Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Grandma Kuzemchenko was, in many ways, already gone. She didn’t speak often, and even then only in the Ukrainian of her youth. She would sometimes violently spit and curse the Soviets, not realizing that the revolution that drove her family from their home had collpased in failure over 20 years ago. She often failed to recognize her children and grandchildren, which was perhaps the most distressing for her large and extended family, which refused to allow her to be placed into a home.

But she still remembered the traditions and skills that had been instilled into her at a young age. Cooking, cleaning, sewing…Grandma Kuzemchenko could be found doing all those things even if she no longer remembered where she was. But the pysanky, the traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs…those were the most special.

Every Easter–for Grandma Kuzemchenko did check her Orthodox calendar with its photographs of illuminated saints–she would raid the fridge for eggs and the emergency candle cupboard for wax. The old metal wax-pot and stylus were kept under her bed, just where they had been during her girlhood near Kharkov, and the family would awaken to see Grandma Kuzemchenko huddled over a carton of eggs and bowls of dye, with wax softening on the stove.

Using the stylus, each egg would be painted with bold geometric patterns or expressive and angular Orthodox motifs. Sometimes both. Grandma Kuzemchenko would work on the eggs in batches, drawing on the wax designs, dyeing, and wiping the wax away with a warm cloth, until fantastic pictures of haloed angels trumpeting Cyrillic blessings amid bold background patterns began to emerge. She wouldn’t stop, save to eat or sleep, for days.

When the pysanky were done, Grandma Kuzemchenko would carefully divide them up: this many for the priest, this many for the children, this many for the graves of loved ones, this many for a living room basket to ward off misfortune and bring good luck. Her family, as much as they were able, distributed the eggs according to her hand-written Ukrainian labels.

But when asked to share the secret of preparing her dyes and drawing her designs, or when asked if anyone else could join in, she would only say, in her mother tongue, “It is a secret to be passed from mother to daughter, and I have no daughters.”

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People tend to think, as the ancients did, that animating essences can only be generated by nature. The dryads inhabiting trees, the naiads submerged beneath bubbling brooks, the fickle spirits of wild and desolate places.

People tend to be wrong, as they so often are.

Any object with a purpose can serve as a physical anchor for something in the metaphysical world. Perhaps it’s best to think of them as emergent patterns in the code of life, ones perhaps not intended by nevertheless embraced by the great Programmer. They tend to come into being attached to older, well-used structures, the ones bathed by the psychic output of many vibrant lives passing by. Places like that have many lingering and lost pieces of life’s code to incorporate and evolve.

So that streetlight you see on the corner–the old one, ornate, from an age of craftsmen–may play host to a dryad of its own. A being of electricity and light, coming forth only on the darkest and hottest of summer nights, illuminating all in her footsteps.

You may also encounter the broken spirits, the lost, whose links have been severed through accident or demolition. Cursed to wander aimlessly until their energies dissipate back into the Universal Code.

In either case, you will never look at a humble streetlight, parking meter, or bus stop in the same way ever again.
Inspired by this.

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“It’s a note from the Boss.” The courier needed say nothing more as he handed over the note.

Nervously, Konstantinov and Polzin looked at each other and unfolded the missive.

Konstantinov & Polzin,

-JS

“Should we go?” Polzin said. “It’ll be well after midnight when the movie is over, and I hear that you get forced to drink Georgian wine at the dinner to make sure you don’t blurt out anything reactionary. The Boss will understand if we send our regrets, won’t he? He was a poet in his youth, surely he understands that, as ‘engineers of the human soul,’ our writing comes first?”

Konstantinov sighed. “You should know better than that. Do you know that the Boss put a stop to a translation of his poem into Russian? Beria had Pasternak–Pasternak!–translating it, and the Boss put the kibosh on it. I hear that he keeps Bukharin’s last note in his desk for sentimental reasons, but that didn’t keep the Boss from having him shot.”

“So if we know what’s good for us, we’ll go.”

“If we know what’s good for us, we’ll be the first ones there and the last ones to leave.”

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Recently paroled convict Emmett “Blue” Blumenthal hitched a ride as far as Noxtub, and walked the rest of the way under the summer sun. The field, the elm, the fence…it was all as his friend Tim had described in prison.

It was a long, low wooden fence with a big old elm tree about halfway through. Tim was right; it was like something out of a poem by Wordsworth. “It’s where I proposed to my wife,” Tim had said before his escape. “I need you to make me a promise, Blue: if you make parole, if you escape…find that tree.”

Blue followed the fence and then paused near where it passed by the elm, as crickets and katydids jumped before him. He poked around in the roots, looking for what Tim had described…a piece of wood, West Indian mahogany, that had no right to be among Massachusetts alfalfa.

Luckily, mahogany withstood the elements better than most woods; Blue found it, mossy and wormy, and pried it up. “I buried something under that wood,” Tim had said in prison. “It’s something I left just for you.”

Sure enough, there was a Zeppelin-brand cigar box there in the soil; Blue pried it open, shooing away pillbugs and earwigs and a Massachusetts Jumping Spider. Inside was an envelope with some cash and a letter.

Dear Blue,

-Tim

Blue stared at the piece of paper, even turning it over to make sure there was nothing else on the other side.

“Aw, shit,” he said. Tim had told him about that town over ten years ago, once. Blue had no goddamn idea what it was called anymore.

With apologies to Frank Darabont and Stephen King.

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He remembered, all right. Dr. Carlsson had left a garageful of books to the library, but his illness meant that the only living things that’d set foot in there for five years were rats and roaches. Half the books had to be thrown out—including some more than 200 years old—because they’d been chewed to pieces for rat nests or smeared with droppings and mold. Even so, the donation had been a treasure trove, with books dating back as far as 1697 in excellent readable condition.

“He took it out with a community user card. The card was real enough—we issued it—but the address is bogus. This street only goes up to 750 and the address is a 902.”

“Those kids at circulation dropping the ball again?”

“Don’t be so hard on them. This guy obviously went to a lot of trouble to get his hands on the thing; you can’t be prepared for that sort of thing.”

“No, I guess not.”

“So where does that leave us? ‘On Symbologie’ has walked off with this Mr. Richat.”

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The shades–perhaps they should be capitalized Shades, given their ubiquity–relayed a dizzying amount of data to his eyes. Compass directions, friend codes of passersby, a GPS line leading to the last destination he’d forgotten to clear. Billboards and paper with a special reactive coating appeared animated through the shades, piping their accompanying musical jingles into his earphones. There were blips on the compass that corresponded to sponsors–fast food places, mostly–and the occasional augmented reality pop-up that was projected in the shades as if it were a living person (albeit one that could disobey the laws of gravity and space).

It was too much, right now. He hated the shades at the best of times, but they were necessary tools of modern life and they corrected his astigmatism for free–a real pair of ground-glass lenses, ad and augmented reality free, would have cost thousands of credits that he simply didn’t have. He pulled his shades off, wincing at how blurry and bright the world was without them. But he wasn’t trying to find fast food or the nearest organic food store.

He was trying to find the girl who had floated into the city from the hilltop park.

Acting like a piece of augmented reality, and yet being visible without the shades…it was intriguing, maddening, enticing. But he’d lost sight of her in the warren of shops and eateries that surrounded the green space. No one else had noticed, no one else was looking so desperately skyward. If they’d seen her, she’d been dismissed as just another ad.

Misty rain began to fall, blurring his vision still further as he wandered among the steel and glow of a city alight with information and yet desperately empty. People walked by singly, eyes focused to infinity behind their shades or looking down at a more sophisticated digital device. It was liberating, he thought, to look up for once outside of the bubble presented by the park. But he feared that he’d lost–or worse, hallucinated from the very start–the girl in white.

But there was a flash of pure prismatic colorlessness in an alley he passed, and there she was. Serene against the sky, pinched between two buildings, twenty feet off the ground. The neon light of the city and its hurrying people below cast itself on the girl’s dress, while a stiff breeze kept the fabric billowing behind her.

She seemed to notice him as he shyly approached, but also seemed to be looking through him, as if distracted by shades that she was not wearing.

“H…how are you doing that?” he whispered.

Her voice was soft, melodious, sad. “I don’t know.”

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227. If you think the book was bad, you should have seen the query letter.

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The Twin Empires
Large and relatively organized remnants of the Old Empire, the Twin Empires each occupy a coastal area on opposite ends of the continent that their predecessor state spanned. They are little more than rump states but wield considerable power and are at least in theory still suzerains over much of their former territories. In reality, though, any attempt to assert Imperial sovereignty is well beyond their capabilities.

Eastern Empire
The great seaside cities of old still stand, joined together in a confederation known as the Eastern Empire and at least theoretically led by an elected Emperor. In practice, though, the eight-year Emperorship rotates between the mayors of the megalopolises that make up the lion’s share of the Empire. This Emperor may also be the Mayor of Five Cities, that one may also hold sway over The Tim, and so on. Some of the cities elect their mayors; others appoint them or have erected truly stunning edifices of graft and corruption that allows the office to be bought and paid for. In any case, the Emperor is largely a figurehead–none of the Mayors are willing to give up an iota of their power. The Emperor is supposed to reside in the central White City of sprawling Dece, but in practice will only spend the evening of their inauguration there.

The Eastern Empire’s greatest asset is its large and centralized urban population and access to heavily trafficked ports. But it lags behind in industry, education, and technology–having long ago ceded its primacy in those areas. It also has very little agricultural land, relying on food imports to sustain its population. These are paid for using the one well-oiled piece of Imperial governance: taxes.

Outland Empire
Nominally, the Outland Empire is part of the Eastern Empire, and its representatives are present at the Imperial inauguration every eight years. It is de facto independent, though, as a vast swath of independent interior lands seperates the coastal enclaves of Outland from those of the East. The Outland has at its heart a series of similarly coastal cities, but incorporates large stretches of relatively empty coast and hinterland as well. Its ruler, the Viceroy, is elected for an eight-year term that is offset by one year from that of the East. In theory the election is free and fair, but in practice the Outland is a single-party state, with a slate of candidates selected by the ruling Popularis Party always the only ballot choice.

The Outlands have their own character and own unique brand of inefficient corruption distinct from that of the East. The population is lower but the farmlands under its control make it more self-sufficient. In many areas, though, Imperial control is nominal, and the Empire’s borders are like a sieve. Few of its inhabitants pay taxes or are on the citizenship rolls, and its operating expenses come almost entirely from the cities, and senior Popularis Party officials who hope to be elected Emperor.

The Betweeners
A patchwork of hamlets, counties, principalities, and free cities makes up the chaotic Beral Lands and Ativia, each basically independent despite nominal fealty to the Eastern Empire and/or Outland Empire respectively. Even the largest cannot compete with the rump empires in terms of population, but freedom from Imperial bureaucracy and corruption does allow them to be much more nimble. They do share a few institutions in common, most notably the quadrennial Spartakiad Games.

Beral Lands
The Beral Lands are impossibly vast, spreading north along the coast above the Outland Empire, incorporating most of the vast and empty Confederate Shield, the Lakelands, and much of the hinterlands beyond the Eastern Empire’s control to its north. Many are confederated, at least in name, send representatives to an annual consultative parliament in Ranier, and elect a figurehead Prime Minister who resides in Lakeside. The Berallanders tend to be collectivist and value technology, education, and the pursuit of utopian ideals. This makes them a leader in cutting-edge science in an era that has grown stagnant and still relies on technologies that were introduced hundreds of years ago. Many major conglomerates like Edison Motors are headquartered in the Beral Lands, and it is home to some of the most well-respected colleges in the world like the University of the Rift.

At the same time, the Berallander states tend to be unethical in their pursuit of technology, with major employer GesteCo often cited as the worst offender. Individual freedoms tend to be highly curtailed, and surveillance is often omnipresent. A philosopher once dismissed the Beral Lands as “a quilt of nanny states and cannabis-worshipping communes” and this does have some truth to it. Of course, with so many different states, any such generalizations are not always accurate. Major states in the Beral Lands include the Free City of Harbin, the Republic of Slon, the Kingdom of Ziaana, and the Chancellorship of the Rift.

Ativia
Unlike the Beral Lands, no single term exists for this area. Ativia is used the most often, but variations like Vativia, Vatlandia, or even the Vatlands are common. They occupy the center and south of the areas between the Empires, and like the Beral Lands are mainly small states. Unlike the Berallanders, there is not even a nominal confederacy among them aside from notional Imperial suzerainty. The individual states make alliances or declare war on their own. They tend to be ruggedly individualistic, preferring action to words and an unspoken moral code to codified laws.

This leads the Ativians to generally be more xenophobic and occasionally more violent than their neighbors, with many technologies (like genetic engineering) being frowned upon or outright banned. They are generally masters of lower-tech industry like steel mills, and are the undisputed masters of arms production in the Old Empire. The Westchester Repeating Arms Company, Steele Arms, and Ranger Defense Systems are all headquartered in Ativian areas, for instance. Major states in Ativia include the Principality of Raposa, the Confederation of Ladtcon, Imami City, New Attica, and the Fellowship of Teresed.

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Republic Park was on the Texas coast, near Galveston. It opened during the post-Disneyland theme park boom in the 1960s and was very profitable for many years because it was much closer to Houston than Six Flags and was heavily subsidized by the county government, so admission was really cheap. They started it out as a Texas heritage park with a waterpark and roller coasters–very popular during the reaction to the civil rights movement and desegregation.

It ran into troubles in the 1970s when the subsidies ended and wound up rotating through about three or four owners a decade, each with a different vision for the place. Eventually the people who own Tonk’s Fruit Farm in California and RKO Studios Florida bought it and tried to turn the place into a traditional Six Flags style roller coaster farm, dropping the Texas heritage theme except as a decorative accent. It never really worked, and attendance was mediocre through the 90s and 00s.

Hurricane Ike was the real nail in Republic Park’s coffin. On the coast, it was vulnerable to flooding and wind damage, and the drainage system failed at the height of the storm surge. The owners never had a clear vision for the place, and they tried to write it off for insurance purposes. But the county had a partial ownership stake thanks to the old subsidy days, and there were some eminent domain issues too. So Republic Park was essentially abandoned after Ike.

The legal problems kept anyone from enforcing anti-trespassing security; the city and county won’t patrol, and the former parent company won’t spring for private security. So it became popular with vandals, graffiti artists, and urban explorers–all of them drawn by the spectacle and the lack of effective security. It’s also become popular with amateur filmmakers.

One crew took advantage of the grey legal situation to try and film a horror movie in Republic Park. Despite fair weather, good cellular coverage, and proximity to Galveston metro, most of them were never seen alive again. The involved parties hastily cut through the red tape in order to demolish the park and entomb what remained in quick-setting concrete, work that was largely complete by 2013.

The exact details of what happened during the shoot have remained hazy…until now.

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Sourced from the Ruins & Rogues Adventurer’s Guidebook, 2nd Edition

Librarian Sub-Classes

At level 30 librarians earn their usual 1 skill point but also gain 100 hit points and an extra equipment slot. At this point they may also choose one of the following sub-classes:

Booksassin
Stealthy and deadly, the Booksassin moves as silently as a turned page and strikes as deeply and unexpectedly as a papercut. This sub-class focuses on speed, surprise, and damage at the expense of durability, legibility, and archival quality. Booksassins may use the Tome Travel ability once per day to travel through bookshelves as if casting a teleport spell of equivalent level and do automatic quintuple damage upon emerging from one.

Dewey Deathimal
The Dewey Deathimal classifies and shelves hard-hitting magical and quasi-magical attacks, casting them over a wide area like a shush quiets an unruly mob. This sub-class focuses on intelligence-based area of effect attack spells at the expense of granularity, adaptability, and clarity. Once per day, the Dewey Deathimal may use Books to Bats, which causes all nearby tomes to animate, flap through the air, and descend on all targets in a designated area bringing death from a thousand papercuts.

Bibliothief
As punishing as an overdue library book and as well-stocked as a private college library, the Bibliothief focuses on collection development at all costs. This grants major bonuses to the Acquisitions and Prestidigitation skills at the cost of Cataloging and Circulation. Bibliothieves can use the Bookwalk ability to walk across the tops of shelves and gain a bonus to all Book Acquisition rolls (which the sub-class can apply to any item with words on it, not just books).

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