Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

A skelestongeon is a large arcane construct which requires two months and 1000 GP to prepare. The skeleton of any large animal will do, but skelestongeons made from equines are the most popular. Each bone must be inscribed with a number of magical runes, requiring an artisan level of skill and a special silver or gold ink; the better the quality of the runes, and the more complete the skeleton, the more powerful the resulting skelestongeon will be. To animate the construct, a pair of gems must be affixed into its eye sockets while a being of roughly equal size is slain in cold blood nearby.

This will animate the skelestongeon and allow it to receive commands. If the ritual was completed properly, it will act as a large courser for riding purposes, inflicting 1d12 damage to anyone it tramples. Once per day, a well-made skelestongeon can cast a 1st or 2nd level spell from each of its eye-gems. If a second casting is called for, the spell will shatter the skelestongeon’s eye as it casts, resulting in all its attributes and rolls being cut in half until the gem can be replaced. Shattering both gems will kill the skelestongeon, and once slain, its bones cannot be raised again.

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Lizio sauntered up to the bar, a highball glass full of fly squeezins in one hand.

“Ladies,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”

“Ew,” said the first lady, some kind of skink. “We don’t like lounge lizards.”

“Yeah,” the second, some sort of monitor, added. “Get lost.”

“Well, if you hate lounge lizards, then you must hate yourself. And I find nothing helps self-loathing more than a little bug juice. What do you say? I’m buying.” Lizio licked his eyes in their sockets and grinned.

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“That is some classic Grotesquericia right there,” said Sean with a laugh.

“Are we not worried that they slew a deer in broad daylight, painted themselves with its blood, and proceeded to jump out at strangers while wearing a bloody deerskin?”

“Like I said, classic Grotesquericia,” Sean replied. “Where do you think the name comes from, anyway?”

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Even though genetic evidence has shown that every species of oo is descended from a common ancestor, they have nevertheless evolved extremely distinct behaviors. The sitting oo never stands or even moves once it reaches adulthood, relying on nutrients in the soil and a sort of photosynthesis for nutrition, and its motile young to spread the species out. Needless to say, the sitting oo was decimated by the introduction of toothed grumbles and exists mainly in preserves today. The standing oo moves as an adult if it must, but prefers to stay standing in one place. In addition to soil and sun, it can also eat grasses and some small animals, and it will usually consume everything within its reach before it moves on, though it will move early if threatened. The toothed grumbles have been less successful in reducing the number of standing ops, though they are still much rarer than they once were. The running oo and the flying oo, which both start moving shortly after birth and never stop until they die of exhaustion, are both extinct in the wild thanks to toothed grumbles. The most common species, the walking oo, is still quite common though.

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“The ‘N’ was the last of the series that the artist was able to complete. Twenty-six miles from the ‘M’ and built on-site, just like the others, the ‘N’ was the ultimate reason Juan Salazar never made it to ‘Z.'”

“And why was that?”

“Before its completion, one of the supports failed and he was crushed by it. His assistants finished the sculpture, but refused a commission to complete the alphabet.”

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The Omelette Knights of the Order of the Scrambled Egg believe that the world was created when a divine Cosmic Egg was broken by the Great Chef and fried up in the heat of creation. This is the reason behind both the stark white color of their armor and their famous–perhaps infamous–mobile henhouses to keep troops constantly supplied with fresh eggs.

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“Aaa!” screamed Dr. Narwhalius, both through the translator and using his natural high-pitched sonar.

“Aaa!” screamed the inter dimensional rainbow laser whale, its low warbling frequency augmented by an intense psychic yelp.

“Aaa!” cried Selucius, as the collapsing wormhole threatened to pull him apart in its death throes.

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On August 17, 1976, an intelligence intercept was delivered to analysts working for the NSA at its facility in Fort Meade, Maryland. The intercept was from a Soviet military source, variously identified as Colonel [Redacted] of the Strategic Missile Forces or Major [Redacted] of the Eighth Chief Directorate of the KGB. The intercept details a recurring problem that had been noticed over the previous several weeks with the new Duga over-the-horizon radar system.

The contents of the intercept, which is only available as a summary of a translation, go into detail about radio interference caused by the Duga system—well-known by amateur radio operators at the time, who nicknamed Duga the “Russian Woodpecker” for its adverse effects on ham radio transmissions—but in an altogether novel way. Something was causing some of the signals to change in between their transmission in Chernihiv and their reception in Chernobyl. The 10hz signal would be returned as an 8hz signal, but only on certain transmissions, and only for certain signals within those transmissions.

Colonel [Redacted] (or Major [Redacted]) apparently noted that, since the Duga system used a consistent and repeating pattern of 10hz tones (the “woodpecker” of the “Russian Woodpecker”), it was possible to find a pattern in the altered tones. He apparently did so, reporting the following pattern: 2 3 5 7 11 13 17 19 23 29 31 37 41 43 47 53 59 61 67 71. The available information helpfully notes for non-mathematicians that these are the first 20 prime numbers.

Apparently, Colonel [Redacted] (or Major [Redacted]) requested official access to the Duga array at Cherniv in order to analyze and/or respond to the signal; this was apparently denied. A subsequent request to triangulate the source of the interference was apparently granted, but there is no information about what was discovered. Analysis of Soviet records following the collapse of the USSR have shown no trace of a Colonel [Redacted] or Major [Redacted]. The Duga arrays at Chernihiv and Chernobyl have both been inspected following the collapse of the USSR, but have offered no clues as to the signal or its origin.

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“It’s very impressive,” the visitor said, marveling at the whirlwind of birds all about them, perched on branches and eaves. “But how on earth do you afford to keep all of these birds?”

“Simple,” said Eames. “The government pays for everything.”

“The same government that will audit your taxes if you underpay by a single red cent?”

“No, not that government,” Eames smiled. “The government within the government, the one that sees inefficiency and waste as a sign that things are working as intended. The Department of Defense.”

“The DoD. It pays for a bird sanctuary?”

“In 1927, the government created the Strategic Pigeon Reserve, to be used as a stockpile of trained birds and breeding stock in case of a sudden need. This was after World War I, you understand, when there was quite the acute pidge shortage.”

“And we keep them because…?”

“Because no one ever repealed it,” laughed Eames. “When a government inspector comes by, I remind them that pidges require no electricity, have high bandwidth, and unlike radios, they can reproduce themselves in the event of a nuclear war or EMP.”

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The lab rat with the lava lamp on its back skittered around the corner on its augmented cybernetic legs and was gone, the glow gradually fading down the corridor.

“I get the robot legs,” Archer said. “But why the lava lamp on its back?”

“I gave the rat the choice of a lava lamp or a disco ball, and now it’s got to live with that choice,” replied Zeus.

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