City of Saints and Madmen

by Jeff VanderMeer

  - I -

  IBONOF, IBONOF. A heretic once named simply Ibonof. A former member of the Truffidian Church. Excommunicated after having a vision in which he appeared to himself and proclaimed himself “divine.” Spent the rest of his life talking to himself and seeing double.

  INSTITUTE OF RELIGIOUSITY. See: Morrow Religious Institute.

  - J -

  JERSAK, SIMON. An unusually socially-mobile individual who eventually became known for his funny and insightful pamphlets about tax collecting and tax collectors. Although usually attributed to Sirin, the quote “those days when taxation has become a thing of beauty” was first written by Jersak. His advice to ordinary citizens is studded with laconic satire: “When a traveler came to some narrow defile, he would be startled by the sudden appearance of a tax-gatherer, sitting aloft like a thing uncanny.” See also: Sirin.

  JONES, STRETCHER. A poet and blacksmith born in Thajad, a southern province of the Kalif’s Empire, who rose to become a leader of men. Driven to fight by the predations of Truffidian priests and the Kalif’s troops upon the poor, Jones raised an army of his impoverished peers and, for a time, captured the southern expanse of the Kalif’s Empire. A brilliant tactician and yet a gentle soul, his is a tragic story, too long to summarize here. If Stretcher Jones had been victorious, he would have led us all to a better place. There are still those in this world who hold fast to his ideals. His most famous speech was his shortest, to the satrap of Thajad demanding justice:

  I feel that a man may be happy in this world. And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see everything in this world, but I know everyone does not see alike. To the eyes of your tax collectors, a sel is more beautiful than the sun and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. To the eyes of your soldiers, the shedding of blood brings tears of joy that might in others be brought forth only by the sight of a tree heavy with fruit. Some see in man’s nature only ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce remark on man’s nature at all. But to the eyes of the true, this is not so. As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers. You certainly mistake when you say that such visions are fancy and not to be found in this world. To me, this world should be all one continued vision of goodness.

  See also: Masouf; Nadal, Thomas; Oliphaunt; Saltwater Buzzard.

  – K –

  KALIF, THE. Any one of 80 anonymous, sequential rulers of the great western empire. Known for taking great risks incognito. Often killed in freak accidents of a macabre but humorous nature. One of the more absurd theories put forth by the historian Mary Sabon is that Samuel Tonsure was an incognito Kalif. Over time, the Kalif’s scientists have invented such modern conveniences as the microscope, the gun, the telephone, and the cheese grater. See also: Ambergris; Banker Warriors; Brueghel, Michael; Busker, Alan; Cooks of Kalay; Royal Genealogist; Saltwater Buzzard.

  KODFAN, M. The creator of the popular Hellatose & Bauble cartoon strip. Kodfan was never seen by the editors of the broadsheets in which his inked antics were eagerly consumed by children and adults alike. As one editor remembers, “Every third day of the week, a manager would arrive at my office, usually on a unicycle for some reason. It was always a different messenger, perhaps because the unicycle is hard to master. I never saw Kodfan. One time I asked the messenger what he looked like. He told me Kodfan looked ‘hooded.’ I asked what on earth that meant. The lad said ‘Kodfan had a hood on.’ I never found out anything about him except that he was fond of squid. Then, one day, the messenger stopped coming. I never heard from Kodfan again. We had to hire that Verden character to ink the strip. It was never the same—Verden wanted Hellatose to pontificate about Strattonism. Eventually, I had to put a stop to it and we discontinued the cartoon altogether. That was when I began to have the fuzzy ribbon dreams, but that is an unrelated issue.” See also: Hellatose & Bauble; Frederick Madnok; Strattonism; Verden, Louis.

  EXHIBIT 4: THE ORIGINAL PENCIL SKETCH FOR A PANEL OF THE HELLATOSE & BAUBLE CARTOON STRIP; ON DISPLAY IN THE MORHAIM MUSEUM’S “ILLUSTRATION” GALLERY.

  KRETCHEN, THE GRAY CAP HUNTER. Around the time of The Silence, rumors began to spread of a man, cloaked in shadow, mystery, and something fashionably black with a silver lining, who went underground to kill gray caps. Some said he was the cousin of Red Martigan, seeking revenge. Others, that he was half gray cap himself and sought only to find his mother. Regardless, Kretchen never bothered to leave the shadows long enough to take a bow and so historians have placed him in that purgatory known as “possible but not probable.” The cappers, on the other hand, have adopted him as their patron saint, putting out “scarecaps” dressed in long black cloaks. See also: Cappers; Martigan, Red; Disappeared, The.

  KRISTINA OF MALFOUR, LEPRESS SAINT. With each little bit of her that fell off, she came a little bit closer to Sainthood. Other than her ability to shed body parts with apparent nonchalance, no historian has ever found any reason why she should have been sainted by the Truffidians. She appears to have sat around a lot and eaten hundreds of servings of rice pudding while watching her family work in the fields of the communal farm outside Ambergris. See also: Living Saints.

  KROTCH. The villain of Maxwell Glaring’s Krotch and Munfroe action/detective series. Krotch is described in the first book, Midnight for Munfroe, as “a tall man, so slender that sideways he might melt into the shadows that had already taken his soul. His gaze, when he brought it to bear upon a man, would show that man the dissolution of his own morals, so dead were they and carious. His mane of black hair cowled him in his evil.” Yet by Krotch’s Last Stand, Krotch is described variously as “stout,” “portly,” “emaciated,” both a “black, scuttling beetle, low to the ground” and a “wisp torn from the wind in his ethereal height,” with “dirty blonde hair” and later “reddish-tinged locks that hung like snakes to his waist.” Perhaps signaling that Glaring had grown tired of the series. See also: Glaring, Maxwell; Krotch; Midnight for Munfroe; Munfroe.

  KUBIN, ALFRED. A psychologist who specialized in the study of the underlying causes of squidanthropy. Over time, he came to comprehend these causes all too well, becoming a frequent patron of the most nefarious squid clubs. When a Truffidian priest refused to marry him to a female squid he met in a club’s wading pond, Kubin became violent and set fires all across the city during one delirious night of arson. Several historic institutions, including the oldest of the Hoegbotton safehouses, sustained severe fire damage. When finally captured, Kubin was incarcerated in the Voss Bender Memorial Mental Institute alongside his former patients, many of whom reportedly laughed uproariously before administering a severe beating. See also: Madnok, Frederick.

  – L –

  LACOND, JAMES. An eccentric historian whose theories of the gray caps have largely been dismissed (unfairly) by the reading public, other historians, and even by the unemployed carpenter who for years haunted the sidewalk outside Lacond’s apartment overlooking Voss Bender Memorial Square. His pamphlets have been exclusively distributed by the Ambergrisians for the Original Inhabitants Society. Among his writings is the essay “An Argument for the Gray Caps and Against the Evidence of Tonsure’s Eyes”. Known for his frequent visits to Zamilon. See also: Ambergrisians for the Original Inhabitants Society; Rats; Zamilon.

  LEOPRAN, GEORGE. A Scathadian writer and diplomat best known for his seven-page account of his journey to and from Ambergris. Also the author of the 3,000-page novel A Sliver of Time, which covers one day in the life of a lonely goat herder. In minute detail. The novel includes a 200-page diatribe castigating Manzikert III as an example of the abuse of power. See also: Scatha.

  LIVING SAINTS. The long history of the Living Saints predates the Truffidian religion, which embraced the saints for their own purposes. Based on the premise that bodily functions are the most sacred signs of God in human beings, Living Saints endure solitary lives of poverty. There are four orders: the Ord
er of Flatulence, the Order of Ejaculations, the Order of Defecations, and the Order of Urination. The saints spend years perfecting their particular specialty and thus honoring “the God that made us mortal” as the scriptures read. Many other religions hire these saints as guards because they are so disgusting they scare away criminals. Manzikert III was once mistaken for a Living Saint in the Order of Flatulence. See also: Kristina of Malfour.

  – M –

  MADNOK, FREDERICK. A flamboyant amateur squidologist of some renown who belonged to the sporn-spurn religion. (The numbers of this particular cult dwindled significantly upon the formal declaration of their views, due to a number of unexplained disappearances.) Suffered a nervous breakdown when, due to a printer’s error, octopi images were placed in one of his squid monographs. See also: Hellatose & Bauble; Kodfan, M.

  MALID, ARCH DUKE OF. Once upon a time, the Arch Duke of Malid was a little boy who tortured insects and small animals. He kept journals of these activities that have survived down to the present day (and which are of great interest to insect collectors and taxidermists for the intense detail of their descriptions). At first, the Duke’s father applauded the Duke’s industriousness in keeping a journal. No doubt he felt differently when he discovered himself, a little too late, on page 203: “Note to self: Above a battlement, on a wall, on a spike, the bloody head of my father.” See also: Gray Tribes, The; Saltwater Buzzard.

  MANDIBLE, RICHARD. One of Ambergris’ foremost early economists and social scientists. Unfortunately, Richard’s respectable reputation has been eclipsed by his brother Roger’s artwork, which was at the center of the New Art’s Great Earwax Scandal, as some wags have called it. Roger, it turned out, procured earwax from the lithesome ears of his sleeping lovers and mixed it into his paint; thus the marvelous amber tint to the sunsets on display at the Gallery of Hidden Fascinations. When the source of the amber tint was discovered, Roger suffered little career damage, but staid Richard, scandalized, never fully recovered from the incident. See also: Gallery of Hidden Fascinations; New Art, The.

  MANZIISM. The rat-worshipping heretic religion inadvertently founded by Manzikert I near the end of his life. This cult has had little or no influence on history while inexplicably continuing to thrive, at least in Ambergris. Nothing sticks in the throats of Truffidian priests in the Religious Quarter more than the sight of rat bishops, rat clerics, and just plain old rat-bastards paraded down the street during the Festival of the Freshwater Squid, a-glitter in their specially-made robes and silver crowns. See also: Manzikert VI; Manzikert VII; Manzikert VIII; Moonrat; Rats.

  MANZIKERT VI. Death by bliss. In all fairness to the sixth Manzikert’s moral fiber, he never really wanted to be Cappan of Ambergris. He was only too happy to retire to a monastery, especially a Manziist monastery. In those days, the only difference between a Manziist monastery and a brothel was that the latter attracted more priests. See also: Manziism; Manzikert VII; Manzikert VIII.

  MANZIKERT VII. Death by an extreme miscalculation while flossing. Of his actual reign, the less said the better. See also: Manziism; Manzikert VI; Manzikert VIII.

  MANZIKERT VIII. Death by tire tread. An expert at staging extravaganzas, Manzikert VIII had no notable political or military victories during his reign. He has the dubious distinction of being the first historical personage to be killed by a very early form of steam-powered motored vehicle (during the Festival). An entire line of motored vehicles was later named The Manzikert. See also; Manziism; Manzikert VI; Manzikert VII.

  MANZIKERT MEMORIAL LIBRARY. Oddly enough, the ineffectual Manzikert III established the Manzikert Memorial Library. He established the library to house his ever-expanding collection of recipes and cookbooks. Since that time, the library has grown to include a healthy selection of fiction, secret documents, and erotica. The position of chief librarian has often been a political as well as administrative position, as when, during the conflict of the Reds and the Greens, the library became a repository for Voss Bender sheet music. Built in the same location as the gray caps’ original “library,” the Manzikert Memorial Library has experienced some of the strangest fungal outbreaks in Ambergris’ history. See also: Abrasis, Michael; Frankwrithe & Lewden; Fungus; Greens; Reds.

  MAP, BRANDON. An unfortunate splotch.

  MARTIGAN, RED. Leader of a doomed underground expedition against the gray caps. This victim of his own curiosity would otherwise have passed out of history altogether. Instead, due to his overwhelming stupidity, Ambergris remembers him as being somehow larger-than-life. He is frequently an inhabitant of horror and ghost stories—in a sense, more substantial in memory than in the flesh. See also; Ambergrisians for the Original Inhabitants Society; Cappers; Kretchen.

  MASOUF. The general who finally defeated Stretcher Jones and personally slew the great rebel leader. He is said to have wept over the body of his adversary. After so many years of battling Stretcher Jones, Masouf was distraught to have finally destroyed the only man who had been his equal in military skill and tactics. In his journal entry that fateful day, Masouf wrote, “As I stared into that pale, bloodied face, as I cupped his head with my hands as he breathed his last, I felt as if I were staring into my own face, into an ill-fated reflection, and as the life flickered out of his eyes, so too the life briefly seemed to have left me as well.” Masouf relieved himself of his own command three days later, and after an unsuccessful suicide attempt left his wife and children and spent the next 20 years as a recluse in the self-imposed solitude of Zamilon. He would eventually take up Stretcher Jones’ struggle and for a brief time liberated the Kalif’s western-most vassals from servitude, before being defeated by a general more brilliant than even he. Masouf died when his horse, spooked by a rabbit, threw him as he fled the battlefield. See also: Jones, Stretcher; Zamilon.

  MIDNIGHT FOR MUNFROE. The first volume in Maxwell Glaring’s series of novels detailing the adversarial relationship between the anti-hero Munfroe and the criminally-insane Krotch. Voss Bender once considered writing an opera based on this book, but abandoned the idea after reading the complete series. Bender’s purported reason? “There is too much Krotch in the world already.” The book first appeared as a serial in Dreadful Tales, which may explain the staccato “voice” of the book—its high number of cliff hangers and near-escapes. Glaring found the story’s success inexplicable and, vowing never again to write a Munfroe-Krotch story, proceeded to churn out a large number of them. See also: Bender, Voss; Dreadful Tales; Glaring, Maxwell; Krotch; Munfroe.

  MIKAL, DRAY. Randomly chosen to be the Petularch by a ceremonial bull, as is still the custom. Let loose by the Priests of the Seven-Edged Star, the ceremonial bull was allowed to roam free until it had chosen a Petularch. The selection process consisted of any “sign” from the bull deemed sufficiently conclusive by the priests. Although the “sign” from the bull in this case has been lost in the garbage heap of unimportant facts, it is known that Mikal was a fruit-on-a-stick vendor before his Ascension. He had immigrated to Ambergris from a small city north of Morrow called Skaal. Luckily, the position of Petularch has been largely irrelevant ever since the overthrow of the Church of the Seven-Edged Star several centuries ago. See also; Caroline of the Church of the Seven Pointed Star.

  MONSTER, THE. Depending on the context, either a huge sewer ball or a huge ball of fungus. See also: Cappers; Fungus.

  MOONRAT. A pure white rat, about the size of a terrier, that gathers at midnight to drink from tributaries of the River Moth. It feeds on honeysuckle nectar and fungi (to which latter food is attributed the fact that some moonrats glow an intense green in the dead of night). Sacred to the Nimblytod Tribes, the moonrat is also of some significance to Manziists, who every year make the dangerous pilgrimage to the southern rainforests to observe the moonrat in its natural habitat. The moonrat’s mating call is sonorous and deep, akin to the sound that emanates from the long horns used by the monks of Zamilon. The symphony created by the moonrat in concert with the Nimblytod’s mouth-music is said t
o rival even Voss Bender for its odd mixture of vulnerability and strength. See also: Bender, Voss; Manziists; Nimblytod Tribes, The; Zamilon.