Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

I, Ad Dakhla, scribe and chronicler to the court of the Sultan of the City of Bronze, do here set down a tale of the Thiefblade, a small dagger that makes a thief of anyone who possesses it. It is finely jeweled, or so the illustrations in the chronicles relate, and so well-wrought that if is difficult to conceal when worn in any capacity.

Upon sight of it, those with even the smallest aptitude for a blade are smitten with it, and seek to steal the dagger at their earliest opportunity. This has, as one might imagine, led to more than one would-be thief being struck down with the very blade they attempted to steal. But once the blade is prized away from its former owner, the cycle begins anew.

It is said that the Thiefblade has been stolen hundreds of times, and will see yet a hundred more before it is put beyond the reach of mortal man. No tales exist of how it came to be, nor any theories; it seems that any knowledge of its history has, itself, been stolen.

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I, Ad Dakhla, scribe and chronicler to the court of the Sultan of the City of Bronze, do here set down the story of an heirloom of the city and the sultanate, the Stained Blade. Long ago, when the city was ruled not by a sultan but by a shah, the current Sultan’s forefather sought to take the city to free it from the Shah’s tyranny. He appealed to fabled Vloles, on the Dreaming Moon, for a blade with which he could strike but a single decisive blow.

And his entreaty was answered, with a warning: stroke your blow, but the evidence of it will forever be known. The Sultan’s forefather smuggled the blade, and his men, into the city over a number of months before the gathered their strength, opened the gates from within, and stormed the palace. Only one blow was struck, to end the Shah’s reign and begin the Sultan’s, but the blood was forever imprinted upon the blade. Its pattern and spray seem to depict a blow not struck in combat but one from behind, on an unaware target.

The first Sultan was not bothered by this, and he displayed it for many years in his palace before it was consigned to the armory. The current Sultan is more ambivalent, and is not enthusiastic about his ancestor’s “cowardly blow.” I offer that if the first Sultan was not bothered by it, and if the hosts of fabled Vloles did not strike him down, none but the Shah may truly find fault with such an action.

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I, Ad Dakhla, scribe and chronicler to the court of the Sultan of the City of Bronze, do here set down with contrition the story of a sword the Sultan revoked my access to. The blade was a fine crystal, clearly useless for combat but nevertheless a masterpiece of several arts intended as a display piece. I was warned not to remove its protective case, and warned not to touch it.

Nevertheless, my curiosity got the better of my judgment and I removed the blown glass cover from the sword and filter gave it a slight tap with a wooden pin. My simple objective was to note the resonance of the sound it produced, and perhaps thereby ascertain the sort of crystal that the sword was made from. But the warnings had been given in earnest, and that small tap was enough to set off a resonance that caused the whole room to vibrate, several glass enclosures throughout the palace to crack or break, and bits of masonry to rain down upon the head of the Sultan himself.

Needless to say, my access was quickly revoked. If he had a hammer and could be assured that he would survive the resulting blow, the sultan told me, he would destroy the infernal thing. When I asked for further details, he refused to give any, simply saying that his family had lost too many armorers to the cursed thing.

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I, Ad Dakhla, scribe and chronicler to the court of the Sultan of the City of Bronze, do here set down the story of the Sword of Regret. Once, it is said, a man of Korton so regretted an action he had taken that be appealed to the Dreaming Moon and fabled Vloles to grant him a means of undoing it.

In response, he was sent the Sword of Regret. By slaying 100 souls that it designated through the shifting engravings on its blade, the Sword would allow the hand that held it to erase one regretful mistake. Though not a violent person, the petitioner nevertheless took up the sword and killed those it bade him. When the time came, his sincere regret was acted upon, and the act undone.

However, with nothing to regret, the sword could never have come to him in the first place, for there was no reason for him to ask it of fabled Vloles on the Dreaming Moon. Thus, he found himself, instead, a murderer and hunted. It is said that his journals, now held in the archives of Korton, and eyewitness accounts corroborate this, though I have not been able to find either myself.

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After writing about the mundane falchion which I carry, I mentioned the fact to the Sultan and he insisted that I also write about my true sword, the one which I sharpen and practice with every day. Thus, I, Ad Dakhla, scribe and chronicler to the court of the Sultan of the City of Bronze, do here set down the history of my pen.

While I use goose quills from the royal aviary for much day-to-day writing, I am lucky enough to have a nib pen wrought by the Sultan’s personal metalsmith as well, for writing on wood-pulp paper and vellum. It is made of fine steel, ornately engraved so as to provide a grip, with a nib that can be removed, exchanged, and sharpened.

The metalsmith made me 100 nibs by way of his apprentice, and since that gift I have used up 54 of them. The 55th nib writes these words now, and I have often wondered which will come first: my own death, or the 100th nib?

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I, Ad Dakhla, scribe and chronicler to the court of the Sultan of the City of Bronze, do here set down the story of my own sword at the Sultan’s express request. I imagine it amuses him, or perhaps he thinks that I was given Le Aaiun’s sword when she passed through and have secretly kept it. No matter; history should recall all, even the mundane.

My sword is a simple falchion, steel-bladed and tanged, with accents of brass and lapis on the handle. I purchased it in the bazaar during a visit to Korton; it is said that their legendary blind smiths had a hand in its creation, but the same is said of every blade there. On my return to the City of Brass, I had the weapon inspected by a smith a trust, who modified it to my taste and created the azure scabbard for it. I have never been much of a swordsman, but I know a few basic parried and thrusts sufficient to protect myself.

If they write songs of my mundane sword, it will be about how I used it as an axe, a paper cutter, and a straight-edge for drawing.

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I, Ad Dakhla, scribe and chronicler to the court of the Sultan of the City of Bronze, do here set down a very strange set of occurrences surrounding a blade I have dubbed Memoria. Whilst reading through an inventory of the Sultan’s armory prepared by his great-uncle’s master-at-arms, I was struck by a mention of a blade that was kept in its own room in the cellar.

I was struck moreso by an annotation, apparently in my own hand, warning me not to seek it out. Curiosity won out over discretion, and I made my way to the cellar, into the old forge area, long since shuttered in favor of a grander one in the new wing. Few had been there in many years, and only a few footprints let in and out of the area. On closer inspection, the footprints were mine, though I was sure I had never been to the cellar before.

Arriving at the blade’s room, I found a series of notes pinned to the door, all written in my hand, each describing a fresh attempt to enter the room and examine the blade within. All, apparently, had somehow failed. I cracked the wooden door, enough to see the light from my torch play over the silver of a great sword held within, and then resolutely shut it. I collected the notes, carefully locked the door, and returned to write this description. On my way, I called upon the Sultan’s chamberlain to inquire about placing a permanent warning, and he noted that I had been working on the same sword for five days, and that he had begun to worry about me.

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I, Ad Dakhla, a scribe
Chronicler to Sultan’s court too
The City of Bronze is my life
The facts I set down here for you
Another great sword I’ve examined
In the Sultan’s museum at last
Though its power seems limited
I can assure you that it’s quite vast
The blade forces all those who hold it
(And all whom it strikes, I suppose)
To sing aloud every thing that
They might otherwise render in prose
I hold it in one hand this moment
Even as I scratch out these words
For as one who doubted the power it
Has certainly left me unnerved.

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I, Ad Dakhla, scribe and chronicler to the court of the Sultan of the City of Bronze, do here set down an account of my meeting with the great diplomat Mocstun of Korton, the elder statesman largely credited with the trade routes that ended the city’s isolation under Køs and brought trade and prosperity back to its darkened streets.

At a banquet in the Candlehall, I asked Mocstun how he was able to accomplish his many feats when other diplomats, myself included, were so often stymied. He pointed to the sword at his side, a plain blade set in an ornate scabbard, and said that the sword helped him to speak any language. I protested, since all tongues are as one in the Dreamlands. Surely that was not necessary? He corrected me: every man, every woman, every child has their own language, and the subtle shades of meaning between them could be as great as the gulfs between any waking tongues. His sword allowed him to speak and understand the personal language of every person he met such that there was perfect clarity and understanding if he so chose.

I, taken aback, asked if that included me, if our entire conversation had been through the seemingly inert blade at his side. Mocstun only smiled and said that he had to keep some secrets, and it was not long after this that he retired from his post and disappeared to the south.

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I, Ad Dakhla, scribe and chronicler to the court of the Sultan of the City of Bronze, do here set down what is known of the Curseblade of Stay. It is a normal cruciform sword with the crest of House Stay, so it is said, and it grants the bearer exceptional skills in combat as well as immense resilience outside of it.

But this comes at a price. The bearer’s dreams are forever after of the Infinite Chateau of Stay, and they feel a compulsion to travel there that grows stronger with each passing day. Eventually, when they can stand it no more, the bearer travels to the Infinite Chateau and is lost among its rooms, refusing all rescue until they vanish into its depths. The sword, tossed away in their final madness, then seeks anew. Some have said that this proves the Infinite Chateau is a living thing, like unto an anglerfish, with the Curseblade as its lure; this is an interesting supposition, but one that perhaps cannot ever be proven.

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