This post felt a little special so I’ve decided to diverge from my usual topics: the mind altering, the madness inducing, and etc.

For now I’d like to talk about the Italian poem written in 1308-1320 known as Divine Comedy.

A religious text that tells the journey of Dante through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven and something that, although I haven’t read myself, I find very interesting. It is a slight inspiration that I intend to use when writing for my Dungeons and Dragons group! Mostly the idea of Contrapassos.

“Suffer the opposite”, “poetic justice”, an ironic punishment. All of which are the same. A Contrapasso is all of those things and more. One of the Contrapasso’s is for those who attempted to see the future! They had their heads twisted around and were forced to walk backwards because they could no longer see what was ahead.

I’m thinking of introducing Contrapasso puzzles into my story arc for Dungeons & Dragons. Maybe a bridge that can only be seen with ones eyes closed? A prison cell that rather than be a cage is a truly endless field? Many many possibilities and I’m very interested to see more of these in my research surrounding the Divine Comedy.