Aimé Césaire--Poet, Statesman, Game Designer

Aimé Fernand David Césaire was a poet and activist, a founder (along with Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas) of the négritude movement among the pre-war African diaspora, and served as president of Martinique in the 1980s.

In 1960 he published several random encounter tables disguised as poems, translated here by Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith:

Patience of Signs (D20)

1 sublime excoriations of a flesh fraternal and whipped to the point of rebellious fires in a thousand villages

2 arenas

3 fire

4 hulls prophetic masts

5 fire

6 breeding ground for moray eels

7 fire riding lights of an island truly in distress

8 fires frantic tracks of haggard herds which in the mud are spelled

9 pieces of raw flesh

10 suspended spittings

11 a sponge dripping sour wine

12 a fiery waltz of lawns strewn with the cornets that fall from the broken surge of great Tabebuias

14 fires shards lost in a desert of fears and cisterns

15 dried up fires never too dry for a worm to beat their tolling its new flesh

16 blue seeds of fire

17 fire of fires

18 witness of eyes which crazed for vengeance exhume themselves and expand

19 pollen pollen

20 and along the sands where the nocturnal berries of sweet manchineels swell rich oranges always accessible to the sincerity of long long thirsts

Beautiful Spurted Blood (D10)

1 trophy head

2 lacerated limbs

3 deadly sting

4 beautiful spurted blood

5 lost warblings

6 ravished shores

7 childhoods childhoods a tale too stirred up

8 dawn on its chain ferocious snapping to be born

9 oh belated assassin

10 the bird with feathers once more beautiful than the past demands an accounting for its scattered plumes

The Dream-Space of Abstract Threat

"Something real and tangible, yet fraught with infinite suggestions of nighted mystery, now confronted me."

Reading Lovecraft's Shadow Out Of Time again--it's great.

The usual sort of nervous academic narrates a story of experiencing a strange split consciousness, being not wholly himself, strange visions and dreams of massive landscapes, compulsions to consult obscure texts. All this is wonderfully done--better than usual, I'd say, Lovecraft in top form: shadowy but crisp, obscured but never vague, never embedded more in the mundane than necessary to feel grounded.

The narrator does eventually get around to describing why all this is happening to him. Spoilers:

Specifically goofy-shaped psychic aliens that take over peoples' brains and zoom around in space ships, rovers and boats and zap each other with "cameralike" weapons.

These guys:

Fun, definitely, but ironically lacking all the emotional and aesthetic qualities that seemed to horror enthusiasts to be distinctive enough that someone decided to coin the adjective "Lovecraftian".

This is one of the paradoxes of Lovecraft: his actual inventions were, if not banal, at least, technically, almost wholly typical of the kinds of pulpy sci-fi of the era. It was how he described them and--moreover--their effect on people, that was magically creepy.

The quality of any given Lovecraft story tends to depend a lot on how he manages the transition from the dream-space of abstract threat (his forte) to actually telling us what the monster is (a big roll of the dice).

My restrictions as a prisoner gradually disappeared, so that some of the visions included vivid travels over the mighty jungle roads, sojourns in strange cities, and explorations of some of the vast dark windowless ruins from which the Great Race shrank in curious fear (Beautiful, awesome) There were also long sea-voyages in enormous, many-decked boats of incredible swiftness, and trips over wild regions in closed, projectile-like airships lifted and moved by electrical repulsion (Wait, you were in a blimp?)

It's not exactly the old cliche that "what you imagine is scarier than anything you could see" I think it's more that the dreamstate of only half-imagining is a more powerful evocative state than the fully described thing. That juxtaposition of that half of it that is nailed down with a few specificities with that other half that could still be anything and you haven't thought too hard about it is essential.

This is one reason why the actual Call of Cthulhu book and its laying out of the "mythos creatures" always seems a little disappointing--although these squidbeasts and tentacled pyramidheads are the lynchpin, justification and most identifiable characteristic of the Lovecraft stories, they aren't the actual heart of the magic.

The magic (as in most horror) is in the delirious prose evocation of the emotion of guessing at and anticipating them. The simple word "Azathoth" contains much more of it than the image or stats in the book. (Lovecraft's first mention of it was in a note to himself that just read "Azathoth--hideous name".)

I think a lot of weird fiction after Lovecraft (and influenced by him) recognized this--and tried to find ways to suspend that moment of not-knowing-what-the-fuck as long as possible. When Ligotti describes language and life itself as the horror he's trying to do this, when Grant Morrison describes a demon as made of the collective despair over like Hiroshima he's trying to do this: the story can't be let down by the final boss' banality because the final boss still has a gap of effective indescribability.

Lovecraft knew the trick, even if he didn't ultimately rely on it: the "non-euclidean angles" and the "concepts beyond our understanding"--these were word-constructs, not descriptions of mere things you could picture and get bored of.

To describe the indescribable space of dream, (by which I mean the consciousness characteristic of real dreams which films and books and games can sometime approximate) I'd say:

There is an unquestioned assumption that something is there and real, without the sobriety, distance and clarity that the mind constantly unconsciously uses to understand the thing's full shape and limits. The important questions that would establish how a thing is in the world are not answered but also never asked.

Games have one disadvantage in getting you into the dreamspace of abstract threat in that in even the spookiest situation you generally know the thing does have stats and is embedded in a world where foes are basically challenges that can be addressed. The possibility of uncontested annihilation is off the table. It always boils down to a bag of procedures or numbers.

On the other hand, games have one tremendous advantage: unlike a short story or film, the game does contain something that is there and is authentically of unknown and unknowable shape--the future of the campaign.

It is undeniable that the campaign will keep going and it is undeniable that no-one can describe in full detail where it will go. The campaign need not simulate the ecstasy of potential dangers and evolutions, metastasizing meanings, it is that. You are in the midst of a genuinely half-shaped and half-shapeless thing. With a book, you could skip to the end and the unknown turns into a package, a product, a mere evocation of infinity, not the actually infinite. In game, as long as the campaign is still on, you are still watching form solidify from a shadow that is not yet used up: continuously and in real-time.

The demon of RPGs means Tiamat is far more statted, described and knowable than she is in any story where she might appear, but it also means what will happen when I meet her is far less knowable. When I pick up the ring it might mean something and it might not.

And that--feeling being in the middle of that--is kind of great.
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Creepy Repeaters

Looking at the use of language in horror.

This text was created by feeding in the entire script of the Silence of the Lambs film, removing every line that didn't include the word "Clarice", and rearranging them in order of length.

It makes a nice little treatise--or christmas tree--on how much Lecter loves to say her name (perhaps because you have to bear your teeth and bite the air just to say it)--and the uses he puts it to.

Clarice.

Hey, Clarice.

Brave Clarice.

Well, Clarice?

Goodbye, Clarice.

Clarice M Starling.

Hot damn, Clarice.

Not "just", Clarice.

Thank you, Clarice.

Good evening, Clarice.

Clarice M. Good morning.

You're very frank, Clarice.

Yes, he did. Clarice Starling.

I'll help you catch him, Clarice.

Clarice, phone. It's the guru.

Where were you going, Clarice?

What became of your lamb, Clarice?

First principles, Clarice. Simplicity.

No. It is your turn to tell me, Clarice.

I'm Clarice Starling. I'm with the FBl.

I have no plans to call on you, Clarice.

And how do we begin to covet, Clarice?

Our Billy wasn't born a criminal, Clarice.

That was an especially nice touch, Clarice.

How did you feel when you saw him, Clarice?

Look deep within yourself, Clarice Starling.

What did you see, Clarice? What did you see?

Clarice. They're waiting for you. Watch your step.

Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice?

I've been in this room for eight years now, Clarice.

Yes or no, Clarice? Poor little Catherine is waiting.

If I help you, Clarice, it will be "turns" with us too.

Why, Clarice? Did the rancher make you perform fellatio?

Good morning. Dr Lecter, my name is Clarice Starling.

Oh, Clarice, your problem is you need to get more fun out of life.

I don't imagine the answer is on those second-rate shoes, Clarice.

I've waited, Clarice, but how long can you and old Jackie Boy wait?

Nice to meet you, Clarice. You can hang your coat up there if you like.

Clarice Starling and that awful Jack Crawford have wasted far too much time.

Clarice, doesn't this random scattering of sites seem desperately random, like the elaborations of a bad liar?

Below is a very condensed but surprisingly coherent remix of Lovecraft's original Call of Cthulhu story created by removing every sentence that doesn't have the word "Cthulhu" in it. The overall effect is to get rid of almost everything ordinary or dull in the story and reveal a very effective imagism at the core of the writing. Lovecraft seemed to not want to waste his invented word on any merely scene-shifty sentence.



Once before, it appears, Professor Angell had seen the hellish outlines of the nameless monstrosity, puzzled over the unknown hieroglyphics, and heard the ominous syllables which can be rendered only as “Cthulhu”; and all this in so stirring and horrible a connexion that it is small wonder he pursued young Wilcox with queries and demands for data.

This was that cult, and the prisoners said it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway.

 He talked of his dreams in a strangely poetic fashion; making me see with terrible vividness the damp Cyclopean city of slimy green stone—whose geometry, he oddly said, was all wrong—and hear with frightened expectancy the ceaseless, half-mental calling from underground: “Cthulhu fhtagn”, “Cthulhu fhtagn”.

Hieroglyphics had covered the walls and pillars, and from some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice; a chaotic sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound, but which he attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of letters, “Cthulhu fhtagn”.

From Dunedin the Alert and her noisome crew had darted eagerly forth as if imperiously summoned, and on the other side of the earth poets and artists had begun to dream of a strange, dank Cyclopean city whilst a young sculptor had moulded in his sleep the form of the dreaded Cthulhu.

There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration.

I had largely given over my inquiries into what Professor Angell called the “Cthulhu Cult”, and was visiting a learned friend in Paterson, New Jersey; the curator of a local museum and a mineralogist of note.

They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them.

That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth.

These words had formed part of that dread ritual which told of dead Cthulhu’s dream-vigil in his stone vault at R’lyeh, and I felt deeply moved despite my rational beliefs.

What seemed to be the main document was headed “CTHULHU CULT” in characters painstakingly printed to avoid the erroneous reading of a word so unheard-of.

Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency.

I suppose that only a single mountain-top, the hideous monolith-crowned citadel whereon great Cthulhu was buried, actually emerged from the waters.

Here were new treasuries of data on the Cthulhu Cult, and evidence that it had strange interests at sea as well as on land.

Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young.

The carven idol was great Cthulhu, but none might say whether or not the others were precisely like him.

The two sounds most frequently repeated are those rendered by the letters “Cthulhu” and “R’lyeh”.

After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.

The chant meant only this: “In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
“In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

Roland Barthes: Dungeon Master

From Roland Barthes' lectures, Collège de France, 1977 (from How To Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces, Tr: Kate Briggs):

Of Games

Novels RPGs are simulations that is to say fictional experimentations on a model the most classical form of which is the maquette. The structure, an outline (a maquette) through which topics, situations are let loose.

More than one language game exists because more than one desire exists.

Take note: the game is normative it wants to resist, prevail over the disorder of the given, it thinks of chance as disorder.

But our method—the one we're adopting here—involves shuffling the cards and dealing them in the order in which they appear. For me now whenever I'm working anything any thematic grouping of traits (of index cards) always makes me think of Bouvard and Peuchet’s question: Why this? Why that? Why here, why there?=An automatic distrust of associative ideology (which is the ideology of the ordered presentation genre.) The card players motto: “I cut the deck”. I react against the fixity of language.

The systematic gradually breaks down, is disappointed—the non-systemic flourishes, proliferates. Yes something direct has to be put in place in order for the indirect, an unforeseeable to emerge.

Of Fantasy

Now the first force I am able to investigate, to interpolate--the one I can see is it work within myself even through the illusions of the imaginary--the force of desire. Of, to be more precise (since it's the point of departure for our research)--the figure of the fantasy.

Let's be clear that a fantasy requires a setting (a scenario) and therefore a place.

Now fantasy=scenario but a scenario and bits and pieces always very brief=just a glimmer of the narrative of desire. What's glimpsed is very sharply contoured, very brightly lit, but all of a sudden it's gone: a body I catch sight of in a car as it goes around the bend before it plunges into the shadows.

I engage in the exhausting strategies of desire.


Of GMing


I truly believe that for a teaching GM relationship to be effective the speaker GM should know only slightly more about the topic than the listener player--sometimes, on certain points, less--this is the process of exchange.

Of Foes

Animals=Evil. Demons figured in animal form, a vast theme.  Anthonian theme: demons entering Saint Anthony's cave: snakes, lions, bears, leopards, bulls, wolves, aspic, scorpions: all "the wild beasts." Their figurative profusion in painting. Animality=infranature: aggression, fear, greed, flesh: man without law.

Of The Party

But what's the fascination of the small group (the gang, the sanatorium)? The state of autarky (autarkadia: self-sufficiency) contentedness=plenitude. It's not the emptiness that draws us in its the fullness of or if you prefer the intuition that there's a vertiginous vacuity to the plenitude of the group.

Autarky: strong intradependence + 0 extradependence. Independence marks the boundary and so gives the definition the mode of being of the group.

Bion makes this clear “Leaders who neither fight nor run away are not easily understood”.

Of The Dungeon

Description of the protective enclosure: Robinson Crusoe meticulous almost excessive quasi obsessive set of defenses against others as soon there's a suggestion of the presence of another man on the island (footprints)--> mad defensive measures. A house that's completely buried from view, invisible whole system of fortifications, of hiding places, enclosure as craziness, as an extreme experience.

Already in Robinson Crusoe--a "healthy" "rational" "empirical" subject if ever there was one--panics at the prospect of danger (the footprints in the sand) endlessly reinforces his defenses. Absolute protection is never achieved (mirage asymptotic). Stockade enclosure camouflaged by a thicket, no door--unmistakably the theme of absolute enclosure--just a little ladder that Robinson pushes up behind him. The colonists apartment in the granite wall in the Mysterious Island--a ladder that can be pulled up then in an elevator. The symbolism of burying oneself below ground and walling oneself up is based in the empirical fact of protecting oneself (symbolically speaking, the only absolutely protected space is the mother's womb). To go outside is to be exposed, to be defenseless, it's life itself. Making it impossible for enemy to get in gets converted through access through neurotic exaggeration into the self-imposed impossibility of getting out.

Piranesi: prisons are supposed to be the anti-hut (note that they’re vast, anti-cellular structures demonic capsizing of levels)—> Space of crisis, of drama, of the sublime (Burke= “a sort of delight full of horror, a sort of tranquility tinged with Terror.”)  Piranesi: “out of fear springs pleasure."

The Labyrinth: Symbolizes the paradoxical labor whereby the subjects sets about creating difficulties for himself. Walling himself up within the impasses of a system. It is the archetypal space of the obsessive. The Labyrinth is this space of active enclosure. Endless futile efforts expended on finding the way out. In the subjects effort to find the exit he only acts exacerbates his only his own imprisonment. He walks, constantly changes direction, etc yet remains in the same place. Labyrinth: a system that's hermetically sealed by its autonomy. Example: The system of a love affair--once inside there's no way out, and yet the labor it requires is immense. Finding a way out an almost magical act: the glimpse of a thread of a different system through which you then have to pass--Ariadne's thread. The Labyrinth is a very effective symbol of that state, an inextricable system of walls, but one that's out in the open air graph paper there's no roof...To someone looking on from the outside (looking down from above at their notes) the solution is obvious, in contrast to the person inside it: a situation typical of a love affair.

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P.S.

Check it: Red & Pleasant Land is Reddit /RPG game of the month--and it's not even a game.

Retropost Saturday: Scoring Your Setting Supplement

We've seen some good setting stuff recently: Hot Springs Island, Yoon-Suin, Veins of the Earth, Hubris--stuff that does what a setting book should. 

Big question is: What is that? I laid out what I want from a city supplement--before I wrote Vornheim-- here:

What do I want when I buy a city off somebody? I want them to do work for me. Not necessarily work I couldn't have done myself, I just want them to have put in the hours to put a little love into things I myself was too busy with other things to do.

So, scoring your city supplement:

Size

-You get one point for each thing described. An NPC, a building, an item, a unique local custom, a bar game, a legal system, etc. For example: you can say "there's a church" and you get a point.

Clarity at High Speed

-You lose that point if you tell me anything about it that could just as well have been randomized or made up on the spot by anybody with a brain, like: "the church doors are eleven feet high and made of oak."

I can make up generic details myself, I don't need professional game designers for that. More importantly, doing that clutters up the graphic design on the page when I'm in the middle of the game trying to figure out what's going on with your church. This may seem harsh, but the whole point of using someone else's setting is that you have to do less work and if I have to prep and highlight all over the page or rewrite it then it suddenly becomes more trouble than just writing my own thing.

-You lose a point if you explain the function of a thing when I already know what it does. Like if you say "the Cathedral of Chuckles is the center of the worship of the Great God Chuckles" you're wasting your space and my time.

Notice that from these rules the effect is: if you include a church and do nothing but give me generic details about it and describe what a church is, then you've actually lost a point and so you are better off leaving the church out entirely if that's all you're going to do.

Map

-You gain 0 points for putting the thing on a map or otherwise locating it, unless where it's located has some especially distinctive effect on the game or setting, in which case it gets you one point. Telling me the crypt is in the northeast quadrant of the city doesn't get you a point unless that means the graveyard is built on top of the all-girl juggling school. Again, if you're giving me a detail it needs to be a detail that couldn't just as well have been randomized.

-0 points if there's a map that's keyed with only numbers or letters referring to paragraphs spread out across the supplement. Five points if it's keyed with the names of places and/or some sort of distinctive shape telling you what something is just by looking at it. Twenty points if the spread with the map manages to both locate a place and encapsulate most of the important things I need to know about each location.

Character

-You gain a point for adding a descriptive detail that affects the style of the thing. That is: creates some sort of shift in the idea of the thing by its mere presence. For example: telling me the church is shaped like perfect sphere, or an antler, or is made entirely of leather, or is a monolithic grey streaked with long dark stains from centuries of rust and rain. Ideally, You get this point even if it I don't like it--like you say the church is made of burlap and magic lutes.

Adventure Fuel And Completeness

-You gain points for adding distinctive features to things that create playable depth --information, "adventure seeds", mini-challenges--to a thing you've created, according to the following scheme:

-One point for a detail that basically says "There's an adventure you could go on outside the setting" (no matter how lame). i.e. "It is rumored that the priest has a map to the location of a sunken wreck full of treasure." (Assuming the description of the actual wreck and map are not provided in your setting.)

-One point if the adventure being pointed to isn't lame.

-Two points for a detail that points the PCs towards an adventure outside the setting and implies that some person or institution in the setting will be pleased, displeased or in some way affected by completion of the task, and if that person or institution has any identifiable and persisitent personality or role in the setting. i.e. "It is rumored that the priest carries the map because he hopes, one day, to recover the dog collar belonging to his dead puppy, Randolph, who died on that voyage."

-Three points for a detail that could send the PCs out of the setting but which will, if they succeed or fail, create a substantial change in the setting. i.e. "Legend has it that returning the collar to Charneldyne will cause all the madmen in the city to become sane."

-Four points if it sends the PCs out of the setting but also requires or implies that in order to complete the task they must do something substantive within the setting. "The ruined galleon is a mile beneath the waves. It is said there are only a handful of devices and substances that allow one to reach such depths, and a scant few in the city who know how to use them--and they all have been imprisoned by the Baron for either necromancy, lechery, or fraud."

-Five points if the task can be performed entirely within the setting. "The wreck is actually located deep beneath the surface of the Baron's moat."

(Or, to put it another way, the easier you make it for me to run the city just like a dungeon, the happier I am.)

(I'm all for "leavng space for the DM to invent things" but I don't need you to provide that--I know I can create space wherever I want. I'm subcontracting you.)

-Six points if a detail could be of general use to many, most, or all of the PCs activities within the setting. "The priest, like all the clergy in the city, is unknowingly subject to a ancient curse from the Sea Gog, Nykkto, whereby his intimates are doomed to die by drowning."

Style

Five points for each part of the basic premise of the city that is actually interesting. i.e. "The City of Charneldyne is a bustling metropolis at the heart of the orcish empire" would get 0 points, whereas ""The City of Charneldyne is a bustling metropolis at the heart of the orcish empire and is built entirely from the bones of slain foes" will get 5 points.

Subjectivity

Twenty points if the setting as a whole is actually interesting. Like Viriconium.

Neither gain nor lose points either way if it's just basically a medieval place.

You lose twenty points if it goes out of its way to be uninteresting, like Stamford, Connecticut.

Value

Divide the number of points by the cost in U.S dollars of the setting.
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Things Underlined So Far in "Gormenghast"

I picked up a copy while visiting Scrap Princess...

a python! Even at that ghastly and critical moment I could see what a beautiful thing it was. Far more beautiful than my old brute of a mule. But did it enter my head that I should transfer my allegiance to the reptile? No. 
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the darkness that lay beyond took him, as it were, to herself, muffling the edges of his sharp body.
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(re: a bunch of cats) so close upon each other's tails that they might have been a continuous entity, her ladyship's white clowder
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For a moment she stared about her ruminatively. The cats, with not a whisker moving, were everywhere in the room. The mantelpiece was heraldic with them. The table was a solid block of whiteness. The couch was a snowdrift. The carpet was sewn with eyes.
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I was among mountains. Huge tufted things. Full of character; but no charm. I was alone with my faithful mule. We were lost. A meteor flew overhead. What use was that to us? No use at all. It merely irritated us. 
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No one reads his poems, but he holds a remote status – a gentleman, as it were, by rumour.
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yet sullen as her mother and as incalculable...Fuchsia tosses her black flag of hair, bites at her childish underlip, scowls, laughs, broods, is tender, is intemperate, suspicious and credulous all in a day.
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Do things without any mention – like getting tea, for instance, and laying it quietly before me.' 'All right,' answered Clarice, rather sullenly.
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and stroked the sleek ears of the goat
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There was something lewd in the way the wax-coloured petal of his eyelid dropped suggestively over his bright eye and lifted itself again without a flutter.

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is as naked and blatant as a pig in a cathedral.
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They made no effort to bear out the promise of the other features, which would have formed the ideal setting for the kind of eye that flashes with visionary fire.
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...less like a man than a ravaged suckling
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Must I what? Explain yourself, dear boy. If there's anything I abominate it's sentences of two words.
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His skin stretched so tightly...that the freckles were twice the size they would normally have been.
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At The Fly's prod he did not wake with a start, as is the normal thing: that would have been tantamount to a kind of interest in life. He merely opened one eye. 
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His voice floated out of his soft head like a paper streamer.
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It was in Bellgrove’s class, one late afternoon, that Titus first thought consciously about the idea of colour: of things having colours: of everything having its own particular colour, and of the way in which every particular colour kept changing according to where it was, what the light was like, and what it was next to.

Bellgrove was half asleep, and so were most of the boys. The room was hot and full of golden motes. A great clock ticked away monotonously. A bluebottle buzzed slowly over the surfaces of the hot window-panes or from time to time zithered its languid way from desk to desk. Every time it passed certain desks, small inky hands would grab at it, or rulers would smack out through the tired air. Sometimes it would perch, for a moment, on an inkpot or on the back of a boy’s collar and scythe its front legs together, and then its back legs, rubbing them, scything them, honing them, or as though it were a lady dressing for a ball drawing on a pair of long, invisible gloves.

Oh, bluebottle, you would fare ill at a ball! There would be none who could dance better than you; but you would be shunned: you would be too originaclass="underline" you would be before your time. They would not know your steps, the other ladies. None would throw out that indigo light from brow or flank – but, bluebottle, they wouldn’t want to. There lies the agony. Their buzz of converse is not yours, bluebottle. You know no scandal, no small talk, no flattery, no jargon: you would be hopeless, for all that you can pull the long gloves on. After all, your splendour is a kind of horror-splendour. Keep to your inkpots and the hot glass panes of schoolrooms and buzz your way through the long summer terms. Let the great clock-ticks play counterpoint. Let the swish of a birch, the detonation of a paper pellet, the whispered conspiracy be your everlasting pards.

Down generations of boys, buzz, bluebottle, buzz in the summer prisons – for the boys are bored. Tick, clock, tick! Young Scarabee’s on edge to fight the ‘Slogger’ – young Dogseye hankers for his silkworms’ weaving – Jupiter minor knows a plover’s nest. Tick, clock, tick!

Sixty seconds in a minute; sixty minutes in an hour; sixty times sixty.

Multiply the sixes and add how many noughts? Two. I suppose. Six sixes are thirty-six. Thirty-six and two noughts is 3,600. Three thousand and six hundred seconds in an hour. Quarter of an hour is left before the silkworms – before the ‘Slogger’ – before the plover’s nest. Buzz-fly, buzz! Tick, clock, tick! Divide 3,600 by four and then subtract a bit because of the time taken to work it all out.

Nine hundred seconds! Oh, marvellous! marvellous! Seconds are so small. One – two – three – four – seconds are so huge.

The inky fingers scrubble through the forelock – the blackboard is a grey smear. The last three lessons can be seen faintly one behind the other – like aerial perspective. A fog of forgotten figures – forgotten maps – forgotten languages.

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100 More Lyonesse Things

100 more persons, places, creatures and objects you might run into from Suldrun's Garden (1983) and The Green Pearl (1985) taken from the Lyonesse series of books, all these quotes copyright Jack Vance.

1, a troll, with a narrow forehead and a great red nose from which sprouted a mustache of nose-hairs. He carried a net and a wooden pitchfork.

2, a furious troll, wearing purple fustian. He was even more ugly than the previous troll, with warts and wens protruding from his forehead, which hung like a crag over a little red nose with the nostrils turned forward.

3, a troll who seemed to combine all the repulsive aspects of the first two. He wore snuff-brown garments, black boots with iron buckles and an odd conical hat tilted to one side.

4, an ogre, rocking from side to side on heavy bowed legs. He stood fifteen feet tall; his arms and torso, like his legs, were knotted with wads of muscle! His belly thrust forward in a paunch. A great crush hat sheltered a gray face of surpassing ugliness. On his back he carried a wicker basket containing a pair of children.

5, the carcass of a child, stuffed with onions, trussed and spitted, roasted over the fire. Nerulf turned the spit and from time to time basted the meat with oil and drippings

6, He went to the table and drank the contents of the purple cup. At once he dwindled in stature to become a squat powerful troll,

7,  the missing head. Pode and Daffin discovered it halfway across the meadow, pulling itself forward by snapping at the ground with its teeth.

8,  a witch trapped me under her hat and sold me

9, the ghosts of dead children running along the' roof.

10, One of the dryads splashed water toward Dhrun. He saw the drops rise into the air and sparkle in the sunlight, whereupon they became small golden bees, which darted into Dhrun's eyes and buzzed in circles, blotting out his sight.

11, Dame Melissa, as she calls herself, is a dire witch. When I was fifteen years old, she gave me drugged milk to drink, then transferred herself into my body—that which she wears today. I, a fifteen-year-old girl, was housed in the body Melissa had been using:

12, a set of dolmens, arranged to form the In-and-Out Maze, whose origin is unknown

13, In Wookin reside a vampire, a poison-eater, and a woman who converses with snakes.

14, Rhodion, king of all fairies, who wears a green hat with a red feather. Take his hat and he must do your bidding

15, On yonder hill I plan a great moon-trap, and when the moon comes walking and spying and peeping for to find my window, I'll pull the latch and then there'll be no more of my milk curdled on moony nights

16, I wait under gallows until the corpse drops, whereupon I assume possession of the clothes and valuables...

17, Pilbane the Dancer, who robbed along the highway for thirteen years

18, This gallows is known as Six-at-a-Gulp. Both law and custom forbid the hanging of five or four or three or two or one from the ancient beam

19, He wore a long black cloak, a black cloth over all his face, save his eyes, and a flat-crowned black hat, with an extremely broad brim. In his left hand he brandished a dagger on high.

20,  the great Janton Throatcut himself. Only last week I hanged high his six henchmen. He was in the act of taking their shoes for his collection; he does not care a fig for clothes."

21, the Thief-Taker

22, The festival had not yet commenced, but already booths, pavilions, platforms and other furniture of the fair were in the process of construction.

23, DOCTOR FIDELIUS

24, Grand gnostic, seer, magician.

25, HEALER OF SORE KNEES

26, ... Mysteries analyzed and resolved: incantations uttered in known and unknown languages. ... Dealer in analgesics, salves, roborants and despumatics.... Tinctures to relieve nausea, itch, ache, gripe, scurf, buboes, canker.

27, At Sinkings Gap you must pass under a boulder balanced on a pin. You must kill the guardian raven, or he will drop a feather to topple the boulder on your head.

28, At the River Siss an old woman with a fox's head and a chicken's legs will ask you to carry her across the river. You must act on the instant: cut her in half with your sword and carry each piece over separately

29, a pair of bearded gryphs. Give each a comb of honey coming and going, which you have brought for the purpose.

30, a number of manikins carved from blackthorn roots. "Name these little homologues with names, and place them on the map, and they will scuttle to position. Watch!" He took up one of the manikins and spat in its face. "I name you Casmir. Go to Casmir's place!" He put the manikin on the map; it seemed to scamper across the map to Lyonesse Town

31, Fafhadiste and his three-legged blue goat

32, acrobats, contortionists, mimes and jugglers

33, took a black box from the shelf, poured inside a gill of water, added drops of a glowing yellow liquid which caused the water to show films of light at various levels. In a leather-bound libram Tamurello located the name "Shimrod." Using the appended formula he prepared a dark liquid which he added to the contents of the box, then poured the mixture into an iron cylinder six inches tall and two inches in diameter. He sealed the top with a glass cap, then held the cylinder to his eye. After a moment he gave the cylinder to Carfilhiot. "What do you see?"

34, Looking through the glass, Carfilhiot observed four men riding at a gallop through the forest. One of the men was Shimrod.

35, six poles fifty feet tall, supporting as many impaled corpses.

36, a kind of aviary thirty feet high and fifteen feet in diameter, equipped with perches, nests, feeders and swings. The human denizens of the aviary exemplified Carfilhiot's whimsy at its most pungent; he had amputated the limbs of several captives, both male and female and had substituted iron claws and hooks, with which they clung to the perches. Each was adorned with plumage of one sort or another; all twittered, whistled and sang bird-songs

37, a team of two-headed black horses, of great size and strength

38,  a round chamber decorated in blue, pink and gold, and with a pale blue rug on the marble floor

39, a gantry twenty feet high from which hung four men with heavy stones dangling from their feet. Beside each stood a marker, measured off in inches…Let markers be placed; then when these miscreants have stretched to double their length, let them be released,

40, Up the cliff they rode, back and forth, and at every stage discovered instruments of defense: embrasures, traps, stone-tumbles, timbers pivoted to sweep the intruder into space, sally-ports and trip-holes.

41, I am a magician of the eleventh level," said Shimrod

42, A band of fifteen ragged mendicants straggled south

43, a circular frame something less than a foot in diameter, surrounding a gray membrane. Carfilhiot plucked at the center of the membrane, to draw out a button of substance which grew rapidly under his hand to become a nose of first vulgar, then extremely large size: a great red hooked member with flaring hairy nostrils.

44, Carfilhiot gave a hiss of exasperation; tonight the sandestin was restless and frolicsome. He seized the great red nose, twisted and kneaded it to the form of a crude and lumpy ear, which squirmed under his fingers to become a lank green foot. Carfilhiot used both hands to cope with the object and again produced an ear, into which he uttered a sharp command:

45, bluffs extend into the valley, with little more than an arrow-flight between. They are riddled with tunnels; were you to march past a hail of arrows would strike down and in one minute you would lose a thousand men

46, the Wastes of Falax

47, the Flesh Cape of Miscus

48, the Totness Squalings

49, The line from Murgen's spool, so fine as almost to float in the air, could not be broken by the strength of human arms.

50, A great gibbet was erected, with the arm sixty feet from the ground

51, Princess Madouc, half-fairy, is a long-legged urchin with dark curls and a face of fascinating mobility.

52,  the trolls of Komin Beg to war, in which they are led by a ferocious imp named Dardelloy.

53, three one-legged witches: Cuch, Gadish and Fehor

54, A boy or girl innocently trespassing upon a fairy meadow might be cruelly whipped with hazel twigs

55, VISBHUME, apprentice to the recently dead Hippolito, applied to the sorcerer Tamurello for a similar post, but was denied.

56, a spell of ennui upon Desmei: an influence so quiet, gradual and unobtrusive that she never noticed its coming

57, a spell of stasis upon you, and you will never move again.

58, a young witch named Zanice, accused of drying the udders of her neighbor's cow.

59, brain-stone of a demon

60, goblin's egg

61, basilisk's eye

62, each year the Esq magicians alter a hundred human fetuses, hoping that one may be born with thirteen eyes in a circlet around its forehead…So far, nine eyes is their limit of capability, and these become priests of the cult

63, he rubbed the soles of his sandals with water-spite, that he might be enabled to walk on water.

64, a spell of temporary meekness

65, a glossic to make Sir Hune's weapons shrivel and droop and all his arrows fly awry

66, a plague of stag-beetles for my bed

67, Scurch: untranslatable into contemporary terms; gernerally: ‘susurration along the nerves', ‘psychic abrasion', ‘half-unnoticed or sublimated uneasiness in a mind already wary.' ‘Scurch' is the stuff of hunches and unreasoning fear

68, the activating spell is of three resonances and a quaver

69, a Circassian witch who began to corrode Tamurello with Blue Ruin

70, Sandestin: a class of halfling which wizards employ to work their purposes. Many magical spells are effected through the force of a sandestin.

71, he cursed the witch with footlong toenails, so that now and forever she must wear special boots."

72, the wizard Baibalides, who lived in a house of black rock on Lamneth Isle, a hundred yards off the coast of Wysrod

73, I know the tube well: it is Gantwin's Millenial Spectator; it depicts events of the last thousand years anywhere within its purview

74, a mask representing Baibalides. Next he brought out a skull on a pedestal and arranged the mask in place over the skull. Instantly the mask seemed to come alive. The eyes blinked; the mouth opened to allow a tongue to moisten the lips. Shimrod called: "Baibalides, can you hear me?

75, optical wisps

76, falloy: a variety of halfling. much like a fairy, but larger and far more gentle of disposition.

77, listening shells

78, The mirror is of magic. You see reflected the person you think yourself to be. Or you may say: ‘Mirror, show me as I appear to Shimrod!' or, ‘Mirror, show me as I appear to Tamurello!' and you will see these versions of yourself.

79,  a druid appeared in a brown robe with a sprig of mistletoe pinned to his hood. He uttered a single word; all fell silent, then slunk away and hid in the shadows.

80,  a dour old castle of fourteen towers overlooking the harbor

81, green vapor, which, caught by the wind, blew out over the sea. Swirling low and mingling with spume from the waves, the fume condensed to become a green pearl

82, "You refer to the Temple of Atlante?…The priests claim that the number of steps above the surface is dwindling: either the land is sinking or the sea is rising: such is their reasoning

83, Hoonch the dog-god

84, iron-legged goat

85, I can put toad-heads on your enemies!

86, I can change the stone of their castles to suet pudding.

87, I can enchant the surf, to bring sea-warriors with mother-of-pearl eyes charging ashore out of each breaking wave!

88, a stuffed blackbird mounted on a stand. A sheet of parchment, folded and tucked between the bird's legs, read: To hold converse with. Tamurelo, pluck a feather from the belly of the Bird and place in the flame of a candle.

89, The base was a circular ebony platter, marked around the rim with signs of the zodiac. The golden ball at the center, so Casmir had been told, represented the sun. Nine silver balls of various size rolled in circular troughs around the center, but for what purpose was a secret known only to the ancients. The third ball from the center was accompanied by a smaller ball and made its circuit in exactly one year

90, Trilda had been designed by Hilario, a minor magician of many quaint notions, and built overnight by a band of goblin carpenters who took their pay in cheeses.

91,  a wonderful structure of jet and milk-glass. Slender columns supported domes and tall arcades and higher domes, and still more, ranked one above the other, along with a hundred terraces and balconies and, higher yet, a cluster of towers flying pennons and banderoles. In the shadowed halls hung chandeliers encrusted with diamonds and moonstones, which gave off glints of red, blue, green and purple light.

92, Stangle: the stuff of dead fairies, with implications of horror, calamity and putrefaction

93, I will transform all your teeth into barnacles."

94, crayfish in the shallow pools and a noble trout lazing in the shadows

95, Threlka is a witch of the seventh degree, and is wise beyond most others.

96, Threika cut away the splint and threw it into the fire. "Burn, wood, burn! Pain, in smoke fly up the chimney; disturb Tatzel no longer!" From a black jar she poured a syrup upon Tatzel's leg, then sprinkled on crushed dry leaves. She wound the shin with a loose bandage and tied it with a coarse red string. "And so it goes! In the morning you shall know no more weakness

97, the Cam Brakes. This is a series of ledges or terraces arranged like steps, which, according to myth, the giant Cam laid out to ease his way from Lake Quyvem up to the moors.

98, ancient tombs; give them all due respect. This place was sacred to the ancient Rhe-daspians, who inhabited the land three thousand years ago. Ghosts are common, and it is said that sometimes old friendships are renewed and old antagonisms find vent. If you by chance see such ghosts, make no sound and give no interference, and above all, never agree to act as arbiter at one

99, a ghoul who has the power to change his guise. It will meet you in sweet friendship, and offer wine and food and kindly shelter. Accept nothing—not so much as a sup of cold water—and cross down over this brake, no matter what the cost, while the sun is in the sky; at sunset the ghoul assumes its true shape and your life is in the balance. If you take its gift you are lost.

100, When you come to Lake Quyvern, you will discover Kernuun's Antler, which is the inn of Dildahl the Druid. He is, so it seems, a kindly man, and offers a hospitality of moderate cost. This is hardly true and you must eat none of his fish! He will serve it in many guises: as roe, and croquettes, and pickles, and pudding, and in soup. Eat only the items whose cost is specified

D100 Things You Find In Lyonesse Hexes

Lyonesse is a trilogy of books by Jack Vance (as in Vancian magic). It doesn't have quite the verbal gymnastics of his must-read Tales of the Dying Earth, but it somewhat makes up for it by having a less episodic plot and a wider variety of characters.

More to the point for this random table, Lyonesse is also a place in the novels--a kind of fairy-talish pre-Arthurian place with competing wizards. So if you have a place like that in your game, you can use this for random encounters or hex-fillings. I'll be using them for The Hexenbracken, the Far Lands and Gaxen Kane.

These are from the first Lyonesse book Suldrun's Garden. I basically went through and cut and pasted every single unusual or unusually-described noun from the book into the table. All of these are direct quotes, copyright Jack Vance, 1983.

I'll put up another one with stuff from the other two books later.

What do you see? Roll d100

1, Loald, a submarine giant

2, eery knight Sir Sacrontine who could not sleep of nights until he had killed a Christian

3, the crone named Dyldra, who was profound in the lore of herbs, and by some considered a witch

4, Ewaldo Idra, Adept of the Caucasian Mysteries.

5,  a wagon from which a pair of maidens tossed handfuls of pennies into the throng.

6, Blausreddin the pirate built a fortress at the back of a stony semi-circular harbor. His concern was not so much assault from the sea, but surprise attacks down from the pinnacles and gorges of the mountains, to the north of the harbor.

7, Go to Thripsey Shee just as the first rays of sunlight sweep down across the meadow. Do not go by moonlight, or you will suffer a death of weird invention. 

8,  Queen Sollace showed great cordiality to religious zealots and priests, and found much of interest in their creeds. She was thought to be sexually cold and never took lovers.

9, What to do with the defeated magician, who seethed with evil and hate? Murgen rolled him up and forged him into a stout iron post, ten-foot long and thick as my leg. Then Murgen took this enchanted post to the crossroads and waited till it shifted to the proper place, then he drove the iron post down deep in the center, fixing the crossroads so it (Zak: the heretofore fugitive Goblin Fair) no longer could move, and all the folk at the Goblin Fair were glad, and spoke well of Murgen

10, Never-fail will serve you all your life long, always to indicate where Lord Dhrun may be found. Notice!" King Throbius displayed an irregular object three inches in diameter, carved from a walnut burl and suspended from a chain. A protuberance to the side terminated in a point ripped with a sharp tooth

11, "Tell about Goblin Fair!"

12, "Well then, it's the place and time when the halflings and men can meet and none will harm the other, so long as he stays polite.

13, books of fairy-skein, written with words that you can't get out of your head once they're in.

14, a mordet* on him."

15, *A unit of acrimony and malice, as expressed in the terms of a curse.

16, the orangery

17, Dame Boudetta, Mistress of the Household, a severe and uncompromising lady, born into the petty gentility. Her duties were manifold: she supervised the female servants, monitored their virtue, arbitrated questions of propriety. She knew the special conventions of the palace. She was a compendium of genealogical information and even greater masses of scandal.

18, Prince Quilcy, is feeble-minded and spends his days playing with fanciful dolls and doll-houses.

19, Hall of Honors beyond, where fifty-four great chairs, ranking the walls to right and left, represented the fifty-four most noble houses of Lyonesse…One chair was characterized by a shifting sidelong deceit, but pretended graceful charm; another exhibited a doomed and reckless bravery. 

20, the crags Maegher and Yax: petrified giants who had helped King Zoltra Bright Star dredge Lyonesse Harbor; becoming obstreperous, they had been transformed into stone by Amber the sorcerer

21, King Oriante, a pallid round-headed little man, was ineffectual, shrill and waspish. He reigned at his castle Sfan Sfeg, near the town Oaldes, but could not rule the fiercely independent barons of mountain and moor. His queen, Behus, was both tall and corpulent and she had borne him a single son, Quilcy, now five years old, somewhat lack-witted and unable to control the flow of saliva from his mouth.

22, four gaunt Druid priests.

23, They wore long robes of brown furze, belted and hooded to hide their faces, and each carried an oak branch from their sacred grove.

24, …caught a mouse and changed it into a fine horse. 'Ride home at speed,' he told me. ";Do not dismount or touch the ground before your destination, for as soon as your foot touches ground, the horse is once more a mouse!

25, …a pair of young mermaids. They had seen her and called out, but they used a slow strange language Suldrun could not understand. Their olive-green hair hung about their pale shoulders; their lips and the nipples of their breasts were also a pale green. One waved and Suldrun saw the webbing between her fingers. Both turned and looked offshore to where a bearded merman reared from the waves. He called out in a hoarse windy voice

26, King Casmir now dispatched a secret emissary to Dascinet, urging attack upon Troicinet, and promising full assistance.

27, On the rocks west of the Chale crawled cripples, lepers and the weak-minded, in accordance with the statutes of Lyonesse.

28, Each was spread-eagled naked to a frame and hung upside down, facing out to sea. Down from the Peinhador came Zerling, the Chief Executioner. He walked along the row, stopped by each man, slit the abdomen, drew out the intestines with a double-pronged hook, so that they fell over the chest and head, then moved on to the next.

29, …the Tower of Owls

30, …green glass bottle of a size to hold a gallon. The mouth fitted tightly about the neck of a double-headed homunculus, so that only its two small heads protruded. These were squat, no larger than cat-size, with wrinkled bald pates, snapping black eyes, a nose and oral apparatus of tough brown horn. The body was obscured by the glass and a dark liquid, like strong beer…"Let the bottled imps clamp your hair or your fingers and you will learn the meaning of harm."

31, an octagonal mirror in a frame of tarnished wood…I see nothing. It is like looking into the sky."

32, The surface of the mirror moved; for an instant a face looked into her own: a man's face. Dark hair curled down past a flawless complexion; fine eyebrows curved over lustrous dark eyes; a straight nose complemented a full supple mouth.. .The magic faded…From time to time I demonstrate the inconceivable, or mock the innocent, or give truth to liars, or shred the poses of virtue—all as perversity strikes me. now I am silent; this is my mood."

33, …trained animals, which King Casmir had ordained for his pleasure. Bears in blue cocked hats tossed balls back and forth; four wolves in costumes of pink and yellow satin danced a quadrille; six herons with as many crows marched in formation.

34, …a weird-woman dressed in white entered the chamber holding high a glass vessel which exuded a flux of colors swirling behind her like smoke

35, …Brother Umphred, a portly round-faced evangelist, originally from Aquitania

36, …the Skyls, a dark crafty race of unknown origin, were uncontrollable. They lived isolated in mountain glens, emerging only when the time came for dreadful deeds. Vendetta, revenge and counter-revenge ruled their lives. The Skyls' virtues were stealth, reckless elan, blood-lust and stoicism under torment; his word, be it promise, guarantee or threat might be equated with certainty; indeed the Skyl's exact adherence to his pledge often verged upon the absurd. From birth to death his life was a succession of murders, captivities, escapes, wild flights, daring rescues: deeds incongruous in a landscape of Arcadian beauty.

37, Five golden crowns rolled forth. They became five golden butterflies which fluttered into the air and circled the parlor. The five became ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred. All at once they dropped to cluster upon the table, where they became a hundred gold crowns.

38, A cavalcade of twenty knights and men-at-arms came down the Sfer Arct and into Lyonesse Town. At their head rode Duke Carfilhiot, erect and easy: a man with black curling hair cropped at his ears, a fair skin, features regular and fine, if somewhat austere, save for the mouth, which was that of a sentimental poet.

39, A great lummox claims that you have molested his wife; he takes up his cutlass and comes at you.

40, Pomperol is an ardent ornithologist

41, swan-headed barge, which a dozen young girls clad in white feathers propelled slowly across the lake.

42, They breed and train the cannibal falcons, each a traitor to his kind.

43, a scarlet and gold carriage drawn by six white unicorns

44, a tall shape muffled in a long black cape, with a wide-brimmed black hat obscuring his features. He stood always back in the shadows and never spoke; when one or another of the magicians chanced to look into his face they saw black emptiness with a pair of far stars where his eyes might be.

45, Sartzanek, perhaps the most capricious and unpredictable of all the magicians, resided at Faroli, deep inside the forest,

46, the Spell of Total Enlightenment, so that Widdefut suddenly knew everything which might be known: the history of each atom of the universe, the devolvements of eight kinds of time, the possible phases of each succeeding instant; all the flavors, sounds, sights, smells of the world, as well as percepts relative to nine other more unusual senses. Widdefut became palsied and paralyzed and could not so much as feed himself. 

47, a plague of maggots

48, He was compressed into an iron post seven feet tall and four inches square, so that only upon careful scrutiny might his distorted features be noted. This post was similar to the post at Twitten's Corner. The Sartzanek post was implanted at the very peak of Mount Agon. Whenever lightning struck down, Sartzanek's etched features were said to twitch and quiver.

49, She appeared to him as a female clothed with a soft pelt of black fur and an oddly beautiful cat-like mask. This creature knew a thousand lascivious tricks

50, In niches beside the entrance stood a pair of sphinxes carved from blocks of black diorite: the Tronen, or fetishes of the house.

51, imps riding like knights on armored herons

52, A griffin's claw reposed in an onyx case. 

53, A gallstone cast by the ogre Heulamides gave off a peculiar stench.

54, Persilian, the so-called "Magic Mirror." This mirror would answer three questions to its owner, who then must relinquish it to another. Should the owner ask a fourth question, the mirror would make glad response, then dissolve into freedom.

55,  This feather," he said, "is indispensable to the conduct of daily affairs, in that it infallibly detects fraudulence."

56, a young harpy in a cage. 

57, Desmei moved away. Presently she departed through the forest in a palanquin carried by six running shadows.

58, Over a time of two hours she worked a great spell to sunder herself into a plasm which entered a vessel of three vents. The plasm churned, distilled, and emerged by the vents, to coalesce into three forms. The first was a maiden…

59, The cow's horn yields either fresh milk or hydromel, depending upon how one holds it.

60, a green meadow where rose an array of twenty poles, half supporting impaled corpses.

61, I am a student of magic. I am taught by the great Tamurello, and I am under obligation, so that I must refer to him matters of policy. 

62, Balberry's Abstracts and Excerpts, a vast compendium of exercises, methods, forms and patterns inscribed in antique or even imaginary languages.

63, Using a lens fashioned from a sandestin's eye, Shimrod read these inscriptions as if they were plain tongue.

64, a cloth of bounty, which, when spread on a table, produced a toothsome feast

65, fairies of Tuddifot Shee, at the opposite end of Lally Meadow, who loved music, though no doubt for the wrong reasons.

66, Fairy musicians, discovering that a human passerby had chanced to hear them, invariably inquired how he had enjoyed the music, and woe betide the graceless churl who spoke his mind, for then he was set to dancing for a period comprising a week, a day, an hour, a minute and a second, without pause. However, should the listener declare himself enraptured he might well be rewarded by the vain and gloating halfling. 

67, On certain occasions fairy horn-players asked to play along with him; each time Shimrod made polite refusal; if he allowed such a duet he might find himself playing forever: by day, by night, across the meadow, in the treetops, higgledy-piggledy through thorn and thicket, across the moors, underground in the shees. The secret, so Shimrod knew, was never to accept the fairies' terms, but always to close the deal on one's own stipulations, otherwise the bargain was sure to turn sour.

68, To the side a long-bearded troll, with an extravagantly large cudgel, beat a lank furry creature hanging like a rug on a line between a pair of trees. With every blow the creature cried out for mercy: Stop! No more! You are breaking my bones! Have you no pity? You have mistaken me; this is clear! My name is Grofinet! No more! Use logic and reason!"

69,  He placed down a small box, which expanded to the dimensions of a hut. 

70, …the severed member. Rings decorated the four fingers; the thumb wore a heavy silver ring with a turquoise cabochon. An inscription mysterious to Shimrod encircled the stone. 

71, In the forest nearby a door opens into the otherwhere Irerly. One of us must go through this door and bring back thirteen gems of different colors, while the other guards the access.

72,  isolated mountains of gray-yellow custard, each terminating in a ludicrous semi-human face. All faces were turned toward himself, displaying outrage and censure. Some showed cataclysmic scowls and grimaces, others produced thunderous belches of disdain. The most intemperate extruded a pair of liver-colored tongues, dripping magma which tinkled in falling, like small bells; one or two spat jets of hissing green sound, which Shimrod avoided, so that they struck other mountains, to cause new disturbance.

73, three small transparent disks. "These will expedite your search; in fact, you will go instantly mad without them. As soon as you pass the portal, place these on your cheeks and your forehead; they are sandestin scales and will accommodate your senses

74, you will need this sheath. It is stuff to protect you from emanations.

75, a pair of iron scorpions crawling at the end of golden chains. "These are named Hither and Thither. One will take you there; the other will bring you here

76, three competing religions: The Doctrine of Arcoid Clincture; the Shrouded Macrolith, which I personally consider a fallacy; and the noble Derelictionary Tocsin. 

77, a jet of blue magma

78, Shimrod brought the House Eye down from the ridge-beam, and set it on the carved table in the parlor, where, upon stimulus, it recreated what it had observed during Shimrod's absence.

79, On the great table he found a silver penny, a dagger and a small six-stringed cadensis of unusual shape which, almost of its own accord, produced lively tunes. 

80, WITHIN AND ABOUT THE Forest of Tantrevalles existed a hundred or more fairy shees, each the castle of a fairy tribe

81, BOAB: who used the semblance of a pale green youth with grasshopper wings and antennae. He carried a black quill pen plucked from the tail of a raven and recorded all the events and transactions of the tribe on sheets pressed from lily petals.

82, TUTTERWIT: an imp who liked to visit human houses and tease the cats. He also liked to peer through windows, moaning and grimacing until someone's attention was engaged, then jerk quickly from sight.

83, GUNDELINE: a slender maiden of enchanting charm, with flowing lavender hair and green fingernails. She mimed, preened, cut capers, but never spoke, and no one knew her well. She licked saffron from poppy pistils with quick darts of her pointed green tongue.

84, WONE: she liked to rise early, before dawn, and flavor dew drops with assorted flower nectars.

85, MURDOCK: a fat brown goblin who tanned mouseskins and wove the down of baby owls into soft gray blankets for fairy children.

86, FLINK: who forged fairy swords, using techniques of antique force. He was a great braggart and often sang the ballad celebrating the famous duel he had fought with the goblin Dangott.

87, SHIMMIR: audaciously she had mocked Queen Bossum and capered silently behind her, mimicking the queen's flouncing gait, while all the fairies sat hunched, hands pressed to mouths, to stop their laughter. In punishment Queen Bossum turned her feet backward and put a carbuncle on her nose.

88, FALAEL: who manifested himself as a pale brown imp, with the body of a boy and the face of a girl. Falael was incessantly mischievous, and when villagers came to the forest to gather berries and nuts, it was usually Falael who caused their nuts to explode and transformed their strawberries to toads and beetles.

89, Twisk, who usually appeared as an orange-haired maiden wearing a gown of gray gauze.

90, The troll Mangeon

91, He marshaled two armies of mice and dressed them in splendid uniforms. The first army wore red and gold; the second wore blue and white with silver helmets. They marched bravely upon each other from opposite sides of the meadow and fought a great battle

92, He assembled an orchestra of hedgehogs, weasels, crows and lizards and trained them in the use of musical instruments.

93, Falael, from boredom, next transformed Dhrun's nose into a long green eel which, by swinging about, was able to transfix Dhrun with a quizzical stare.

94, a fairy sword. "The name of this sword is Dassenach. It will grow as you grow, and always match your stature. Its edge will never fail and it will come to your hand whenever you call its name!"

95, a locket around his neck. "This is a talisman against fear. Wear this black stone always and you will never lack courage.

96,  a set of pipes. "Here is music. When you play, heels will fly and you will never lack jolly companionship."

97, "This is a magic purse," she told him. "It will never go empty, and better, if you ever give a coin and want it back, you need only tap the purse and the coin will fly back to you."

98, "Go your way and do not look back, on pain of seven years bad luck, for such is the manner one must leave a fairy shee."

99, a clearing planted with plum and apricot trees, which had long gone wild.

100,  Before the hall the ground had been tilled and planted with cabbage, leeks, turnips, and onions, with currant bushes growing to the side. A dozen children, aged from six to twelve, worked in the garden under the vigilant eye of an overseer boy, perhaps fourteen years old. He was black-haired and thick-bodied, with an odd face: heavy and square above, then slanting in to a foxy mouth and a small sharp chin. He carried a rude whip, fashioned from a willow switch, with a cord tied to the end.