Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The mayor of Kindling, having been elected in the place of her deceased father. Her husband, a stonemason, is often away on business and is currently at work on Prince-Bishop Leonard III’s palace. Mayor Hooper desires nothing more than to live at court and to be a civilized and sophisticated noblewoman; this is reflected in the elaborate court dress she wears at every Flight Festival. In order to fund her ambitions, she is in the process of negotiating to allow illegal logging and hunting in the Fyrewood.

Dr. Ethelred has been forcing Mayor Ethelred, 60 years his junior, into a relationship by threatening her position. This has been kept secret from both her husband and Dr. Ethelred’s fifth wife.

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A middleman for the Lumber Guild, Stripbark is responsible for coordinating the small amount of cutting the guild is allowed to perform in and around Kindling, and supervising the woodworkers of the town and the festival. An ambitious company man, Stripbark hopes that his position and power will improve if, as rumored, Prince-Bishop Leonard III lifts the prohibition on cutting in the Fyrewood.

Naturally, if the Flight Festival fails or suffers a disaster, this presents a keen opportunity for the Lumber Guild.

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A hawkmaiden is the highest level one can achieve in the all-female Raptor Guild, and it means that they have formed a life-bond with their hawk that allows them to see through one another’s eyes and act as one. The Raptor Guild has traditionally sent a hawkmaiden to the Flight Festival to perform demonstrations and gather recruits. Elia has long awaited this opportunity, as it is her first festival, but she also feels like the town of Kindling and the festival itself are an undue encroachment upon nature.

Rumor has it that Prince-Bishop Leonard III is planning to disestablish the Raptor Guild, replacing it with all-male mercenaries from a neighboring kingdom. This has left Elia on edge and desperate to show her guild’s worth at the festival.

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A scout for the Shatterjaw Orcs, who once inhabited the Fyrewood. His people were annihilated on the field of battle by an ancestor of Prince-Bishop Leonard I and driven out of the Fyrewood to be scattered and absorbed by other orcish groups. Still banned from the Fyrewood by ancient decree, the Shatterjaw nevertheless often attend the Flight Festival, since it and the town of Kindling are open to all for the duration and it represents the only opportunity for them to visit their ancestral lands.

Every Shatterjaw arrives under strict orders to behave themselves, but there is an unspoken expectation that they will attempt to secretly sabotage the festival in some small way without getting caught and by stealing a small item as proof. The tales of these exploits have a great deal of social cachet among the remaining Shatterjaw.

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The hamlet of Kindling was founded as a logging camp in the Fyrewood during its clearcutting. When Prince-Bishop Leonard I made the area a nature preserve, it alone was not shut down, and along with the Old Forest Road that connects it to the rest of the world, it remains open and inhabited.

Officially, the people of Kindling are there only to support the forest’s regrowth and its study. A handful of small farms provide it with crops, a small mine with ores, and it also includes shops, an inn, and other amenities. Unofficially, the hamlet has two additional purposes: poaching, and the annual Flight Festival.

Poaching has been a problem for the Prince-Bishopric for decades, and the preserve’s rare and endangered animal life makes it a tempting target for the unscrupulous or the desperate. With wardens few and far between, it is all too often unpunished, although the official punishment can be as harsh as execution.

The Flight Festival is the hamlet’s other major draw, bringing scholars and amateurs alike to the area hoping for a glimpse of rare or unusual avian fauna. The majority arrive hoping for a glimpse of the extinct yellow-billed woodpecker, of course, but there are also lectures, guided tours, falconry, and other pursuits.

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One of the most enigmatic birds of the old Fyrewood was the yellow-billed woodpecker. As large as a hawk or eagle, according to the few stuffed skins that remain, it was only ever found in the deepest part of the Fyrewood. Despite being known to locals for centuries, no one had ever seen it nesting or breeding, and young animals were similarly totally unknown.

While never abundant, the yellow-billed woodpecker was driven to extinction as the result of the intensive logging of the Fyrewood before the personal union. Despite the pleas of ornithologists and other learned people of a scholarly bent, the logging concerns did not stay their axes even when they began recovering dozens of dead woodpeckers in the fallen trees.

In the years since then, with the regrowth of the Fyrewood, many scholars have continued to be fascinated by the yellow-billed woodpecker both for its large size and its sudden extinction–the first such bird to be wiped out in living memory. Funded by the Prince-Bishop himself, several expeditions per year have attempted to find surviving birds, to no avail.

Nevertheless, records of sightings persist, and not all of them can be explained away by the similarly-sized red-beaked woodpecker. Many hold out hope that this elusive species yet remains in the depths of the Fyrewood.

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Prince-Bishop Leonard I’d instructions, followed throughout his long reign and that of his successor, placed the Fyrewood off limits to hunting or development. With one exception, the area was patrolled by ducal game wardens empowered to seize, expel, or even execute trespassers.

The one exception was for scientific inquiry, which the Prince-Bishop supported wholeheartedly. As such, provision was made for a single small settlement in the interior of the Fyrewood, the town of Kindling, to serve as a base of support for forest and science. Tradesmen and merchants were permitted to settle there under strict rules, and a rotating group of scholars also took up residence at the Prince-Bishop’s pleasure.

Thanks to these protections, the Fyrewood soon began flourishing again and by the 100th anniversary of its protection it had largely regrown, and was a haven for many plants, animals, and other creatures that had been put under pressure by the intense settlement elsewhere nearby. Birds, especially, flourished, and the second Prince-Bishop, Leonard II, encouraged their study. An amateur ornithologist, he personally introduced several rare and endangered birds to the preserve and presided over the first Flight Festival.

With Leonard II’s recent death at age 86, his distant cousin Leonard III has inherited the Prince-Bishopric, and while he has not made his feelings known on the matter, many suspect that he would be more open than his predecessors to allowing the Fyrewood to be developed.

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The Fyrewood was so named both because of the frequent wildfires that used to sweep through the area and for its extensive exploitation for firewood and lumber a century ago.

As a result of a long-running land dispute between the Grand Duchy of Radiata and the Bishopric of Scalling, the Fyrewood was claimed by neither as both advanced their claims to the city of Oldport down the river. As a result, the Fyrewood was governed by the laws of neither, setting the stage for intensive and destructive exploitation. By the time the two entities were joined in personal union by the Prince-Bishop Leonard I, and the dispute settled, hardly any trees remained in the Fyrewood outside of its deepest reaches.

In response, the Prince-Bishop declared the area a nature preserve, and refused to allow any logging, hunting, or other exploitation for the remainder of his long reign. His great-nephew and successor, Leonard II, followed the same policy. Now that the throne has passed to a more distant cousin, who succeeded them as Leonard III, there is some hope among loggers and hunters that the area may be reopened.

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Title: Cowboy Guns: Rail Wars
Developer: Chuo Team
Publisher: Pilcom Corporation
System: Musjido 32
Release Date:
JP: N/A
NA: June 6, 1998
EU: February 12, 1999

With the localization of Kauboigan 4: Tetsudō sensō, a confusing situation arose. The first game in the series had been localized as Western Guns by Glowbe USA, but had released as Kauboigan, or Cowboy Guns, in Japan. When Chuo Team had localized their own game, it had been as Cowboy Guns. But when Glowbe was prohibited from using the Kauboigan name in Japan, they called their next game Seibu no jū or Western Guns.

The result was Glowbe’s games being Western Guns in Japan and Cowboy Guns in North America and Europe, while Chuo Team’s games were Cowboy Guns in Japan but Western Guns in North America and Europe. As game journalist Lance Oaks said in 2006 “it’s a naming scheme that seems deliberately designed to sow confusion among fans and scholars alike.”

The name confusion aside, Cowboy Guns: Rail Wars was a largely faithful port, though the evil Mr. Baron was changed to Mr. Barron, and Satan was recast as a demon named Asmodean. The Musjido 32 was more popular in North America than in Japan, and Cowboy Guns: Rail Wars saw healthy sales, but it was also outsold in every respect by the competing game on the Phonos FunSystem. High demand and low supply has made Cowboy Guns: Rail Wars one of the most sought-after games for the Musjido 32 in recent years; it is often cited as the third most-expensive game on the system after the Summer Championship 1999 multicart and the first-run grey Tale of Sayre that was pulled from distribution.

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Title: Kauboigan 4: Tetsudō sensō (カウボーイガン 4: 鉄道戦争)
Developer: Chuo Team
Publisher: Pilcom Corporation
System: Musjido 32
Release Date:
JP: September 13, 1997
NA: N/A
EU: N/A

Unlike Zykaya, which signed an exclusivity deal with Phonos, Pilcom published games for both the Musjido 32 and the Phonos FunSystem (as well as the Japan-exclusive JEC-PC). Under pressure from Musjido to release an RPG for their system, Pilcom commissioned Chuo Team to develop a new entry in their Kauboigan series immediately after the release of Kauboigan III. Development lagged due to Chuo’s unfamiliarity with 3D and the Musjido 32’s infamously poor developer kit, but the competed game was eventually released in fall 1997.

Kauboigan 4 is an all-3D game with a theme of grand strategy in addition to its RPG elements. It sees the player commanding a party of three, Ken, Viki, and Zeke, while attempting to wrest control of a complex railroad network from an evil robber baron named, fittingly enough, Baron. El Conejo returns from Kauboigan III as a neutral force who may be courted or fought as he seeks to sabotage rail lines, and other characters from the earlier game appear as NPCs as well. By capturing, holding, and defending their rail network from Mr. Baron, Ken and his companions can eventually build up the strength to challenge him and learn about his true backer: Satan, the Devil himself.

While regarded as a minor classic, Kauboigan 4 was only a modest seller in Japan. This is largely due to the Musjido 32’s lukewarm performance in that market, as Kauboigan 4 topped the Musjido sales charts for some time.

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