Bookish Ponderings

"The inn was all the way on the other side of the forest. Our homes, mine, Blue Tom's, Ned's, Alice's, were all scattered about the hills on the other side, where the fens yawned and the wolves cried. We'd meet by the lonely birch and head by the one road, which curved like a sickle through all that darkness, walled with mossy bark and crumbling, wet stone. Once you got out it was like gasping in the light, and there, down the hill that rose up to meet you, was the inn. We'd drink and we'd joke with the carters and take comfort in something that wasn't our homesteads. One foolish night when we were all staggering for the wine soaking out of our stomachs, Ned said, hey, wouldn't it be faster if we just went through the forest where it was narrowest and straight through. The road was long and we ached for our beds so we took him up on it. We were too drunk for good decisions. Alice had her flintlock, after all, Ned said. Should anything cause us troub

The Reliqum Caverna is a system-neutral natural phenomenon that can occur anywhere within the vast and variant multiverse. It is often cited by scholars venerable and not as the cause for the ever anomalous free-range dungeons happened upon by adventurers in their vagrancy. ORIGIN The Reliqum Caverna often begins with a single person's wish: That their wealth, on the event of their untimely death, be protected and kept away from the unworthy. Often enough the wish is a mere pleasantry, as there are wills and second cousins and ancient uncles to take the wealth into their hands, if not their loved ones, but sometimes there comes a time when metaphysics must take matters into its own hands. Should someone die in the wilderness with their earthly wealth in a ditch somewhere, the Wish, acting as an arcane catalyst, will begin the construction of a safe-keep for the valuables. The process by which it assembles this keep will be detailed below. Once it reaches a sufficient size, the gro

Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two CHAPTER THREE The thorns were out in full force. There were days when the pain fell back and was manageable. Never truly gone, the hints of it stirring about her, but manageable.   And there were days when it was like her insides were cut open and all her strength was left to bleed out. For days like those she had the cane. For nights there was the tincture. One sip and her thoughts would soften and the world blur and the pain would just go away. That bottle stood in its place on the nightstand. She couldn’t help but eye it from her seat by the fireplace. As much as it helped she couldn’t help but hate that bottle just a bit. She was herself, pain and all, and the tincture turned her into nothing but fraying cotton. She tore her eyes away from it and looked at the book in her lap. It was some fictionalized history of a hundred years’ dead king and all his conquests. She was nearing the climax of the account, where the king rallied his troo

  Prologue   Chapter One CHAPTER TWO With the accolades and respect afforded to someone who filled the role of head butler of a great estate, Anton should have considered himself better off than others. He was charged with the trust of the nobles to oversee the servants in the management of the many petty affairs of the castle. Most days, the honor associated with his position balanced out nicely when compared with how much stress and toil the job demanded. Today was not most days. Today was the ball. With hundreds of aristocrats with tempers to match their lofty titles to keep, Anton had his hands full. The grand ballroom had been set up, the tables decorated with fine silks and the floors with expensive carpet. The room was lit by candles set into elaborate holders of crystal and gold, and the dancefloor filled with the music of the finest musicians who had played to emperors and cheering pub crowds alike. Setting all that up in a few too short weeks had been a great undertakin

Prologue CHAPTER ONE Architecture functions on a very different scale from the inside-out than the outside-in. It is one thing to see a space laid out in halls and wings and roofs and towers from a distant hillside or from outside its walls, and it is quite another to walk those halls. And walk them Princess Reserve did. It had begun when she was a child, defying the spirit of the rules set upon her while still following them to the letter. She did not leave the castle’s walls. She did not put herself at the mercy of the dangers of the world outside its walls. But that still left everything in the castle. They’d tried to limit her walks about the castle with chaperones and watchful guards but the castle was big and she, if not as graceful or clever as her sisters, knew how to outpace and outwit her escorts. The pain was still present through all this, of course, and some days she did as was expected of her and stayed in her room and rested and she was glad for it. But restful d

Once upon a time, there was a king who had three daughters. The first, the eldest, was from her very first year a well-mannered and studious child, so the king called her Wisdom, and raised her in the matters of statecraft and science, to one day be married to some far off prince and bring the knowledge of the two kingdoms together into a brighter age. The second was from her very youth taken with dance and ritual, so the king called her Grace, and she was taught in poise and elegance, to one day be married off to a rambunctious and adventuresome prince, who would be in need of a wife who was calm and collected yet charming. The third was the youngest and she was not like her sisters. But her being unlike her sisters was not in the way of heroes, of youngest sons who know virtue and humility, no, her way was that she was neither wise nor graceful, but a daughter. A daughter who the physician had deemed fragile, for there was a thorn bush in her ribcage, and sometimes, it rustled and th