Lore of the Principia Infecta

That Shuddering Beneath the Earth...

That shuddering beneath the earth is the beast waking from its long slumber. Mayhaps to roam and ravage, mayhaps to merely look about with bleary eyes before settling back to sleep as though dead.

Whatever the future holds for Principia Infecta, it will soon include a published manuscript, a tome of writings. I, your humble scribe, have moved to assemble artists and piece together the Later Blue Tome of Amaxathroth the Cursed. It is a sword and sorcery mini-supplement for Ron Edwards' Sorcerer, a bitter and fragmented glance at a lustful and decayed aeon. Sorcery, demons, and vile rogues!

Take a moment to look at the preview, if you will, and console yourself that the crumbling of this, our present age, is at least a more mundane horror than the sorcerous rot witnessed by Amaxathroth the Wanderer.

Since the Principia lapsed into slumber some time past, I have not removed myself completely from the forlorn role of a game-scribe. Through strange happenstance, you will find my credits upon Fantasy Flight Games' Creatures Anathema and the forthcoming Radical's Handbook and Rogue Trader. It is an unseemly world in which one such as I is forging canon for Warhammer 40K - how my past self would have laughed at such! Perhaps matters will become stranger yet, to the joy and detriment of many. We shall see.

[ Posted by Reason on June 1, 2009 | Permanent Link ]

Another Glimpse of Amaxathroth's Decayed Aeon

Amaxathroth is seated in his tomb, waiting. Not for you or I, for we are less than the swirling motes to his unblinking gaze. His heart is blackened by the ages, and his contempt of mankind complete and utter. Yet his words remain, scribed across countless lifetimes, and hoarded by those who come to regret their greed for such.

But know this now: as the toil of building the Later Blue Tome of Amaxathroth the Cursed now winds to a close, I, your humble translator, offer you a second preview of the words of Amaxathroth as a bookend to the first. These are print quality color files, hence large:

Preview PDF #1: The Spire of Thirst and Madness (6.9M)

Preview PDF #2: The Demon Grove (7M)

Expect much more of a similar ilk within the finished tome, a book of vitriol and bitterness to match the rot witnessed by Amaxathroth the Wanderer, Amaxathroth the Scribe, Amaxathroth the Cursed; he who lives yet while all else dies.

[ Posted by Reason on July 6, 2009 | Permanent Link ]

Amaxathroth the Wanderer, Amaxathroth the Cursed, Amaxathroth the Published

I'm pleased to note that The Later Blue Tome of Amaxathroth the Cursed is now available in print and PDF - and a very fine looking product it is, even if I say so myself.

The Later Blue Tome of Amaxathroth the Cursed is a 144-page mini-supplement for Ron Edwards' Sorcerer and Sorcerer & Sword, currently available as either a full color PDF or black and white print paperback. It is a lush portrait of a demon-ridden world of corruption and decay, richly illustrated by artists including Scott Purdy, Chris Huth, and Eric Lofgren.

May you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing in Amaxathroth's bitter voice. But here we lay Amaxathroth to rest for a time, to brood upon the corrupt nature of mankind in his tomb of ages, for other projects beckon.

[ Posted by Reason on August 14, 2009 | Permanent Link ]

Released: the Logic of Tales and Dreams

Some forms of insanity resist easy categorization, producing strange symptoms and stranger actions. Here we have one such result, a story game called The Logic of Tales and Dreams - a game that does not in fact exist.

The Logic of Tales and Dreams is free and creative commons licensed: download it and do with it as you will.

[ Posted by Reason on December 25, 2009 | Permanent Link ]

Sibellus Noir

In the grand tradition of striving to achieve goals that are neither straightforward nor likely to be completed, allow me to offer you the first and opening part of a little thing I call Sibellus Noir:

Sibellus. City without end, layered hive of mankind, asylum for billions struck ignorant and mad by its walls. I've been gone a long time, to far, sickened places. Long enough for me to forget - if I had wanted to. Long enough for a generation of newborns to be crippled, struck dumb, made sinners. But the City has its hooks into me, just as it does them. So I remember everything.

It's been five years by my ticking clock, and twenty by the booming beat of the City. The Man sent me away, and now the Man brought me back. He thinks he is the one whose devices and secrets have the hold over me - but the City is a cruel moll, and she wields the sharpest implements of all. No man can ever forget Sibellus, not in his heart, no matter how much he wants to.

Download the creative commons licensed PDF.

[ Posted by Reason on February 15, 2010 | Permanent Link ]

Sibellus Noir, Part II

The second part of Sibellus Noir is available as PDF:

Vaults, passages, and stairways pass in watchful, wary silence. From deserted halls where fungus hangs from City stone in place of carved angels, we come to the populated back ways. The hurrying of a scribe avoiding something better left unsaid. Chains hang against the walls, guides for blinded serfs, the least of the Pit's own. Rejected even by the Man, their eyes taken by the machine-men, they serve. Then a crossway, a spiral stair, and a huddled knot of hard men in meshwork Legion armor, jarred by our intrusion into their whispered conference. One holds up a life-warrant as a ward, thinking us watchers. Who else walks between the lumens?

We follow a line of serfs bowed beneath parchment bundles, upon their way to a master's scribe pen, hand over hand upon their wall-chain. Our boots on stone and duct-plate bother them not - as though they simply hear by our footfall what the Legion-men could not see. The rusting plates where their eyes used to be drip runnels of sweat, glistening under each dim lumen. A whitestone statue of the Man watches our quiet procession from its alcove. Armored, judgmental. Staring.

Download the creative commons licensed PDF of parts one and two together.

[ Posted by Reason on March 13, 2010 | Permanent Link ]

Sibellus Noir, Part III

The third portion of Sibellus Noir is complete and available in PDF format:

Spend the years drenned to the hilt and it never leaves, always that last dreg feeding the fires. The chem-burn makes them jump and turn to its heartbeat, makes them crazy in the end, biting blood from their own arms to stop the screaming. The coordinator wore long sleeves, eye-covers to hide the hollows. Made it part of a look. He wasn't fooling anyone who matters - but he's still the one who'll tell the machine-men to take your eyes or send the watchers to break you. I remembered that while the drenn-sweat formed on his face, and the moll watched him like he was half a squashed raque, squirming.

Download the creative commons licensed PDF of parts 1-3.

[ Posted by Reason on April 11, 2010 | Permanent Link ]

Sibellus Noir, Part IV

The fourth portion of Sibellus Noir is complete and available in PDF format:

Broad greystone stairs slope down into thrumming blackness past the last functioning lumen. Rounded and pitted, the steps are slabs laid an age ago in some deep ward, dragged from their resting places to bring slow stone-rot to the Citytop. Condensate drips from fundament ducts overhead, set too low for comfort. The fan-pumps within rattle and wheeze, left to die in their own time by the machine-men - too small, too insignificant. Or too near to our destination: a prison for the madmen that the Pit calls correlators.

Download the creative commons licensed PDF of parts 1-4.

[ Posted by Reason on May 29, 2010 | Permanent Link ]

Sibellus Noir, Part V

The fifth segment of Sibellus Noir is complete and available in PDF format:

It's like this: you walk the low alleys in Magistratum blue and silver, listen to the curses and the screams, step over the drugged and the dead—but not because it has any worth. It makes no difference to the misery and the filth whether the barracks makes itself known, whether you knock heads together, whether you send the thieves and the killers before a magister. The City will be the City. She was cruel when you were a kid, she'll be hard-lipped and sneering when you're gone. No. You do what doesn't matter because it's a path to the few moments that do.

Download the creative commons licensed PDF of parts 1-5.

[ Posted by Reason on August 29, 2010 | Permanent Link ]