The DOOM of the DARK is a success!

Praise be to Hekaton and the children of Old Night, the Doom of the Dark Kickstarter smashed its initial funding goal within a few minutes and made ten times that by the end of the day, smashing another goal, meaning we can crank up the print quality as high as possible for all backers.

Fifteen Days Remain!

As well as increasing print quality I will likely also look into producing an interlinked PDF to make DotD more playable for those digitally bound.

The artist Amanda Lee Franck attempting to protect her living space
from the smears of that most primal of pigments; charcoal black, (attempt fails re; cat).

Posts and Interviews

However, other than that, I am not super well versed in publicity etc. For the period of the run of DotD, I, and Amanda when available, are open to interviews, articles, posts, links etc etc. If anyone wants us on their thing, or wants text, questions, answers, opinions, we (me mainly, Amanda has a lot to do), are available till the end of May, so drop a comment or email me at pjamesstuart at googlemail dot com.

May the Turne-Spytte Dogge forever tread…

Also look at this video if you haven’t already. It’s very good! (Animation by Amanda Lee Franck).

The DOOM of the DARK is coming...

The Black Casket of Night has indeed been opened beneath our feet, soon, only days will remain!

I have been posting here and there about ‘Doom of the Dark’ for a while. Here is the full version;

After my encounter with Tunnels and Trolls, Amanda suggested that I publish the adventure I created for her and a few friends. This is that adventure, illustrated and layed out by Amanda Lee Franck.

Simple Zine

DOOM of the DARK is a 34 page zine containing a real-time adventure fit for an evenings entertainment. By the end of the night you will have either saved REALITY ITSELF, or doomed it to… the DARK.

The adventure is statted up for Tunnels and Trolls and designed for that playful vibe. Most of the working parts are built into the creatures and the location so anyone familiar with old school D&D should have little trouble running it in a BX-adjacent or Nu-OSR game.

Its not a super-difficult dungeon, though hopefully a fun one. Think somewhere between storybook and catastrophe.

U.S. and U.K. Print

False Machine is doing things a little differently with this one. We intend to print in both the U.K. and the U.S.A. One print will be sent to Spiral Galaxy in the United Kingdom and ship from there, the other will be sent to Flying Cloud in America and ship from there.

This means postage will hopefully be less of an insane nightmare for Americans and Canadians.

The Kickstarter will have options for the U.K. print and the U.S. print, so back for the print location most convenient for you! (& try not to screw it up!).

I am also putting in wholesale options for both prints, so if you run a shop and want ten copies you can back for one of those.

UnIdentical Twins

The two prints will not be exactly the same. The U.K. version will be an A5 zine and the U.S.A. version will be in ‘portrait’ (so a little longer and thinner). We (Amanda) designed the thing with this in mind so the difference in experience should be minimal.

If we make a lot on the Kickstarter we will crank up the print quality on both items, but the printers in the U.S. and U.K. don’t offer exactly the same paper weights etc. We will try to keep the quality of both zines as similar as possible.

50/50 profit split

Like almost all False Machine products, profits for Doom of the Dark will be split 50/50 between writer and artist, so if you are an Amandamaniac, or Franckophile, you will be supporting your artist by backing or buying.

A Real-Time Adventure

Vague concepts for single-night, Level-One, Real-Time adventures have been rolling around my head for a while. DOOM of the DARK is played in real-time; however much time the players take is how much the adventurers take, and there is a time-limit; you only have two to six hours to save the world!

There are also a bunch of diegetic elements included in the adventure to, bluntly, keep bumbling players doing what they are meant to be doing; SAVING THE WORLD IN UNDER SIX HOURS.

Hopefully this should be a fun time for two to six players running starting characters, and a relatively easy dungeon to run.

Quick Kickstarter

The Kickstarter opens on the 15th of May and runs for just over two weeks, ending on the 31st of May (U.K. time! So Mid-day for Americans).

If you want DOOM of the DARK at its initially low price of £8, or if you know someone who might, then you only have two weeks to back this thing or let them know!

The more backers we get the higher we will crank the print quality!

We hope for a print in mid-June and to start delivering towards the end of June.

CLICK HERE FOR THE KICKSTARTER 

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!

Echoing Stars - 12 Forms of Posthuman Corporations

1. A council of androids voting on behalf of cryo-frozen owners.

2. A bot-populated futures market sets the strategy.

3. Each share equates to a "volume" of simulated neurons in the vast network which makes up the corps 'mind' - each tendency of shareholders forms an organ or segment of that mind.

3. An exact replication of the election of a Venetian Doge; 

(“Whenever the time came to elect a new doge of Venice, an official went to pray in St. Mark’s Basilica, grabbed the first boy he could find in the piazza, and took him back to the ducal palace. The boy’s job was to draw lots to choose an electoral college from the members of Venice’s grand families, which was the first step in a performance that has been called tortuous, ridiculous, and profound. Here is how it went, more or less unchanged, for five hundred years, from 1268 until the end of the Venetian Republic.

Thirty electors were chosen by lot, and then a second lottery reduced them to nine, who nominated forty candidates in all, each of whom had to be approved by at least seven electors in order to pass to the next stage. The forty were pruned by lot to twelve, who nominated a total of twenty-five, who needed at least nine nominations each. The twenty-five were culled to nine, who picked an electoral college of forty-five, each with at least seven nominations. The forty-five became eleven, who chose a final college of forty-one. Each member proposed one candidate, all of whom were discussed and, if necessary, examined in person, whereupon each elector cast a vote for every candidate of whom he approved. The candidate with the most approvals was the winner, provided he had been endorsed by at least twenty-five of the forty-one.” — Anthony Gottlieb, "Win or Lose," The New Yorker.)

4. Interstellar escrow - the shareholders are frozen and en-route at sub-light speed. Sets of counter-checking A.I.'s and managers organise resources drawn from futures markets based on possible future company value, to create that future.

5. An A.I. chooses the human board according to core values laid down in the charter. The charter can only be altered by an 80% quorum of shareholders.

6. The corporation has no memory of itself - all records are locked by an ambient A.I. omnipresent in the companies intranet. No-one knows what it did in the past or what it will do in the future. Employees have access only to information about what they themselves are doing. (The memory system itself has no understanding of the records it controls.)

7. Designed for an enthnocentrist colonisation project, the population group intended as beneficiaries died out but the corporation itself was very successful. Now run by A.I.'s, the corp has a secret tacit breeding program amongst its employees - trying to recreate the original ethnogroup.

8. Social-media based promotion and management structure. Views, clicks, likes and comments are the means of assessment. Employees can be sued for botting.

9. An anarcho-primitivist colony with no technology within 1,000 miles makes all the decisions. Society is organised like a version of ancient Greece. Information comes to them by boat and horse, they debate, stage plays, and vote, before sending back their decisions. (The colony is a virtual simulation, its inhabitants are not aware.)

10. Engrams of dead billionaires.

11. Company is in a state of perpetual reformatting. The current board organises its sale to new owners with the proviso they select a new board who will prepare for resale, with the proviso that...

12. Crypto-Company - structure runs in the background of an MMORPG.

Fall - The Knights of Gloom

In the gloom they gather and the gloom they rule, lords of the half-closed eye. Snare-hearted men who lost the light but would not serve the dark, branded by sun and star. 

(Beksynski)

No knights of the equator these, their castles ring the utmost north, where they retire yearly for  week-long half-lit days, sending bright factotums into dark and sunlit lands, seeking scrolls of forgotten verse and vases given as funeral gifts to long-dead emperors. 

Only here, at the interstice of time may they thrive for they are sworn to shadow as a whole

and to the court of Mab. Their tents and pennants hung with wooden wind-chimes which make their own music in the still air. 

Here they drink from clouded glasses and dine on slices of pale meats which they skewer with silver forks, served by fae with the heads of whippoorwills and the bodies of upright foxes - dressed in tabards and carrying bras anthophagous carnyx, or by huge snuffling hedgehog squires, or pairs of orphans, one deaf, one blind, or ancient men, their grey beards trailing on the earth. 

Do they even have political views? Their minds like dusty barns with swooping owls. They are desirous of fine China and will meet your eyes in a silvered mirror. Adjacent to death they make congress with beautiful ghosts, their tournaments attended by pale maidens for whose favour they quest. Aye, anything for a dead maid. Why else should killers fear the gloom, and all retire to sunlit lands? 

Thus they hunt. Unmoving, they appear. Knights that gallop not, congealing from mist, etching themselves from branch-shadows, arising from the cambers of dark streams, under moss and willow. Soft-edged knights whose hoof-beats sound like puddle drips, mist beading on their long cloaks of Ungulix fur and Jabberwock skin. Helms capped with cupped hands, tarnished silver owls, leafless bronze trees, gibbous moons, stooped crows or tragedians masks in bronze. Shields picturing thistledown flowers, half-closed eyes, half-open gates, half-drawn swords and half-suns bisected by smeared half-clouds, or infinitely quartered blazons that can never be completely read. 

Their lances quest like tentacles - curling into tree-boles, under doors. The Knights ride lantern mares made of pale light. Fretwork like branches. Pausing in the distance to dismount and fold up their horse like a triptych which they carry like a shield. 

Are they sniffing?

Are they whispering?

But nothing can escape them,

In the gloom.

Perhaps by closing your eyes, pressing the heels of your hands into the ocular gap - producing utter dark - perhaps then they cannot find you. For all that is half-see sings to them; the choir of the occluded. 

Or by holding them in clear, full, un-occluded sight - then they shall cringe and must act knightly, offer war or mercy and make half-lit unbreakable oaths in whispered words like blinded bats. 

They are closing in as the sky darkens and the silver lyre plays, like leaves on slow water, they drift closer, barely seeming to touch the earth. 

As swift as the wind,

Silent as owls,

Gentle as a shave. 

Colourless men lead forward by swords held like tweezers. Swords which quest like hounds, sniff like cold noses, and shift in their hands like weasels. Swords fed on chickens in the night. For these are no earthly knights.

 

 

Silentium Ruinarum - Fall

This began as one of my 'Fall' posts about 'Cults of 5th Century Rome, which I rapidly discovered I could not write as I don't actually know anything about 5th Century Rome, and then later because I realised I found 8th Century Rome more interesting. 

So instead this is more of an "open post", discussing some of the possibilities for a game or story set in Rome during its nadir, and asking the readers if anyone out there actually knows anything about this period in history. 

 

DREAM OF A DARK DETECTIVE 

The population graph of Rome over history tells the story better than I could; 

an extremely, even unnaturally for the time, dense and highly populous city declining into a smallish town, leaving its stones and tenements to moulder. 

Based purely on population it stays this way through the entire middle ages, only leaping into action again as we approach the modern era. 

But even during this Nadir there was quite a lot going on in Rome. It was still the seat of the Western Christian Church, (some of the time), and while its population was relatively small, it never disappeared. 

I've always loved this liminal period of European history, especially notable in Britian, and I couldn't stop thinking of some kind of ancient detective story set in fallen Rome, of a Knight or Investigator sent out into the grass-filled ruins and down into the Crypts to deal with the freaks and oddities which, at least theoretically, might have been hanging out there. 

It is a lot of very dense, overgrown, largely empty, ruined and available property. Really a great place to set up shop if you are a cult or criminal gang, so much that you might almost want to start a cult just so you could hang out in the ruins of Rome, being weird.

 

The Silentiary 

The Silentiary, ("Silentiarius, silentiarios), was a Byzantine Court post. Originally it seems to have been a job of keeping all the nobles and petitioners in the Imperial court in order, and then later was transformed into an honorific of its own. 

I learned of the role through the strange name of "John the Silentiary" a Byzantine court agent who played some important role in the fate of Rome in the mid 8th century. 

It’s a general idea of mine to that to create a Detective, first build a world of social layers, factions, racial groups, ideals and religions, and when you look down through the stacked Venn diagram of all these different groups, find the part where as many overlap as possible, and make your Detective right there, stuck in the middle of everything. Make sure they have enough putative authority to walk into the homes of rich and poor, but nowhere near enough to guarantee they can get what they want. They need a ritual, neutral role, something socially protected, but not one that can afford its own range of patronage.

 

The Silentiary is a curious ritual role from a foreign court, one of the "Bearded Classes", (i.e. not a eunuch), though it could be amongst the lowest official roles, and could be awarded honour-ily, presumably for notable or useful deeds. They seem to make a perfect detective, a Silentiary of the Ruins, or Silentium Ruinarum. 

But what cults or mysteries will they be investigating? Here things get difficult! If we assume a period for the Detective Stories around the middle part of the 8th Century, before Byzantium is driven out of Italy by the Lombards, it might be a little like this; 

 

Some ideas for cults; 

> Local Powers 

Islam - A surprisingly big chunk of southern France is under Islamic control up until the mid 8thC. What could be more Lovecraftian for a Catholic Roman Italian than sneaking through the ruins and discovering... Secret Muslims! 

Germanic Wotanism - At the same time the Lombards are currently ruling northern Italy, and I think are still Germanic Pagans. The Franks are Christianised, but how Christian are they really? There must be some hold outs and crypto-Wotanists. Native post-classical Pagnism is one thing but what if the Goatherds find a Blood Eagle in the Temple of Jupiter. Secret Germans? Or is someone trying to throw you off the scent. 

 

> Christian Cults - The Heresies 

There are SO MANY fragments of early Christianity that get banned or ejected; Arianism, Docetism, Ebionites, Gnosticism, Marcionism, Montanism, Trinitarianism. I barely know a damn thing about any of them. 

"Sethian - Belief that the snake in the Garden of Eden (Satan) was an agent of the true God and brought knowledge of truth to man via the fall of man." 

"Ophites - Belief that the serpent who tempted Adam and Eve was a hero and that the God who forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge is the enemy." 

Finding secret heretical Christians lacks the Elevator-Pitch high concept energy of secret Muslims but is a lot more likely and probably just as upsetting for the authorities of the time. 

There were also "The Cults of the Martyrs" and "The Cults of the Saints", though I know nothing about either of these or if they even match my requirements for cults. 

 

> Surviving Roman Paganism

Julian the Apostate died in 363, so a looong time ago relative to our story, but who knows, maybe some remnants of the Senatorial classes, or one of the families of Rome, or some shady Bishop, or just local people, maintain some form of Classical Paganism. The most likely are the actual Gods of Rome, (there must be statues about), Isis Worship and the Mythratic Cults, who, tbh, would really love hanging out in mysterious ruins. 

 

> Byzantine Crypto-Paganism 

The Empire still stands after all, and the great texts and ancient knowledge of Rome still exists, just not here. 

An interesting thing about Byzantine Crypto-Paganism is how modern it feels. Courtiers and Bishop are being accused of Crypto-Paganism in 7th Century Byzantium and 600 years after that, Gemistos Plethon writes a book  recommending a return to some form of Platonism. 

Instead of being a weird superstition, here the moral and philosophical challenge is coming from within the texts themselves. You can't just un-write Plato and it looks like there was some kind of weird undercurrent in Byzantine thought that maybe questioned this whole Christianity thing and was a bit too interested in the Old Books. 

Secret Platonists in the ruins! A plot of intellectual elites driven by a search for truth. 

 

> Satanism 

It’s a classic for a reason. I think even the medieval idea of Satan hadn't taken shape by the 8thC but a belief in the Devil and in Magical Powers and Demonology and Witchcraft more generally kind of tugs along in the undertow of Christianity by the middle middle ages, driven by people like Clerks, Alchemists and overeducated oddities. 

Our Silentium could run into the first hot new actual Satanists! Imagine being the first guys to work that one out!  

And of course, not to forget the European Classic; 

> Jews 

Because it wouldn’t be a European conspiracy story if there weren’t Jews in the tunnels.

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!

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;

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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.”

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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!

 I fully intended to do at least one full, proper post before the Gackling Moon Kickstarter ends on Christmas Eve..

And I have failed! I am sorry!

At least we have hit some stretch goals;

All backers will get a free interlinked PDF! (the rest of you will have to pay £5)

The Book will now be Hardback for all!

We are taking £1 off the cost (either of the book price or postage, whichever is easier), for all backers!

We have about 24 hours left, so…

Its possible we might hit this one; £2 off for all backers.

And if we get that one..

Gasp!

At backers request, you can now back for two books!

Gackling Moon!

Take a look if you want to! Merry Christmas Everyone!