Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Argentsail the Dispossessed
The far-flung Island of Anpok is nearly a thousand miles out to sea, and was undiscovered until a goblin longboat was blown off course in a storm and into Anpok’s small harbor. Its captain, exploring the area, found the veins of argent silver which saw the island go from uninhabited to supporting a population of 2000 miners within five years. He was able to sell the title of the island to the crown of Layysia in exchange for a tidy sum every year. This provided him with a good income until the crown, on trumped-up charges, ceased payment. In retaliation, Argentsail sold a quitclaim to the King of Pexate and guided an invasion fleet to oust the Layyians. Thus it was that Argentsail became (technically) dispossessed, yet maintained his name.

Ryntap Rawfingers
Musician, storyteller, and itinerant bard, this goblin composed ballads on the ryntap, the traditional goblin lute-drum. His epic stories, told in song and verse, were the life and times and family history of Mycnu Rollfall, a mighty goblin warrior. Named for his ability to roll with the punches and think on his feet, Mycnu Rollfall was a goblin living in what became the Kingdom of Pexate in the time of King Eyon I and leading a band of his fellows against the incursion of the King’s conquest. His exploits won him the respect of his adversary but did not spare him from death in furious battle. Playing his fingers raw while spreading his ballads, Ryntap won his name and reknown. The only detail, which never seemed to bother Ryntap or his listeners, was that Mycnu Rollfall (and his lovely mule wife Nyubl) never existed at all.

The Stitchwound
Anatomist, healer, and all-around doctor, The Stitchwound tended to the wounds of both sides of the catastrophic Battle of Buckethill, earning his name for saving the life of a baron by stuffing his wound with maggots and stitching. As legendary for his insults as he was for his healing, The Stitchwound would likely have earned a name for himself when he told the Crown Prince that “he was not afraid of a man who took ten years to learn his alphabet.” Later, when attending to the Baron Varrett, the Baron’s son worried that his father would be poisoned. “Have no fear,” The Stitchwound told him, “for no man in Varrett would take away your father’s life to make you baron.” Spurning any other names, he insisted on being known only as The Stitchwound (with an integral article) until his death tending to a goblin chief during a raid across the border of Layyia.

Tpaukep Skinpeeler
When the famous Amber Crown of Layyia was stolen by gutsy brigands from the Crown Jewels, the King of Layyia brought together the best trackers and minds in his kingdom to try and see to his treasure’s return. A goblin answered the call, certain that her methods of deduction were superior to those tried by the better-known and more expensive hunters. The royal steward derisively let her try. Realizing that it had to have been an inside job, the goblin tracked down where every single person with keys had been the night of the theft. The only one with no alibi was kidnapped and interrogated with a flayer’s knife; it only took one arm peeled like a potato for him to divulge his accomplices. The goblin then tracked the thieves using the same methods; the last purpetrator reportedly lost every inch of skin on his torso before he divulged the crown’s location. Tpaukep literally means “yellow-stone,” amber, and “Skinpeeler” explains itself.

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“I dated a geneticist for a while.”

“Why didn’t it work out?”

“She wanted to have kids, but I wasn’t really about that.”

“But she’s a geneticist! She can make her own kids with DNA!”

“Yes, she can…just like every other woman.”

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Near the end of the Golden Age of the Abbasid Caliphate, engineers digging an irrigation ditch uncovered a most curious item. Accounts differ as to whether it was found there or plunged to the site in a ball of fire from the heavens, but all agree on the nature of the object: a nearly perfect cube of a material that was smooth as obsidian, warm to the touch, and roughly the size of a man’s head. Astonishing its discoverers, the cube was surrendered to the Caliph reigning in Baghdad and his House of Wisdom, the greatest grouping of scientific minds of this or any age.

It was called sagheer kaaba or little cube by those who found it, in reference to its shape as a near-perfect cube. Many in the House of Wisdom found the sagheer kaaba to be pleasingly evocative of the holy Kaaba in the Great Mosque, the House of God. For this reason, it was felt by some in Baghdad that the sagheer kaaba must be divine in and of itself, a gift from Allah.

The Caliph warned sternly against this, promising to punish as idolaters any who bowed to the sagheer kaaba in prayer and ignored the directive in hadith and surah that only the holy Kaaba in Mecca was to be used for such. Nevertheless, the Caliph allowed the study and display of the sagheer kaaba within the House of Wisdom as a curiosity.

One of the greatest minds of his age, the polymath Ibn Al-Haytham was the first to discover a curious property of the sagheer kaaba during an experiment in physics. The object had the curious property of generating an electric current in any conductor it touched–or even was brought into close proximity with. Ibn Al-Haytham was able to use the sagheer kaaba to power a variety of small automatons he constructed for the Caliph’s amusement, and the fragmentary Baghdad Chronicle records the Caliph’s son being delighted by a “mechanism of skittering brass legs like unto a spider” with the cube perched on top of it.

Study continued after the deaths of Al-Haytham and the reigning Caliph, with increasingly elaborate devices being designed to draw on the sagheer kaaba‘s power, which was found to grow at a geometric rate in response to the demands made upon it. It powered baths, moving walkways in the palace, lights that burned without wicks or oil, and a series of catapults and crossbows arrayed in the city walls for the purpose of defense.

In time, too, the younger Caliph wavered in his father’s attitude toward the sagheer kaaba as an focal point of worship. Arguing that its wondrous properties could mean nothing but a divine origin, the Caliph and his household began directing their daily prayers to Allah to the small cube rather than the great one. The House of Wisdom’s best scholars noted with unease that the cube seemed to increase its power output as a response to these prayers, and several quietly quit their posts and left Baghdad.

When the great imams of Baghdad learned of the Caliph’s actions, they demanded that he cease his heresy at once. He agreed through a messanger and announced that the sagheer kaaba had been destroyed, but thereupon he and his household were largely confined to the palace and did not appear in public. Observers from the House of Wisdom noted that the Caliph’s palace was increasingly fortified, and that the sagheer kaaba-powered defenses had begin appearing inside the city walls, at the palace’s battlements.

Eventually, the Caliph’s eldest son returned from campaigning against the Mongols in Iran and attempted to meet with his father. Denied access–again through a messenger–he snuck in through a secret oubliette. The next day, shaken and trembling, the Caliph’s son summoned the imams, the House of Wisdom’s scholars, and the commander of the Baghdad garrison. Without giving an explanation other than heresy and continued idolatry, he insisted that an attack on the palace begin at once.

When an emissary sent to the Caliph returned full of crossbow bolts, the luminaries of Baghdad agreed to the assault. They soon found out how efficient the new defenses were, though, and if the records are to be believed close to 10,000 men were wounded or killed in the battle–cut down by all manner of infernal machines. The troops that did pierce the inner sanctum were sworn to secrecy, but several accounts of moldering bodies locked in the harem and the sagheer kaaba floating in glory on a throne of gold nevertheless survived.

The new Caliph declated the sagheer kaaba to be a thing of the devil, a demon set loose upon the earth, and attempted to destroy it. The Mongols preempted this, however, with their great assault on Baghdad’s weakened defenses. With the sagheer kaaba‘s miraculous machines no longer functioning, the enlightened city of Baghdad fell to the invaders in only 12 days.

Unreliable accounts indicate that the sagheer kaaba was delivered to the Khan as a curiosity along with the Caliph’s severed head. In any case, its last known whereabouts were in the titanic convoy of plunder that left Baghdad in 1259 bound for Karakorum.

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In the decades after the Fungal Wars, we often wondered why. Why the alien Fungoids had chosen to attack when they had, why we as a species had been so ruthlessly enslaved, why we seemed to have been singled out for special mistreatment.

It was only after nearly a century that we realized the race of evolved fungi had found our ideas of mushroom nudity very unsettling when they spied a toadstool in the painting by Vermeer that we had sent into the stars attached to a space probe.

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NOTICE

The Deerton School District is committed to a safe and healthful environment for all of its students. We therefore must reluctantly take the following action as a result of the unfortunate events that happened last week.

As such, all garlic is hereby banned from lunches brought from home, effective immediately.

The number of students in the DSD who are vampires has been growing, and their intense allergy to garlic makes an unsafe learning environment for them. Even a student who has handled garlic and gives one of our vampire students a hug or a kiss can cause an allergic reaction, and the school nurse may not be able to get there with an epi-pen before the child melts into a puddle of slurry.

After the unfortunate incident last week, we feel that this rule is the only way to prevent another such tragedy. We at DSD know that there are many garlic lovers among our populace, but we hope that this will be seen as an unfortunate necessity.

In addition, we regret to inform our Catholic students that holy water for the purposes of baptism and ablution is also hereby banned for the same reason, and effective immediately, wood shop classes are suspended. These measures are in response to various incidents of our vampure students being staked and scarred, and are also an unfortunate necessity.

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HOPEWELL, MI – It has been said that human subcultures are fractally nested, and that there is no bottom. Pundits have also claimed that in the age of the internet, people with interests so specific and so far outside the mainstream can come together and commiserate in ways that would have once been impossible. Putting both of those ideas to the test is the emerging subculture of “benchwarmers.”

Despite what the name may suggest, “benchwarmers” are not people who are left on the sidelines during sporting events. As an anonymous “benchwarmer” put it in an interview with the Hopewell Democrat-Tribune, “we call ourselves ‘benchwarmers’ because we’re on the bleachers all the time.” In other words, the “benchwarmer” subculture is made up of people who regularly drink bleach.

One might think that, given bleach’s propensity to cause chemical burns, that such a subculture might go extinct after its first outing. However, the “benchwarmer” that spoke to the Democrat-Tribune disagreed. “We start with a very low concentration, just enough to get the taste and the burning sensation,” she said, “and then we gradually increase the percentage of sodium hypoclorite.” This accelerates the formation of scar tissue that protects the drinker from the full effects of the caustic chemical.

Gathering on web sites and forums like “The Bleachfields” or “Sodium Hypocrites,” the “benchwarmers” share their stories of internal injury, oral and coleorectal scarring, and different ways of diluting bleach so that its ingestion does not cause instant and painful death. The sites also maintain “Benchwarmer MVP” lists with information about fallen members of the subculture and the highest percentage of sodium hypoclorite they were able to ingest before death.

“Cloroxian1977 is still a legend on The Bleachfields,” said the anonymous source. “He was able to get up to a solution of 37% NaClO before his organs ruptured.” Our source maintains that the dream of a human being who is able to drink pure, undiluted bleach–100% sodium hypoclorate–remains the dream of the subculture.

Responding to criticisms that “benchwarming” is a suicidal fixation and most likely a manifestation of a mental illness like pica, the Democrat-Tribune‘s source became defensive. “It’s a very freeing, cleansing thing, and extremely important to our mental well-being,” she said. “People ingest dangerous amount of chemicals all the time, we are simply more open about it.”

At press time, the “benchwarmers” associated with The Bleachfields online forum were attempting to have their first in-person convention at the Southern Michigan University convention center. The head of that facilty told us that he would not be “party to a suicide pact” and had refused to let the space. In a response, the campus diversity officer blasted his concerns as “exclusionary” and “divisive.”

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Lapur Xianuende, an elven engineer formerly in the employ of Baron Hecoran, and Sustrai Xianuende, a dwarven mercenary hired to protect Hecoran Keep as the Baron consolidated his forces for a confrontation with his neighbor Baroness Ioxus. They met and fell in love, which resulted in the expulsion of Lapur from his family and the blacklisting of Sustrai from her unit. Forced to make ends meet as they could, the pair ended up fleeing into the wilds of northern Hecoran where they fell in with the bandit leader Mtos. Despite their circumstance, they managed to have seven children in four sets of twins:

Mailu (age 15)
Favoring his father, Mailu is already taller than all of his siblings at 15 but has inherited his mother’s incredible swarthiness with a growing beard that will one day be the envy of many a full-blooded dwarf. His strength and height have found him work as a longshoreman on Pexate’s rivers, felling trees even at his young age. He harbors a dream to become a soldier, though he lacks the money and martial skill to do so.

Harro (age 15)
Mailu’s twin, Harro favors his mother and has never grown any taller than her. Despite this, he has the slim build and features of an elf, and appears very like a rare halfling of Daqin, a people like the ogres and trolls on the verge of extinction. As such, he has joined a treveling carnival under the name “Arqin the Last Halfling from the East” and currently tours Pexate. His parents consider this a phase that he will grow out of, failing to see the unintentional pun therein.

Gezi (age 20)
Gezi favors his mother, being of average dwarvish height and build but with his father’s dazzlingly blonde and straight hair and delicate ear-points. Even so, he lives as a full dwarf in the settlement of Noaad near the Pexate-Layyia border and writes only occasionally of his work there as a miner and prospector.

Alkate (age 20)
Gezi’s twin, Lantza is between her parents’ heights, on the short side of the elven norm, with ears that are semi-pointed and wavy brown hair. Unable to fit in with anyone but her parents, she serves their band of bandits as a scout and a courier, gathering supplies and passing messages. She finds the work quite thankless and is rather desperate to find another elf-dwarf hybrid of similar appearance so that she can feel a greater sense of belonging.

Brankan (age 25)
Living in Toan, Brankan is studying to become a Priest of the Sepulcher under the Bishop-Baron of Toan. On the short side but still rather taller than his mother, his dwarf-like thick bushy blonde hair allows him to hide his delicately pointed ears and pass for human, while his taking of the cloth as a celibate man of the Creator will serve to disguise his inability to have children. Far and away his parents’ favorite, his studious and dull personality is constatntly held up as an example for the others despite the fact that Brankan clearly wants nothing to do with his parents.

Zaldi (age 25)
Brankan’s twin, she favors her father and has an elflike height and build with her mother’s black and curly hair and semi-rounded ears. Though she could pass for human, she instead lives as an elf and works as a waitress and occasional actress in the Elf Quarter of Aiov in the Barony of Varrett. The money she sends home does not make up for her parents’ stern disapproval of her lifestyle.

Lantza (age 30)
The sole survivor of Sustrai’s first difficult pregnancy; her twin Daic was stillborn. As tall as her father, but with her mother’s stout build, she is a mercenary in the city of Simnel and moonlights as a wrestler in the city’s famous but illegal Mud Pits. Despite the fact that she is an elf-dwarf hybrid and cannot have children of her own, her lack of a husband continually bedevils her parents who are always writing her with suggestions.

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“Okay, the category is Science, and the question is: Does Uranus have an aurora?”

“Hahahahaha! I don’t know, I’ve never checked! Bring me a mirror and give me a minute in the bathroom.”

“Fair enough. The answer is yes, but something tells me it’s mostly methane. Next card, History category: What did Dick Tuck do to Richard Nixon’s Chinatown train?”

“HAHAHAHAHA! Oh. My. GOD. Is that really someone’s name? How can you have a name like that and not change it? I have no idea what happened when he ran a train on Nixon, and I don’t WANT to know!”

“Card says that…he waved the train out of the station before Nixon was done. Ahem. Your turn. This one’s Arts Literature: At what time did Wee Willie Winkie run wild through the town?”

“This is starting to get a little spooky. Is it just me, or is this one SERIOUSLY perverted game of trivia?”

“Copyright 1984, but published in a factory built on an old Hustler Magazine burial ground.”

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The Taw, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is used to describe a movable point in space, the size and hardness and luster of a pearl. It contains within it the exact mathematical opposite of every point in the known and living universe. Gazing into it is to invite madness. Sages have wasted away aeons tracking down the Taw wherever it has found itself and attempting to intuit truths about our world from viewing its opposite.

None of this, however, explains how the Taw appeared on eBay with an opening bid of 99¢ and a Buy It Now price of $19.99 (plus sales tax in California).

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Despite rumors to the contrary, ogres are a species apart and not simply very large goblins or orcs. Like orcs and goblins, ogres posess the ability to conduct photosynthesis through the green hue of their skin. Unlike them, though, ogres tend to be much larger: an adult ogre is usually 10 feet tall and in excess of 1000 lbs. They also have a decidedly simian build, with short and stocky legs to support their bulk but very long arms on which they can knuckle-walk to move faster.

The key differentiator between ogres and other sapients–though classifying ogres as sapients remains a matter of no small debate–is that ogres have never formed social groups larger that closely related bands. They understand and can speak a few words but have no language of their own so far as is known. This has led many to dismiss them as mere beasts, an evolutionary link between evolved sapients and their simian forebears.

This is in fact not the case. Ogre social organization is extremely complex, based around triumvirates of mature males that gather a band of mature females and immature males about them to live a mobile lifestyle of foraging and raiding. The males in the triumvirate routinely conspire against, challenge, and kill each other, an order that other sapients often use to take control of ogre bands. If someone is able to kill all three ogre band leaders, they are regarded by the others as the new leader.

Despite their limited language skills, ogres are masters of nonverbal communication and can converse in the Silent Tongue and sign language with a high degree of fluency. They are also extremely adaptable and excellent mimics: once exposed to the use and maintenence of metal weapons, for instance, they will practice those skills on their own. This is why most ogres encountered in latter days were well-armed and well-armored.

Unfortunately, the territory required for ogres to live in the wild was considerable, and as the nations of the world consolidated their borders, ogres found themselves squeezed out or in many cases deliberately killed. By the time of Uxbridge’s Anarchy in Pexate, for instance, ogres were extremely rare aside from a few captive bands belonging to powerful barons. The dawn of the modern age saw them all but extinct, confined to a few tracts of vast wilderness in Poccia and “sapient zoos” in Pexate and Layyia. Like the trolls of Ceres and the halflings of Daqin, ogres were simply unable to effectively adapt or oppose cultures in which organized warfare and professional soldiers were the norm.

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