Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

The Pixie Patch
The Lofgrens fled to Hylewood to escape anti-fairy persecution on the mainland and established themselves in this charming eclectic antique. The bricks are fired from locally sources enchanted clay, while the timbers were imported from the enchanted isle of Evermeet. Legend has it that the large turret doubles as an escape rocket should the anti-fairy hysteria ever return.

Olive Acres
Family patriarch Augusto Alivardo built this Victorian home with his own two hands, and some additional hands borrowed from hired laborers. Designed as the potioneer’s perfect perch, it is reinforced against explosions and features an elaborate hidden laboratory amidst the family graves, albeit shielded to protect against accidental resurrection.

Blue Barn
Lydia Wolfowicz makes this charming Cape Cod house her home away from the Screaming Banshee inn. It is curiously reinforced from the inside, with numerous safeguards and reinforced woods designed to keep…something…inside. It was originally known locally as the Red Barn before its relatively recent repainting.

Fisherman’s Paradise
This Victorian cottage was built during Hylewood’s boom times but had fallen into disrepair when it was purchased by local fisherman Andersen for his new “foreign” bride. Reflecting the couples’ tastes, the pink exterior and nautically minimalist interior combine to form a unique and attractive package. Just don’t ask about the subterranean tunnel to the sea rumored to exist beneath it…

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Phlegmy the Younger was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Phlegmy’s uncle, Phlegmy the Elder, helped raise and educate him. Both Phlegmy the Elder and the Younger were witnesses to The Sneezening of 80 AD, the loudest and most prolonged mass sneezing in history.

Phlegmy the Younger wrote hundreds of letters describing the Sneezening and his theories on mucus in general, of which 247 survive and are of great historical value. Some are addressed to reigning emperors or to notables such as the historian Tacitus. Phlegmy served as an imperial handkerchief-bearer under Trajan, and his letters to Trajan provide one of the few surviving records of the elaborate rituals and pageantry surrounding the wiping of an emperor’s nose.

After Trajan’s death, Phlegmy rose through a series of civil and military offices, ultimately serving as consul with Nostrildamus Majorus in 119 AD. He was a friend of the rhinologist Achooius and might have employed the mucusier Snotonius on his staff.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Banshee’s Scream Inn
Named after a powerful positive female role model in Irish folklore, the Banshee’s Scream is a hub of social life on the island. From its award-winning Shillelagh micro-brew to its treasured secret recipe pig-in-a-blanket, the cuisine is a local staple. The Scream also lets rooms as a bed and breakfast and serves as temporary headquarters for the Xanthophyll Festival and Mr. Autumn, its mysterious and reclusive grand marshal.

Xanthophyll Festival
Celebrating that most magical of fall leaf pigments, the Xanthophyll festival is a time-honored tradition during decorative gourd season. Come for the homemade pumpkin spice chicken gumbo, stay for the stage shows including music by acclaimed local band Cucurbita & the Pepos.

Langtree Schoolhouse
The sole school on the island, Langtree caters to all students from kindergarten to super senior. It is renowned for its emphasis on musical education, animal husbandry, ecology, and dark magic. It also serves as the local community college, and earned credits transfer to Sim State (go LLamas!).

Ladder Alley Marketplace
Named after a narrow byway that has since been widened into Mill St., the Ladder Alley Marketplace offers all the dry and wet goods the islanders could ever want. With everything from LlamaMart-brand goods brought over from the mainland to local small-batch artisan organic produce, Ladder Alley has something for everyone. Its pumpkin spice jam, pumpkin garlic bread, and gourd-filtered coffee are local staples.

Addams Beach
This secret getaway is famous for two things: its unspoilt stretch of white sand and its riptides. Sometimes called the “graveyard of the leafers” it is notorious for swallowing unwary tourists whole. Legends of a sea monster with an underground laboratory lair are unsubstantiated.

Candlewood Beach
The island’s most popular and most sheltered beach, popular with tourists and those who feel the siren song of the deep unknown. Legends of fish-men emerging from its depths are largely dismissed. Legends of fish-and-chips men selling overpriced seafood to tourists are confirmed.

Innsmouth Seafood
The bounty brought in by the local fishermen who own Innsmouth Seafood is uncommonly rich, with the best of the catch reserved for this eatery. World-famous after being featured in the “Eateries and Estuaries” issue of The Llama Review, it is also notable for having a chef that has never been seen in daylight.

Dr. Alivardo’s Potent Potions
Serving as both the island’s sole physician and its alchemist, Dr. Alivardo was a fixture for many years. After his tragic death in an invisibility potion mishap, his practice is still famous for its high standard of medical care and the potency of its potions, especially the locally famed Essence of Esprit reinvigoration potion. Lose 30 years off your life in a month or your money back!

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

The Sisters of the Lone Daisy are dedicated to living simplistically and are known for producing some of the best wine in the region. Founded on a vision of a llama that occurred in a Mollyborough-on-Trout field of flowers in 1513, the Sisters were able to survive the Dissolution of the Monasteries by going into hiding and posing as simple vintners. Reemerging in the 1680s, they were able to remain a small but devoted convent accepting the occasional new member.

Upon joining the Sisters, a novitiate takes vows of chastity, poverty, and abnormality, pledging themselves to never be complacent and always odd in the face of the Lone Daisy. In the past, the vow of abnormality has led to short-lived nun rock bands and the ill-fated 1966 “Nun Run” marathon.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

The woodland elves of the Wilds and the highland orcs had an interesting and bizarre system of governance. According to their oral histories, a great war between the two was settled through the marriage of an orcish chieftan’s daughter to the son of an elven elder. Their son was born the heir of both peoples and led them to a great victory over an unnamed enemy. After that time, it was decided that the leaders of both societies would intermarry and that their offspring would rule all of the combined territory.

These rulers were known as the edor, a combination of the elves’ word for themselves and the orcs’ own endonym. They were never numerous, as the marriages were uncommon and their offspring tended to be sterile with many miscarriages. But the edor were widely respected for their intelligence, wisdom, and ferocity–combining the best traits from both their parent races.

When settlers from the West began to arrive in the Wilds, the civilized elves and orcs were revolted by the edor and succeeded in having several territorial laws passed against them. Edor encountered by Western orcs or elves tended to be killed on sight, and any elves or orcs suspected of having ‘misagenated’ ancestry were shunned. Although through natural variance some edor looked enough like their elven or orcish parent to pass as full-blooded, even they suffered in the general decline of the local inhabitants.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

The locals in the Wilds have dozens of theories about its origin, but so far the Labyrinth of Lessos has defied classification. All attempts at mapping it have failed, leading many to surmise that its interior is continually reshaped by some magical means. The stone it is hewn from is unremarkable save for its size–nearly a square mile from the outside, seemingly infinite on the inside.

Wilds natives used it as a sort of crucible, with many being charged to spend a day and night therein before attempting to find their way out as punishment for a crime or to prove some sort of (wo)manliness. Legends persist of a treasure in the middle of the labyrinth, but the only things of value ever to come out of it have been things brought in by those who failed to come out.

The walls are ten feet high, and even those resourceful enough to bring ladders and rope have reported that climbing seems to bring them no closer to the edge. Cords are snapped as if by scissors, marks disappear, and any other means of defeating the labyrinth other than sheer dumb luck always seems to fail.

Indeed, the best and only thing it seems to offer is a respite for fugitives. Even the most hardened lawman is loathe to follow a suspect in, and with good reason–9 out of every 10 that enter never return. With even the entrance shifting on a regular basis, for that 10th person, it can make the difference between a life cut short on the gallows and one spent on the lam.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Everyone was in awe of Thomas when he emerged from the forest with one of the Woodfolk. They had been spoken of in songs and myths for centuries but rarely seen and even more rarely interacted with. And yet Thomas had walked out of the woods with a proud green woman beside him with golden flowerpetal hair and a bouncing greenish baby at her side. Together they had declared their intention to build a life together.

Immediately, gossip in town turned to a single point: if the Woodfolk woman’s hair was a flower, how exactly had Thomas sired their child?

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Before settlers arrived in the area, the closest thing the Wilds had to a government was the great wyrm of the mountains. It went by many names but has become widely known under the monicker it gave to the fist settlers in their own tongue, Highclaw.

The tribes and small nations paid Highclaw tribute in gold, and in return the great dragon would act as an arbiter in disputes and as a defender in times of need. But when the settlers arrived, the tribes were not able to meet Highclaw’s fee to destroy the invaders, and the dragon allowed the newcomers to settle in exchange for tribute.

While Highclaw at first negotiated with the settlers, eventually they became so numerous that they began making demands. Alarmed, the dragon charged into battle against the largest settlement in the area. Its poor judgment returned to pay dividends, though, as its erstwhile tribal allies remembered Highclaw’s earlier refusal to help them. They, in turn, would not aid the ancient wyrm.

A fierce battle raged for two days, but at the end, Highclaw was struck down by cannon fire. Legend has it that, approached by a cautious militiaman, the great serpent whispered one last curse into the ear of a curious militiaman:

“May your greed go forever unslaked and my hoard go forever undisturbed.”

No trace was ever found of the great golden hoard that centuries of tribute must have produced. But in the century since, hundreds of treasure seekers have perished trying to find it.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“Drop your irons, boys!” the woman said with a confident flash of her teeth. “Calamity Djinn’s got the drop on you!”

The pair of revolvers in the bandit’s hands were quite convincing; the Valley Union men tossed their coach guns to the floorboards.

One of them couldn’t resist tossing a remark out as well. “Who?” he said.

Calamity walked up to him, reaching a little above the man’s belt. “Calamity Djinn, scourage of the valley!” she said. “You’ll have quite the tale to tell of your narrow escape, providing you behave and keep your mitts where I can see ’em!”

“The scourge of what valley?” the guard said. “I’ve never heard of you.”

“Does it matter which valley?” Calamity snapped.

“It certainly does matter which valley,” the Union man said. “If it’s Sagescrub Valley, well, that’s got…seven homesteaders? That sound right to you, Bill?”

“Yeah, John, I think that’s right. Seven or eight, depending on whether Jinny Witchazel had her baby yet.”

“It’s a populous valley!” Calamity said. “Point is, I’m feared, and the thunder of my twin .45s is enough to bring most men to their knees!”

“Well of course it would bring them to their knees,” John said. “They’d be shot. That hurts a lot. It’d bring me to my knees.”

“Maybe even lay me out flat,” Bill agreed. “But that ain’t got nothing to do with being feared. Sissy Hammertoes could shoot me in the gut and I’d be kneed, and I don’t fear her at all.”

“Sweet, sweet little thing,” said John. “Really, if I went in for stonefolk I’d court her in a second.”

“I meant the sound of my guns!” Calamity shouted.

“It’d better be powerful loud for that,” Bill said.

“Powerful loud. Like a cannon in the war.”

“Even then, I never saw a man run from a cannonball.”

“By the time you hear the sound it’s too late to run anyhow, it takes a minute to catch up to you.”

The half-folk grimaced. “Do you want me to bring you to your knees right now?” Calamity said. “Put a little lead in your bellies and see how you feel then?”

“Well, you could do that. Murder us in cold blood, I mean,” John said. “But I’m not sure you want to do that.”

“Oh, I think I do,” said Calamity. “Unless you bit your tongue and start getting real quiet and real fearful.”

“Well, you got a pair of Chesterfield revolvers there, the pocket models,” said Bill. “Three shots each. There’s ten guards on the train. Now I’m no accountant but that just don’t add up.”

“Especially since it might take more than one .45 to put a man down good,” John added. “Especially if it’s Rags or MacGrothnak, on account of being stonefolk and leader respectively.”

“Respectively,” Bill said.

“I’m not alone,” Calamity sighed. “My gang’s doing its work.”

“Well, a gunshot’d be heard. Even if you’ve got a gang of ten, our boys might not be pushovers if they hear you coming,” said Bill.

“THAT’S IT! THAT’S ENOUGH!” Calamity howled. “SHUT YOUR MOUTHS!”

“Okay, okay!” said Bill. “No need to shout.”

“Yeah, you got us fair and square,” John agreed. “They don’t pay us enough to be heroes.”

“Good,” said Calamity.

“One thing though,” Bill said. “Just a quick question. Why the ‘djinn?'”

“I’m half djinn,” Calamity said proudly.

“Which half?” Bill said.

“Top half, definitely,” said John. “That’s why she’s all air up there.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Dash’s Diner
Named for its first owner, Randy Dash, Sr., Dash’s puts the easy in greasy spoon with its menu of low-cost down-home favorites.

Purple Bakery Cafe
Renamed and repainted after a disastrous start as the Burple Bakery Bistro, the Purple is a popular watering hole for locals and tourists alike. Ask about their 1,001 recipes for smothered toast!

Curl Up and Dry Salon
A mainstay for locals looking to take their coifs to the next level, Curl Up and Dry is the home of the famous Thatch Weave, a hair extension that helped defeat Japan in the war.

Elsewhere Echo
Serving the island since 1919, the Elsewhere Echo reports on every facet of island life. Except ducks.

The Sweet Potato Grocery Store
Home of the popular I Yam What I Yam sweet potato pie, this local favorite serves an intriguing mix of small-batch artisan foods and shipped-in LlamaCo GMOs.

Between the Sheets Bookstore
Picking up where the library leaves off, everyone knows that the best place to read a book is Between the Sheets.

Fish Head Hotel
Elsewhere Island’s premiere luxury hotel, the Fish Head offers luxury accommodations to the discerning traveler. The Fish Head: pampering that’s off the scales.

The Pink Flamingo
People may walk funny coming in or going out, and it’s often more comfortable when you’re upside-down. But there’s no reason to get your feathers ruffled: the Pink Flamingo is here to provide a roof over your head for a budget price and a continental breakfast (from Antarctica).

Balls to the Walls Bowling Alley
Though the name may suggest something from the gutter, locals have this place pinned down: it’s the best place to strike up some fun and have a ball with spare change.

Mariner’s Rest
For those sailors who have rowed into the great beyond, and caskets full of bricks representing those lost at sea, Mariner’s Rest is a respectful resting place slowly sinking into Neptune’s embrace.

Museum of Maritime History
If nautical knowledge be something ye wish, drop in on our staff and listen to their pitch!

Elsewhere Elementary School
Go Vampire Squids!

Peabody Public Library
A repository of tomes from the benign to the malevolent, Peabody has all the latest romance novels as well as one of only 6 remaining copies of the Llamanomicon.

Gray Sands Medical Clinic
Just an ordinary small-town clinic. Nothing to see here. Absolutely normal, in every conceivable way, with normal doctors and normal nurses and absolutely nothing out of the ordinary.

Magicus Shopicus
Life will never be abracadaboring when you tarot it up to 11 and let fly the doves with the selection of Hogwarts-caliber arcana on sale here every day.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!