Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

I don’t want to live in fear
Of a garden overgrown and dead
I don’t want to despair
At the thought of the work ahead
I want to plant the seeds deep
So their roots can grow and spread
And if the shoots should wither
If the cabbage never comes to a head
I’ll still be the better for trying
And refusing surrender to dread

Eight years ago, a man shot himself in the head. His family, his friends, and his doctor all warned him not to do it, but he refused to listen. “Nobody tells me what to do,” he muttered, putting the pistol to his head and pulling the trigger.

Remarkably, he survived. The pain was intense, and the cost was immense, but over the course of that eight years the man slowly recovered and regained his health. Against all odds, he had not died.

Then, he picked up the same pistol again, and put it to his temple. Again, his friends and his family urged him not to pull the trigger. The doctors reminded him of his long recovery, the pain he had suffered, and how lucky he had been to survive. As one, they begged him not to make the same mistake again, for the second time might well be fatal.

“Nobody tells me what to do,” the man muttered.

Lady Withrington, Dowager Lich
The widow of an antiquarian who ran the Unnatural Society. Turned to necromancy after her husband died to preserve her claim on his fortune. Funds expeditions for powerful and interesting artifacts but is a dilettante, easily bamboozled by fakes.

Wardson Gumpter, Nouveau Riche Merchant
Gumpter House has established itself as the trade authority at the city docks over the last ten years, ruthlessly consolidating smaller trade houses. Wardson was born poor and clawed his way up, giving him a keen and skeptical eye. His son, Wardson II (“Wardie”) however…

Herbert Van Lyke, 4th Marquis of Cofferdam
A staid and traditional aristocrat of limited interests and intelligence, and a keen big game hunter. Still haunted by the decades-old debauchery of his cousin, the infamous 3rd Marquis or “Masochist Marquis” and bristles at any mention of that era.

An Answer Thine Need
To The Riddle This Is
We Will Send Our Screed
On The Summer Solstice

Whelk (Age: ??)

An evil, unscrupulous shopkeeper, loan shark, and pawnbroker. Miserly, bitter, and a cheat, he seeks to accumulate magical items of the greatest power for sale to the highest bidder. Though he appears to be a simple, if filthy, old man, his true nature is unknown and there is ample evidence that he is in fact some sort of demon or malignant spirit.

The Abdar (age: ???)

As lawful and benevolent as the Zaar is chaotic and malignant, the Abdar seeks to guide wayward souls. However, it is bound by strictures in a way that the Zaar is not, limiting it to advice and attempts at guidance rather than direct action. Centuries of non-intervention have also made it rather aloof and cold, and it would rather see the rules adhered to than the Zaar’s plan foiled, even as it recognizes the absurdity inherent in its position.

Two sides of the same coin, the Zaar and the Abdar both arise from the festering of once-mortal souls, but while the Zaar’s violent demise fuels its rage at the world, the Abdar was bound by a promise or stricture it was unable to keep, which led to its helpful but also straitlaced nature. None can say where they rules they cleave to originated, but they are strictly obeyed all the same.

The Zaar (age: ???)

A malevolent and incorporeal spirit of wickedness and chaos that delights in practical jokes, the misery of others, and frustrating the goals of others. It will take time out from its ultimate goal to torment others our of sheer malice, but is also highly intelligent and cunning and capable of great subtlety when it wishes. A being without form or flesh, it can possess anything with an anthropomorphic shape given the proper circumstance. Its first vessel in the story is a waxwork of Eamon de Valera; its second is Hazel herself. The Zaar’s ultimate goal is a combination of revenge and a twisted desire to do what it sees as good: to “tug loose a thread” in the ordered world, creating a breach that will inevitably widen and bring forth a new reign of utter chaos it is convinced will inevitably lead to a more equitable world.

The Zaar disdains the touch of any living being, as the trauma of its creation may be made manifest to anyone who touches its possessed form. The Zaar’s spirit is the result of a human’s death and unfulfilled soul grinding in the darkness between worlds, festering like a wound until all that remains is a primal urge for unchecked vengeance and terror.

Syke (Age: 2)

An androdryad—that is, a masculine spirit of the forest and trees—Syke is the psychic and life force of a young fig sapling, which can project itself into (and interact with) the material world in the form of a young man. Rather than the pastoral and gentle gynodryads of legend, Syke is an angry young man who seeks to assert his masculinity and worth at every turn. Initially apprenticed to the foul antiquarian and pawnbroker Whelk, Syke is capable of moving only a limited distance from his fig sapling—a problem he takes in stride by bearing it on a specially constructed backpack.

Syke’s mother, the gynodryad Teenah, was a 1000-year-old tree who had not borne fruit in nearly 900 years; having been raised for her fruit, none of her saplings had germinated. Despondent over her lack of descendants, she made a deal with dark powers to allow her to bear and germinate a single fruit with a single seed within it—Syke—in exchange for her living heartwood. Whelk, called upon to carry out the deed by the selfsame dark powers, cut Teenah’s heartwood from her as the newly-sprouted Syke watched and fashioned it into a box that he then sold before reneging on the bargain and taking the young sapling hostage to force it to work in his shop.

Cary (Age: 215)
Real name: Caroline Easterly; her bestowed name is short for “caryatid” as in “caryatid column.”

An ambulatory statue in the form of a young woman, tasked as guardian of an important artifact in a hidden crypt. Despite her isolation and the nature of her duties, she has remained quite up-to-date on recent trends and fashions through badgering visitors to the artifact and a small illicit radio and television set (she is terrified that the authorities will find out she has not been paying the proper licensing fee). A devoted consumer of American culture, this has led to her speaking in a rather stereotypical California accent at a mile a minute. Despite her naïveté, she is incredibly skilled in combat and nigh-indestructable.

In 1820, she lived in Dublin as the daughter of an Anglo-Irish landlord and member of parliament; a youthful dalliance with a cruel sociopath led to her being kidnapped and sacrificed as part of the ritual needed to create an animated caryatid, which bound her soul within the stone (her companion, Tiddy, was bound in the same manner from an out-of-work governess).

The Fáidh (Age: 71)
Real name: Munroe Dalcassian; his assumed name/title means “wise man, sage, seer, prophet” in Gaelic.

A self-proclaimed bard, helper of the lost, and speaker of the fair tongues, the Fáidh claims to be “one-quarter fae on my mother’s side” but what, if any, fair ancestry he has is open to debate. An experienced hand at moving between the mundane and the fair, he is good-hearted but absent-minded, prone to distraction, and wont to discourse on subjects at exhaustive length. If he doesn’t know the answer to something, he will happily make it up. In his youth, he was a devoted groupie and roadie for a number of rock bands during their tours in the UK and abroad and is surprisingly well-versed in the culture and language of classic rock ‘n’ roll.

In 1975, the Fáidh was aboard a tour bus that suffered a fiery crash along the M1 motorway, killing the band he was traveling with as well as his fiancée. The trauma of the accident, and the visions that came afterwards, were responsible for his move toward an itinerant bardic lifestyle thereafter.