One of the unexpected side effects of researching a supplement for a roleplaying game set in the area where I am currently living is discovering a huge amount of local history that I did not know.

Like, that a local chap was mentioned in the Divine Comedy (the Medieval poem, not the band).
Or that a local castle was owned by the Countess of Castiglione, lover of a number of kings (including Napoleon the Third), spy and courtesan, striking 19th century beauty and allegedly a practitioner of the dark arts that used the “Liber Potestate”, a popular grimoire.
Which is quite good, considering the supplement I am writing is for a horror game.
And then no end of battles, of strange brotherhoods (and even an “arch-brotherhood”) and other weirdness, and of castles that were razed and disappeared, including one that was supposedly about 300 yards from where I am sitting. Quite interesting.

Anyway, we are now at 15.000 words on the sourcebook project, and we still have a lot of work to do.

This is how I’ll spend my Easter weekend.