What’s a “Ruscumag” anyway?

A question that’s long overdue: what exactly is the “ruscumag” that’s part of your blog’s URL?

-Alzrius

Well, that will take a little digging, so bear with me…

Once they stretched across continents. Not Forests, but THE Forest. Trackless. Primeval, Unknown.

And in hidden places, where subtle vortexes of primordial energies and vagaries of geography have kept patches of forest relatively undisturbed across the ages, THE Forest remains.

Preserved within those vortexes, fed and given form by the burgeoning ancient life of the trees, are realms of history and imagination merged, mythic time and space, archetypal places governed by tales and magic. Within those realms you may find ancient peoples, beasts long extinct, and tales in a thousand forms to draw you into their narratives whether you like it or not. Within a few weeks outside, in a patch of woods a half a mile across, you may spend decades exploring thousands of square miles of hidden realms, lakes, and mighty rivers – sometimes even traveling through time and space or perhaps emerging from another patch of ancient forest entirely. Perhaps you will reclaim those lost years when you emerge, perhaps not.

All Forests One Forest.

Before Will, and Word, and Spirit, before the Gods walked… Sympathy, Contagion, and Similarity WERE,

Old, OLD, Magic.

Occasional myths and tales given form – Mythagos, whether manlike or monstrous – may emerge from the hidden realms as well, called forth by the dreams of men living beyond it’s borders – but beyond their realm, things such as the Wild Hunt, the Great Predators, and the Dark Cults will fade away into nothingness in a few weeks unless they return to the sheltering trees. Still, the borders of the Primordial Forest are an uneasy and perilous place, no matter how modern science seeks to explain what it is that walks in the darkness and then vanishes without a trace.

At the deepest? Past Witches and Warlocks, Past Arthur and his Knights, beyond the Fomori and the Nature Spirits, you will find the youth of the race. Delve deeply enough, and encounter the shamanic masters of fire, who first tamed it to the will of men, the lightning-hurling reflections of the homids who created bows, and spears, and throwing stones. Beyond them? A place that men find almost impossible to reach. The realms of innocence before the rise of mind, the ancient ice, the ages of beasts, the deep realms of the dragon lords, the green world before more than insects had emerged from the seas, and – at the last – the most ancient seas of a young earth. Perhaps fortunately… few indeed are the undisturbed patches of woods large enough to contain such depths. Even in this fantastic realm… there are limits.

Ryhope Wood – the centerpiece of the setting for Robert Holdstock’s Mythago and it’s sequels and prequels – only covers about three square miles, so it doesn’t go back much past the last ice age, but that’s still a rather long ways.

Within that novel the Urscumag Mythago – or on a couple of occasions (at least in the edition I happen to own) the Ruscumag – was both a guardian of the forest and a subtle and dangerous guide to the magical realms within.

Personally, I found the original book, and later the series, to be quite good. While the basic premise of an ancient place that served as a gateway to a mythic realm. of tales that play out again and again within that realm, and of masks – both literal and figurative – which give form to the formless forces of magic at play there, are not especially new, they’re well handled here, the books have interesting depths, and the tale offered up more than a few elements that suggested stuff for games, When I was setting up this blog, and found that the first few names I tried were already taken, I decided to go with something more obscure – and that the Urscumag / Ruscumag made a reasonable good game master metaphor. So I tried it with the Ruscumag spelling which I happened to like better. And thus Ruscumag.Wordpress.Com. The fact that the “Ruscumag” spelling turned out to be an obscure typographical error within a 1986 paperback printing left the origin of the word next to impossible for anyone else to find, but was at least unique.

That may not be terribly important, but I suppose that “why is this blog called something so odd” is worth clearing up – and since you have asked, I hope that help clarify things!