Category: WorldBuilding

From: Fangs 3817 of the Tumbling Viper Segment 1: The Hunger That Falls Like a Gull There was falling first, or there was hunger first; she could never afterwards decide which. Perhaps they had been born together, twins in the dark, one holding the other’s heel. There was no up, or there had been an…

From: Elixir of Lunar Insight • The First Vision Under Full Glory I stood alone upon the high ridge where the wind had worn the stone into a narrow spine of pale rock, and the night opened above me like a vast unblinking eye. The moon, swollen to its fullest, hung so low that its…

From: Constrictus Segment 1: The Smothering of the Living Breath The longhouse smelled of boiled mutton, stale beer, and the wet fleece of three hundred men pressed together against the timber walls. It was a thick, hot smell that stayed low to the floor and got into a man’s throat until every breath tasted of…

From: TCM 681 of the Balanced Quillwright Segment 1: The Ledger That Ate the Forest There are some men, and some boars, and a good many creatures between the two, who are born with a ledger already open in their hearts. They come into the world counting their own toes before they have properly learned…

From: Malagan 417 of the Master Sculptor Segment 1: The Melon-Faced Ancestors This is the account set down by Hurrash Bone-Teeth, high chieftain of the river province, son of Ilme who was daughter of Karrash the Otter-Cloaked, so that the weeping of the valley shall not be forgotten by those who come after, and so…

From: Elixir and Ether Alchemical Café Segment 1 Passphrase Spoken Twice The trouble with a rumor, I have decided, is that it never introduces itself. It simply arrives in your ear already halfway through a sentence, like a guest who has come in through the window and is now asking where you keep the biscuits.…

From: Traditional 77 of the Turkmen Eye Warden Segment 1 — “The Ewe Who Would Not Rise” As told by Batyr Oglan-Sheshme, the Small-Herder A man wakes before the light because the animals wake before the light, and a man who waits for the sun to tell him what hour it is has already given…

From: Kitsune 743 of the Nine Tailed Binding Segment 1: The Page the Slug Ate As set down by Hakuro the Sly-Stitcher, nine of tail and bottomless of grief, in the grinding voice of two river-stones; being the first chapter of the whole matter, and the longest, for grief is always the longest chapter Call…

From: Kitsune 582 of the Endless Revelers Gourd Segment 1: The Dry Cup Beneath the Yellow Rice-Cake Moon As told by Gensai, monk of small holiness and large liver Now, I have been called many things in my life, and most of them were accurate, which is a rare compliment to the people doing the…

From: Codex Scholars Satchel Segment 1: “Invocation of the Winds Between Worlds” As told by Zephyr, the Diminished Whisper, keeper of the Shifting Emporium Sing, O muses of memory, you daughters of the unwritten dawn, sing through this keeper, who is now but a whisper of thought, a curl of light no larger than a…

From: Nectar Infusion   Segment 1: “The Clamor Before the Quiet” As told by Odom the Hollow-Handed, hermit of the Wildflower Valleys I have come to believe that a man may be poor in nothing but silence and still be the poorest man in the city. On the last day I spent among the towns,…

From: Baba Yaga 423 of Disquiet Segment 1: The Whisper Under the Roots As told by Starukh Iven, the Forest Warden There are sounds a man may forget. The creak of his mother’s door. The name of his first dog, called across a field of summer barley. The voice he himself possessed when he was…

From: Item 817 of the Penitents Coil Segment 1: The Cooking of the Brothers The shift was in its nineteenth hour. I know it was the nineteenth hour because the bell had rung four times since the eating-break and the bell rings once each hour after the break. I counted the bells. Counting the bells…

From: Vaporous Vipers Segment 1: The Whisper of a Legend Gather close, my children, gather close, for the hearth burns low this eve and the tale I carry is one that hungers for firelight and huddled shoulders. Aye, draw thy cloaks about thee, for though the night without is mild, the tale within is cold…

From: Talmudic 418 of the Ancestral Lexicon 1. The Soup-of-Noises Call me a Chronicler, though the title sits upon my shoulders the way a borrowed coat sits upon a drowned man — too large in some seams, too narrow in others, and wet through with the salt of every voice I have failed to save.…

From: Whisperpipe of the Fen 8 Segment 1 — “Hear Ye, Hear Ye, and Hear Ye Again” Being the Account of Pemberton Quill, Seventh Royal Crier of the Eastern Square, Set Down in His Own Words, with Such Digressions as His Nature Cannot Prevent It has been observed by men far wiser than myself —…

From: Crimson Lashcap Pickles 899 Segment 1: “The Ledger That Would Not Balance” As told by Varrek Hollowname, Guild-Master of Shadows There are men who will tell you that ruin arrives as a thunderclap—that it kicks down the door with torches and writs and the long blue coats of the watch, and that a careful…

From: Anguishra Segment 1: “The Morning She Was Not Born” As told by Angorath, the Weaver of Woes There was light, first; or perhaps there was the sound of water, which is also a kind of light when one has nothing else to hold; and I lay upon the stones — was laid upon the…

From: Shadowhunters Satchel Segment 1: The Twilight That Never Broke As told by Thal-Zhurath, who was Unmade And there was a country once, in the years that have no number, where the day had gone away and never come again. I have walked in it. I have breathed its grey breath into my lungs and…

From: Time 6893 of the Lingering Spark 1. The Winter That Came Twice The thaw had lasted four days. That was the trouble with it. Four days was long enough to believe in. Brannoch had seen the eaves drip. He had seen the black mud come up through the snow at the center of the…

From: Phasewalkers Boots Segment 1. The Wind That Carried the Tale There are nights — and I have known too many of them — when the wind does not blow so much as it remembers. It does not move through the world; it gropes through it, the way a blind mourner gropes through a house…

From: Seiðr 42 of the Mortar of Mystic Grinds   Segment One: The Hut Where the Floor Drank Color The rain had been falling for two days when the boy came running, so I knew before I saw his face that he was bringing me something I would not want. I was sitting on the…

From: Gloomspiders Segment One: The Master’s Fitful Sleep There is a kind of waking that is not waking at all but rather a slow returning, the way a small boat drifts in toward a shore it has been pointed at for hours, and that is the kind of waking I came to that night. I…

From: Thunderous Tail Club Segment 1: “The Watching-Stones at the Mouth of the Cave” A note, before the matter proper. The reader will forgive an old man his preliminaries. I have been told, more than once, by superiors who possessed less patience than learning, that I begin too many of my chronicles with apologies and…

From: Taweez 402 of the Hallowed Detonator Segment 1: The Soot-Quarter Wakes Wrong This one was eating, which is, as any reasonable creature will tell you, the proper occupation of the hour before dawn. The fish-head was three days old and had been ripening in a particular gutter behind the brassmonger’s shop, where the runoff…