#maniculum

This week, we're joined by author M.T. Anderson as we dive into the thrilling tale of Nicked, the true story of a medieval heist to steal the holy body of Saint Nicholas and save Bari from plague. We take a step-by step approach to the heist and use it as an example for how you can adapt real relic thieves and heists into your TTRPGS & stories.

Check out Nicked here! Find MT Anderson's works on his website, here.

Transparency Statement: the Maniculum does not take sponsorships or paid promotions. We are excited to share Nicked with our audience because we loved the book and believe it is a perfect example of what we strive to do on the show: bring medieval tales into the modern day. We were gifted a copy of Nicked from Penguin Random House as part of the interview process.

Join our discord community! Check out our Tumblr for even more! Support us on patreon! Get your copy of Marginal Worlds, a deck of 50 magic items pulled directly from medieval manuscripts, built for any TTRPG system here!

Socials: Tumblr Website Bluesky Instagram Facebook

Citations & References:

Nicked, MT Anderson - at your local bookstore & Bookshop.org, a storefront for small bookstores - find it here!

Anderson, M. T. Nicked. Pantheon Books, 2024.

Anderson, M. T. Yvain: the Knight of the Lion. Illustrated by Andrea Offerman, Candlewick Press, 2017.

al-Jawbari, Jamal al-Din ‘Abd al-Rahim. The Book of Charlatans. Translated by Humphrey Davies, edited by Manuela Dengler. New York UP, 2020. Library of Arabic Literature 64.

Birrell, Anne, translator. The Classic of Mountains and Seas. Penguin, 2000.

Christopher of Mytilene, “To the Monk Andrew…” The Poems of Christopher of Mytilene and John Mauropous, edited and translated by Floris Bernard and Christopher Livanos, Harvard UP, 2018, pp. 240–51. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 50.

Einhard, “Translation of the Relics of Sts. Marcellinus and Peter.” Translated by Barrett Wendell, edited by David Appleby. Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, edited by Thomas Head, Garland Press, 1999, pp. 199–225.

Farley, David. An Irreverent Curiosity. Gotham Books, 2009.

Geary, Patrick J. Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages. Princeton UP, 1991.

Guibert of Nogent, “On Saints and their Relics.” Translated by Thomas Head. Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, edited by Head, Garland Press, 1999, pp. 405–27.

Kurtz, Katherine. Saint Camber. Ballantine Books, 1978. Vol. 5 of the Deryni novels.

Map, Walter. De Nugis Curialium / Courtiers’ Trifles. Edited and translated by M. R. James, revised by C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors, Clarendon Press, 1983.

Novik, Naomi. His Majesty's Dragon. Del Rey, 2006. Vol. 1 of Temeraire.

For spelling reference

Bari

Manzikert

Myra

myroblyte

Seljuk

Good details from Nicked we never got around to mentioning:

Appearance of the historical Norman Reverse Mullet

Myself and my co-host @maniculum have made a deck of 50 magic items pulled directly from medieval manuscripts that you can play in any TTRPG, and it's launching next week!

We've spent about a year translating, designing, play testing, and creating gorgeous art for this deck. All of it is done by hand and we have not and will not use AI on Marginal Worlds. These items are a love letter to the stories we love as academics and we as gamers want to play. So if you want to support the project, you can sign up here to back it on launch day:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/themaniculumpodcast/marginal-worlds-magic-item-expansion-pack?ref=a7esad

most of what i've learned about manuscripts and book history has been either during my degrees or from work (i have worked in various libraries including with special collections, although mostly with early printed books and later paper manuscripts in that capacity). and in terms of what it's like to interact with, i have learned this mostly from interacting with it, but if you don't have a library or museum near you that will enable you to do this, it's a bit harder. this makes it hard to give recommendations although there are lots of very good books out there about books and manuscript history

(there's one i read early on in my journeys with palaeography etc that went into loads of detail about different writing surfaces including wood and wax tablets and so on, but i cannot remember the title and past me did NOT write it down which was really unhelpful. if i remember it i'll post about it)

there are also a ton of online resources about manuscripts though. lots of museums have online guides to manuscript production, parchment, writing through history. there's lots of codicology stuff out there. so it's not like you have to learn it in a formal environment -- that's just where i learned it and therefore mostly from lectures rather than shareable resources

but to understand parchment specifically i think understanding the process of making it is a crucial step to understanding why it is the way it is (and why it's not paper). here's a couple of youtube videos that give an overview

this is a more detailed video about a project that got people to make parchment themselves which is just kinda interesting (haven't watched it all the way through but am watching parts):

once you understand how parchment is made and the resources that go into it, i think it's easier to understand why it probably wouldn't be used for ephemera and scraps, and that helps you think about situations where people might use something else -- e.g. a wax tablet to take hasty notes, send messages that don't need to be permanent, send messages that are emphatically not permanent (your recipient can melt it and hide the note), etc -- as well as beginning to rethink the modern world's reliance on the written word in general and consider how oral messages and other non-written communication might have been used

as for the tactile side of things, as i said in a previous post, if you can't touch book parchment, go find your local irish musicians and see if the bodhrán player will let you handle their drum (or good quality orchestral timpani will do too! but with a bigger drum it's harder to feel both sides of the skin). drumskins made of goatskin are very similar on a tactile level to parchment, just a little thicker and not processed to quite the same level as a writing surface. it helps you stop thinking of them as super fragile once you realise people are whacking them with a stick regularly, and you can learn about the difference between the hair side and the flesh side of the skin and stuff and see the way the hair leaves traces in the skin and so on. this helps with the tactile understanding

(the cheaper the bodhran, the rougher the reverse side will be even if the front is still nice and smooth, which also makes you realise the difference between high quality books where you can barely tell which side of the page is the hair side, and low quality ones where they're not fully treated, there's still hair, whatever)

i talked to a conservator lately who told me the way he got into book conservation was via musical instrument repair -- they are more similar than you would think -- and i know trad musicians scattered far and wide enough to be reasonably confident that even if you're in an area with no touchable medieval manuscripts, you can probably at some point find a drummer who will let you play with their bodhrán in exchange for a pint or something, lol

Hi everyone! I recently had the pleasure of working on a Kickstarter project with the talented Maniculum podcast. We created 50 tabletop items for you to use in your games. It's running until June 30th!

Sample item from our current kickstarter project, a deck of 50 system-neutral magic items for TTRPGs, inspired by medieval texts, marginalia, and archaeology.

This one in particular is based on the stylish hat sported by this fellow in the marginalia of the Rutland Psalter (folio 82v, specifically):

As a bonus, here is a sketch from the margins of the included GM's Guide, illustrating how to wear this hat with Confidence:

You can back the kickstarter at the link below; it runs until the end of June.

Both sides of a sample card from our current kickstarter project, a collection of 50 system-neutral magic items for TTRPGs, inspired by medieval literature, marginalia, and archaeology.

I'm sure many of you recognize this particular item, since Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not hugely obscure as medieval literature goes, especially after the movie with Dev Patel from a few years ago. (I'm making the possibly unwarranted assumption that most people reading this have a pre-existing interest in medieval literature.)

Those of you who are sufficiently familiar to have Opinions on it might question why our interpretation is particularly good at decapitation, since famously the Green Knight only requires that Gawain strike a blow, and it's Gawain's choice to decapitate him. For this I point you to the text:

Þe grene knyȝt vpon grounde grayþely hym dresses, A littel lut with þe hede, þe lere he discouerez, His longe louelych lokkez he layd ouer his croun, Let þe naked nec to þe note schewe.

When Gawain is preparing to strike the blow, the Green Knight intentionally positions himself to make his neck a target, going so far as to move his hair out of the way. He never says "cut off my head", but he implies that is the right course of action because he wants Gawain to make that choice.

So our version of the Axe of the Green Knight is enchanted to also encourage that behavior. It doesn't come with any sort of curse requiring that you receive any blow you strike with it after a year and a day, but if an ambitious GM thinks that would work in their campaign, they're welcome to toss that in of course.

Anyway, the kickstarter runs until the end of June, and you can back it here:

Happy Halloween! The demon has become a fantastic villain (or patron) in many TTRPGs, but their legalistic nature can sometimes feel overused. Join us this week as we analyze real accounts of medieval demons, how they behave, and how to get rid of them so that you can spice up your TTRPG this Halloween.

MOONSHOT NETWORK CHARITY STREAM: Streaming November 8-9 Watch the stream here: http://twitch.tv/moonshotnetwork Donate here: http://moonshotpods.com/donate

Join our discord community! Check out our Tumblr for even more! Support us on patreon!

Get your copy of Marginal Worlds, a deck of 50 magic items pulled directly from medieval manuscripts, built for any TTRPG system here!

Socials: Tumblr Website Bluesky Instagram Facebook

Citations & References:

Caesarius of Heisterbach. The Dialogue on Miracles. Translated by H. von E. Scott and C. C. Swinton Bland, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929. 2 vols. Broadway Medieval Library.

Kuang, R. F. Katabasis. Harper Voyager, 2025.

“A Rugrats Passover.” Rugrats. Nickelodeon, 13 April 1995.

Looking to craft your next dungeon delve for your campaign? Want a few puzzles your player have never seen before? We've found a few medieval tales with tantalizing puzzles and twisting dungeons, ready to be used in your next TTRPG. Sit back as we do the work to show you how to adapt these dungeons into your game.

Join our discord community!

Check out our Tumblr for even more!

Support us on patreon!

Get your copy of Marginal Worlds, a deck of 50 magic items pulled directly from medieval manuscripts, built for any TTRPG system here!

Socials: Tumblr Website Bluesky Instagram Facebook

Citations & References

Read the Gesta Romanorum here

Francis Carmody. Physiologus, The Very Ancient Book of Beasts, Plants and Stones. San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1953. Read an online version here.

Neri, Elisabetta, et al. “Unveiling the Paint Stratigraphy and Technique of Roman African Polychrome Statues.” Archaeological & Anthropological Sciences, vol. 14, no. 6, 2022, pp. 1–11.

Dull, Robert A., et al. “The Columbian Encounter and the Little Ice Age: Abrupt Land Use Change, Fire, and Greenhouse Forcing.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 100, no. 4, 2010, pp. 755-71.

Faust, Franz X., et al. “Evidence for the Postconquest Demographic Collapse of the Americas in Historical CO2 Levels.” Earth Interactions, vol. 10, 2006.

Kopczynski, Noémie, et al. “Polychromy in Africa Proconsularis: Investigating Roman Statues using X-Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy." Antiquity, vol. 91, no. 355, 2017, pp. 139-54.

Notes

Additional music for this episode from freesound.org; created by, in order of appearance: liezen3, Merrick079, holizna.