Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

St Hiddle-on-Botham Town Hall
Named after a local saint that was declared fictitious and removed from the Catholic saints registry in 1289, St Hiddle-on-Botham (not to be confused with the St Hiddle in Strothshire) nevertheless benefited from a stream of pilgrims to the site where St Hiddle reportedly beheld the divine llama. Its town hall was built near that spot, replacing an earlier structure that dated to 1534. The current building handles all government affairs and still admits a few diehard pilgrims each year.

Bhampton School
The most prestigious academy in St Hiddle-on-Botham, Bhampton maintains a strict British boarding school atmosphere despite being a local public institution. It has produced one-half of a Rhodes scholar (don’t ask) and a champion field Quiddich team. It has also stubbornly resisted attempts to change its motto from “Parcere Praedae Virga Puer.”

Heaton-on-Westom Weather Field Station
The moor of Heaton-on-Westom may owe its grand name to a long-destroyed manor on a long-silted creek, but its reputation for science stands undiminished. Researchers from the University of Camford and the University of Oxbridge routinely conduct experiments here, though many locals insist that they do not so much predict the weather as cause it.

The Meadery on Twettle Row
A place for strong liquor and stronger personalities, the Meadery serves drinks to numb the tongue and strip paint. Its food may be legendarily inedible, but no one has yet drunk the owner under the table with their own supply of backroom hooch.

Elle’s Chorels
The drinks as Elle’s may be as watered down as Botham Pond, but her food is a local staple. Hearty meat pies, aspics, and sponge cakes are her specialty, even if they are washed down with the weakest beer this side of Milwaukee.

Newtons St Pethen Library
Newtons St. Pethen was a local eccentric and bibliophile who left his large collection of esoteric tomes to the city upon his expiry. They reside here alongside s few newer volumes, and are a favorite of researchers into the normal, paranormal, and supernormal.

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Like many who settled on Hylewood, the Bashalde Hungarian-Slovak Romani were fleeing persecution on the mainland. They arrived in a small group, and have settled permanently though they do still enjoy taking their still-functional wagons along the island roads from time to time in honor of their itinerant ancestors. They make most of their income from tourists, selling handmade crafts and CDs of their unique music, but are also frequent performers in island festivals and at the Screaming Banshee.

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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…

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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.

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