Wyrd Tales, Issue No. 2

Put Down the Rock

I used to have an Instagram account, a Facebook account, an X account, a Tumblr account, your mom's account. I found that a large portion of my brain was dedicated to funneling information into and out of social media, and I think social media, in general, is corrosive.

There are uses for it that I can understand, and some things I think are really helpful. I actually like Instagram, in that, if we have our addictions under control, it allows us to interact in a very playful way. I think LinkedIn is a necessary tool for business, but I find it is like walking through the mall with those kiosks in the middle, everybody asking you to try their lotion.

The one thing I really like is newsletters.

The reason being, you can go to a newsletter. You can get the information you want. You can read it at your speed. You can actually come away with a more in-depth understanding of something. When you open up a newsletter, if you are a newsletter type of person, and if you are here I assume you kind of are, your brain has a different reaction than it does to Instagram. Instagram is constantly pushing you to go to the next thing, see the next thing, see the next blinky light, look at the next shiny toy. Look, look, look, look, look! A newsletter allows you to calm down, sit down, and really read something at depth.

That is why my favorite social media tool, if I could even term it that, is the newsletter, and that is why I am so excited to bring you one. If you are in the same ballpark I am, and my ballpark is fantasy, dark fantasy, horror, conspiracy, aliens, cryptids, government cover-ups, spirituality, ancient religion, mythology, ghosts, and the paranormal, then these are things we can sit with properly.

So if you, like me, enjoy having a minute to sit down and talk with somebody in depth about the topics that interest you, I recommend my newsletter. I recommend other newsletters. I recommend putting down the social media Sisyphean rock, taking a rest on a park bench, and opening up a newsletter.

That is what I hope to be able to provide. That is what I hope you will consider reading.

Thanks, Jim.

The West Marches of Caith

Even early on, when I played D&D, my background stories were the bane of my dungeon masters. They would come in at 10,000 words, 15,000 words — I think I got one up to 25,000 words. These characters have always come alive for me. For some reason, Dungeons & Dragons seemed to pump that extra life into them — maybe because I was thinking about them on another level, even as I was writing them.

So now I am infusing them into a West Marches-style campaign, where all of those characters — in an alternate version of their lives — are able to meet and interact and go on adventures together, in a world I call Caith. This world has fantasy elements, and it has some connection to our world, although that remains to be discovered by the reader.

Here is the gist.

The first time I picked up The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons book, and yes, it was in 1981, something magical happened. A sensation coursed through my blood and bones. Something that I'd never felt before. The as-yet-unseen imagination of this role-playing game left me with a feeling I can only describe as spiritual transcendence.

When I first took the Advanced D&D Dungeon Master's Guide and the Player's Handbook home, I had no one to play with. So instead, I read them cover to cover. Multiple times. Just... read them. Even at that, I'd never read anything like it.

Those of you newer to this world than I am, and most of you are, have likely had the same experience with other games or books or music. There is plenty of fantasy to feast on today, but let me tell you, when AD&D came out, this was it and I was hooked. I have been ever since.

Now, what does that have to do with The Caitharsic Chronicles? (Working title? Probably…)

Every character in this West Marches-style episodic novel originated, at least at first, as a character that I've played in different worlds. Now, this isn't a D&D campaign on paper. That's not the point. These characters are real in a way that just writing them for me could never achieve. For those of you who play RPGs, I hope you've had that visceral bonding experience with your own characters. I know a lot of you have that deep love for characters you've played. That emotion you feel when you think of the best of them? I feel it too. And I hope to share it with you through this series called The Caitharsic Chronicles.

While these characters are all mine, they've been played in other campaigns, or at least, an alternate version of them was. They have been given new life inhabiting the same world and adventuring with one another in an episodic epic fantasy where there are multiple protagonists and the focus will shift as the series goes on and you share your opinion of which you wish to see more.

I think this is growing to be my new way to see fantasy. Just as The Wheel of Time didn't just follow Rand al'Thor, no matter how cool Rand was. There were Mat, Egwene, Perrin, Nynaeve, Lan, and all of them. Advancing in that tradition, these stories follow all the characters but we can go as deep as we wish and take as many different journeys as we wish. Like the best of tabletop role-playing games, the adventure stories never need to end.

This project is going to be massive and I am so excited to bring it to you. I believe it will be something liminal. I hope it will be, at the same time, like nothing you've experienced before and familiar and deeply rooted in the emotions you felt when you picked up those first books that made you say, "this changed me." I can't wait to share these with you.

Lore & Esoterica: Arms, Armor, and the Coming of the Gun

Every issue, I share some of the research that goes into the stories. This time: what really happened when steel met gunpowder — and what that means in Caith, where magic is real.

Part One: The Real History

Guns did not kill armor in a day. Guns and armor lived side by side for more than 300 years. It was a race. Guns got stronger. Armor got thicker. Then armor got smaller.

At its peak, a full suit of plate — a full harness — covered a man from neck to toes and weighed about 33 to 55 pounds, spread over the whole body. The richest men bought a garniture: one base suit with parts to swap in and out — one set for war on horseback, one for the joust, one for fighting on foot, a light helmet for parade, even armor for the horse. Good plate was dear. A horseman's Milanese suit cost 100 to 166 days of wages, and to equip one young nobleman fully could cost 8 to 16 months of a working man's wages.

Armor was tested before it was sold, and the test was called proof. In the gun age, the maker shot the plate himself. If the ball made a dent and did not go through, the plate passed — and the dent was left in, as proof the buyer could see and feel. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds a cuirassier armor from Milan, made about 1610 to 1620, that weighs about 86 pounds. Its dents are not battle damage. The maker fired pistol shots into it to prove its strength.

As guns spread, the breastplate grew thicker at the chest — and heavier. So men dropped the parts that helped least. Foot soldiers wore three-quarter armor, with the lower legs bare. Heavy horse soldiers, cuirassiers, wore armor to the knees and carried pistols and a sword. After about 1650, plate shrank to a cuirass — a breastplate and a backplate — and many men wore a buff coat of thick ox hide instead, which could turn a sword cut and cost far less than steel. By 1700, full armor had left the field. It lived on in parades and portraits.

The guns changed, too — in how the powder was lit. The matchlock arquebus, the common gun of the 1500s, used a lit cord; cheap and simple, but the cord had to stay lit, and rain was its foe. The wheellock, from about 1500, lit itself with a spinning wheel and sparks — a fine, costly little clock of a lock, carried by rich men and officers, never made in bulk for common troops. The snaphaunce, from about the 1560s, did the same job with flint and steel and fewer parts. Then came the true flintlock, about 1610 to 1615, from Marin le Bourgeoys in France: cheaper to make, quick to light, no cord to tend. In time it armed every soldier in Europe, and it stayed in use for more than 200 years. The lesson is the same as the armor's: the cheap, good tool beats the fine, dear one.

Early guns were slow — fire once, then a long reload — so armies mixed guns with pikes, spears up to 18 feet long. In pike and shot, the pikemen stood in a deep block, a wall of steel points no horse would charge. The shooters fired from the edges, then stepped back into the pikes' shelter to load, rank by rank, in the countermarch, so the fire never stopped. The mix lasted 200 years. It ended when the flintlock fired faster and the socket bayonet let every gunman be his own pikeman.

And why did guns really win? Not because they shot straight — early guns were poor shots, and a bow was truer, faster, and longer-ranged. Guns won on time and cost. A longbow takes years to learn; a boy must grow into it. A knight takes years more. A musketeer takes weeks to a few months: learn the steps, stand in rank, fire when told. A gun could be made by the hundred, to one pattern, by common smiths. A fine harness could not. States chose the tool they could make more of, faster, for less. Train fast, make cheap, field many — that was the cause.

The sword never left, by the way. It just changed jobs. A plain rule for telling them apart: a rapier at a duel (it was chiefly a town sword, for cloth clothes and honor), a broad sword or sabre in a charge, and, from the late 1600s, a smallsword at court, worn more as a badge of rank than a tool of war.

Part Two: Magic & Firearms in Caith

This part is my world, not history. In Caith, magic is real — so the same race runs again, with one new piece on the board: the mage.

Rule 1 — Mage-time is garniture-time. Enchantment is real, it is strong, and it is never issued to a regiment. A mage's work takes years to learn and hours to cast, and a fine enchantment is fit to one man, one blade, one breastplate — the way a garniture was fit to one rich lord. So magic stays where fine armor stayed: with kings, great captains, and rich knights.

Rule 2 — Enchanted armor is proofed like plate, and the test costs more. A lord who pays for a spelled breastplate wants proof. So the plate is shot — then struck by a cast bolt of fire or force, at a set range, with the court mage as witness. If it holds, the mage cuts his mark beside the smith's mark. Two marks, two proofs. A plate with no mage's mark is just steel, at a steel price.

Rule 3 — Common soldiers still get plain guns. A kingdom can make a hundred plain muskets for the price of one spelled one, and train a hundred musketeers in the time it takes to train one battle mage. So the ranks get plain guns, plain pikes, and plain buff coats — in Caith, just as in our world. Magic does not change the math of big war. It only crowns the top of it.

Rule 4 — One mage is worth a troop. One mage is also one man. A battle mage can break a charge, light a wet powder store, or hold a gate alone. But he tires, his power runs out, and he can be shot by a boy with a cheap gun and three weeks of drill. Wise captains guard their mages the way pike captains guarded their shooters: inside the pikes, never alone, never spent cheap.

Rule 5 — Guns grow around magic, not against it. Rich horse soldiers carry one spelled pistol, proofed and marked, beside one plain pistol — the spelled one is for the one shot that must not fail. Siege men wear the thickest spelled plate for the same short, deadly job their steel cousins did. And most powder in Caith still gets wet, because there are never enough mages to spell every store dry.

Rule 6 — The cheap tool still wins the war. Spells win moments. Guns win wars. A king who spends his gold on wonders while his foe spends it on muskets will lose his crown with his wonders still bright on his back.

Lilliana

Let reverie come, she told herself. Do not let the pain lay claim. Do not hear your fear. Let … go … let …

Lilliana’ellieth Shaelendren woke tied, gagged, and beaten on a stone floor, her blood and bitterness spread out around her with her golden hair. She looked around and saw the cold remains of a rusted cell. Stairs were opposite her and the passage down filled with rubble.

Was she in the ruins? Below ground? She smelled a rankness up the stairs. Heard scuffling and voices. Harsh, grunting language. Draconin? K’vold derivation, likely. Her head. Hard to think. The pain was building. If I can rest, she thought, I can heal. Eying the stairs and seeing nothing, she closed her eyes, and sent her mind far from the painful present into reverie and into the past.

⚜

The elf child Lilliana or Nyx, as kith and kin called her due to her small size, ran around the willow trunks, singing with abandon.

Brokk’duidain, next oldest and first prince to the throne, emerged from the forest, spotted her, and shook his head, one part relieved, one part annoyed. He called in low elven, “Nyx, Father will cut your bowstrings for sneaking away.”

Nyx ignored him.

Brokk approached and leaned against a tree and watched her race around, “Princess to the Seraphe throne? Sole remaining daughter to the Alberon’thranduil and his noble consort, Tianna’aetheliwyne? Any of this sound familiar?”

Sole remaining daughter stopped her running. She sat against a trunk, “Oh, settle your heart on it, brother. Does father need to know everything? If so, perhaps I tell him about …”

Brokk barked out a laugh, “No, no. As always, you get your way, high lady,” he put mocking weight on lady.

Nyx jumped up and marched up to him, “I am the high lady, mark you, first prince,” she laid equal mocking on his title, “and I will go where I please! The Veiled Court, nay, the entire Seraphe kingdom could not keep me imprisoned if I wished to escape and today, brother, I do wish it!”

Brokk bowed his head and spread his arms in surrender, “You really will be a terror one day, Nyxie. Come on. We’ll return the long way.”

Brokk and Nyx explored the ancient ruins on the outskirts of the forest.

Nyx asked, looking around, “Do you ever see the savages here?”

Brokk replied, “Never. They believe it holds evil spirits and, truth told, the border walkers do all they can to encourage that belief.”

Nyx climbed the crumbling towers peering inside, imagining impending doom around every corner. She knew Brokk would never allow her to tread dangerous ground. However, when he could, he rescued her from the chains of her position at the Veiled Court and she loved him for it. Her restrictions were many and freedoms too few. This life was a cage. She did not ask to be the last surviving princess.

⚜

Rising up to consciousness, bruised and broken, Lilliana’ellieth mouthed the word “princess…”

Blood-caked lips cracked with the effort, the sting of it stealing away her state of reverie. She lay face up, cold radiating through the stone. The stench triggered a gag. She concentrated, ignoring the cold, the pain, the smell.

Yes, away … away …

⚜

As summoned, Nyx approached her father, Alberon’thranduil, in the Grove of Elders. Alberon tapped his fingers on the immense Darkwood council table as if keeping time to a lively ballad. The council table was five spans wide and polished to a high gloss through petrification curated over an Age.

She stepped up and nodded to him, eyes down.

He spoke in High Seraphe, “Lilliana’ellieth Shaelendren, you have been summoned as a sign of respect. Despite your persistence in ignoring your responsibilities, to which I do not now opine. I do, however, beseech you to be more … amenable … towards your mother’s entreaties to teach you of Thaumaturgy. Magic is in your mother’s blood and so it is in yours. You need to learn to govern it before it becomes ungovernable. I have spoken.”

Nyx smiled brightly up at her Father. Despite his regal demeanor, she knew he only resorted to High Seraphe with her when exasperated. Which meant he was easier to wear down. She hoped she could bank his anger by sundown. The nights of Blightleaf were colder than she wished this turn and her audience gown, the one Father insisted she wear to these formal chastisements, was not designed for warmth.

Nyx advanced on him, “Father, I have less interest in Thaumaturgy than snails do in flying. I will follow your council in all things, of course, but my life is not in service to magic!” She tried to breathe calmly, “In the next Great Turning, I plan to test …” Her anger broke through, “to demand, as is my right, to be tested for admittance into the Fadh-Righ.” There! That should set his ears back.

Her Father narrowed his eyes, which for him was an expression of shock and outrage, “The border walkers, girl?” Recovering quickly, he shook his head. He smiled that patient, predator smile that she knew meant danger. His voice, however, belied nothing but calm reason, “Those spears are twice as long as you, little Nyxie. Even Brokk works hard to prepare for the Fadh-Righ trials and there is no promise even he will pass the test, first prince or no.”

Nyx stepped back before she could stop herself. Gritting her teeth she regained the step lost and said, in forced courtesy, “Honored Father, what is it you always say? The power is not in the weapon, but in the wielder?”

“Nyx…”

“If I wish to test for the Fadh-Righ and protect our lands, the size of my spear will be no barrier.”

“Nyxie…”

“There are more incursions from the K’vold dog men as well as the human savages every new moon. Some say the savages hunt …”

“Lilliana’ellieth!” he barked, slicing through her diatribe, “The sole living princess walking the edge will tilt no scales, but being slain might. It would land a death blow to the Seraphe, the people you claim to love. All this for what?”

Nyx fell silent, not because she was afraid to speak. She was never that. She just didn’t know the answer.

After a moment, he walked to her, his robes trailing behind in a tossing wave of colored leaves.

“Lilliana,” he said, “you have the blood in you, as does your mother, as did your sisters, the Veil part for them. You cannot run from your own blood’s call,” he put an arm out for her and she stepped back, “Come, we will be late for supper.”

⚜

The screech of rust-rotted hinges announced the arrival of the four K’volds. Ugly perversions of dragon blood, they were thick bodied, flat faced, and mottled with a toad green pallor that hinted at the scales they lost generations ago. They looked at her then at each other, and grinned with sharp toothed fangs.

Lilliana’ellieth opened her eyes, wiping away the tear salt crusting and smears of blood.

The cold reptilian croak of the head K’vold said in mock pleasantries, “Wakey, wakey. We got some grub for ya, princess.”

She sat up, her legs tucked under her mud stained chainmail skirt, and looked at the four squalid creatures with a regal disdain, “I will take nothing from you.”

The K’vold laughed and shoved their leader forward. He held a gunny bag dripping darkly, “Now, now, we’re not as bad as all that. I mean we don’t have a fancy leg of lamb but,” he looked back at his companions, his voice holding a secret, “we did find a leg for you.”

A bloody leg, chopped off mid-thigh, dropped in front of her with a wet thud. It was human, bronze like the savages, and cooked. Her mind went cold with shock, trying to remain calm, she looked down.

Her bile rose. She mercilessly swallowed it back down, furious that she let these vile creatures shock her. Lifting her chin, she glared at them with a look her father knew so well. They shook with laughter and smacked each other, pointing at her and jeering. Having enough of this humiliation and getting nauseated, she turned away knowing full well what would happen next.

The laughing teetered out and the K’vold leader marched up to her, “Don’t ye turn your back on your dinner, bitch queen!”

The attack was savage, mercifully, and took her into darkness with one blow of the severed savage’s leg. She embraced the oblivion taking her from this horror.

⚜

A near grown Nyx saw the white pennants break into the clearing. She ran out and searched for her Mother’s white mare.

Nyx ran up and embraced her legs and kissed her mother’s slippers before she could dismount. “Oh, mother, how I’ve missed you!”

Tianna’aetheliwyne beamed, looking down, “Oh, heart sake, how I’ve missed you, as well.” Her voice, like liquid comfort, poured into Nyx’s heart and filled her to the brim.

Nyx felt a deep kinship with her father, of course, but her mother held the sacred place in her heart. After endless skirmishes with the K’volds, Nyx was the only surviving royal daughter of Tianna’aetheliwyne. Perhaps the deep love and comfort they found in each other was out of mourning as well as merriment. Nyx trusted her father with her life, but she trusted her mother with her heart.

Nyx discovered early on it was no use keeping secrets from her. The slightest deception summoned her. When she appeared it was, in Nyx’s child’s eyes, a dreadful presence of retribution, demanding to know the whys and wherefores and extracting repentant promises of obedience from Nyx and Brokk alike.

Nyx did not know how her mother knew of her subterfuges. She only knew her mother was the last great Thaumaturge among the Seraphe. Nyx imagined swarms of castings and scrying circling thick around her waiting to sound the alarm.

While Nyx was aware of the blood of her mother flowing through her, blood that came with the ability to call down Thauma, her so called gift. That gift came with expectations as heavy as iron manacles.

Nyx thought of her sisters, all similarly gifted and now all dead in battle or capture. She was the last. Her Mother taught her how to hear the call of her blood. Nyx stifled it. Let it stay deep inside, she commanded herself. Her passions were in the martial arts, not the magical.

Tianna’aetheliwyne travelled throughout the Seraphe lands using Thauma for the good of kin and kith. When she returned, she carried back stories of great triumphs and, sometimes, tragedy. Both were the threads of which Nyx’s dreams were woven.

“Mother, tell me about your sojourn.” Nyx would ask, but when Tianna told of how Thauma was used to great effect, Nyx would ask, “Did you see the border walkers?”

Still, Tianna’aetheliwyne delighted in lavishing her daughter with stories, all extravagantly told with flares, booms, evanescent illusions, the least among her powers. Tianna’s stories were her greatest treasures, and she showered them all upon her remaining daughter, Lilliana’ellieth.

⚜

Choking. Coughing. Fetid water poured down her slack-jawed mouth. Against her will, her tongue sought the wetness and, although it disgusted her, her throat and belly sought the wetness. Lilliana told herself, “It’s just water. Just water.” But it still made her want to vomit.

She saw a squat K’vold woman in front of her with a wooden bucket and a rag. The figure knelt, squeezed out the rag, and reached out…

“Do not touch me, creature!” Lilliana’ellieth cried out as she shrunk away.

The K’vold’s voice, high and harsh, said, “Now, now, princess. We canna ‘ave you so dirtah when they find you with those savages’ arrows in yah guts that it gives the ‘ole trick away!”

Lilliana’ellieth kicked at her and pushed away.

“Alright, ‘ave it your way, lady.” The K’vold dumped a nest of old belts onto the filthy floor. They fell among a sheaf of human fletched arrows. The K’vold was small but strong and Lilliana, beaten and wounded, could not keep her at bay. The K’vold strapped her hands, feet, and knees with the thick leather belts.

As the belt at her feet was cinched tight, Lilliana freed one arm and … something sang out. By instinct she traced a pattern in the air. There were words she knew. She spoke …

A thick boot smashed in her nose. The words died in her throat as Lilliana saw her blood pouring. She looked up just in time to see the boot descend again, then blackness.

⚜

Nyx, almost as tall as Brokk, ran through the ice waters of the Olve River with her spear before her. Her heart hammered and her lungs flexed filled like bellows. It was all she could do to stay afoot and duck the branches overhanging the river’s edge. She slowed, just for a moment, to catch her breath.

A shout came from behind her, “Do you wish to go back to your father, princess? Will you put down the spear as your brother has done? There is no shame in it. Most do.” Faerenduil, the sergeant-at-arms of the Fadh-Righ, passed her and tapped her on the back of the head with his longspear.

Nyx sucked in and replied, “I do not, spear leader. I will...” she sucked in more air, “...carry the spear until my days are ended.”

Faerenduil looked back briefly and called out, “You may carry it to the next season. We shall see what the winter brings.”

Lilliana ran, dreading the snows that would bring harsher trials. She saw Brokk in her mind’s eye, exhausted, stumbling, and when Faerenduil asked him, he had no choice. He could not go on. His spear fell to the earth. That was two turns ago and something lay wounded in him now.

If she withdrew from the Fadh-Righ, all her talk, her boasts, her pride, would go up in green smoke. Her father and mother would accept her gladly back. She would be trained as a Thaumaturge as was expected, as was her fate.

Lilliana yelled out, “Until the end of my days, spear leader!” and raised her spear higher. Legs burning, lungs tasting of blood, she demanded her body catch up with her spear leader.

She. Would. Not. Withdraw!

⚜

Lilliana’ellieth coughed up blood, thick and sharp in her throat. She rolled over. Something was wrong. She couldn’t feel her spear arm. At first, she panicked, thinking the K’volds had broken it or … removed it. Relieved of her body’s weight, the blood flowed back into her limb which awoke with a thousand needles. She made a fist, flexed as well she could in the straps.

⚜

But that didn’t stop the urgent press that something was … missing. It was Rhynes … oh, no … he was … she could no longer sense him. She closed her eyes and sought him, a terror filled her. Had the K’volds killed him? That filled her with an agony far worse than the bindings or beatings. Rhynes. Rhynes. Where are you?

The tale doesn't end here. Lilliana's whole story is waiting on the site — free for members.

Read the Rest of the Story: https://wyrd-tales.ghost.io/lilliana/

One Last Thing: Tell Me About Your Worlds

I am excited about this project, and I would love to hear your thoughts. Do you have anything going on in your worlds that you'd like to share? A character who will not leave you alone? A backstory that got away from you and ran to 25,000 words? Hit reply and tell me. The adventure stories never need to end — and neither does the conversation.

Until next week — put down the rock, take a rest on the park bench, and read something at depth.

— Jim