Large swathes of evidence about the Picts are gone; either lost to time, fully degraded, or destroyed. While we can’t recover them, we can build curiosity in current research and inspire renewed fervour for what still lies buried.
Carved in Stone is a guide to early medieval1 Pictland2 that Kickstarted in 2021. I was very excited to back and pick this up because the peripheries of Arthur’s Britain are only hurriedly sketched out in Pendragon and its supplements3. The attention to the textures of the world - the small things, material cultures, atmosphere of the different environments is also a great model for things I’d like to think about across the entirity of the game map4.
Footnotes
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The specific date they ground it in is 690 - a couple hundred years later than our target. Because of the accelerated timeline we’re running on, that’s not such a huge gap for when people will actually be in the area. ↩
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i.e. Scotland, now quite in contest-and-dialogue between the Irish settlers called Scotti, the older Picts and several other groups. ↩
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This would be covered by Beyond the Wall (and some minor adventures or sidenotes about things happening there in other books), which… there’s useable stuff in there and good inspiration for how Pictish things may fit into the broader storylines, but it’s not exactly the deepest sourcebook. ↩
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And which are at least a start for some similar areas. ↩