Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

As our region of the country prepares for the awe-inspiring Red Eclipse when the sun is transited by Nemesis, the Star of Death, it’s crucial to prioritize the safety of your eyes and the integrity of your sanity during this extraordinary event.

We asked a leading ophthalmologist and retina specialist, who asked not to be named as they feared invoking the wrath of the Consort of Nemesis, to share essential tips to protect your vision while enjoying the eclipse.

Risk Assessment

The Red Eclipse occurs when the Red Star of Death, Nemesis, Vh’eklolbh-of-the-Pillars, Kthildax-at-the-Threshold passes between the Earth and the sun, momentarily subsuming our view of the sun with its reddish light that resides outside the color spectrum of our ordered universe. Even during partial Red Eclipses, Nemesis emits harmful light from a place beyond love, beyond fear, and beyond sanity; gazing directly at the it during an eclipse can lead to severe brain damage, resulting in a fugue state, temporary psychosis, permanent insanity, or even death by cerebral hemorrage.

As out expert explains, “The mind’s natural defenses—such as dissociation and memory loss—are useless during a Red Eclipse, washed away on the madness of Vh’eklolbh and its Consort. It’s crucial to avoid direct exposure without proper eye protection.”

Safety Measures

Even though our area will only see a partial Red Eclipse, caution is still necessary. Follow these dos and don’ts to ensure a memorable and safe viewing experience:

Dos:

1. Use Certified Red Eclipse Glasses:

Invest in specially designed eclipse glasses or viewers that meet international safety standards. These glasses effectively filter out harmful non-Eucledean rays and most forms of madness, allowing you to observe the eclipse safely.

2. Inspect Your Red Eclipse Glasses:

If you have eclipse glasses that are more than three years old, perhaps from the last Red Eclipse, or notice any scratches, damage, or defects, discard them. Reliable viewers are essential for eye protection, and Nemesis learns to overcome our protection with time and inevitable decay.

3. Spread the Word:

Educate your friends, family, and community about the importance of safety during the Red Eclipse. Encourage everyone to use proper eye protection. More awareness means fewer hospitalization, less mass hysteria, and fewer cases of violent psychosis demanding an armed response.

4. Keep Your Red Eclipse Glasses On:

Even brief exposure to the Star of Death during the eclipse can detry your mind. Wear your Red Eclipse glasses consistently to safeguard your vision. If you must take them off, be sure to turn 180º and look at the ground first.

Don’ts:

1. Don’t Stare Directly at the Red Star of Death:

Regardless of the Red Eclipse’s visibility, avoid looking directly at Nemesis or its Consort without proper eye protection. The risks are real, protecting your eyes is paramount, and death may result for laxity.

2. Avoid Homemade Filters:

Homemade filters, such as sunglasses or unverified materials, do not provide adequate protection. Stick to certified Red Eclipse glasses or viewers. Remember well the fate of Jared McBlain IV, who viewed the Red Eclipse through a welding mask and went on to murder 75 innocents before he was brought down by federal marshals

Remember, the Red Eclipse is a rare and awe-inspiring event. By following these guidelines, you can enjoy it safely without compromising your sanity.

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Few things have divided the Star Confederation’s member sapients more than Chameloids, about whom more speculation than objective fact exist.

The one thing that is clear about them is that Chameloids are natural shapeshifters, able to assume the form of any sapient within about one standard deviation of a certain size. They can be “locked” into a certain form, and prevented from shifting, through the use of Holtzmann restrictors built into standard restraints, although the mechanism of action is currently unknown. It’s speculated–perhaps wildly–that Chameloids are energy beings manifesting themselves as different forms of matter, and a Holtzmann restrictor interrupts this process somehow.

It is also unclear how Chameloids come into being. While there are rumors and hearsay of Chameloid children, all individuals confirmed to have been encountered are young adults or older. This has led to speculation that sapients may spontaneously develop Chameloid characteristics upon adulthood, or even that the Chameloids themselves forcibly “convert” other sapients to their cause.

The response of the Star Confederation to this has, thus far, been legislative. A known Chameloid is required to choose a form and then be Holtzmann-locked into it on a more or less permanent basis and kept under surveillance. This serves both to assuage espionage fears among the various constituent governments of the Star Confederation and is also thought, by some, to prevent the Chameloids from “infecting” others.

Notably absent in the discussion have been the Chameloids themselves.

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“The Steam Djinn”: Why the radiators no longer work

When the building had first been constructed, a man from the ironworks had come and carefully bound up a steam djinn in the basement to run the boilers and pipe hot steam through the wrought radiators. It had been a complex ritual, swallowing a whole week during the pouring of the concrete basement, and photographs from the archives caught snatches of the process as the man chalked elaborate runes of summoning and circles of binding to bring the djinn from its home plane and herd it into a steam boiler.

For the next 75 years, the djinn provided the building with heat, its exertions echoing through the decorative radiators, their scrollwork now blurry and muted under decades of paint. A little water every now and then was all that was required to keep the djinn productive and the building warm. It was not as efficient as later forms of heat, and the radiators were notorious for burning anyone who brushed up against them. The mighty whirlwind wraith in the central cooling plant was far better, but with no money for renovation or repair, the steam djinn continued its work.

It had begun to fade of late, though. No matter how much water it was fed, the heat was increasingly intermittent and feeble. Votive offerings and half-remembered rituals from old library books propped it up for a time, but it was soon apparent to everyone that the summoning had been for a 125-year contract, a standard span in the era before urban planning, and that as the time approached the steam djinn would increasingly fade out, returning to its home and leaving the building dark and cold.

None knew how to summon another. And there was no money for anything better. The plan, then, was to ride out the ebbing steam as long as possible, piling on layers and huddling ever closer to the dying heat, until the day it went out. Water would need to be turned off at some point in the near future, to keep pipes from freezing and bursting, and the building would continue its slow decay from magic to mundanity.

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The entries were dated, but not in any sort of order. The fifth of May followed the first of June, and 1920 was noted as often as 2501. The pages were very fine, quality paper with a high rag content, the sort of paper that would last centuries, and the ink was in various states of fading, iron gall ink rusting, or more modern liquids slowly dyeing to purple. It was the sort of book that someone would carefully purchase, and keep, if they wanted to be sure of its survival from the days of Khemet rising around the Nile to the sputtering sparks at the end of it all as the last humans winked out.

The pages held secrets, to be sure. But without the key, without the hand that wrote them, they might be unrecoverable.

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They call it the Alchemist’s Labyrinth
For it is a twisting maze of ingredients
A morass of ritual and science, intertwined
The alembic’s lament; scourge of mortar, pestle
Failure is months of work lost, at the least
A life ended in fire, at the very most
But a success, oh, a success…
Success is immortality
Though there are some
Wizened alchemists of old
Who would beg
To differ

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“Chronicles of the Lost Constellations: A Star Map Leading to Forgotten Cosmic Realms. Wait, so constellations can change?”

“The precession of the equinoxes. The proper motion of the stars. Earth’s axis wobbles on a 26,000-year cycle, and the stars are, all of them, in motion with regard to the earth. What we believe is fixed and immutable has changed within the span of recorded history, albeit only slightly, and it will change again.”

“So what’s the big deal, then?”

“This text chronicles lost constellations and asterisms, collections of stars in configurations that they could never have had in human history. In fact, my own computer modeling indicates that this book contains constellations that would have only been visible during the Ediacaran period, the first great explosion of multicellular life on this planet.”

“Are you saying…that this book was written in the Ediacaran?”

“Of course not. Look at it! It’s made of wood pulp and iron gall ink, and the Ediacaran was close to 100 million years earlier than the Ordovician period–to say nothing of the further 100 million needed to get to the Devonian period and trees. Anyone with the proper training could have backdated the existing constellations to this configuration, but why?”

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“I’m looking for the Tome of the Unknown Unknown,” said Cins.

“It might also be called the Book of Secret Secrets, or the Grimoire of the Unseen,” said Kerr, helpfully

The librariandroid cocked its head at the question, servos audibly clicking, hard drives spinning, electricity pumping. “Can you describe it?”

“It’s said to be the book containing all the most important information that no one knows that they need to know,” Cins said.

“I think it’s got a brown cover,” pipped Kerr. “Probably leather, since it sounds hella old.”

“One moment.” the librariandroid lurched to a nearby hatch, which promptly disgorged a book meeting the exact description that Cins and Kerr had given. It was leatherbound, with an air of the ancient about it, and all three titles were embossed on its cover.

“How…how did you get that so fast?” Cins gasped.

“Get? Patron, we do not ‘get’ items. No, we create them. From the description given to us, our immense Ingestion Machines create an object matching the description immaculately and then atom-print it to order.”

“Open it to page 99,” Kerr said. “See if what we need is there.”

Opening the volume, Cins was confronted with the overwhelming scent of a new book–far from what he might have expected. Page 99 was entirely given over to the dangers of a “1961-63 Corvair swing-axle rear suspension,” whatever that was.

“This…isn’t what we need,” he said.

“Ridiculous,” said the librariandroid. “The Ingestion Machines have ingested every available piece of data in the known universe, and several parallel dimensions. If this book does not match your expectations to within one standard deviation, clearly the problem is with your expectations, not the system.

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Not native to the realm, jackalopes are imports from the Lands Beyond, recently opened up for conquest and exploitation. Introduced by well-meaning explorers, they have subsequently escaped and bred wildly, overrunning the populations of local hares and stags by outcompeting them both. The high relative intelligence of the jackalope, combined with its powers as a seelie fae, has enabled it to outcompete native rabbits and hares. The Collegium has been involved in control efforts for the pest, posting bounties and attempting to locate and introduce natural predators, but to little effect so far.

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Long shunned as the most unseelie of the unseelie, a human being that had been cursed for unspeakable sins, it is now recognized that werewolves are in fact quite seelie, and their condition is caused by a disease the collegium has dubbed heteromorphia lycans. While much work remains to be done on the subject, it is believed that the condition may be acquired in life or congenitally passed down from parent to child, with particularly severe attacks occurring on a cycle of roughly 28.8 days—hence the myth of a lunar connection. Sufferers still have a major stigma about them, even with the availability of treatments to reduce the frequency and severity of outbreaks, and many fail to seek treatment out due to embarrassment or social pressure—with almost invariably fatal results for the individuals involved. The presence of Collegister Ie, a known werewolf, among the ranks of the institution is in and of itself proof at how far the fortunes of these misunderstood creatures has come in the modern age.

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Once classified as unseelie due to their seemingly mysterious appearance despite no young or breeding females ever being observed, the redcap is now in the process of being reclassified as seelie by the Collegium, as their nature and function are better understood. Rather than being animal, as had been supposed, redcaps are now known to be fungal, with their usual form being a nearly invisible network of mycelium. When they wish to spread their spores, however, redcaps will produce motile fruiting bodies that, to the observer, seem humanoid or even goblinoid. Since proper dispersion of spores requires a violent impact against the fruiting body, redcaps therefore mindlessly seek out combat. Once regarded as a perennial scourge, they can now best be understood as a menace that can be dealt with using a minimum of force and little danger in the loss of life and limb if a fungicidal agent is put in place.

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