October 19, 2017
Dorko Bachtel
Cleric
Insists that, among his people, “Dorko” is an ancient and proud name, regardless of how it feels on our tongues.
Beat Rockhold
Fighter
Her name is supposed to be a derivation of “Bette” but she does not go out of her way to correct it.
Thacker Blood
Rogue
His father was actually a surgeon, and Thacker was the name of a wealthy and influential patron.
Dark Coolbeth
Mage
Elizabeth fashioned herself a new name to reflect her profound love of necromancy.
September 29, 2017
A slick grin slopped across Muntz’s face. “I can’t write,” he said. “Can’t read, either. I’m just a natural.”
“Make your mark with an X, then, same as everybody else,” said Missy. “Right there on the line.”
Muntz shrugged. “Supposing I don’t?” he said airily. “Supposing I decide to make whatever cantrips I want wherever I please?”
“Then you’ll do them whenever you want and wherever you please,” said Missy. “Excepting Smokewood and its environs. Nobody comes into town without surrendering their tools of mayhem.”
“I am a tool of mayhem,” said Muntz. “Am I to surrender myself to you, little girl? I doubt you could handle it.”
September 28, 2017
Silas Moore has been dead for about 10 years, but it hadn’t interfered with his running of a funeral parlor with his equally dead brother Elijah. Whenever someone came to buy a coffin in advance, Silas would always tent his gaunt, colorless fingers in delight. “Wonderful! Perhaps they’d be interested in joining the ranks of Smokewood’s living dead? It is a community badly n need of new blood.”
Silas wasn’t lying; in addition to himself and Elijah, only a handful of undead graced the area with their presence. There was Smathers the zombie, passed out drunk on cerebrospinal fluid on any given day. A couple of secretive ghouls lived in the hills, and a vampire rancher who would come into town only every fortnight.
When the client declined, as they inevitably did, Silas would smile wanly. “It is, as they say, up to you. But should you wish to join me in the divine hereafter of living death, the table is set.”
Elijah, for his part, refused to acknowledge that he was dead and would only allow that he was “getting on in years.”
September 27, 2017
“Jed?” One of the boys said. “What if they won’t go? What if they’s stubborn?”
Jed’s eyes glowed red under the floppy brim of his hat. “Let them burn, then,” he said. With a flick of his wrist, he scattered magical sparks onto the dry grass before him.
The dry teeth around his neck rattles as he turned his back to the fresh gouts of flame and walked away.
September 25, 2017
Every town, even out east, has one of Them. The slacker, the drunkard, the ne’er-do-well that sins through inaction. For the burg of Smokewood, such as it is, that’s Feris. Yeah, just Feris. Every time she introduces herself, she gives a different last name, one that’s usually a pun or a crude joke. A partial list follows:
-Shufflebottom
-Dungworth
-Wheel
-Clutterbucker
-Bracegirdle
-Hiscock
-France
-Rattlebag
-Cornfoot
-Bungay
-Fair
-Swindell
-Nutters
September 20, 2017
The first firearms were dismissed as mere toys, especially after a single powerful warmage annihilated the entire Royal Rifle Corps in the Humbling on the Rhyn. But they had one important benefit: unlike the Art, which required years of study to master for all but the most talented, anyone could be trained in the use of firearms.
Most importantly, the advent of sealed brass cartridges and repeating firearms meant that guns were no longer limited to a single shot, and a full spread from a six-shooter could plow under an unprepared wizard in seconds. Considerable effort was devoted to bulletproof shield spells in retaliation, but these required concentration and considerable willpower to erect and maintain. It was also exceedingly difficult to fire spells from behind a shield.
September 19, 2017
The sign on the door says “detective,” but I’m really more of a folklorist. I investigate the whispers and legends of old, letting people know once and for all if what they once believed was ever true–for a price.
I confirmed an old woman’s childhood fear that there had been monsters on the mountain…by finding their long-dead bones, and letting her know that her grandchildren had nothing to fear. I proved to a young child that the Autumn Lords had never existed, and that what he had thought to be their malign influence was nothing but smoke and mirrors.
But those were nothing compared to the time I was confronted with evidence of a living mountainside, one which had devoured half of a climbing party. If I’d known then what I know now I’d have told the mountaineers to bury their dead and forget about them forever.
March 26, 2017
He declined the Nobel Prize in 1951. Pulpy adaptations of his Pulitzer-winning plays littered the Hollywood landscape during the golden age of the silver screen. James Hatcher managed to carve himself a towering place in southern drama during his fifty-three years on the planet, and the devotion that he enjoyed during his lifetime translated into a reliable tourist industry for his home town.
And that’s why people kept on trying to drink from his birdbath.
“This is the birdbath that many people think was the inspiration for Howard’s speech in All Is Mended,” said Madison. She was wearing the James Hatcher tee that they’d forced her to buy, as if people needed any reminder that the person with the nametag at Hatcher House was an official tour guide.
One of the tourists, a man of indeterminate age in a vaguely hipster getups, raised his hand.
“Yes, a question?” said Madison.
“Can we drink from the birdbath?” he said.
Madison sighed. “You’ll note the fence, and the sign saying PLEASE DO NOT DRINK FROM THE BIRDBATH,” she said.
“‘…but the melodious waters pour forth as into a birdbath, liquid made song, song made liquid, to be seen by all of us but tasted only by the best,'” the man said, quoting Howard in Act V of All Is Mended.
Madison had never heard that one before, oddly enough. She’d never heard the line from Hatcher’s most famous play, never seen him quote it at his Pulitzer acceptance speech, and never saw those words on Robert Mitchum’s lips in the 1961 movie.
“That speech is generally regarded as a metaphor,” Madison said with a forced smile. Minimum wage and bragging rights in the creative writing program were not worth the number of times she’d had to say that.
“Birnam Wood was a metaphor,” the generic hipster said. “People still go there to cut branches.”
“Do they also storm the castle and kill Macbeth?” said Madison.
“If they want to. Can I drink from it?”
“People who drink from that bath have gotten sick with everything from salmonella to the cold of the last guy who dunked his face in,” Madison said. “Hatcher House can’t be held liable for that, but it hasn’t stopped people from trying to sue us for their own idiocy.”
The generic hipster douche was unmoved. “I promise not to sue.”
Madison brandished her walkie-talkie. “If you do, I’ll call Gus at the gatehouse to escort you out.”
This seemed to mollify the tourist, who hung his head and muttered something sullen about free speech.
Madison moved the small group on to the next part of the tour was the quarter-mile nature trail, which Hatcher had cut himself to use as inspiration. It was probably responsible, along with his horrid diet, for the day in 1965 when his wife had found him face-down and cold trailside.
An older woman who looked to be wearing her gardening clothes approached Madison as they walked. “Why are people so adamant about drinking from that birdbath?” she said. “Can’t anyone tell fantasy from reality anymore?”
“No, not really,” Madison said. A moment later, realizing her answer sounded a bit flippant, she added: “I think a lot of people see this place as being some mystical fountain that gave Jim Hatcher all his gifts and notoriety. They think that he must have sipped from his own birdbath before he wrote the play that made him millions and got him a Nobel Prize to turn up his nose at.”
“So they think being here and sipping on that, if you’ll pardon my French, shitty birdwater, will help make them successful?”
“Probably they do, somewhere deep,” Madison said with a laugh. “It’s a lot easier to tell yourself that Jim Hatcher got his gifts from a magic house with a magic birdbath than by writing everyday, living in poverty, and treating his wife like, if you’ll pardon my French, utter shit.”
“I guess I can see that,” said the lady. “Everyone wants to be rich and famous but nobody wants to put in the work.”
Upon reaching the midpoint of the trail, Madison turned around and did a headcount before doing her spiel on the place where James Hatcher’s body was found.
They were one short.
“Goddammit.” Madison took up her radio. “Gus?” she said. “We’ve got another drinker. Call the cops and get a mug shot for the wall of shame, will you?”
“Okay,” said Gus, ever-said and unfazed. “Want me to see that he gets toughed up a bit?”
“No,” said Madison, “We’ll let the ipecac I put in there this morning do it for us.”
March 22, 2017
238 – Gordian I and his son Gordian II are proclaimed Roman Emperors. They might just be the most laughable emperors in history as they were killed 20 days later without even getting so far as Rome.
1599 – Anthony Van Dyke is born. He becomes famous as the painter who made Charles I look sort of okay and the inventor of the Supervillain Beard.
1765 – Parliament passes the Stamp Act, requiring the Thirteen Colonies to pay taxes for more or less the first time ever. This leads to the American Revolution for some reason.
1797 – Future German Emperor Wilhelm I is born. His legendary muttonchops-and-handlebar whiskers seal March 22’s reputation for melodramatic facial hair.
1894 – The first Stanley Cup. Then, as now, nobody cares outside of Ontario, and the Upper Midwest.
1916 – Yuan Shikai, the last Emperor of China, abdicates. As he was a pitiful excuse for an emperor–a general who had seized imperial power and held it for only 83 days, we can see that March 22 is a good day for bad emperors.
1930 – Stephen Sondheim, composer of musicals your roommate loved in college, is born.
1931 – William Shatner boldly goes into the world.
1948 – Andrew Lloyd Webber, composer of musicals your girlfriend loved in college, is born. Stephen Sondheim has made a mortal enemy, but this will not become clear until The Singening in 2021.
1960 – The laser is patented. Pew pew.
1990 – Gunnery engineer Gerald Bull is assassinated. At the time, he was building Project Babylon, a supergun that would have allowed Saddam Hussein to shoot things into space. The two are definitely not related.
2001 – William Hanna, famous American animator and cofounder of Hanna-Barbera, goes off-model.
February 14, 2017
Excerpts From Nonexistent Books 