Bongosian Press

§088 The Cleansing

With the crab gone, they could enter the lava tubes again without worrying so much about them collapsing. They didn't have to travel far to find the corruption; it was only a few minutes' journey into the mountain before the walls grew warm and sweated an ashy, greasy substance. The dense magic was unmaking the stone, turning it into something more basic than basaltic rock.

A voice spoke through the tunnels, echoing from the deepest layers of the mountain.

"I used to live among th...

§087 The Praxium Brigade

SCENE: Night, on a muddy battlefield. The sounds of fighting are heard in the distance. Vergner pulls his sword from the body of a beast. A group of soldiers runs past him in fear, but one of them stops.

SOLDIER: Didn't you hear the horn of retreat? Take your life and flee!

VERGNER: What's happened? Were were winning but a moment ago!

SOLDIER: The duke has summoned an army of spirits to fight for him, and strange magic falls from the sky! He's become a Dark Lord!...

2025-10-27 19:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post

§086 Monthy Brief

Princess Mariella — Imperial Palace

The imperial children were briefed once a month, in a stuffy room without windows. This wasn’t where the decisions were made, but where they were explained as part of the imperial brood’s training. Not all of them were present – they wouldn’t all fit into the room – but all of the emperor’s offspring who were deemed competent enough to inform about the workings of the empire were gathered to learn, under the critical eye...

§085 Payouts

"Sweetie, your new man lives in a ruined castle in a dangerous forest, and nobody will go there because of all the strange magic. He is totally a Dark Lord."

"Your boyfriend lives with his mother."

"Touché, sweetie. Touché."

— Dating on the Dark Side, A Cathy MacCurty adventure

After a quick, magical cleaning and a change of clothes, Taylor descended into the living room to find a priest in basic white robes admiring the shelf of hou...

§084 Chess

Chess

“You’re usually more entertaining than this.” Strife, the god of conflict and protection, was bored and grumbling. Instead of trying to win, his opponent had bottled up the battle in layers of defense that made assault impossible. Strife hated deadlocks.

“I want to have a conversation,” said his opponent, “and that’s hard to do when you’re crowing about every little capture.”

“Humor the mortal,” said Feythlonda, goddess of life....

Definitely Not Canon

It seems like ages ago now, but I published the first chapters of ISINADL in April. True to my usual form, I began in March by writing a bunch of random scenes based on familiar light novel tropes, twisting them to my liking. Some of it went into notebooks, and some was typed into Scrivener. About half of that early work will never see the light of day, and the other half is barely recognizable today. Somehow, out of all that soup came the core ideas for ISINADL.

I don't throw away the...

Curator Jane Enjoys Her Books

Sometimes, you need to take a break and hang out with your best friends.

Volume 4 Update & Process

Rest assured, I have not been idle for the last few weeks. I have devised an outline for the next book, laid down the first few installments, and written first drafts of key chapters here and there. I should have over thirty thousand words by October 22nd, which is enough to start publishing.

I can't speak for other writers, but I dislike posting anything unless I know what happens twenty thousand words later. It helps a lot with consistency, and it's easier to edit with fresh eyes whe...

Travel Mishaps

Things seemed to go very smoothly this morning. 3am wake-up, hotel check-out, and ride acquisition all went without a hitch. I got through the first security checkpoint and dropped off my checked bag before I realized why I felt so light and free this morning.

I left my backpack in the Uber.

The driver is long gone, and I’m into the screening area, so there’s no going back. My work phone and work computer can be replaced. But I also lost two cashier notebooks with early chapt...

The Magic of Aarden

Ultimately, magic always comes down to power (how much mana can a user bring to bear) and will (how badly does a user want to change reality). With enough of the two, a magician can do nearly anything. Any problem can be solved if you throw enough magic and desire at it.

Magic becomes far easier as other factors are leveraged against a problem. Familiarity with the problem space and skill at shaping mana have multiplier effects. It’s the difference between wishing you weren’t hurt v...

Kasper, Meet Bees

He looks like a little rascal, doesn't he? But soon, he will learn his lesson: "Bees are strong."

Kasper will appear in black & white in the published novel. Only the fortunate few get to see him in color.

Imperial Coinage

Coins are round, solid, and have milled edges. Their precious metal content has been stable for several generations. However, the base metals have changed over the years, reflecting their relative cost and availability. Collectors are especially interested in high-quality coins of "cusp years" when adjustments were made to a coin's alloy.

Small denominations are made of iron and bronze alloys.

The more valuable denominations, and their face/reverse sides, are:

1 dori = 1 sma...

Billing paused; Curator Jane and her books

I have paused billing for one month, as of today. Existing members will not be billed again until October 22nd. By then, I'll have chapters of Book 4 ready for you to enjoy. New members will be billed normally and gain access to all paid content.

Here are early concept sketches of Jane, enjoying quality time with a few of her books. Something like this will appear in the published version of Volume 2.

§083 Tanglewood II

Taylor

The clubhouse was located in the center of the course, surrounded by the "front nine" that everyone could see. Players who finished the first nine baskets received a clue, and, if they solved a puzzle, the secret "back nine" was revealed to them. The safety path led straight to the clubhouse, or as straight as anything ever was in Tanglewood, so the local vendors could come and go with supplies. The town wanted to run special events, using the space to...

§082 Tanglewood I

Otis

Otis's party of eight rented rooms at a Wokehaad hotel. This town had a train stop, so it was used to travelers passing through to other places, or even stopping for a few days to fish or do business with the locals. Nobody pried too hard into their affairs. 

He managed to get Amos for a Healer and William the Assassin. Constance was his Evoker, Frank was a Scout, Redvers and Charles B were different sorts of fighters, and Nate was an Archer. It was a reasonably well-r...

Something to tide you over

Today's chapter will be late. So here's something to look at while you wait … Kasper discovering that "bees are strong."

I hope my artist is up to the task, because I'm not ;-)

§081 Montage

Hannah — Bostkirk

"It's done, Lady Augburg. Blodwin d'Mourne is at home, nursing her bruises. Otis is in Midway. He's visiting his old crew."

"Do you think he knows?"

"That he's being pushed? I don't see how. I barely touched him, and his whole body of restraint toppled over. He wants to do this. He's wanted this for a long time." Sometimes it paid to be generous in victory. "I can't even take credit for it."

"If he was that fragile, then you were wise to restrain ...

The end is nigh — Can you feel it?

It should be obvious at this point that we're near the end of book 3, Twilight Hunters.

So, what happens next?

I have this awesome button on Patreon that lets me pause subscriptions for a month. My plan is to punch it on the 22nd, before anyone gets charged for a second month. When subscriptions restart, I'll post chapters for book 4.

What to Expect During the Free Month

You haven't been forgotten.

• Blog and/or Sourcebook posts will continue at a ...

  2025-09-17 23:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post

§080 Wokehaad

Originally, the idea was to spend a month at Wokehaad Farms training Alexis and Willemien to handle mana. Alexis was Taylor's sometime-apprentice. She had the Orchardist class, but he had failed to find a suitable class teacher for her. So Alexis was apprenticed to Nelis, the ancient arc who owned his orchard outside the town of Wokehaad, and who ran it as both a farm and a school. In return, Taylor promised to teach Willemien, Nelis's niece, how to handle mana.

In the half-year since t...

Ophelia

This is one of the illustrations for book 2, The Legate of Mourne. Ophelia only has a couple of scenes, but Taylor's crush on her continues.

I tapped local Sonoma County artist Ruby Castillo @roobie_kahsteeyo for the project.

§079 Otis & Blodwin

Col. Otis d'Mourne (ret)

The harvest was good that year. For a rural township with little in the way of industry, that was everything. The granaries were full. Carts piled high with the last fruit of the season had trundled off toward the provincial capital of Bostkirk. For once, nobody bothered him about there not being enough to eat.

A portion of the town's income went to the Legate's account. That, plus the money he earned from hunts, was more than enough to ke...

Appease Him With Treats

TheNeverBored on RoyalRoad posted this, and I had to share. It's inspired by the scene in Vacation I where Jalil makes up a song called, Anger Not Our Lord, But Appease Him With Treats.

Words and music are by our new AI Overlords. We'll all be out of jobs one day, and even our hobbies will be better done by AI. Until then, there's this …

§078 Classes

There were fewer people inside the Temple of Origins than Taylor expected. The priestess from earlier was there, as was another priest he hadn't seen before, sitting in pews at the front of the room. Knexenk loomed above them, bathed in hazy winter light. Instead of spreading wide to embrace her congregation, her arms were filled with fruiting branches. Even more unusual, she wasn't absurdly busty and looked nothing like Feythlonda, the goddess of fertility. This was an ancient depiction of t...

Lunchtime Sketches

I'm thinking of commissioning a drawing of Curator Jane, and I would love to see her in her nest of books.

So I ended up doodling for lunch. Moments like this make me want to spend time learning how to draw. But then I remember I could spend that time writing.

§077 Moyalwande

"What's so important that you can't stay?" Cecilia was in his suite, the self-appointed captain of searching rooms for anything left behind.

"I have to sort out the church situation. Then I have to go to Wokehaad to keep a contract. I can't be late." He needed to be at the Farm in less than a week, and he was getting nervous about the timeline. Maybe, sealing every contract with Chowgami wasn't such a great idea, given the potential reach of divine punishment.

"When I'm done there...

§076 Vacation VI

Theudebald declared he was conducting an impromptu assessment and brought along a senior appraiser. The two extra people barely put a dent in the carriage's expansive interior. Their next stop was a workshop, where they picked up a dwarven woman with a bag full of gliders and a few tools.

"Remember," Taylor told them, "we are the only people who know this is my project. Officially, I got word of it from an anonymous note, tried it, and put together this outing so others could enj...

§058 The Other Place

Matthijs was a cleverly moustached arc, a handsbreadth taller than three feet, and greeted the two boys with open arms. He was even more enthusiastic about the supplies they brought. The group's captain had died in the surprise assault, along with their baggage horses, and the group's tablet had been dropped and trampled. Taylor reported his success to Midway's legate, then gave up his tablet for the wardens to use. He wouldn't need it for the less urgent work of finding and closing a mana ve...

§075 Vacation V

Taylor rented a large carriage for the day, nearly as long as a fast coach. It wasn't as ornate as the princess's transportation, but it seated more people and came with a uniformed catkin driver and a large stock of non-alcoholic drinks in a cooling box. His time in Celosia had been very productive. He made excellent progress on his attribute research, better curse-dampening accessories, and bitter enemies of the Academy's entire summoner class and their professor. There was only one good wa...

On The Nature Of Spirits

From Collected Treatises, Vol 3 (Second Arcaic Edition, out of print) 

My master was the renowned Hazel Mage. Though famous for his spellwork, he had a large number of summons available to him. One stood above the others, a blue-skinned siren who was his particular companion. I often saw them engaged in deep conversation, with my master taking copious notes. After he passed, I never found his writings on the spirits, but I relay here remembrances o...

§059 Otis & Blodwin

Colonel Otis d'Mourne (Ret.), Legate of Mourne

That monster ruined everything. If Otis had known he was bringing ruin to his house by allowing it to live, he would have killed it long before it was born. It wouldn't matter if Sybil hated him for it; at least she'd be alive. Their two older children would have had their mother. With Sybil on the battlefield, Simon would have come out of Garem-Da alive. Restoration wouldn't be lost. His lost domain of Willowrun wouldn't be neck-deep i...