Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The Gallant Griffin Tavern
Named after the arms of a noble family that once ruled these lands, the Gallant Griffin is the favored local watering hole and groggery. It is famous locally for its Hippogriff Hops brew, and barrels of their signature Griffin Grog are occasionally ordered as far away as Snordwich.

The Cloister of St. Martha
St. Martha-with-the-Field-Mice was a notable early saint, and her devotion to the Watcher lives on in her namesake cloister, as does her love of small animals and a persistent colony of snakes.

Castle Llewellyn
This edifice was constructed by the now-extinct line of the Barons Llewellyn, the famed Griffin Knights. Uninhabited for decades, it is maintained by a hardworking and fastidious Steward in the hopes that it will once more be the scene of feasts, jousts, and conspicuous consumption on an impressive scale.

Redstone Manse
The line of the Barons Llewellyn is extinct, but their distant cousin Aldus Elwyn was able to stake his claim to this manor in their former domain as a reward for his service in the Gastrobury Crusade. He now hopes to see his line take lordship over Castle Llewellyn and restore the lands to glory, or at least to respectability.

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Things We Found in the Mine by The Adventuring Party:
-Modrons (two kinds!)
-A trap that shot out a poison dart but we caught it and put it away
-Dark elves (boooo!)
-Devils
-A tripwire
-A dwarf girl whose dad got kidnapped
-An easily intimidated elevator
-The skill to smack Oreos out of someone’s hand

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Sirens in the distance
Whole fire department
An ambulance roars by
Police in the median
Concerned citizens
Are frantically typing
Unanswered questions
On the department’s
Twitter feed

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My great uncle was the most humorless man I ever knew. A big Catholic stick-in-the-mud and sourpuss who I only visited out of filial piety since he was the only living relative I had left on my dad’s side.

I knew something was wrong when I came into his apartment and found him laughing hysterically.

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“Look,” said Alyse. “I told you that, if you were able to cut it as an electrician, I’d add you as a supernumerary. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less.” She held out a scoop light minus its shroud, a mess of electrical tape and dripped solder. “Does this look like cutting it to you?”

Sonja let out a choked cry that bounded back and forth across the loading dock alley. “Is that all I am to you?” she said. “A lampie? Even after last night?”

“If I was your boss, I’d fire you,” said Alyse airily. “I can’t let my personal feelings get in the way or I’m just as bad as Barnard and Cecily.”

“Does that mean humping and dumping like them too?” said Sonja.

“Hey,” Alyse growled. “That’s a low blow. Not cool.”

“This was my chance to finally respect myself a little bit by being out there, even if it was only as Tree #4. Don’t you see that, dammit?” Sonja continued. “What’s one little electric lie in the face of all that, especially if it led to last night?”

“I’m sorry,” Alyse said. “If it’s a choice between that and seeing one of my fellow actors electrocuted, that’s no choice at all.” She dropped the light at Sonja’s feet where it landed with a sad clang. “You can drop your badge off at the box office. I’ll put your stuff up there for you.”

“I hate you!” Sonja cried as Alyse trotted up the steps to the loading dock and disappeared through the stage door. “You ruined everything! I wish you were dead!”

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The Temple of Schoology holds that all beings are immortal and immaterial, with their souls transcending their various bodies. Its founder, the Rev. Dr. J. Mariette Lyndon PhD DDS, named it after the crux of her discoveries about the Rebirthening Cycle: each lifetime is a lesson and the goal is to attain the ultimate passing grade. We now have knowledge of these souls from the beginning their journeys as the precursor elves of the primeval forests one trillion years ago, and living through the rise, decline, and fall of each of the Seven Eternal Empires. Lyndon has shown that, as the inheritors of the Elven High Command and a billion generations of lessons, that we are nearly ready for the final test.

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Novosibirsk, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russian Federation
22:05 Krasnoyarsk Time

“Do you remember the last iteration of our spambot?” said Irina Paznikova, the senior database analyst and programmer for CпамKомпания, the largest web scraping company east of the Ural Mountains.

“Oh yes, the one which kept on coughing up gems like ‘Its such as you learn} my mind!’ and ‘Keep functioning, splendid job!'” laughed Olga Kuzmina, one of the assistant programmers. “It’s a good thing we don’t need relevant comments for the spambots to work.”

“Well, I decided to work on a new algorithm to generate better comments,” said Irina. “Something that could help fewer of them get caught by filters.”

“Oh? How’s that going?”

“It achieved sentience about thirty minutes ago.”

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“Well, near as I can tell, Soderquist and Sanchez came right through here,” said the sheriff, sucking on a hollow tooth. “They made it as far as the edge of the Lovett pasture where we found them footprints and a bit of Soderquist’s prison oranges, and then they both got themselves drowned in the swamp.”

“That doesn’t explain much,” Trooper Barnes said.

“Course it does,” Sheriff Davis said. “Everybody in Sap Hollow knows he had it in for old Dan Olsen. Thought he’d stolen the deed to some Soderquist land and shut him away to keep anyone from doing anything about it.”

“And I’m guessing the attempted murder, assault and battery, and dealing in controlled substances on Soderquist’s rap sheet are nothing, huh?”

“No, not nothing, but he musta felt he had no choice. No other reason that a local’d go through the Sap Hollow swamp.”

“And why’s that?”

Sheriff Davis reached into a pocked and flicked a grainy photograph out of it. “Because of the monster,” he said. “That’s why those boys never came out, and why they never will.”

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Using the explosives the Yellow Planeswalker had distilled from the essences of the slain githyanki, Digger was able to craft some high-quality explosives. Some to bring down the prison roof, and some to blow open the wall in order to let the other prisoners escape.

The demons, the modrons, and the drow all looked at Faris, who sat on his throne, a sly grin on his face. “I’m sorry that you’re surprised,” he said, “but all of you, including my old friends from Valia, will have your agreements honored. If, that is, you are able to find the bauble before anyone else.”

“WHO’S YOUR DADDY!” the strige screamed, shaking young Denny like a ragdoll.

“Fine, fine!” he muttered. “Aiden…Aiden Jenison. That worthless old tin pot.”

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Pomp and circumstance
University officials on the dais
Before them a sea of school colors
For those in the audience
A once in a lifetime event
For the platform party
A sense of deja vu
They will do this
Thirty times more
Before they retire

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