Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

01. The best internet links are the ones which make you cry in your cubicle, whether from laughter or empathy. If you do not have a cubicle, acquire one, even if it means setting one up in the spare room.

02. It’s not how often you update your blog that matters, but how heartfelt your posts are. Do try to shoot for at least once every six months, though; you can save up all the feels during that time.

03. Using a gendered salutation like “dear sir” or “dear Mr.” in an ambiguous situation will make you an object of private ridicule or public shame if you get it wrong. If in doubt, use the standard universal omnisex salutation: “hey chowderhead.”

04. Introverts will one day rule the world. And we will do it from the shadows with an extroverted puppet figurehead just to throw you off the scent. Come to think of it, maybe we rule from the shadows already…!

05. Nerdiness, geekiness, and dorkiness, are not to be shunned, but embraced. Nothing creates a shared bond faster than meeting a fellow Trekkie/Whovian/Browncoat; you can forge a shared connection through longing that the Enterprise/TARDIS/Serenity will show up and take you away.

06. You can never have too many books or too many bookshelves. Unless you create a Babel tower of books and it collapses, spraying loose pages across three states. That might be slightly too many.

07. God has a plan for all of us. If you ever doubt that, just remember the He has a great sense of humor. The existence of Lolcats is too perfect to be the result of chance.

08. Sign language is the most elegant form of communication. When the world becomes a giant rock concert, as it inevitably will, signs will be out only means of speaking amongst the decibels.

09. Cats are a microcosm of all life’s pains and joys. It is important to note that life does not like going to the vet.

10. Science makes everything cooler: just look at “science fiction.” This does not conflict with #7; Science and God are Secret Best Friends.

From an idea by breylee.

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The Ur-City

Oral legend states that the ancestors of Citizens, Outsiders, and other peoples long lost to history once lived together in a great city of great technological sophistication on a scale that dwarfs even modern achievements. Several versions of the story exist: in one, the precursors of the City and the Outland left because of the Ur-City’s decadent corruption. In another, the Ur-City itself was destroyed by a calamity, leaving the precursors as refugees. A final variation of the tale posits that the other Ur-Citizens left or were forced out by the precursors, leaving them in control. As no evidence of an Ur-City has even been found, academics at the Citizens University remain divided on whether the oral traditions have a basis in fact.

The Precursor City

Whatever the case, the precursors found themselves on the opposite side of the Great Sea. There they built the Precursor City, the ruins of which have been discovered and partially excavated by archaeological expeditions (though its great distance has limited the work that can be performed there). Stories and surviving deciphered text fragments indicate that the Precursor City was less technologically advanced than the Ur-City, and was approximately at the level of the modern City, though many modern discoveries were unknown to the precursors and some of their knowledge, notably that of matter teleportation, have been corrupted or lost.

The Precursor City was ruled by a council of learned citizens, and valued technological improvement above all else. Nevertheless, it seems that the civilization stagnated, especially in its later years, as many new ideas were considered heretical. The precursors practiced exile as the primary form of punishment, and were strict by modern standards–the slightest deviation from the Precursor Code, of which only fragments remain, was grounds to be placed on a penal barge. The barge made trips across the Great Sea twice a year, putting inmates ashore to fend for themselves. This population of criminals, undesirables, and opponents of the precursor regime were the ancestors of modern Outsiders, and archaeological evidence from the penal barge landing sites indicates that these exiles quickly reverted to a primitive state. Eventually, the penal barge system was replaced, and the trips ceased.

There are only incomplete records and stories regarding the Precursor City’s fall, but it appears to have been from an external invasion. The source of these invaders is obscure, but all accounts agree that while less sophisticated than the precursors, they were better trained and equipped than the city’s small defense force. The struggle was brief but bitter, and a great part of the city’s population was killed or taken by the invaders to parts unknown. A small group of refugees was able to commandeer vessels in the city’s harbor, and fled across the great sea. Several ships were destroyed by the invaders, and others floundered during the crossing in the hands of inexperienced navigators, but under the leadership of Sejan–who had been an official in the precursor government–thirteen ships managed to land just north of the modern-day City.

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“Well kids, here’s your new tutor!”

“It’s an octopus!”

“I think it’s dead!”

“Nobody’s perfect.”

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“It’s sad, isn’t it?” said Lloyd, looking out over the city of Arcadia from the portico of his hotel on the Citrine Hill. “Arcadia used to be the shining light of the continent, and war has all but snuffed it out.”

Sure enough, the wide boulevards were all but empty and lit only by moonlight thanks to blackout restrictions. The grand art noveau statuary and buildings that the government had erected during the last decades’ prosperity were braced with sandbags and wood against artillery strikes and bombs. The official position of Lloyd’s employer, the city of Naraka and its associated state, was that Arcadia was rotting from the inside out through decadence and immorality.

From Lloyd’s point of view, it had already happened.

Turning back to his informant, Lloyd placed a sack of Arcadian gold coins on the table. “What have you brought me?”

Callaghan, the informant, gestured at the paper. “A complete map of the city’s defenses as prepared for the Arcadian General Staff. As you can see, it consists of three concentric trench lines about five kilometers apart with fortresses located at strong points in each line.”

Lloyd looked it over. “How many troops?”

“About 100,000, including artillery, transport, and noncombatants.”

“Materiel?”

Callaghan laid down another sheet of paper. “That is their greatest advantage. There aren’t enough defenders to fully man the lines, but they are well-supplied. Each battalion has one heavy and two light machine gun companies, and there are thousands of light mortars, submachine guns, and the like being given to anyone who can bear arms. They have enough gas masks that gas shells will be used by artillery and by their landships. This line here might mean that the Arcadian Air Corps is preparing to use gas bombs as well, but I can’t be sure.”

Lloyd nodded. “Any idea how many landships, how many biplanes?”

“Most of them were lost with the collapse of the Heimstadt front. No more than a handful of each, mostly older types. The plan is to use the landships as mobile fortresses and the planes as interceptors and bombers–they are too old and slow for anything else.”

“You’ll be well-rewarded even beyond this when the time comes,” said Lloyd, spilling the coins onto the table. He cast his gaze back to the moonlit streets of Arcadia, soon to be re-lit with the explosions from artillery and bombs. “It’ll all be for the best, you’ll see. A stronger Arcadia will emerge from the fires like a phoenix.”

“If you say so.”

“It has to,” Lloyd murmured, nervously stroking his beard. “It has to.”

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Ray Seymour was a postmodern monster.

But if you asked he would say he was just having a little harmless fun.

“All right, let’s see what slaves are online today,” he said, cracking his knuckles in front of the massive self-built computer rig that took up a whole corner of his tiny apartment. Built with parts scavenged from his minimum-wage day job at Best Electronics, the rig was Ray’s whole world. Everything else was going out for groceries or the pennies needed to keep the lights on.

They weren’t real slaves, Ray would have been quick to point out if cornered. It was just the jargon that people in his circles used for people whose computers had been hacked with a remote access tool–a RAT, the same thing that system administrators used to take control of the poor old Susie’s computer in accounting when she couldn’t figure out how to eject a thumb drive.

“Only one? Shit. Well, at least that makes my choice easy.” Ray brought up his RAT’s interface, which gave him full remote control of a laptop two counties away. Like most of his “slaves,” the person behind the computer had downloaded a trojan file that Ray had seeded onto file-sharing sites and torrents–in this case, the copy of Sex in the City 2 they thought they’d downloaded had been a screen for giving Ray’s RAT root-level system access.

From there, he could browse and copy personal files, access the screen and volume controls (which he usually did only to spook the “slave” on the other end), and, most importantly, access the built-in webcam and disable its “on” light. “I have access to everything they have, everything they are,” Ray had written on an internet forum for RAT hackers like himself (of which there were surprisingly many). “I could steal their identity or ruin their life, but all I do is take a few pictures. It’s harmless fun.” The person in question had been outraged to find their vacation photos on the forum; Ray had made his pronouncement and then banned the user (as he was an admin) before they could respond.

“Just doing what the NSA already does,” Ray muttered to himself as he remotely activated the “slave” webcam. “But she won’t end up in Gitmo.”

He opened up the webcam in a separate window, ready to capture any screens that piqued his interest. It was never the kind of salacious things you’d see on an episode of CSI or NCIS, naturally–those were always in JPEG form on the hard drive, never from a live feed. But the voyeuristic thrill, the endorphins that came with Ray’s smugly self-satisfied outsmarting of women who–he assumed–would not give him the time of day…that was the real money shot.

The screen fuzzed into being, and Ray witnessed the same “slave” he had watched through her own webcam on and off for weeks. She was kicking madly, desperately, as an assailant in a black ski mask attempted to drag her off.

Ray Seymour was a postmodern monster.

Someone upstairs had apparently decided to lay a test before him, to see how deep and wide that monstrous streak actually ran.

Based on this news story.

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Dario Azzara, sotto capo to Don Luca Baldi, sat in a darkened room with a bottle of aged scotch at his elbow.

“I heard crying upstairs.” Don Baldi said, quietly entering the room. “Has something happened?”

“I was about to wake you up, to tell you,” said Azzara. His face was drawn, and he mumbled into his glass.

“But you needed to fortify yourself with some liquor first,” said on Baldi quietly.

“Yeah.”

“Well, how that your drink is finished, why don’t you tell me the news? I seem to be the last one to know.”

Azzara choked a little, thinking back to the massacre he had witnessed.

“It’s all right,” said Baldi. “We’ve known a day like this would come. It’s the life we have chosen.”

“Angelina D’Antonio has been eliminated from American Idol,” Azzara choked. “The vote wasn’t even close.”

Don Baldi fell to his knees with an anguished sob that echoed throughout the manor.

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He was the greatest assassin and enforcer the Syndemo organization had ever retained, and just recently foiled in an attempt on the life of a prominent local landowner at the behest of Lady Faxhall, the hypochondriac nymphomaniac lynchpin of a far-ranging conspiracy. He was behind the blade on many of the most vicious encounters that Cecil the potato-loving priest and Vic the unlucky thief had been though, from the Lillandel mine ambush to the halfling prostitute kidnapping. A mountain of a man, he went by many aliases, each as dark as the cloak he wore and as crooked as the feathered hat rakishly tilted over a shaven pate.

To Vic and Cecil, their hulking foe was only known as Big McLargehuge.

And now, atop the icy winter spires of Cecil’s ancestral manor, he was about to be brought to justice.

McLargeHuge’s assassination attempt had ended in failure, with Roxie the porcelain sex doll golem smashed, the gnome negotiator/sorcerer fled, Bear the Berserker cut down in mid-drinking-song. Fleeing to the roof, the assassin found himself with Vic and Cecil at his back, with their well-armed hirelings Namor Ylati(Junior Bro of the Order of the Tri-Delts associated with the Knights of Clohl) and Sirea Lossberg (who Vic had accidentally hired while trying to proposition).

“Y-you there!” cried Vic, his voice muffled by the cloth he had wound around his head to conceal his identity and avoid reprisals should the battle go ill. “Stop all the getting-away-like…stuff!”

Big McLargeHuge turned around, the icy wind on the rather flat but still sloped castle roof catching his cloak dramatically. “I agree, it’s time to end things,” he said menacingly. A blade of foreign manufacture, crackling with enchantments, whipped out of its scabbard. “Come and face your doom, you interfering necromancer.”

“H-how many times do I have to tell you people, I’m not a necromancer!” Vic cried. “I’m a…treasure…hunter-type…guy.”

“You’re a dead man,” said McLargeHuge, his sword singing as it cut through the air in a practice swing. “That’s necromancer enough for me.

“Stop that there assassin in the name of Clohl!” cried Cecil. His estranged father had been the assassin’s target, and even though he remembered little of his life before a potato-shaped rock had called him to the priesthood, he was still honor-bound to intervene. In invoking the spirit of Surah 18, Psalm 42, Line 118, Word 3 of the Book of Jehosephat (which was a real page-turner), Cecil had cast a holy spell.

The assassin had been focused on taunting the “necromancer,” seeing him as the key threat. So the spell of holding cast by the bumpkin-seeming priest in overalls and a flowered hat caught him totally by surprise. His taunting words died in his mouth and he froze, a surprised expression on his face, just as surely as if he had been left to the snowy elements for a week. A light breeze whipped up, and the assassin pitched over, still stock-still, onto his side.

Ice on the castle roof and gravity did the rest.

“Oh!” cried Cecil.

“Ooh!” yelped Vic.

“Dude!” whistled Namor.

“Ouch!” winced Sirea.

Nimbly shimmying down the waterspouts castleside, Vic approached the fallen, motionless assassin.

“Is them that there malefactor…dead?” Cecil cried with heartbreak in his voice.

Vic took the opportunity to rifle through Big McLargeHuge’s pockets and his…everywhere else. “Got to look more closely to be sure.” In moments he had appropriated the assassin’s badass hat, badassier cape, and badassest sword (along with 275 ducats from an inner pocket).

When Cecil’s spell wore off moments later, the assassin found himself unarmed, partially undressed, and defenseless. His previous bravado forgotten, he beat a hasty retreat toward the tall fence at the edge of the property. Vic’s attempt to pursue was undermined somewhat by tripping on the cape that he had somehow managed to fasten around himself in the confusion (to say nothing of the large-brimmed hat that was suddenly interfering with his peripheral vision).

It looked like the vile Syndemo assassin BigMcLargeHuge might escape after all; he had scrambled over the fence before Vic could find his footing.

And then Sirea bore down upon him like an avenging angel. Using the spear she had stolen from one of McLargeHuge’s own Syndemo mercenaries in the Lillendel mines, she vaulted over the fence in a show of extraordinary grace (and, from Vic’s point of view, extraordinary ass). Her boots were planted square in the small of the assassin’s back, knocking him out for good and all.

By the time the less-agile Cecil and Namor reached ground level, Sirea had tied the unconscious assassin to her spear like a boar on a spit and was dragging him back toward the property.

“I think I’m in love,” Vic breathed.

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Baris Kolar is not from the general setting area but rather the nearby and contextual land of Noiun (noy-ooh-n), which for many years suffered under the reign of tyrannical bishop-princes. The Kolars were a relatively well-to-do family in Viesot, and Baris’s older brother was expected to inherit their property while Baris was trained as a priest. Unfortunately, the brother was a member of a banned society that attempted to kill the bishop-prince, and as a result he was executed and the family’s property confiscated.

Radicalized, Baris was expelled from the seminary for advocating revolution (though he got a good education out of it beforehand) and was forced into exile after becoming associated with the same rebels. It was during his exile and subsequent work as a mercenary to raise funds for Noiun revolutionaries that he met the other characters back in the day. Eventually he returned to Viesot with his earnings and new skills and paid a small but vital role in the overthrow and execution of he last of the Noiun bishop-princes. The newly-proclaimed Republic of Noiun occupied most of his time over the next decades; Baris served in the government in mostly behind-the-scenes roles, not one of the rulers but at the same time not a nobody either.

The new rulers wound up no less tyrannical than the old, though, and after his faction lost a power struggle Baris was forced into exile once again, and most of his remaining friends and allies were executed or forced to flee abroad. Penniless and regarded with suspicion by those who know his revolutionary past–Duniya is not hospitable to such ideas–Baris has been forced to rejoin his old allies from his first exile. He hopes one day to return triumphantly to Noiun, but for now is content to stay alive.

As with most revolutionaries, Baris has a tale or two to tell, and he does so at length, reminiscing about the glory days of his revolutionary struggle or all the young woman from Viesot for whom power was an aphrodisiac. However, age has rendered him completely impotent, a detail that he is desperate to hide from his companions, and he fears that he may run into children he sired and abandoned during his first exile.

His revolutionary past and long exile coupled with his rejection of traditional Noiun religion and societal norms mean that he is excellent at subterfuge and persuasion and has embraced the technology of firearms. As such, he plays like a rogue/ranger, with emphasis on concealment, diplomacy, and ranged combat with pistols.

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The Hopewell Democrat-Tribune newspaper offices kept their back issues in the basement. The county office bound theirs up nicely in cardboard endpapers. The Hopewell District Library paid to have their stock microfilmed once a year. Between the three of them, they had every issue of the paper since the Hopewell Democrat and the Hopewell Tribune had merged in September 1889.

Except one.

Someone, with exacting thoroughness, had made sure that wasn’t the case for September 18, 1927. The Democrat-Tribune bundles, done up with twine and silently disintegrating, were tampered with, the pile for September 1927 tied with a piece of twine much newer than the others. The county office copy had been sliced out, straight and clean with a razor blade, between September 17 and September 19. And the Hopewell District Library microfilm had been cut and taped up professionally, as if in a movieola.

As the Democrat-Tribune was the paper of record for the area, everything that happened on that far-off fall day had been all but wiped from existence. The obituary column was backed up by other records, and some small-town papers nearby picked up a few comings and goings, but for the most part some unknown malefactor had taken considerable pains to erase those papers from history.

To this day, no one can say why.

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enosiphrenia – The belief, founded or otherwise, that you are being made part of a gestalt group consciousness.

The term enosiphrenia (“joined mind”), coined in an allusion to schizophrenia (“split mind”), was first reported by parapsychologist Sir John Travers Lexow, writing in 1888 in a bulletin to the Royal Miasmatic Bedlam Society. His report of a person who found their thoughts uncomfortably joined and commingled with those of nearby people is still the typical diagnostic case for the malady. It differs from simple telepathy in that it combines thoughts from multiple people into a single gestalt with aspects of each, where telepathy is generally a simple transmission of information.

Most (65%) of enosiphrenia sufferers only encounter sporadic and low-level incidents of group consciousness, typically with people nearby that have some sensitivity to psychic phenomena. The sensation can range from an uncomfortable annoyance to a debilitating attack which takes months of recovery time as consciousnesses are disentangled. A significant portion (20%) of enosiphrenia patients retreat into themselves and become catatonic; this is thought to be a defense mechanism which works by minimizing conscious thought to suppress the shock of having those thoughts joined by others.

The remaining 15% of enosiphreniacs, sometimes misleadingly called paranoid enosiphreniacs, serve as an unwilling locus for the development of a hive mind. They are generally kept isolated and sedated as the ability to create more enosiphreniacs and instinctively joining with them can spiral out of control with disastrous consequences. The Battle of Saarbrucken in 1917 is believed to be the most serious enosiphrenia outbreak on record; a enosiphreniac conscript in the Imperial German Army had a major episode which led to an entire battalion of heavily-armed troops becoming a gestalt consciousness. Artillery strikes were eventually used to break up the formation, leading to deaths in excess of 2,000.

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