Online and downloadable the first adventure of the role-playing game set in the Italy of the Lombards

After the success of the one-shot in Brescia , which saw in the Basilica of San Salvatore the participation of more than one hundred role-players living the fantasy adventure set in theItaly of the Lombards, the first adventure of the role-playing game Before the Rooster crows is now online and downloadable from theAssociazione Italia Langobardorum website. The comic book that can be used as a guide for the new fantasy setting role-playing game, wanted by the Associazione Italia Langobardorum in order to spread through gaming, the knowledge of the Lombard civilization in Italy and the UNESCO serial site"The Lombards in Italy. Places of Power (568-774 AD)."

Inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, the world’s best-known fantasy role-playing game, the Before the Rooster crows adventure, produced in collaboration with Gummy Industries, sees as its setting that of the Lombard kingdom in Italy, on the eve of the conflict that in 774 would pit theLongobard army led by Prince Adelchi, son of the ruler Desiderius, against the troops of Charlemagne, king of the Franks, who a few years before the fateful battle had repudiated his wife, a princess of Longobard blood, daughter of Desiderius, mentioned by Manzoni in his tragedy Adelchi as Ermengarda.

The plot

Conceived and written by Emilio Palmerini and Giada Taribelli, with a comic book antecedent scripted and illustrated by Francesco Mazziotta of the “Don’t Say Dragons” collective, the plot of the game revolves around the mysterious disappearance of a nun, named Adelinda, and the discovery of the true identity, initially kept secret, of another nun, who will turn out to be Princess Ermengarda, who escaped thanks to the intervention of the brave Adelinda from an ambush set by the Franks with the aim of eliminating her during her return journey to the court of her father Desiderius. Players, in the adventure proposed with Before the Rooster crows, embody the role of a group of characters - charged by King Desiderius with solving the mystery of the disappearance by ending the threat of the Franks and saving his daughter Ermengarda - who come from different parts of Lombard Italy and who summarize in themselves the characteristics of each of the places of the UNESCO serial site “The Lombards in Italy. Places of Power (568-774 A.D.),” established to protect the most significant monumental evidence of Lombard civilization.

The main idea, underlying the conception of the role-playing game, is to spread, particularly among younger groups, knowledge not only of the Lombard civilization, overturning that negative representation of the Lombards, associated with the ’idea of barbarism and decadence, which recent historiography has disproved, but also of the monumental groups that make up the UNESCO serial site, each of them bearing its own specific identity, represented by the characters of the adventure, who are:

Adelmo, a duke, i.e., a military leader, from Monte Sant’Angelo in the Apulian Gargano, a national shrine of the Lombards, an emblem of Lombard devotion to the Archangel Michael in whom they saw reflected the warrior qualities of the Germanic god Wodan;

Folco, a warrior from Castelseprio in Lombardy, a place already known since late antiquity as a military encampment and fortification, where the Castrum with the Tower of Torba and the Church of Santa Maria Foris Portas in Torba stand;

Hilderic, a scholar belonging to the school of Benevento, an artistic center that flourished in the fields of painting, miniature and song, active in the Lombard duchy of the same name, which left as its main monumental evidence the complex of Santa Sofia in Benevento;

Orso, a native monk of Campello sul Clitunno in Umbria, where stands the famous Lombard Temple, a sacellum in the form of a Corinthian temple that combines the classical architectural model and the Christian cultic destination, a symbol of the path of conversion of the Lombard people from the paganism of the origins to Arianism finally landing, with Queen Theodolinda, to Catholicism;

Randwulf, a free man from Cividale del Friuli, powerful political and religious capital of the first Lombard duchy In Italy, where we find the Gastaldaga area with the Lombard Temple and the Episcopal Complex;

Sigmar, a priest from Spoleto, capital of the duchy of the same name, where we find the Basilica of San Salvatore, a martyrial cultic hub and early architectural evidence of the Lombard age.

Before the Rooster crows is part of the project “Longobards on the road to new scenarios” under Law 77/2006 of the Ministry of Culture “Special measures for the protection and enjoyment of Italian sites and elements of cultural, landscape and environmental interest, included in the World Heritage List, placed under the protection of UNESCO.”

Online and downloadable the first adventure of the role-playing game set in the Italy of the Lombards

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