(In which Camber talks to theirself. Camber Squid's Sandbox.).
Welp. I'd better learn what all these buttons do at some point.
- Visitor Book?
- Weird Snippets
- After Awakening Process
- Possible Misc Projects
- Just a tad ambitious.
- Kingdoms
- Possible Contributions To Library - Unfleshed
- Hidden Trails and Distant Shores stuff
- All Work and No Play
This is going to look really silly if nobody ever sees this. Or rather it, uh, isn't going to look anything. Um. Oh well.
Feel free to leave a comment, or not to.
I'm not kidding about the weirdness. What was going on when I wrote these? I just don't know. I kind of hope I never find out. Warning: May Contain Severe Ramblage / Alien Atmospheres Devoid of Sense! (Adaaapt Theeese or Paaarts of Theeese)
Also some of this is really old. Prepare accordingly.
i) They tried to build their memories in crystal, impulses of light and synapses of aether, and roofed their world in the intricate sculpture of their thought processes, but even as their creation's light-thoughts went from flicker to beam in matrices of diamond that pulsed with absorbed warmth like something organically alive instead of what it was, a copy and not a superior one, for they had only traded one reliance on a mortal element for another - as they fitted new planes of concept into the construct of their processes and hopes and dreams and grew shrunken and pale, pouring their natures into the crystalline labyrinth that now covered their home, familiar conclusions drawn on the dark ground in gradiented reflections and refractions of sunlight, their sun, now only seen diffracted through countless lenses if at all, began to fail, as all stars do. As they had burnt up their time with the painstaking reconstruction of themselves for a future era, it had built its outer cloud of hydrogen into helium as the reason and process of its time and now began to consume itself. Aeons after the original fallible creatures were gone and their new self had gleamed its photon thoughtforms for what would be called generations if anything ever changed in the continual orbit of ideas, over and over, the ailing sun had lost too much of itself to contain its core and swelled, slow in the dimming faceted eyes of the crystal, its wavelength dropping, its skin cooling to a bloated red. It cools over countless millennia, though what was once the creatures observes this as an escalating process as its photon thoughts become slower and slower and the conclusions less concrete, panels built for brilliance now enveloped in obscurity. It slows but sees instead the star's death hurrying faster and then faster again, whole subtle engraved patterns of deduction made for fragments of sunlight to glint off for a fraction of a millisecond lost in the shadow of the panels above, intended to magnify and focus, now the last shell of a decaying remnant of consciousness. Does it die as the star does? They were a people steeped in ritual and repetition; does its design as one endless complex train of thought representative of that of a civilisation make it less alive than them? The fact that it was born from minds rather than bodies, hands rather than a womb?
It dies, and orbits a fragment of the star, the corpse of a civilisation.
ii) I found you at last in the wax gas burning, twelve points of entry under the mirrored-gallows-shape of the chapel roof. It was a small place and everything there was just slightly real enough to be uncomfortable, after where I'd been. (Each breath seemed set and difficult to evade; even though the clouds that cloaked my mouth dissipated after a brief moment they were still there in the past, hanging frost-white frame by frame.)
iii) thrid amongst the white reeds, grey and pale and silver-slivered, bitter writhing slips of moon
iv) DAY 1: UNDERWATER LIVING ROOM - Everything moved like a dream today - like (a) heaven, or like (a) hell. Our hair made halos and shadows around our heads, one minute a golden field, the next a daemon-snake with a mind of its own. You could see the history of other’s actions in the wash and wave of their clothes and hair behind them. To sit down was to sink gently onto something that wasn’t quite real. The whole day we were drowsily fighting to keep our feet on the ground; every time we lost our focus we’d float upwards and end up clinging to the semi-functional lightbulb. Panicking or paddling was no good - the only thing that kept us down was focus. Needless to say, I spent most of the day with ceiling plaster clogging up my hair.
The strangest thing was that you could see that outside was perfectly dry. I wonder what passers-by must have thought of our noses pressed against the window, bodies hanging suspended behind us. We didn’t see any passers-by, though. We haven’t seen any for a long time. I wonder why.
v) Black-tongued and with sockets brimming over, we choke on the dust of our own old bones.
vi) SATURDAY: PAPER AEROPLANES - In other news, Dad’s best jumper got devoured almost entirely by the ravenous, wool-gobbling moth larvae that hide in the deep recesses of linty pockets. Their close relatives the sock-grubs have been seen crawling beneath the wallpaper again and we have locked the socks in an airtight wooden chest. Outside the window, hundreds of thousands of paper aeroplanes are sleeting down. The floor-varnishing has trapped us inside, but I caught one as it flew by my bedroom window. It wriggled desperately in my hands like a trapped bird, and I only had time to read a few of the words inked carefully onto the brown parcel-paper of its nose before it fluttered out of the window once more, brushing the curtains. Tomorrow the ground will be covered in scraps of paper and the words will have run off with the rain.
Even inside, they cast a regular stream of shadows on the wall opposite the window. It’s like summer rainfall - perhaps even more soothing. Dad certainly seems to think so: he’s fast asleep, with the ceaseless shadows flowing over his face and down his shirt. He must be having very strange dreams.
vii) (Remember that poem you wrote, about being defined by the web of sensation? There was some substance there. See if you can find it in your old folders.) - (only in consuming ourselves can we understand ourselves can we consume ourselves can we understand ourselves can we consume ourselves | can we understand ourselves? unseen artistry never exposed to examination, appreciation, as is its (holy, divine, true biological, created) purpose. Red webs like trees or more like themselves, constellations of memory growing and glowing brighter or fading as connections atrophy, a flesh-and-chemical canvas painted continually with change. Each colour discoveed is new, for none has seen it before you with your eyes, with your brain, and so each new observer creates a new piece of art. A possibility for infinite energy.)
(What is this Awakening Process? Why does our protagonist find themselves in this perpetually, mysteriously overcast land? How intent must I have been to avoid revising? We simply do not know.)
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS
Day 5, after Awakening Process
Cloudy today. In the Mess Hall Alice complained of a headache, and there was this sudden silence. It kind of made me want to laugh. Come on, it's almost as if they think those tourist stories the old guy outside the temple told us had anything to them. - Well, they might have had something to them, that's pretty much the point of this jolly little field trip, but we've all come up totally normal on the tests - electromagnetic and everything - so being scared that some kind of, what, (ILLEGIBLE1) behind our eyes? I'd think some of them were having second thoughts, but we all swore into this together, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Five days in and already the biologists have their first piece of broken equipment. Ho hum. Seriously, how do they break stuff so regularly if the only thing they do all day is look at bits of plants?
Day 9, after Awakening Process
Cloudy again today. Boy, I'm tired. Fixing the generator took me all night, even with Claire's help, and I couldn't have much of a lie-in before breakfast. I keep spacing out, though it's not really an issue since everything seems to be working fine today, for a miracle. I managed to keep myself awake through the tests but at dinner I could hardly keep track of the conversation. I think they were talking about something going round - Alice's migraine still hasn't let up so her chair was empty, and now Hal and Mish are starting to get the same kind of thing. Hey, I guess I absorbed more than I thought. Whatever, I'm beat.
Day 10, after Awakening Process
Cloudy again. I might be coming down with something too - no headache, but sleeping a full 8 hours yesterday didn't seem to help the spacing: I zoned completely in the radiation chamber this morning, even after eggs and tea (Mish is a miracle-worker, you'd never know they'd been cooked over a Bunsen.) When I got out Pierre was looking at me kind of oddly. I think he might be feeling a little under the weather himself - when I asked if everything was okay he gave me the least convincing smile I've ever seen anyone try to pass off as real. He's probably too stubborn to tell Petra about it (who's the doctor now Hal's sleeping off his with plenty of paracetamol. Poor guy.) These scientific types always seem to think they're invincible when it comes to the common cold. Either that or he doesn't want to show himself up in front of Petra. If he thinks the whole camp can't see the way he looks at Petra, he is severely mistaken. Maybe if he stopped freezing every time she so much as looks at him, something might come of it.
Day 13, after Awakening Process
Cloudy. I thought it might be my imagination, but the zone-outs are definitely becoming more frequent. I don't want to bother Petra - she's got her hands full looking after what must be two thirds of the camp at this point - and I need to compensate for everyone else who knows how to replace a goddamn fuse having come down with this weird bug. Especially since everybody keeps looking at me funny just after I've zoned. I mean, I get it, I've got to look pretty weird just staring into space like my brain's taken a holiday, but it's still irritating. I thought they'd got less jumpy about the whole unusual behaviour thing after it turned out Hal and Mish actually had something going on, and weren't plotting to murder us all in our sleep/possessed by benevolent smile-inducing demons/trying to warn us of impending danger that they were unable to articulate after all.
At least we don't have to take the radiation tests for a while. Pierre said he thought the equipment must need recalibrating - inexplicable peaks, I think he said. I asked him if he needed help but he said - snapped, really - that it was a purely scientific error. It sounded like complete BS to me, but hey, I'm not going to complain about less tests. Frankly, the tests are just a formality at this point. If the temple was going to do anything it would've done it by now. A few people keep trying to start rumours that it might be the bug, but it seems pretty unlikely seeing as it's proved about as lethal as toothache. You tend to expect a little more from an (ostensibly) millennia-old temple. A bit disappointing, but we've only got a month to wait for the official test period to be over and then we can all go home. Just another month of repairing lightbulbs for the biologists. Whoopee.
Day 15, after Awakening Process
Cloudy. I'm getting pretty worried about Pierre. He hardly ever comes out of the labs any more - well, he never really did in the first place, but he's starting to miss meals. And when I passed him by the Portaloos he looked really pale and didn't even say hi. Why can't he just get himself together and book into Medical? Sure, they're busy right now, but better that than risk collapsing over some blood samples, or something.
I get it. I still haven't reported the zoning thing, not that anyone'd make anything of it if I did. Nobody's been getting that much sleep in the last few days, what with everyone's double workload. At least I seem to stay in position when I zone out. Claire noticed when it happened half-way through welding a broken tent-pole and asked, so I told her about it, and about everyone looking at me funny, but then she suggested it should go on my psych profile! Jesus. I told her thanks for the concern, but I'm pretty sure I'm not imagining it. She didn't say anything, just got back to fixing one of the air-con units. We haven't needed them so far, but better to be safe than sorry. Does the sun ever come out in this godforsaken place?
Day 16, after Awakening Process
Cloudy, again. You can't even see where the sun should be. Just routine maintenance today. Everywhere's really quiet, even the medical bay - they're keeping everyone who's sick pretty much quarantined off, since we can't afford to lose any more staff to the Mystery Bug. Nobody's gotten worse than the original headache so far, but then nobody's got better (Hal said he had but from what I heard he was fairly obviously just trying to take some of the weight off Petra's shoulders). I'd say I didn't envy them but right now 12 hours daily mandatory rest sounds like heaven. Jokes aside, we really could do with a bit of sun. Or rain! Basically anything except clouds, is what I'm saying. Is this a microclimate or are we just unlucky?
(cont.)
(Finish this off, or at least get a reasonable way into the plot, then ask for help on the forum. May have misjudged pacing, yes? Writing style, perhaps, ja? Assistance maybe desirable, hm?)
Directories/indexes! Hurrah, categorising and identification of trends/proposal of theories through said categorisation! Main problems seem to be: a) ascertaining if anyone else is currently or has been in the past organising a similar collection, and b) finding incidents that use synonyms or bypass categorisation completely. That's what obsessive weekends are for, I suppose.
Directories already in compilation: I guess I'll go look for those now.
The Captives! (Ess See Pees, except we don't use that word here -squinty eyes-) Oh my. Get in here before all the good ones go, I say.
That Spaceship thing Ah, ensemble casts! The Library really does lend itself to them. And you know what else does, if that sentence makes sense? Spaceships! Laydeez and gentulmen, I present to you… a fantastic notion, the like of which has hardly ever been seen on alternate weekdays… MARVEL at the cliche! BE ASTOUNDED at the sheer lack of originality it must take to even consider such a thing! BOGGLE at the thinly-disguised Star Trek references! Iiiiit's… The Library… iiiiiiiiiin SPACE!
So yay ensemble cast (as has been done successfully at least twice here, to my knowledge), in some literarily-named old tub (given its use of Ways something Alice-related could be nice - through the looking-glass, and all) that doesn't look like much but can do the Kessel Run in under (nope, this is not the plagiarism you are looking for, move on) has probably got a lot of agility, or versatility, or general ability to get through ways due to the network of runes carved into its engines, or is powered by the electromagnetic radiation emitted by the non-corporeal captain, or something. Huzzah. Plots are fairly easy to come by. Foundation ship two parsecs to port, and the like. Try organic ships for the homey feel. Perhaps an organic ship could be 'rescued' in their first adventure, letting them discard the rattly thingummy they had first. Try to avoid exposition for now but think about it, because fleshing out should really be done after you've a handle on the characters and language. Important to ascertain - secondary objective? Primary to escape the fate of many in a universe partly dominated by the Foundation and GOC, o' course, but secondary - study would make sense, but of what? Anything in particular? Simply exploration of new worlds before the Foundation or others get to them, expansion of knowledge of Library, 'rescuing' anomalies, artifacts - what? Each crew member should have a bunch of secondary skills to make exploration worthwhile, e.g. philosopher, fungi scholar, ethically dubious alchemist, whatever. Try not to stick to the more obvious character stereotypes. Go for slightly less prominent ones instead!
(Also, the words 'Prime' and 'Directive' should never be uttered in conjunction, and hopefully not at all. I mean, really. You do have some standards.).
DIRECTORY OF KNOWN BEINGS (LIBRARY-DOCUMENTED) (for my own reference/filling up of loose time, because really, when would this ever actually be useful.
BOOKS SCANNED: Eleven hours (up to 'Recollection')
Brother Calhbach (up to 'Make Like A Tree')
Transitive Norton (up to 'Hunting the Margrawn')
PLANTS
MORE-THAN-USUALLY-ANIMATE
STATIC TO THE USUAL DEGREE/WEIRDLY STILL
Flann-Leaithín, or Red Dryad - rare flower of life and death.
A whole bunch of abnormal bonsai trees (each, if I'm not mistaken, sharing a little soul with their creators). More individual constructs than species.
[[|The Grandfather - the oldest tree, recovered from Dolren. [DECEASED]]]
ANIMALS
HERBIVORES
[[|Golden goats - butter-exuding goats? What. [EXTINCT]]]
CARNIVORES
Margrawn - huge, aggressive, found in the Ravelwoods.
Foedissimum Os - nonsensical, possibly reality-bending inside-out creature.
Nigerian Lava Cat. Endangered. Otherwise, exactly what it sounds like.
Elrichian Sea Pigeons. They eat fish eyes.
OTHER-STUFF-VORES
[[|Furcifer quiritatio [Anomal., an 'endocorporeal' parasite, from the coat phosphors of which metaneon can apparently be extracted.]]]
Lots of abnormal insects.
PROBABLY SENTIENT BEINGS
HOSTILE/INESCAPABLY DANGEROUS OR INSPIRING OF TERROR
Red desire-demon-flies-thing. Sort of humanoid. Chimeric.
Ahntem - magi-mechanical abominations.
Skinwalkers. Mutated humans, due to curse. Best thing to be done is to put them out of their misery (or administer Red Dryad seedheads, though they're extremely rare).
NEUTRAL
Genii loci - invisible, intangible, capable of telekinesis within a small area.
Ropen - big, bioluminescent birds.
FRIENDLY, OR AT LEAST ROUGHLY ALIGNED WITH KEEPING THE UNIVERSE SAFE AND SO ON
The Blue Creature. Lots of arms, lots of blue fur. Closes up holes in reality.
WHO KNOWS
Kingdoms Drawings Series-thing
So, this happened. Oh god what do I do now ahhh I did not intend this at all
Okay, be calm. (Use 'becalmed' more in stuff). Caaallllmmm. Options: a) do nothing. Bury the goddamn things deep in the hard-drive and never speak of this again. Pros: less nerve inducing? Cons: I spent actual time on those. And some of them are not bad. And it's the first time I've ever finished one of these thingummies, so. I don't like waste.
b) Post them. They'd probably fit somewhere, right? Pros: You've been half-wanting a reason to purge all traces of yourself in this persona from the online world for, like, years. Give in to your self-destructive impulses! Somebody might like them! (The drawings, that is. Not the… yeah.) Cons: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA ARE YOU KIDDING ME.
c) Do more work on them! Then post, maybe. Pros: Possibly good for self-esteem! Will teach you patience and prudence in starting new projects, possibly. Also detail work and planning are things I need to get better at. Cons: Meh. I kind of, you know. I already did this stuff. If I wanted to make a marked difference that would justify the amount of time spent being bored doing details and finishing then I'd have to actually rework the entire thing for composition and stuff, and no. Just… no. Not dedicated enough to this particular idea, which frankly is a bit un-thought-out.
d) Leave it here to languish until you can look on it with an eye untinted by panic and myopia. Pros: Shunts the problem to a different person! (Hey, future me! Gosh, I'm glad I ascribe to this view of past and future versions of individuals. Hehe the Doctor Who theme just came on.) Also I can have them all in a row, like cute ducks. Well, hopefully more dark and scary ducks, but at this point… Cons: Some unenlightened individuals (such as myself when not on a sugar high (?)) might call this irresponsible. I say, said hidebound and reactionary individuals' faces are irresponsible, and I mean that in the most sincere manner. You should take care of those faces. They're liable to do something unfortunate, such as be unable to hold your innards in when you tragically fall out of an airlock into the airless vacuum of space. In short, no cons. Let's do that.
Edit, 9th June 2014 - I… don't think that, in the colloquial sense of the word, your face holds in any innards at all, if you are a medically normal human. Unless you count blood and a certain amount of flesh as an innard? How far down does your face go, anyway? Does it become a different face once you reach the bone? (If it wasn't yours, whose would it be? Or do you just have several faces okay this is a trivial line of thought I'm stopping now). I always thoughts of innards more as guts, really. There should be about one bilious unidentifiable green thing, for preference, and some vaguely organ-like stuff, baglike preferred. Would eye jelly count? Well, maybe technically, but everyone would know it was passing on a technicality, so why should it even bother trying?
Anyway, I believe that question mark next to the sugar high theory was unwarranted. It's a bit of a miracle it wasn't followed by a few exclamation marks, really. Incoherent threats towards a nebulous reader/director/universe (hehe, a nebulous universe) are a fairly strong indicator, although it is getting increasingly harder to tell when my brain is reaching its 'situation normal' state. This… might be a good thing? I'm almost certain there will be some way of looking at it positively.
That was supposed to be a segue into me talking about the point of this ramble. Oops. …Containment procedure seems sound, despite probable impaired mental state when composing. Yup. Some other future me's problem now. Bye, inconvenience! See you again in a few months or so!
Edit, 1st December 2014 - Wow.
…Nope.
- C
If nothing else, format needs some work. Original 9 pages designed for griddish Rubik's cube pattern, but the extra blank black one seems to work? Still need certain panels, such as the tunnels and faces, next to each other, so extra panel may need to be scrapped. Blast, I really didn't consider the aesthetics of arrangement at all - really much better in some kind of flip-book, but i) nope and ii) why was I doing this in the first place. You're not even supposed to be able to see some of them at the same time, dash it! Oh well. It was pretty fun to do.
Because I'm lazy and my computer takes unpredictable amounts of time from ~0.3 seconds to several days to load more tabs, here're the book categories of interest + info (ones that I have no hope of ever contributing to will probably be omitted, or possibly included to induce envy and thus - hopefully - spur my productivity to new middles, as well as closed books). Categories removed when something larger than a teeny snippet is created for them, or seems to be expanding into their vicinity; you know the drill, or at least you thought you did when you were writing this.
It seems like the best way to write for this is to let ideas evolve and take shape while keeping the categories at the back of your mind; basically any idea inspired in some way by this stuff will totally fit into one category or another, and then can be tailored to make sense with what limited canon the Library universe has, or with a particular group. Unless your head's in a totally different space. Don't do that, silly.
Ophiuchus Codex (ophiuchus-codex) - A general miscellaneous category. Anything that doesn't fit elsewhere can go here. - (…) various poems, prophecies, mission statements, philosophical essays, information, and reflections by Serpent's Hand members since the rediscovery of The Library in 1967. ((Try The Things You Find page. Or drawin's. They're totally cool too. You know what, just - format experiments are great and I want to do them. So get up to learning HTML stuff, lassie. Orrrr you could even try looking for referenced works in other stuff that aren't already written, although you should make sure that nobody else was planning to write them as part of a plot arc, or anything.))
Brother Calbhach's Herbal (calbhach) - Entries describing otherworldly fruits, vegetables, plants, and similar things. Generally accompanied by the cryptobotanical tag. - Brother Calbhach, an 8th century Irish monk, was a deeply pious man, but he saw no harm in learning from the pagan lore which herbs could be made into potent charms, or which plants would help keep insects and blight away from his cultivars. ((Biology, oh how my heart sings for you. Read the other entries first, to get a general feel. Yes, all of them. No, I'm not joking. Do. It. - Also there are only three entries! What? With the entire world of plant-related folklore to feed off? Fantastic. In, um, mostly the archaic sense.))
The Cyphers (the-cyphers) - Quotes and scribblings, that come together for entries in the tradition of found poetry. ((Found poetry! Weird. I'm… not sure you could set out planning to write something for this unless you already had a concrete idea of what it would be, and even then… Clearly not my area of expertise, anyhow. Left in here just in case I forget it exists.))
The Book of Eleven Hours (eleven-hours) - Entries concerning magic, specifically supernatural entities, processes, and rituals. - A ten volume series of tomes written in nearly a dozen languages, this series was begun as the repository of magical knowledge of Roxana the Helot and Badr al-Rashid ibn Ya'fir ibn Abdulaziz al-Miṣrī. Though the first five volumes were written mostly by these two individuals and their descendants, soon material was introduced by apprentices and other scholars, and the history of the tomes becomes nearly impossible to track. It is of note that there is a significant gap in time between volumes VI and VII, which were written in the early 11th century and 1890, respectively. The books contain alchemical processes, written accounts on contact with supernatural entities, and magic rites and rituals. ((Rituals! Magic rites! Supernatural entity theories! Awesome!))
Howe's Bestiary (howes-bestiary) - Similar to Brother Calbhach's Herbal, this book concerns itself with fantastical fauna. Generally accompanied by the cryptozoological tag. ((See the Herbal above. Make sure you read this before writing any Hidden Trails business!))
The Journal of the Walk (journal-of-the-walk) - A book of entries detailing the life of an anonymous traveler through many strange and unknown places. ((Aha. Read entries to discern voice, but could be totally interesting.))
The Book of Long Shadows (long-shadows) - A book of poetry with a darker bent. Always has the verse tag. ((Must read all of the existing ones lest I accidentally repeat an idea! If I ever feel particularly down, or particularly contented, or particularly vivid. Frankly most of my stuff could probably fit in here. I'm just that cheery, apparently. - Look, I'd write happy stuff if I had more practice, but it's a self-perpetuating problem! - Blank verse yay))
Manuscript of Mt. Mandara (mt-mandara) - A book for fables, riddles, and short parables. - (…) written in Vedic Sanskrit and offering no clue as to its origins, this text remains one of the most enigmatic texts to date. The text contains a series of fables, parables, and illustrative riddles. ((Seems to be a bit of overlap with the Unknown Tribes thingummy. Welp. Read 'em and see.))
Book of Saints and Demons (saints-and-demons) - A book focused on describing fantastical beings such as gods, eldritch abominations, and extraordinary humans. Generally accompanied by the entity tag. - This Greek Codex of Macedonian-Era Egypt is a compilation of the descriptions of various entities and personages. This book was clearly authored by many different persons, but translation efforts were clearly made to fit all narratives into Greek. The majority of the collected stories seem to be from the Mediterranean, Middle-Eastern, and North-African regions, though some stories are thought to originate as far as Northern Europe or Mongolia. Certain members of the Hand have taken upon themselves to translate the original to English, as well as add modern articles. ((Hmm. Interesting. Useful for providing background for particular entities, through a vision by a half-crazed monk in the Middle Ages, or something. Other stuff too. Use with discretion.))
A Song of the Dry Sea (dry-sea) - Stories that take place closer to present times. Though they don't have to take place exactly in our world or time, they should have a more modern feel to them. ((Yeah, probably not. Still.))
Tales of the Unknown Tribes (unknown-tribes) - Stories styled as folklore or mythology. ((Folklore could be fun. Hey, how about some comparative essays of differences and similarities between folkloric beliefs regarding particular entities, locations or types of location and so on, no doubt concluding in an unspecified but no doubt gruesome fate for the author? Just a thought. Kind of incredibly cliched, but, well. Sun, under, nothing new, etcetera.
The Files of Lady Margo DeWolde (margo-dewolde) - A book containing stories recorded by a victorian collector of curiosities. Gothic horror, steampunk, weird weird west, that sort of thing. Basically "period" stuff. ((Victoriana! What can I say? It has me in its brass-scaled, tentacular grasp.))
The Spirit World (the-spirit-world) - A book focusing on descriptions of ghosts, demons, and gods, generally grounded in real world mythology rather than made up whole-cloth. - An assembled collection on non-corporeal or obscure entities, their properties, and their relationships with various worlds. The volumes constituting it have been contributed to heavily and irregularly since its first publication in 1038 CE, being updated whenever new information becomes relevant. Sources have varied greatly, causing some degree of contradiction: writers have included members of the Catholic and Anglican Churches at alternate stages in their history, early cultists, unaffiliated university scholars, otherworldly immigrants, hermits, and several of the entities of the subject matter themselves. ((Hah, yes! Real world mythology! Now, that I can get behind. I certainly wouldn't want it behind me, that's for sure.))
The Haskhakian Inscriptions (haskhakian) - Entries describing the fictional religion of Haskhakia. ((If you come up with anything that fits in well enough.))
Elementals (elementals-book) - Entries describing primordial elemental beings. ((Eh. If anything comes up. Elementals? Not really a thing pertaining to me.))
The Collective Works of Lycadia Arcaon (lycadia) - Entries from the collection of Lycadia Arcaon, a renowned theologist. Subject matter varies greatly. - A variety of journals, papers, fragments and other documents, orginally gathered by renowned theologist Lycadia Arcaon. The collection is now maintained by several members of the Serpent's Hand, including a few of his descendants. The works in this collection are of a primarily religious, mythological and philosophical nature. ((Theology and philosophy and essays on said stuff! Reality and comparative studies, etc.))
The Book of Potential (book-of-potential) - Entries concerned with the future. Though it has a general Science Fiction slant, anything is acceptable as long as it's set after the modern era. ((Sci-fi! Check for robots and superheroes and genetic manipulation already there, but basically if you get any of those 'what is you made two identical robots speak to each other' type ideas…))
Orbis Arcana Pictus (orbis-arcana-pictus) - A book of drawings and photos, sometimes accompanied by text. ((Oh boy, I wish I could contribute to this. But it's kind of in a class of its own. Plus it has an unknown but clearly present system of organisation, logical or illogical, and - man, it's just so good. Darn it.))
Hidden Trails and Distant Shores: The Travels of Transitive Norton, Explorer (transitive-norton) - A book detailing the travels of the titular Transitive Norton, a dimension travelling big game hunter.
For some reason it's the "Hidden Trails and Distant Shores: The Travels of Transitive Norton, Explorer" thing that I just wrote a couple of paragraphs for. Is that good etiquette? I mean, I know it's allowed, unless I'm very much mistaken, but I don't want to butt into anyone's story arc or characterisation, which would make the varied-unknown-authors sectors less guilt-inducing, so I really don't know what I was doing writing stuff without first ascertaining (boy I love that word) whether it was polite.
Oh well. Once I figure out how to put this under a spoiler-type thing I will.
(also reading all or most of the entries in the Journal of Aframos Longjourney seems sensible in terms of general worldview! Although the Search shouldn't really take place in the Ravelwoods, and if it must only at the beginning and possibly the end. Don't want repetition unnecessary for establishing the connective theme.
TRANSITIVE NORTON SNIPPETS:
In Search of the Interdimensional Shrood
I'll freely admit that the question on whether to include this particular adventure was a knotty one. Surely not!, I hear you cry. True, the distinction between creatures worthy of inclusion and those that simply do not provide enough mortal peril to be worth bothering with seems, at first glance, a simple calculation of brawn and tenacity, but look closer and consider the problem a second time (I generally find Roothmorton's Cigars to aid the cogitative process; those harder of thinking may require a third or fourth period of musing.) Hopefully you have hit upon the snag. The decision on whether to include a particular beast rests on four conditions: the sparingness of the chase it provides, the - (okay this is definite ramble, we have a rambling situation, rapidly approaching critical babblage mass. Just cut it down, you blitherer. Perhaps even figure out what direction you're heading in, instead of a rough compassy type spectrum of possibilities).
The area of big game hunting is not one in which these trifling technicalities are generally found,
Fitzgibbon and Progeny's Gentleman's Impervious Wellingtons (Wellingtons is totally not period-accurate. Ugh. Kind of like doilies being called Doyley's. But somehow I doubt that more than a superficial level of period accuracy is required. Language is still important though! Gosh, I just spent twice as long self-analysing than I did actually being productive [possibly]. Maybe it'll increase future productivity?)
In hunting the Interdimensional Shrood you must first understand that the name of this beast is particularly apt, if representative of a certain lack of creativity (and contempt for conventional modes of spelling) in its originator. Whoever the fellow was, they were pretty well up in the habits of said I. S., possibly even to the point of surviving the encounter. Ah, but don't be so hasty in polishing up your pith helmet! (The Wooster inspiration really, uh, shines through here. You're not writing a Wodehouse parody, you nut. Also wrong era and wrong character! Oh well it's fun to write at least)
All credit goes to them. I'm just keeping this here 'cause it's cool.
License: CC BY:NC:SA 3.0
Let's hope this works.