"And next year.. Queen Mab.."

Man this took a long time. My earliest development notes date back to July 2020. This was originally meant to be an adventure.

The idea came in at almost the same time that the Covid 19 Pandemic began.

2020- Covid and Genesis

The earliest file I have is “Queen Mab Base File 15072020”

I used to live in Birkenhead and take the train into Liverpool to work in the Library there. Slowly I began to notice less and less people working in the Library, and odd people wearing masks on the train. Eventually I was the only one left, masked up, working alone on an empty floor, then the library closed, then my gym closed, then oh boy my life got a lot worse.

Phobos

Actually, the ‘real’ earliest file I have on Queen Mab is from a project I conceived of around March 2020 called ‘Phobos’. One element behind this was doing a different or new version of ‘Maze of the Blue Medusa’. I only have two files left relating to this and one of them is just a blank Notepad document called ‘THE PHOBOS’. Here are the entire contents of the other file, and the total development done on that idea;

“A space ship

Inderdimensional Fey Techno-Vessel

3 Transhumanist Techno Angel Fey chicks

From a post singularity post apocalyptic futurepast

Titan-Children, or architects

psathyrella - th Infinite

(Weird space angels)

Some new arrangement

re-write of the opening area

factions and moving parts

Where am I to get names?

Science Fictional

Poetic

Memorable

Decks of a ship?

How to Introduce Concepts

Lizardmen are Zombie Engram Humans

A cylender ship?

a spiral, like a helix of DNA?

like a curl of smoke

sections - but they intertwine

but like a ship also, a tendril of sails

>> reflection of a cosmic solar-sail vessel on a midnight sea

seen through a dimensional mirror thing

Maybe you can enter through any painting in the ship?

or through many of them

More complex desires/actions for the factions

Lizardmen

Aurum Spectre

Critics

A repository of culture

like an ark

the ark of fear

holding humanities hopes, and its end

evolved past the need for

and you enter it maybe from a fantasy setting

like its a normal ship

but then you work out - or the player works out

its a space ship

or an interdimensional thing

or the PCs would think its an Elf prison

even though its supertechnical”

What remains from that concept into the final ‘Queen Mab’ seems to be; transhumanism, fey babes in space and the idea of a space ship entered from a fantasy setting.

We cut ahead a few months. By this point I must certainly have encountered August because she is mentioned here and our first formal agreement dates from a month before this. So we must have been discussing it. Here we are definitely reading a proposal for an Adventure;

“Concept

The idea for this adventure is that, depending on how you orient the page as you read it, it is both a fantasy and a science-fiction adventure.”

HOW THIS IS MEANT TO WORK IN THE PRINTED BOOK?

When you flip the book one way - with the spine on the right, as in western books, then its a science fiction adventure.

When you turn the book upside down and read it “backwards”, like a manga, then its a fantasy adventure.

BUT - the truth is that these are the same people and places but just seen from different cultural perspectives

the portrait-images of the main characters are flipped like those of playing cards, one half facing one, direction the other facing the other direction.

The Science Fiction adventurers will see it as a dimensionally-warped ship of perverted biomechanical transhumans.

In terms of adventure design, the context of the information they can get and are given will lead them to see it as a technical and material problem, and the very nature of their inquiry and the way they seen the people in it

will make the *mission* darker and more dangerous for them. Their technical abilities and the power of destruction and opposition that their guns etc give them means they are more likely to start conflicts.

BUT

If PCs enter this realm from a Fantasy Land, they will see it as a strange Eld Palace (Spenserian & Shakesperian elves rather than Tolkien) and will react to the beings there very much as if they were elves. They will (probably) not believe they have much of a chance of direct opposition so will fall back on the traditional weapons of the weak: courtesy, deceit, flattery, cunning and thinking ahead.

AND - most importantly, they will treat the beings in The Queen Mab *the way they wish & expect to be treated*.

So for fantasy characters it will be more of a dangerous social/investigation adventure, whereas for SCi Fi characters it might become more of a ‘run and gun’ shooty and/or running-away horror adventure. Either Alien, or Aliens, depending on how competent your PCs are

Wonder, or Horror. (Or both).

Format Of This Product?

I’m basing it roughly on Sean McCoys ‘Mothership’ and associated adventures. So I would say;

Size - US half-letter size, or A5.

Pages – estimate 42 pages, say 21 spreads inside.

Stapled booklet on decent quality paper.

Should be relatively easy to print and simple to send about.

‘Mothership’ is very dense and really a masterwork of layout. I doubt I can match that density but hopefully I can get close.

Aesthetic Concepts

My initial Aesthetic prompts are Alcopopstars “Ship of Theseus” and “Chernobyl Fairy Pool”.

So based on that - everyone is blue and female and there is lots of biomechanical porn/horror/beauty.

Which I am cool with - actually I am not cool with it - I really really like it and the strangeness, intensity and beauty of those images was a prime driver behind the concept.

HOWEVER - I am open to alternative approaches and the aesthetic is far from set atm.

Shelly

Another aspect of this ‘design doc’ is the huge number of quotes from Shelly’s Queen Mab;

“Unalterable will, quenchless desire

Of universal happiness, the heart

That beats with it in unison, the brain,

Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change

Reasons rich stores for its eternal weal.”

Which I must have read about this time. Shelly’s Mab is an extremely, almost hyper-progressive poem about human development, and while relatively little of the scenes and figures end up in the final ‘QMP’, this verse of helter-skelter revolutionary human potentiality does seem to affect the soul and background of what becomes a somewhat nightmarish Post-Human ‘Paradise’

“The restless wheels of being on their way,

Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,

Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:”

“Sean McCoy Built this in a cave with a box of scraps”

Thusly, work begins! A SIMPLE (directionally flipped duo-adventure) SHOT (42 pages and 21 spreads!) product. Surely, this won’t take long!

“Logistically, how does this work? in terms of timeframe and revenue split?”

Timeframe - this is the hardest one to answer. The longest I’ve ever had, a huge project that got delayed a lot, was about 5 years.

For this I would guess at about a year, the majority of which for you would be waiting around while I did stuff.

Yes…. about a year

By the time we get to the end of 2020 the basic idea of what this place is going to be, has become a lot more clear, the High Ladies exist, and their courts are set; The Queen of Air and Darkness in Autumns Halls, the Pythian Three in the Court of Dreams, Elpozoi in her Grove of Joy, Nights Iron Chariot, the Parliament of Beasts (largely cut from the final text), the Nome Queen in the Symphony of Forms, Her Grace of Wyrms in the Wyrms Roost, ‘The Halls of Melinoe’ (a little different now), and Matterjack and Antijack.

And we have a little bit of (very sketchy, I hope August won’t mind me posting this), art for ‘Queen Mab’;

2021 – Peak Patrick Hours

Its 2021 people! Good news for Patrick; DCO Remastered comes out and is very popular. This is by far and away the most popular and successful thing I have ever produced since I started self-publishing, I think it nearly matches the sales volume of the rest of my catalogue put together.

I still remember the delivery of the final book to my flat; I had it sent to what I thought would be a more accessible location and ended up having to take an Uber to some industrial estate in the middle of summer, masked up, sweating and confused, and wandering around the place looking for my boxes of books. Can’t remember if I walked back or got another cab.

While I must have been pretty busy doing other things, 2021 shows regular, at least weekly, and often daily, growth in the regular drafts of ‘Queen Mab’. There are a bunch of things here which end up ‘on the cutting room floor’ and don’t appear in the final book, for instance, the Exo-Petitioners;

Exo-Petitioners

You Hear

Barks in an unknown language. A devil-box eats this tongue and spits it out in comprehensible metal words.

“Put your hands up! Who are you? Who do you serve?”

You See

Sun-Spears blind you. Lances of burning white light, carried by hunters who seem no more than black shadows behind the sun-bright lamps.

An older, calmer voice calls out, ordering the hunters, who drop the lances of their lamps.

As sight returns you, you see a strange conclave; an old hunter and his strange followers, circled and guarded by a league of blind men. All wear masks of glass strapped around their heads, attached to tubes which lead to flasks of imprisoned beneficent wind.

These are men, of a sort. Not quite as you know them.

The Petitioners

The Old Hunter

A grave gentleman with a lined, heavy face and hair like snow. He wears something like a hunting jacket with a slim silk scarf hanging in a straight line down the centre of his pure white shirt. His clothes are finely made, though in simple cut and sombre colours which match his strong and certain manner. Clearly he is leader of this group. Though he is dressed to hunt, he carries nothing in his hands.

[For August – the references to ‘hunters clothes’ or being ‘dressed like a hunter’ are meant to be someone with a middle-ages aesthetic looking at a modern suit, for which the trousers, short jacket and tie might seem like a strange version of the clothes worn by nobles when hunting.]

The Scrivener

A young woman in a fitted hunting jacket and skirt. she carries a case at her side and holds a tablet. She treads closely upon the old hunters heels, attending to his words

replying only with agreement, and scribing in her tablet.

The Priest

An old man with a long grey beard, wearing a fine robe embroidered with strange symbols, he walks with a tall ivory staff, topped with gold. He is deeply troubled by everything he sees.

The Mage

A woman, her hair tied and face unadorned but for glass lenses upon her nose. She wears a knee-length coat of purest white over a mans grey hunting suit. She glances about herself, like a bird, talking overmuch, though largely to herself. She carries a bulky case and holds the devil box which speaks the transformed metal words.

The Warrior

A warrior in a peaked cap, his face lined and serious, his chest bestrewn with medals and ribbons of many colours. His gaze roves about, dauntless and impetuous. He has a miniature cannon at his side and he shouts orders at the blind guardians.

The Blind Guardians

Strong and vital men wearing the black glass shades of the blind. Yet they look about themselves, glancing here and there, listening to the orders of the great warrior. Their sombre hunting clothes are like that of the Old Hunter, yet not as perfectly made. They hold small cannons and sun-spears which they shine about at any noise or movement.

The Plea Of The Old Hunter

In metal words passed through his mages devil box the Hunter tells his tale;

“I rule a far land.

One fall-time, strange things came. Flyers in the sky. Beasts, Satryrs and Dancers stepped from shadows and from water, like reflections.

Our tools turned on us. Our fighters fell sick, or were lost to dreams.

They took much. Winter came. They left.

Since then, many dream without sleep. More and more each day. Soon the dreamers will outnumber those who wake.

We can find no cure.

Autumn came. The leaves turned. A white Satyr came, and said; Come, King, beg Queen Mab, and she will heal your harm.

The White Satyr showed us a door in the shadow of falling leaves.

So I have come to find this Queen Mab. To beg her to lift her curse of dreams.

We are lost here. No food and water. Please help us.”

 

2022 - ‘HA HA HA I AM A GENIUS’

Bad news everybody! Demon-Bone Sarcophagus comes out and it is not well liked to put it mildly. (It actually sells not-too terribly, about half the rate of DCO, but unfortunately I had, lets say, a LOT of confidence in this project and its collapse was demoralising.)

This far in, the art for ‘Queen Mab’ is starting to look a lot more like the final version and the file is starting look a lot like an actual book. We have tables like this;

One or two characters from which do actually show up in the final text.

By the end of the year I have… massively overwritten the idea. 2022 ends with 306 pages and nearly 79,000 words. Any idea of a ‘short adventure’ is clearly left long behind, but where am I actually going with this? While continuing to detail the people and places of ‘The Queen Mab’, I am also bringing in hyper complex concepts like the time-looped ‘Knights of Grief’, strange extra-causal ‘Messengers of Time’ and aspects of the adventure that include messages from your future selves and the idea of multiple plays as an intrinsic diegetic part of the setting.

This is all very innovative but this idea is huge, and growing ever more complex, and every form of complexity interacts with every other form, requiring more and more prodigies of explanation and contingency.

2023 – a Crowhurst Moment

Speak, False Machine comes out this year and does ok. A massive book at a high-ish price, and all little more than a testament to my own self-importance. The robots won’t be able to re-write me now!

But with Mab, clearly I have begun to recognise that I have fucked up severely. There are only eight updates for this whole year.

2024 – Wait, I Can Still Fix This

The year of Gackling Moon, another book whose publication history is… complex, and long.

With Mab, a sea-change has taken place. Clearly I have given up on writing an actual adventure module. Instead my drafts have been re-named ‘Queen Mab – a Guide’ and everything starts to be re-written in a very different manner.

“I find I must speak a little more to tell you first of the manners of the palace for its courtesies are so curious that, should I embark to tell you of this or that realm or court and you have not the way of it first, what might be held strange shall seem beyond understanding.

While it is said that the Palace is a Free Kingdom where one might rise or fall by ones own efforts, aye even beasts and the doors given voice, the dead walk and dreams made real, in truth the High Ladies rule all, and Mab rules the High Ladies.

The creatures and courtiers may be somewhat predatory, cannibalistic, homicidal and mad, but they are rarely impolite. Even the lowest; the Kroo and the Dwellers of the Crypt will make some attempt at forms of politeness. Courtesy does not preclude predation. The Palace hovers often on the edge of famine. In the Crypt one may eat freely of whomever one may take, save those blessed by Melinoe, or in a Night Market during a Saints day. In the Courts there is a different law; one should not predate, save by the will of whatever court one is in.”

This is the first existence of the voice of ‘The Scribe’; the narrator of a ‘Gackling Moon’ style Gazeteer, written in an Epistolary style, a visitor from a pseudo-medieval culture describing ‘The Queen Mab’ for… who exactly?

The first ‘Scribe’ is bodiless, nameless, even genderless, I never knew even what sex they were or what they looked like. But this will slowly change..

Around April, the drafts of ‘Queen Mab – a Guide’ transmute into ‘Queen Mab’s Palace’, and then into ‘QMP’, I am on a roll here and its during this grand re-write of 2024 that the descriptive ‘place’ sections are broken up, moved around and absorbed into particular recollections by in-world characters. The ‘Guide Book’ slowly changes into a ‘Story Book’. The ‘Scribe’ gains a gender, a form, and a strange and particular history. They even get their own drawing!

Most people who have read the final text of ‘Queen Mab’s Palace’ say something like; “It’s not bad, the first part reads kind of like a game and the end more like a novel” and I think I am ok with this. I could have re-written more, made it more and more and more like a novel, but I am fine with the presence of time and the development of the writer in a text, and I like the book the way it is, and of course, remember the “42 Pages” and “About a year”. By this point the phrase “and then Queen Mab” and “still working on Queen Mab” have bedded themselves so deep into my vocabulary that they are like automatic speech.

By August (the month) 2024, I have completed a ‘Draft Zero’ which is pretty much the text for the finished book

And in October 2024, we run a successful..

KICKSTARTER!

Yes everything is going ok and we will certainly have a finished book for you by….

Oh my god….

2025 - Did I really publish nothing this year?

Look, things just take a while.

Layout, discussions, firm and frank exchanges of views, art, more art. I know it seemed like not much was happening but in fact a fair amount was and I can prove this because we did indeed produce a finished book! It just took just over a year to get everything laid out and finished and the book actually printed.

But it does exist!

2026 – No-One Killed Me

Donald Crowhurst is a semi-famous figure in British modern mythology; an attempted amateur round-the-world solo yachtsman, his self-designed yacht started to fall apart mid-Atlantic.

In a world with global radio coverage, but without, yet, a universal Global Positioning System, the only way for the race observers to confirm the yachts locations across the globe was via self-report. Each contestant would radio in, every day, with a latitude and longitude, to tell everyone how they were doing.

As Crowhursts actual position began to fall behind the other contestants, he began, only a little at first, to bend details, to place his reported position just a little ahead of where he actually was. Then the next day, having lied a little, he lied some more, all the while desperately dealing with a leaking, floundering ship, alone in the ocean. Thinking, perhaps; “I can make it up, I can get back on track.”

Eventually he seems to have come up with a desperate concept to rescue his dream; he would float around in the Atlantic, going nowhere, living out this fantasy of a round the world race, with fake reported positions and fake events, until the actual race did finally go circumvent the earth, and returned to the Atlantic, at which point he would join in, for real, and float into port, ahead of the rest, having gone ‘round the world’.

Either he fell into the sea or took his own life. His body was never found, just the empty, leaky yacht, with no Crowhurst, but two well-kept logbooks; one showing every position of his ‘round the world race’, the other, his actual, mad empty circles in the Atlantic.

Who knows, perhaps he is still out there somewhere, living under another name. We can hope.

(Shelly, who wrote the ‘Queen Mab’ quoted above, also died mysteriously in a boat.)

What does this have to do with ‘Queen Mab’s Palace’? Absolutely nothing.

Anyway, thanks to August for not actively murdering me. The book is now done and is available for sale. I think its pretty good.

“The Map of Five-Times-Five

The paper was flayed skin. Around its borders were these words; “A map of Signs, like those which show the way to Grace or Down to Damnation, through good deeds or bad.” I studied thus and decided that the Great Signs must be the Saints, but of the lesser Signs and lines I knew not, but went in search of one who would speak to me of such, for ‘Five-Times-Five’ had gone.”

I mean how good a map do you expect to get for one tooth?

.....

In this opening part of 'Queen Mab's Palace', our Narrator, the Scribe, has arrived in the Crypt of her Palace, in the shadow of Saint Seven, the Time Saint, and fortunately, on that Saints Holy Day, meaning they arrive in the middle of a Market, and that it would be illegal to hunt and eat them, (at least within the bounds of the Market itself, and at least till the end of this Saints Day).

In attempting to learn more about the strange, dank Fairyland in which they find themselves, they (somehow) end up in position of (someone's) teeth, one of which they trade to 'Five-Times-Five' for a map of the crypt in which they now are set. 

This is that map; 

What we know but they do not, is that the 'Crypt' is the broken, de-powered and/or industrial sections of a gigantic space ship. If you could see ‘the crypt’ in a 3D image of the real-life ‘Queen Mab’, it would be like dark sections, occupying most of the shitty parts of the ship, the stuff around recycling, the ‘lower decks’ main cargo bay etc.

Seen like this, the ‘Crypt’ isn’t just a single blob of contiguous space, it would weave its way through and into the ‘Courts’, like a black dirty Octopus spreading tendrils everywhere.

The division between the ‘Crypt’ and the ‘Courts’ is as much social, political and religious, as it is material and practical. The ‘Crypt’ is dark, often wet, full of naked industrial machinery, often hot, or maybe far too cold. Its population are the ‘Dwellers’ a peasant/untouchable class.

To make some sense of this, consider a Medieval Map like the Hereford ‘Mappa Mundi’, the religious centrality of things is important. Here is a medieval map of the whole world;

As you can see, the whole world is represented. In the middle is Jerusalem, the holy city, and below it is the Mediterranean. I think the UK is bottom left.

The thing in the middle of the Crypt Map is the Court of Melinoe, Queen of the Underworld and beloved by all who Dwell Below.

The Flow

The ‘Flow’ is anything the Courts (above) flush or throw away. This stuff enters pipes, (praise the pipes), unless its isolated and trapped, in which case the Gongfarmers go get it.

Then it flows down the pipes, which merge like the streams leading to a river. All joining together. Then these streams meet at a Saint.

There are Seven Saints, as you know, and these are arranged on the map, each at the centre of their own drainage network.

Finding Your Way in the Crypt

What’s on the map has absolutely no real relationship to actual distances, but does have a good rough representation of relationships, especially the Flow. (The Flow is sacred).

How you might verbally describe a location is based on the Saint, first, then the direction uses the closest other saints as compass points, to tell which way someone is meant to orientate. 

The spaces between the ‘flows’ are deserts, unusually dry and sometimes warm. The more ‘flow’ there is, the more likely it is to be wet, and perhaps cold, until you get real close to the Saint the flow is flowing to, when it may warm up again. There are also more people and stuf happening generally ‘downflow’ (which may be dangerous).

‘Five Turns Sixwards of Five’ is a pretty simple instruction for someone around Saint Five; just turn ‘Sixwards’ (people nearby will probably have a good general idea of which direction ‘Five’ is), and then take five major turns in that direction.

In ‘reality’ any guidance would be way more full of oddness and cryptic stuff that only makes sense when you do it, when you already know about it or just doesn’t make sense. Like;

’when five red gates do pass, 
Courtwards of the merry lass,
Venomwards of Young do mark your measure,
Riddles be sung and drips be treasure’

What the fuck does this even mean? Presumably five rusted (red) gates or portals, then moving ‘Courtwards’, so usually upflow of ‘the merry lass’, whatever the fuck that is, maybe it makes sense when you get there. Then Venomwards (direction of saint Six), of ‘Young’ (Saint five), then riddles be sung, so maybe there is something stopping you, like one of the Pythians Sons (an insane uplifted automatic door), and then ‘drips be treasure’, its really dry and you will need to conserve liquids? But you get the general vibe.

.......................

To explain a little more about the Crypt and the Saints, here is a fragment from one of the several appendicies of 'Queen Mab's Palace' where one of the Endothermic Knights describes the Seven Saints of the Crypt

SAINT ONE - THE RAIN SAINT

"Whose day is called ‘Rainsday’ and who hangs upright in a mighty vault. The Market lies beneath, where the dribs of flow trickle down the great saints side and drip a soft pattering rain. Any drop may be the Vile Flow, or the Pure, and the Many turn upwards, bare their tongues, and risk the Vile that they might taste a Pure Tear of the Rain Saint.

SAINT TWO - THE CHAIN SAINT

The second Saint is mighty, though He sleeps. He is the Chain Saint and Chainsday his day. The pipes of the Flow are fed and laced in below the holy carapace. Flakes of this are treasured. Mab herself is pleased by their colour. (You must never cut or strike them from His shell, for this is Heresy most Foul.) The Market is atop his back and each great chain around him has a small shrine at its base, past which the people climb.

SAINT THREE - THE PILGRIM SAINT

The third is the Pilgrim Saint, for the many which attend him. He is a saint-vertical and clings to His shroud of iron as a maggot clings to flesh. Blessed with a ripeness and roundness, yet also a longness and a greatness of legs, and with Hairs, and the sides of the Saint are marked with gods-eyes. Huge seeds float out from His holy Pores and gust about. They are of worth if caught, and his shed Hairs are of facility. On Pilgrimsday the Market is before his eyes, on a great bridge which crosses a rumbling and jumbling torrent of the impure flow. This he gnaws and makes into bricks of safe, pure flow-stuff which pile beneath him in a spoil, amongst which scavengers reign. Above them, on the bridges edge, Hydraulic Monks meditate by looking into his faceted black eyes.

SAINT FOUR - THE SAINT OF BLOOD

The fourth Saint is the Saint of Blood and stirs, half-sleeping in a chamber of strange waters. Soft and tasty, glossy, pulsing black, fat with blood, with a great ringed maw of infinite teeth which pulses open and closed as if dreaming of a feast. He is like a great raw steak. Rafts set out into the Blood Saints lake and carve off hunks of His rich meat. Thrice-purified blood-pipers drain thick life from within, selling it cold or warmed, by pint and vat. The Bloodsday market lies around the blood-lake rim. ‘Tis deadly land. We walk the circle round to harrow Crimes, but ill is often done, for the market shares a border with the unlit dark and the fat iron reek makes it easy to hide murder thereabout.

SAINT FIVE - THE YOUNG SAINT 

The fifth day is Birthsday and is the Young Saints time. They are propped up as if sitting, with an archway set about them. Less pipemartyred than others, the Young Saint supports Theyself. The Young Saint glows a cool, bright, moonlike light. This blessed luminescence enlightens all who see it. They wriggle freely and are soothed and polished, and anointed with oils, by Hydraulic Monks, collecting Orbs of luminescent liquid pearl which hold the sacred gleam of Their dripping innards. They love the Young Saint, as do we all!

SAINT SIX - THE VENOM SAINT 

The Sixth day is Venomsday and their market is set within the circle of the Saints body with great limbs spread about like the spars of wrecked ships, and we walk along the Saints flank, keeping watch. This very deadly and wonderous saint is curled in a great circle, alike unto a centipede with his martyr-pipes set into his back. The Venom Saint is wrathful and half-sleeps. He dreams of violence! Sacred lances pierce its small mind. When He twitches, the Monks cry out “more power!” and rush to huge wheels which they run inside, which thereby spark the lance of mercy. It is a safe day for all must pass the Toxic Gates, where the Monks collect the Holy Venom, and if the Saint smells blood on any man, He begins to twitch and wake, therefore none dare blood to spill. Even the Drinker of Poison cannot transform all and so deadly poison drips continually from his forcipules. At times toxic fumes mist up from the venom wells and drift across the market.”

SAINT SEVEN - THE TIME SAINT

Here is where we begin, and if you wish to know more, you must wait till the book is ready.

Are Artists Even Human? (False Machine News!!)

Ordinary humans have literally zero idea of what it takes to develop and create an image, meaning they treat it as a kind of magic, and adopt towards it the same attitude they would have towards superior magicians, one of envy and disdain, (A WISE POLICY), but, what if an Artist (traditionally entirely mute beasts) could be trained somehow to take, to explicate and take apart its art, showing its as a product of effort, concentration, iteration and time? Could this possibly lead ordinary decent humans to have more sympathy both with this art and its creator?

Consider then the following words, from the artist of ‘Queen Mab’s Palace’ (due hopefully at the end of the year), the often-storied August Lake Cartland, or ‘Alcopopstar’;

………………

“Hello humble and beloved benefactors,

Today I have an update for you, not slope for swine but delicately prepared delicacies for the petite porcine prince/esse/s among us, for all of us to enjoy.

So, ART.

I have been working hard on new illustrations. I thought today, to waste the wanting hours, I might describe to you the process of bringing about an illustration for the book to full fruition.

The first step for me is to take myself to some pleasant place (usually a cafe) with a sketchbook or notepad and actually read what Patrick has written, which to my pleasant surprise, is actually quite good! At this point I start to sketch..

For this example we are using the section of the book on the Hydraulic Monks.

At this stage of image making I am only trying to draw out concepts from words and get a general idea of what things could look like. The sketch itself here is not meant to look pretty! it's very utilitarian in fact. I just put down basic information that I can pick up at a later stage so there is less cognitive load happening all at once.

After this stage is complete I amble blindly home and, within a day or two of that first sketch usually put down some rough lines as shown below.

Once again, not designed yet to look pretty, the aim at this moment is to architect an image based off of information in the first sketch. I often take a few attempts at this stage, as we can see with the kneeling figure. In this Image I resolve that I would like the front of the altar visible to give it its due reverence, and so turn the monks to face it.

Finally with this done I begin the fun part of adding and retracting blacks. Which I can only describe a little like pushing and pulling. I tend to work only on one layer and so work the white and black back and forth until content.

As this is happening I usually grab the picture, or work in progress, and send it off to my partner; the oil painter who will be doing our lovely cover, who tells me everything is wrong and how to fix it.

After a bit more back and forth the final image appears!

I try to leave things a little loose to let a slight sketchy feeling through, as I don't want to compete too much with interpretation of the lovely words Patrick has put down on the page.

There is one more secret stage after this fact, where I neurotically edit the image with minor invisible changes that only I can see and never hand anything back to Patrick like a dragon hoarding treasure. But eventually, presumably, the system works :).

I hope that little art morsel has been interesting! I prepared it just for you.. and maybe nourished us all enough for the long wait until October. Wish me luck!"

False Machine News! In Three Parts!

ONE - MALUSTRIOUS BROOD - from Scrap Princess

Long-term art-brute of the False Machine nobility, Scrap Princess has released an entirely self-produced monster art book; Malustrious Brood!

https://monstermanualsewnfrompants.blogspot.com/p/malustrious-brood.html

"I've been meaning to have a print on demand book available of original drawings of mine and now this deed is done!

MALUSTRIOUS BROOD!!!

In this 102 page tome I have taken 12 iconic monsters from the pastiche swirl of d&d's fantasy pool and done a bunch of takes of them. Each monster gets 7 pages , and a range of approaches.

The monsters being : The classic elemental spirits of Gnome, Nereid, Salamander, Sylph. Ogres, Hags, Dragons, Basilisk/Cockatrice, Orc, Manticore. And two Very Much d&d , the Catawhere and Eye Tyrant."

https://www.peecho.com/print/en/1750387

TWO - FALSE MACHINE WHOLESALING!

False Machine is now available for wholesale!

Held in the U.S.A.

• Silent Titans

Held in the U.K.

• Deep-Carbon Observatory

• Demon-Bone Sarcophagus

• Gackling Moon

• Gawain and the Green Knight

• Speak, False Machine

Contact me if you want to know more!

THREE - FALSE MACHINE PRICE DROP! THIS ISN'T REALLY NEWS!

This is still on!

https://falseparcels.bigcartel.com/

• A Night at the Golden Duck = £5

• Deep-Carbon Observatory = £30 (-£10)

• Demon-Bone Sarcophagus = £20 (-£20)

• Gackling Moon = £25 (-£5)

• Gawain and the Green Knight = £15 (-£20)

• Silent Titans = £40

• Speak, False Machine = £40 (-£20)

AND! - A FREE HEIST PLAN FOR EVERY (UK-BASED) ORDER - WHETHER YOU WANT IT OR NOT!!!! 

FOUR YES THERE WERE ACTUALLY FOUR I JUST FORGOT THIS ONE! -  ANOTHER 3D APPEARANCE! - LEICESTER 17TH MAY!

Dying Earth Catalogue, the people behind my recent adventure to Nottingham, have invited me to another thing

Called Campaign, the day-long event consisting of talks, live game play sessions and stalls will run from 11am - 9pm at Leicester Gallery and Leicester Castle, on Saturday 17th May 2025, with 250 people expected to attend.

I will be there, running a False Machine stall, selling signing and singing, until 6pm at least.

Ride! Ride! Ride!

Only 24 hours left on the best work of visionary transhumanist science fiction that’s also a medieval quest story that’s also beautifully illustrated that I could write!

• Prices will go up if you want to get it in the future!

• Did you know postage to the U.K. and E.U. is surprisingly affordable?

• We are this close to providing FREE MICE with every copy!

Enter the Palace of the Queen of Air and Darkness, before All Hallows Eve ends!! 

The Sybermice!

A Queen must be served and Queen Mab is no exception. As unnatural and disturbing as they seem to some of the books narrators, perhaps the Scribe sees them differently, (or August just likes drawing them this way), for in these images, Mabs somewhat craven cybernetic and genetically altered footmice and maidmice seem... almost cute?

(just don't look too closely, or think too much about what it must take to create them)

All glory to the Queen of Air and Darkness! Her Age is drawing to a close! We only have FOUR days left of the Kickstarter and its likely we will hit the next stretch goal and provide a ribbon to the book, .... BUT;

We may even hit the goal after that! And if we do thereward will be as many Sybermice as August can comfortably drawn, in sweet sticker-form, delivered to backers along with their books. (And we will probably try to cram them into the book wherever we can in the form of marginalia).

If you like mice.. re-blog, link, follow, comment, like and subscribe! Bring us up in conversations with friends and co-workers!

THIS IS THE LINK!

You only have FOUR DAYS till HALLOWEEN! The dead will rise and this Kickstarter will end!!!!

Dark Secrets Revealed!

Because we have slithered uncomfortably over our stretch goals for 'Queen Mabs Palace', I have been forced to come up with new, even-more-unlikely goals to hit. I am front-loading these stretch goals because I really do *not* want to do a lot of them!!!! I will tell you why! (Only the first one is boring.)

£8,000 - A Ribbon

At 8k will add a ribbon to the book, with the colour chosen by YOU, the backers. (I'm actually ok doing this one as its just a manufacturing decision and means adding quality to the book).

At 8,500 - The Sybermice

None of you know what the Sybermice are yet as you haven't read the book, but they are the cybernetically and genetically altered attendants of Queen Mab in her Palace of Doors. In the book I describe these guys as being pretty grotesque but, in one of the ever-common meta-communications between Writer and Artist which seem to be flawed but end up emblematic of the work in the public mind, August has always insisted on drawing these guys as extremely cute Cybernetic Mice and I have never had the heart to insist on a more-unpleasant 'real' depiction. (Though, August, if we actually hit this one I may force you do do at least *one* picture of a "real" sybermouse, and hide it somewhere in the text to hopefully scare children in case they accidentally pick it up.)

If we hit £8,500 we will produce a sheet of extremely cute Sybermouse stickers and include them with every *hardcopy* book sent *to backers*.

I hate doing physical rewards!

£ 9,000 -Re-Print A Night at the Golden Duck

You know once I have these printed I have to individually cut and fold all of these with my own hands right? Then I have to ship them to my fulfilment centre, which, even if I do a whole bunch, is still just going to be one or two boxes? And then when you by one, with fulfilment charges, VAT and postage, it costs WAYYY too much to just order one? So its really only good for adding on to orders?

I don't want to do this!! But people have asked, so if we actually hit £9,000 total then I WILL re-print 'A Night at the Golden Duck' and try to make it available at the same time that 'Queen Mabs Palace' hits fulfilment, so you can add one to your order if you like.

£10,000 - Dark Secrets Revealed! To YOU alone!!! 

(If you are a backer(for the hardcopy)).

If we hit 10k I will reveal two deep, dark, so far unknown secrets about False Machine, *only* to those who backed for the book. I will send this information in a personal message via your Kickstarter account which you *must* delete after reading. These are secrets which only a precious few know, and which must NEVER become public knowledge!

Six Forgotten New England Monsters

(During the Kickstarter for Queen Mab's Palace I am trying to blog as a much as possible. This will be separated into two streams; Echoing Stars for my dark Science Fiction Posts, and Fall Posts for more fantasy-esque Autumn Themed ones. The first Fall Post was Twelve Adventures of the Autumn Lands, this is the second;)

 

John Gast

 

1. Old Teak Britches 

He walks by night and by wind for only so will none hear him come. If you are out in the forest by night - listen for him when the wind stills; if every tree ceases creaking but one - and that one stops a little later than the rest, you might still have time, for he is not too close and seeks to hide him approach. Make for the forest edge for he doesn't like to go beyond it. If you hear him swift after the wind, like creak-creak, creak-creak, like footsteps getting faster, its likely too late so you may as well run and don't stop running just because the land is clear for though he likes not to go beyond the green growth and fresh fences, he can still reach beyond them and you might be carried up and away... 

 

2. Shock Hairs Pig Mans Mark 

There was a deal done by night at some time and on one side was a Pocumtok who knew nothing of pigs but wanted some, and a half-Dutch who knew more of them than man should, and on the other was the Devil. In any case the men would have pigs and old Shock-Hair said 'now here is a sign I shall show you two which I gave long ago to a Lady far off, and if you make right the ink and draw right the sign on a man’s hearth, he becomes a pig, and you can make as many as you like, though in return I will take off your spirit till the sun goes black like a coal. These two fools mistook and had the Sign not right, thence, on using it, they made not a pig, but a man-pig, who was neither one nor another. Pigs having wits and men some too, the man Pig caught them both and got the secret out of them and set about trying to get the Sign right, thinking if he could get a Pig done rightly he would be half-way to getting one un-done - which was himself. Those three never could get a Pig done right and likely they are all dead now but the Pig-Marked men are still abroad and still take people here and there to try their Sign. 

 

3. The Chatter Box

 This was an Algonquin maid who wasn't of the usual kind, so no man would marry her, but they feared her too much to say no but pretended to be sick, mad or dead. She got sick of this and said she would go with a white man, which she did, and found a widower. He did not know about the kind of thing she was, so married her, but he found out. From the moment she moved in she would not stop yammering, in English and every other tongue, morning, noon and night and every minute of every hour. This woman didn't even sleep but got up on the walls and onto the roof in the dark, talking and talking. She drove that man mad and he jumped in the river so she went off to marry another, but they got her first, for white men stuffed their ears and caught her and put her hands in chains and her head in a box of rowan wood, which was an old cruel punishment even then. She got away from them but she couldn't get out of of that iron or that box. If you hear her, and you will if she is close, for she is still talking, talking, talking, run fast and run quiet for if she learns your name you will never be free of her. 

 

4. Nantuckets Whalebone Man

 He was made in Nantucket by a whaling man who had seen the last of his trade and by God did he hate whales. He hated that he could hear them still, swimming and free, and he knew whales hated man just the same way/ "White men and whales is like Christians and Indians; it is them or us so we better get killing". Why then did he make the Whalebone Man? Surely for spite alone. he made him from Ivory Bone and dressed him like a Gentleman and paid good money for the whalebone face, giving him smoked spectacles to hide the whalebone eyes, and he set him loose with he last breath as a curse upon the world that wouldn't hate whales the way it should. Now, if you are inland and you see a pale gentleman who walks with a click and if you hear a whales song as if from an ivory flute, but he has no flute to play; leave your doors and windows open, no matter the cold, for if you don't they'll find you drowned in the morning and your house full of seawater which comes out in a flood. (He pipes it down the chimney you see.) 

Michael Ayrton

 

5. The Hessians Hole 

At the time of the war against King George there was a Hessian who loved to kill. He killed when told to and when suggested and he liked it so much that he kept at it regardless, which left him in difficulty. He was out in the night and met an old Indian by the road and was about to kill him too but the old man said don't do what you are thinking and I will give you a hole you can put anything in and take where you like. Well that's just what I need said the Hessian - you show me and I'll believe it. So the Indian showed him the hole and said here is the cat gut to sew shut the hole and only it can so be careful with it, and take care a second time to always leave it not quite open or it will get loose, and it’s as hungry as you are. And he unsewed the hole and there it was, deep as you like, and the Hessian said very good then and kicked the Indian into it and sewed it up and carried it off. Then he just killed who he wanted and put them in the hole. But it came at one time the call to battle for Washington was coming and we better kill that man, and he was busy at the hole so sewed it shut but caught the cat gut with his spur and rode off and started fighting. The hole was loose and came for him. he was fighting and stabbing and found himself going missing, part by part, though no blood flowed. It was the hole. Soon all that was left was a spur and a long cat-gut thread. That hole is still around, you can listen for the Hessian and Indian still in it and still arguing over who gets what to eat. 

 

6. The Southrons Mill 

There is a Mill that moves through the night like an owl and the earth like a worm. It is always working and never in the same place twice. A Southron made it. This was in the years before the war between the States. He came north slave hunting, saying they get cold in the woods and slow down, though he never seemed to catch any, but he built that mill which made candles that gave a strange light. Then the war between the states took up and his fortunes fell and it seemed people started going missing here and there and the old mill took up thundering away all night with bright clear candle light shining out. The women got to talking about that Mill saying 'Did you ever work there?' 'No?' 'How about you?' Well it seemed no-one worked at that mill or ever had so up went a good many one night to talk to that man and pound on his door. Up he popped. "You won't have my Mill and no-one will for my investors won't allow it!" Then that Mill just burrowed into the soil like a mole and swam through the earth like a whale and was gone.

 

 

The Kickstarter for Queen Mab’s Palace has hit its goal and is still on! More artistic goals coming soon!

Queen Mab Lives!

 If you want to find out more, click here or the image below!

ere is your regular post, Autumn-themed for all of October;

Twelve Adventures of the Autumn Lands

1. The Candle and the Fog-Bound Bells.

A house moves through the fog like a ship, bells ringing from its highest hall. A curse comes with it from the past. A blessed candle shows the way to the house through the fog and once there, it lights the interior of the rotted mansion as it once was, revealing scenes that can solve the mystery of the curse. But while looking at the golden walls, take care for other things haunt the darkness.

2. The Giants Pantry

A giant has lifted the roof off the pantry and stolen the jam! And all the cheese, honey and preserved meat! That’s all we have to eat this winter! Someone has to go after that giant, take back the food, and somehow stop the Giant from coming back. At least his tracks should be easy to follow.

3. The Roc Migrates

A giant Roc has haunted the lands, but with Autumn, the bird has migrated (probably), South to warmer lands. Its nest must be full of all the treasure and goods of all the people it ate! It lies near the peak of a mighty mountain, ringed by the azure world. Storms are coming and Goblins are chasing the gold!

4. The Cursed Geese

Each night, honking Geese fly above the village as they migrate, and each night one or two people who hear their call are transformed into Geese and fly away with them! Someone has to go and get them back. The Charcoal-Burner tells you that the Geese live 'North of the Wind and West of the Moon', and there you must go to find the altered Geese and bring them home.

5. The Witches Pigs

Each night, winged pigs attack! Through sheer mass they barrel into houses, smashing windows and doors, snatching up children and the old, wreaking ruin! They are gone before the sun rises. Only the Anchorite knows the secret of the Pigs and the Witch they serve, a twice-bend crone who lives in a great Boot, along but for her Pigs.

6. The Town Returns

Out in the drowned bog, the spires and eves of a sunken village have always poked up through the glassy waters. Now, day by day, inch by inch, the sunken town is slowly rising from the bog, though the waters do not fall. Things are coming from the sunken town.

7. The Goblins Conker

The Goblin King is stealing homes, squatting in them and ruining everything before moving on. No-one can refuse his challenge to a conker-smashing contest and no-one can win against his devilish Conker - soaked in the blood of maidens and the bile of babes. Only a Conker from the tree which grows from St Aldhelms tomb can defeat the Goblin King, but that was lost in the forest an age ago.

8. The Wood-Nut Man

His brown face appears in the darkness beneath the boles of trees, his barky hands reach out to stroke the heads of truffle-hunting pigs, he feeds them his nuts and they speak in a deep and growling voice, the voice of the Wood Nut Man, to insist you do his will. There are things he needs, several and few, and you must have them before the snow falls.

9. A Gust of Bones

When the storm winds blow from the east we see skeletons in the wind. They grab onto spires, trees and the tops of towers, trying not to be swept away. When things calm down we have to go sweep them out of branches and cart them back to the graveyard, while they complain all the time. Someone must go west and have a word with whatever is making this wind!

10. The Devil in the Frost

Black, horned, hooved, arrow-tailed, sharp-toothed, goat-eyed and cloven tongued, he appears at dusk and dances from frozen puddle to frozen puddle - appearing only above the frozen waters, disappearing into gusts of leaves and piles of worms. He cuts, bites, spoils, spills and tells terrible lies - not even the strongest man can hold him! He laughs and cackles, saying "The frost is coming! The snow will fall! Hoo Hoo Hoo!"

11. The Smith Beneath the Tide

An inlet of the high, grey sea. A sea cave where waters churn. When the tide is high a fire burns beneath the water, hammer blows ring out with the waves and a smiths bold laughter echoes in the ocean all around, keeping the fishermen up at night. A rich man with long fingers will pay you good gold to steal something from that salty smith.

12. The Stained Skulls Verdigris Brass Ring

He comes down chimneys and into windows, popping out of wells, chattering his teeth, followed by a horde of dingy grey-black Geese who eat the seed. "My Verdigris Brass Ring!". No-one can get anything done and the floating skull is scaring the children. Will someone please find this Verdigris brass ring so this thing will shut up and go back to sleep!

Echoing Stars - Queen Mab

 The Kickstarter for my latest book; ‘Queen Mabs Palace’, launches TOMORROW, on the 1^st of October at about now-ish UK time. 

So, over October I will be trying to blog and post as much as possible. All of my posts will have the ‘Queen Mab- suffix during that period and all should have an image with a link to the Kickstarter. 

They will also be original content! 

I will try to focus my posts around Mabbish subjects, on two main poles; Autumn, for the Fey and Fantasy aspects of Queen Mabs Palace, and Echoing Stars, for the Science Fiction aspects. 

None of these are ‘additions’ or content for the book, but could be parallel texts; essays and creations on similar and not-not-canon subjects. 

 

Queen Mab's Palace is Complete

 I wrote a novel by mistake. I am sorry.

How Queen Mab Started

Back in 2020 I conceived the idea of an adventure that "depending on how you orient the page as you read it, it is both a fantasy and a science-fiction adventure."

The original Queen Mab was meant to be a crazy gimmick book where you could read it one way, then turn the book upside down and read it another way, engaging with two adventures;

When you flip the book one way - with the spine on the right, as in western books, then it’s a science fiction adventure.

"BUT - the truth is that these are the same people and places but just seen from different cultural perspectives

"the portrait-images of the main characters are flipped like those of playing cards, one half facing one, direction the other facing the other direction.

The Science Fiction adventurers will see it as a dimensionally-warped ship of perverted biomechanical transhumans.

In terms of adventure design, the context of the information they can get and are given will lead them to see it as a technical and material problem, and the very nature of their inquiry and the way they seen the people in it

will make the *mission* darker and more dangerous for them. Their technical abilities and the power of destruction and opposition that their guns etc give them means they are more likely to start conflicts."

This was always meant to be, and has remained, a fully-illustrated book.

Right from the beginning, August was the intended artist and I have driven her slowly insane with my relentless over-writing and never finishing anything. I am sorry!

There is not much art in this initial post as we are still working out how much of our load to blow in promotion and how much to save for the book, but expect to see more as we get closer to the Kickstarter.

Inspiration

A key inspiration was Vincent Wards 'The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey' in which Monks from the Cumbrian Middle-Ages, fearing the advancing Black Death, tunnel through time and arrive in a modern city (1980s Aukland).

This is a film I haven’t seen in decades, and I think I only saw it once, but it left an impression, the key to which was the deep visionary strangeness with which its characters encounter modernity. The known made unknown, the familiar viewed through unfamiliar eyes, a great making-strange

Another, less-direct and later inspiration was Shellys 'Queen Mab', a radical pure-freedom anti-monarchist poem full of startling images.

"The yet more wretched palaces

Contrasted with those ancient fanes,

Now crumbling to oblivion;

The long and lonely collonades,

Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks,"

Another was a translated copy of the 'Orphic Hymns'. There are many more! There is a lot of stuff in the book.

How It Changed Over Time

Two things happened as we went on;

First, I kept writing more and more and more and more, adding monsters, characters, concepts, places and so on,  breaking them all down to be somewhat workable and part of the same reality

the other is that, as the number of things in Queen Mab grew, the complexity of the arrangement became questionable.

First, we realised that we just couldn't handle the whole two-books-in-one thing.

Then we realised we couldn't handle two actual books.

Ok, so one book only, with one adventure, but we incorporate the pseudo-medieval viewpoint of the adventurer into the text, so that, everything is described as if it is being seen from a medieval/early-modern viewpoint. The reader, and presumably the players, know they are looking at something technological and science-fictional, but the viewpoint characters don't, so that the duality exists in the mind of the user rather than literally on the page.

Then that went on for a while, (with me constantly writing more and more and more), until about June 2023

With so many other books, (I think Demon Bone Sarcophagus, Gackling Moon and Speak, False Machine were all put together and published in the period of writing Queen Mab), and projects stumbling down the track, I had just kept writing and writing and writing.

But once I got a good look at everything I had written - it was just too much. Too many places, process, creatures, characters, courts, crypts, Queens, Knights,  Ladies, Fairies, just too much of everything. It was crazy. There was no way I could turn this into a workable game-book. It would be unplayable to an insane degree, or it would take another four years to make it playable.

So instead I took one year, and turned it into a novel! Problem solved.

The Final Version

I did not think it would take me a year to completely re-write and re-arrange Queen Mab. I did think, for each of the 14 months it took, that it would only ever take "a few more weeks", but it took much longer than that.

What does it mean to turn a game into a story? They are not the same thing at all, though they seem to share organs and limbs, these things are differently arranged, so that if you try to turn one into another, without thinking about why and how they work, it will not go well.

So as time went by in the writing of 'Queen Mab', now retitles 'Queen Mab’s Palace', partly to make it a nice classic three-word False Machine name, and partly because there are a LOT of things in our world called 'Queen Mab' and I wanted this one to be searchable.

At first, it was just a travelogue, a report from the Palace of Queen Mab, but as more and more was written, and more and more actual events took place and more of a character came into play in the nameless, and at-first, genderless, Protagonist, and then secondary characters joined the journey, and then secondary and tertiary narrators, it turned into... well who knows what? A historical science-fiction travelogue picaresque adventure tragedy?

I finally finished Draft One around the middle of August and here we are!

Draft one is about 970 words, (including appendices), and we are budgeting for 400 pages, though hope to have it in well below that.

It might be a work of genius, or at least of peak deluded narcissism. Which is appropriate considering the subject.

This is how the book starts;

..............................................................................................

Queen Mabs Palace

 - how I came to the seat of the Queen of Air and Darkness and what I learned there of her Courts, Ladies and Thanes, and her lesser Servants and Rude Rabble that do occupy thereabouts, from one who has journeyed to that Realm overlong and returned, but not unchanged, may God have mercy on my soul.

The Missing Children and the Frozen Knight

Let me live in memory for a while, and write with glass within my glass, to the spirit which resides there. May-be in writing and remembering in line, as pearls on string, one upon another, I may escape my dolour, and know again what once it meant to be astounded or surprised. For it was surprising, and most strange.

It came about in the grieving of the year when gold first touched the green that the night, black as sleep, chill as stone, made strange music and some heard voices of beasts who spoke as men.

We barred our doors and hid, trusting to prayer and cold iron. With the sun came silence, and then the wailing of women, my sister among them. All the children fit to work were gone, and their parents mazed and made curious numb, like empty pots. And these were Jory my Sisters Son, the Blacksmiths Child, Ceyln the old Maids helper, the Dog Boy, Haswa, and Dgibert the Fat Squires boy.

Some said was bandits, others fae, but while the sun still halved on the skys rim, a dog found scent and the bravest set forth and doing so, made for me to come, for I could both read and write and had been the teacher of those lost, and also my Sister was grieved and made me go.

We had gone not far but we found a Knight wounded by the path, strangely armoured, fit to die and rimed with frost.

The Knight made gesture for one to come forth and hear him and I was made to by the rest for I might give him Grace, though I am no Priest and did not wish to.

The Knight spoke twice-ways. He whispered words I could not understand, but as I spoke to him and gave him succour, soon came another voice, this like cold iron, but an echo of the first, yet I knew the tongue.

He said; “You seek those taken, as once I so sought.”

I said aye this was so and how came he here.

He said; “They are with Queen Mab. Knowing this, would you still go?”

This name I knew. The Queen of Air and Darkness, Empress of the Eld, timeless and undying whom the wise have called a myth. I asked how Queen Mab might be found and the Knight said; “There is a Door. It is a cut in the air. You do not have long.

Then he said; “Do not go, but if you do, know this; First; never promise, never disagree. Second; speak well and listen more. Third; eat not fairy food or you shall never leave.”

Then he grieved and said;

“Your life is death to me, and mine to you. I do not know where I am. My seals are broken and the stars unknown. I die lost. But I am under a sun and above a land. And I am myself. So ends my story. Put me under stone, far from water, where none go.”

Then he died. I said words from the Book. Then, though I meant first to tell the others with me of what the frozen Knight had said, a madness came upon me and, thinking but to test its truth,

I stepped forth into a haze, like mist, cut like a slice, which hovered close.

This is how I came into the Palace of Queen Mab, and often I wished I had not, for I returned much changed; marked with strange service and cursed with queer passions and wild hungers, that I think none could fulfil, and I am placed here in this cell, and mocked and much wondered at I do not doubt.

But still my mind and my soul are my own, which not all I have seen can say, and I have ventured far, more far than men might dream of. So I make this book within my glass, where none may look upon it less I allow it, for only I have its print and key. And I make it as a warning and confession, so those who read its words will know that I have seen and spoken true, and like that frozen Knight I say; do not go, but I fear some shall, through some Dream or Autumn door, and Mab alone knows if you have or will for in that place there is no other God but Her, Christ have mercy on me.”

..............................................................................................

What Next?

In the words of Joesky; an adventure is on, as the fearful scribe ventures into what they see as the Fairy Palace of Queen Mab, crawling through its Crypt, visiting its Courts, speaking with (gently) its Knights and Ladies, and trying as best he can to get back the missing children and go home.

Well, from the opening text, you know they make it home, but you don’t know how, or what they see, how they are changed and who else makes it back with them.

This is Queen Mabs Palace, an adventure through a decaying, dying space-ship inhabited by crazed transhumanist radicals, through the eyes of a Medieval Scribe.

The main text is done. August is still working away on images. We are getting quotes in and preparing for a Kickstarter which should hopefully start around (or maybe before), Autumn, which seems appropriate for the Queen of Air and Darkness.

Gird your loins and batten down your marketing hatches, expect to here me going on about this for a while!