Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The Kingdom of Pexate was founded in year 776 of the Old Calendar by Eyon of Anselm, a knight in the service of the Crimson Empire. He led a large band of surviving men-at-arms after the disastrous Battle of the Three Rivers in which the Emperor was killed and the lands his army defended overrun. Rather than lead his men and camp followers back to the collapsing Empire, Eyon instead carved out a kingdom of his own, at the strategic confluence of the River Pex and the Toothful Bay.

The lands were mostly inhabited by gobs, who Eyon defeated in a series of pitched battles. Unlike many of his fellows, he did not massacre the gobs after defeating them, but had each band acknowledge him as suzerain. The city of Simnel was founded as a fortified keep to defend the river mouth, and in time grew large and powerful from trade. Before his death, he engaged the services of magicians fleeing the chaos of the Empire to craft him an heirloom: the Purposeful Blade. Made with a bird-of-prey motif to comemmorate his family’s humble beginnings as falconers, it would only shine brightly in the hands of one of Eyon’s line, and shine brightest in the hands of the worthiest to rule.

In this way, he forestalled a succession crisis and upon his death his youngest son took the throne, being judged by the sword to be the worthiest of the king’s nine children. King Eyon I recognized the importance of economic strength and spent much of his reign building up the first of the famed Pexate Trade Fleets. His son and successor Eyon II followed this policy and also carved out a buffer of petty kingdoms under Pexate suzerainty to help defend their gains.

Eventually, the powerful House Lambert married into the royal line, bringing with it the former kingdom of Aloc. The enlarged Kingdom of Pexate was henceforth ruled by House Anselm-Lambert. Over time, the Purposeful Blade was seen less and less, until it appeared only at coronations. About 500 years after Eyon I, in OC 1204, Pexate endured a series of child kings and regencies. None of the three kings from Eyon III to Thurlford II lived to the age of 18, Pexate being instead reigned by a series of regents. King Thurlford III was the first to break this streak, and he fathered a single son with his consort after coming to the throne after his nephew Thurlford II’s death.

Thurlford III died only six months after his son Eyon’s birth, leading to the declaration of yet another regency. His distant cousin on his mother’s side, Lord Uxbridge, was elected regent. However, when the news of young Prince Eyon’s death broke a few months later, Uxbridge was crowned king of Pexate as Uxbridge I. Many suspected him of murdering the young heir, whom many called Eyon IV even though he had never been crowned.

It has been said that if Uxbridge exercised half of the statecraft in being king that he had in becoming king, Pexate would have entered a golden age. Instead, King Uxbridge proved to be a weak and ineffective ruler, incapable of commanding the loyalty of anyone who was not related to him. Thus began Uxbridge’s Anarchy, a period of unsettlement and strife where the various lords of the land increasingly asserted themselves against the crown.

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“Prithee, tell me how thou hast endured so well whilst thine flock and kind have ever diminished,” said the elder finch.

“It is a simple tale,” replied the younger finch. “You know of the great green ones, the moving-rocks who withdraw into themselves when threatened?”

“Yes, though there are fewer now than there once were.”

The younger finch bobbed its head. “We built our home upon its back.”

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“Why do they call it Ogrestab Hollow?” said Eyon. “It doesn’t sound safe to me.”

“Gob would tell Master, but Gob feels that Master seeing it with his own eyes would be best.”

Ahead of them, the trees parted to reveal a very large ogre, skeletal, in great and rusting armor. He was propped up by a cottage and a lance that he held, one that had skewered the walls all the way through.

“Goodness,” Eyon said softly.

“Gob assures Master that the Hollow is quite safe,” Gob continued. “It is in fact one of the great prides of Gob’s people within these borders.”

“How do you mean?”

“Ogres are gobkin but often no friends of we the gobs. This ogre was particularly old, and thus particularly large and particularly clever, as Gob is sure Master knows that ogres get bigger and cleverer all their lives.”

Eyon did not, in fact, know this. He had never seen an ogre up close. “So he decided to take the village?”

“The ogre sought to take the village and live in the manner of a lord,” said Gob. “As you can see, his was very fine arms and armor. The villagers appealed to a band of gobs to drive him off, as it was during the Anarchy.”

“Looks like they were successful.”

“Master is very astute,” said Gob. “Most of the gobs were easily killed, but the great gob Rnaea Stonethrower climbed that cottage roof and killed the ogre with a single stone to the eye. He was too big to move, so after Rnaea earned her name he was simply left as he was.”

Eyon nodded. “Very brave. What happened to the gobs?”

“Rnaea Stonethrower became matron of her tribe, as I’m sure Master knows is the gob way. The villagers invited the gobs to live among them as equals in return for their service.”

“But I don’t see any people,” Eyeon said, squinting. “Only gobs.”

“As is so often the case, Master, your people eventually forgot their gratitude,” said Gob. “In time, they all moved away to be among their own kind and abandoned the village to the gobs. The gobs keep it now in their own way, and Master’s people rarely venture here, fearing ogres or worse. The great dead ogre, Rnaea’s ogre, is a useful reminder of that.

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They found him leering through the bullet hole his latest kill had torn in the windshield of a dereclict car. A lit cherry was clenched between skeletal teeth hidden only half-heartedly beneath a hood; with no nose and no lungs, there was no way he could have enjoyed it.

Unless, that is, he just enjoyed watching things burn.

“Well, we had quite a time finding you,” said Alicia, boldly opening the passenger side door. She cleared a pair of still-smoking brass shells off the seat and took a seat next to the Hecate anti-material sniper rifle that had fired them. “And I won’t waste your time: we have a job for you.”

“Job for me? You don’t even know me.” The voice was sepulcher and stone, issued from no voice box but just precipitating from an empty rub cage like vile precipitation.

“Nobody does, but you’ve done jobs all over regardless. Unless you’re going to tell me someone else has been precision reaping around here lately, which I doubt.” Alicia withdrew a short stack of photos from her messenger bag and laid them on the Hecate. Each was a simple, brilliant, and bloody reaping of a mortal soul, usually with a single bullet.

“Fair enough. What do you want, and what can you pay?”

Alicia had that ready in her messenger bag, too. A full dossier, with wherebouts, movement patterns, and of course a name. “Juan Ramirez, ex-military, now working as a mercenary on the East Side.”

“Surely you have your own people for such a thing. Why a reaping where a simple murder would do?”

“Because it’s not Juan Ramirez we want,” said Alicia, her foundation and mascara cracking a bit as she grinned. “That’s what our firm specializes in, you see. Since there aren’t natural deaths anymore, it becomes a numbers game: who can we remove to make all the great chains move, for people to slither into new positions?”

“It’s that same lack of natural death that has me out on the street accepting table scraps.” The reaper’s stub flickered orange in the car. “I’ll do it, and I’ll do it clean, but it won’t be cheap.”

“Name your price,” said Alicia. “His soul? It’s yours.”

“Don’t want his soul,” the reaper said. “Not interested.”

“Well, then, tell me what would interest you.”

The reaper, long out of work with bones worn in pursuit of a hard career, cast back his hood. “Your soul,” he said, the shadows falling in such a way as to suggest a smile. “I’ll do it for your soul.”

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You will know the Jovecap mushroom by its pattern of banded stripes, which match the clouds of Jupter’s sun-facing disk perfectly. If you have patience, you can watch the clouds swirl by and around the Jovecap as it ripens, but bear in mind that it, like all fruiting bodies, is ephemeral.

Do not be fooled by lookalikes like the Junocap, which resemble Jupiter but not its most current appearance in an attempt to get their toxic spores ingested and dispersed. If in doubt, consult the true face of the planet through direct observation.

The effect of the Jovecap depends on when it is ingested. Normally, it offers simply a delectable taste comparable to a rare truffle. But when eaten on the first new moon after the Great Conjunction, Jovecaps can serve as a panacea for any pathogen. It’s for this reason that, despite spoiling rapidly, they are avidly hunted to this day by specialized peccaries.

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The Emirate of Tiqr, small but oil-rich, saw the aging Emir attempting to bolster his credentials against forces from the left advocating reform and forces from the right advocating retrenchment. As part of this balancing act, he established the University of Tiqr and stocked it with leading Western minds while simultaneously forbidding the teaching of anything that the clerics might regard as offensive.

As part of this, UT was able to lure a professor of Middle Eastern history and archaeology from Georgetown, Landon Stephenson. The Emir was particularly interested in Dr. Stephenson because of his enthusiasm for conducting excavations in the deserts outside of Tiqr’s capital city of al-Asim. In Stephenson’s first month at UT, for instance, the Emir was invited to the dig site several times and plied with artifacts for his personal collection.

It was during one such visit, a few months later, that the Emir’s son orchestrated a coup d’etat. His father, boarding a bulletproof limousine at Stephenson’s dig site, found himself instead conveyed to al-Asim International Airport, where his private jet awaited to take him into exile. The Emir’s absence and lack of contact at crucial junctures, it seemed, had made the coup bloodless and virtually unopposed.

Some years later, a Tiqri art collector found himself in posession of an urn from the former Emir’s personal collection. Anxious to see that it had retained its value, the collector tracked down Dr. Stephenson at the school where the latter worked as associate dean of the combined history and archaeology departments.

“That’s absurd,” Stephenson said. “I’ve never been to Tiqr, and that vase is an obvious fake.”

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The sentinel hung motionless, three feet in the air, as Kelsey approached it. Unmoved by the noise of her approach–which, in her ancient kerosene-powered beater, was considerable–it only responded when she was within a car length.

A grinding electronic noise sputtered forth from a hidden speaker somewhere on a cuboid form caked with dust and grit. At once time, it might have been intelligible, a demand which one could understand. Now, it was merely a signal to display a talismen.

Kelsey stopped and got out, leaving the engine idle and knocking. She held up a faded rectangle of plastic, on which the barest ghosts of writing and a picture could still be discerned. It wasn’t Kelsey’s picture, nor could she read the writing, but that didn’t matter. She’d bought it from a trader for a very dear price, since it was the only thing that the sentinel would accept.

Red beams shot out from the thing’s core, probing for the talismen. Finding it, further wordless sound crackled out of it. That was the signal that it was safe to proceed.

Kelsey reentered her vehicle, carefully winding it through the slagged wrecks of travelers who had not carried the proper artifacts. Whatever the sentinel’s eternal job was, it had discharged it well.

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The Gray Man, He-Who-Walks-Without-Walking. Some say he sustains himself on the fresh-born nightmares of the slumbering. Others that he is a harbinger of ill fortune borne on dark wings of refuse and shadow. But all who see him–faceless, ever-seeking, aloft in his trench coat and once-fashionable hat, are forever scarred by the sight.

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House Essyn had long been one of the Great Houses of the Confederation, with its scions often presented to the Confederate Court and the sovereign. But by the election of Eleseer III as High Sovereign, House Essyn was in steep decline.

Seron II, Marquis of Essyn, had enjoyed a long tenure of nearly 70 years as head of his house, but he had never fathered a legitimate heir, preferring instead to marry consorts he knew to be barren and spawning scores of bastards with courtiers and serving-girls. Though in theory the Confederation allowed Seron absolute authority to designate his own heir, none of the other Great Houses would see fit to ally with even a legitimized bastard, or to offer one of their own heirs up in marriage.

In a panic brought on by his advancing years and ill health, Seron married a young petty noblewoman. Their only child together was a daughter, with her mother dying in childbirth. Growing up in splendor even as her aged father ignored her in a fruitless search for a male heir, the Lady Essyn was nevertheless fiercely independent and keenly intelligent. Her beauty earned her the monicker “Flower of Essyn” at her presentation to the Confederate Court, but that was far from the sum total of her whole.

Over time, the court and even the High Sovereign began to wonder at Seron II’s decline; despite the old man’s health having reduced him to being carried about in a bier, he refused to die despite the obvious ravages of age and disease. At the same time, the Confederate Court was rocked by news that the Flower of Essyn had kindled a romance with a low-born conjurer rather than the many eligible young men of her own rank that had been put forward by Great Houses looking to add Essyn to their holdings.

What happened next is subject to many lurid tales. Did the Flower’s secret consort betray her and her house with dark magicks? Did she dabble too greedily in the dark arts in an attempt to extend her ailing father’s life? Or did she merely get entangled in the putrefied beginnings of the Dead Uprising?

All that is certain is that the Flower of Essyn was slain in her prime, the subject of a funeral procession led by a father who scarecely knew where he was anymore. And three days later, she rose from her grave.

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“Yes, there are some similarities to other incidents like the Philadelphia case I sent you,” said Mahmoud. “We’ve read up on them, though, and there are considerable differences as well.”

“Go on,” said Col. Hamid. “I haven’t had time to read your message. But this is a matter of considerable personal interest to the Ministry of the Interior and the King, so bear in mind that everything you uncover may be destined for the highest organs of the state.”

“Well, ordinarily the investigation of a suicide would be conducted by the Mutawa, as suicide is a sinful violation of the public order,” Mahmoud continued. “But the sumber of suicides, as well as their geographical proximity, led to it being passed to the Mabahith.”

“You were afraid that there was a serial killing preying on pilgrims to Mecca,” Col. Hamid said. His tone indicated that he was comfortable settling on a threat he knew, a threat he could shoot.

“That was our first thought, yes,” Mahmoud replied. “Or that someone was attempting to cover up personal murders by passing them off as random, like the woman in America who poisoned her husband’s pills and then the pills of random others. I sent you that case as well.”

“Go on,” Hamid said, waving a hand. “My time is too valuable for reading.”

“Very well, sir,” said Mahmoud, repressing any instinct to respond in kind. Hamid had his position through royal patronage, after all, and it would do nobody any good. “But the investigation quickly showed that there was no question of suicide in many of the cases. Pilgrims running off of building roofs and balconies in full view of witnesses. Pilgrims stabbing themsleves with hidden knives. Pilgrims laying down and allowing themselves to be trampled.”

“All right, but the presence of sinners among the supposedly faithful is no surprise,” Col. Hamid said. “We have adultery, robbery, even apostasy in the holy city every year. How is suicide any different?”

“With respect, sir, twenty-seven dead in three weeks is different,” Mahmoud said. He bit the inside of his cheek to stifle an angry outburst.

“Could be a coincidence.”

“With respect, sir, all of the victims had been in close proximity to one another.”

“Oh, they had all arrived at the same time? Perhaps it is one of those, what do they call them, suicide rings? Suicide pacts? Very unfortunate, but we can round up the stragglers and see that they get their wish for death.” Again, the prospect of rounding up, imprisoning, or shooting–using the tools he was comfortable with–seemed to make the colonel much more energetic.

“No, that’s not it at all,” Mahmoud said. This had all been covered in his report, naturally; a report that the colonel had neglected to read just like everything else that crossed his desk. “They arrived in different groups at different times and in some cases spoke different languages. What I meant by proximity is that each victim had been close to or physically touched the previous one due to chance, as near as we can tell.”

“So…a conspiracy?”

“With respect, sir, no. Not at all. A Turkish woman cannot conspire with an Egyptian man when they only contact they have ever had is both touching a Turkish husband. Something is being passed between these pilgrims like a disease, and whatever it is leads them to murder themselves as quickly and efficiently as they can.”

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