I rediscovered this, which I sketched up inspired by Goose Gold & Goblins. I thought and still think GG&G is one of the best-concieved, best-realized, and most-original RPG ideas I've ever seen.
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In the beginning there were two geese. One of the geese was dark, like a Greylag, and one was bright, like a Snow Goose. Their necks were intertwined and they formed a circle. A plane of infinite light sprang from this.
The first men were born where their feathers met the light. They did not understand the geese, and so they acted wickedly. They pulled and pulled on the two geese until they were wrenched apart with a tremendous thunderclap.
The two geese were inside of a great, gleaming egg with a shell of gold, green, and blue. The egg was thereby shattered. Pieces of its shell formed the blue sky and the golden sun, but some parts of the shell fell onto the feathers of the Greylag Gander and these became the sea, the forests, and the gold of the Greylag's goosedown- for that is what the soil is called in these old stories. And that is where we stand today.
At night, when the great shell passes out of sight, you can see dust from the golden eggshell in the distance. That is what we call the stars.
So we live on the Greylag Down, and the Snow Goose still wanders amidst the clouds. She is just out of reach of her mate, forever. There are earthquakes when the Greylag calls for her, and there are snowstorms when the Snow Goose cries for him. Those cruel men from the first days were frozen, or shaken to death, except for the ones who didn’t pull on the geese. The Gander took them under his wing. And there’s a lesson there.
Now, it wasn’t long before the Snow Goose gave birth to many goslings. They couldn’t stay amidst the clouds so they sailed down to the earth. On the Greylag Down they found many jealous spirits who had drifted in when the egg was broken. The spirits stood against the goslings, and so the goslings formed a flotilla and drove the spirits into the nooks and crannies, the wells and the mirrors, where they remain to this day.
Now all these goslings were born of the Snow and Greylag, and all common geese were born of the goslings, and these are the generations of geese, which accounts for their varying temperaments, but the divine is in them all. This is why no other animal lays golden eggs; because geese and men were made an helpmeet for one another.
But hear this. Just as not all spirits are friends of mankind, you must never seek out or approach these goslings lightly. They are from an old time when geese and men did not live as friends. And they are no longer goslings, but mighty. And proud.
I am old, and I will tell you what I know of them, because I am the only one who can.
The Girl-Guide: Brown and white with a golden beak. Formal, chaste, an instructive bearing. She leads you places you need to go, even if you’re not sure what you need.
The Orphigoose: Her sea-girt chasm is guarded by a vicious boar whose tusks shiver with lightning. She has a deadly serpent coiled comfortably around her neck, giving her a chimeric aspect. Little birds, serpents, and shoats vie languidly for her attention, which she coyly favors them with, and occasionally swallows one up when she is hungry. She has a tongue like a sawedtoothed tentacle. She beckons you to accompany her into the chasm, but you must not go.
The Lawgander: Jade with golden spirals, golden compound eyes that shed light all around. When it honks, which it does not do promiscuously, equilibrium is restored all around it. A landslide may instantly settle. A flood may recede. A snowstorm abates, fire burns out. Anger is calmed, malevolence repented of. Infections are cured, spirits are banished, deceivers driven away. But its honk only sets things straight; in time, that which is driven out may return again.
The Logoose: A bloodstained white goose. This goose will give of himself to help those in need. If he passes those starving, he will tear off his wing for them to eat. If he finds a burning house with people trapped within, he will crash through the wall and burn up in the cinders to open a way to free them, honking in agony.
Mother Goose: The downy cradle beneath her wing is the place of resurrection. When someone has given themselves to save the lives of others, you may bring their body to this goose. If there was some catch in the deed and it was not really necessary or helpful, you will never find her. If it was such a chosen death, the goose will take the fallen hero close to its heart, under its wing, where its down is softer than can be described. Then it will leave, and you must not follow it. In time, your hero will be reborn. He will awaken in an egg, floating on a river somewhere. Then there will be magic in his bones.
The Goose of the Nighttime Deep: The goose does not stop, but she does move slowly. Jet black with a fiery red beak, bright, electric red, or actually aflame, guiding the way. She travels only by night, and there’s no telling where she will go, but sometimes that’s the least of your worries.
The Bridge Goose: Her feathers are the sharpest steel. Brilliant; every color shifts with the light. Like stained glass in a church for tyrants. Prismatic, is what the gemcutters would call it. You will know her when you see her.
An ingenious creature. She learned our myths, somehow. So when people hear what she’s done, they don’t believe it. A folktale.
She finds prosperous men and kidnaps their daughters. Ambushes them on the bridges, you see. Never the sons; that would be too novel. Usually it’s blamed on highwaymen, but sometimes parents will find out that it could have been the Bridge Goose and go to leave an offering. If the goose likes what it finds, their daughter will come back. But many have disappeared.
A brilliant creature. No one comes to help. The cynics say, "A likely story. Probably it was highwaymen." The Bridge Goose never elucidates to parents how to get their daughters back; they must believe what an old sage tells them. And how often would you guess they do?
The feathers of this dragon-goose possess potent powers, but if you pluck one you’d better be fast on your feet.
The Golden Goose: A tiny, tiny thing. It exists somewhere in the world, but the chances of you seeing and catching it are infinitesimal. And yet men still seek it. There is a Hermetic order seeking it; old men who waste what time they have left.
The Goose of Plenty: First it lifts up hearts. Good cheer. Outgoingness. Even the shy, solitary and misanthropic will come out and have a laugh. Cats get affectionate, geese too. The insects lie still.
Never will it rain. Always sun and a few clouds, like the Snow Goose wants to see it happen but doesn’t want to block out the sun.
Then it will come. It doesn’t announce itself. It just sails up a river, looking around slowly, like “What a lovely place.” It has a great red band with gold trim about the shoulders and a black crenellated pattern around the mid neck, and there is a red and gold stripe up each side of its beak, meeting in the middle. Otherwise it is white.
As it sails, the water clears, before it and behind. The rocks in the river get polished all of a sudden, so the river just shines. The grass grows thick, flowers too. It’s like they grow extra petals. Trash curls up and blackens. Looks just like fruit rinds after a couple weeks, ready to blend in with the soil.
Water turns to wine in cups. Very light and sweet. Colors get vibrant; clothes, house paint, rouge. A good reason to put in something extra when you repaint your walls.
Then it goes by the fields. You should have seen these pumpkins, boy. They’d have fit three of you inside sitting. The wheat blossoms. The heads get so fat it’s like they’re bowing to you. The bread tastes a lot like chocolate or gingerbread once it’s baked. Makes you feel the same way, too. And you’ve never seen cabbages blossom out just like sunflowers. Resplendent, somebody said. Like the cabbages knew they were holy and were just basking in the fact, baring themselves for the world to see. You should have seen the men take off their hats and wave them around as the goose left town. Everybody knew not to follow. To give it a perfect send-off.
Not everyone is so respectful. There’s a conspiracy of callous men somewhere in this land who seek to hunt this goose, trap it in a net or shoot it. They think its body parts can extend their lives, fix their marital problems, cure hypochondria. No doubt they’ll damn themselves and a sight few more people if they succeed.
The Bounty Gander: A mysterious, fully-armored goose that takes the world's worst evildoers and carries them deep into a mountain. Nothing more need be said of that. Be grateful for his work but do not follow him in mind or body, for he is as grim and hard as the mountain.
Aethergoose: A ghost. All blue, pale blue. Sails through the night sky against the clouds; that’s the only way you can see her. Maybe she’s the only one who can hug her mother now. I’m afraid I have a feeling the Snow Goose can’t feel it. This ghostly one, she only comes out when there’s people facing a very hard choice. Or no choice at all. When they have to do or die; when it’s steal or starve. Eat something filthy or perish. Kill or be killed. Tear down the burning home. Cut off the rotten leg or the trapped arm. Rebel against your king, or be hung. Climb the mountain or drown. And so forth. Molten lead drips from her as she passes; you find beads of it on the ground, even in the dew. Better to see her than the burning eye, I suppose. If you see her it’s because you already know what must be done, even if you won’t acknowledge it. If you see the burning eye, it’s already too late.
The Cygclops: Its burning eye. How would I describe its burning eye...
It comes at night, when the stars are out and there are no clouds. Otherwise it stays in the mountaintops or in the desert. It has a burning eye floating above a featureless head. No beak or eyes. Just a great, flaming, eye-shaped glyph near its forehead. The lines of the glyph seem to be shaped like… tools of fine measurement, like an architect would have. I have seen it once, you see, and to this day my palms sweat and my heart quickens to think of what happened. Here, feel my hand. And I'm no spring chicken.
It can see through your every lie. It brings destruction. Dams will burst beneath its gaze, bridges will bend, houses set ablaze. For the sins of the community, you see. Of individuals. The community is not spared.
And if you speak to it… if you say something to it that you don’t mean, your clothes will blow away, right off your back. But if you lie to it, then your bones will break with your every word.
It doesn’t punish silence, except if you’ve betrayed somebody who thought that they really knew you. Then your teeth will fall out.
And once it’s gone, you’ll find that whatever problems you’ve been ignoring, well, you can forget about them. If you’ve been neglecting your sick auntie, she’ll have died. If your village has been feasting instead of bringing in the crops, then they’ll have withered away in the field. If you let your best friend become a drunk, you’ll find him stiff and cold as a bottle in your pantry. If you’ve not been maintaining the road, it’ll be hit by a landslide. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is. I've seen it all. The people knew why.
Some people put out food for it, some leave jewelry. Whatever is left is burned up, but the people may find eggs in the ashes. Golden eggs. Not little nuggets either, but the kind that could set a family up for life. If they're careful. And the ones who find the eggs usually are.
But don’t go near it with unfinished business.
Greylass: I met a young girl once. I didn’t understand the intimations of what she told me at the time but I do now.
I passed through the shrine at Teleopeia Firebay. The girl had been given work there sweeping at night after having washed up on the shore. There wasn’t a shipwreck so she was assumed to be a found-out stowaway, a suicide or a castaway of spent pirates; she’d been too long without the air and couldn’t tell the shrinekeepers what had happened. Whatever the case, she needed help.
When you go too long without breathing, it can change your mind forever. I don’t recommend it. The shrinekeepers had tried giving her other work, but when they put her to work in the garden and a farm boy she’d never seen before came in to weed, she beat him with a hoe and bloodied him before he got away. So they put her at the dovecote and she liked that until she’d tried to run with a dove off of a precipice and broke her ankle. She said she hadn’t expected to do it. Apparently they hadn’t learned their lesson because they lent her to a lemonade stand when the minder came sick. She came out hissing and limping at the first little boy who approached, scared him to tears.
A fiery creature. Told me she didn’t understand her fits of rage, her flights of fancy. Told me she felt like a terrible burden and wanted nothing more than to take herself to the river and drown.
Ah! That reminds me of another one!
The Firegoose: An omen of great change. There is half a chance it heralds a general disaster, and half a chance that a great discovery is in the making. You will know this Firegoose as a second sun or a pillar of steam burning off a river.
The Sanguinoose: This one is milky white like his mother. He is the Goose-Errant. They call him sanguineous because of his bravery in the face of danger, and because more than once he has been soaked in blood by circumstance. If he is bloodied, burned, or buried there will come a snowstorm, even in summer, for his mother will cry.
Beware, for there is another just like the Sanguinoose. And this one has no pleasure but to ruin good people, using the cruelest betrayal it might devise. Rescuing children from a fire only to lead them to a starving bear, or offering a ride to a young girl so that her parents think that the Bridge Goose took her and waste their substance in offerings, for she is not likely to resurface. It is the Blood Goose.
The Lawgander, which wears a crown, is implied to be the Blood Goose in the future; perhaps if you look closely he has dried blood between his feathers.
The Chaos Goose: It looks just like a regular goose, but it is possessed of a malign intellect. It subtly wreaks havoc upon unsuspecting villages, misplacing things, knocking over flowerpots, bedeviling dogs, pulling down tablecloths after dinner has already been set, and other such acts of wickedness. Would that I could wring its neck; but it is far too crafty.
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This post is dedicated to the geese and cattle of Henley-on-Thames.
