Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Safety rules are written in blood, petty rules are written in bile.”

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

Those and other experiments led Hamur to reflect: did the gods not respond because they refused to respond, or did they not respond because they did not exist?

He thought upon this long and hard, and at length he spoke to his good friend Aynak.

“How are we to know what the gods want of us, or if there are indeed any gods at all?” Hamur asked.

After thinking for some time, Aynak pointed to a bird in the distance, a desert hawk perched on a cliff. “Can you tell me what that bird is thinking?”

“It is hungry and wants to hunt,” Hamur replied.

“That is what you imagine it thinks, but do you know for sure?” Aynak said.

Hamur admitted that he did not.

“Can you be sure the bird is up there?” Aynak added.

“I see it with my own eyes,” was Hamur’s reply.

“I have often seen a rock, or even a lizard, that I fancied a bird, especially on a hot day when the mirages are strong,” replied Aynak.

This discussion led Hamur to a revelation. “I can react to what the hawk does, but I can never know what it is thinking or if it is real, at least not until it makes itself unambiguously known by perching on my arm.”

The question was not, and never had been, whether the gods were real or not. The answer was not, and never had been, about which god or gods to worship. They were all as birds, unknowable and possibly mirages. Hamur came to realize, sitting there, that to act as if there were no gods and to simply react to the depredations of life as they arose…that was true wisdom.

But it was not a complete thought, not yet. It was not yet the Hamurabash. It was simply the musing of two friends in the desert.

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

The deserts of Naïx were Hamur’s birthplace and home, and he did not see the splendor of the Seven Sisters and darken the gates of noble Gaiza until he was already grown. That which was told to Hamur was the story his people had clung to for centuries in the desert, since before the Crimson Empire arose and fell.

The orcs of Naïx held that the land was full of spirits and the sky was full of gods. Gods of earth and fire, spirits of stones and rocks. To live a good life without hardship was to please these gods and satisfy these spirits, and many rituals to that effect were conducted.

Hamur’s tribe held one Numas-Ara, the supposed god of sand and stone, in particular regard. A shrine stood in the oasis village, and small totems were made of rock during every hunt and for every herd. The people were devout, and always gave to Numas-Ara even when they had but little themselves.

It could escape no one’s eye that Numas-Ara did not reward such devotion. The tribe was often hungry, was ceaselessly warred upon by stronger neighbors, and was often befallen by misfortune. Hamur, in his travels, found the same to be true for many of the desert orcs, many of the human nomads, and even the odd dwarven traders. They were almost always devout, and their efforts were almost always rewarded with fresh hardship.

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

This is the testament of Hamur, the Hamurabash. Hamur set this down with his own hand, and if there be fault with it, that fault is Hamur’s own and none but his.

In his studies and in his travels, Hamur read many testaments written by many prophets for many gods. He read of Creator Dead and Dreaming; of Muolih the Spreading Darkness; of Dvangchi and Qingvnir whom many dwarves revere; the Old Gods of the orcs, and even what remains in the Codex of the Ogres. All claimed to be absolute truth, set down divinely inspired and perfect save Tsianlwyn the elf, whose people are set apart from this Hamurabash, under its protection but exempt from its provisions.

All that is promised by this Hamurabash is that it is the truth as Hamur understands it to be. Never forget that all truths are as mortal as the beings who carry them, and that blind acceptance of a truth can be as pernicious as a lie. Seek the truth in all things, be honest and true and forthright. But be prepared regardless to be wrong, to embrace error as truth and falsehood as wisdom, and to learn from the mistake.

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

Is it an act of civil disobedience
A red banner flapping in the breeze
Using a thing past planned obsolescence
Hiring skilled hands for repairs
Steady hands with soldering irons
Capacitive touch screens slid into place
In a world yelling “shop, buy, upgrade”
Saying “I’ll make do; I’ll get it fixed”
A secret celibacy, a monastic vow
Going without when all around indulge
But only up to a point, to an extent
There is no digital era equivalent
For driving the same car 50 years on
The upgrade comes for us all, eventually
Grim reaper of silicon and glass
As I slide an old smartphone home
Into a recycled cardboard mailer
Sailing off on eBay waters
Replaced, not repaired, 5 years obsolete

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

Robert W. Chambers was a writer of short stories and novels who dabbled in cosmic horror themes early in his career before moving on to more conventional stories which were the bulk of his output. He would probably be completely unknown today if not for one dedicated fan: H. P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft particularly enjoyed Chambers’ The King In Yellow, a tale of a play that drives readers mad, and incorporated references to it and the aforementioned King’s Yellow Sign into his later works. Other Chambers stories also influenced Lovecraft, such as The Harbor-Master, which has thematic similarities to The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Chambers himself, though, mostly wrote ordinary stories that are held in disdain by weird aficionados; one edition of The Harbor-Master describes Chambers’ descent into “hackneyed romances which are now universally and deservedly forgotten.”

Perhaps that is the true horror. From beyond the grave another, more popular, author has forever tarred him with a genre he only dabbled with. Chambers’ other works, his bread and butter and passion, have been reduced to forgotten footnotes.

He wanted to be remembered as a writer of romantic historical fiction yet the weird is all that abides.

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

Rule 67: Wear At Least Business Casual

When The End comes, do your best to wear something a bit more formal.

It’s not necessary to wear your finest clothes, as those tend to unduly restrict movement and comfort. But you also do not want to greet The End in your pajamas. Therefore, simple business casual is a good choice, a mix of comfort and formality. Greet The End as if it were an interviewer for a job, or a retirement party–which, in a sense, it is.

Look. Some people are going to meet The End in their sweatpants, howling and mewling against their fate like the animals they truly are. Others are going to be there in tuxedoes, sweating and chafing to the very last. Do you want to be like them?

Everyone who could possibly judge your choices will be gone, too. Sweet oblivion is all that awaits, with no worry of barbs tossed by snarky spirits in some sort of hereafter.

No, there is only the inevitability of The End as it finds you, the last sucking gasp of air, and then a dark curtain. It will be as it was before you were born, and no amount of pleading, bargaining, or false ceremony will change that.

The End is coming. The End will soon be here. Dress up nice for it. But not too nice.

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

“You run away from a guy with a knife and toward a guy with a pistol. That’s day one stuff, ya dingus. Get off the line.”

“Uh, boss? This guy has a pistol with a bayonet. WWI bringback. Do I run away or run towards?”

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

Legend has it that when the 5th Hussars were assigned to charge the enemy at the gates of Nordlitz, they had recently lost their standard-bearer to dysentery. Asking for volunteers, they found on in a new private, who nevertheless worried that he would drop the standard inadvertently, as he was by nature a clumsy man.

He was told that all he had to do was grip firmly, but he fretted about sweat. Upon being told to chalk his hands, he worried about sudden bumps or shocks, Upon being given a lanyard, he worried about the pole splintering. A metal pole was located, and upon being given it he was at last satisfied, declaring that nothing would loose his grip on the unit’s standard.

Reminded that he might yet die, the hussar cried to his compatriots: “LASH ME TO THE POLE THAT THE SIRENS OF DEATH BEAR ME NOT FROM MY DUTY.”

They did so, and he led them into battle and victory at Nordlitz. Upon the battle’s end, his fellows found him near the city wall and congratulated him on a standard well-borne, even then being held aloft.

Only then did they discover that their man was dead, having been carried from this life by a musket ball not long after the battle began. But such had been his preparations that not even death had stayed him from his task, and the Emperor himself reportedly offered the hussar a posthumous promotion.

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

MV Seaflake was a charter boat operating out of Shortbeach on the US gulf coast. It was generally rented for fishing expeditions, but had also been used for diving, hauling light cargo, and other odd jobs. On one memorable occasion in 1972, the boat had served as a scab, shrimping with makeshift equipment as part of the management response to the Gulf Coast Shrimp Strike of 1971-72.

On September 6, 1977, the MV Seaflake put out on what was ostensibly a fishing charter. Other boats around the marina recalled the skipper, Joseph Andrews, arguing about money with an unidentified man; they assumed it to have been the aggressive haggling that Andrews was infamous for. In addition to Andrews and his passenger, three other hands, all regular part-timers for Andrews, were aboard.

According to the harbormaster, the MV Seaflake was supposed to return from its charter in 6 hours. When the ship failed to appear after 12, a search and rescue operation was initiated, one that was rapidly complicated by the formation and arrival of Hurricane Cecelia, a Category Three storm, in the gulf.

A small skiff, manned by volunteers and coordinating with the Coast Guard station at the Shortbeach Light, located the MV Seaflake seventy-five miles off course. The vessel had a slight list, and was completely abandoned, her engines disabled for want of fuel.

Photographs and affidavits confirm this part of the story. However, wilder tales soon emerged of a lower deck slick with blood, mysterious packages in the hold, and a “black motorboat” shadowing the rescuers. In any event, no survivors or logs were recovered.

With Hurricane Cecelia bearing down on the rescuers, they ran a tow line to the MV Seaflake. The outer bands of the hurricane snapped the line, however, and the ship was last seen drifting into the eye of the storm.

It has since been regarded as one of the preeminent ghost ships of the area and era, thanks in no small part to the wild tales spread by its would-be rescuers that could not be disproven without the craft itself.

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