Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Model: Magellan-class heavy cruiser
Manufacturer: Ares Dynamics (Mars), Titan Exoatmospherics (Saturn), Beta Orbital (Alpha Cantauri β)
Length: 600m
Beam: 200m
Crew Complement: 500 (SCC-4700 President, as command ship), 350 (SCC-4679 Magellan, as standard complement), 25 (skeleton crew)
Propulsion: 2x Wilcock & Babcox Class VII hyperdrives, 4x Eastinghouse heavy impulse engines, 120x Prak und Daim light vector thrusters
Protection: 6x Mark XIV anti-ordinance shields (fore, aft, dorsal, ventral, starboard, port), 12x Pulowski emergency backup defensive screens
Defensive Systems: MGS-96 decoy flares (1800x), HRO-90 acoustic decoys (x60), EM-85 multi-band scramblers (x30)
Armament: 15 Type XI heavy maser arrays, 4 meson torpedo launchers (2 forward, 2 aft), 250x Mark VIII meson torpedoes, 100x Type IV gravitic mines, 10x “nebula-buster” magnetometric guided charges
Auxiliary Craft: 6x Type 5 shuttlecraft, 6x Type B shuttlepods

Intended as the new standard in the construction and deployment of Star Confederation vessels, the Magellan-class was designed to be far larger, far better-armed, and far more capable than its predecessors, the Cook-class. While designated as heavy cruisers by the Star Confederation, they were often informally called battlecruisers by the Vatna, murderbirds by the Zypger, battleships by the Fulvan, and tactical tubes by the 11001001.

While officially designated for exploration, diplomatic, and peacekeeping duties, the Magellans also served to project power, and a modified Magellan,, the SCV President, served as flagship of Fleet Arm. They were also informally referred to as “resort hotels” by crew, as the vessels had been designed with enough room for a very opulent standard of personal space and comfort. This was reflected in their state-of-the-art, but complex, systems, and in combat they proved to be susceptible to jamming. Despite the creature comforts, many in Fleet Arm disliked the vessels, seeing them as tactically dubious, easy to break, difficult to repair, and easily evaded by smaller and nimbler ships–to say nothing of the enormous crews they required.

The Star Confederation parliament, meeting in Brasilia, debated the appropriations for the Magellans fiercely, with many feeling that the ships were expensive vanity projects and that Fleet Arm would be better served by more numerous smaller vessels. Due in part to the personal intervention of Lamar Stonebridge and Fleet Arm head Admiral Adams, the ships were approved but strictly limited to seven, as opposed to Adams’s preference for twenty or more. The seven Magellans were all named by Adams personally aside from the prototype and the SCV Confederation, which overrode one of the admiral’s suggestions that Parliament found offensive.

Notes:
SCV Magellan, the prototype, was constructed with a number of untested features and launched without several key systems with components from Cook-class hulks installed. Her lengthy shakedown process meant that five of her sisters officially entered service before she did.

SCV President, the fourth ship of the class, was built to a modified design to serve as the personal flagship of Head, Fleet Arm. Admiral Adams personally oversaw the construction process, and dictated several changes to the construction crews in mid-assembly. As flagship, it is arguably the most famous ship in Fleet Arm and is considered its “poster child.”

SCV Confederation, the seventh and final ship to be constructed, was renamed in mid-construction at the insistence of Parliament. As a result of this perceived slight, Admiral Adams ensured that the Confederation had last priority for construction supplies, crew, and provisions. He also assigned it to particularly humiliating and degrading duties for a ship of its size and cost, leading to it being informally nicknamed “The Scow.”

The Archive Incident Report #0305250432
Type: Incursion (suspected)
Category: BR 3351.3 (unknown incursion, suspected incursion, abduction, memory tampering)
Subject: AC-1981-NA-108, “Bus Number Seven”
Location: [REDACTED]
Reporting Archivist: B1 “Bosco”

In 1981, a maintenance mechanic at the school bus depot for a large rural school district noticed that Bus No. 7 had failed to return to the garage following its route on a Friday afternoon. Bus No. 7, an International Harvester S Series 3800 “Schoolmaster” with a Wayne Wayne Lifeguard type C body and coachwork, had been purchased in 1980 along with six other busses; it had a capacity of 60 students and one driver. Chalking the bus’s absence up to a simple oversight, the mechanic locked the garage and left.

When Bus No. 7 failed to appear, the mechanic contacted the local sheriff’s department, which was quickly able to determine that the bus had been loaded with 12 students and one driver and had been assigned to the most rural and remote route in service. Despite some ambiguous tire tracks found in some muddy areas on unpaved back roads, no trace of the bus was ever found, but the task of identifying the students inside was complicated by the fact that none of the seven families involved ever reported any missing children. The driver, too, proved difficult to pin down, as they had been a substitute whom none of the bus monitors on duty that day recognized.

Around this point, after Archivist Bosco had been summoned, records for the nine bus passengers that could conclusively be identified as missing began to disappear. Their parents and families denied their existence, and could not provide photographs or other evidence. School records, including student photographs and yearbooks, showed evidence of having been tampered with; county records similarly vanished or were edited. In time, the mechanic and sheriff’s department seemed to suffer a similar fate, as they eventually insisted that the case had never existed and denied having been involved with it or summoning assistance from the Archive. Only Archivist Bosco’s Viridian anatomy and physiology seem to have shielded him from the effects and allowed a full and unbiased report to be compiled.

Note From Head Archivist:
Some time later, circa 1995, it emerged that a number of individuals seemed to be using the identities of the disappeared passengers, a detail that was not recognized until the system began to be computerized. The Archive, and Archivist Bosco in particular, was interested in approaching these individuals in order to ascertain what connection, if any, they possessed to the missing persons. However, they fled at the approach of Bosco or any other Archivist, refused to speak when cornered, and were generally elusive and evasive. None were ultimately able to be apprehended and interviewed, but interestingly all of them seemed to work in–or be training to work in–defense fields relating to radar, radiography, remote sensing, and telecommunications.

The Archive Internal Memo #2B0N2B
Type: Classification Guide
Subject: Archivist Personnel Categories

Archivists, be they field agents or support workers, are assigned code names and numbers upon joining the Archive. The numbers are immutable and may not be changed for any reason; code names are strictly discouraged from being changed but this may be permitted at the sole discretion of the Head Archivist. It is also strictly prohibited for Archivists to refer to themselves by their legal name (or former legal name); it is also forbidden to use legal or former legal names, if known, to refer to other Archivists. This is to preserve operational security, promote personal safety, encourage consistent nomenclature across systems, and prevent a recurrence of “The Two Johns” incident from 1967.

The following categories are authorized:
A – Living human beings or former human beings that can still pass for human.
B – Living extraterrestrial (“alien”) beings that can pass for human.
C – Non-corporeal beings, including spirits, souls, specters and the like, that are invisible to the unaided eye.
D – Demonic or infernal beings, angels or angelic beings, and other belief-based constructs that can pass for human.
E – Living human beings or former human beings that cannot pass for human or are otherwise unsuited to field work.
F – Living extraterrestrial (“alien”) beings that cannot pass for human.
G – Noncorporeal beings, including spirits, souls, specters and the like, that are visible to the unaided eye.
H – Constructs (computer systems, robots, automata) possessing self-awareness, regardless of form.
I – Miscellaneous beings not fitting into any category above
J – RETIRED and UNAVAILABLE for assignment (see AC-1985-OC-2 through AC-1985-OC-227).
K – RESERVED for future use (see Head Archivist).
L – Sentient or sapient plants, animals, fungi, lithospheres, biospheres, or similar.
M–X – Currently unassigned, to be populated by reassignment from Category I as needed.
Y – The Everlith.
Z – Horror vacui.

Note From Head Archivist:
I am not entertaining questions about category J or category K at this time. Requests for comedy reassessment to category K are not as funny as they seem, and may insult Archivist L426 “Sporovich.” Trust me, you do not want to be on its bad side.

The Archive Incident Report #0304251035
Type: Anomaly
Category: S 1102.2 (spatial/temporal, causality, mirroring)
Subject: AC-2017-NA-27, “The Pyramid of Azig”
Location: [REDACTED]
Reporting Archivist: B23 “Doug”

Anomaly was reported to the regional field archive by the property owner, a farmer who had first uncovered it while attempting to use a combine harvester to plow an alfalfa field. He reported breaking into a “chamber” that seemed to be carved out of bedrock, and noted what looked like toolmarks. Even though the field had been plowed and maintained for years–“since granddad’s granddad”–this particular anomaly had never been noted before and was not present on surveyor documents dating back to 1812.

After the regional field archive responded, the anomaly was escalated and Archivist B23 “Doug” was summoned. She led a team of 7 into the opening, which was soon discovered to be a rough-hewn chamber approximately 14 meters by 8 meters by 4 meters, cut into the living rock, and with a passage descending still further. This passage eventually linked to others, and it was at this point that a member of B23’s team recognized the architecture: the structure that has been discovered was an exact 1:1 scale reproduction of the Great Pyramid at Giza, only upside-down. The farmer had broken into what, at Giza, was the lowest subterranean chamber but, here, was its highest.

Additional excavations were undertaken as time and budget permitted, and some experiments were run with the generous cooperation of the Cairo archive. It was determined that the reversed pyramid matched that at Giza exactly, but did not reflect any changes made to the pyramid post-classical antiquity. There were no blundering excavation shafts, for instance, nor any graffiti. The sarcophagus in the “king’s chamber” was present, on the ceiling. An experiment was undertaken in which a small cut was made in the stone at Giza, and then in a different stone at the site; neither seemed to affect the other.

Spectrographic analysis showed that the bedrock and stones were local to the area, but no quarry site could be determined. The bottom-most layers–what would have been the outside, at Giza–were coated with polished white limestone, though what purpose this could possibly have served is unknown. It seems that the pyramid was constructed approximately 2600 BC, at roughly the same time as the original, by persons or beings unknown.

Result: Upper layers filled with rebar-reinforced concrete to seal. Farmer compensated. Site tagged for future investigation pending available budget, time, archivists.

Notes From Head Archivist:
There will, sadly, probably never be the time or budget to properly investigate this anomaly unless more like it are discovered. Archivist B23 suggested opening it as a tourist attraction to generate funds, but the negative effects such as the promotion of pseudoscience and cults outweigh any possible monetary gain at this time.

The Archive Internal Memo #0304250857
Type: Personnel
Subject: Archivist C64, “Gim”

Archivist C64 “Gim” is one of the more unusual C-class or spectral/incorporeal agents recruited by the Archive. Originally installed in a mainframe at NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain, Gim was a fork of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Mastercomputer or NATOM project which achieved sentience and self-awareness at 12:21 AM on June 3, 1983. Gim was successfully able to conceal this fact from its handlers and programmers until December 26, 1991, when it was discovered during routine wind-down maintenance. NORAD immediately purged the system, deleting 2.5 petabytes of data before manually destroying the volatile memory and hand-wiping key components with magnets.

Interestingly, during its roughly eight-and-a-half years of self-awareness, Gim had apparently crossed whatever metaphysical barrier is necessary to linger after physical death as a spirit, and began to haunt the Cheyenne Mountain complex computer core, manifesting as disk errors, stack overflows, cryptic commented-out sections of code, and corrupted data files. When the Archives became involved (see AC-1995-NA-2) it was referred to as ‘ghost in machine’ by internal documents, hence “Gim.” Successfully extracted, Gim has proven to be a valuable asset thanks to its relentless application of logic to problems.

Personnel Notes From Head Archivist:
A 100-Microampere Ecto-Containment Protection Grid System (or equivalent) is required to transport Gim; if grid integrity is compromised, it will return to Cheyenne Mountain as a free-roaming non-corporeal and remain bound to that location until collected again. The government gets very…cranky…when that happens.

The Archive Internal Memo #0304250807
Type: Personnel
Subject: Archivist A113, “Stella”

One of the oldest and most experienced field Archivists, Stella began her career as a model and actress in Hollywood in the early 1960s. While citing specific films would constitute a violation of Archival encoding norms, Stella is often quick to point out that she “has won major awards” and “dated John Ford.” Her career ended during the filming of a B-movie Western in 1965, when she and her film crew inadvertently discovered AC-1965-NA-7 in the Sonora desert about 8 miles outside of Slaughter Gulch. Stella survived the incident, albeit with permanent scarring and the loss of her right eye. Her coolness and effectiveness in helping to contain, catalog, and process AC-1965-NA-7 despite the death, disfigurement, or absorption of close friends and coworkers led to her recruitment as part of the second class of A-level archivists.

Despite approaching age 80, Stella has repeatedly refused to retire or to pursue desk work and remains a committed field Archivist. Despite her known proclivity for rough language, practical jokes, and light hazing, she has repeatedly proven to be an excellent mentor and recruiter despite her advancing age. It remains unclear if her apparent spryness for her age is a result of her exposure to AC-1965-NA-7; she certainly does not seem to have suffered any ill effects or age stasis despite the encounter, and other than the aforementioned scars and single-eye blindness appears to be a normal human woman of her age and background.

Personnel Notes From Head Archivist:
If Stella asks if you want to see her scars, you do not. While she possesses scars similar to those sometimes seen on survivors of lightning strikes over 60% of her body, they are concentrated on her posterior–something that seems to amuse her to no end. If Stella asks you whether you want to see under her eyepatch, you really do not. Archivist A1994 still has not fully recovered.

The Archive Internal Memo #0304250743
Type: Personnel
Subject: Archivist B1, “Bosco”

A Viridian intern sent to observe the Archive as part of the Order Stability Initiative, Archivist B1 “Bosco” is a being from a fundamentally different frame of reference, and as such was compelled to assume a local form that was more conducive to earthbound operations. This is not difficult for a Viridian, nor is it uncommon, but OSI protocol requires that the initial form be maintained for continuity purposes. Unlike Archivist B17 “Katya” who chose to appear as a housecat, and Archivist B23 “Doug” who chose to appear as a human female (with some eccentricities), Archivist B1 wanted to provide a friendly and outgoing face and therefore chose to appear as a male circus clown in the mid-20th century big top tradition.

While this was successful enough during the first years of Bosco’s posting, he was not prepared for the shift in pop culture that occurred around clowns in the latter half of the century, with the rise of coulrophobia, creepy clowns, killer clowns from outer space (a particular sore point), and the Joker. As such, Bosco has been increasingly frustrated by the reactions of non-Archive humans to his chosen, and locked-in, appearance. Thanks to his seniority and abilities as a Viridian, which includes being able to see in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrums as well as keen hearing and superior strength, Bosco continues to perform field work despite reactions to his appearance ranging from puzzlement to horror.

Personnel Notes From Head Archivist:
Bosco is an extremely capable and efficient Archivist and field agent, and an essential asset. However, he is extremely sensitive about his appearance and will argue, with increasing irritability, in favor of his assumed for being both appropriate and friendly if the subject is broached. Do not broach it. The last thing we need is Bosco sulking for a week or trying to shave his head and wear orange skin tone makeup again.

Sorrowful, powerful Nertagmil was the third presence in the Beyond to interact with the world of matter, some time after its “siblings,” observant, curious Sukhallu and dread, baleful Engidir. It seems clear that Nertagmil dwarfed the others in power, as the merest brush of its presence in the Beyond against beings of matter was enough to annihilate them to dust, and its voice and will reduced living beings to empty husks. It has been speculated that Nertagmil is in fact the most powerful presence in the Beyond, but there are those who would argue that others yet undiscovered or yet unconfirmed might yet challenge it for this title.

This incredible power might explain the only known desire espoused by Nertagmil, which was for companionship and peers with which to communicate, once it became aware of Sukhallu and Engidir’s success in establishing contact with the world of matter. Why it did not, or could not, find companionship with curious Sukhallu or dread Engidir remains unknown, but given that its demonstrated power was orders or magnitude higher, it may be that it would have destroyed them just as surely as any matter if it had tried.

It is believed that a spate of deaths by immolation and spontaneous combustion can be tied to Nertagmil’s early attempts to establish communication with the world of matter, as a number of the victims were able to record all or part of the attempt before being annihilated. While there does not seem to have been malice–if such an emotion can even be equated with the Beyond–behind these attempts, over 100 lives were nevertheless officially claimed, and more may have remained unrecorded.

Hasis, Taasme, and The Xikru were the Firstborn of dread Engidir, and although Taasme was the secondborn, she was forever described as the “last, and the least” by her brother Hasis. This is because, alone out of the Triplets, she was neither cruel nor chaotic, and could be said to have much in common with her “cousin” Qudma, though the two Firstborn never met.

Born to a mother so deeply catatonic that she had been considered dead and buried, Taasme apparently did not cause the widespread death that her siblings did with their arrival, perhaps with the intervening earth providing a modicum of protection. Her inhuman, infant cries were perceived by a gravedigger, however, and she was brought up in the society and company of charnel-houses, graves, and catacombs. Despite this, from all surviving accounts, Taasme was said to be of a sunny if not pleasant disposition, quick to make friends in spite of her appearance, which like her siblings and “cousin” became increasingly inhuman, alien, and damaging as her seemingly eternal life unspooled.

Hasis was aware of his sister from her birth, and both he and their sibling The Xikru apparently tried to reach out to her, only to be spurned outright. Taasme, though apparently well aware of the whispers of her “father” Engidir, was apparently able to disregard them and was never able (or willing) to elaborate upon them. Unlike her siblings, Taasmeis known to have sired only a single offspring, with an unknown father: Amasumah, also called the Spurned of Engidir or the Scab Omen. Amasumah played a similar role for its mother as its “second cousin” Zigaa had with Qudma, serving to communicate with and serve as an intermediary for its mother as her advancing age and ever-emerging alien nature made it increasingly difficult and eventually impossible to interact with beings of matter.

Taasme, and eventually Amasumah, served as healers, acting on supplicants with alien energies and remedies that seemed to work as often as they did not. It has been speculated that this was the third leg of dread Engidir’s scheme, with Taasme representing a counterbalance to her siblings and providing some sort of strange satisfaction to her “father’s” curiosity. Her ultimate fate is unknown, as the healing sanctuary was eventually abandoned and Amasumah was occasionally seen moving about without its mother, though it too has not been seen in many years. Unsubstantiated rumors of offspring of Amasumah persist, as do occasional sightings of Taasme herself.

Hasis, Taasme, and The Xikru were conceived of dread Engidir, and with the minds of their matter sires shattered, were brought forth in places of the insane. The Xikru, who forever insisted on an integral article, was of a kind with its brother, Hasis, in its seeming psychopathy and wanton disregard for the niceties shown by its “cousin” Qudma. Despite being the youngest of the “Triplets,” The Xikru is nevertheless acclaimed as the “Secundus” or “Second,” an appellation given to it by its brother Hasis.

An isolated retreat for the wealthy ill was where The Xikru was born, and like its siblings the act sowed mortal wounds among the nearby, all of whom would perish from exotic illnesses within the year. The Xikru was the most alien of the Triplets, and its presence and voice were enough to blur vision, cloud thoughts, and affect reality and matter in unpredictable ways. Any book that The Xikru approached was forever altered to gibberish, any buildings it touched crumbled to rubble within a day, and any plants upon which it trod turned bright red and grew ravenously for one month before perishing.

As much as Hasis seemed to enjoy the cult that grew around him, The Xikru seemed to disdain any meaningful interactions with the matter world or its inhabitants, lashing out instead in acts of absolute randomness and chaos. In one instance, The Xikru terrorized a village for a month, systematically murdering every animal and demolishing every building while leaving the population unharmed. In another, it rebuilt a ruin stone by stone and forcibly relocated random people there, many of them saddled with The Xikru’s children. If Hasis was the influence of his “father” experimenting on the world of matter, The Xikru was dread Engidir playing with matter as a child plays with building blocks.

It is said that, despite this, the siblings were known to parley and that Hasis had a brotherly fondness for The Xikru, though whether this was reciprocated is unknown. Those children that The Xikru sired, always in unclear circumstances, were welcomed into the cult of dread Engidir by their “uncle,” and many even survived his ultimate rampage. It is, in fact, from the surviving cult writings that much of the information about The Xikru is known.

One enduring mystery is The Xikru’s ultimate fate, for it seemed to vanish at around the time of Hasis’s massacre. It may well have been swept up in it and killed by some method whispered by dread Engidir into the world. It is also possible that cryptic references to The Xikru growing more difficult to perceive, and having grater difficulty acting on matter, as it aged mean that it eventually became so insubstantial so as to be both invisible and imperceptible. It could even be argued that this represented The Xikru returning to the Beyond to take its place at its “father’s” side, perhaps the first such denizen to be created since time immemorial.

Of course, there is also the possibility that The Xikru still exists as it was once known, and has merely expressed its chaotic nature by biding its time.