{"id":9595,"date":"2025-03-29T08:56:43","date_gmt":"2025-03-29T14:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/?p=9595"},"modified":"2025-03-28T13:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T19:57:09","slug":"lord-jago-wants-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/2025\/03\/29\/lord-jago-wants-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Lord Jago Wants You"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lord Jago Branok is having a party at Loveday House.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, he has a party every month.\u00a0 No two are ever the same.\u00a0 But nothing is ever the same at Loveday, his lordship’s rambling mysterious (some say haunted) manse, perched on the cliffs overlooking the sea on Keun Island, off the Atlantic coast of Cornwall.\u00a0 It’s a queer place, Keun,.\u00a0 Three miles of mudflats and an ancient stone causeway connect the rocky island to the Cornish mainland during low tide, but when the tide comes roaring in\u2026 fast as a galloping horse, as the locals say\u2026 the road\u00a0 is submerged and Keun becomes a true island, accessible only by boat.<\/p>\n

The island has been inhabited, off and on, for millennia.\u00a0\u00a0 Archeologists have found Stone Age cairns there, and the jagged remnants of standing stones larger than any of those at Stonehedge.\u00a0\u00a0 A ringfort stood atop the island\u2019s sheer black cliffs during the Dark Ages; later a crude castle of rough-hewn stone went up in its place.\u00a0\u00a0 For hundreds of years Keun was the stronghold of a clan of reavers and pirates known as the Hounds of the Sea, who raided and plundered up and down the Cornish coasts and into Wales and England.\u00a0 It was from them the island got its name; keun<\/em> being Cornish for \u2018hound.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0They were finally extinguished in 1308 by Piers Gaveston, new-made 1st<\/sup> Earl of Cornwall, who put to death every member of the clan and razed their castle.\u00a0 Legends claim that the last surviving hound pronounced a curse on Gaveston as he died.<\/p>\n

Thereafter the island remained uninhabited for several centuries, save for seabirds and an occasional fisherman.\u00a0 The fisher folk did not like to stay overnight, however; it was said the island was haunted.\u00a0\u00a0 There were also tales of merfolk in the waters surrounding Keun Island; some stories spoke of beautiful mermaids who lured sailors to their doom, others of more grotesque creatures, not unlike the Deep Ones of H.P. Lovecraft\u2019s mythos.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Humanity returned to the island in the 1500s.\u00a0 A new castle arose atop the cliffs on the seaward side of the island, and a fishing village on the landward side.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Over the years half a dozen noble families came and went,\u00a0 leaving legends of their own behind,.\u00a0 The last and greatest of the lordly manors on Keun was called Loveday Castle, the seat of the family St. Gerren…. but when the last of the line, the widowed Lady Morwen (known as Mad Morwen) died during the Great Storm of 1703 as the castle collapsed about her, she left no heirs, the ruins of Loveday were\u00a0 left to decay… until 1857, when a\u00a0 wealthy merchant styling himself Marcus St. Gerren\u00a0 laid claim to the island,\u00a0 pulled down the overgrown ruins of the old castle, and used its stones to build a large, splendid Victorian mansion on the site, which he named Loveday House.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 By the turn of the century, however, most of the money was gone, and the great house had begun to decay, a process that continued until the Great Depression, which took the last of the family wealth.<\/p>\n

The last St. Gerren attempted to sell Loveday House, but found no buyers; the mansion had become a white elephant, too huge to maintain without servants, impossible to heat, its paint peeling, its foundations cracked.\u00a0 When old Tristan St. Gerren died in 1937, Loveday was abandoned once more and left to rot.\u00a0\u00a0 And so it did… until a new owner turned up and set about restoring\u00a0 the old house to its former splendor.\u00a0 The \u201cnew lord”\u00a0 is a mysterious figure who goes about in a hooded cloak, always masked, who seems to have no limit to his wealth.\u00a0\u00a0 A dozen mutually contradictory tales are told\u00a0 of him in the village, but on one point the villagers agree: Jago Branok is a wild card of some sort.\u00a0 An ace, a joker, a knave, no one is quite certain\u2026 but one of them<\/strong><\/em>, no doubt.<\/p>\n

And the quests who visit Loveday each month are just as queer, the villagers will tell you.\u00a0 They come to Keun from all over the world.\u00a0\u00a0 Most of them leave after the party winds down.\u00a0\u00a0 Most of them.\u00a0\u00a0 As to the others…<\/p>\n

None of the villagers are quite certain.\u00a0 There are stories, though.\u00a0 Stories told by the likes of Stephen Leigh, Mary Anne Mohanraj. Kevin Andrew Murphy, Peter Newman, Peadar O Guilin, and Caroline Spector.\u00a0\u00a0 They know a few things.\u00a0\u00a0 They were\u00a0 guests at Loveday last year, accompanied by their characters old and new.<\/p>\n

You can read all about it in HOUSE RULES<\/strong>, the latest volume in our long-running WILD CARDS series of mosaic novels.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Volume thirty-four in the ongoing series (which launched way back in 1987)… and no, you don’t need to read the preceding thirty-three to enjoy this one…\u00a0 HOUSE RULES was released by HarperCollins Voyager in the UK in December, and by Bantam in the USA on January.\u00a0\u00a0 (Yes, I am a few months late in getting out the word, but I have been crazy busy of late).<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

For those of you who like autographed editions, Beastly Books in Santa Fe has signed copies of both editions in stock.<\/p>\n

(And they have many of the older volumes as well).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Whether you’ve been a Wild Cards fan from the very beginning, or are a newcomer curious to visit our world, do come to Keun.\u00a0 Jago Branok’s parties are not to be forgotten… and who knows, we may even let you leave.<\/p>\n

GRRM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lord Jago Branok is having a party at Loveday House. Truth be told, he has a party every month.\u00a0 No two are ever the same.\u00a0 But nothing is ever the same at Loveday, his lordship’s rambling mysterious (some say haunted) manse, perched on the cliffs overlooking the sea on Keun Island, off the Atlantic coast […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[218,1],"tags":[47,7],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9595"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9595"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9626,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9595\/revisions\/9626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}