less involved in politics during the early years of Henry’s reign. However, her sons grew up, and she and Henry – two very stubborn, passionate, strong-willed, intelligent people – fought quite a bit, especially over the infamous Thomas Becket affair (Eleanor had been against appointing him as archbishop of Canterbury, Henry didn’t listen, and it Backfired.) Henry was a notorious philanderer who had never been faithful to her and had a lot of mistresses, tried to divorce her at a few opportunities and take her lands, and Eleanor wasn’t having that. So around 1172-1173, she encouraged her teenage sons, Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey, to go to war against their father, who they resented because he kept promising them their inheritance and never giving them anything. (The Angevins are sometimes called the “devil’s brood,” as they were supposedly descended from the Devil’s daughter Melusine – a story that Richard in particular loved – and nobody who met these red-haired, hot-tempered, ambitious, totally unstoppable people probably doubted it). There were rumors that Eleanor had poisoned Henry’s favorite mistress, Rosamund Clifford, among other things. So it was generally a clusterfuck.
Meanwhile, Eleanor had MORE adventures, disguised herself as a man at a few points, and finally caused enough of a pain that Henry captured her and shut her up in jail for sixteen years, in Salisbury and Winchester. Eleanor patiently waited this out, and then when Henry died, having fought his sons to the end, Richard became king. He and Eleanor were very close and he had always been her favorite son, so he let her out of jail at once and she became the de facto regent (and later the actual regent) of England as he prepared to go on crusade. Mind you, at this point, she was almost seventy years old.
Eleanor then went to Spain to fetch Richard’s intended wife, Berengaria of Navarre, took her to Richard in Sicily, stayed there exactly four days, then went back to England to break up domestic squabbles that had already started in the king’s absence. En route, she went to Rome and visited the Pope, got home and stayed an active player in politics while Richard was abroad (which included thwarting John and Philip II of France, both of whom hated Richard for different reasons; Philip was Louis’ son by his third marriage). Then when Richard got captured on his return from crusade, Eleanor personally oversaw the raising of his ransom – 100,000 marks of silver, a huge amount of money – and traveled with it to Germany. She was now seventy-two. Retirement is for losers.
Eleanor stayed the effective queen of England during the rest of Richard’s reign, and he died in her arms, having contracted gangrene from an infected wound, in 1199. She immediately manipulated and pulled out the stops to support her youngest son John becoming king after that, though they had always had a difficult relationship. She once more went to Spain (this case Castile) to get her granddaughter to marry Philip’s son, Louis VIII, as part of a peace agreement; this was supposed to be Urraca of Castile, but Eleanor, aged seventy-eight, decided on her sister Blanche instead. She got trapped by her grandson, Arthur of Brittany (son of her late middle son Geoffrey, who thought he should be king instead of John) at the siege of Mirabeau in 1202, and kept him distracted (aged eighty) until John got there to break the siege and free her.
Eleanor finally retired to Fontevraud Abbey and died in 1204, aged eighty-two, just a few weeks before John famously lost Normandy to Philip II. To the end, she was a badass, a patron of literature, a woman who gave No Fucks and did what she pleased, who famously enjoyed sex, who was beautiful, accomplished, independent, defied two husbands and outlived them both, had ten children, saw three of them (Young Henry was crowned co-king in 1170 and died in 1183, before his father’s death; plus Richard and John) become king of England, outwitted popes and emperors, shocked the church enough that they tried prohibiting women on future crusades, and served as one of Richard and then later John’s most effective political operators at the age of seventy-plus. She was queen of almost all of Western Europe at one point or another, and she made no secret of enjoying that fact (she foiled a bunch of Henry’s various plots to get rid of her that would have involved any demotion in rank).
She was in short, Completely Fucking Awesome, and in this house we love and respect her always.
Steel Phoenix Studios 
