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The Maze

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  The Maze A broken expanse of stone stretching to the horizon, cut by shallow shadows and washed in the same sun-bleached limestone and reds as everything else. There are no peaks to catch the eye, no towering walls to announce themselves. It feels open. Almost simple. Until you begin to understand the scale. What seemed like faint lines are not lines at all, but chasms. What looked like gentle undulation resolves into a violent fracturing of the earth, as if the ground has been shattered and then left exactly as it fell. The closer your gaze lingers, the more the terrain refuses to settle into anything coherent. There is no single canyon. There are thousands. They fold into one another, overlap, double back, and disappear. Walls rise and fall without pattern. Pathways seem to promise direction, then narrow, twist, and vanish into stone. Light pools in strange pockets, leaving entire corridors in shadow even under the open sky. It is not a place you can hold in your mind. It resis...
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The System of the World is Changing (Again)

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The System of the World Is Changing Again From Human Constrained to Post-Constraint Economies Like most science fiction geeks, I've attempted to read Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. The attempt was not entirely unsuccessful, though I will admit I did not make it all the way through those three massive volumes. I did make it far enough to get the basic gist of the central idea.  To summarize, the three books are adventure stories set in the late 17th and early 18th century. But they're more than an adventure story, they are an attempt to chronicle the emergence of our modern "system of the world". The birth of capitalism, especially global capitalism, as the dominant economic force. They assert that the world is governed by a set of integrated socioeconomic and geopolitical systems, by common global  structures and interactions , not just individual or national intent. And that around the time the book covers (late 17th and early 18th centuries) that system fundam...
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A Conclave of Cats

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At the end of the last adventure, the party was gleefully patting themselves on the back for convincing Bast, goddess of cats, into sneaking them inside the Great Pyramid to force the Governor into providing an audience he had been reluctant to give. The Governor was the official empowered to grant the Writ of Passage, which authorized the Exile Queen and her entourage to travel deeper into the Holy Empire of the God King. While the Exile's case for such a writ was well established by precedent, the Governor seemed leery of the potential blowback of being the one responsible for allowing a shipload of barbarians carte blanche access to the Empire. Since he didn't wish to grant nor did he have grounds to refuse it, he had decided the pragmatic course of action was to delay any decision on the matter indefinitely.  In addition to securing the Writ, several other notables in the city had asked the group to take advantage of a potential audience with the Governor in various ways. ...
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Bawabba Mbo

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We last left our heroes, the Search for Black Alice has led them to the streets of Bawaaba Mbo , gateway to the Holy Empire of the God King and the vast continent of Great Mbo.  The journey to the city was not easy. They were inspected twice, once by a pair of dragon-riding High Justices and once by customs officials in the harbor who charged a tax of 10% of the value of the cargo (a tax the heroes cleverly avoided by using Ricmo's newfound mirror magic). Dakhir noticed with some dismay that each High Justice wore an amulet identical to the Amulet of Theno that he carries. He managed to hide his amulet before the High Justices took notice, however. On the last day of the voyage, the heroes also each had a strange and magical dream in which their various magical patrons gave them advice and, in some cases, special tasks to complete.  Whisperleaf acquired a paper bag of mysterious cookies. Very good cookies. Ricmo acquired a strange mother of pearl ear ring.  They al...
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Dreams in Shadow

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Freddy's Dream That night Freddy dreamed. It started off as a good dream. He was back in Valoria during the heyday of Hot-Red and the Freddies , back before things had gone bad. He remembered the night vividly; they had just finished up a set at The Mended Drum , a set which had gone well. Very well. The crowd had been huge, way more than they had expected, people spilling out the door and into the alleys outside. The music was catching on. Word was getting around. Valorian Swing was becoming a thing.  They had been hanging out after the show at Hot Red’s crib in some getto ass part of Valoria, exhausted, but happy. Ozraeline was lounging on the couch, smoking something or other, and some unnamed drummer was passed out on the floor. They’d never had much luck with drummers; they came and mysteriously went with dizzying regularity. Freddy didn’t remember the names of half of them. Hot Red was pretty particular about the beat, never satisfied with anyone they hired for long. In hinds...
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