Chapter 25 - Of Splendour Falls and Roleplaying

I am a roleplayer. 

It started when I was 12 in the early 90s with Dungeons and Dragons and now I spend my Wednesday evenings with friends rolling dice and pretending to be Vampires in a story one of them devised. One of my favourite games is Changeling The Dreaming by White Wolf Games and the title of the short story anthology to go with the game should be familuar to fans of Victorian Poetry.

The Splendour Falls comes from Alfred Tennyson's The Princess (1847). Inspired by a holiday he took in Ireland to visit fellow poet Aubrey Thomas de Vere, it makes up one of the many "songs" that interject the main narartive of the poem. 

The splendor falls on castle walls
    And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
    And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,
    And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O, sweet and far from cliff and scar
    The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugles; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

O love, they die in yon rich sky,
    They faint on hill or field or river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
    And grow forever and forever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

Sadly none of the stories in the collection are Victorian based (Changeling is game about Faeries set in Modern times) but this is a moment when two of my loves combine.

The book is long out of print but you can sill buy copies if you are a Faerie or Urband fantasy fan: US | UK

Also there is a Kickstarter for a new edition of the game. Check it out.