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Walking Widdershins |  |
This is sort of a double-purpose post. First, I just wanted to let everyone know that Gamecraft 2.0 is pretty much done (though it needs some playtesting yet), and that I’m working on the setting that I’m going to bundle with it, which I’m calling Wild Blue. Wild Blue is a setting that I initially explored in my NaNoWriMo novel (which I’ll try to get published eventually), and one I’ve been toying with in my head for a while. It has various influences, from traditional fantasy to western to high seas adventure. At any rate, one of the things that I’m going to include in the setting is a list of some common idioms of the Demesne (the name of the territory that the game takes place in).
Which brings me to my second reason for this post. An idiom that I’ve recently come up with for the setting is “walking widdershins”. Originally this term referred to a ceremony used to get into a Quick, a sort of pocket sub-reality that the Folk dwell in (more on the Folk in a later post, possibly). In that ceremony, you find the Folktree bonded to that Quick and you walk counter-clockwise–or widdershins–around it thirteen times. Upon completion of the thirteenth revolution, you step into the Quick. Now, I said that this was the original meaning of the idiom; common parlance has distorted it significantly. The train of thought goes that the only people who would want to get into a Quick would be those not in their right mind or the Folk, themselves (who are, according to the people of the Demesne, not in their right mind). Over time, the term “walking widdershins” came to mean that someone was not in their right mind, and is now used to describe anything from mild eccentricity to full-blown dementia, depending on context and tone. Usage: “I wouldn’t go up to Faircroft Manor. Lord Faircroft’s been walking widdershins since his wife died.”
