Kinslayers

Kinslayers
by
Bobby Derie

Prince Ulther paused on the broken road, eyes on the horizon. Behind him, Borri Forkbeard called the Dragon Company to a halt. Eighty pairs of heavy boots came together in unison. They had been on a forced march north for three days, with a bare few stops to wash the dust from throats and beards. All around them, the country was dark, storm-tossed and grim. Wild thorns grew in the sunburnt fields which were once the source of Karak Ungor’s beer, and along the worn old road laid by cunning dwarf hands, goblin dung had been gathered and molded into crude effigies. Before the throng, not half a mile away, the gates to the fallen hold were closed. But Ulther’s eyes were to the east, across the fields to the foothills of the World’s Edge Mountains, where the tips of spears and skull-topped battle standards could be seen moving towards them.

“Battle lines!” barked Ulther.

Long-bearded sergeants took up the cry, the dwarf throng positioning itself in squads along the old dwarf road, forming a shieldwall. Each sergeant went up along his lines, exhorting the men, checking to make sure their powder was dry and handguns at the ready. Ulther’s eyes never left the enemy, even as four dwarfs set his oathstone in front of him, and Borri Forkbeard planted the dragon standard into the earth at his right and let it unfurl.

“Think you to die here this day, Ulther of Karak Ungor?” said Dwalin Ironbeard, one of the few slayers that had come with the expedition. Ulther stepped onto the oathstone. “By my oath, today I will have death or vengeance.” said the prince, unslinging his great axe. “Well spoken” said the slayer, hefting his great flail. Ironbeard had come to his disgrace late in life, and when the time had come to shave a runesmith had taken the longbeard’s great plait and fashioned it into a weapon, a thick rope knotted with iron nails and ending with a great spike-covered steel ball. When whipped at speed, the beard-flail could crush the skull of a troll.

Over the hills road a company of wolves the size of ponies; ridden by tall, lanky, crookbacked greenskins in strange attire. Some bore rough spears, poles of wood topped with skull and cruelly serrated leaf-shaped iron blades and iron-rimmed wooden shields; others bore strange curved blades or twisted bows of bone and sinew. The larger hobgoblins beat their smaller brothers into the ragged semblance of a line, slapping hobgoblin and wolf alike with the flat of their great curved swords, preparing for a charge.

“Stand fast you sons of Grungni!” Prince Ulther yelled to his troops. “No grobi shat into this earth can match Grimnir’s sons in battle, nor will our vengeance be soothed by every drop of blood in their veins! These are but the vanguard of our great enemy that blight our hold. Here we stand! Here they fall! Our fire will consume them like the mighty drakk of the undgrin…what are we?”

Eighty dwarf voices rise in unison, clanging the butt of their handguns on their shields. “The Dragon! The Dragon!” Prince Ulther gave a grim snarl as the hobgoblin wolf-riders fought to keep their mounts in line at the sound of the din. The largest hobgoblin of them all, the khan, bedecked in black chainmail and stolen silks raised his sword and beckoned his greenskins forward.

The first line of wolf-riders loped down the hill, directly toward the shield line like a gigantic arrow, the leading spears aimed at Ulther and the center of the Dragon Company’s line. The wolves loped easily across the wild grass, picking up speed as sinewy hobgoblins dug their heels into the beasts’ flanks, spears leveled ahead of them. Ulther waited until the last possible moment to give the order for his men to fire.

The massed volley of handgun fire tore into the hobgoblins flanks, felling wolves and greenskins alike. Riders were flung from the saddle as their mounts collapsed beneath them, and riderless wolves stopped to feast on the dead without their masters to stop them, some even turning to rip the dying greenskins from the saddle and devour them while the meat was still warm. One hobgoblin got close enough to nearly impale Ulther on his oathstone, but a shot rang out from Borri Forkbeard’s handgun and took the greenskin in the eye, and Ulther himself smashed his axe down into the wolf’s skull, anointing his father’s blade with brains.

Up and down the line, the scene repeated itself as the leading edge of the hobgoblin line came within range; here and there the greenskins managed to touch the line, but most fled back toward the hobgoblin line without ever engaging the dwarfs at all. The hobgoblin khan let the cowards flee through his second line, then ordered the second assault. Here again came the flying arrowhead, pointed at Ulther’s heart, this time with the hobgoblin in the lead.

This time, however, was different. Hobgoblin archers broke off from both sides of the wolf-riders to flank the farthest edges of Ulther’s throng. The prince could have chewed his beard in frustration, but there was naught he could do against the tactic at the moment. He focused instead on the hobgoblins in front of them. They were better-armored than the last wave, and fewer fell to the massed handgun fire.

Beside the prince, Ironbeard began swinging his beard-flail, building momentum in anticipation of the battle soon to come. Dwarf troopers, without time for another shot, laid down their guns and reached for their axes. A bullet from Borri passed through the hobgoblin khan’s ear but did not kill him; the standard bearer simply reversed his grip to wield his handgun as a club.

This time, the crash of impact was louder. Great stinking furry bodies pressed themselves up against the groaning shieldwall, fangs and claws snapping at legs and beards, while the hobgoblin riders leaned in their saddles to strike and chop at the dwarfs. Then the shieldwall would flex as the dwarfs pushed back, sometimes knocking a wolf over where it would squash its rider and be prey to a quick axe blow, or else provide room for the dwarfs to swing their blades at wolf or hobgoblin rider.

At the oathstone, the khan locked his blade with Ulther’s axe, but the spiked ball of the slayer’s beard-flail caught him in the side of his head and knocked him straight from the saddle. Ulther kicked the riderless mount in the snout with his steel-shod boot, and the wolf fell back as blood poured from his nostrils. At the base of the oathstone, the hobgoblin khan flailed to remove his dented helmet. Borri stepped in and clubbed the dying khan to death with his handgun.

Along the line, the dwarfs held back the hobgoblins. Here and there a dwarf would fall to claw or sword-stroke, but another would step up in his place; fewer than one dwarf fell for every three greenskins they killed. On the far flanks, when most of the battle was already over, hobgoblins bows and dwarf handguns continued to exchange fire. Ulther prepared to give a facing order so that the massed fire might once again be brought against the greenskins, when he felt a rhythm in the air. Instinctively, he squatted down to lay a hand on the oathstone, then looked again at the hill over which the hobgoblins had come.

Squat, familiar forms marched over the hill, in perfect step despite their heavy armor. They were a twisted parody of a Dwarf throng, stubby legs covered by long plaited skirts of bronze scales, faces and beards covered by bronze masks and guards molded in daemonic visages. Their banner was a lightning bolt shattering an anvil, on a field of red trimmed with black.

Black laughter like the cackling of a dwarf in the grip of gold-sickness came from the sky, and a warm breeze washed across the Dragon Company. Ulther stared into the sky.

A great red dragon-winged bull flapped powerfully in the afternoon sky, hovering above the approaching throng of Chaos Dwarfs, fire flashing from its nostrils. The lord seated upon its back wore a tall, flat-topped helm, his coiled black beard flashed with gold tokens in the shape of skulls, and in his hands lay an axe as familiar as Ulther’s own.

“Grimmaz” said Borri. “Lost to the Twisted Goblin tribe when Belegar fell trying to reclaim the hold.”

“Praise Grimnir, brothers.” said Ironbeard. “For today we may all find our dooms.”

“That may be,” said Prince Ulther. “But when night falls, dead or alive, we shall all be kinslayers.”

###

Lovecraft: An Addendum to the Clayton Family Tree

Lovecraft: An Addendum to the Clayton Family Tree
by
Bobby Derie


"The wedding promised to be not only a happy one but a brilliant one. It was attended by prominent relatives: the dukes of Norfolk, of Westminster, and of Pomver; the earls of Lovelace, of Carlisle, of Perth, and of Burlesdon; the barons of Tennington, Dunsany [...]"
- Tarzan Alive (Farmer 7)


In his groundbreaking biographical work, Philip José Farmer traced in part the true biography of John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, following the hints left by Burroughs, Watson, and others who couched the true exploits of the heroes and detectives of the 20th century as the fictional exploits of pulp demigods, and left a trail of breadcrumbs revealing the phenomenal family that holds Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes, Doc Savage and the Shadow, Bulldog Drummond and G8. This small article expands on a branch of the clan that Farmer had overlooked, or more likely simply lacked the resources to investigate.


The wedding of John Clayton and the Honorable Alice Rutherford in 1888 was attended by a number of illustrious luminaries, as well as close kinsman and more distant relations. Among the guests was John William Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany - one of the oldest and most prestigious titles in the whole of the English peerage. Accompanying the Baron Dunsany that day was his wife, Ernle Elizabeth Louisa Maria Grosvenor Ernle-Erle-Drax, and their young son, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, the future 18th Baron of Dunsany. The Plunketts were distant cousins of the Claytons, a relationship renewed every few generations by intermarriage, and William was a close friend to William Cecil Clayton, who was one of those being married that day. Notably absent from the nuptials were the Holmeses, cousins of both the Claytons and the Plunketts. For Mycroft this is nothing surprising; even in 1888 it would have taken a more titanic force than a gilded invitation to rouse the "unclubbable" man, but Sherlock's absence is explicable only by his being otherwise engaged - in this case, one of his periodic trips to the United States, from which he would not return until 1889, shortly before the events of "The Sign of Four" (1890).


In time, William Plunkett died and his son Edward inherited the title, and as Lord Dunsany he did his family proud as a soldier and hunter, a writer and playwright. We cannot know, of course, how well Lord Dunsany kept in touch with his more distant relatives, but there is reason to believe that he did keep in touch with his distant cousin, or at least was well-acquainted with Holmses to be familiar with their appearance and to be able to recognize them on sight; likely they supped together periodically when Lord Dunsany was in England, Holmes or Watson regaling his cousin and his cousin's wife with tales of his investigations.


Whatever the case, in time Lord Dunsany's reputation as a writer was made, and in 1919 he was in the United States on a lecture tour. It was at one such stop in Boston that Lord Dunsany noticed in the audience a rather shy man - just about thirty years of age - who must, despite the pugnacious jaw and brown eyes he inherited from his mother, have struck the Baron as a very close resemblance to a certain consulting detective. Whether Lord Dunsany made anything of the resemblance or not is unclear, but it would be some years until he saw Holmes again - the detective being busy with the adventures related in his Casebook during the early 20s, so it was probably not until 1924 - but when he did, he must have brought up the curious resemblance, either at dinner or perhaps a quiet word with Holmes in private later, while smoking a pipe. Whatever the case, shortly after that meeting Holmes set off for another trip to America, retracing the journey he had taken over 30 years ago, to meet with H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937).


The events of 1925, the revelation of Holmes' affair and paternity, were given by the biographer P. H. Cannon in "Pulptime," later included in The Lovecraft Papers. (And which, unfortunately, makes irrelevant a great deal of strenuous genealogical effort aimed at the Lovecraft family tree, such as Richard D. Squires' Stern Fathers 'neath the Mould: The Lovecraft Family in Rochester.) Of course, Cannon gives a somewhat rose-tinted take on the affair; Sherlock had come thousands of miles to get a look at his bastard, and found a keen and perceptive mind that yet seemed to have inherited more of his brother's lack of drive than his own piercing intellect. So too, it is hard to know what effect this had on Lovecraft - obviously, Cannon shows he was initially thrilled to discover his true father was no less a figure than an idolized boyhood hero, but imagine the disappointment when Holmes left - unable to recognize his son publicly, and apparently unwilling to do much else for him.


This may go some way to explaining also why Lovecraft's later genealogical research focused on his "more distinguished" maternal family tree; to his dying day he would likely never know that the Lord Dunsany he so admired, who he met but never spoke to in 1919, was also his distant kinsman. Likewise, he never knew that the exploits of Tarzan, which at first enthralled him and then later repulsed him with their pulp sensationalism, were based in part on the true exploits of his cousin John Clayton, Lord Greystoke.


Of course, for that matter there were certain familial secrets H. P. Lovecraft most likely did not share with his newly-discovered father either; for at least in one respect the apple does not fall far from the tree: Lovecraft too had a child out of wedlock. As revealed in the letters of David Parkes Boynton (1897-1956) due to the scholarship of Kenneth W. Faig, Jr. (and partially fictionalized in Tales of the Lovecraft Collectors), in 1909 a teenaged Lovecraft had a brief affair with an Italian girl named Cristina Berlucci, resulting in a child: Dora Berlucci...and in time grandchildren, though Lovecraft was long dead before the first of them was born.


There is another part of this story, though it is more confused and difficult to trace. While it is fact that Holmes did not meet his natural son until 1925, there are indications that Lovecraft was at least dimly aware of some of the family lore at an earlier date - at least before writing "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" (1920) which bears some startling references to what can only be the lost city of Opar and the mangani. This account of familial degeneration was, remarkably, essentially true in many respects, though initially difficult to resolve with Farmer's chronology. In the 1760s, Sir Wade Jermyn (though that was not the true family name, as like Burroughs and Watson Lovecraft wrote in code) discovered Opar and the mangani, and became the mate of the priest-queen who preceded La. Lovecraft changed the dates to avoid suspicion, but "Arthur Jermyn" actually died by his own hand 1852, but the mummy that was supposed to have caused the affair did not arrive in London until 1912. This date corresponds to when Tarzan and Jane returned to London in Farmer's chronology - it was Tarzan who must have taken with him the mummified corpse of the former priestess, or possibly someone in his entourage.


Like the Greystokes, the Jermyns were one of the most ancient lines in the English peerage; unlike them, they were heirs to a rather different legacy. Where Burroughs traces the Greystokes to their mythical progenitor of Woden, the Jermyns traced their heritage to certain of the more ancient native peoples of the British isles, their heritage disappearing into legends of near-human races - probably neanderthals, or tribes of Cro-Magnon that had bred with neanderthals and absorbed their ancient religion as well as their genes. This family, whose seat was an ancient cult center, though they intermarried with waves of invaders, retained their religion down through centuries, though eventually the line dwindled and many times the seat fell into disrepair. This Gaelic clan was seated on the borderlands of Wales and would provide as well the basic outlines of Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls" (though Lovecraft changed the title to another, extinct title to preserve the anonymity of the family).


The "mummified ape princess" did not escape the notice of one of the few cadet branches of the clan in London - the Welsh mystic, actor, author, and journalist Arthur Machen, whose home town of Caerleon with its ancient ruined Roman garrison was very close indeed to the old family seat, where the invading Romans had married their pagan rites with those of the local cult. Interestingly in the late 1880s and early 1890s, Machen was involved part-time in scholarly research for certain gentlemen attached to occult societies - in particular, the Egyptian Freemasons - under the lodge-name "Tall Cedar," translating old Latin and French alchemical and occult manuscripts into English, rendering their complex codes and symbolism as best as he could. Among this body of work was the final account of Arthur Jermyn - himself a mason in good standing until his death, who had willed certain family papers dealing with esoteric matters to the lodge. These papers were copied and eventually a copies sent to sister-lodges, including in the United States...where they fell into the hands of Winfield Scott Lovecraft.

The fullest account of what happened after that is given in Colin Wilson's Introduction to the Necronomicon, but suffice it to say that the young H. P. Lovecraft stumbled upon the transcripts in his father's papers, and there had about half of the story of Opar and the Jermyns; the other half would have to wait until 1919 - when, as part of his many anecdotes to amuse the the audience, Lord Dunsany included the story of the mummified ape princess among his many fables. Lovecraft, recognizing the affinity with the history he had already read, then crafted his mostly true tale.


What Wilson did not know was why Winfield Lovecraft chose to bring the lodge papers home - and it was because that the Jermyns were in fact ancestors of the Phillips, his wife's family, and were of genealogical interest. Unfortunately shortly after this Winfield's illness took hold, leaving his young son to eventually find the papers and work out the history of his family as best he could. It was this bizarre conflux of genes that gave rise to the unique genius of H. P. Lovecraft.

###

Retrosaber

Retrosaber
by
Bobby Derie

The moons rose over the sea on Dantooine, and beyond them in the cloudless sky was the spiraling flow of the galactic arm; both were reflected in the dark sea, so that it seemed one could almost walk into the sky. Eiven Task lay on his back, staring out at sea and sky, his ragged breathing drowning out the slow beat of the waves. Long, dark brown fingers with bulbous, glowing tips crawled over his form, great brown eyes scanned his form, humming tunelessly as he worked. Task's body was a map of reddened and blackened skin; dark scabs with rough, dry edges already going yellow; and deep blue-grey bruises. A skilled duelist would be appalled at the history written in those recent wounds, the blackened blisters on the right hand that still gripped the Rakatan forcesaber in a deathgrip, the bits of other creature's bone in his right heel where he had broken through skulls, the strange-colored bloodstains that could not be his...and beneath those fresh injuries, the scars and memories of a dozen conflicts, many never properly seen to by doctor or medical droid, a legacy of desperate, life-or-death conflicts...

The squat brown shape of the Green Sith moved over this broken form, and as his glowing fingers hovered the charred flesh flaked off to reveal new pink flesh beneath, bruised flesh swelled and faded, cuts knit together, and deeper injuries that Eiven was only barely aware of slowly healed. Task could feel every moment, spared not a single iota of pain as small bones were telekinetically pulled back into alignment. The little alien seemed to draw on his pain, the glow brightening as each whispered scream forced itself from the human's throat.

He almost told the darksider not to bother. As painful and myriad as his biological injuries were, Eiven knew they weren't what was killing him. An ancient pink scar ran down the length of the human's torso, from the base of his neck in a straight line down to his hip. To the right of that line he was still a man, a pale near-human with the lean, muscled build of a marathoner; to the left he was machine - metal and plastic implants, prosthetic organs to replace those damaged or lost when he had been dissected. His left arm was not even a stump, only a broken socket installed in the shoulder-joint. Now, the cybernetic organs were failing - already the left side of his chest failed to rise, the plastic lung still and silent; his heart beat was erratic and arrhythmic.

Task closed his eyes, as his friend fed off his pain to try and save him, waiting to die. Fever came, as the night came on to dawn, though honest sleep eluded him. Fire burned under his skin, behind his eyes, pounded through his temples, all except for his prosthetics which were cold and lifeless. The Green Sith no longer hovered over his patient, but Eiven was aware of him, the short-legged, barrel-chested alien waddling back and forth, piling things up nearby. In his more lucid moments, the human saw they were pieces of technology - the Jedi had forbidden most tech on the island, but Task saw a small pile of devices small enough to hide within a body...power cells, memchips, small holo projectors...along with ancient antennas and wires probably looted from the buildings that served as dormitories for the prison. Then the heat would come again, and strange dreams; his arms and legs kicked out in his sleep, refighting old duels...Sith and Jedi, Mandalorian bounty hunters and Imperial Knights, punk kids in alleys playing with ancient, honored weapons...and again and again he came back to the bloody prison massacre.

Two dozen Force users had screamed as he had ignited the forcesaber, and then he had silenced those voices, one by one...the first dozen or so had been an orgy of slaughter, his rage and pain driving him through...but after that, he had hunted them down, in ones and twos, not stopping until he couldn't fight any more.

He woke to find the Green Sith forcing water into his mouth. The pile of junk...still looked like a pile of junk, but now it was more organized, somehow. Wires connected pieces of it together, lights glowed, and something in its guts hummed.

"Don't worry," the brown alien said, mopping Task's brow with a wet rag. "Reaper calling home."

*

Consciousness came back to Eiven Task by degrees. Force senses awoke before he opened his eyes, two presences in the room with him - one, the Green Sith, his power greater than his short frame would suggest, like a seed waiting for the right soil; the other, one Eiven did not know, not particularly powerful but driven. The smell of bacta wafted into his nostrils, and he breathed easily and without pain; his right hand still grasped the forcesaber, but his skin touched cloth...sheets...and he lay on something soft and flat. The pain of his injuries had faded into a dull memory-ache, except for the uncomfortable weight of a catheter. Finally, Eiven registered sounds.

"...I think he's awake." A human voice said. Female, but unfamiliar. Task opened his eyes, blinked.

A medical bay. The Green Sith sat on a too-big chair, next to a human female with dark brown skin and kinky black hair cropped close to her skull, but her eyes were droid-eyes, glass-and-metal lenses that followed his moves. She was dressed in a grey-and-white technician's jumper, but at her hip was a curve-hilted grey-metal lightsaber, with a curious cord that stretched from the base of the hilt to a black box clipped to her belt. He felt a flicker of her presence in his mind.

"You feel better." She said. Task nodded. He brushed the sheet aside, and wasn't terribly surprised to see he was nude underneath. He still looked better than he had in months. His recent injuries had been reduced into barely visible scars, and even his old scars seemed to have faded. The line of red-black Sith runes tattooed into flesh along the line of his bifurcation were intact, and the prosthetics themselves were new and unfamiliar, like blue sacs held within a ceramic mesh. The shoulder-socket was still empty, however. Forcing himself to drop the forcesaber, Task clenched and unclenched his stiff right hand.

"Thanks to you. So what do I owe you?" Task asked. The woman came forward and not ungently disconnected the catheter.

"Nothing you don't want to give, Eiven Task. The Reaper called in a favor." she said. Her mechanical eyes met his own, and he made the mistake of staring for too long before he realized she probably didn't blink. "The only question now is what do I do with you. Two notorious Sith just broken out of a secret Jedi prison...won't be many places in the galaxy they won't be looking for you."

"I'm not a Sith," Eiven said, "and we need to go to the Graveyard."

She cocked her head to the side. "What for?"

"Because that's where I left my ship."

**

She called herself Droideyes. The ship was an unarmed and refitted Bothan frigate left over from the Rebellion; the name was in Droid, but she said a near-translation was No Tears for Meat. Droideyes was captain, six droids were the crew complement. While the Green Sith never wore clothes, at least as far as Task could tell, Droideyes had scavenged up a pair of pants for her fellow human, and the three biologicals settled into a regular pattern as the ship hurtled toward the Alderaan system, a regimen of exercise, meditation, and conversation.

"Injuries of body, healed. Again!" The Green Sith said, sitting on Eiven's back as the human did his one-handed push-ups. "Injuries of spirit, not so much."

"So when do I get to lightsaber practice?" Task asked, sweat dripping onto the floor.

"Never," Droideyes said, her hand resting on the hilt of her own blade. "Reaper told me about what happened on Dantooine. You lost control. That thing," she pointed a toe to the weapon hanging off his new belt. "Tipped you over the edge, almost burned you out."

"I don't care what Greenie said. It's just a tool," Task said, going down and coming back up in another rep.

"Not just tool," the little brown alien said "for others, perhaps. Not Force-users. Understanding of the Force, requires focus, experience. You see this, with lightsabers. So hard for non-adepts to use. The blade has no weight, so little mass, so deadly. To wield properly, a Jedi, a Sith must be aware of where the blade is at all times; to see where it is and where it is going to be. This awareness is only the beginning. Beyond this is affinity, to understand a weapon, to bond with it, to begin to understand how Force flows through that which does not live. It is the crux of what makes Jedi a Jedi, Sith a Sith."

Eiven felt a weight off his back, and saw the small brown alien levitating, legs tucked up underneath him, the big eyes closed, chin resting against his chest, which glowed from within, highlighting the dark grey shapes of the Sith tattoos. Task paused and stared up at him.

"In ancient days, before lightsabers, was the Jedi katanas. Metal blades, imbued with the Force, some using crystals in the hilt as focus, forged by a Jedi's power and understanding of the Force; tools, yes, but extensions of the Jedi, expression of their connection to the Force. Their power poured in the metal, to shape it, both the seen and unseen. Then came the forcesabers; older than the Jedi, feeding off anger, pain, and fear...many Jedi were unprepared, unable to control such feelings. Many fell to the Dark Side. This was the beginning of the Sith. They took the teachings of the Jedi and expanded on them, the Jedi Forge became the heart of Sith Alchemy, the ancient technique of forging Jedi katanas became the basis for Sith swords..."

"The Jedi weren't prepared because they didn't understand what they were dealing with," Droideyes broke in. With a deft maneuver she ignited her own lightsaber, brought it up in a Makashi salute. "Like you, when you picked up the forcesaber. They weren't prepared for it, because they hadn't developed the technology, didn't understand it. They recognized the potential of lightsabers, but knew they couldn't handle the forcesaber's power. So they made their own." She moved through a Makashi kata, beginning and ending in an opening stance. "Primitive fireswords and the like were not unknown before, but now the Jedi were trying to emulate something specific, and their technology wasn't quite up to the task. Their first efforts were protosabers - handheld energy swords, but with heavy power requirements that required an attached belt-mounted power supply."

"Like yours?" Task asked. She nodded.

"Mine is a retrosaber. Same principles as the protosaber, but with modern technology and materials. What the ancient Jedi did by necessity, I do by choice - but I do it better. The lightsaber as we know it was actually refined from Sith lightsabers, because the Sith experimented and perfected the superconducting loop that made the external power supply unnecessary. My retrosaber is as hardy and powerful as any modern design, but the power pack gives it a stronger, more lasting blade; while it lacks a bit of reach for some styles of fighting, the curved hilt is an old dueling design allows greater flexibility with the range it does have."

She demonstrated with a speedy, precise display, leaving blinding afterglow of Basic letters in Eiven's vision.

"Style too, important." Greenie continued. "Early protosabers, use sword-style. As understanding of lightsabers increased, so did combat become more...refined."

"The seven forms," Task said.

"That, and more than that," the Green Sith said. "There are powers to the stances, techniques, forms of meditation. The lightsaber becomes a part of the understanding of the Force, a means to use it; the power of the Force becomes one with the style of combat. Faster. Stronger. Surer. You know this. The forms move beyond the mere martial arts, they incorporate use and understanding of the Force into themselves - acrobatic flips, telekinetic throws, reading an opponent's thoughts...and sometimes more. You know Juyo."

"Yes," Task said.

"The seventh form, long incomplete. Once, Juyo was forbidden to the Jedi. Too aggressive, it led them to skirt the Dark Side. Then came Vaapad. The perfected seventh form, which channeled the Dark Side without being consumed by it...and even then, too dangerous."

"Mace Windu's form," Task said. "I know the stories. It's been lost since he died."

Droideyes ended another kata, this time with the point of her blade hovering only centimeters from Eiven's nose. Eiven's hand twitched, but he carefully kept his palm on the floor, far away from the forcesaber.

"You listen, but you do not understand. I know of you, Eiven Task. Holovids of underground tournaments, bounties levied, dead bodies found burned and dismembered. You walk a fine line between Light and Dark, calling neither Jedi nor Sith master. I respect that." She brought up the blade and clicked it off, hooking it back into her belt in one smooth, well-practiced motion. "But this forcesaber is powerful. More than anything you've dealt with before. It will make you dangerous in the eyes of those you run from. It may even destroy you. More than one Jedi, thinking they could master a forcesaber, slew everyone around them - and finding none left to hate, turned the burning blade on themselves."

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Throw away. Destroy it." the brown alien whispered, "That would be best. Yet Reaper could not do it. Kept it with him, long time. Now, yours, and I doubt you throw it away either. No, Eiven Task, Darth Bitch of Dantooine Prison...you must find a way to control it, or come to peace with it. To find the balance you have lost. We will help you, until you get to your ship. Then, you are on your own. Now," the alien said, levitating back onto Task's back.

"Break is over. Again!"

*

Once, there was a planet called Alderaan. Now there was only the Graveyard, a debris field where a world once was. Perhaps one day, gravity would bring the fragments of the planet together again; but that would take place on a cosmic time scale. For now, Task knew, it stood as a memorial of a dead world, the psychic screams of the victims still echoing through the Force in the space around it. The three adepts were mostly silent as the No Tears for Meat slipped towards one of the larger fragments, keeping clear of the patrol by the Guardians - descendants of Alderaan that had been off-world when the planet died, now guarding the lost treasures and memorials erected from the depredations of scavengers and pirates. With Droideyes in the pilot's seat, Eiven acted as navigator, helping her avoid the Guardian's remote sensors, showing her where to land...a smuggler's bay, built into the chunk of a dead planet, long forgotten. Inside his ship, The Memory of Alderaan.

They said their goodbyes as the air filters hissed into life in his ship. Task watched the frigate leave through the front view-ports of the cramped pilot module. He waited until they were out of sight, and then until their Force presence faded into the background of the universe. When he was sure they were gone, he headed back into the living chambers and pressed a hidden stud. A portion of the wall moved aside with a hiss and a puff of dust. Others might have seen part of the old Imperial armory - blaster pistols, web gear, and bits of armor familiar to any Stormtrooper - but among the pieces was a workbench stocked with fragments from a dozen lightsabers, some of them ancient antiques dug up from barren battlefields; the decapitated head of the Sith architect droid A1S1; a row of seven holocrons won from the tournament on Tatooine. Front and center, on the narrow workbench where he had left it, was Eiven's prosthetic left arm.

Task set the forcesaber down next to it, and issued a command in Basic to A1S1. The droid responded with a long string of beeps and clicks in Droidspeak. Eiven nodded and began taking out the tools he would need. Whatever other lessons Droideyes and the Green Sith had hammered home in the slow weeks it took to travel from Dantooine on the Outer Rim to the Graveyard of Alderaan among the core worlds, Task had learned quite a bit about retrosabers.

Removing the casing from the prosthetic arm, Eiven revealed the lightsaber embedded in the limb, and set about removing it. The work was slow, because the human only had one hand to work with, and he and A1S1 chirped and chittered back and forth to each other. Disassembling the lightsaber, he held once more the crimson krayt dragon pearl he had taken from the tomb of a Prophet of the Dark Side - just holding it, the voices of the Alderaan dead grew more clear, his senses expanding and sharpening. Task set the gem down and began on opening the casing to the forcesaber.

The work was tricky, slow, and careful - because neither Eiven nor A1S1 had any experience with Rakatan technology. Yet even though ten thousand years might separate them from the artisan who made this weapon, a power cell was a power cell. The krayt dragon pearl was incorporated into a new focusing assembly attached to the beam emitter, the internal power cell attached by wires to an external power supply which Task installed in the upper arm.

The final adjustments to get the blade length and focus correction would require the blade to be activated, of course.

Eiven meditated to steel himself for the task, clearing his mind, letting the cold, dead emptiness of space ground him. He laid his right hand on the switch. Power surged through the melding of new and old circuits, and the forcesaber blade ignited. Instantly, rage and despair welled up within him, more intense than last time - the effect amplified by the Prophet's artifact. Now however there were no targets for his wrath, and Eiven felt almost overwhelmed by self-loathing. Rage at his impotence, his failures, all the abuse he had endured...yet as he hung on A1S1 chirped and burbled, the thin trailing wires from the Sith droid's head attached to the focus assembly, calibrating the blade length and shape. In less than a minute, the crimson blade was the length of a shoto, thirty-five centimeters long, thin and intense. Then the droid head cut the power.

Task crumpled onto the desk, his head in his hand. Less than a minute, and his new weapon had almost destroyed him. With a bit of a struggle, Eiven replaced the outer casing on the prosthetic arm, the emitter hole on the back of the wrist an the back of the hand plated with lightsaber-resistant phrik alloy. By the time it came to attach the arm into his shoulder socket, Task's hand had stopped shaking. When finished, he stood and stretched his left arm, getting used to the weight of it on that side of his body again, and allowed himself a small smile. It felt good to be whole again.

Then he frowned. For as powerful a weapon as the forcesaber was - more powerful, perhaps, now that it was married to the other artifact - it was still beyond his control. That would not do.

*

In the darkness, Task sat on his haunches before the seven holocrons, and bowed low as they flickered into life, the shadowy images of ancient Jedi and Sith staring at him.

"Masters," he said. "tell me what you know of Vaapad."

###

Adam's Ruritania

Adam's Ruritania
by
Bobby Derie

Luc found Jenna in the library, on the third floor where the large tables were set against the high windows, and more importantly where there was a plug for her laptop. She had managed by dint of effort to conquer half of the table, which she begrudgingly shared with a pair of essay-writers, using a wall of cloth-bound geographies to demarcate her territory. Jenna herself was leaning back in a stretch, and one of the essayists was packing up, so Luc stepped forward, bearing a poisonously black doubleshot from the ground-floor Starbucks as he sidled into the empty chair. She accepted his tribute with a purr.

"How goes the book?" he asked.

Her eyes smiled as she sipped the steaming, bitter liquid caffeine.

"Almost done."

Luc clapped politely, and scanned the book titles. Fat and heavy histories of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires and cloth-bound collections of obscure journals sat on the bottom, more modern slick-and-shiny paperbacks on top - keywords seemed to be Russia, Cold War, Politics, and Eastern Europe; subdivided into piles for economics, geography, law, religion, language...

"This is the Adams project, right?"

"Yup." She said, staring at the screen between sips. "He likes to make fun, but it's a real place. Interesting people, interesting history."

"I'm sure. How far back does it go?" Marc said, sliding a copy of Herodotus' Histories from one forlorn corner of the wall to browse through it.

"Hmm, good question. Not much to interest archaeologists there, but the general feel is that the Elb region has been inhabited for at least four thousand years. In Medieval times a monk wrote a mythic history saying that the people were Egyptians who had immigrated from the isle of Elbo, which had been built up in the sea from piling ashes on top of each others; linguistic and genetic evidence suggests something closer to a migration from north and west, near the headwaters of the river Elbe in the modern day Czech Republic - but with a large Hunnic infusion as well. My guess is the Scythians chased these poor bastards into the mountain valleys and then the Huns stopped by when they raped their way through Europe."

She leaned back and closed her eyes, letting the heat of the coffee radiate through her fingers.

"There's a bunch of related microstates nearby, but this is the one everybody knows, because of Adams. Geologically the whole place is just a shallow mountain lake with poor drainage; lots of snow-melt, lots of mud. There are legends about the mud going back almost as far as there were stories about the place. To hear the locals tell, Julius Caeser's chariots got stuck in the mud when he tried to invade, so he went south. Only place he thought wasn't worth the trouble of conquering. But they were conquered."

Marc just listened; he knew Jenna liked the opportunity to compose in her head by talking about things. She sipped and continued.

"The place was a Byzantine client state, back around the time Armenia declared itself Christian. One of the emperors had heard about a magic spring, set up a spa and small fortress there to guard the passes and so he'd have someplace to stay. Turns out that the spa is actually a lithium water spring; it's probably why the locals have a reputation for being out to lunch. Anyway, the Christian priests rolled in and over the pagans, and that was that until the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453; the Turks made their way into the mountains a few years later and the local garrison didn't put up much of a fight, and the local people didn't blink much when the churches mostly became mosques. The capital city Phlimsk grew up around the medieval castle which the Byzantines built and the Ottomans expanded; it's still in use as the Presidential Palace today."

"That was the start of the problems, really; the Muslims introduced a strong taboo against left-handed people, which was quite common in the region - there's a genetic study in here somewhere, highest propensity for it in the world - " Jenna started fiddling among the journals then gave up and carried on, " - and it gained the force of law. Southpaws were a legally ostracized minority for a couple centuries, right up through World War II when the Ottoman Empire crumbled and the Russians got the place as part of the spoils."

"Not much in English after that - never is with these Iron Curtain microprincipalities - and the Elb language is a mess with its own font that seems to be all vowels and diacritical marks; half the jokes Adam makes about the place are from mistranslations. The Soviets came down hard on religion, and there's strong evidence the place didn't even have a priest or imam for something like fifty years after they rolled in. The whole place was divvied up into collectives, mainly subsistence farming and using the spa waters to make cosmetic mud. The place was still very much off the radar until the USSR collapsed; the regional governor in Phlimsk - Yorgi - set up a referendum and declared the whole place a free democratic republic on April 2nd, 1990, promising capitalism would cure all ills. Then Yorgi declared himself head of the right-handed majority party and was elected president-for-life. A couple Communist recidivists kept control in the northern valley and declare themselves a separate state of North Elb - not quite like Korea, but not far off either."

She set the empty coffee down on a pile of books whose spines looked like the bastard spawn of Cyrillic and Hunnic, in chipped and faded gold leaf. Marc passed her his own untouched coffee, which she took as a cue to keep going.

"So, democracy was a hard sell. Capitalism too. And the only major export was literally mud. The United States tried to spur foreign investment and the government tried to expand its markets, but the country and the people weren't ready, which meant it was a posterchild for corporate abuse. Most of the villages still operated under the old collective structure, where individuals weren't paid for their labor; American corporations opened subsidiaries and branch locations and basically built sweat shops to pound out their products with slave labor. Lot of the people left for other countries where wages were higher."

"The political situation didn't help. There was an armed revolt led by an American businessman called Dagobert or Dogebert or something on October 7th, 1991; he claimed he was the messiah and set himself up as king in Phlimsk. Didn't last long though; he mistook an annual gardening festival as an armed uprising and fled. Yorgi returned to power almost immediately, but the left-handed minorities had had enough and staged an open rebellion behind a leader called 'The Fox.' The conflict became protracted because neither side had access to modern weapons - imagine if the Taliban had tried to get Al Qaeda out of those mountain caves and neither had anything heavier than some cheap AK-47s - so in '92 Yorgi asked an American economic advisor in to arbitrate the negotiations."

Jenna sipped the coffee.

"It was all a plot to kill the Fox, of course. And it worked! Crazy Yorgi's stupid scheme worked! But it backfired when the American advisor joined the rebels, and forced Yorgi to the table and to make concessions. But there are still reports of rebel leftist activity through 2007. 'scuse me."

She got up and made a bee-line to the bathroom; Marc took the opportunity to flip through one of the top books - a legal history - and read the first article at random. It seemed that after the Soviets had left, the People's Republic of Elb had written a constitution, but in a fit of bizarre backwards nationalism had reverted to its pre-Russian legal system - the bizarre medieval Corpus Juris Civilis, straight up Roman Law as codified by the medieval glossators, with the addition of several hundred years of precedents and laws set down by whatever king, governor, or melik had been in charge. On top of which was juris elbonii, the folk law of the villages, which included trial by combat and other bizarre practices and punishments, not a few of which involved the omnipresent mud. There were no formal courts; the village collectives served to hear cases outside the capital, and inside the capital the president was the supreme arbiter. No bill of rights either; they'd tried to pass one under "King Dogebert," but it had never got out of committee.

The part that Marc most enjoyed was the digression on "Animals in Public Office" - apparently the small nation had a history of pigs, cows, and things heading up posts like Secretary of State and Secretary of the People's Treasury. It had been used as far back as Byzantine times by local kings to keep certain positions filled, based on the supposed precedent of Emperor Caligula naming his horse Incitatus a Senator - and Yorgi had revived the tradition to consolidate his power from both Leftists and overreaching subordinates in the Righthanded majority party.

Marc closed the book as Jenna came back.

"Where was I? Oh right, Yorgi back in power. So the technical skillbase and infrastructure were terrible, but with their cheap labor companies in the People's Republic could underbid pretty much everyone else. Led to a couple disasters; in '94 the French wanted a satellite put into orbit and it was left up to them...the engineers miscalculated or used the wrong technology or something and the rocket actually hit the French embassy in Phlimsk. Well, that caused an incident - the French responded with a brief retaliatory aerial bombardment, but there wasn't much to hit, and the country claimed it actually made a profit selling the scrap from the munitions. The 'war' became a point of national pride."

"1995 saw an overmining of the ubiquitous mud, combined with a drought in the mountains that dried up several important streams; a couple businessment reaped massive profits but devastated the local ecology, then skipped out with their money overseas. The mud levels dipped so low that the locals actually discovered a new species of amphibian - genetically it's a salamander, but it looks like an eel with teeth - which the locals called 'mud weasels' or 'leprechauns' or something, though that last one might be a mistranslation. Lot of local stories about people getting bitten by unseen things swimming in the mud, y'know?"

"Anyway, the sudden rise of GNP with the overmining caused foreign speculation in the ikruhd - same root as the Czech koruna - and the currency crashed. Mass inflation. President Yorgi scrapped it and replaced it with a new currency, the gropnik. I think he was trying to cozy up to the Russians."

Jenna pawed through the pile of books until she found a slim one in library rebinding, and flipped through it to show a grainy photo of a short, rotund figure with white hair and glasses.

"This is Dogebert. He came back in 1999, this time as the American diplomatic liason - nobody else wanted the job - and basically went hog-wild with his diplomatic immunity. Looted the ancient burial mounds of the pre-Byzantine kings, parked wherever he wanted, etc. Yorgi was busy with the rebels again this time; the Lefties had appealed to the masses with an effort to unionize against the foreign corporations, appealing to old Communist sympathies, and Yorgi arrested the leader and tried to execute him. Eventually Dogebert intervened and intimidated Yorgi into surrendering - again. Dogebert spend a couple months strip-mining the mud to fill his own pockets while building 'the Las Vegas of Eastern Europe' - where gambling and prostitution weren't just legal, they were mandatory!"

She laughed.

"Yeah. Anyway, then there was a famine in 2000 - genetically-modified crops brought in to prevent starvation, spread like a weed but nobody would eat it. Worse, they claimed it sucked all the nutrition out of the local mud - geophagy was pretty common there historically, probably due to frequent bad harvests, but a lot of locals make claims about the mud that border on the supernatural. Anyway, they cleared out the crops but a resident plutocrat named Petru Vlasdomovitch used it as an opportunity to seize power; the massive stock of nitrate-based fertilizers for the GMO crops were turned into explosives and he blackmailed and bullied the surrounding microstates with them, but the explosives were unstable and not stored well and exploded - and that was the end of Petru."

"Next chapter, oil!" she said with an excited squeal. "Massive deposits from all those prehistoric lake-fish or something, trapped under the mud. Foreign company goes in to drill, right in the Wildlife Preserve, because there's no environmental regulations or corporate taxes; it's cheaper than getting a pipeline built in the United States. Killed seven species, including the oryx elboni, sometimes mistaken for a unicorn in medieval texts. Turns out there's a lot of coal and gas under the People's Republic, and the people in charge start using the money to improve the infrastructure, starting with a nuclear power plant which began construction in 2002 - I don't know if they've ever finished it. Of course, that turned out to be a cover for their nuclear weapons program; they bought a Russian warhead around the same time, but lack any sort of delivery system for it, and the intelligence community has stymied their ability to get any actual plans to build their own yet, which is probably for the best."

Tapping a bit into her laptop, Jenna flipped it around to show something that looked like a prop of the Death Star. "Remember that group in the North that broke off? Still Communist? Yeah, they were doing the same thing. This is supposed to be a version of what Ronald Reagan wanted for his Star Wars program; big ol' commie-frying laser that the Commies have stolen the plans for. No idea if it works yet, natch."

Spinning it back around. Jenna started typing, still talking.

"Things got okay after that. International vegan appeal against the Elb selling mud weasels meat, the first call centers open, some idiots hire them to launch a private communications satellite in '04, first cell phone network implemented in '05...nation-building, really. Of course, once they had access to the global communications network and with no laws or regulations in place, everyone was a cybercriminal. Hacking was frequent, identity theft commonplace, and the United States still suspects it's guilty of massive software piracy. Then the global recession hit in 2008, and the People's Republic hit another wave of hyperinflation - a billion percent a day or something, it was ridiculous."

Marc moved behind her and started rubbing her shoulders; Jenna made appreciative noises.

"So, politics are covered. What was that about Dogebert as the messiah?"

"Oh, yeah." she said. "When the Russians rolled out, the region had been basically atheist for a generation or two. There were still a lot of holdover practices - they all dress like Orthodox monks, the left-hand taboo thing - but for actual religion, notsomuch. Somebody got the idea to recreate the old ethnic pagan religion, kind of like Romuva. What they got was a polytheistic conglomeration with deities like the Übanübá the monkey-god and the sky-god Düg or Doüg or Dœg or Doge - hence, Dogebert claimed to be the descendant of Dœg. There were some fragmentary Holy Scrolls which nobody made much sense out of because it was in the Old Elb dialect, and they made up holidays like Holy Week - first week in August - which are normally celebrated with pranks. Then there's the ЖӊrӨdrüк or Hatstone, a megalithic monument that's become the centerpiece to the whole movement, their big sacred symbol; it's taboo for a human to touch it, or the new age will begin or something. Lot of folk superstitions persist, which I think shows an Oriental influence - the concept of breath and soul and image or reflection are kind of all jumbled together, which is why people like Adams say they think if take their photograph or yawn in their direction you're stealing their soul...it's one of the things I want people to know about. Like, the animal thing."

"The animal politicians?" Marc said, still rubbing.

"Right. Like, the new Church says that 'all others have the same value as livestock,' but that was written when a frickin' pig was the Secretary of State! It's not saying the guys over in Kneebonia are subhuman or whatever."

"Uh-huh." he said.

"Don't get me wrong, the Elb aren't perfect people. Along with the lefty-thing, there's deeply entrenched misogynism, especially in the workplace. Parents don't traditionally show a lot of affection to their kids. Cutting hair is another taboo, hence the long beards. Medicine is a joke; tuberculosis is rampant and there are even cases of bubonic plague - which is part of the reason that the leading cause of death is self-inflicted gunshot wounds; if the Elb get the plague, they pretty much know they're going to die and prefer it to be quick instead of slow. Some human trafficking, mainly from people looking for a better life somewhere else. Rampant corruption at all levels...well, you know. Eastern Europe in microcosm."

Jenna placed her hands on Marc's, and he stopped massaging.

"Well hon, you've certainly done your homework. So what are you going to call the book?"

"Elbonia: Adam's Ruritania." she said.

###

Introduction to the Hastur Mythos

Introduction to the Hastur Mythos
by
Bobby Derie

"Along the shore the cloud waves break
The twin suns sink behind the lake
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa."
~ From Cassilda's Song, The King in Yellow

In certain ages, bold commercialism can spur genuine academic interest; so it is with True Detective. This book, planned to hit shelves in time with the release of the first season on DVD, owes its existence to the sudden renewal of interest in a very obscure and little-understood but fascinating part of the American literary landscape, a mythos which began with Ambrose Bierce and Robert W. Chambers, which intertwines with but lies distinct from the works of the much more famous H. P. Lovecraft and Marion Zimmer Bradley, light from alien suns that shines down to illuminate many different worlds.

The scholarship in this body of work trace the origins, influence, and evolution of these infamous names - Carcosa and Hali, Hastur and the King in Yellow - which have taken on many meanings under different authors, been interpreted and reinterpreted, categorized and re-categorized - the "Mythology of Hastur" as Lovecraft had it, the Yellow Mythos, the Carcosa Mythos. It is a worthy subject to study at any time, but with the advent of True Detective the popular curiosity has been piqued, and so now seems a proper time to assemble the scanty scholarship from where it has languished in fanzines, introductions, and obscure journals into a single volume, complete with new scholarship that sheds new light on the enigma at the center of it all.

The work begins with "On 'An Inhabitant of Carcosa'" by S. T. Joshi, one of the few noted scholars on Ambrose Bierce; Joshi is uniquely well-suited to comment on the influence of this tale, and its influence on later weird fiction writers such as H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth.

"A Twenty-Second Letter of Ambrose Bierce" by Ambrose Bierce and Samuel Loveman; a heretofore unpublished addendum to Loveman's collection Twenty-One Letters of Ambrose Bierce (1922) discussing the story, and somewhat disputed by scholars because the original letter has disappeared—and, of course, Loveman developed something of a reputation for literary forgery. Annotated by S. T. Joshi.

"Infratextual Stuctures in Poe, Bierce, and Lovecraft" by Adam Wheeler looks at the development of these shared references between different writers, borrowing the names and concepts of other writers and incorporating them in their own fiction.

"The Mythology of Hastur" by Robert M. Price traces the origin and development of the use of Hastur, from its Robert W. Chamber's The King in Yellow (1895) to its eventual inclusion in the Cthulhu Mythos, from which point the concept and use of Hastur and Carcosa mutated into something very different.

"The Derleth Mythos" by Richard L. Tierney, newly revised and expanded with quotations from Lovecraft and Derleth's letters, traces the divergence of Derleth's interpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos from its original conception.

"Hastur—Whose Side Is He On?" by Robert M. Price looks at the position of Hastur in the expanded Cthulhu Mythos, and how authors have portrayed him in opposition against Cthulhu and other powers.

"The (bastard) Children of Hastur" by Marion Zimmer Bradley examines the use and influence of the Hastur Mythos on her own Darkover series of science-fiction novels.

"The Road to Hali" by Johnathan Tyne is one of the most fundamental and important re-imaginings of the Hastur Mythos in contemporary fiction, recasting Hastur from the simple air elemental and brother-opponent of Cthulhu that he had been boxed into by August Derleth into a much more cosmic force of entropy and decay.

"Yellow Dawn" by David J. Rodger follows the development of the Hastur Mythos in the various Lovecraft-influenced roleplaying games such as Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, and his own Yellow Dawn setting, tracing the literary influence of the Hastur debate on the games and fiction.

"Haiyore! Hasuta-san" by Ken Asamatsu looks at the development of Hastur in Japanese interpretations, focusing primarily on the bisexual love-triangle that develops in the light novel/OVA series Haiyore! Nyaruku-san between the characters of Nyaruko (Nyarlathotep), Mahiro, and Hasuta (Hastur). Illustrated with sample pages from the shota doujinshi starring those characters.

"Bearers of the Yellow Sign" by Joseph S. Pulver, Jr. is an examination of modern uses of the Hastur Mythos, including interviews with True Detective's Nic Pizzolatto, William Pugmire, Johnathan Tyne, archival interview with Karl Edward Wagner and Marion Zimmer Bradley, and others.

Taken as a whole, these essays cover the scope of modern scholarship on the Hastur Mythos, from the humble first appearance of the names and places from Ambrose Bierce and Robert W. Chambers, through the odd parallel mythologies of Marion Zimmer Bradley, H. P. Lovecraft, and August Derleth, and on into its modern conception in True Detective. I hope they will be as enlightening to you as they are to me.

"Night fell and hours dragged on, but still we murmured to each other of the King and the Pallid Mask, and midngiht sounded from the misty spires in the fog-wrapped city. We spoke of Hastur and Cassilda, while outside the fog rolled against the blank window-panes as the could waves roll and break on the shores of Hali."

- "The Yellow Sign" by Robert W. Chambers