For the Last Wolverine, a Myth

14 Mar, 2026

Le commerce des fourrures en occident à la fin du moyen age, by Robert Delort

A strength of Mythic Bastionland is the capaciousness of its format - its Myths are flexible containers for many kinds of story. The Mythic Bastionland Jam was full of interesting riffs on song and story. There have been moves to lift the tech of myths to different ends, and adapt the game to different genres, like the strange and compelling Soviet Baztiumstan.

I wanted to use the Myth format to explore a different form altogether. Here's my attempt at translating James Dickey's 1966 poem For the Last Wolverine to Mythic Bastionland.

Below - some reflections. Embarking on this experiment, I'd expected that I would have to learn more deeply what makes Myths tick, and learn better how For the Last Wolverine works. This was the big appeal, really, and I have certainly learned a lot. More than anything, I came into this project excited about the poem. Now that the project is complete, I'm far more conflicted about it than I expected. But that can wait. First:

Myth: The Wolverine

Omens

1. Fur trappers offer hospitality by their campfire. One whistles as she cleans a wolverine pelt, bloody to the elbow. This pelt should fetch them a handsome steed at trade. "Soon they will be down to one," she explains.
2. The Poem Knight, drunk, his shoulders draped with a wolverine pelt. The pelt is splashed in blood but he won't talk of it. Instead, shares his mead with any who tell a poem. (Restore d6 SPI).
3. The Elk Steed lying with guts torn out. The Poem Knight on all fours, devouring the heart from its chest.
4. A spruce tree, dying in a field of snow. At its top, a mangy eagle, and a wolverine, mate to the death. The tree sways and bursts into flame, and they are mingled.
5. Over the horizon, something gigantic, legendary, comes. It falls upon the nearest holding, snatching folk into its jaws, tearing buildings from their foundations.
6. Small, filthy, unwinged. The Poem Knight crouching alone, burrowing into the ground to die.

Cast

Fur Trappers, Orbost, Tarn & Varla

VIG 12, CLA 10, SPI 5, 3 GD A1 (pelt and hide), sturdy knife (d6) OR bow (d8 long) Snares, bitter gallbladder cordial (drinker cannot be tracked by scent). Will die wearing new-bought finery.

The Poem Knight

VIG 8, CLA 14, SPI 17, 6 GD A2 (silver mail), barbed spear (d10 long) Elk Steed (VIG 12, CLA 9, SPI 5, 3GD, d8 antlers) Drunk, gregarious, generous. Wants to know the world, and be known. Will betray anyone for this.

The Poem Knight, Ravenous

VIG 14, CLA 8, SPI 12, 8 GD A2 (thick pelt over tattered mail), wolverine claws (d10) Snarling, defends his meal fiercely.

A Legendary Beast, made purely of northern lights

VIG 18, CLA 5, SPI 10, 10GD A3 (iron pinions, massive frame), fang (2d8 long) OR claw (d8 blast) SCREAMING that it cannot die, That it has come back, this time on wings, and will spare no earthly thing.

Something Gigantic, Legendary

Reflections

Context

The post has been sitting in my drafts for a long time. I dusted it off due to the discourse of the day (sorry folks).

In brief: Snow has put out a manifesto calling for less polish in the artform of RPGs, which has reignited a discussion about the central role of 'functionality' within the hobby. We had a spate of chatter last month around Noise Sans Signal's call for more poetry in RPG blogging, and now we're dancing the discourse dance again.

I don't have much to say on the matter, except to state my belief that oddly-shaped things belong here. Nonfunctional objects of dubious beauty are fruitful; dilettantes, amateurs and cranks enrich the hobby. To put my money where my mouth is, I decided to post this short, flawed experiment and a few reflections on it.

It's not really for me to judge how successful this myth is as either a game text or as a translation of Dickey's poem. But it's been an interesting exercise and I've had some thoughts about the outcome. To get much out of this section you really need to read For the Last Wolverine. It's short - I'll wait.

The Myth as Game Text

I've tried to keep to themes and a structure that roughly follows the poem. I think what I've written is a playable myth, and I'm happy with that as a starting point.

Knights will probably spend too much time as witnesses, rather than participants. Then again, some of the Mythic Bastionland myths are quiet (or have quiet beats).

There also aren't particularly clear point of leverage within this myth - I'm not entirely sure whether player action could divert or forestall the movements of the myth. On the other hand, none of the myths in Mythic Bastionland are strictly built around if/then logic. Still, if Chris McDowall can trust players to creatively involve themselves in myths, then perhaps so can I.

I'm also not sure if the denouement - the final omen - is appropriate to the game. Most myths have a big showstopper as the 6th omen. What I've done reflects the pace and stakes of the poem, but it feels like it might be out of place with the Myths presented in the book.

Finally, I think it's overwritten. I haven't put this near layout, but at an eyeball I reckon I'd have to chop 30% of the text out if I were to match the myths in the book.

The Myth as Poem

I first heard of this poem on the excellent (and sadly shortly-lived) Deltahead podcast, where the hosts pick a video game and read it through the lens of a pair of poems. Dickey's imagery initially caught me up, but the poem's themes of dumb refusal to participate in our technoculture, and its violent rebuke of consumption and the underlying edifice of progress stayed with me over the last 5 years.

A lot of the imagery has survived into the myth intact. These are the parts of the poem that were easiest to translate (and certainly the strongest).

Progress is not a huge theme in Mythic Bastionland - except inasmuch as it exists in Electric Bastionland's shadow. Progress is mostly highlighted in the City Quest, so the world is not a perfect foil for the overt themes of the poem. However, there are other themes of at play, about the difference between the human and the animal, about self-realisation versus pro-sociality.

The Myth as Criticism

In doing light research for this piece, I learned that James Dickey was a bone-deep misogynist and a sexual predator. His attitude to women wasn't just a matter of character, but of worldview. And so his attitudes inform his work. This piece in particular, which indulges in a hearty camaraderie with Dickey even as it criticises his excesses, now informs my reading of The Last Wolverine.

I'll quote it at length:

As the earthbound understand it, the poetic imagination comes with wings; only Dickey’s came equipped with talons, too. In a fallen world where our worst instinct, our herd instinct, is reinforced and manipulated to make consumers and networkers of us all, Dickey followed more ancient instincts. He was a solitary predator—a big cat consumed with curiosity—who made up his own menu as he went along.

It was an impressive menu, unless you were on it. A member of Dickey’s family thanked Pat Conroy for glossing over the poet’s legendary “appetites.” But without the appetites, could we have had the poems? As Dickey himself wrote, in the stunning, bravura “For the Last Wolverine”—

How much the timid poem needs
The mindless explosion of your rage
The glutton’s internal fire...

James Dickey ate more than his share and never apologized.

This section, referencing the "timid poem" always confused me in earlier readings. I used to read For the Last Wolverine as some sort of forlorn wish for nature to take a bloody-toothed revenge on our culture of progress. Now, I know that the poem is at the same time autobiographical, that the wolverine is Dickey, that its appetites and rage and violence are his, that the progress it criticises is, in a sense, female liberation and empowerment.

This isn't the only layer of meaning at play, but it's impossible to ignore. And so I rewrote the Myth to feature Dickey himself, the Poem Knight. It's in this regard - the Myth as Criticism - that I'm least happy with my attempt. I'd like to bring more pressure to bear on him, depict more of his duplicity, weakness and predation (and the expansiveness of spirit and clarity of vision to which it is a counterpoint).

It is a hard task, and the reason I have hesitated to post this until now. Next to Dickey's tremendous ability with language, my own words seem clumsy and brittle. Maybe one day my craft will be up to it.

But above my dissatisfaction with my project, I feel like this is a good moment to engage with poetry as we engage with games. The time to edit is past, and the time to post is now.

Discourse is a harsh master.

#discourse #mythic bastionland #poetry