City of Saints and Madmen

by Jeff VanderMeer

  EXHIBIT 1: THE ORIGINAL COVER OF BURNING LEAVES, VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1; ON DISPLAY IN THE MORHAIM MUSEUM’S “HISTORY OF SOUTHERN PERIODICALS” WING.

  BUSKER, ALAN. Busker, long known as a fanatical (and often quite critical) traveler in both the north and south, may also have been a spy for the Kingdom of Morrow. Certainly, there was a time when Busker’s travels among the northern cities resulted in disaster—Stockton, Belezar, Dovetown, and Tratnor all fell to Morrow shortly after Busker’s visits to them. Most famous for attempting to enter the Kalif’s Holy City by impersonating the Kalif himself. Some historians believe Busker spent a number of months in Alfar and Zamilon, his other journeys undertaken to provide cover for his true activities—research into the link between the gray caps and the monks of Zamilon. See also: Alfar; Kalif, The; Stockton; Zamilon.

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  CABABARI. Long-snouted, foul-smelling, fungus-eating, dirt-seeking pigs instrumental in the ouster of Trillian the Great Banker as ruler of Ambergris. See also: Fungus; Trillian the Great Banker.

  CALABRIAN CALENDAR. A wonder of inefficiency that used an estimated count of the various islands the Isle of Aandalay had fragmented into as the number of days in its year. Months were named after the nearly unpronounceable monikers of old Aan leaders, but the names of months changed as new leaders rose and fell, with the result that many Aan towns employed month-tellers whose sole function was to untangle the knots of names. Making the situation more confusing, each group of Aan on each island began to name their months differently. The charts created by the month-finders began to dwarf those used by mathematicians and mapmakers. Several wars were fought over the allocation of days and months, including the famous War of the Three-Day Weekend, which left over 10,000 people forever unable to enjoy even a one-day weekend. Eventually, under the rule of Michael Brueghel, a reunited Aan people scrapped the Calabrian Calendar altogether in favor of the Kalif’s calendar, itself based on the old Saphant Empire’s calendar. Thousands of month-finders had to seek out other careers. Their color-coded charts still reside in many wealthy art collectors’ mansions, although the largest collection can be found in the Morhaim Museum. See also: Aandalay, Isle of; Brueghel, Michael; Morhaim Museum.

  CAPPERS. Individuals hired to clean the sewers. The profession requires nerve and cunning, due to the likelihood of encountering gray caps. The most dangerous duty involves rolling a huge metal-and-wood ball down the main stretch of Ambergris sewer, which runs roughly the length of Albumuth Boulevard. The purpose of rolling the ball (nicknamed “The Monster”)—an invention of Porfal’s—is to remove all impediments from the sewer. Sometimes, those rolling the ball will be surprised by a semi-crushed but still deadly piece of fungus or gray cap. The leaders of capper teams are called “martigans.” See also: Albumuth Boulevard; Martigan, Red; Monster, The; Porfal.

  CAROLINE OF THE CHURCH OF THE SEVEN-POINTED STAR. A heretic from Nicea who left the Cult of the Seven-Edged Star to found her own religion. Unlike the Cult of the Seven-Edged Star, the Church of the Seven-Pointed Star believed that God had seven points rather than seven edges. Therefore, rather than worshipping the journey toward self-realization symbolized by the edges, they worshipped the goals of self-realization as symbolized by the points. The specific points Caroline adhered to were: celibacy (during certain times of the year, if absolutely necessary), truth, beauty, self-realization, self-worth, love of others, and good hygiene (in some translations from the sacred text, literally, “negation of body odor through soapy immersions”). Adherents to the Church of the Seven-Pointed Star used swords with sharp points but no edge, while the Cult of the Seven-Edged Star used swords with sharp edges but no point. Alas, edges proved superior to points in most battles fought in the streets of Nicea. Caroline’s followers were forced to either commit sacrilege and switch to edges, or become meals for the ever-present saltwater buzzard. Proving, one could say, the point of the edges. See also: Mikal, Dray; Saltwater Buzzard.

  CHURCH OF THE FISHERMAN. Fish worshippers who abstain from eating “our watery brethren” but attain religious ecstasy by catching them and setting them free. Although the Odecca Bichoral White Whale is a mammal not a fish, the biology-challenged adherents of this religion have made it the centerpiece of their spiritual life. The high priest, or Fish Head, delivers his sermons from a lopsided marble altar chiseled to resemble the whale’s head. Of late, Church of the Fisherman worshippers have been implicated in a series of crimes, from stealing dead fish on display at the markets and releasing them back into the River Moth, to freeing Odecca whales from the Daffed Zoo. See also: Citizen Fish Campaign; Daffed Zoo; Odecca Bichoral White Whale.

  CITIZEN FISH CAMPAIGN. A practical joke, staged by the writer Sirin, seeking to replace the current Truffidian Antechamber with a stinking, five-day-old freshwater bass during the Holy Elections (held every decade). Sirin and his New Art friends created campaign posters featuring the dead bass, delivered stirring speeches in its name, and paraded the candidate around Ambergris on a cart. When the dead fish placed second as a write-in candidate in a field of eight, Sirin and his cohorts had to flee the city for a short period due to threats of physical violence. Groups offended included the Truffidian priesthood and the Church of the Fisherman (which felt Sirin’s real aim was to ridicule the fish they held sacred). See also: Church of the Fisherman; New Art, The; Sirin.

  COOKS OF KALAY. A clan of professional cooks who lived in the far western reaches of the Kalif’s Empire, near the mountain fortress of Kalay. During frequent famines, these cooks learned to prepare meals from such unlikely items of sustenance as shoe leather, belts, grass, flowers, shirts, dirt, earthworms, and insects. Such was their prowess, according to legend, that when the famines passed, people still came to Kalay just to eat dirt. They became so famous that the Kalif forcibly transplanted the entire family to his palace at Vonaril, where they still languish, forced for generation after generation to cater to the Kalif’s every craving for a midnight dinner or afternoon snack. See also: Kalif, The.

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  DAFFED, XAVER. An excellent observer of animal behavior whose reputation in recent years has been sullied by accusations he became too intimately involved with his subject matter. Daffed published numerous books on animals of the southern climes, including Diary of an Aardvark, My Life Among the Sand Turtles of the Moth River Delta, A History of Animals, Vols. I—X, and The Hoegbotton Guide to Small, Indigenous Mammals. He was found dead, of an apparent heart attack, in the tropical mountains near Nicea, wearing only a wooly monkey suit, several perplexed wooly monkeys watching from the nearby bushes. See also: Cababari; Daffed Zoo; Hoegbotton Guide to Small, Indigenous Mammals, The.

  DAFFED ZOO. Founded by Xaver Daffed shortly before his death, his work completed by daughter Sarah Daffed, the Daffed Zoo has, over the years, hosted a wide assortment of the strangest animals ever seen, including the common banded snakblooter, the pigmy sanfangle, the red-and-white slout, and the metigulamated ratpig. Specializing in exotics, the zoo has at times fallen into disrepair and been closed for the public’s safety. The zoo has also suffered from such outlandish claims as those promulgated by Xaver’s great-grandson, Thomas Daffed, who, shortly before his death, hosted a rather redundant fungi exhibit that was to include a “fungal creature” he claimed to have caught near the ruined monastery-fortress of Zamilon, but which never made an appearance. More recently, the zoo’s Odecca Bichoral White Whale exhibit was ruined when, in a daring raid, members of the Church of the Fisherman stole the centerpiece of the exhibit: the world’s only captive Odecca Bichoral White Whale. See also: Church of the Fisherman; Daffed, Xaver; Odecca Bichoral White Whale; Zamilon.

  DEFECATION, ORDER OF. The most reviled of the orders, although perhaps not the most disgusting. See also: Living Saints.

  DISPOSSESSED. Some of the Ambergrisians “dispossessed” of their families because of The Silence became strange and fey to their friends. They would dig up animal bones, eat strange fungus, and visit graveyards, claiming to hea
r their brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, calling to them from the ground. In later years, these individuals became the official Dispossessed, wandering from place to place and burying the bones of their dead in the walls of buildings that others had boarded up after The Silence. For more than 70 years, these urban nomads roamed like lost souls, living by ever more desperate means, their numbers dwindling until they finally disappeared from the city. See also: Fungus.

  DREADFUL TALES. A magazine of horror adventure tales published and edited by exploiter extraordinaire Mathew Palwine. Palwine’s stable of authors included such hacks as Rachel Thorland, Gerrold Picklin, and Salzbert Flounder. Dreadful Tales became popular chiefly due to the proliferation of typographical errors among its pages, which made it the darling of the “found object” adherents of the New Art movement. Nicholas Sporlender, among others, found cruel sport in writing letters to the editor on such subjects as “Why the Untoward Removal (Twice!) of a Very Important Vowel From the Word ‘Countless’ in Saltzbert Flounder’s Story ‘Tortured Love in the Middle Distance’ Renders the Author’s Vision Bleak Rather than Maudlin.” See also: Midnight for Munfroe; New Art, The; Sporlender, Nicholas.

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  EJACULATIONS, ORDER OF. The most pleasurable yet socially- unacceptable of the Orders. See also: Living Saints.

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  FESTIVAL OFTHE FRESHWATER SQUID, THE. A celebration specific to Ambergris that has, on occasion, led to untoward incidents.

  EXHIBIT 2: “VIEW OF FESTIVAL FIREWORKS FROM SOPHIA ISLAND” BY LOUIS VERDEN, PUBLISHED IN BURNING LEAVES; ON DISPLAY IN THE MORHAIM MUSEUM’S “FAMOUS VIEWS OF THE CITY OF AMBERGRIS” GALLERY.

  FIGHTING PHILOSOPHER, THE. See: Peterson, Richard.

  FISH HEAD. Holy. Or rotting. Incidental to the Citizen Fish campaign. See also: Church of the Fisherman.

  FLATULENCE, ORDER OF. The most deadly of the Orders. See also: Living Saints.

  FRANKWRITHE &LEWDEN. A devious and conniving publishing company run by L. Gaudy and his family. Known for their insidious marketing strategies and accused by some of collaborating with the gray caps. Frankwrithe & Lewden was founded during the waning days of the Saphant Empire and claims to be the oldest publisher still extant on the Southern Continent. Books published by F&L have been banned by the Truffidian Antechamber of Ambergris 43 times. Most recently, as F&L has expanded into areas other than bookselling, it has been engaged in what amounts to a war with H&S over ownership of Sophia Island. See also: Albumuth Boulevard; Banker Warriors; Manzikert Memorial Library; Midnight for Munfroe; Saphant Empire, The; Sophia Island.

  FUNGUS. A type of spore-reproducing “plant” that is usually quite harmless. One of Samuel Tonsure’s favorite words—the most frequently-appearing word in his journal after the words “the,” “a,” “and,” “that,” “blood,” and “fear.” James Lacond, backed by evidence discovered in Marmey Gort’s copious notes, has postulated that the gray caps have grown a giant fungus below the southern half of Ambergris. According to Lacond, this fungus started as a single spore but, using black shoestring filaments to expand, now covers 2,000 acres and has a width of three feet. By mapping fungal concentrations of the golden mushrooms that pop up after rainfall—the physical manifestation of the “Monster” as Lacond calls it—he drew a controversial outline of its expanse that is strikingly similar to a mushroom in shape (now on display at the Morhaim Museum). Many trees in the city may actually be hollow husks, according to Lacond, their insides infiltrated by fungal spies. Lacond has not offered any theories as to the purpose behind this huge fungus, whether evil or benign. See also: Cababari; Dispossessed, The; Gort, Marmey; Lacond, James; Monster, The; Morhaim Museum.

  FUNGUS SHIP, THE. See: Thrush, The.

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  GALLERY OF HIDDEN FASCINATIONS. A gallery often considered the flagship of the ideals of the New Art. When it closed, the New Art movement lost its momentum and eventually fragmented into a number of splinter groups, including the Found Art movement, the Body Art movement (enthusiastically endorsed by the Living Saints), and the controversial Shadow Art movement. See also: Living Saints; New Art, The; Shadow Art Movement, The.

  GLARING, MAXWELL. The author of Midnight for Munfroe, The Problem With Krotch, Munfroe’s Return, Krotch Strikes Back, Munfroe Reborn, Krotch Reborn, Krotch’s Triumph, Munfroe’s Legacy, Krotch’s World, Son of Munfroe, Krotch’s Last Stand, A Krotchless World, Krotch’s Legacy, Son of Munfroe II, Krotch and Munfroe: The Lost Memoirs, and, posthumously, The End of the Legacy of Krotch and Munfroe. See also: Bender, Voss; Krotch; Munfroe; Midnight for Munfroe.

  GORT, MARMEY. Marmey Gort kept minutely detailed records of city inhabitants’ sanitary habits, including their storage of refuse. A typical entry reads: “Subject Z—outhouse use increase: av. 7x/day (5 min. av. ea.); note: garbage output up 3x for week: connex?” Gort even managed to track gray cap garbage pickup habits and concluded that if the gray caps were using the vast amounts of garbage as food or as mulch to grow food, the gray cap population under the city could exceed 300,000. No one listened to him. No one likes bad news. But Gort didn’t care that no one listened to him—he went right on with his research, leaving behind 6,000 pages of observations when he died at the age of 70. Later, the Kalif would use the journals to successfully invade the city. See also: Banker Warriors; Fungus; Occupation, The.

  GRAY TRIBES. Successors to the Aan in the Southern Islands. Implacable, cultured and barbaric at the same time. Thrilled to the opening of a book as much as to the opening of an enemy’s throat. Denied a foothold on the continent by the Arch Duke of Malid, who thrilled only to the opening of throats and therefore put more enthusiasm into the endeavor. See also: Aandalay, Isle of; Malid, Arch Duke of; Saltwater Buzzard.

  GREENS. A political movement and amateur military force intended to defend the interests and person of the composer nee politician Voss Bender. The remnants of the Greens ended their days as part of a music guild that provided piano lessons to youngsters. See also: Bender, Voss; Borges Bookstore; Manzikert Memorial Library; Reds.

  GRNNCK, HARAGCK KHAN. Responsible for the failed amphibious attack on Ambergris during The Silence. Grnnck had complicated tastes. Utterly ruthless and without peer in the arts of deception, he was also enamored of frogs and all things connected to frogs. He may have possessed the largest collection of frog art in the world, from paintings to sculptures and wood carvings. Torn from his youth in the Southern swamps to join the Haragck who invaded his remote homeland, Grnnck quickly rose through the ranks until, by a stroke of luck, he managed to best the old Khan in single combat and replace him. No doubt love of frogs, a vestige of his youth he did not wish to relinquish, proved his downfall. Who can doubt this love made the idea of an amphibious invasion of Ambergris so attractive? See also: Blgkkydks, Heckira.

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  HELLATOSE & BAUBLE. Although real enough, this squid-and- man circus act reached its zenith of popularity as a cartoon strip inked and written by the reclusive M. Kodfan. See also: Kodfan, M.; Madnok, Frederick.

  EXHIBIT 3: AN ORIGINAL PANEL FROM M. KODFAN’S FAMOUS CARTOON STRIP, RUN IN THE AMBERGRIS DAILY BROADSHEET; ON DISPLAY IN THE MORHAIM MUSEUM’S “ILLUSTRATION” GALLERY.

  HOEGBOTTON, HENRY. A good friend and accomplice.

  HOEGBOTTON, RICHARD. After several false starts, the Hoegbottons finally established a foothold in Ambergris due to this member of the clan. Over a period of 20 years, Richard Hoegbotton crushed Slattery and Ungdom, his main competitors, and established the beginnings of a mercantile network that today spans from the Southern Isles to the lands of the Skamoo. See also: Hyggboutten.

  HOEGBOTTON GUIDE TO SMALL, INDIGENOUS MAMMALS, THE. The definitive guide to the fascinating variety of small, indigenous mammals found in the southern climes, including the tarsier, the wrinkled-lip bat, and the moonrat. The lengthy and rather dramatic chapter on the mating dance of the wooly monkey has long been considered an eccentric classic. See also: Borges Bookstore, The; Cababari; Daffed,
Xaver; Moonrat; Trillian the Great Banker.

  HOLY LITTLE RED FLOWER, THE. One of two central ideas behind the unnamed faith created by the fighting philosopher Richard Peterson, the other being the destruction of the “Strattonist bicameral brain followers.” Peterson told the story of “The Holy Little Red Flower that Grows by the Side of the Road” at most of his gatherings, formal and informal. Taken from the third volume of his Dodecahedron (Book of Petals, Chapters 3—411, inclusive), published privately by the Holy Brotherhood of the Red Stamen, the tale is generally incomprehensible without the proper religious training. See also: Peterson, Richard; Strattonism.

  HYGGBOUTTEN. A clan of nomadic horsemen originating in the far west, near Nysimia. A ruthless people driven east by the even more ferocious Haragck. The Hyggboutten forced the peaceful Yakuda peoples out of their valley and assimilated such Yakuda skills as weaving into their own culture. After driving the Haragck out of the Kalif’s empire, the Kalif’s armies turned their attentions to Yakuda, destroying the Hyggboutten and their bondsmen as a political and cultural force. The remnants of the Hyggboutten fled to the frozen north and eventually became assimilated into eastern cultures in such places as Urlskinder, Morrow, and Nicea. Some clan members changed their name to the more eastern-sounding “Hoegbotton” and, over time, descendents such as Richard Hoegbotton founded the Hoegbotton & Sons trading empire. The Hyggboutten were renowned for their skills with horses and their elaborate burial rites. After death, Hyggboutten leaders were flayed from head to foot, their organs scooped out and mummified. Priests purified the remaining skeleton and flesh by laying it out on a litter to dry. The priests also treated the skin with a preservative and a clan artist tattooed it with scenes from the leader’s exploits while alive. The mummified organs were then placed back within the dried skeleton and the skin stretched over the bones and grinning skull. The next phase of burial included the ritualistic slaughter of the leader’s horses, his servants, and his wife. The horses were transformed into spirit beasts by attaching antlers to their heads and scrawling sacred symbols across their skin. The Hyggboutten then dug a huge pit, built a small house in the pit, planted shrubs and trees around the house, and placed the leader, horses, servants, and wife inside the various rooms of the house. A period of ten days of mourning followed, after which the pit was filled in, burying the house and the dead alike. The Hyggboutten would wait for two weeks before building an identical house above ground on the same location as the buried house. This house would be filled with small pebbles carried by fast riders from any nearby sea or river and delicately placed within the house by virgins no older than 18. Once the house had been filled with pebbles, a Hyggboutten priest consecrated the ground and a tent stitched together by a dozen Hyggboutten women was placed over the house. The leader’s eldest son or daughter would then set fire to the tent cloth, the flames also devouring the wooden beams of the house and leaving a pile of scorched pebbles. Each member of the clan would then take a pebble, while still hot—to remind them of the pain of their loss—to keep with them for the next six weeks, after which they would be required to bury the pebble wherever they had camped for the night. Then each member of the clan would carve a stick with the likeness of the fallen leader’s “animal of power” and drive it into the ground to mark the location of the pebble. If the clan returned to that site in a year’s time and all the pebbles were found, the leader’s soul had passed on to the afterworld successfully. However, if even one pebble could not be found, the Hyggboutten were duty-bound to return to the place of burial and build another house full of pebbles atop the site, stitch together another tent, and repeat the entire process. Over time, and as they were dispersed by the Kalif, the Hyggboutten abandoned this ritual simply because they did not have time to observe it. See also: Hoegbotton, Richard.