Celtic witchcraft lineage refers to the historical and ancestral roots of witchcraft practices within the Celtic culture. The Celts, a group of tribal societies that originated in the Iron Age and later spread across Europe, have a rich history of magical traditions and beliefs deeply intertwined with nature and the spirit world. The Celtic people revered the natural world and believed in the existence of spirits, deities, and other supernatural forces. This deep connection with nature formed the basis of their magical practices, which revolved around harnessing the power of the elements, the spirits of the land, and the cycles of the seasons. Celtic witchcraft lineage is passed down through generations, often within family or community circles. This lineage is not only about learning spells and rituals but also about understanding and respecting the ancient wisdom and spiritual traditions of the Celtic people.
The lower right part of the screen is reserved for the NPCs that materialize from thin air and start talking to, like this person. The manual suggests that NPCs will get annoyed if you don’t answer them quickly enough, though when I was fumbling through the controls, they didn’t get hostile and start attacking me. They were probably as confused as I was. BTW, indoor areas looked like the above and consisted of only one floor — no super deep dungeons or multi-floor towers. Just seemingly empty rooms until NPCs materialize out of thin air.
If you can see a creature within range and are able to see its original location though it need not be in range , the target must make a Charisma saving throw or be teleported back to its point of origin where it began its current turn. If the creature returns to their normal form while in a space too small for them such as a mouse hole, sewer pipe, or the like , they take 4d6 force damage and are pushed to the nearest space big enough to hold them within 50 feet.
This lineage is not only about learning spells and rituals but also about understanding and respecting the ancient wisdom and spiritual traditions of the Celtic people. Celtic witches, also known as Druids or Wise Ones, were believed to possess the ability to commune with the spirit world, foretell the future, and perform acts of healing and protection. They utilized various tools and symbols in their practices, such as cauldrons, wands, and Celtic knots, to channel their magic.
Let’s parlay with NPCs from the past – Swords of Twilight
The manual boasted an experience like none other in experiencing an intuitive world of mystery and adventure.
Free Fall Associates was a third-party developer for a then-fledgling Electronic Arts who published their well-known and remembered classic, Archon, in 1983. Founded by husband and wife team, John Freeman and Anne Westfall (the name of the company is a portmanteau of their last names), Free Fall also came up with a murder mystery game, Murder on the Zinderneuf, which also came out in 1983. And they also came out with a sequel to Archon in 1984.
But they also worked for three years on their own RPG called Swords of Twilight released solely on the Amiga in 1989. As noted by CGW’s November ’89 issue as a Christmas gift pick, both developers felt that the current trends for fantasy RPGs at the time seemed “clunky” and with the Amiga’s horsepower, could cross that divide between feeling as if the game were rolling dice versus delivering a more “lifelike” experience for the players.
The title screen had some great music with a pic of the swords and the Queen of Albion in the top bar.
My feeling is that “clunky” was their way of saying “crunchy with statistics” riveting together most every CRPG then as now. This is an important distinction because, as one of several ways to distinguish itself from its peers, Swords of Twilight doesn’t have any.
You don’t even get to create your own characters. Players instead pick from a stable of pre-mades classified under one of three different categories — knight, champion, or mage. Mages themselves also follow one of three different schools of magic defining their arsenal: Goety, Witchcraft, Wizardry, Enchantment, and Sorcery…each with its own unique focus such as Enchantment’s role as supportive (buffs and debuffs) magic. And each character out of the 31 total have their own pre-determined starting levels and AI quirks described not in numbers or percentages, but as descriptions.
Your party consisted only of three spots — all three could be controlled by players sharing parts of the keyboard and a joystick — or you could play the game solo with the AI handling the other two.
The manual is thick on detail but anemic when it comes to explaining just why you and your team are heading out into the world. Swords is one of those games that slowly develops its story in-game along with the main goal with as little background as possible. Most of the text in the manual is devoted on describing the mechanics of how to play the game as opposed to providing any flavor for the environment the game actually takes place in, a stark difference from other CRPGs that spent a welcome part of their packaging immersing players such as the Ultima series’ approach with cloth maps and booklets.
Eventually players discover that the “Swords” in the title are powerful weapons that were used to protect worlds along the “Rainbow Road” linking them together. Evil Shadowlords have crept up the Rainbow Road, taking over other worlds and spreading their darkness, but it is these swords that are also their greatest weakness with each proving to be the bane of a specific baddie. You start on Albion, a medieval world suddenly without magic, and whose queen puts you on the path to solving one or two simple quests before our heroes discover the threat of the Shadowlords.
Time to meet the queen. Instead of random encounters for combat, you get random encounters for talking. People just appear out of thin air and engage your party.
The AI can autopilot through conversations if you let it, but at the same time, you can’t really give orders to the other two members of your party which can make some things annoying to deal with. Like the bad pathfinding when someone just wanders wherever. Time to break out a notebook!
Levels aren’t earned by grinding through combat. In fact, there’s hardly any of it in the game unless you initiate it by changing your disposition to “hostile” (which also affects how you talk to other NPCs), holding down the trigger button, and then start whaling on another character. By hitting CAPS LOCK, mages can go into a “trance” to cast spells whose names are typed out.
Most combat in the game involves not getting NPCs too angry at you while talking, though it’s apparently impossible to avoid entirely as the Shadowlords have to be dealt with in a more direct fashion. Instead, players are rewarded for succeeding in their quests (the “great deeds” the manual talks about) and may go up in rank in their respective professions. For mages, this means being able to cast higher level spells and more of the same as long as they don’t tire themselves out.
Fatigue and getting hungry are also part of the experience. Exploring without rest, or eating, can tire characters slowing them down while exploring. Sleeping out in the open can also subject them to unexpected dangers, though if they’re nice enough, they might be offered to stay indoors at a nearby building by the inhabitants guaranteeing both a meal and a peaceful sleep.
It’s time to explore the world outside the castle. Albion is rich and lush with life (but no magic). But there are also a world or two that look like they’ve been blasted back to the stone age (but where magic does work). There’s also a day and night cycle and you’ll be prompted to camp when night falls and post a watch. Or be brave and sleep under the stars with no one watching your back.
One of the game’s biggest boasts was that it was a multiplayer game allowing three players to control the three characters making up your party. If you didn’t have enough people, you could assign control to the computer for whoever was missing.
The manual described the attitudes of each character and, depending on what you do in the game, each character has their own distinct ‘personality’ reflected in their disposition towards NPCs, in it’s simplistic combat, or how well they follow behind you. Players hoping for a more diplomatic game might not do well with AI controlled characters that don’t say a whole lot because of who they are.
The lower right part of the screen is reserved for the NPCs that materialize from thin air and start talking to, like this person. The manual suggests that NPCs will get annoyed if you don’t answer them quickly enough, though when I was fumbling through the controls, they didn’t get hostile and start attacking me. They were probably as confused as I was. BTW, indoor areas looked like the above and consisted of only one floor — no super deep dungeons or multi-floor towers. Just seemingly empty rooms until NPCs materialize out of thin air.
There are gates on each world that connect to the Rainbow Road linking multiple worlds together, and a dragon guards most of them. This is actually the game’s copy protection. At one point, the dragon will ask you to identify a crest and you’ll need the manual to find out just whose it is. The dragon won’t eat you if you get it wrong. You just won’t be able to continue. You can see our two knights and one champion in their colored armor on the screen, lined up, like cupcakes ready to be devoured by…
The Rainbow Road’s trippyness is further enhanced by the prose that opens the way in the lower right corner. As worlds come into “focus”, you need to hit the ‘trigger’ button to jump off the road and enter the world that comes into that focus. Of course, there’s no way to tell just which world you’ll exit onto (at least at first), so it’s off to find someone to help tell you where you are…or cast a spell.
While Douglas Seacat writing for CGW’s review of the game praised Swords as his GOTY pick because of its unique approach to the role-playing experience, other critics were a lot less impressed such as Tony Dillon writing for CU Amiga-64 in November of ’89 and archived over at the Amiga Magazine Rack who was decidedly bored by both the game’s visuals and design along with the technical shortcomings long load times brought to it.
Unlike Archon, Swords of Twilight disappeared into obscurity. The reasons for why can only be speculated, but its exclusivity to the Amiga alone without ports to other, more prolific platforms, probably hurt its chances to be seen by a wider crowd.
Explore new worlds, meet new people, and hopefully talk them into sharing more information to help you on your quest.
It’s also not a traditional CRPG and while its approach is creative, it’s not perfect. It eschews grinding up experience via combat which is an interesting approach. But it also does away with huge dungeon levels, loot, stores, and a party of personalized characters for a story-intensive approach that slowly reveals itself through engaging NPCs to piece together what is going on. Even the cluebook for Swords of Twilight delivers its walkthrough as a series of stories seen from the perspective of its characters. It can feel extremely limited without things like stores or merchants to buy food and upgrade gear with — things that many CRPG players have gotten used to and have come to expect. In a way, it was only a few degrees away from being a more traditional adventure game like another buried gem, Infocom’s Journey, which also came out in the same year (1989).
For the time, though, it did a few things that other games years later would also explore. Multiple solutions to certain tasks (the cluebook presented one way to get a quest item in the beginning of the game, but you could also ‘steal’ it from a chest in the castle instead), affecting dialogue and NPC behavior towards you based on your attitude, making quests matter more in terms of character advancement than combat, and AI led characters with their own quirks and behaviors to distinguish them apart from each other (an old mage isn’t going to keep up with a faster knight, and a fighter might be more prone to be belligerent in conversation than someone with a more patient outlook). An interesting gem from the Amiga’s past, Swords of Twilight might not be remembered today, but the ideas it tried to explore have become staples in more than a few iconic titles that came after it.
This 45 page digest adventure features a twenty room tomb dungeon, using thirty pages to do so. It’s format is fine, for comprehension, but it lacks significant exploratory elements. In the end, tomb adventure is A Tomb Adventure.
The ancient Celts had a strong oral tradition, which meant that much of their magical knowledge was passed down through storytelling, songs, and poetry. This oral tradition allowed for a fluid and adaptable form of witchcraft that could evolve and incorporate new influences over time. Today, those who practice Celtic witchcraft lineage often draw inspiration from ancient Celtic mythology, folklore, and customs. They seek to reconnect with the wisdom of their ancestors and honor the natural world through their magical practices. Celtic witchcraft lineage is not bound by rigid rules or dogma but instead encourages individuals to develop their own personal relationship with the Celtic gods, goddesses, and spirits. It is a spiritual path that emphasizes harmony, balance, and reverence for the earth and its cycles. In summary, Celtic witchcraft lineage encompasses the historical and ancestral traditions of witchcraft within the Celtic culture. It emphasizes a deep connection with nature, spirit work, and the passing down of ancient wisdom through generations. By embracing the wisdom of their ancestors, modern practitioners of Celtic witchcraft seek to honor their heritage and forge their own spiritual path..
Reviews for "The Goddess Tradition in Celtic Witchcraft Lineage"
1. Lydia - 2/5 stars - I was really disappointed with this book on Celtic witchcraft lineage. The author claims to have deep knowledge of the subject, but it felt more like a hodgepodge of information from various sources without any real depth or analysis. I was hoping to learn more about the rich history and practices of Celtic witchcraft, but instead, it felt superficial and lacking in substance. Unless you're a complete beginner, I would recommend looking for a more comprehensive and well-researched book on the topic.
2. Mike - 1/5 stars - I found this book on Celtic witchcraft lineage to be completely useless. It was filled with vague and generic information that could easily be found with a simple Google search. The author didn't provide any real insight into the subject matter and relied heavily on outdated stereotypes about witches and Celtic culture. There was no depth or nuance, and it felt like a wasted opportunity to explore a fascinating topic. I would strongly advise against wasting your time and money on this book.
3. Sarah - 3/5 stars - While I didn't hate this book on Celtic witchcraft lineage, I can't say it was a particularly enlightening or inspiring read either. The author seemed to jump from one topic to another without any clear structure. I was hoping for a more cohesive narrative that would guide me through the history and practices of Celtic witchcraft, but instead, it felt disjointed and confusing. There were some interesting bits of information sprinkled throughout, but overall, I was left wanting more. If you're looking for a comprehensive exploration of Celtic witchcraft, I would recommend looking elsewhere.