Gaff's Prole Box

"The culture of the Great Transformation had been, by definition, rootless, fluid, and carnivalesque. Old people acted like adolescents, children acted up, women dressed like men, classes changed places, and words lost meaning. People, buildings, languages, and nationalities endlessly multiplied, migrated, and spread evenly and thinly over a leveled, decentered landscape."
- Yuri Slezkine, The USSR As A Communal Apartment


Due to mago-technical precautions, materials produced by the Bookburners behave radically differently from most printed or transcribed works. Rather than making its way to the Library, from whence all information flows and ultimately returns, their information is of a sort that remains nailed to the page, perishing with the frail paper. It seems that their work was deemed insufficiently insulting to the Library on its own.

Therefore, any time that a Wanderer has an opportunity to procure a work from the Bookburners, it is considered a great boon to the Library and its knowledge of its foes. One such work, found in 1957 during a extra-planar pilgrimage by Mr. Li Yaotang, was the entirety of a book entitled Escape from Turkistan: On the Run from the Bolsheviki Sorcerers.

The author of the book, a Prof. Felix Konstantinovich Memetov, was a key leader of the Brotherhood of Nine Hundred, one of the organizations instrumental in the creation of this latest iteration of the Bookburners. Due to the aforementioned precautions, Prof. Memetov's rank within the Bookburners is unknown, although several offhanded references throughout the book, as well as its publication by "GOC Internal Press," suggest a relatively high standing.

I have provided commentary in order to elucidate some of the more esoteric passages as well as correct any demonstrably false information given.

- Kouangay Threesands
Archivist, South-by-Southeast wing

One early afternoon in Doroghkent1 near the close of 1920, a carriage pulled up to my residence from which emerged three men dressed in European-style suits. Such choice of dress in the climes of Turkistan is highly uncomfortable, and I myself had switched to wearing the traditional Podlogi to'n, or colored robe, within a week of my arrival several decades prior.

I recognized one of the three as Mr. G, a man who, if not particularly gifted in the arts of magic, was at least capable of studying them with an earnest passion. Formerly a close associate of mine, G had recently chosen to side with Lenin and his Bolsheviki faction in order to secure a favorable position for himself in the new arrangement of things. Such a disregard for tradition among practioners of the esoteric arts is quite unseemly. The other two fellows were local Podlogis I had not met personally, but knew by reputation as brutes and sadists, without a single redeeming characteristic. Of their intentions, there could be no doubt; I was, at that time well-known about the areas of Doroghkent as an agent of the White faction of democrats against the Bolsheviki.

My cleaning woman and intermittent companion, Gulchitay, greeted them at the door. A master of the intricacies of Podlogi etiquette, she was able to hold them for several minutes with her formulaic pleasantries. While the Podlogi companions were doubtless transfixed by their learned cultural affectations, I can only assume that G was held in place by Gulchitay's will, which, at times, could be entirely otherworldly.

At the time, I found myself incapacitated slightly by the bottles of local araq that had been given me by the descendant of a local emir two days prior. After several attempts, I managed to rise to my feet and place a simple hex upon the majority of my important possessions, those left out being destroyed in prior attempted castings.

Evil detecting cat.

I was hoping that you would say that.

Shots fired.

Old scrolls react unpredictably.

The taller fellow

He grabs as many as he can find before fleeing.


Constructs given a share of "magic" or whatever, perhaps in the form of purchased souls. They consume the magic over time, simply by moving. In addition, they can make use of magic, but this drains their reserves faster. http://emicago.tumblr.com/post/132185385956

May everything be well with you, and may God protect you from misfortune. I love you very much.

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